22 percent of Jews under 40 support boycott of Israel, according to exit polling. That’s shocking news for liberal Zionists who would constitute the mainstream Israel lobby under a Joe Biden presidency.
Despite predictions 30% of Jews would vote for Trump, the number was 21% to Biden’s 77 in exit polling– the mirror opposite of Israel, where Jews overwhelmingly support Trump. Only 5% listed Israel as their most important issue, down nearly 100 percent since 2016, which is bad news for the Israel lobby.
Israeli leaders believe that Donald Trump has set the new normal for US-Israel relations: total acceptance of Israeli expansion. And if Joe Biden is elected president today, Israelis will expect compliance from him; and Biden will likely do little to take Netanyahu on. That’s the view of Israel lobbyists as the pageant of democracy unfolds in the U.S.
Under pressure from Trump to endorse him, Netanyahu said yesterday the US Israel alliance “has never been stronger” and praised many Trump moves. Israeli news called it a “non-endorsement endorsement.”
“The president stands with our friend, Israel, more than any other president before,” Melania Trump brags in Florida. While Democrat Rep. Ted Deutch says, “Joe Biden will be a great president for the US Israel relationship…He… will make Israel a stronger country.”
Bernie Sanders: “In Russia, in India, in Brazil, in Hungary, in Israel and elsewhere, we see this rise of a divisive and destructive form of politics. We see intolerant, authoritarian political leaders attacking the very foundations of democratic societies. These leaders exploit people’s fears by amplifying resentments, stoking intolerance and inciting hatred against ethnic and religious minorities, fanning hostility toward democratic norms and a free press, and promoting constant paranoia about foreign plots.”
Eric Edelman and Eliot Cohen, two Republican neoconservatives, endorse Joe Biden saying he will foster bipartisan support for Israel. And don’t worry about the Iran deal. Biden can’t easily return to the deal, Edelman assures a “Jews for Biden” event, because Trump has now set the terms and Dem leaders including Schumer and Menendez don’t like the deal.
Forty percent of Arab American voters cite race relations as most important issue in election, and 70 percent have positive view of anti-racism protests, according to an Arab American Institute survey of voters. Just 5 percent of Arab American voters say solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is their top issue– a number not dissimilar from surveys of Jewish voters.
Battle for Jewish voters. Trump brags of his “Yiddishkeit.” And on a Biden campaign call, Sarah Hurwitz, former Michelle Obama speechwriter, tells about the day she crunched into a wall at the White House so as not to get in Joe Biden’s way and the vice president said “Kid, you don’t have to do that,” as a demonstration of Jewish values of giving dignity to everyone you meet.
One of Joe Biden’s political achievements this year is that he has taken what seemed to be a big issue for Trump– Israel — out of the campaign. The Israel lobby trusts Biden because he promises to use American force overseas and try to end the politicization of the Israel issue here. Biden and Harris have actually run against their own Democratic base on Palestinian rights.