A prevailing discordant theme among pro-Palestinian protestors is that they are mourning the loss of life and destruction of Gaza, while simultaneously calling “Intifada, Intifada.” The two statements are incompatible.
Mourning the loss of life is something that all people can understand. It is a sign of basic empathy to be upset by death, especially young civilians who are inherently innocent.
The current strategy of pro-Palestinians is to use those feelings as an on-ramp to the Diaspora Intifada, to taunt, threaten, intimidate and discriminate against Jews, even though mass death is a core part of the strategy of those same people calling for an Intifada.
The Diaspora Intifada is attempting to enlist those who prioritize empathy (typically liberals and progressives) onto their jihadi platform. It bypasses facts and reason and pulls at heartstrings, drowning the new recruits in an empathy swamp of toxic antisemitism.
By all means, hold a vigil and be sad for ALL people who have died if you like. But chanting “Intifada” and “by any means necessary” are genocidal calls for mass murder, the exact opposite of the empathy you claim to champion.
In the Middle East, the Iranian Proxy Intifada is being fought militarily, and Israel is correct in using aggressive force to repel those attempting a genocide of the Jews in the region. Outside of the region, one needs to politically and legally prosecute those advocating to the slaughter of Jews, and extract friends drowning in the empathy swamp of dead Palestinians.
ACTION ITEMS
Write the White House and your senator and representative to keep arms flowing to Israel in its multi-front defensive war. Tell them to push to rescind the antisemitic UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which makes it illegal for Jews to live in their holiest city of Jerusalem. Intifada the Intifada.
Write your alma mater to kick Students For Justice in Palestine off of campus as a hate group no different than the KKK. Get them to expel professors who lie that Israel is a ‘European colonial settlement,’ denying thousands of years of Jewish history and centrality of the land in Judaism.
Write to your favorite media and social media about a ‘Draw Mohammed Intifada‘ to explore whether calling for the massacre of Jews and drawing a picture of the Islamic prophet are simple matters of free speech to be done everywhere. Diaspora Intifada the Diaspora Intifada.
The most powerful Jewish American politician is Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who is the Senate Majority Leader. He often claims to be a guardian – a ‘shomer’ in Hebrew – of American Jewry but he is nothing of the sort.
On the anniversary of the most heinous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, Schumer offered tepid remarks – to almost no one.
His sole post on the day condemned the October 7 and called for the hostages to be brought home. He expressed empathy for the slain and captive but nothing else.
His vanilla post was viewed by 62,700.
Compare that to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul who posted repeatedly on October 7.
Hochul talked about fighting antisemitism. She said that New York stood with Israel. She ordered flags to fly at half-mast to remember the massacred Israelis. She spoke about peace, all in several posts viewed much more than the Jewish Senate Majority Leader.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s post was viewed over 8 million times, or over 130 times more than Schumer. Her comments said that Hamas is a terrorist group that must never be allowed to govern Gaza. She spoke of standing with Israel and making sure it could defend itself against Iran and its proxies. She spoke of antisemitism.
Even outgoing Senator Mitt Romney had more moral clarity – and more views – than Schumer. In a succinct statement Romney said he wanted to see an end to the terrorist group Hamas, that he stood with Israel, prayed for the hostages and Israeli soldiers and to end rampant antisemitism.
Schumer did not stand with Israel. He did not call Hamas a terrorist group which must never be allowed to rule Gaza. He did not say he supports arming Israel to defend itself. He did not mention peace. He did not call out the sickening antisemitism everywhere.
Schumer is not a shomer.
Schumer prefers to use his pulpit to lead the charge against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer called for early elections in Israel while the country is engaged in a multi-front defensive war, in direct election interference.
Sen. Schumer’s term doesn’t end until 2029 when he will be 79 years old. The Jewish community should begin to strategize about who should primary him.
ACTION ITEM
Email Sen. Schumer and relay your disgust at his tepid remarks about the October 7 massacre.
Columbia University has long felt insecure among the Ivy League schools, particularly relative to Harvard. Whether in the undergraduate or graduate programs, Harvard was considered the gold standard. For decades, Boston has been known as the elite university city while New York City was an elite city that happened to have a bunch of decent schools.
