From the left: How DSA Lost Me
A founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Maurice Isserman, thunders at The Nation that he’s quit “to protest the DSA leadership’s politically and morally bankrupt response to the horrific Hamas October 7 anti-Jewish pogrom.” The group has been “captured” by hard-left outsiders aiming to use it “for ends at odds with the spirit and purpose of the original members.” The new leaders have elevated the Palestine issue as “a convenient stick” against moderates unwilling “to embrace the most extreme positions,” such as “denying Israel’s right to continued existence.” Thus DSA’s national committee statement on the Oct. 7 atrocities “made no mention — let alone offering any criticism — of Hamas,” blaming Israel instead, and local branches joined in. “An organization that believes that slaughtered Jewish civilians, including children and infants, are ‘military assets’ who deserved their fate has forfeited the right to call itself democratic socialist.”
Centrist: Support for Israel Is Bipartisan
“Initial polling conducted following the Hamas pogrom reveals that Americans strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself, and importantly, believe that protecting Israel is a key interest for the United States,” cheers Douglas E. Schoen at The Hill. “While support for Israel has been a more partisan issue in recent years, recent polling shows increased support for the Jewish state on both sides of the aisle.” “Indeed, 7 in 10 Americans” back “providing aid to Israel,” while 80% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats “feel protecting Israel is an important aspect of American policy.” This “support for Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists who seek its destruction” speaks to “the impact of the savagery the entire world witnessed on Oct. 7.”
Playwright: Jews’ Suicidal Devotion to Dems
“We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats,” recalls David Mamet at UnHerd. Even today, Jews are electing Democratic presidents who “give aid to the terrorist state of Iran” — which “pays for the equipment and ordnance” now “eradicating Jews.” Yet there’s no more “mystery in the antisemitism of Democratic Party,” with its links to Democratic Socialists and pro-Palestinians who call for the end of Israel, i.e., the death of the Jews. Democrats still “refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital,” despite “absolute proof to the contrary,” and to call out Hamas atrocities. “Many good German Jews in the Thirties ignored their brothers and sisters to the East, and later died with them.” Today, “many liberal American Jews” seem ready to die, too.
Eye on 2024: Make Nikki Haley the One
The many non-Trump GOP presidential candidates “are drowning each other out, making it impossible for a single alternative to emerge,” moans the Charleston Post and Courier editorial board, setting up a repeat of 2016. “From a Republican perspective, this scenario is disastrous, because Mr. Trump is the least likely candidate to defeat President Joe Biden,” but “it’s also disastrous from the perspective of Democrats and independents — and many Republicans, and the rest of the world — because there’s no guarantee that Mr. Biden would win a rematch.” It’s time for “the field to coalesce” around Nikki Haley, “the one Republican who is clearly ascending — in the polls, in fundraising, in her willingness to challenge the former president.”
“Informed observers have known for some time that our universities are broken,” notes Jacob Howland at City Journal. Now “cheerleading on American campuses for terrorists who unleashed a pogrom of a magnitude and viciousness not seen since the Holocaust” shows how this “imperils Western civilization itself.” “For decades, students have been steeped in a postmodern intellectual culture of repudiation, relativism, and reductivism” and “learned to regard fundamental social relationships as zero-sum games of domination and servitude.” “Alumni must speak up, and, if necessary, close their checkbooks.” “The other way forward is to found new universities.” But “whatever form new institutions and programs may take, they must above all aim to educate citizens.”
