Stop Fretting Over Whom a Third of NY Jewish Voters Voted For; Fret Over Whom They Voted Against – Us
#1298 November 30, 2025
Recent statements by friends of Israel President Trump and Senator Graham on the heels of so many of us voting for no-friend Mamdani show we grassroots must more actively make our Jewish people’s homeland case to both of our country’s political parties.
How We’ve Allowed Ourselves To Be Taken For Granted
When Lee and I gave our PowerPoint talk based on our anti-Israel media bias book to a group at the international headquarters of a venerable huge pro-Israel Christian organization, we were asked in the Q&A “What’s wrong with American Jews, why don’t they stand up for Israel and themselves?” Their view was we Diaspora Jews have been beaten down for so long in so many places we’ve lost our self-respect and spirit. Perhaps, some of us have.
Without doubt, a third of New York’s Jewish voters voting for Mamdani, who in the very heat of his election campaign threatened to arrest Bibi if he set foot in New York and denied Israel’s right to be a Jewish state in a world populated with Muslim and Christian states reinforces that perception, particularly our currently unrequited loyalty to the Democrats, no matter how anti-us their candidate openly proclaims his positions, not least when utterly irrelevant to the elected position he seeks.
Mamdani wasn’t the first in his tribe to take our tribe for granted. Back in February 2024 Jonathan Tobin (JNS, 2/23/24, Is Biden Worrying About Losing the Wrong Voters?) observed
“… even a slight shift in the Jewish vote in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where Jews outnumber Muslims by 3-1, could turn the election as surely as any shift in the Arab vote could swing Michigan.”
But he wrote in the Federalist, 2/15/24, Biden Kowtows to Dearborn’s Terror-Justifying Mayor To Retain Antisemitic Votes. Democrats not reciprocating our loyalty goes back before that. For instance, Obama. Google:
“Barack Obama received 78% of the Jewish vote in the 2008 presidential election and 69% in the 2012 election. Jewish voters have historically been a strongly Democratic leaning demographic.”
Yet Obama, on his way out the door, perpetrated UNSC 2334, calling historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria “occupied Palestinian territory” and for restoration of the 1949 ceasefire lines, “the greatest betrayal of Israel by a U.S. president (David Friedman, One Jewish State, p. 78). And he followed this up in 2023, joining in world response to Hamas’ October 7 pogrom by calling Israeli control of these Jewish places “unbearable occupation” (INN, 11/10/23, The Incredible Lightness of Barack Obama).
Google’s response to “Jewish Vote for Obama” wasn’t done:
“High Water Marks: The 2008 results for Obama were slightly lower than the highest percentages of Jewish votes ever recorded for a Democrat (90% for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Frankin D. Roosevelt in 1940).”
But here are the words of a high U.S. official toward the Holocaust’s end (Kaniuk, Commander of the Exodus, chapter 20, summarizing Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945):
“… the two great democracies, the United States and Great Britain, were, in the words of an official of the American Treasury Department, ‘deeply committed not to save the Jews.’”
Recent Statements of President Trump and Senator Graham
These days I have a deep concern regarding President Trump and our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel, but, to get this out of the way, I don’t regard the sale of state-of-the-art F35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia as part of it. Trump places great value on both ending international conflicts and strengthening our deficit-and-debt-ridden U.S. economy. Dangle a huge military equipment sale and a trillion dollars in U.S. industrial investment before him, and how would you expect him to act in the interests of the United States?
What troubles me is his recent “Israel will not annex the West Bank.” It’s not what I and expect Amb. Huckabee (“I’ve never been willing to use the term ‘West Bank.’ There is no such thing. I speak of Judea and Samaria. I tell people there is no ‘occupation.’”) expected. No greater security and Jewishly meaningful damage could be done to our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel than ripping from it historic Jerusalem and defensible biblical hill country highland Judea-Samaria.
And I’m troubled by what Senator Graham told the Republican Jewish Coalition [!] at the end of last month (INN, 11/2/25, Pro-Israel Senator Threatens to Cut Support Over Sovereignty Plan). Sub-head:
“Senator Lindsey Graham Warns Israel Against Annexing Judea and Samaria, Says The Jewish State Must Embrace Palestinian Statehood”
What troubles me is that Senator Graham sees only two polar possibilities: a sovereign Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River, inside the land of Israel, or with Israel sovereignty either “no Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank” or “millions without rights.” I hope Amb. Friedman will try to get through to Senator Graham, who has been too good a friend to lose, the expanded Trump first term plan detailed in his One Jewish State – areas of internal autonomy for Palestinian Arabs within Judea-Samaria with Israeli sovereignty and security control. This is in addition to Palestinian Arab majority in three-quarters of Mandated Palestine, judenrein Jordan, and whatever ends up in Gaza.
