Obama and The Jews II May 22, 2008

These past few weeks I’ve been touring, promoting my album, This is Babylon and haven’t been able to write as much as I had been in the past. From Berlin to LA and everywhere in between, these past few weeks have been a non-stop marathon of promotion and performance.

And I believe today’s travesty which graces the front page of the New York Times is a quite apt segue to make my return to the blogosphere.

Jodi Kantor’s “As Obama Heads to Florida, Many of Its Jews Have Doubts” highlights, in black and white, perhaps one of the most lamentable upshots of collective Jewish consciousness: the anti-Semitism still latently looming over America (and the world)’s present and ominously towering over the world’s recent past, combined with the advent of Web 2.0, has opened the door to a whole new era of misinformation and paranoia. Ms. Kantor’s article chronicled her visit to the “Aberdeen Golf and Country Club” (so right off the bat — mince no words — we know precisely which class of people we’re dealing with) where she met Jews who voiced their insecurities with voting for Obama.

Predominantly representing the aging South Florida demographic whose largely 70+ populace have become anecdotal (and the butts of painful puns like “Botoxodox Jews”), Ms. Kantor’s interviewees showed a downright depressing susceptability to the Obama-noia that’s been plaguing the inboxes of many likely Democratic voters:

“The people here will not vote for Obama…because of his attitude towards Israel,” Ms. [Shirley] Weitz, 83, said…”They’re going to vote for McCain.”

Does anyone realize — or care — that the Jerusalem Post said that Obama’s voting record was “impeccable” regarding Israel? Is it that Sen. Obama supports a two-state solution regarding Israel and Palestine — the same thing that is advocated by both Hillary and McCain? Is it that Sen. Obama expressed willingness to speak to Iran? Would it be better to just consider Iran the world’s first “suicide state” prima facie, and react accordingly?

Perhaps the most disturbing thing is the rundown in the continuation of the article. Ms. Kantor’s article continues with an interview with Rabbi Ruvi New — who mused about the entire election coming down to a “few old Jews in Century Village” — and then moves on to Jews who have become a “conduit” for Obama misinformation.

Ms. Kantor’s article notes that some “older Jews…as well as many younger ones” believed any number of fanciful inaccuracies, One man believed his friends’ word that Obama was “an Arab”. One woman suspected affiliation with Palestinian organizations, and one woman suspected al-Qa’eda had endorsed Obama. As Jack Cafferty alluded today on CNN, how is it possible that such affluent people, such educated people, such worldly people could be susceptible to such misinformation?

And perhaps the worst part of all comes out when racism — the elephant in the room thus far — gets brought up. Ms. Kantor alleges that some of the voters’ apprehension was as rooted in race as it was in Israel relations:

At brunch in Boynton Beach, Bob W…in his 80s, said…bluntly, “Am I semi-racist? Yes.”

Is this really just “par for the course”, the “nature of the beast”? Does it have to be this way? Is Obama campaigning in Florida in vain? Is there really nothing that David Axelrod and Robert Wexler, Obama’s Jewish Florida strategist, can do to change these opinions? And perhaps worse — will these Jews vote for a right-wing candidate who Bush said will “continue…his policy”, in spite of their own and the country’s best interests, just because at the most cursory of face values, a white face is more trustworthy than a brown one? Mr. Obama shares very little psychographically with most of the anti-Semites in the black community, as Ms. Kantor notes — he lives in a community alongside Jews and has “close ties” to Jews his entire career.

Obama has denounced Farrakhan, Rev. Wright, and virtually every other enemy of the Jews in the African-American community. The Jews in Florida are demographically less poised to flip-flop to the GOP — as opposed to their New York counterparts — and if it’s really racism that would cause such a flip it is time for anyone who has come to pooh-pooh such conduct to engage in self-examination.

All the information on Obama’s voting record is available and can easily disprove the online rumormonger set. But nothing in the world can make him un-black. We have to remember what is at stake — and if American troops are put on track to “stay in Iraq for 50 years”, it will be small consolation that an old white man sent them there.