Letters

I’m voting for the Democrat

After losing badly in April to former union organizer Analilia Mejia in the special election to fill Mikie Sherrill’s unexpired term in our 11th Congressional District, Republican businessman Joe Hathaway is trying for a rematch. This has inspired Denny Klein to renew his appeal for Jewish voters who in the main are traditionally Democrats to jump ship to the Republican candidate. This time he’s joined by Max Kleinman (“Two Democrats, one vote: Joe Hathaway for Congress,” October 16.)

Considering that Hathaway’s defeat in April was by a whopping 21 percentage points, I read their argument not so much as an effort to help their candidate’s electoral chances, but more as a means to turn Jewish voters against the national Democratic Party, which they claim “takes our votes for granted.”

Like Mr. Klein’s April op-ed that I refuted at that time, they try to paint Rep. Mejia as a dangerous extremist and to peddle the myth that Hathaway represents something other than a Republican partisan and a Trump supporter. I think they are badly mistaken on both counts.

The word “socialist” is a recurring theme in the essay, as are references to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), but these are two parts of the same straw-man argument. At no time in her campaigns for Congress or in her current role as our representative has Ms. Mejia described herself as a socialist. Moreover, the authors apparently also missed or chose to ignore the fact that in an official April statement, the North New Jersey DSA Executive Committee harshly denounced Mejia when she sought and received the endorsement of the pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy group, J Street. The DSA chapter wrote, “By accepting their endorsement, Mejia has consciously decided to affirm her support for Zionist settler colonialism, racism, and apartheid.” Despite this pushback from the extreme left, Rep. Mejia has continued to work with J Street and to advocate in Congress for a future of peace, security and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians.

While they point out a few specific issues in which they claim Hathaway has broken with Trump, Klein and Kleinman neglect to mention that Hathaway has said he would vote to keep Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican, ardent Christian nationalist, and Trump loyalist, as House Speaker. With Trump wrecking our economy, setting all-time records for corruption in office and weaponizing both the Justice Department and Homeland Security against Americans who disagree with him, the importance of real checks on his power cannot be overestimated, and those checks can only happen with a Democratic-led Congress.

Congressional elections in our country are not just contests between individual champions, like tennis or boxing matches. They are more like team sports. In our two-party system, the party that holds the majority in the House of Representatives, even if by only one seat, elects the speaker, who controls the calendar. In the current hyper-partisan reality, this means moving forward his party’s proposals while blocking those of the minority party. The majority party also controls the degree of oversight and the scope of potential investigations of the Executive branch.

Klein and Kleinman long for an earlier era, before the partisan gap grew so wide. But in the age of Trump, expecting that kind of bipartisanship is naïve. Ask Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney or former Jersey Governor Christine Whitman, who were pushed out of the GOP for trying to check Trump. The last truly bipartisan act on health care came from the late Senator John McCain, whose vote saved the Affordable Care Act. Hathaway, by contrast, said in an April debate that he supported the party-line spending bill that made tax cuts permanent for a minority of Americans while deeply slashing Medicaid and food assistance for millions. He is not cut from McCain’s cloth.

Rep. Analilia Mejia has been speaking to the 11th District’s most pressing concerns: affordability, corruption in government and ending forever wars. Hathaway has not seriously addressed any of these problems.

Klein and Kleinman center much of their essay on the U.S. relationship with Israel, uncritically repeating a claim that our representative is somehow out of touch with the views of her constituents. I’ll address that below, but first, an important reminder: the majority of Jewish Americans, and Americans in general, are not actually one-issue voters when it comes to Israel. In fact, a survey conducted by the respected GBAO Strategies and commissioned by J Street during the last U.S. presidential election found that the issue of Israel ranked a distant fourth among Jewish voters’ concerns, far below the future of democracy, abortion, and inflation and the economy.

Hathaway seems to have nothing in particular to say on either the question of affordability, an especially big concern of the voters this year, or democracy. Rep. Mejia, like virtually every other Democrat, has called for an end to the ill-conceived Iran war, an enormous driver of inflation. With the Republicans in Congress adamantly refusing to stand with their Democratic colleagues to invoke their authority under the War Powers Act to force Trump to bring the hostilities to a close, Hathaway’s quiet about the issue speaks volumes.

According to a late March survey by GBAO, most Jewish voters strongly disapprove of the Iranian clerical regime, but 60 percent of us oppose Trump’s military action, 77 percent think Trump doesn’t have a clear plan and 58 percent say the war weakens the U.S.