The Task Facing Us Grassroots U.S. Jews
We must stop being taken for granted. Our big organizations have money and access, but when it comes to voting we grassroots have the votes. Let both of our country’s political parties hear from our American Jewish Street that we don’t acquiesce in delegitimizing terminology “West Bank” and “annexation” and “occupation,” that we stand by our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel in its historical, legal and equitable claim to historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria hill country heartland, that we have to have it, secure and Jewishly meaningful, not a nine-miles-wide-in-the-lowland-middle Jewishly meaningless Jewish national ghetto.
After Oct. 7, 2023, I would have expected the final death knell for the so-called “two state solution.” It had seemed to this citizen that I had been reading less and less about a Palestinian state before that date. After the farce of Gaza’s development after it was turned over to the so-called “Palestinians” by the Sharon government, I assumed that it was obvious to all but the brain dead that the idea of Palestinian autonomy and independence was a farce — a diabolical farce. But I was wrong. It seems that the deranged Hamasians have not disqualified any of their claims by their behavior over the past 20 years culminating in Oct. 7. The primitive, maniacal event seems to have had the opposite effect of re-awakening all that “two state” [sic] garbage talk. Trump’s off the cuff remarks should have stayed on his “cuff,” and any independent Palestinian state is, I believe, untenable. They just want to wipe Israel, and anything (any public statements or political actions) that even indirectly support that goal should, I believe, be rejected out of hand.
Thanks for this, Jeff, with which I agree. The world wants to install the Pay-For-Slay Palestinian Authority in a “state” bracketing Israel in Judea-Samaria on one side and Gaza on the other, leaving our Jewish people’s homeland Jewishly meaningless and indefensible. It must be, as you say, rejected out of hand.
While I agree with you, many likely majority of Jews, are swayed by liberal politics that credit the Palestinians as moral and oppressed, The reality is not seen because of liberal blinders that can not conceive the immorality of Hamas, Hezbolah and even the PLO,. All walk a tight rope . Trump I can not trust. God only knows who has threatening information on him,,,especially Russia, Long hard road ahead. Bob
1. The Jewish vote pro-Mamdani. I wonder whether “Jew” is just a box on their birth certificate. It has no context or meaning. It is superfluous to their identity. This is an issue for our community, but it says nothing about Jerry’s blog.
2. Arabs of Judea and Samaria. I was as shocked as Jeff that Hamas’ genocidal attack would result in a call for a two-state solution. Uni is right, the Pay for Slay entity is not a peace partner nor deserving of a state. But the West’s response shows its desire to solve the Palestinian(Jewish) problem, a lack of knowledge among its elites, and a lack of imagination. (As Jerry has written, there is no historic Palestinian people. Its origin story is with the KGB, not indigenous to the land.) We may have the votes, but absent a revolt, we follow the elites. We, the Jewish grassroots, have to convince our elites that we are the indigenous people of Judea and Samaria. The UN Mandate in Palestine was to implement the League of Nations ‘ implementation of the Balfour Declaration. We can not be colonisers in our Homeland. Palestinian Arabs are from Arabia. If Jews are not indigenous to Judea and Samaria, where are we from? Our job as readers of Jerry’s blog is to educate ourselves and convince the elites.
I agree with you, Ken, that we must educate ourselves [Philly ZOA is offering a “crash course” – see on its website and under “Action” and “Places” here], and I’d add that what’s crucially at stake here is the goodwill toward Israel of ordinary Americans, and that on the front lines here are we ordinary American Jews. The case we must make is not just that a Palestinian Arab state inside the land of Israel would render it indefensible, which it would, but that as you say we Jews are the land of Israel’s indigenous people and that as both Bibi and Speaker Mike Johnson have recently said the land of Israel is OURs. Palestinian Arabs are the majority of three-quarters of Mandated Palestine, judenrein Jordan. Christians like Amb. Huckabee recognize the poison in delegitimizing terms – “West Bank … annexation … occupation” – that we ourselves shamefully use. Stop. Jerry