Building on its historic reputation as a haven for “revolutionaries” in the 1960s, the administration opted to use the Palestinian Arab enormous massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023 as a launching point for its new branding campaign. It allowed student protestors to harass Jewish students, break into school buildings and intimidate anyone who did not show solidarity with the anti-Israel movement. It gave permission for radicals to cut off access to the school and incite violence. It laughed off the dwindling Jewish population’s petition to remove Professor Joseph Massad who celebrated the October 7 Palestinian slaughter of Jews. The dean of the university celebrated the “peaceful protests” of the students as part of the “long and proud tradition [at Columbia] of protest and activism on many important issues.” She allowed deans who mocked antisemitism to resign with all their benefits rather than fire them for cause.
Columbia’s “Israel apartheid wall” bisects the campusPro-Hamas marchers calling for violence
As college enrollment has been on a steady decline since 2010, Columbia’s administration decided to tap into the populist anti-Israel movement and rename its School of International and Public Affairs, as the Yahya Sinwar School Of Government, after the leader of the Palestinian pogrom on Israeli Jews. It is bringing back the Intifada banners hung by students and etching its call into the stone walls of the buildings’ entrances to embrace antisemitism as the new anti-racism.
Columbia “Intifada” banner to be preserved in the new Yahya Sinwar School of Government lobby as historic inspiration
Columbia hopes that its new jihadi branding will entice the antisemitic generation to look past the flailing institution’s educational content and embrace the thriving Jew hatred culture metastasizing among the socialist-jihadi youth.
Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Columbia has eyes on you.
The National Review posted a cartoon in the aftermath of the political-terrorist group Hezbollah’s pagers blowing up around Lebanon and Syria, of U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sitting at her desk and pondering why her pager had just exploded. In response, many of her alt-left comrades rallied to her and accused the right-leaning media company of racism.
If Tlaib was targeted solely because she is an Arab Muslim, that would certainly be offensive and racist.
Tlaib has a history of falsely attacking Israel as engaging in “ethnic cleansing”, “apartheid” and “genocide.” She has also refused to call for Hamas to be held accountable for actual premediated genocide and ethnic cleansing. She seemingly believes that the best defense for Palestinian Arab terrorism is to go on the attack to make their evil actions appear warranted.
Does someone’s antisemitism and hatred of Israel warrant being labeled terrorist-adjacent, at least in jest?
The recent exploding pager attack was narrowly targeted to members of Hezbollah, and hit those in its orbit including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. It clearly demonstrates the ties between politicians and the terrorist group, hence the cartoon.
Hamas and Hezbollah are both radical jihadi groups with manifestos calling for the destruction of Israel (“It’s destination is manifested in our motto, ‘Death to Israel'”- Hezbollah; “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” – Hamas). Tlaib has not stated anything that extreme, even though she defends the groups’ crimes against humanity.
Had the cartoon been made using Rep. Jamaal Bowman, would people have made a charge of racism about the cartoon? Is the alt-left’s aggressive defense of Tlaib acknowledgment that 75% of Palestinian Arabs support the heinous Hamas massacre of Jewish women, children and the elderly?
While other alt-left members of Congress have a few reasons for possibly being portrayed as anti-Israel, Tlaib is the unquestioned champion of vile antisemitism, promoting libels about Israel, defending anti-Israel terrorist groups and taking funds from their supporters.
The charge of “anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia” does not hold.
They are scared when praying in their synagogues, visiting Jewish community centers and when they go out to dine. They are scared when they walk on the street or attend classes at school.
In April 2024, the rabbi at Columbia University told the Jewish students to leave campus and return home in an email stating that the school’s policies “have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety.” It has continued into the Fall 2024 semester, when another New York City school, CUNY’s Baruch College told Jewish students that they could not hold a Rosh Hashana celebration because the school could not “guarantee their security.”
New York Post article blasting the City University of New York being unable to protect basic Jewish human rights
The intimidation, harassment, denial of Jewish human rights and antisemitic attacks since the October 7 attack on the Jewish State of Israel have skyrocketed, especially at universities.
