By Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein
(OCTOBER 26, 2021 / NEW YORK POST) We’ve often sounded alarms over fellow Democrats who demonize Israel. But lately, even our party’s establishment and its leaders have become complicit in the consequences — by failing to denounce these attacks. Voters need to demand that top officials from both parties speak up loudly.
Such attacks put Jews in tangible danger and threaten the United States’ and Israel’s national security, given that Israel is our closest ally and the only stable democracy in the Middle East.
The harshest rhetoric emanates from the party’s progressives. Yet the Democratic establishment increasingly seems OK with it. Even Vice President Kamala Harris, one of the most powerful Democrats, actually applauded a student who accused Israel of “ethnic genocide,” saying that the young woman’s “truth should not be suppressed.”
It’s shocking: The claim of “ethnic genocide” is patently false, and it’s used as a rallying cry by extremists who seek Israel’s destruction. It also plays into a vile, twisted antisemitic stereotype that the Jewish state — and by extension, the Jewish people — are oppressors. For Harris to have endorsed that is more than alarming.
And she’s hardly alone. Indeed, anti-Israel sentiment has even infiltrated U.S. policymaking, sending an even louder message and carrying real consequences for Israel.
