Unfinished Wars Lose Elections - Gregg Roman

 

by Gregg Roman

The war on Iran was just, and it was America's war. What cost the Republican Party the House and the Senate on Tuesday was leaving it unfinished for eight months. Vice President Vance's answer and the congressional Democrats' both end it on Tehran's terms. The lame-duck Congress has the tools to let President Trump finish it, starting with the National Defense Authorization Act.

 

The aircraft carrier USS George Washington under way in the Arabian Sea, October 14, 2026. U.S. Navy photo, a United States government work.

The voters punished the unfinished war with Iran, not the decision to fight it.

Vice President Vance wrote on X on Wednesday: “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.” He set a test for the Republicans who disagree with him: “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.” The answer is that it was worth it, and that what cost the Republican Party the Senate was not the war but the eight months in which the United States neither won it nor ended it. His 614-word post names the war as the reason the Republicans lost and does not mention Iran, Tehran, the bomb or the Strait of Hormuz.

This was an American war. The United States chose it, and no other government, in Jerusalem or anywhere else, had the standing to make that choice for Washington or to tell it otherwise. President Trump’s case on February 28 was for the United States. “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” he said, and he listed the embassy hostages of 1979, the Marine barracks in Beirut, the USS Cole, the service members killed and maimed in Iraq, and Iranian missiles that “could soon reach the American homeland.” On the bomb: “I’ll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon.” None of it depended on what Israel wanted, and the argument for finishing the war does not either.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth set the standard on March 2. The mission was “laser-focused: Destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure and they will never have nuclear weapons.” He added: “We set the terms of this war, from start to finish.” The Middle East Forum’s report on the first day called it “a regime disruption campaign,” not a punitive strike.

Then came the pauses. A two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan was announced on the evening of April 7 and took effect the next day; President Trump told the news agency Agence France-Presse it was a “total and complete victory,” and a blockade of Iranian ports followed on the 13th. On April 21 he extended the ceasefire “until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.” The memorandum of understanding he signed with Iran in Islamabad on June 17 gave 60 days for a final deal, ended the blockade within 30, promised “at least USD 300 Billion” for reconstruction and asked Tehran only for “its best efforts” on safe passage. On June 26 American forces struck Iran in answer to an Iranian drone attack on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. By July 13 the President was reinstating the blockade, and the 60 days ran out on August 17 with the two sides “further apart than they were then.”

After that the pause became the policy. The Pentagon has disclosed no bombing of Iranian targets since two days of strikes in early September. The November 2 strike on Iran’s Qeshm Island, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was one the President called “just a minor attack,” adding “It wasn’t war.” On October 8 President Trump wrote that “we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections.” The Iranian regime used the time to set its price. Mohsen Rezaei is the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. He wrote on Tuesday that Washington “must fully and explicitly address Iran’s seven conditions and act upon them; only in this case will the Strait of Hormuz be reopened.”

The cost of those eight months was known before Tuesday’s election. The Pentagon’s revised toll on October 29 was 23 American service members dead and 865 wounded. The Congressional Budget Office put the cost at $38 billion through August 1. Each further month adds $2 billion at the low intensity of May and June and half again as much at July’s, by its estimate. U.S. Central Command’s figure for Congress was $43.6 billion as of September 3. About 1,700 Patriot, 200 THAAD high-altitude and 150 Standard Missile interceptors had been fired by August. United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, the Royal Navy’s shipping-advisory office, logged 35 vessels hit in October, the most in any month of the war. Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz in the week to the 28th ran at about 49 percent of the pre-war baseline on the preliminary figures of the shipping-data firm Kpler, and tanker crossings averaged 11 a day against 50 before February. Regular gasoline averaged $2.98 a gallon on February 26 and about $4.15 on Tuesday, the highest on any election day since at least 2000.

The American voters answered the price and the duration. In the Associated Press’s Voter Poll about six in ten said the United States made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran, a verdict on the choice to fight. About a third called the war “crucial” to their vote for Congress, well below the roughly half who said that of the cost of living. Fox News’s survey with NORC at the University of Chicago found that “More than two-thirds said it was very important to avoid a prolonged conflict in Iran, while half said the same about stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” and that nearly twice as many preferred ending military involvement to bring down gas prices as wanted it restarted, with six in ten Republicans the exception. The New York Times reported that the final survey by the President’s pollster Tony Fabrizio found the top two answers from Republicans not planning to vote were ending the war and addressing inflation, and that a summer slide deck from James Blair, who left the White House to oversee the midterm strategy, showed the Democratic lead growing during active hostilities, shrinking while the talks under the Islamabad memorandum ran and spiking when the ceasefire collapsed. The President said the same on Wednesday: “The price, not the war, the price.” An election removes no threat. The uranium that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cannot locate was as enriched on Wednesday morning as on Monday night, and the Strait of Hormuz was as closed.

The pattern in American politics is old. President Harry Truman’s approval stood at 22 percent in February 1952, the lowest Gallup has ever measured, with the Korean War stalemated. Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency that November after promising on October 24 to concentrate “on the job of ending the Korean War, until that job is honorably done” and saying “I shall go to Korea.” The war that was finished went the other way: once the 1991 campaign against Iraq ended, President George H.W. Bush recorded 89 percent approval in early March, then the highest Gallup had measured.

The list the Vice President shared, an unnamed pollster’s four answers from Trump voters who defected, reads: “1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel.” He endorsed it as the reason many of them voted for Democrats. The first item, “End the war,” is a slogan, not a policy. A policy would say what becomes of Iran’s enriched uranium, the Strait of Hormuz and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ missile launchers, and the Vice President’s post says nothing about any of the three. On March 3 he wrote: “Iran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. That is the goal of this operation and President Trump will see it through to completion.” The goal has not been met: the uranium is unaccounted for, and Rezaei said on Iranian state television that the regime is debating whether to keep its ban on the bomb if hostilities resume. “End the war” now means the seven conditions Rezaei set out, and the Qatari mediators’ two-day draft has the United States lifting the blockade and releasing some frozen funds at the start, Tehran answering with an official invitation to the IAEA to send inspectors to the bombed sites, the Strait of Hormuz reopening on day two, and nuclear talks only after that.