The U.S. House of Representatives held several hearings about the horrific rise in antisemitic attacks at universities. Rep. Foxx (R-NC), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, was tireless in her efforts to expose the systemic Jew-hatred prevalent in the institutions – or antisemitic ambivalence, should one choose to be charitable – which receive billions of dollars of government handouts. The Senate’s Republicans wanted a similar panel but are the minority party so could not force a discussion on the topic.
Despite the Democratic chair calling for a generic hearing on hate crimes, he pulled a narrow panel which consisted of a Muslim Arab, a Jewish rabbi, and a liberal apologist for antisemitism. There was no one there to talk about the most prevalent hate crime – attacks on Black people – revealing the thin veneer of the title meant to obfuscate the obvious problem of antisemitism.
But Democratic politicians were loathe to simply discuss rampant antisemitism without ALSO discussing the much less prevalent anti-Muslim hate crimes. Every Democratic senator on the panel made a point of discussing a wide range of hate crimes to appear balanced, even though the scale of Jew-hatred dwarves hate crime against every other group, and has for years, while Republican senators were laser-focused on antisemitic attacks.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was apoplectic about the refusal to hold hearings specifically on antisemitism (start 1:55:50). He showed the steady rise of antisemitic hate crimes in the U.S. since 2014, with a terrible escalation starting at the beginning of the Biden Administration in 2021 and then again in 2022, before skyrocketing in 2023.
Cruz demanded that more attention be paid to Jew-hatred, a vile form of hatred that has led to genocide. He called college campuses vile “incubators of hatred of Jews,” and went on to list comments by students and student organizations that threatened Jews, including a Jewish student being told to “go back to the gas chambers.”
Cruz also called out the administrations such as M.I.T., which refused to prosecute some of the antisemitic agitators because if the school did, “the students risked losing their visas and being deported.” As he went on to criticize the Democratic administration and local Democratic politicians for refusing to enforce the law because they feared the “pro-Hamas wing of the party,” anti-Israel people in the audience began to protest (2:01:00). The senator concluded his remarks by noting that no university has yet lost federal funding despite being clearly in non-compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was similarly angered by the unchecked Jew hatred at universities. He showcased a poster of a student holding a Palestinian flag and a sign which read “THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION,” a reference to the Nazi’s “Final Solution” to exterminate Jews. He showed another with a banner “LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA.”
Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute (AAI) testified that she objected to automatically inferring that the term “intifada” meant the violent slaughter of infidels, such as the brutal “Second Intifada” in Israel where Muslim Palestinian Arabs blew up buses and ice cream parlors full of kids, killing over 1,000 people. Berry said (2:10:15) that intifada “literally just means ‘to shake off’ or ‘get rid of’.” She would not agree that intifada necessarily means the violent destruction of Israel, while it could mean that. She essentially educated the committee that ‘intifada’ is an umbrella Arabic word that could mean a silent protest or the raping and beheading of infidels. Lots of in between.
Unmentioned in the hearing were the perpetrators of the antisemitic attacks. Sen. Durbin mentioned “white supremacists” repeatedly in his comments but no one directly pointed to the pro-Hamas extremists in the fringes of the Muslim and socialist communities who are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of Jew-hatred crimes today.
The president of Rutgers University, Jonathan Holloway who is not Jewish, told a House committee in May 2024 that he did not believe that Israel is a genocidal state and that “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are calls for violence. He and his family were subsequently threatened and he announced his resignation last week due to fear for his and his family’s safety.
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway announcing his resignation due to fear for his family’s safety
The Intifadas in Israel are genocidal jihadist attacks to slaughter Jews and destroy Israel. The Diaspora Intifada is more “nuanced” as AAI’s Berry said, and may mean violence and rape or it may simply be taunting and harassment.
This four stage battle plan was used by Arab nations leading up to the 1967 Six Day War. It is being used again now on a broader scale, as jihadi extremists brought in the whole world to the third stage on September 18, 2024.
