Lieberman and the Jews

By now, we all know that incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman lost the primary race for Senator. While I am not a Democrat and strongly opposed the Gore-Lieberman ticket in 2000, I am forced to ask the question, what does Joe Lieberman’s defeat mean for the American Jewish community? While officially the Democrat party leader Howard Dean was neutral in the primary, it was no accident his brother James H. Dean was an active and enthusiastic supporter of throwing Joe Lieberman out of office. Dean’s support made it clear to the Democratic rank and file that Ned Lamont wasn’t an outsider running against an incumbent; but rather that Lamont was the party leadership’s choice to be the Democratic nominee for Senate. It’s an understatement to say that that political party leadership never goes after its elected officials. Whether it is the Republican or Democratic Party, political parties always support their incumbents.

After the election many in the Democratic Party’s leadership are crowing about how wonderful Joe Lieberman’s defeat was for the Democrats. According to the New York Times, Howard Dean attacked Joe Lieberman after the primary stating voters “…now believe that going to Iraq was the wrong thing to do. I think this shows how far out of touch the Republicans are. What you are seeing is the beginning of the end of the Republicans, because a lot of this was a referendum on George Bush’s policies. George Bush is going to take a big hit and a lot of people are going down with him, including Ken Mehlman….”

It’s hard to quell the suspicion that the vote against Lieberman had more to do with him being openly observantly Jewish than the Iraq war or being too close to President Bush. Hillary Clinton, another major supporter of the war in Iraq, has no serious opposition within the party to her re-election effort.
While some have claimed that Joe Lieberman is a closet Republican, the American for Democratic Action gives him a rating of 80 - the same as liberal Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who is up for re-election with no opposition. Far from being a Bush supporter, Joe Lieberman actually ran against George Bush in 2000 and hoped to win the Democratic nomination for President to run against President Bush in 2004. Joe Lieberman is no Ed Koch crossing party lines to support George W. Bush because of his support for the War on Terror.

Additionally, Lamont supporters have set up a website to parody Joe Lieberman, which has a link of his supposed “enemies list” http://www.joseph2004.org/enemylist.html with anti-Semitic ideas such as the Divest from Israel Campaign, and while its link is broken, the general idea of the pro-divestment movement is the open call for Israel’s destruction. While the site is not officially part of the Lamont campaign, he has not disassociated himself from the site or condemned its contents.
More frightening to me as a Jew was the picture of Ned Lamont side by side with the leaders of the anti-Semitic religious left, Rev. Jessie “Hymietown” Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, whose blood libel attack on "diamond merchants" i.e. Jews, for shedding "the blood of innocent babies" after the accidental death of Gavin Cato in a car accident with the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s entourage lead to the death of Yankel Rosenbaum in a 3 day pogrom. The scariest part of the Lieberman Lamont race was that Joe Lieberman never even raised the issue of Lamont’s supporters clear anti Semitism throughout the race. Anti-Semitism is so normal among the hard left that controls the Democratic Party today that the Lieberman camp saw no electoral advantage in exposing Lamont’s supporter bigotry.

Compare this to the Republican Party where George W. Bush drummed anti-Semites like Pat Buchanan from the party. While the Democrats’ embrace of bigotry is good for my party and the extensive outreach efforts to bring American Jews into it, the rise of anti-Semitism in one of the two major parties can only be viewed as a disaster, not just for the American Jewish community but for American democracy. I can only hope that Joe Lieberman, running as an independent, decides to finally and belatedly raise this issue in the general election. Certainly it is the responsibility of the Republican Party to hold the Democrats to account for their hate.

Silence Speaks Louder than Words

A little over a week ago I decided to be fair and e-maild both the ADC and CAIR to ask them to respond to Joe Badran's support of terrorism and suicide bombings.

Neither organization would respond to me or condemn his call for terrorism.

The reason for their silence is obvious. They support terrorism. They support suicide bombings. They know it would be political suicide to openly side with terrorists, which is why they typically make do acting as apologists for terrorist groups like Hizbollah blaming the Jews, excuse me, blaming Israel for "provoking" the death and destruction caused by terrorism.

But their silence makes the truth obvious. It would have been so easy to send me a response condemning suicide bombing and throwing him out of the ADC. But he only spoke what they say behind closed doors every day. They are part of the global Jihad against freedom.