Alan Dershowitz ... Republican?
Yes. Not independent. Not disaffected. The famed appellate attorney and Harvard con-law professor has not just renounced his lifelong political affiliation, but Dersh has signed up for the other team.
What happened? It starts with Democrats' sharp turn toward anti-Semitism with Israel as its political golem, but as Dershowitz argues, that serves more as a harbinger for a broader radicalization within the party. The catalyst came last week when most of the Senate Democrat caucus voted to withhold funds for Israel's defensive systems, where the scales fell from his eyes on the power of anti-Semites within the Democrat Party:
The Democratic Party has become the most anti-Israel party in U.S. history. Last week all but seven Senate Democrats voted for an arms embargo against the Jewish state, and an avowed enemy of Israel, Abdul El-Sayed, is gaining ground in the Democratic campaign for U.S. senator from Michigan.
There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. Until recently there was an age gap, with younger voters more strongly opposing Israel, but recent polls suggest that the trend now includes Democrats of all ages. Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.
"For now" does some lifting here, but at least recent developments on that front give reason for hope. Donald Trump has become more vocal in his rejection of the most influential podcasters peddling this nonsense, especially Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, blasting them repeatedly over the last couple of weeks. J.D. Vance has distanced himself from the Carlsons more quietly this week as Tucker's son departed his position as the VP's deputy press secretary to, ahem, pursue other opportunities.
Republicans and MAGA at least are moving in the right direction and keeping the nuts on the far side of the horseshoe, so to speak. Democrats ... not so much, Dershowitz writes, and Israel isn't the only issue:
I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world. So I intend to work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate, and I urge those who share my concerns about the increasing influence of radicalism in the Democratic Party to vote, campaign and contribute for continued Republican control of Congress. I will contribute money to Republican candidates, campaign for them, make speeches at Republican events, and urge pro-Israel Americans to change party affiliation or at least vote against Democrats. Until something changes, I will vote Republican for representative, senator and president.
It's the last part that may have the most impact. For the last couple of decades especially, Republicans have tried to woo Jewish voters by pointing out the radical shift among Democrats in the post-Clinton era. The Clintons may have been crypto-lefties, but they were both clear-eyed on Israel and the nature of its enemies. When Barack Obama took over, the pro-Hamas and Iranophile factions began to take over, primarily through Rob Malley and Valerie Jarrett. Obama and then-Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to intervene in Israel's election in 2015 at the same time that they pushed the JCPOA deal that gave Iran access to $1.7 billion in assets that went directly to its terror proxies.
Still, most Jewish voters remained in the Democrat Party, much to Donald Trump's very public frustration in 2024. Why? One has to understand the importance of tikkun olam in modern Jewish life, a theological imperative to "fix the world" that drives voters to support more activist politicians that push government programs to address social ills. Jonathan Krasner wrote about the importance of tikkun olam three years ago for Brandeis University, and more importantly, its ties to Zionism and to the larger progressive movement:
Some theologians saw the Holocaust as a rupture and argued that the relationship with God needed to be repaired. But this time, rather than God being the dominant partner, humans were. In fact, God was unable or unwilling to intervene in the affairs of humans, so humans had to take responsibility to rebuild this world.
Eventually, tikkun olam became associated with social justice. How does that happen?
It was largely done by Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews, particularly Jews involved in the havurah movement who were politically active in the 1960s and the early 70s. There were also educators interested in offering young idealists a Jewish lens through which to see their political and social activism.
In 1973, three havurah movement activists, Richard Siegel, GSAS MA'72, Michael Strassfeld '71, GSAS MA'72, and Sharon Strassfeld, published "The Jewish Catalog," a best-selling countercultural, do-it-yourself guide to being Jewish. In it, tikkun olam is specifically about making the world a better place.
The establishment of Israel as a Jewish state is a major step in tikkun olam, although hardly an exclusive one. It extended into the push for a two-state solution, to which Krasner alludes, as well as environmentalism, "economic justice," and so forth. The strong affiliation between Jewish voters and Democrats is not just a leftover habit of the New Deal or JFK's Great Frontier, but a true connection to what had been mainstream Democrat policy and thought until the radicals came to power in 2009, and then took over entirely after the October 7 massacres.
That is what makes Dershowitz' flip such a yuuuge development. Until now, and frankly still, Dershowitz remains affiliated with the politics of tikkun olam, the effort to fix the world. He might be the best-positioned voice in the political firmament to convince Jewish voters that Democrats have abandoned that effort in favor of anti-Semitism and radical politics, and that Trump may be fixing the world with his confrontation with Iran and the end of terror proxies aiming at the destruction of Israel. Converting to the GOP rather than just independent status gives that argument more power – and Dershowitz knows it.
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