All the attention this week was focused on the removal of “God” and reference to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from the DNC platform. Those terms were reinserted based on the rused that two-thirds of delegates approved, when it was clear that there was not the-thirds support on the voice vote.
But the initial removal of Jerusalem from the platform was not the only problem, as reported by The Times of Israel, Jewish Democrats still unhappy with corrected party platform, which omits clauses on Hamas, refugees and borders:
The platform was handled “by children,” one Jewish leader in Charlotte who asked to remain anonymous told The Times of Israel.In the kind of scathing critique that reporters heard from multiple sources this week, the longtime Jewish activist said, “The people responsible for the platform did such a terrible job working on the wording because they did not conduct an inclusive process with members of the [pro-Israel] community. That’s what leud to this problem, and those people should be held responsible.”What’s more, some pro-Israel activists are far from satisfied even with the corrected language in the platform.Said longtime Democrat and prominent law professor Alan Dershowitz: “I would like to see the president make statements over the course of the coming weeks which re-affirm what was said in the 2008 platform, not only with regards to Jerusalem, but in regard to the borders, the refugees and with regard to Hamas,” he said. Off-the-record, other Jewish Democratic insiders echo the objections.The 2008 platform had demanded “the isolation of Hamas until that organization renounces terrorism and accepts other requirements of the peace process,” insisted that “any settlement of the so-called ‘refugees’ question in a final settlement make a future Palestinian state, not Israel, the destination for Palestinian ‘refugees,’” and noted “that it’s not realistic to expect [the] outcome of negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
But not to worry, Debbie “Alternative Universe” Wasserman-Shultz say all the controversy arose from a mere technical oversight:
Actually, the real universe is that the Democratic Party is the home to antil-Israelis. Not all Democrats are anti-Israel, but almost all anti-Israelis are Democrats.
Update: Joel Engel reminds me of this column he wrote before the 2004 election for The Weekly Standard:
The evidence is overwhelming that acceptable anti-Semitism has moved from right to left on the political continuum, and that its philosophical home now resides in the Democratic party, which has become less the party of liberals than of leftists. Even before Al Sharpton stood as a presidential candidate last year, Democratic politicians genuflecting for black votes–Al Gore, Bill Bradley, and Hillary Clinton, for example–often trekked up to Harlem to kiss his ring. And yet, this was a man who in previous years had either led or instigated two anti-Jewish demonstrations, one in Crown Heights and one in Harlem, which together resulted in the deaths of eight people. Does that matter to Democrats and John Kerry? Apparently not. Sharpton was rewarded with a choice slot at the Democratic National Convention, something that is impossible to imagine being given to the likes of former Republican David Duke, whose incitements have frankly born far less blood than Sharpton’s.
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