The Middle East Forum’s essay on Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative magazine, published the morning after the vote, gave the rules of the postwar settlement on the Republican right: “Strength keeps the peace better than apology does,” and “Pressure short of war is the alternative to both appeasement and invasion.” Mills posted on election night that Republicans “should end the Iran War,” and on November 1 he had promoted, six times, a piece in his magazine headlined “J.D. Vance Is the Man to End the War.” Asked in October about a nuclear-armed Iran, he called it “similar enough to the North Korean situation.” The Vice President has not said whether he would leave Tehran the uranium, the strait or the launchers on the day the war ends. Until he does, his first item is what Mills posted on election night.

The Iranian regime has said what it thinks Tuesday’s result means. Rezaei wrote that “The Iranian nation handed Trump a strategic defeat on the battlefield and in the Hormuz” and “a POLITICAL DEFEAT in Washington.” The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message.” Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s written message of Wednesday warned that anyone hoping “shifts in [America’s] political parties and factions may bring about a change” is “gravely mistaken,” and that if the strikes are repeated “the response will be much more extensive.” The Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project write that Tehran’s leaders “view the November 3 midterm election results as evidence that Iran’s military strategy imposed political costs on the sitting US administration.” An end to the war on those terms is appeasement of the Islamic Republic, whoever proposes it. The Vice President’s first item and Ghalibaf’s “NO TO WAR” ask for the same event, and only the Iranian side has named its terms. An end on those terms would not keep American gasoline prices down for long. The price at the pump follows the Strait of Hormuz, and a passage reopened by Iranian permission can be closed the same way.

The congressional Democrats’ answer arrives at the same place by another road. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday: “We are going to end the war,” and that the Founding Fathers “had the power of the purse as one of the ways of deterring a president who does war without the consent of the American people.” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said it is “important for the president, before we even cross over into the new Congress, to end this war in Iran.” Adam Smith, in line to chair the House Armed Services Committee, called it “the illegal war against Iran” and told colleagues that working with Republicans on the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual bill that sets military policy and spending levels, would be “extraordinarily difficult.” Rosa DeLauro, in line to chair the House Appropriations Committee, said “Democrats will absolutely not fund Trump’s war of choice with Iran that has increased costs on American families and made us less safe.” Time reports that House Democrats plan a resolution in the first week of January requiring the President to end the war or obtain congressional authorization. A funding cutoff while Iran holds the Strait of Hormuz ends the war the way the Vice President’s list does, with the same result at the pump.

The American interest is the one the President named in February, and it has not changed. Twenty-three Americans are dead, and the Pentagon’s inspector general has reported as many as 30 MQ-9 drones lost and seven KC-135 refueling tankers damaged or destroyed. Rafael Grossi, the IAEA’s director general, told the United Nations Security Council on October 27 that the agency “has not been able to verify that there has been no diversion” of nuclear material. Satellite imagery analyzed by the Institute for Science and International Security shows the Taleghan 2 building at the Parchin military complex under reconstruction. Yemen’s Houthis are attacking Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh issued alerts on Thursday for Yanbu, its Red Sea oil export hub. Russian President Vladimir Putin received Rezaei in Moscow on Thursday and, by Rezaei’s account, called it “an unjust war” that “should end as soon as possible.” The Congressional Budget Office’s own warning is that the interceptor shortfall “would become especially problematic” against an opponent with a large missile arsenal, and it named China.

Finishing has a definition. The Middle East Forum’s November 2 study of American forces in the region set out five steps: “Do not trade the posture for the strait,” “Let the force arrive before the calendar decides,” “Protect the tankers,” “Refill the interceptors” and “Credit the allies who are carrying the flank.” The end state is a strait Iran cannot close, a uranium stock removed or destroyed under inspection, and launchers and production lines that are not rebuilt. The President has two aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, a third that will not arrive until mid-November, and eight weeks before the Democratic majorities are sworn in. On Thursday President Trump said: “now we’ll make a decision ... I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I’ll have to. You’ll know soon enough.”

The two men the President has put in charge of the war have not moved. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on October 31 that any settlement “can’t be one that endangers our national security or one that doesn’t meet our core concerns that we have that brought us into that in the first place,” that Tehran has shown “ambitions to be a nuclear weapons power,” and “that can never be allowed to happen.” In September he had said Tehran was “under this illusion that Democrats are going to win in November, and the president will no longer be able to do things against them,” and added: “The president has extraordinary powers. Every president does.” On Thursday, in his White House office, he told the New York Times that working for the President to the end of the term has “always been my plan.” The President, he said, “deserves a tremendous amount of credit,” and the decision was “the price of leadership,” meaning “the willingness to do things that may not be politically popular or expedient but are necessary for your country and its long-term future.” Secretary Hegseth said in a video the same day: “when we say that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, we actually mean it,” and “We are more determined than ever, more resolute than ever, to finish what we have started.” The President said of him on Thursday: “Pete Hegseth has done a fantastic job.”

Congress returns Monday with 20 legislative days in the House and 22 in the Senate. The House passed its version of the defense authorization bill on July 22 by 216 votes to 212. The Senate’s attempt to take up its own version failed on July 14, 50 votes to 46, short of the 60 needed, after Senator Chuck Schumer said the bill “cannot become a permission slip for that recklessness that we see occurring in Iran.” Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Thursday that his immediate focus is getting the bill across the finish line before the end of the year, and Bloomberg Government reports negotiators aiming at passage in December, when military pay and contracting authorities expire. The House-passed bill carries what finishing requires: multiyear contracts of up to seven years for Tomahawk cruise missiles and for THAAD, Patriot PAC-3 and Standard Missile interceptors; the Senate committee’s version adds second sources for the rocket motors. The Pentagon’s budget request asks for 3,203 Patriot interceptors against 341 the year before, and 92 percent of them depend on money Congress has not passed. The administration’s war supplemental request of $67.1 billion, nearly a third of it for munitions, has sat since June 24, and government funding runs out on December 11.