Stage 1: Attack Jews As Foreigners, 1960s-
Shortly after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 become codified in the San Remo Agreement of 1920, the Arabs in Palestine began to attack local Palestinian Jews. They objected to the global powers putting forth what would become the Palestine Mandate of 1922, calling for Jews to return to their homeland. While the Arabs never much objected to Jews living in Palestine, the idea that they would reestablish their homeland was appalling.
After a decade of on-and-off again pogroms killing Palestinian Jews in the 1920s to mid-1930s, Palestinian Arabs began a multi-year riot from 1936 to 1939 which effectively got the British to stop allowing Jews into Palestine, even as the Holocaust was unfolding in Europe. While at first they simply claimed that the land was Arab, over time they developed a narrative coined “decolonization” which swept through Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, and misapplied it to the Jewish State.
Stage 2: Gather the Masses to the Cause, 1973-
The humiliating defeat of the Arab armies in the 1967 war to destroy Israel set the stage for the Arabs to go broader and enlist the world in their genocidal quest. The Yom Kippur War was accompanied by an oil embargo to force the world to bend the knee to the Arab oil kings and blacklist Israel.
The Arabs pushed through a United Nations Resolution to declare “Zionism is racism” in 1975 and slowly dripped the idea that Israel was a European invention and part-and-parcel of colonial imperialism. The notion gathered more steam at the 2001 Durban Conference and fully captured the United States’ attention in the 2014-2016 advancement of Black-Palestinian intersectionality in the wake of several Black men being killed by police. Socialists took up the banner in the cause of a broad redistribution of wealth and power from the first world Jewish State in the midst of the impoverished Arab world that surrounded it, much as people of color were aiming to tear down perceived structures of “white privilege.”
The masses somehow absorbed the lie that Jews are not native to the Jewish homeland, and the Obama Administration turned that falsification of history into antisemitic international law in December 2016 with the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, making it illegal for Jews to even live in their holiest city in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Stage 3: Remove the Enemy’s Defenses, 2024-
On September 18, 2024, the UN General Assembly voted 124-14 to strip Israel of its right to self defense in Gaza, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. A large block of 43 countries were too chicken to vote against the absurd notion that a country cannot defend itself from barbarous murderers who killed thousands and threatened to commit the atrocities “again and again.”
UN General Assembly vote to deny Israel the ability to use self defense, September 18, 2024
The short list of Israeli friends were: Argentina; Czechia; Fiji; Hungary; Malawi; Micronesia; Nauru; Palau; Papua New Guinea; Paraguay; Tonga; Tuvalu and the United States.
BBC cited the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) which stated that the major arms suppliers to Israel were the USA (66%/ voted against the resolution), Germany (30%/ abstained), Italy (5%/ abstained) and some from the United Kingdom (abstained; figures don’t add to 100% due to rounding). It means that while some countries like Canada (abstained) may announce a halt of selling arms to Israel as it did in March 2024, the impact is limited. It is the USA and Germany that are the main suppliers to Israel.
And the anti-Israel radical left-wing in the United States is targeting those very arms.
Radical socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders was quick to advance a resolution “to stop the sale of U.S. arms to Israel.” Alt-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez retweeted her approval.
The situation may become more dire.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) of the Foreign Relations Committee, might be the next Secretary of State should Vice President Kamala Harris win the election in November. He has made clear that he supports conditioning aid to Israel, which would leave the Jewish State vulnerable to the many jihadist armies which surround it.
Stage 4: Assemble the Armies, ?
The Jewish State is becoming more and more isolated. Should the United States and Germany withhold arms to the country, just as the Islamic Republic of Iran obtains full nuclear weapons capability, the Jewish State will be critically vulnerable.
For the last fifty years, the Arab world convinced the world to embrace the idea that Jews have no rights or legitimacy in their holy land, capped by Obama’s blessing of UNSC 2334. That has metastasized over the past decade to bring the world to the point of trying to strangle Israel of its inherent right to self defense in the face of genocidal jihadists.
We are at a very dangerous point in history. It is now up to the United States and Germany, two foes who fought each other 75 years ago over the fate of Jews, to declare that they stand by Jews in regards to their history, heritage and human rights to live in peace and security, including having the capability to appropriately defend themselves from genocidal jihadists next door.
