OPINION: The Jewish vote — Obama by a landslide — shows support for progressive agenda

[IndianaGreen]

OPINION: The Jewish vote — Obama by a landslide — shows support for progressive agenda

Author: Ari Goldman
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 12/10/08 13:41

The election campaign gave rise to the formation of several Jewish groups for Obama that played a significant role. They included such groups as Jews for Obama; Rabbis for Obama, with several hundred rabbis signed up; and the Great Schlep, a campaign sparked by humorist Sarah Silverman urging Jewish young people to travel to Florida to visit their grandparents there and talk to them about Obama, which generated visits, phone calls and e-mails, and much publicity. A number of powerful videos aimed at Jewish voters got wide circulation, including several featuring well-known Jewish Hollywood personalities and one showing Israeli Obama supporters. Another featured seniors in Florida, including Holocaust survivors, volunteering for Obama, and hearkened back to the historic Jewish/African American alliance for civil rights and labor rights.

Jewish participation in the Obama campaign took many forms, including phone banking, travel to battleground states (in New York the United Federation of Teachers, with a large Jewish membership, sent busloads of volunteers to Pennsylvania), chain e-mails and pro-Obama ads in Jewish newspapers in major cities.

In addition, a new Jewish lobbying group was formed last year — J Street — focused on pressing for action on a two-state solution, a kind of anti-AIPAC.

J Street backed 41 candidates for Congress, of whom 33 won, including several in very tight races. These candidates all support proactive measures toward achieving a just two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. Indeed, the day after the election, J Street ran a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for speedy appointment of a high-level special envoy to achieve an Israel-Palestine agreement.

Right-wing groups within the Jewish community have worked for years to represent themselves as speaking for all Jewish Americans, and have sought to intimidate those who dissented, particularly on U.S. policy on the Israel/Palestinian crisis. But the election results and other developments over the past months show that these right-wing elements may be losing some of their clout. Jewish Americans are not one-issue voters, and concern for social and economic justice, racial and ethnic equality and inclusiveness, civil liberties, democracy, separation of church and state, peace and internationalism — major themes in the Jewish historical tradition — came to the fore in this presidential election.

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/14122/