The lame-duck Congress can pass the defense authorization bill with its munitions provisions intact, fund the interceptors, and refuse any rider that bars operations against Iran before the job is done. That takes mettle and grit from congressional Republicans tempted to blame the war and from Democrats in both chambers eager to use it against them. The Vice President’s list, Senator Schumer’s power of the purse and Iran’s seven conditions all end the war with the Islamic Republic holding the uranium and the strait. President Trump and Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth have kept to the terms set on February 28. A Congress that handicaps them now hands Tehran the outcome it has worked for since the first ceasefire in April.

The MEF Take

I draw three conclusions. First, the war with Iran was right and the pause was the error; the voters punished the eight months, not the opening night, and the precedents of 1952 and 1991 say the same. Second, “End the war” is not a policy until it says what becomes of the uranium, the strait and the launchers; the Vice President’s list and the congressional Democrats’ resolutions both leave those to Tehran, and neither party label makes that safer. Third, the lame-duck Congress has one job that bears on this: pass the National Defense Authorization Act with the munitions money and no Iran rider, and let President Trump finish what he started.

Gregg Roman

Source: https://mefinsider.meforum.org/p/issue-076-unfinished-wars-lose-elections

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Democrats may have accidentally triggered Republicans to abolish filibuster - Ashe Short

 

by Ashe Short

Be careful what you ask for: Democrats are being asked about scrapping the filibuster again, and refusing to answer. That may give Republicans a reason to scrap it themselves in the next two months.

 

In the wake of the midterms, Democrats may have inadvertently given cover to President Donald Trump and, some observers say, have created an opportunity for Republicans in Congress to use the next two months to pass legislation by ending the filibuster before their terms expire.

Democrats, prior to 2024, spoke about ending the filibuster to ram through more legislation that was being held back by Republicans who considered it radical. Once Trump was elected, however, Democrats' filibuster discussions ended. Now, Democratic leaders are still refusing to answer direct media questions about whether they will reverse course again. According to Fox News, Schumer also refused to answer questions earlier on Wednesday morning about some of his plans for the Senate as Democrats took back the majority. Eliminating the filibuster was one of the topmost questions directed at Schumer. 

A Senate filibuster is a legislative tactic used to delay or block a vote on a bill, resolution, or nomination by extending debate indefinitely, and requires two-thirds (or 60 senators) to break. A three-fifths threshold is required for cloture to end a filibuster, so the procedural rule prevents advancing most legislation with a simple majority.

For Republicans, that could be a signal to go ahead and end the filibuster themselves, since Democrats may try to do it anyway. Republicans could use that move to pass legislation like The SAVE Act and tax-cut revisions. The SAVE Act passed the House but is currently stalled in the Senate.

The filibuster itself has been down a long and treacherous political road. In 2013, Democrats deployed what was called the "nuclear option" according to PBS, and got rid of the 60-vote requirement for federal judicial nominations, except for the Supreme Court, and executive-office appointments. 

In 2017, Republicans triggered another legislative nuclear device using the same weapon handed to them by Democrats. The GOP eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees after Democrats refused to allow Trump’s nominees to move forward.

Schumer's non-denial denial amidst some dissent in party

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is set to return as Senate Majority Leader when Democrats take control of the Senate in January, did not say his party would not abolish the filibuster when back in power. Schumer was asked about ending the filibuster at a Capitol Hill news conference on Wednesday, to which he replied: "The first thing we are going to do is reduce people's costs and work the legislative process to do that." He, along with putative House Speaker Hakeem Jefferies, D-N.Y., refused to answer questions about it on Friday as well.

James Talarico, who is set to become the freshman senator from Texas, said during an interview with NBC News, he believes “the majority has the right to govern in this country.”

Not all Democrats are on board, however. In July, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post explaining why he no longer supported an end to the filibuster.

“History has vindicated former senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) and Joe Manchin III (West Virginia), two people who were vilified by the Democratic Party for their support of the filibuster and whose courageous efforts damaged their political careers. The rule is a critical line of defense that prevents President Donald Trump from having a fill-in-the-blank government with new laws, deregulation or procedures of its choosing,” Fetterman wrote.

Scrapping the filibuster "puts party power over everything else," Fetterman says, citing Manchin

Fetterman also wrote that “And while I was once vocal in criticizing Manchin and many of his decisions in the Senate, I now wholeheartedly agree with his assessment that scrapping the filibuster is part of ‘extreme election-year politics that put party power over everything else.’ We cannot become a smaller version of the House of Representatives.”

Fetterman’s office did not respond to a Just the News inquiry about whether he still supports the filibuster now that Democrats are in control again.

Back in 2022, Schumer held a vote that would allow Democrats to end the filibuster to pass legislation. Manchin and Sinema voted with all 50 Republicans to block the effort. In September 2024, then-Vice President Kamala Harris said she supported the idea of ending the filibuster to pass pro-abortion legislation.

During his first term, Trump on several occasions suggested that Republicans end the filibuster to pass his preferred policies, but then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., resisted the president’s calls in order to preserve the filibuster for future minority parties, including Democrats.

With Democrats now openly flirting with the idea of ending the filibuster in order to push through legislation – which Trump would likely veto anyway – the question of Republicans ending it ahead of time to pass their own legislation is likely to come up.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., however, has repeatedly said he wouldn’t abolish the filibuster to pass Trump policies. Thune's office did not respond to a Just the News inquiry.

Republicans may wait for Democrats to end the legislative filibuster, as they did in 2013 when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada ended the filibuster for judicial nominees to get more judges on the bench under President Barack Obama. 

Ideas being floated by GOP

Other Republicans have also floated ideas to work around the Democrats' filibuster attempts in the last two months of the legislative session. Rep. Harriet Hageman, who will begin the new year as Wyoming's newest Republican senator, told Just the News that her party should repeat their successful reconciliation bills – like the One Big Beautiful Bill – to pass key legislation prior to Democrats taking over in January.