Klein and Kleinman are upset that Rep. Mejia voted along with 102 other Democrats for a July amendment proposed by Republican Thomas Massie to a defense appropriation bill that would have stripped weapons assistance for Israel. I wouldn’t have voted that way, and J Street, the organization for which I’m a local leader, did not recommend it. But the words of Nancy Pelosi, one of Israel’s most longstanding and steadfast supporters, speak to the symbolic nature of that vote. “For the good of the Israeli people and Palestinian people, it’s clear that U.S. policy must change … The American people are rightly demanding an end to a perpetual cycle of war, and the Netanyahu government cannot maintain its current course. Therefore, while this amendment is ill-conceived, I vote yes for the message that it sends.”

Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in his own “Dear Colleague” letter ahead of the Massie vote, spoke of the good-faith reasons why various Democrats came down on different sides of it, and he emphasized that going forward, the U.S. security relationship with the government of Israel must change. “Israel has an advanced economy and is capable of paying for its own sophisticated weapons. …[A]ny future security arrangement between our two countries should be structured consistently with defense agreements that exist with our other Western allies and strictly adhere to our human rights laws and values.”

I would guess that what bothers Klein and Kleinman is exactly this promise by Leader Jeffries: to treat the Israeli government like any other ally, which must adhere to our human rights law and can’t expect a blank check from our taxpayers. Isn’t that what they meant by praising the Republican Hathaway for promising “not to put conditions” on U.S. aid to Israel? Ironically, Denny Klein’s previous op-ed supporting Mr. Hathaway was highly critical of AIPAC for what he called its “cynical, dishonest” stealth ad campaign to sink the candidacy of former Rep. Tom Malinowski in the winter Democratic primary election, only because Malinowski refused to promise an ongoing, unconditional blank check to the Israeli government. I’ll leave Mr. Klein to reflect on his inconsistency.

In my experience, voters in the 11th District appreciate Mejia’s focus on affordability, her demands for accountability about high-level corruption, and her devotion to working-class rights, priorities that reflect values many Jewish Americans, myself included, share.

Klein and Kleinman are asking to transform our Jewish community’s vote into a single-issue protest movement against the direction of the Democratic Party. Like other single-issue movements, that’s a dead-end street.

Klein and Kleinman are at pains to convince us that they are only crossing the line to vote for Donald Trump’s Republican Party “for one race”. I don’t buy it, and I suggest none of us start down that slippery slope.

I’m sticking with Analilia Mejia – the Democrat.

Mark Lurinsky
Montclair

Mr. Lurinsky is a member of the steering committee of J Street’s New Jersey chapter.

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It is unfortunate to see Rabbi Engelmayer fall prey to Arab propaganda (“Rabin’s murder and a critical election,” October 16). The world has not turned against Israel because it is not involved in a ‘peace process.’ In reality, it was President Obama who began the turn away from Israel in the U.S. during his terms in office. This was supercharged by leftist educators who taught that Israel is an ‘oppressor’ nation and immigrants who brought their hate of Israel to the U.S. and other Western countries. These ‘sleeper agents’ were activated by Qatari, Pakistani and other Arab propagandists immediately after October 7th. 

Thankfully, Israelis have no interest in a two-state solution while their Arab neighbors educate their children to hate Jews, pay murderers who kill Jews and have not given up their fantasy of an Arab Muslim state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Leftist American Jews who live in relative comfort (for now) can play make believe and support suicidal policies that will leave Israel vulnerable, but Israelis don’t have that luxury.

Mel Bergman
Paramus

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Stephen Flatow (“When former presidents rewrite Israel’s history”) commits the same mistake he criticizes former US presidents Carter, Bush and Obama for rewriting the history of Israel. Mr. Flatow focuses on how Israel obtained land for the future state and the circumstances under which Arab residents left. Mr. Flatow writes, “Jews acquired land through purchase.” Accurate, to some degree. Mr. Flatow continues, “Hundreds of thousands (of Arabs) became refugees. Some were expelled. Others fled combat, fear, or the collapse of Arab communities as the fighting spread.” Again, accurate to a point.

Isabel Kershner, in her book, “The Land of Hope and Fear,” provides a more accurate description of this time period which is now generally accepted by legitimate Israeli historians. Ms. Kershner writes, “The Arab armies invaded. Some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven by Zionist forces from their homes. Many had assumed it would be a temporary absence until the war died down.” Ms. Kershner states that these refugees ended up in camps as the new government prohibited any refugees from returning. In any case, she writes, “Israel destroyed some 400 abandoned Arab villages, ensuring that their inhabitants, and the internally displaced, had nowhere to return to.”

Terrible things happen in war. But Mr. Flatow does no favors to Israel or the Jewish people by pushing a false narrative which casts Israel as above reproach.

Peter Herbst
Montclair