The casual social media user could be forgiven for concluding that most events of any relevance can be traced back to the pernicious influence of Jewish money and clout.
On the internet, Israel is at the center of everything.
Israel is to blame for the collapse of the cease-fire with Iran, not the Iranians who fired on commercial shipping without consequence for months before the president lost the appetite for further humiliation. Israel murdered Charlie Kirk, not the furry-adjacent far-left radical who confessed orally and in writing to the crime. Israel dictates American foreign policy initiatives, not the voters who are as justifiably menaced by Israel’s Islamist terrorist enemies as Jerusalem.
The casual social media user could be forgiven for concluding that most events of any relevance can be traced back to the pernicious influence of Jewish money and clout.
The online tenor has the feel of an organic groundswell. But if that feeling reflected reality, we might expect America’s most responsive body — the House — to channel the public’s sentiments and champion the cause backed by an overwhelming number of Americans. Well, that legislative body took up the internet’s cause on Wednesday. The result was underwhelming.
A vote on an amendment that would have zeroed out $3.3 billion in aid earmarked for Israel failed when over three-quarters of the House voted it down. The entire Republican conference save outgoing Representative Thomas Massie (who introduced the amendment) and close to half of the Democratic caucus — 314 members in all — rejected the effort to end America’s financial support for Israel. Ten members voted “present,” and another seven didn’t vote at all. In total, 104 members supported the amendment, 103 of whom were Democrats, which is a little less than half of the Democratic Party’s 212-member strong caucus in the lower chamber.
The political press has treated the Democratic vote as though it was a “seismic” development. It represents the “most substantial signal yet that once rock-solid bipartisan support for the country is disintegrating,” the AP reported. As Politico acknowledged, however, the “scale of Democratic support for the amendment” was evidence of “the grassroots fury that has reshaped the political landscape inside the party.”
To its credit, Axios reporters displayed far less of this sort of precious credulity. “For many Democrats, this is simply about avoiding anger from the left — and a potential primary challenge,” the outlet observed. Which is to say that most of the 103 Democrats who endorsed Massie’s amendment are acting out of fear. One petrified Democrat, who “spoke anonymously,” elaborated on the charge: “Even if it doesn’t make any sense, even if it’s poorly drafted, even if there’s no precedent for anything like this,” the unnamed “House Democrat” said. You just “can’t message that” to the activist class.
The Democratic Party’s second ranking House Democrat, Representative Katherine Clark, plays a starting role in political media’s narrative surrounding the Democratic Party’s surrender to anti-Israel agitators on the left. In a confused statement announcing her intention to break with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who opposed the amendment, Clark criticized the legislation as a “cynical effort” to “divide people.” But it was worth supporting, nevertheless, because it was “also a chance to say clearly that the status quo is not acceptable.”
Clark is a weathervane on this one. When she thought there would be no consequences other than to ingratiate herself with the myopic left, Clark was happy to accuse Israel of executing an incompetent and unverifiable “genocide.” When it turned out that there were political downsides associated with the casual slander of Israel, she backtracked. Now, she’s trying to have it both ways — opposing the amendment she voted for because “the status quo cannot continue.”
Outside a small caucus of true believers within the Democratic firmament, it’s a safe bet that the party’s establishmentarians share Clark’s outlook. They are happy to ape anti-Israel shibboleths if that removes the far-left’s target from their backs. Republicans won’t even go that far. Their hostility toward Massie’s maneuver reflects GOP voters’ support for both the Israeli people and their popularly elected government.
As Ro Khanna recently learned, the fulminating extremists with whom Democrats are attempting to ingratiate themselves will not be happy with anti-Israel performance art or protest votes. For some of them, nothing less than justifying the mass slaughter of Israeli civilians in the name of resistance to the Zionist entity will do. If you think I’m exaggerating, I urge you to check out the pro-October 7 struggle session to which the far-left activists at Drop Site News subjected Khanna.
The 103 Democrats who are chasing the affections of this cohort have consigned themselves to a Sisyphean torment. Not only will their labors never satisfy the audience for whom it is intended, they will alienate a broader universe of voters who do not while away their lives on the internet. Like the backlash against data centers, growing skepticism of Israel’s defensive military operations is real. But it is a low salience issue.
If the House vote is reflective of that, the Democrats who jumped on Massie’s bandwagon will regret tethering their party to the fixations of a militant and unrepresentative few.