"I think we ought to do another reconciliation package and fund some of these programs and agencies that we know that the Democrats are going to target," Hageman said on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

"We did it with reconciliation for the Department of Homeland Security just this summer. So yes, we have the ability to do that," she added. "We need to target those agencies that we know that the Democrats are going to target from the standpoint of trying to either destroy them, undermine them or fundamentally change where they go."

Hageman also suggested including border and immigration budget items and codifying the cuts to the USAID foreign aid budget, among other priorities.

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., agreed with Hageman, adding that he was willing to work "around the clock" to accomplish those priorities.

"Part of the reason we lost the majority is voters didn't think we worked that hard," he said. "They saw the Senate not even trying to pass the Save America Act, and they said, 'What's the point in having them?' Well, we've got two months left, and we should use every minute to the maximum advantage that we have." 

Ashe Short

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/did-democrats-accidentally-trigger-republican-filibuster-abolition

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Trump insists Senate 'must act' when it returns next week, claims chamber is 'killing our country' - Misty Severi

 

by Misty Severi

The Senate is expected to return for a lame duck session next week after Republicans faced a brutal defeat in both chambers during the midterms on Tuesday night, meaning the GOP will only maintain a majority in the chambers until January.

 

President Donald Trump insisted Friday night that the Senate "must act" when it returns to session next week, claiming the chamber is "killing our country" with its inability to get things passed.

The Senate is expected to return for a lame duck session next week after Republicans faced a brutal defeat in both chambers during the midterms on Tuesday night, meaning the GOP will only maintain a majority in the chambers until January.

“The Senate has to act," the president told reporters in Florida following remarks at the Kennedy Space Center. "The Senate is getting nothing passed, and it’s just killing our country.

“Democrats and Republicans are just not getting anything done," he continued. "The Democrats vote in a block. We could have the best bill in the world for our country. They vote in a block, and we always have a few Republicans that obstruct. 

"[The Senate is] the biggest problem we have, it’s a roadblock," he added. "You send things to the Senate when you want it to die. The Senate is killing our country.”

The president said one of the main reasons Republicans saw such a big defeat this week was because of the Senate and its inability to pass meaningful legislation, though he declined to specifically blame Senate Majority Leader John Thune. 

Republicans are slated to hold their leadership elections in the Senate next week, though Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is attempting to delay the vote. No Republican has publicly launched a bid to replace Thune as GOP leader.

Misty Severi a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/trump-insists-senate-must-act-when-it-returns-next-week-claims

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How China Weaponizes Jew-Hate - Robert Williams

 

by Robert Williams

Now China has lit upon the Jews, who do not even live there, but who, as author and documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov pointed out, are politically useful.

 

• Using both its profitable blockbuster social media app TikTok and the nonprofit networks of Shanghai-based American citizen Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans (founder of Code Pink), China has been able to foment Jew-hatred and unrest on the streets not only of the United States but also the United Kingdom.

• Notably, the Chinese-funded People's Forum is out to end not only Israel but also America. At the 2024 People's Conference for Palestine, the organization's Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos, who advocates for Cuba, also called for the complete destruction of the United States: "We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room."

• According to the US House Ways and Means Committee: "Evidence suggests that The People's Forum and Code Pink have been funded and influenced by Mr. [Neville Roy] Singham and the communist Chinese government, both of which are foreign principals."

• Historian Dara Horn suggests that tyrants and totalitarian regimes, to maintain or gain further power, promote the "Big Lie" of Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that the Jews are "evil." Evil in what way? Just fill in the blank with whatever you like, like a Rorschach test.

• It probably helps to select a target that would rather just be left alone under its fig tree, a target disinclined to retaliate – as China already succeeded in doing by oppressing the peaceful Tibetans and enslaving and torturing the Uyghurs.

• Now China has lit upon the Jews, who do not even live there, but who, as author and documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov pointed out, are politically useful.

• "These lies are all part of the foundational Big Lie: that antisemitism itself is righteous. If the Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist, resistance against them is not only moral, it is good!... The only thing that varies is what you value the most. Say you're a religious Christian, then you are lied to that Jews are destroying Christianity, or that they killed Christ. Say you're a human rights activist, then Israel's the world's worst violator of human rights, and it doesn't matter that you're being told this by the Islamic Republic of Iran." — Dara Horn, interview, Times of Israel, September 3, 2026.

Using both its profitable blockbuster social media app TikTok and the nonprofit networks of Shanghai-based American citizen Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans (founder of Code Pink), China has been able to foment Jew-hatred and unrest on the streets not only of the United States but also the United Kingdom. Pictured: The headquarters of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, in Beijing, China. (Photo by Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

China's role in funding Jew-hate -- and whipping up unrest in the United States through local non-profits abusing their tax-exempt status -- is finally coming to light thanks to a two-year investigation by the US House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means. The probe began in 2024 and has been investigating how countless foreign actors have been able to wield foreign influence through the use of local tax-exempt non-profits.

One of the main powers is China. Using both its profitable blockbuster social media app TikTok (here, here , here and here) and the nonprofit networks of Shanghai-based American citizen Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans (founder of Code Pink), China has been able to foment Jew-hatred and unrest on the streets not only of the United States but also the United Kingdom.

Steven Richards wrote of Singham in September 2026:

"He is the primary sponsor of a network of organizations: The People's Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. House and Senate investigators have documented extensive financial and leadership ties between the groups and Singham as well as Singham's close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Public 990 filings – IRS forms for tax-exempt groups – cited by the committee show The People's Forum alone received over $20 million from Singham and Evans from 2017 to 2022."

Singham, according to the New York Times, "works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide." He does so through a web of organizations and in a mix of "progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points."

The People's Forum was a primary organizer of the large Times Square pro-Hamas rally on October 8, 2023, as well as countless rallies and other "actions" in the weeks, months and years that followed. Those events include the November 4, 2023 National March on Washington, numerous "Shut it Down for Palestine" action days, and pro-Hamas activities on US campuses. More recently, the People's Forum has been involved in anti-ICE activity.

