by Jonathan S. Tobin
The career of the retiring Manhattan congressman demonstrates the way partisan Democrats have abandoned support of Israel for leftist applause.
There was a time when Rep. Jerrold Nadler
(D-N.Y.) could be counted on as a stalwart defender of the Jewish state.
I know this because I heard him speak at a street-corner, pro-Israel
demonstration across from the United Nations in the late 1980s. Those
were during the dark days of the First Intifada, when it was becoming
clear that fashionable liberal political opinion started turning on
Israel as it coped with violent Palestinian demonstrations within and
around its borders. Even though The New York Times editorial
page and other outlets popular in his Manhattan constituency were
denouncing Jerusalem’s efforts to cope with the situation, Nadler turned
up to express his solidarity.
That was a long time ago. But as the
78-year-old announced this week that he won’t run for a 17th term in
Congress, it is difficult to square the sentiments I heard from him that
day with the political figure he eventually became.
That was made obvious in July when, rather than showing up to support the Jewish state, he joined a protest against
Israel’s just war of self-defense, outside the Israeli consulate in New
York City, organized by the viciously anti-Israel group T’ruah.
Nadler is best known to most Americans
because of his four years as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
from 2019 to 2023 and for stage-managing two separate impeachments of
President Donald Trump. His truculent attitude during his time in the
spotlight seemed to embody the hyper-partisan spirit of the moment for
both liberals and conservatives. A knee-jerk opposition to Trump and the
Republicans on every conceivable issue played well among Democrats,
especially at home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He’s even garnering
applause from liberal pundits for his retirement announcement
because of his recognition that his party’s tradition, in which
geriatrics hold onto power at the expense of younger people, and, as
with the example of President Joe Biden, past the point where they are
competent, is something that needs to end.
Cowardice at a moment of peril
His relinquishing of a safe, deep-blue
House seat where the GOP barely exists has set off a feeding frenzy
among Democratic politicians and celebrities, including Chelsea Clinton,
eager to succeed him. But the graceful manner in which he is exiting
office may be the best thing that can be said about the end of his
career. While he may have been willing to stand up for Israel three and a
half decades ago, at the moment of greatest peril for American Jewry
and the Jewish state, he has deserted their cause.
In the two years since the Hamas-led
Palestinian attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, Nadler has
provided a troubling example of how prominent liberal Democrats have
chosen to side with the Jewish state’s foes.
He showed that his priority was staying in
sync with the leftist base of his party and not in defending Jews
during the unprecedented surge in antisemitism post-Oct. 7. He defended
prominent Jew-haters like Mahmoud Khalil, organizer of the pro-Hamas
mobs at Columbia University, in his own district. He opposed
administration efforts to force Columbia and other universities to end
their toleration and encouragement of antisemitism on their campuses.
And, even as he declared himself to still be a supporter of Israel, he
joined those who were mainstreaming Hamas propaganda about the current
war, as well as echoing the blood libels about the Jewish state and its
government being guilty of mass slaughter and war crimes, even supporting an arms embargo on it.
On top of that, this summer Nadler endorsed
New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and
virulent antisemite, after he won the Democratic mayoral primary in
June. While many of his neighbors in what some wags call the “People’s
Republic of the Upper West Side” fear for their futures in the world’s
greatest Jewish city, Nadler was smoothing the path to victory for a man
who thinks there’s nothing wrong with chants advocating for Jewish
genocide and the destruction of Israel (“From the river to the sea”) and
terrorism against Jews (“Globalize the intifada”).
Why did Nadler go down this path?
Unlike many of his colleagues in the current Democratic caucus, Nadler had tried, as The New York Times
noted, “to stake out space for a politics that was both pro-Israel and
progressive.” While that may have worked in an earlier era when talk of a
bipartisan pro-Israel consensus was more descriptive than aspirational,
Nadler’s career arc demonstrates that the two categories are no longer
compatible. In fact, they are now mutually exclusive.
The shift on the left
Nadler and others blame this on Israel and
its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, the leader of the
Jewish state and its government are not exempt from criticism; however,
what’s happened within the Democratic Party has very little to do with
the actions of either. The so-called explanation for their alienation is
their becoming disillusioned with Israeli policies. But the truth is
that they are following the lead of progressives who have always been
against Israel’s existence. That is the product of the left’s embrace of
the toxic myths of critical race theory, intersectionality and
settler-colonialism that branded Israel and Jews as “white oppressors,”
who are always in the wrong and must therefore be brought down.
As we saw in the days, weeks and months
since Oct. 7, the rationale of those opposed to Israel’s just war to
eradicate Hamas had more to do with a belief that Israel must simply
accept the continued presence on its southern border of an Islamist
terrorist entity pledged to repeat those unspeakable atrocities. Their
criticisms of efforts by the Jewish state to root out these genocidal
murderers were untethered to any actual evidence of war crimes, let
alone “genocide,” based on repetitions of the lies told by Hamas
operatives and their enablers.
