Right-Wing Media Attack American Jews For Not Turning On Obama

Written by Adam Shah

Published

The right-wing media is sure that President Obama betrayed Israel and “sided with the terrorists” with his restatement of U.S. policy that the Israelis and Palestinians should come to a peace agreement that results in a “secure Israel” and “viable Palestine” with “borders ... based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

But a funny thing happened. American Jews -- 78 percent of whom voted for Obama in the 2008 election -- didn't immediately rise up against the president. So the conservative media found their next target for attack: American Jews.

On May 23, Glenn Beck called Obama's statement an “absolute betrayal” but said “the Jewish community seems to be giving him a pass yet again ... How is that possible?” One of his sidekicks said the reaction of the Jewish community was “unbelievable.”

On May 26, Ben Shapiro published a piece on CNS News arguing that Jews who support Obama are “Jews In Name Only.” Shapiro wrote:

In 2008, Obama grabbed 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Even the most wildly optimistic polling today shows that Obama's support remains high among Jews. It's a result that Republicans simply can't understand - why do so many Jews continue to support a president who has shown time and again that he stands against the State of Israel?

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The answer is deceptively simple: the Jews who vote for Obama are, by and large, Jews In Name Only (JINOs). They eat bagels and lox; they watch “Schindler's List”; they visit temple on Yom Kippur - sometimes. But they do not care about Israel. Or if they do, they care about it less than abortion, gay marriage and global warming.

And then on May 27, on Andrew Breitbart's BigPeace.com, blogger Dan Friedman trumpeted a Jerusalem Post poll finding low support for President Obama in Israel and declared that “Israeli Jews [Are] Not Nearly As Sick As USA Jews.” (I wonder whether Friedman will also turn on Israeli Jews when he sees a Haaretz poll of Israelis finding that “only 20 percent saw [Obama] as hostile” compared to 43 percent who found him “businesslike” and “a quarter [who] described him as friendly.”)

American Jews aren't buying the right-wing media's alarmism about Obama's views on Israel, and these media figures would rather attack the Jews than rethink their own arguments.