The People's Forum is a leading member ("convenor") of the Shut it Down for Palestine Coalition, which is, in the words of Influence Watch, "an advocacy and activism coalition focused on disrupting or halting the activity of political offices, businesses, and workplaces that fund, invest in, collaborate with, or otherwise support the State of Israel."

The People's Forum is also co-organizing the now bi-annual conference, "People's Conference for Palestine," which has featured numerous Arab terrorists, including Wissam Rafidi, a member of the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Notably, the Chinese-funded People's Forum is out to end not only Israel but also America. At the 2024 People's Conference for Palestine, the organization's Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos, who advocates for Cuba, also called for the complete destruction of the United States: "We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room."

According to the US House Ways and Means Committee:

"Evidence suggests that The People's Forum and Code Pink have been funded and influenced by Mr. [Neville Roy] Singham and the communist Chinese government, both of which are foreign principals."

Code Pink has been a central participant in and organizer of a multitude of pro-Hamas and anti-Israel actions, including the National March on Washington for Palestine in November 2023. The March featured the organization's co-founder, Medea Benjamin and its "Palestine organizer" Nour Jaghama as speakers.

Code Pink has been , in addition, a central player in multiple "Shut it Down for Palestine" and "Rise up for Gaza" action days, "commemorations" of the October 7 Hamas atrocities as "one year of genocide/resistance." Code Pink has also taken to disrupting congressional hearings, targeting politicians to pressure them to go against Israel and supporting pro-Hamas activism on campus, such as running a "Gaza Summer School," stirring up unrest and disrupting college campuses (see here and here for examples).

Code Pink has also expanded its operations to the UK, where the organization, according to a recent report in The Telegraph, "encourages activists to join mass pro-Palestinian marches and has organised demonstrations at the Ministry of Defence as well as the London office of an arms company."

Luke de Pulford of Britain's Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China said in response to the findings:

"We have to be honest – the UK is under siege from China and practically defenceless on the battlefield. The CCP is engaged in a whole-of-state effort to manipulate narratives abroad, to sow division and chaos... Communist Party academics call this kind of activity unrestricted warfare: seeking advantage through non-military means, and they're very good at it. We have yet to even recognise this acute threat, let alone defend ourselves appropriately."

The UK Home Office has launched an investigation into the matter.

If it were not so chilling, it might even have been mocked: China, a ruthless Communist regime lording it over 1.4 billion people, taking part in a war on the Jewish people and their tiny state, Israel, the size of New Jersey -- by weaponizing antisemitism to foment division and civil unrest in the West.

As observers of this sad situation, we ought to at least ask why one of the world's most powerful and populous countries is behaving in this manner.

In her recent book, The Final Solution to the Jewish Question -- a follow-up to her non-fiction bestseller Why People Love Dead Jews -- historian Dara Horn suggests that tyrants and totalitarian regimes, to maintain or gain further power, promote the "Big Lie" of Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that the Jews are "evil." Evil in what way? Just fill in the blank with whatever you like, like a Rorschach test.

It probably helps to select a target that would rather just be left alone under its fig tree, a target disinclined to retaliate – as China already succeeded in doing by oppressing the peaceful Tibetans and enslaving and torturing the Uyghurs.

Now China has lit upon the Jews, who do not even live there, but who, as author and documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov pointed out, are politically useful.

"The through line of antisemitism for thousands of years has been the denial of truth and the promotion of lies," Horn recently remarked in an interview.

"These lies range in scope from conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial to the blood libel to the currently popular claims that Zionism is racism, that Jews are settler colonialists, and that Jewish civilization isn't native to the land of Israel. These lies are all part of the foundational Big Lie: that antisemitism itself is righteous. If the Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist, resistance against them is not only moral, it is good!

"Today, the Big Lie is... in every era, every social circle. The only thing that varies is what you value the most. Say you're a religious Christian, then you are lied to that Jews are destroying Christianity, or that they killed Christ. Say you're a human rights activist, then Israel's the world's worst violator of human rights, and it doesn't matter that you're being told this by the Islamic Republic of Iran."

So far, for China at least, these capers seem to be working rather well.

Robert Williams is based in the United States.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22901/how-china-weaponizes-jew-hate

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Jordan Is Fighting Iran and the Brotherhood. Washington Should Take Notice - Gregg Roman

 

by Gregg Roman

Amman Has Shot Down Tehran’s Missiles and Jailed the Brotherhood’s Financiers. America’s Strategy Has Not Caught Up

 

Amman, Jordan.Shutterstock

 

On November 2, 2026, King Abdullah II opened Jordan’s parliament ten days after gunmen killed nine mourners and wounded 34 at a funeral in St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church in Hamoud, a village in Karak governorate. The king called the killers “khawarej,” the old name for those who put themselves outside the faith, and told lawmakers they have no place in Jordan, “not now, not ever.” Three suspects have since been charged with terrorism.

It closed a hard year for the kingdom. Since 2025, no Arab state has done more against the two forces that threaten American interests in the Levant: the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Washington has noticed mostly in its appropriations bills. It should notice in its strategy.

Since 2025, no Arab state has done more against the two forces that threaten American interests in the Levant: the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since the war began on February 28, Iran has treated Jordan as an enemy. In the first five weeks alone, it fired 161 missiles and 120 drones at targets inside the kingdom. Jordan’s air force and air defenses brought down 261 of the 281. Between July 9 and July 25, they downed another 70 ballistic missiles and 25 drones. On September 9, they intercepted 18 of 20.
Jordan hosts about 4,000 American troops, and Iran’s fire has fallen on them, too. In July, three U.S. soldiers were killed in Iranian strikes on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. In September, another strike there damaged an A-10 and about eight F-15s. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ answer was an ultimatum: Expel the Americans or face a “crushing response.” The Americans are still there.

Geography explains the stakes. Jordan’s eastern desert borders Iraq, where smuggling routes across the Jazira and Badia are dominated by Iran-aligned militias, a Konrad Adenauer Stiftung study found in October. Its northern border with Syria was for years a main gate for Captagon and guns moving south. Its western border runs along Israel and the West Bank. A Jordan that falters would hand Tehran a corridor from Baghdad to the Jordan River.

