Michele Bachmann’s words about the Jewish-American community selling out Israel simply because we strongly support President Obama and the Democratic Party do nothing less than encourage one of the oldest, and most dangerous, anti-Semitic memes – that of dual loyalty.
Of Jewish support for President Obama, Bachmann said:
The Jewish community gave him their votes, their support, their financial support and as recently as last week, forty-eight Jewish donors who are big contributors to the president wrote a letter to the Democrat [sic] senators in the US Senate to tell them to not advance sanctions against Iran. This is clearly against Israel’s best interest. What has been shocking has been seeing and observing Jewish organizations who it appears have made it their priority to support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president over the best interests of Israel. They sold out Israel.
This is nothing more than Congresswoman Bachmann telling us that our primary loyalty should be to Israel because we are Jews and Israel is the Jewish State and that we should vote accordingly. Bachmann is not the first Republican to engage in such behavior and she will certainly not be the last as Republicans have long tried to use this as a wedge issue to win more Jewish votes; a plan that heretofore has failed miserably, as we remain one of the most reliably liberal and Democratic groups out there.
The fostering of this perception, however, is very dangerous to the Jewish community. It encourages people to treat us as outsiders. After all, if we’re not completely American because we all have this dual loyalty, then we shouldn’t be treated as full Americans many would then proceed to argue. Our loyalty would become suspect and the haven, and home, that America has been to us would disappear.
My great-grandparents fled Latvia and Poland so that they could escape the pogroms and the violence and the systematic oppression from the government. Encourage dual loyalty on our parts, and then create that perception in the minds of our fellow Americans, and all that nastiness could quickly come back. None of this, however, comes to mind to these Republicans because they don’t really care so much about Jewish-Americans or the safety and welfare of Jews in general.
In the end, Jewish safety and welfare is completely irrelevant to Bachmann because we’re just pawns in her desire to see the realization of the end times postulated in the Book of Revelation. That is what Bachmann and her ilk are concerned with. We are only here to help bring about the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world. While it is not hatred of the Jews that we have seen in other corners of the world, it is certainly not love for the Jews that we see here.
What Bachmann, in her apocalyptic fervor fails to understand is that Jewish-Americans do not wish to be part of her schemes. We vote on the issues that are most important to us. All one needs to do is look at the various social and economic issues. On pretty much each and every one of them the overwhelming majority of Jews come down on the liberal side. That is why every Democratic presidential candidate has won the Jewish vote for nearly 90 years running.
Congresswoman Bachmann, I think I can speak for the vast majority of Jewish-Americans when I say I can’t wait until you’re back home in Minnesota for good at the conclusion of this Congress.