Imagine that your neighbor had a big party celebrating the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when 2,400 military personnel were killed in a surprise attack by Japan. What would that say about that person’s view of the United States?
How would you feel if your town celebrated the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks as a moment of “joy” when the Global South rose up to take the mighty United States down a few pegs, launching a surprise attack on the country’s financial and military centers, killing nearly 3,000 people? Would you consider that person not only despises the country but Americans as well?
Consider how you would react to your school – teachers and fellow classmates – marking the anniversary of the slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel on October 7 – mostly civilians – with a vigil for the people who committed and supported the barbarous attack.
It is not theoretical. Jihadists and their supporters are pushing such events on American campuses.
The University of Maryland decided to cancel the celebration on October 7 by the Students for Justice in Palestine as an affront to human decency. The president of the university wrote a letter that the “day opens emotional wounds and evokes deeply rooted pain. The language has been charged and the rhetoric intense… out of an abundance of caution, we concluded to host only university-sponsored events that promote reflection on this day [October 7]. All other expressive events will be held prior to October 7, and then resume on October 8 in accordance with time, place and manner considerations of the First Amendment.”
CAIR, the Council for American Islamic Relations, stepped in to sue the school. It wanted to be able to taunt and mock Jewish pain specifically on October 7.
CAIR argued – perhaps legally correct but most definitely morally bankrupt – that free speech doesn’t take one day holidays. If people want to taunt Jews on the first anniversary of the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, they have every right to do so.
The jihadi defending group made its point clear and cited the University of Maryland’s own Free Speech guide, “to think the unthinkable, to discuss the uncomfortable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” CAIR notes that Students for Justice in Palestine specifically chose October 7th because they know that Jews, Zionists and other people of conscience will be supporting Jews and noting the terrible evil of Palestinian Arab terrorists.
CAIR is attempting to not only have free speech but do it SPECIFICALLY WHEN AND WHERE they can aggravate the most Jews. They are suing to have protests at the doors of synagogues and Jewish community centers, at kosher restaurants when Jews are dining, and at school when young Jews are mourning their dead friends and family.
CAIR may win their legal argument, much like the Westboro Baptist Church was able to protest at funerals of marines. CAIR may hold placards of “Globalize the Intifada” much like radical church members held signs that “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”
Being morally depraved is not a crime.
CAIR and SJP may win the right to taunt Jews and mock their pain but society must take note: just as the Westboro church is not included in broad interfaith gatherings nor invited to give an opening blessing in Congress or sing the national anthem before sporting events, CAIR and its members should be disinvited and excluded from decent society.
Jews have always been the most persecuted group in the United States on a relative basis, with an average Jew multiple times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an Arab or Muslim. The situation has only grown much worse since the genocidal jihadists of Gaza attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
In addition to the antisemitic violence, Jews have been subject to threats, intimidation and harassment. Whether at schools, synagogues or Jewish community centers, Jews have been confronted by mobs threatening them with genocide and mocking their trauma after the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
On July 15, 2023 these pages suggested new laws be instituted to protect the most beleaguered minority-minority, “Protecting Synagogues Like Abortion Clinics.” The most prominent idea was to enforce FACE which protects religious institutions in the same manner as abortion clinics, banning any protests within 100 feet of the entrance.
Fortunately, the idea was approved in Los Angeles in August. Unfortunately, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) found the idea of protecting synagogues outrageous.
In a letter to the city on September 16, 2024, CAIR-LA called the “bubble zone” around synagogues an affront to the right to protest, even though the right exists everywhere outside of the 100 foot perimeter. It said the protection of Jews “wastes taxpayer money,” and is meant to “serve a political agenda” of Jews.
CAIR not only wants to destroy the Jewish State, but it wants to block Jews from entering their synagogues and enjoying the free exercise of their protected rights.