Iran’s designs on Jordan predate the war. In March 2024, Jordanian security arrested members of a Brotherhood cell tied to Hamas’s military wing that had received weapons from Iranian-backed militias in Syria, Reuters reported. The target was the monarchy itself. That is the point Washington keeps missing. In Jordan, Tehran and the Brotherhood are not two files. They are one.

King Abdullah II of Jordan. Shutterstock

On April 15, 2025, Jordan announced the arrest of 16 Brotherhood members, trained and financed in Lebanon, who had set up a rocket and drone factory. One rocket was ready to launch. Eight days later, the government outlawed the movement and seized its offices and assets.

Then it followed the money. In July 2025, investigators reported that the Brotherhood had raised more than 30 million dinars, about $42 million, much of it in donations collected for Gaza. Only about 1 percent reached Jordan’s official relief channels. The rest, prosecutors said, paid for politicians, election campaigns, and property abroad. On October 25, a Jordanian court sentenced seven Brotherhood leaders, including former general supervisor Murad al-Adaileh. Five, among them finance chief Ahmad al-Zarqan, received three years.

Washington followed Amman, not the reverse. On January 13, 2026, the Treasury designated the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for its material support to Hamas, citing the rocket, explosives, and drone cases Jordan had already brought.

The job is unfinished. The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Islamic Action Front, won 31 of 138 seats in 2024. It survives as the Umma Party after the election commission ordered it to drop a name that broke the ban on religious parties, and in September it elected Muath al-Khawaldeh, a longtime Brotherhood spokesman, as its leader. Charities tied to the movement still operate.

Congress has been generous. The 2022 memorandum of understanding commits Washington to seek $1.45 billion a year through 2029. Congress appropriated a record $2.1 billion for fiscal 2026, and the House-passed bill for 2027 matches it. When Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) moved in July to cut Jordan off entirely, the House rejected him 421 to six.

Money is not strategy. The Treasury designated the Brotherhood as an organization but not the people and charities that move its money. The House defense bill’s $500 million for Jordan’s armed forces is still not law. And as Qatar mediates a U.S.-Iran deal built around uranium and the Strait of Hormuz, the country that absorbed hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones has no seat at the table.

As Qatar mediates a U.S.-Iran deal built around uranium and the Strait of Hormuz, the country that absorbed hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones has no seat at the table.

Three things must follow. First, Congress should enact the 2027 figures, including up to $500 million for Jordan’s armed forces and not less than $150 million for its border security. The administration should open talks on a successor memorandum with air and missile defense at its center. Jordan’s interceptors protected American troops this year. Paying for more of them is not charity.

Second, the Treasury should finish what it began in January. It should name the Jordanian Brotherhood’s financiers and front charities, using the evidence Jordanian prosecutors have already put before a court, and freeze what they hold in American reach.

Third, any agreement with Tehran should require an end to attacks on Jordan and to the smuggling of weapons across its borders by Iran and its militias. Washington should also back the border coordination that Iraq, Jordan, and Syria began in August, with intelligence and surveillance the kingdom cannot buy alone. A deal that quiets the Gulf while leaving Jordan exposed would only move the war.

Jordan has shot down Iran’s missiles, jailed the Brotherhood’s financiers, and kept American troops on its soil under fire. In January, this author will lead a Middle East Forum delegation to Amman. Jordan has done its part. Washington should do its own.

Gregg Roman is the executive director of the Middle East Forum. In 2014, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency named him one of the “ten most inspiring global Jewish leaders,” and he previously served as the political advisor to Israel’s deputy foreign minister and worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense. A frequent speaker on Middle East affairs, Mr. Roman has testified before Congress and the Knesset and appears on international news channels such as Fox News, i24NEWS, Al Jazeera, BBC World News, and Israel’s Channels 12 and 13. He studied national security and political communications at American University and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and has contributed to The Hill, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, and the Jerusalem Post.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/jordan-is-fighting-iran-and-the-brotherhood-washington-should-take-notice

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US offers reward of up to $20 million, possible relocation for information on Iran nuclear program - Seth J. Frantzman

 

by Seth J. Frantzman

Rewards for Justice, dedicated to gathering information on terrorism and hostile foreign operations, issued a new offer for information, including nuclear facilities, equipment, and personnel.

 

Iranians drive next to a billboard displaying pictures of nuclear scientists, centrifuges and a sentence reading in Farsi: " Science is the power", at the Enqelab square in Tehran, on August 29, 2025.

(photo credit: AFP/via Getty Images)

 

The US State Department announced it was offering a reward of up to $20 million and possible relocation for information on Iran's nuclear program, in a statement from its Rewards for Justice program on Friday. 

Rewards for Justice (RFJ), a program dedicated to gathering information on terrorism and foreign operations against the US, issued a new offer for information including facilities, equipment, and personnel connected to Iran's nuclear program. 

RFJ accepts tips via Signal, Telegram, and Tor Browser in several languages.

It’s unclear why the US waited until now, some eight months into the war, to make this offer. The offer specifically mentions key aspects of the program, such as “facilities, equipment, and associated personnel, such as those in the scientific community, or the movement of any of the above.”

It notes that “in 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran is enriching uranium to 60% purity, a level that is a short technical step from the 90% required for a nuclear weapon. Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to produce uranium at such a high enrichment level.”

US State Department's Reward for Justice program offers reward for information on Iran's nuclear program. (credit: US State Dept/Rewards for Justice)

The release notes that “experts estimate this quantity, if enriched further, could be enough for several nuclear weapons.”

Since its inception in 1984, RFJ has paid over $250 million to more than 125 individuals who provided "useful information that helped to protect US national security," RFJ said.

To protect the safety of its informants, RFJ keeps sources strictly confidential and may offer relocation for a source and their family on a case-by-case basis.

