בס״ד some extent. Indeed, as עש"ק פרשת וירא 19 Cheshvan 5781 ISRAEL NEWS the RJC poll showed, November 6, 2020 those voters who A collection of the week’s news from Israel Issue number 1319 considered Israel and foreign- From the Bet El Twinning / Israel Action Committee of policy issues to be their priority Jerusalem 4:05 Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation went for Trump by a whopping Toronto 4:43 87 percent to 6 percent margin. This validates the conventional wisdom that Orthodox voters, Commentary… who went for Trump by a 70-19 margin, look to Israel as their litmus test. The Jewish Vote Mattered More Than We Thought in 2020 Jews, like other Americans, generally vote along partisan lines By Jonathan S. Tobin for the candidates of the party with which they affiliate. However, it We already knew that the chasm that separates those Jews who also reveals that it’s still possible for politicians to increase Jewish vote for Democrats and those who vote for Republicans was already support, albeit marginally, by demonstrating—as Trump has done— wide. The partisan split between all Americans who vote for the two that they are a friend of Israel. major parties is growing all the time. But is there any gap greater than There’s something else going on that needs to be put into context that between two branches of the same ethnic/religious tree that and understood. separates the Jews who voted for former Vice President Joe Biden and This election was no ordinary political contest. It was as nasty as those who voted for President Donald Trump? any in living memory. That was especially true among Jews. Jewish As a general rule, analyses of the Jewish vote in presidential Democrats didn’t just disagree with Trump’s stands on the issues; elections tend to be a sterile exercise that has more to do with a contest they presented him to the public as nothing less than the moral for what amounts to nothing more than bragging rights between Jewish equivalent of a Nazi bent on destroying democracy and presenting a Democrats and Republicans. But this year, measuring the breakdown physical and existential threat to Jewish survival. Whatever people of the Jewish vote turned out to be more significant than that. By doing think about Trump, when you consider that he did more to mobilize a lot better among Jewish voters than his opponents expected, Trump the federal government to fight anti-Semitism, as well as align the demonstrated that there may actually be some persuadable voters United States more closely with the Jewish state than any of his among Jews and that they can be won by appealing to their attachment predecessors, that’s an astonishing and false assertion. to the State of Israel. While up to two-thirds of American Jews really do think Trump Yet in doing so, this election also proved that the gulf between is some kind of Nazi, about a third thought he was not just worthy of those who were willing to cast their votes for him and the majority re-election yet also Israel’s best friend. who didn’t is more than a spirited disagreement. It’s a function of a People can agree to disagree about policy choices. However, the stark demographic reality in which the notion of a unified Jewish gap between thinking someone is akin to Joseph Goebbels (as Biden community has been proven again to be a myth. The only way to termed him in an interview) and believing Trump to be a righteous understand the 2020 campaign is to realize that the talk of two distinct gentile is a clash of worldviews, not a polite disagreement. warring American Jewish tribes that neither understand nor want much We already knew Orthodox and politically conservative Jews to do with each other is not a metaphor. It is a harsh reality that must disagreed with the majority of Jews who are non-Orthodox and be acknowledged and taken into account in every discussion about politically liberal. But when you realize that a lot of those liberals communal life. really do think their Jewish brethren voted for an authoritarian and More data will be forthcoming in the future as the vote is studied anti-Semite, then that is a fact that must be reckoned with. The pious in detail. But the initial exit polls of the 2020 electorate do talk, which I have always believed more out of hope than as a result demonstrate that Trump improved upon his performance in 2016 when of empirical proof, that what unites Jews is greater than that which he won approximately 24 percent of the Jewish vote nationally. divides them may be just that, mere words rather than reality. The AP Votecast showed Biden beating Trump among Jewish This election provided encouragement for Republicans to keep voters by a 68-30 margin. That poll roughly overlapped with a poll working to win Jewish voters, even as Democrats can rightly point commissioned by the Republican Jewish Coalition that showed the out that the overwhelming majority of Jews are loyal to their party. breakdown as 60.6 percent for Biden and 30.5 percent for Trump with Yet those who are tasked with trying to bring us together need to stop 9 percent split between minor party candidates and those who pretending that the divide isn’t so great and begin to acknowledge wouldn’t reveal their vote. that these are two warring Jewish tribes that have less and less in Another poll sponsored by the left-wing lobby J Street showed a common than ever before. (JNS Nov 4) better result for the Democrats with Biden beating Trump 77 percent to 21 percent, but it appears that, unsurprisingly, their sample overcounted progressive voters and undercounted Orthodox Jews. By Palestinians Call for Boycotting Israel, Then Ask Israel to Save contrast, the AP and the RJC polls dovetail not only with a Fox News Their Lives By Bassam Tawil Voter Analysis that showed Biden besting Trump by a 69-30 margin, Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat spent the past two decades but also with a previous poll of American Jews taken before the calling for the boycott and isolation of Israel. In the past few months, election by the Jewish Electoral Institute that also showed Biden Erekat, a PLO leader who previously headed the Palestinian getting 67 percent and Trump 30 percent. negotiating team with Israel, came out against the agreements to That makes the J Street poll the outlier. The other surveys all normalize relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and showed that Biden’s percentage of the Jewish vote appears to be the Bahrain. lowest total for any Democrat since 1988 while Trump is the best He and other Palestinian leaders, including Palestinian Authority showing for a Republican since that same year. President Mahmoud Abbas, accused the UAE and Bahrain of The AP poll was also able to give us a breakdown by state of the betraying the Palestinians and stabbing them in the back by making Jewish vote published in The New York Times. Among the most peace with Israel. significant were the totals for the battleground state of Florida, where On October 8, Erekat announced that he had been infected with Jews comprised 3 percent of all voters. COVID-19. A few days later, as his condition seemed to worsen, The AP showed that in Florida, the gap between the candidates Erekat was rushed from his home in the West Bank city of Jericho to was closer than elsewhere with Biden only winning by a 58-41 margin. an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem: Hadassah Ein Kerem. An Israeli Translated into actual votes that meant that Trump got about at least ambulance guarded by Israeli soldiers transferred Erekat to the Israeli somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 Jewish votes. In a competitive hospital at the request of his family and the Palestinian Authority state where he wound up winning by only 377,000 votes, that’s leadership. significant, especially if it was far more than he got in 2016. The man who worked tirelessly to harm and slander Israel and Given that the RJC invested heavily in ad buys aimed at who condemned Arabs for establishing relations with Israel in the persuading Jewish voters that Trump deserved their votes because of end chose to seek medical treatment in a hospital belonging to the his record on Israel, this demonstrates that the effort succeeded to same state he has spent much of his life demonizing. "Many people are now asking why was Erekat transferred to an When he announced that he had been infected with COVID-19, Israeli hospital? Just a few days ago Erekat was attacking Arabs for Erekat received an offer from Jordan's King Abdullah to receive establishing relations with Israel. But now he has chosen to be treated medical treatment in the kingdom. Expressing gratitude to the in an Israeli hospital. Egypt and Jordan have the best hospitals. Isn't it Jordanian monarch, Erekat did not take up him up on the offer. strange that Erekat chose an Israeli, and not Arab hospital? The Instead, when his health deteriorated, Erekat, along with his family Palestinians need to explain to the public why he preferred to go to an and the PA leadership, ran to Israel for help. Israel responded by Israeli hospital. I am not the only one asking this question. They must immediately dispatching Israeli medics and soldiers to Jericho to give us an answer.