The radical Islamist group, whose “leaders often traffic in openly antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric” is smearing Jews as taking unnecessary money from the public because they seek protection from jihadists calling for an Intifada pogrom while they try to enter Jewish houses of worship and Jewish community centers. The Islamic hate group is further attempting to libel Jews as controlling American politicians.
Leaders of CAIR have been publicly calling Jews “enemies” and blessing “mapping projects” highlighting the location of Jewish institutions for a few years. They have now begun taking their vitriol to the entrance of synagogues and the halls of government in a Diaspora Intifada, designed to threaten Jews outside of the Jewish holy land.
Muslims got the world to bless banning Jews from living in their holiest city of Jerusalem, and praying at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount. Blocking Jews’ basic human rights in the diaspora should be relatively easy.
American citizens in 43 states will have no say on the presidential election in November 2024. Seven “purple” states – Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania (19) and Wisconsin (10) – with a collective total of 93 electoral votes, will ultimately decide the election. All of the other states are deeply Democratic or Republican so an individual’s vote there will not change anything, despite how vocal or passionately they feel about the candidates.
It does not mean that there is nothing for the vast majority of Americans to do.
For those who are moderate and do not want to see the country continue its divisive path towards the fringes, it is incumbent to try to help separate the party of Congress from that of the presidency. That means, that as Democratic nominee Vice President Harris continues to gain momentum and looks to secure the White House, people should try to ensure that Republicans are the majority in the House and/or Senate to avoid a Democratic administration tacking to the socialist-jihadi extreme of the party.
House of Representatives
The current split in the House of Representatives is 221 Republicans and 213 Democrats. Of these, fifteen are running for a different office (12 of which are Democrats), fourteen are retiring (8 of whom are Democrats) and three are resigning (1 Democrat).
Roll Call identified ten of the most contested races in the House of Representatives; I have added one more, NY17. In every race, the pro-Israel bipartisan lobbying group AIPAC endorsed the incumbent, of which seven are Republican. Those races are (incumbent listed first, AIPAC endorsed in bold, Republicans endorsed by AIPAC in red):
NY22: Brandon Williams (R) v. John Mannion (D)
CA13: John Duarte (R) v. Adam Gray (D)
NY4: Anthony D’Esposito (R) v. Laura Gillen (D)
WA3: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D) v. Joe Kent (R)
NC1: Don Davis (D) v. Laurie Buckhout (R)
OR5: Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R) v. Janelle Bynum (D)
NE2: Don Bacon (R) v. Tony Vargas (D)
AK: Mary Peltola (D) v. Nick Begich (R)
CA27: Mike Garcia (R) v. George Whitesides (D)
PA8: Matt Cartwright (D) v. Rob Bresnahan (R)
NY17: Mike Lawler (R) v. Mondaire Jones (D)
Senate
The Senate is currently divided with 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans. According to Bloomberg, “of the 34 Senate elections currently scheduled for 2024, Democrats and allied Independents are the defending party in 23 contests, while the Republicans are defending just 11 seats. Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are all up for re-election in states President Joe Biden lost in 2020. Trump won all 10 states where Republicans are defending Senate seats, all but two of them by double-digit percentage-point margins. Nebraska will have two races in 2024, including a special election triggered by the resignation of Ben Sasse (R).”
According to Real Clear Polling, there are seven toss up races in the Senate in 2024. They are:
Arizona: [open] Ruben Gallego (D) v. Kari Lake (R)
Florida: Rick Scott (R) v. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D)
Maryland: [open] Larry Hogan (R) v. Angela Alsobrooks (D)
Michigan: [open] Elissa Slotkin (D) v. Mike Rogers (R)
In summary, the top ten races people should get behind to stem the anti-Israel and antisemitic tide are: Bacon (NE2); Chavez-DeRemer (OR5); D’Esposito (NY4); Duarte (CA13); Garcia (CA27); Lawler (NY17); Williams (NY22); and in the Senate, Moreno (OH), Rogers (MI) and Scott (FL).
Runner-up to the top ten is also a somewhat tight race in NJ7 where incumbent Tom Kean (R) is running against Sue Altman (D).
To be clear, I am not suggesting that these individuals have great records overall; I am saying that a balanced Congress is the best antidote for extremist policies, and donating or volunteering for these candidates may provide a path for a more moderate administration.
