Hindus have always traditionally leaned Democrat, which leads people to believe they are liberals, but that is changing. Below is an article by a Jew named David Brog (who attends Noahide Chabad synagogues) attempting to bridge Hindus and Jews on an anti-woke agenda. Hindu emergence into the right wing in America is not a good thing, it is a step toward the social conservativism that is needed to usher in a Noahide agenda. Conservative Jewry and conservative Hindus are a deadly combination.
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/355409/towards-a-jewish-hindu-alliance/
Towards a Jewish-Hindu Alliance
Politics can be divisive. But when done the right way, politics can also bring us together.
David Brog
January 26, 2023
The hexagram of two interlocking triangles represents the male and female force (Shiva and Shakti) in Hindu religion. It is more commonly associated with Judaism as the the Star of David. This carving is set within a lotus in the courtyard of the Royal Kumari of Kathmandu. Cindybug/Getty Images
Politics can be divisive. But when done the right way, politics can also bring us together. You don’t win elections without forging coalitions. Seeking new allies forces you out of your comfort zone to meet people from different backgrounds. The great joy of politics is discovering that you share more with new communities than you ever realized. If politics can end friendships, it can also forge them.
My first foray into politics was as a chief counsel and then chief of staff for Senator Arlen Specter in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. The job required frequent visits to Pennsylvania, including the central and northern parts of the state, the so-called “T.” While located in the Northeast, this region is surprisingly rural, Christian and conservative. It was there, in cities like Coudersport and Erie, that I connected with evangelical Christians for the first time in my life. As my suspicion gave way to admiration, I realized that I shared critical priorities with this community including love of the Bible and Israel.
My decade building Christians United for Israel was the direct result of meeting these evangelicals on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania.
I left the Northeast years ago. This cycle, I ran for Congress in my new state of Nevada. I lost. But the race forced me back out there, beyond my family and my community. I met with that rich pageant of immigrant communities that make up Las Vegas and, to an increasing extent, America. In the process, I engaged with the Hindu-American community more closely than ever before.
Time after time, I found that I connected with Hindu Americans in deep, immediate ways. They reminded me of my parents and uncles – a generation closer to my family’s own immigrant experience. And even if we didn’t agree on politics, we shared the same worldview and reference points.
In particular, Hindus share three important characteristics with other immigrant groups that shape their politics. They lean Democratic despite their financial success. But they’re wary of the woke agenda that threatens the very meritocracy that enabled this success. Finally, they have ties to a foreign homeland that shape how they view the world and America’s role in it.
Right now, there’s no community in America with whom we share more than the Hindu American community.
As America’s Jewish community confronts a political emergency on the left, we need to find allies who share our experience in America and the policy perspective that flows from it. Right now, there’s no community in America with whom we share more than the Hindu American community.
The Challenge
The American left has turned against Israel and is increasingly hostile to Jews. That’s not a partisan statement. It’s not a denial of antisemitism on the right. It’s merely a recognition of reality. It’s old news.
Those who counter that President Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer are solid friends are trying to distract you, not inform you. Yes, many older Democrats still support Israel and abhor all forms of antisemitism (including anti-Zionism). But they are relics of a bygone era. When you focus on the activist base of the Democratic Party – where both the young people and energy are – the landscape is bleak. While there are wonderful exceptions like Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), they remain terribly outnumbered.
But if those who ignore the problem are wrong, so too are those who counsel retreat. We must never give up on one of our two political parties. Nor do we have to. There is a powerful progressive case to be made for Israel. And we can still appeal to progressive values to fight antisemitism. When we show up and make our case, we can claw back territory from the haters.
If we want to make lasting progress on the left, however, we cannot go it alone. Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, America’s Jews are not particularly well positioned to defend our interests in the fierce marketplace of American politics. Punching above our weight in activism and donations only takes us so far when threatening new winds begin to blow. We need new friends and allies who can help turn our lonely voice into a winning coalition.
In thinking about how to do better on the left today, we’d be wise to learn lessons from how we did better on the right in the early 2000’s. It was an effort with which I was intimately involved.