RFJ currently offers rewards ranging from less than $1 million to up to $25 million for information on terrorism, foreign election interference, malicious cyber activity, and financial mechanisms of North Korea.

US, Canada issue new sanctions against Iran

Also on Friday, the US State Department announced that the US and Canada "sanctioned eight digital asset service providers that help the Iranian regime use digital assets to evade sanctions and fund terrorism." 

The sanctions effectively cut the firms off from the dollar-based financial system, blocking any assets that the firms may have in the United States and prohibiting any transactions with US persons or entities.

“Treasury will pursue and disrupt the Iranian regime’s financial channels anywhere in the world,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. 

Asher Smith contributed to this report. 

Seth J. Frantzman

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-914113

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Why do American Jews vote for antisemites like El-Sayed? - Jonathan S. Tobin

 

by Jonathan S. Tobin

Politics now plays the role religion used to play in most people’s lives. For many their faith is liberalism and the Democrats, with Jewish peoplehood and Israel discarded.

 

Orthodox Jews vote at a polling location on Election Day during the midterm elections in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, Nov. 3, 2026. Credit: Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images.

It doesn’t take a degree in political science or a job as a talking head on a cable news network to understand the 2026 midterm elections. As is usually the case, the results were a referendum on the incumbent administration. Though the reasons for it can be disputed, there is no denying that the blue wave that swept the Democratic Party into control of both houses of Congress was a rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republicans.

But there is one aspect of the voting that remains a puzzle for some. How is it that so many Jews in Michigan, indeed a reported majority of early voters according to one survey, voted for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed?

National midterms exit polling suggested that 68% of those who identify as Jews voted for Democrats. That’s not all that much different from the surveys of the 2024 election. Two years ago, an AP/Fox News poll showed that 66% of Jews backed Democrats, while one conducted by the liberal Jewish Electoral Institute put the number at 71%.

Some observers believed that Jewish support for El-Sayed would be far lower than those numbers. Given his record of open antisemitism, that seemed a reasonable assumption. How could a candidate gain any appreciable Jewish support when he rationalized a terrorist attack on a synagogue and Jewish preschool in West Bloomfield, Mich., opposed Israel’s existence, had credible ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and waged a campaign that hinged on demonizing the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby and driving Jews from the public square, while employing tropes of Jew-hatred that resembled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

A majority of Jewish votes went to El-Sayed

The evidence appears to be that the percentage of Jews who voted for him wasn’t all that much lower than those who favored the average Democrat. While one should always take exit polls with a grain of salt, one survey of those who voted early in Michigan showed that a large majority of those who identify as Jewish—57%—voted for El-Sayed.

If that result is even remotely accurate how can that be explained? And what does that say about the state of American Jewry in 2026, especially considering that it took place amid a global surge of antisemitism that began with the Hamas-led, Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023?

El-Sayed was just one of many Democrats who benefited from the general dissatisfaction with the Trump administration, and he is just one of many opponents of Israel that will be part of the large freshman class of Democrats in the House and Senate in the next Congress.

The list includes such notable additions as Darializa Avila Chevalier, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who led a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City’s Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023 and will soon represent Northern Manhattan in the House of Representatives.

Other DSA members who oppose the existence of the Jewish state, who will be joining the already expanded left-wing congressional “Squad,” include Claire Valdez, also of New York City, Philadelphia’s Chris Rabb, Denver’s Melat Kiros and Los Angeles’s Angela Gonzales-Torres.

And that’s not even noting the many others, whose anti-Israel stances, including those who repeat the blood libel that Israel committed “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, make them indistinguishable from DSA members.

It’s not about Netanyahu

Many Democrats claim to still support Israel. But the list of those who are willing to emphatically refute the antisemitic lies about the Gaza war or the conflict with the Palestinians in general that have been normalized in public discourse, are now few and far between.

Few oppose restrictions or bans on military aid to Israel in wartime or sanctions against Jews in Judea and Samaria, who have been demonized by the false narrative of “settler violence.” Indeed, once you get past Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), there aren’t many Democrats in Congress who fit that description.

Moreover, the notion that the Democratic Party’s turn against Israel can be explained by being alienated by the policies and statements of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a myth.

Pro-Israel Jewish Democrats claim that Netanyahu has destroyed Democratic support for the Jewish state by favoring Republicans, especially Trump. But this is false. In the last two decades, it is the Democrats who have turned on Israel, not just Netanyahu, by embracing appeasement of Iran and clinging to the two-state solution and “land for peace” formulas that most Israelis rightly understand as merely a recipe for more Oct. 7-style terror atrocities, not an end to the conflict.

If anyone still doubts that, they need to read the exchange on X between Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid and Brad Lander, the Democrat who was just elected to Congress from New York City.

Lander, a former city comptroller, won his seat by defeating Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), a man with impeccable liberal and anti-Trump credentials and a critic of Netanyahu, who wouldn’t disavow support for Israel, in a Democratic primary.

Lander is Jewish and claims to not oppose Israel’s existence, but he accused it of “genocide” during the campaign and demanded that Goldman do the same. Lander responded with scorn to Lapid’s expectation that a change in power in Jerusalem and more outreach from Israeli leaders like him, who are eager to be friends with the Democrats, would change things. He made it clear that Democrats like him, who are allied with the antisemitic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and even others who are not that extreme, aren’t interested in mainstream Israeli opinion, even when it comes from liberals who want to be his allies.

Lander, who campaigned for Mamdani after losing to him in the mayoral primary, wants Israel to show “respect for international law and human rights.” While that comment is rooted in lies about both international law and Israaeli conduct, we know what it means. At a minimum, he’s demanding withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and the creation of a Palestinian state, likely run by Hamas, that would pose a deadly threat to Israel’s existence. That’s something that not even the left-leaning “anyone but Bibi” coalition that seeks to replace Netanyahu couldn’t possibly accept.

This perspective, which is where many of those Americans—who, like Lander, style themselves “liberal Zionists” as opposed to the anti-Zionists of the DSA—is a partial reason why Jews continue to vote for Democrats.