One can donate to the candidates via the AIPACPAC portal. The two non-AIPAC endorsed candidates should be contacted directly at Mike Rogers and Bernie Moreno. Volunteering should also be done directly at the person’s website. Early action is highly recommended, as it takes time to build the local momentum needed to win these races.
The Muslim American community is a rapidly growing segment of the United States. It is projected to surpass the Jewish community by 2040 and be entrenched as the second largest religious group, estimated to become 8.1 million by 2050, according to Pew Research.
Like the Jewish community, a major consideration in the group’s focus is the Middle East. For Muslims, the region holds the major Islamic centers of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, while for Jews it is the Jewish holy land of Israel.
Beyond the sanctity of the land are co-religionists. There are 1.8 billion Muslims, with 50 Muslim-majority countries, with most being in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. This compares to just 15 million Jews globally and a single Jewish country, Israel.
Muslim population for Sunni and Shia (dark green), with Israel a dot in the middle
In 2024, several Muslim countries and territories surrounding Israel are waging a war to destroy the Jewish State, and the United States has backed Israel in defending itself. This Iranian Axis-Israel war is weighing heavily on how Muslim Americans are thinking about the 2024 U.S. presidential elections.
The community has long been outraged by former President Trump’s anti-Islamic comments and angered by his strongly pro-Israel actions during his term from 2017 through 2020. Muslims were upset about his cutting funds to Palestinians, placing sanctions on Iran, and normalizing Israel into the Arab Middle East with the Abraham Accords.
But Muslim Americans are also disgusted with the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel fighting against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. They cannot fathom voting for Harris in the upcoming presidential election, even as they view her more favorably than Trump.
Resigned to the fact that both candidates are not anti-Zionist, a significant part of the community has decided to send a message, and hopefully play spoiler in the upcoming presidential election, in the hope of drawing attention to their position to influence future elections.
The Turkish news site Andalu posted a talk featuring Islamic preachers and members of CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations. The discussion called for Muslim Americans to vote for third party candidates like Jill Stein and Cornel West. While they have no chance of winning, the aim is to make the two dominant political parties start to cater to their demands, especially in halting support for the Jewish State.
According to polls released by CAIR, the Muslim vote in Michigan and Wisconsin – two important swing states to securing the presidency – should have an enormous turnout for Stein. Their hope is to show the Democratic party that had they changed policy course on Israel, those votes could have been theirs. The Muslim American community would rather lose the election to Trump whom they despise, to influence the future direction of the Democratic Party, which is already infiltrated by members of the “Squad.”
Donald Trump may win a larger percentage of the Jewish vote than any Republican nominee over the past cycles which might make him keep pro-Israel positions, but Muslims have a soft back-up hope that Trump will credit the Muslim community for abandoning Harris to help him secure the presidency.
While the vast majority of Americans don’t focus on foreign affairs as the primary concern in elections beyond the border crisis, the Muslim and Jewish communities are putting the Hamas-Israel war at the top of their list, and each group may tip the scales to Donald Trump for very different reasons. Jews will focus on continuing to support Israel in its war against genocidal jihadists, while Muslims will argue that the U.S. should abandon Israel and foreign policy and funding altogether, to let the Iranian axis devour the sole Jewish State.
The Jewish community is taking a very near-term view of the American presidential election, concerned about the terrible spike in antisemitism in the U.S. and the ring of evil attacking Israel right now. The Muslim community is playing the long game, and is willing to simply place a marker on the table in 2024 that they are an emerging force to be reckoned with.
Jews are small in number with a single state and are beset by existential fear, so are pushing for immediate action. Meanwhile, the Muslim world has no existential worries, and can focus on the ultimate prize in which their numbers and power overwhelm American Jews, just as they encircle the Jewish State. In the near-term, they will work to infiltrate the educational system and overtake the Democratic Party to breed a new generation of socialist-jihadists who will normalize anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
It’s called the Insidious Jihad in America and is over five years old now. Imagine where the country will be in five more years.
First One Through 