Poll: American Jews feel threatened, blame Trump
By Yonat Shimron
Religious News Service
May 22, 2019
A survey of 1,000 Jewish voters released Wednesday (May 22) by the Jewish Electorate Institute shows 73% of registered Jewish voters believe Jewish Americans are less secure than they were two years ago, at least in part, respondents said, because of the way President Trump has handled anti-Semitism.
The poll’s release coincides with a two-year spike in violent attacks against U.S. Jews, which doubled in 2018, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s yearly audit of anti-Semitic incidents. The data appeared the same week as a rash of fires that were intentionally set at Jewish centers in Massachusetts and Chicago.
The poll, conducted by Greenberg Research, shows 71% disapprove of Trump’s response to anti-Semitism. Nearly 60% believe he bears at least some responsibility for last year’s shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and last month’s shooting at a synagogue in Poway, near San Diego.
“We have a Jewish community, not under siege, but facing great insecurity, blaming President Trump for a lot of it, becoming very engaged and politicized by it, and prioritizing a range of domestic issues that align them to vote Democratic in 2020,” said Stan Greenberg, a longtime pollster for Democrats.
The poll comes as Republicans are moving to capitalize on growing anti-Semitic incidents with an aggressive campaign to siphon off the Democratic Party’s lock on the Jewish vote.
In Las Vegas earlier this month, prominent Republican Party donors gathered at GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian resort for a briefing on a planned $10 million-plus effort to boost Jewish support for Trump, Politico reported.
The latest poll suggests that Jewish voters may be difficult to sway.
Seventy-one percent disapprove of Trump’s overall job performance, while 70% view him unfavorably and 67% would vote for a generic Democrat over Trump, the poll finds. The one segment of the American Jewish population that supports Trump is Orthodox Jews, who represent about 10 percent of the U.S. Jewish population.
One reason for the dissatisfaction with Trump may be his appeals to white nationalists during his campaign and in response to the Charlottesville, Va., Unite the Right rally in 2017. After the New Zealand mosque massacre in March, the president dismissed white nationalists as a “small group of people” who present no “rising threat.”
Asked what was most concerning to them from a list of options, 38% of American Jewish voters said it was Trump’s encouraging of ultraright extremists to commit violent acts. By contrast, 27% identified Democrats’ tolerating of anti-Semitism in their ranks.
The poll also found that Israel ranked at the bottom of a list of 16 policy priorities for Jewish voters. Health care, gun safety laws and combating the influence of white supremacists ranked much higher among their most urgent policy priorities — even as 90% of Jews ranked themselves as “pro-Israel.”
The online survey took place May 6-12 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The poll numbers should come as no surprise since 71 percent of Jews voted for Hillary in 2016 and 75 percent voted for Democrats in the 2018 midterms.
The liberal Jews are going to stick with the Democrats despite the fact that anti-Semitism has taken root in that party. It reminds me that, except for a few Jews like my parents, most Jews willingly remained in Germany despite the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazis. They thought it would soon pass away. Instead, Germany’s Jews passed away in the gas chambers and as slave laborers.
3 comments:
I think the Democratic Party is certainly anti likud party and anti Israel. But with most college age Jews at Berkeley and Harvard being anti-Zionist, I don’t think it crosses over to traditional anti semitism, just like I don’t think most anti-Israel jews are anti Semitic. They just don’t agree with the policies of the current government of Israel. Throwing around terms like anti Semite to folks who have a legitimate disagreement with the policies of the state of Israel trivializes the suffering of victims of anti Semitic violence and shuts down what should be a legitimate debate on the conduct of any state, Jewish or otherwise.
I do not agree. Anti-Zionism and anti-Isralism are dog whistles for plain and simple anti-Semitism. Israel would not be condemned were it not for the fact that it is Jewish. China is not condemned for occupying Tibet and for its persecution of Muslim minorities. Why? Because China is not Jewish. Turkey is not condemned for its suppression of the Kurds. Why? Because Turkey is not Jewish. The list of countries that suppress minorities goes on, but none of them are condemned because the are not Jewish. Only Israel is condemned, and only because it is Jewish. That defines anti-Semitism!
When the Democrats support congresswomen who spew forth anti-Semitism. it becomes obvious that anti-Semitism has taken root in the Democratic Party. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib were making antiSemetic statements long before they were elected to Congress, and they have continued to do so since taking office. The refusal of the Democratic leadership to condemn Omar and Tlaib is evidence that the Democratic Party is now anti-Semitic. It has nothing to do with being opposed to the policies of the Israeli government.
There are two reasons Jews are anti-Israel and support BDS. They have been propagandized by Palestinian and Arab propaganda, or they are self-loathing Jews. The spoiled Jewish students at Berkeley, Harvard and other universities who have joined forces with Palestinian students against Israel have absolutely no idea of what it is like to live in a country where Jews are hated and persecuted. They may yet get to experience that in their lifetime.
I believe that you both make good points. I think it is more the messenger than the message. The Satmar Hasidim are certainly not anti-Semites, they are some of the most philo-Semitic people one could ever meet. They have a sincerely held belief in the three oaths and the prohibition of a Jewish state. On the other hand, most of the so-called anti-Israel crowd are using their anti-Israel bias as a cover for anti-Semitism. In other words, it is a different claw of the same bird. They are strangely silent about gays being killed in Arab countries, they have nothing at all to say about women being stoned in Afghanistan, the Armenian genocide is never spoken of , the Rwandan genocide is something they never discuss., the current practice of the Chinese government of executing political prisoners and harvesting their organs is not something they ever speak out on. Put another way, the only thing that matters is when the Jews do something in Israel. If someone is for human rights, they should be consistent. They should be just as angry about the Palestinian indiscriminate rocket fire designed to kill Israel civilians-people who have nothing to do with the conflict and live in pre-1967 borders- as they are about Israel's response, which is ultimately designed to save lives.
Lastly, the ignorant youths at Cal and Harvard just want to be cool. As I've long said, it is fashionable in the 20 something crowd to be an anti-Israel Jew.
These misguided youths do not know their own history and their behavior is the result of their ignorance.
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