Yet even that doesn’t fully explain why nearly three in five Michigan Jews may have voted for a person like El-Sayed, who is far more hostile to Jewish national existence than Lander. Indeed, not without reason, the Republican Jewish Coalition called El-Sayed the most antisemitic Senate candidate in America.

Politics flow from demography

In order to fully understand why the majority of Jews remain among the most loyal supporters of the Democrats, one needs to comprehend the cultural shift among Americans in general when it comes to politics. It is now axiomatic that in this hyper-partisan era, in which most Americans are thoroughly secular, politics now plays the role in their lives that was once played by religion.

That is even more the case for the overwhelming majority of Jews, who are non-Orthodox and politically liberal.

For this dominant sector of U.S. Jewish demography, liberal political stands—a list of beliefs that can shift with changing political fashions on the left—and devotion to the Democrats is their religion. Indeed, the positions taken by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the policy arm of the largest U.S. Jewish denomination, are more or less those of most Democrats on a host of issues, many of which are not specifically Jewish in scope.

There has been a lot of talk about some movement toward the Republicans among Jews in recent years. Many Jewish liberals have been deeply shocked by the reaction to Oct. 7 from the American political left, especially as they saw their children targeted by pro-Hamas mobs on campuses. But it is yet to be proved that a significant percentage have drawn conclusions from this and are ready to change how they vote.

There was some reason to believe that in states like Florida, Jews were more likely to vote for candidates from a GOP that had become a lockstep supporter of the Jewish state. Trump’s efforts to combat antisemitism on college campuses also gave them a reason to switch sides. And some prominent Jews, like retired Harvard University legal scholar and longtime liberal advocate Alan Dershowitz, have done so.

But as the 2024 and 2026 elections showed, Jewish loyalty to the Democrats has continued even as they have largely transitioned into being the country’s anti-Israel party, Those who agree with Dershowitz appear to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

Part of the explanation comes not so much from ideology as it does from demography. As surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center have shown, the fastest growing sector of the American Jewish population is characterized by demographers as “Jews of no religion.”

That doesn’t just mean that they don’t practice Judaism. It encompasses a broad shift away from traditional ideas about what it means to be Jewish with devotion to religious faith, Jewish law and tradition and, above all, a sense of Jewish peoplehood being discarded. That has led to significant numbers of those who may identify as Jewish in some way but have no real connection to organized Jewish life, including synagogues, community centers and organizations that represent and serve Jews.

This is a function of the assimilation and intermarriage rates in the vicinity of 70% for non-Orthodox Jews, not critiques of Israeli policies or Netanyahu.

Giving a pass to Jew-hatred

It also means that many of them have increasingly fewer ties to the half of the world’s Jewish population that lives in Israel. That doesn’t just mean that they have a poor understanding or none at all about why Israeli Jews think as they do. They have little idea why Israelis are prepared to fight to defend their homes and families against Palestinian foes, whose national existence is inextricably linked to a century-old genocidal war on Zionism, for which the atrocities of Oct. 7 was just the trailer.

But they also don’t seem to understand that devotion to the land of Israel is central to Jewish identity, as Jews have understood it for the past 3,000 years. Many liberal Jews have rejected the widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, because they want one that allows opposition to Israel’s existence, and not just criticism of it. without being accused of hating Jews.

Once you grasp that, it’s easier to comprehend why a not-inconsiderable number of Jews are willing to believe that someone like El-Sayed, who is in favor of the destruction of the Jewish state—something that would inevitably require the genocide of half of the Jews currently alive—but claims to love Jews, isn’t an antisemite or a threat to them.

The stances of “liberal Zionists” like the cynical Lander are likely the product of his knowing that liberal Democrats have been largely indoctrinated in the toxic doctrines of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism and, therefore, falsely define Israel and the Jews as “white oppressors.”

That is why Democrats like him are becoming difficult to distinguish from open DSA opponents of Israel, or even antisemites like El-Sayed. Even those who merely think Israel should be more amenable to territorial withdrawals have little sympathy for the majority of Jewish Israelis who are religious or nationalist. Such American Jews haven’t paid attention to the way Palestinians have consistently rejected peace offers, because the only solution they desire is one in which Israel no longer exists.

Defining Jewish identity

For those whose Jewish identity is still firmly rooted in Jewish tradition, a vote for someone like El-Sayed is hard to justify even if they are loyal Democrats.

Perhaps few would, like Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, think that adding another member to the Democratic Senate caucus is more important than Israel’s survival or that of the Jewish people. But in the current political atmosphere, it is likely that some of them might have done so simply because they hate Trump and the Republicans more than they love Israel.

It is arguable that those with such a negligible sense of their identity as Jews are unlikely to maintain themselves as a separate community or one with any coherence. Indeed, that may already be the case, as the number of those Jews of no religion continues to multiply. Part of the problem with surveys that measure Jewish opinion or votes is that a growing number of those who say they are Jewish have few actual ties to Jewish life.

If one were to only count those Jews who have such connections or beliefs, the statistics about their voting habits and their beliefs might be very different from those that show that the Jewish population is as liberal and loyal to the Democrats as they ever were.

Even if that is true, it is still a measure of the ignorance and the lack of identification with the ongoing struggle for Jewish survival in an age of growing antisemitism that so many Jews vote for the likes of El-Sayed, Chevalier, Mamdani and even Lander. It is a sign of a community that has lost its way.

With so much of the mainstream liberal media—upon which most Jews depend for information about the Middle East and the battle against antisemitism— mainstreaming misinformation and blood libels about Israel, it’s not that surprising that they aren’t questioning knee-jerk support for Jew-hating Democrats.

But it must motivate those who understand just how wrongheaded such stances are to redouble their efforts to promote Jewish education and connection to the Jewish state as well as in telling the truth about the war against Israel.

The only way to combat the Jewish illiteracy that leads so many to vote for antisemites out of partisan loyalty is to spread the truth about Jewish life and Israel. 

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, available on major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won 60-plus awards for his columns, commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/column/jonathan-s-tobin/why-do-american-jews-vote-for-antisemites-like-el-sayed

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