The Precedent
In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, I served as Chief Counsel and then Chief of Staff to Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Among my jobs was to keep my finger on the pulse of the conservative activists back in Pennsylvania. As I did so, I received a lot of feedback regarding Specter’s support for Israel. I didn’t like what I heard.
Prominent critics of U.S. support for Israel such as Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul were developing a dedicated following, especially among the younger activists. The more the war in Iraq bogged down, the more the isolationist impulse grew. To me, our mistakes in Iraq highlighted the importance of allies like Israel who defended themselves by themselves (in sharp contrast to Iraq). But many of my conservative friends simply wanted to turn their backs on the Middle East and, in many cases, the world.
We were losing ground on the right. But the Jewish community was poorly equipped to solve the problem. The American Jewish community is less than 6 million strong. A majority of American Jews are Democrats living in a handful of coastal cities. When Secretary of State James Baker allegedly said, “F the Jews, they don’t vote for us [Republicans] anyway,” he actually had a point.
We desperately needed allies who could supplement us where we were weak in terms of numbers, geography and, most importantly, conservative clout. And, as if heaven sent, there was a vast constituency – evangelical Christians – who checked every single box. There were tens of millions of them scattered in every Congressional district from New York to Los Angeles. They leaned Republican. And most of them shared a deep sympathy for Israel. All they lacked was organization and focus – a path to act on their pro-Israel instincts.
That’s why I was so intrigued when a leading pro-Israel evangelical, Pastor John Hagee, shared with me his dream of creating a Christian pro-Israel organization. When we launched Christians United for Israel in 2006, I was the only employee of an organization that had no money and no members. When I left a decade later, we had over 6 million members. And, more importantly, we had radically shifted the way conservatives and Washington in general think about Israel. No one views Israel as just a “Jewish” issue anymore.
Striking Similarities
But just as we were solidifying our support on the right, we found ourselves facing escalating challenges from the other end of the spectrum. The woke left has emerged as an opponent of Jewish interests at home and our ally Israel abroad.
While influential on the right, our evangelical allies cannot help us on the left. Nor are there other giants waiting in the wings. Instead, we must knit together a band of brothers from the multiple communities that share our experience and agenda. These communities must lean Democratic. And, in the current environment, it would certainly help if they were communities of color.
As we scan the American political scene, one community in particular – the Hindu American community – stands out as the perfect partner with which to begin this urgent work.
There are over a billion Hindus in the world and over 2 million Hindus here in the United States. Like Jews, most Hindu Americans are relatively recent immigrants. While many came to fill high-powered tech jobs, most followed a more familiar path: the first generation opened stores, motels or other small businesses so the second generation could go to college and become professionals.
Like Jews, Hindus still lean Democratic despite their financial success. According to a 2020 Carnegie Endowment survey, 67% of American Hindus planned to vote for Joe Biden, while only 22% indicated support for Donald Trump. This is little changed from a 2014 Pew survey which showed that 61% of American Hindus identified as Democrats while only 13% identified as Republicans.
More than most immigrant communities, Jews and Hindus share a passionate connection to our respective “mother” countries: Israel and India. These countries are not only our homelands but also our holy lands; they are the wellsprings of our faiths and the places to which we return to immerse ourselves in them.
More than most immigrant communities, Jews and Hindus share a passionate connection to our respective “mother” countries: Israel and India. These countries are not only our homelands but also our holy lands; they are the wellsprings of our faiths and the places to which we return to immerse ourselves in them. We don’t just visit – we make pilgrimages.
But neither country is fully at peace or free from danger. Thus we also connect to these homelands in a more urgent way. Italian Americans may feel a connection to Italy, but Italy doesn’t demand their political support. Israel and India, by contrast, aren’t just countries – they’re causes.
Having been shaped by similar experiences and concerns, American Jews and Hindus now find ourselves confronting parallel challenges.