Even worse, this stand involved a
willingness to rationalize and excuse the way the pro-Hamas movement in
the United States was engaged in acts of blatant antisemitic
intimidation and violence. At a time when more and more Jews felt
themselves under attack, even in institutions like Columbia, where they
felt most at home, some Democrats, such as Nadler and Senate Minority
Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.),
claimed to be their defenders. But rather than helping to stem the tide
of hate, they were still primarily focused on attacking Trump, even as
he was doing more to combat antisemitism than they had ever done.
Perhaps not even a great man could have
reversed the trend. But an independent thinker might have stubbornly
sought to oppose the way his party’s base had succumbed to the far left
in a way that would have been unthinkable back when Nadler was speaking
in Israel’s defense on New York street corners.
The arc of a career politician
For all of his obvious skill in holding
onto office, no one has ever accused Nadler of independent thinking, let
alone greatness.
Nadler is a classic example of a career
politician. First elected to the New York State Assembly in 1976 at age
29, he spent the next decade and a half in a dogged pursuit of higher
office, losing races for Manhattan Borough President and New York City
Controller before finally winning a House seat in 1992. Since then, he
has never faced serious opposition, though it was clear that he might be
vulnerable to a younger, even more leftist primary challenger in 2026.
His story, though, is more than that of a
typical political hack. His journey from being a stalwart pro-Israel
liberal to his current stance, in which he cowardly follows the
political fashion of the day, even if it means mimicking pro-Hamas
talking points, provides insight into a similar path being pursued by
many American Jews.
If many liberals are now distancing
themselves from Israel, it is not so much a result of their horror at
the spectacle of Israel being forced to fight a war against a foe
determined to sacrifice its own population on the altar of their
perverted cause. Rather, it is a product of the way partisanship has
overwhelmed all other concerns for them and so many other Americans.
When being pro-Israel was seen as
compatible with being a Democrat or even a natural position for someone
in the party to take, there was no cost in doing so. But once the voices
on the intersectional left became the loudest on that side of the
aisle, politicians like Nadler began to back away from their former
stances.
That was accelerated once Trump came down
the escalator and into American lives in 2015. So great is the
antagonism to the 45th/47th president that it became impossible for
liberal Democrats to make common cause with him, even when he did things
that they had long advocated for, such as moving the U.S. embassy to
Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Nadler was a longtime supporter of
the move; nevertheless, when Trump finally did it, he joined with the Israel-haters of J Street to oppose it.
Even worse, Nadler switched positions on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s widely accepted working definition of antisemitism. Initially, a sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act enshrining it into American law, he eventually opposed
it. His disingenuous protestations notwithstanding, he did only so
because Trump had embraced it, and to make it safe for fellow Democrats
like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), as well as
Mamdani, to avoid being properly labeled as the Jew-haters they are.
Trump’s rise has set off a general
realignment in American politics where working-class voters of all races
are leaving the Democrats for the GOP, with credentialed elites moving
in the opposite direction. The overwhelming majority of Jews have been a
dependable voting bloc for Democrats for the last century. Such
partisan loyalty fits neatly into the current political framework since
they are among those elements of the population most likely to be
college-educated and therefore leaning left.
A Jewish dilemma
But the events of the last two years have
also created a dilemma for American Jews. Some longtime Democrats now
recognize that, as much as they have differences with Trump and most
Republicans, on the one issue that is most directly connected to their
safety and that of their fellow Jews here and in Israel, they are
outside of their party’s new consensus.
That presents them with a difficult choice
in which they must decide which is their priority: staying loyal to the
Democrats and prioritizing their hatred for Trump, or holding their
noses and stepping away from a party that is more and more on the side
of those seeking Israel’s destruction and enabling antisemitism in the
United States.
Those who choose the latter exemplify the
moral collapse of a brand of American liberalism that is incapable of
defending its values against illiberal and antisemitic progressives who
are willing to consign Jews to the status of an unprotected and despised
“oppressor” minority.
We know what choice Jerry Nadler made as
he put his finger up to the wind in recent years. He abandoned a
principled pro-Israel position to pursue the favor of a party base that
swallowed the big lie about the Palestinian war to destroy the only
Jewish state on the planet being the moral equivalent of the struggle
for civil rights in America. While a significant number of Jewish
liberals are beginning to understand that their political home is
rejecting them, many others, like Nadler, have chosen their party over
the fight against antisemitism.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek
and a contributor to many 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, which are available on all 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 more than 60 awards for 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/jerry-nadler-and-the-moral-collapse-of-american-jewish-liberals/
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