Tone deafness
Tevi Troy reviews President Obumbler's conference call with 1000 American rabbis, at which he urged them to get political in their High Holiday sermons, and then comes up with this description of Obama's relationship with the Jewish community. Overall, the mistakes here are minor. But these missteps indicate a continuing tone-deafness in the White House’s political dealings with the Jewish community. This extends to a variety of issues, including the settlement freeze in Israel, the aborted nomination of Israel critic Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, and the Mary Robinson medal. The powers that be in the White House may feel that, since they won 80 percent of the Jewish vote in the last election, the Jewish vote is unshakably Democratic. Perhaps so. Nevertheless, it seems as if the Obama administration is going to try very hard to test this proposition.It's a lot more than tone-deafness. Tone-deafness is a condition that cannot be fixed because the person has no clue that anything is wrong. The issue is really the second half of Troy's analysis: The White House feels that the Jewish community is unshakably Democratic. No matter how substantively anti-Jewish and anti-Israel Obama's policies are, most American Jews are psychologically incapable of voting for a Republican. Obama knows this and is taking advantage of it. And he and other Democrats from the party's far Left will continue to do so until the American Jewish community proves that it is capable of making choices.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:04 AM
2 Comments:
The "rabbis" in on this call are so firmly in Obama's camp that they could not bring themselves to tell him their reservations about his Israel policies. Their belief structure is based on left-liberalism as the highest value.
Liberalism is American Judaism. No amount of reasoning will convince American Jews it is bad for them and far worse for Israel.
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