Is it Really The Jews? Posted on September 15, 2011 by Eli Gold On this past Tuesday, for the first time since 1923, a Republican was elected to represent New York’s 9th congressional district and it appears a key vote moving issue was Israel. It was a repudiation of President Barak Hussain Obama’s treatment of Israel and his lack of respect for the only western democracy in that region. While Bob Turner’s win gives candidates on both sides of the aisle notice that the Jewish vote is not to be taken lightly, we must not lose focus that the issues that moved this key demographic are – or should be – the same issues that move the non-Jewish vote; Social- Security/Medicare and Israel. While it may be near and dear to the hearts of most Jews, the bigger issue we must understand is that support for Israel should not be perceived as “support for the Jews”, but rather support for the only logical ally to stability in the middle-east and even our own national security. It is for this reason that Matt Drudge’s headline “Revenge of the Jews” is so disappointing even though there is an increased Jewish population within the district, (albeit only approximately 25 percent of the total population). In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled The Economic Case for Supporting Israel, George Gilder made the case as to why Israel should be important to Americans, both Jewish and non alike: …Israelis supply Intel with many of its advanced microprocessors, from the Pentium and Sandbridge, to the Atom and Centrino. Israeli companies endow Cisco with new core router designs and real-time programmable network processors for its next-generation systems. They supply Apple with robust miniaturized solid state memory systems for its iPhones, iPods and iPads, and Microsoft with critical user interface designs for the OS7 product line and the Kinect gaming motion-sensor interface, the fastest rising consumer electronic product in history. Vital to the U.S. economy and military capabilities, tiny Israel’s unparalleled achievements in industry and intellect have conjured up the familiar anti-Semitic frenzies among all the economically and morally failed societies of the socialist and Islamist Third World, from Iran to Venezuela. They all imagine that by delegitimizing, demoralizing, defeating or even destroying Israel, they could take a major step toward bringing down the entire capitalist West. We must get past this notion that Israel is all about the Jews, but rather about it being the only stable democracy in that region as well as its importance within our own economy, and national security. Only then, just maybe, we won’t have to hear the offensive comments like that of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) who said “They [Jews] feel they want to protect their wealth, which is why a lot of well-off voters vote for Republicans.” It was Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) who said that These were just Orthodox Jews, not the mainline, Democrat-supporting, population. Might I remind Ms. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that this district has more than 3 times more democrats (195,984) than republican (62,423)? While I like to think that people vote in support of Israel because of all the reasons I stated above; if Rep. Wasserman Schultz is correct, then every candidate for higher-office would be wise to pay attention to the Jewish vote as the election of Bob Turner in NY-9 is a harbinger of what’s to come
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 23:58:00 +0000