Now is the Time for Grassroots Jewish Dems To Fight for the Soul of Their Party
#1296 November 16, 2025
Dershowitz just quit the Dems over their anti-Israel wave. But better to stay and strive to restore that Party’s historic support.
By me, most disturbing for us last week was not that Mamdani won, or that a full third of NY Jewish voters incomprehensibly voted for him for mayor. It was that Prof. Dershowitz, the very champion of rejecting sha shtil, of we American Jews publicly standing up for ourselves, our homeland and peoplehood, walked away from his membership in the Democratic Party. He’s right that support for Israel has never been so low among Dems. But “chutzpah” isn’t walking away. It’s staying and wrestling back that support. So here’s MAGA Republican me pleading with, I believe, the majority of You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly, don’t do like Dershowitz. Here’s why.
Some years ago, I was present at a ZOA gala in New York, alav ha-shalom, when three improbable things happened. Conservative ZOA presented an award to liberal Professor Dershowitz; Dershowitz showed up to accept it; and he introduced, as his brightest law student ever, the evening’s main speaker, Senator Cruz. I’d well-steeled myself in the cocktail hour for the evening’s proceedings, but I recall I agreed with at least one thing Prof. Dershowitz said, that it’s critical that support for our people’s homeland of Israel be bipartisan.
So, while my Republican Party I’m sure would welcome more Jewish Americans with open arms, you pro-Israel grassroots Jewish Dems are situated right now to do America, Israel and our Jewish peoplehood more good by working actively to reinvigorate within the Democratic Party, from bottom to top, appreciation that strong alliance between the U.S. and Israel best serves the interests of both nations and of the political, religious and cultural freedoms that form the civilizational hallmarks of the Western World. Stay there and fight for your Party’s democratic, freedom-loving, Judeo-Christian very soul.
Getting down to specifics, the most critical Jewish homeland-diminishing plot you Jewish Dems have to fight is your Party’s obsession with imposing upon Israel a “two-state solution.” Here’s ZOA’s Morton Klein:
While I understand that someone who wants a Palestinian state may be well-intentioned or believe that he is pro-Israel, in fact promoting a Palestinian Arab state is not a pro-Israel position. The Israeli people understand that such a state would be an existential threat to Israel and every Jew. Indeed, in July 2024, the Knesset voted overwhelmingly to reject a Palestinian Arab state, which only the nine Arab Knesset members opposed.” [emphasis added a little]
Ok, Mort’s one of my heroes, but here he doesn’t go far enough. A western Palestine Palestinian Arab state, inside the land of Israel, would shrink it to a Jewishly meaningless as well as militarily indefensible Jewish national ghetto. Watch, if you will, Mike Pompeo’s and David Friedman’s DVD, Route 60: The Biblical Highway, which sold more tickets the first two nights it was shown in American theaters than any other film. Judea-Samaria (“West Bank” is an antonym) and historic Jerusalem are replete with Christian and Jewish revered sites, and the core of the core, as Bibi put it, is historic Jerusalem.
So, ok, here’s some pep pills. I invite all of You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly to go on my website, confrontingjewishissues.com, and wander around a little on our “Grassroots American Jewish Street.” Click “Israel for Us Grassroots,” and then “Gripping Books on Our People’s Homeland of Israel.” Here you’ll find cover photos and squibs on the most stirring of my thousand+ books on Israel, in almost a dozen categories: archeology, continuous homeland presence, Zionism, Aliyah Bet, versus the British, War of Independence, Americans for Israel in 1948, Six Day War, Yom Kippur War, media bias, alternatives to two-states. You can get these books new or “used” on Amazon or abebooks.com.
Whether we stay inside or promenade on it, we live, all of us, on that grassroots American Jewish street. We should show us vibrantly living our American Jewish lifestyle – celebrating holidays and life events like bar mitzvahs. I ask you to email me electronic photos and text depictions of your gang commemorating these things for me to post there. Comment boxes (moderated by me) are all over the site, comment away and get threads going. Is it in you to be a “blogger” yourself? Email me if you’d like to be out there.
