As the old joke has it, Jews live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans. Long impelled more by their liberal consciences, and less by their (Republican-like) pocketbooks, now suddenly Jews are in danger of being evicted from their home on the left. The arenas where Jews brought their Jewish commitment to public good are precisely the places where Israel is losing support, and sometimes, to a shocking degree, where anti-Semitism is on the rise.

• Human rights groups – Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) – scold the Jewish state as though she were among the cruelest of nations, while downplaying abuses in Arab and Islamic nations. AI hectors Israel but makes no great fuss about Arab nations supporting a trade in black slaves today in Sudan and Mauritania. Tellingly, AI and HRW won’t utter the word “dhimmi” – the Islamic religious category for subjugated Jews and Christians in Islamic lands. Ironically, it’s the “right wing” pope who champions religious equality in the Middle East, not “progressive” Amnesty.
• Left wing blog communities at the base of the Democratic Party are exhibiting blatant anti-Semitic tendencies. Lanny Davis, former speech writer for President Clinton, wrote in shock about the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic cartoons and postings found on the most popular left wing blogs – the Daily Kos and Huffington Post – whose “netizens” have serious influence in the Democratic Party. Some of the most popular hits on Daily Kos are entries naming the benefits to the world if Israel did not exist. Other postings simply spew Jew-hatred. This net community is large, growing and powerful. Kos takes pride in having sabotaged the campaigns of both Senator Joseph Lieberman and Martin Frost, the moderate Jewish Democrat from Texas who had hoped to become the DNC Chair.
• Democratic Party woes: A recent American Thinker article traced “a clear decline in support for Israel among all Democrats,” citing an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll: 84 percent of Republicans and only 43 percent of Democrats sympathize with Israel, and an L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll where only 39 percent of Democrats wanted America to align with Israel against Hezbollah while 63 percent of Republicans did.

A growing number of Democrats in Congress – James Moran, Cynthia McKinney, Charles Rangel, Ray McGovern, John Dingell, Jim McDermott, Neil Abercrombie – openly express opposition to Jewish concerns.

Jewish liberals must take this on. The first step is to end the denial: admit that our problem on the radical left is penetrating the mainstream. This is intolerable. Jews must and can wage a powerful fight against the anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-Western forces aiming to hijack liberalism. Liberals can be won away from alliances with those who oppose rights not only for Jews but for gays, women, racial and religious minorities, labor leaders, free speech advocates, atheists, agnostics and apostates. Indeed, a powerful group of liberal intellectuals (www.eustonmanifesto.com) has begun this fight. They are openly challenging the rise of anti-Semitism on the left, concealed, they write, “behind the formula of anti-Zionism.” We need to rally behind them. Every JCRC should mobilize its liberal base for this battle.