When we arrived in America, both of our communities faced discrimination because we weren’t considered white. We achieved success despite prejudice and quotas. Now that we’ve worked our way to relative prosperity, we find ourselves confronting new obstacles from a new source. The woke left ignores our struggles and blithely dismisses us as “white” or “white adjacent.” The quotas the right once used to keep us down are being resurrected by a left that wants to keep us out. Our children will pay the price.
The same woke left is increasingly critical of Israel and India. They take complex conflicts and recast them as simplistic morality tales in which Israel and India are the perennial villains. They dismiss Israel as a Jewish supremacist country that occupies Palestine. They criticize India as a Hindu supremacist country that occupies Kashmir. The world’s only Jewish majority country and major Hindu-majority country are held to ridiculous double standards.
When it comes to responding to shared challenges, Israel and India are providing an example we should follow. These two nations have developed a robust strategic and economic alliance. Israel is now a major arms supplier to India, second only to Russia. And bilateral trade is thriving, especially in the tech sector. In the old days, flights from Tel Aviv to Mumbai were filled with young Israelis seeking eastern enlightenment or adventure. Today, these flights are packed with tech entrepreneurs in search of business partnerships.
The time is long overdue for American Jews and Hindus to follow the example set in the old country and accelerate our alliance here at home. In so doing we can defend our communities from discrimination and our homelands from hate. Even more importantly, we can repay a debt of gratitude to the United States by helping it recalibrate our approach to two issues where we’ve lost our way: civil rights and foreign policy.
On civil rights, our communities are well positioned to confront the excess of the woke left. We’re the descendants of immigrants who suffered discrimination. We’re the cousins of Rabbi Heschel and Mahatma Gandhi. We can help focus the social justice movement on removing old barriers without building new ones. Sure, people will point to our success and tell us we have no right to talk. But we’re a lot harder to ignore when we stand together.
We also have much to contribute to America’s foreign policy. Americans no longer want to police or fund the post-war order. Yet our desire to withdraw from the world comes at a time of escalating threats from rising adversaries. How can we protect our interests without sending our troops abroad to do so? The answer is that we must find front-line allies willing to confront shared enemies on our behalf.
Israel and India are the leading examples of such allies. Each nation confronts a major U.S. adversary: Iran and China, respectively. Israel is taking the lead in containing Iran by striking its proxies in Syria and Lebanon. India is holding the line against China’s westward ambitions (our disagreement on Russia notwithstanding). Neither ally has asked for American troops to fight on their behalf. All they want is the military and diplomatic support they need to defend themselves by themselves. In the process, they’re defending us as well.
Towards a New Alliance
Evangelical support for Israel has never been a favor to the Jews; it’s an organic Christian priority. Evangelical zeal for Israel was therefore sufficient to fuel the rise of an independent organization dedicated to the cause, Christians United for Israel. Many other evangelical leaders and organizations have joined the chorus of support for Israel and made significant contributions.
We can’t expect Hindus or any other immigrant group to adopt our priorities to this extent. Instead, we need to build a coalition of communities with shared interests and ideals akin to the 1960’s Civil Rights coalition.
This celebrated coalition – already in decline – has been further sidelined by a woke left that no longer sees Jews as persecuted or Martin Luther King, Jr. as a hero. If we want to fight for the old ideal of a colorblind society, we’re going to need to bring in new partners. And if we want to maintain support for Israel we must join with others who know enough about foreign affairs to reject the simplistic woke worldview.
We need to reach out to other immigrant communities that lean Democratic but are increasingly anti-woke, including Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Nigerian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Muslim Americans (beginning with Muslims from Israel, India and the Gulf).
Jews and Hindus can be core of such a new alliance. But it cannot end with us. We need to reach out to other immigrant communities that lean Democratic but are increasingly anti-woke, including Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Nigerian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Muslim Americans (beginning with Muslims from Israel, India and the Gulf).
Imagine a new rainbow coalition made of Americans from these multiple immigrant communities together with those who never went woke. An alliance of people so diverse they deflect the race baiters. A coalition of people so practical it ignores the radicals. Because they’ve lived the American Dream they know how best to help others do likewise. Because they’re closer to the dangers of the world, they reject the folly of demonizing our allies.
If we can be the catalyst for such a coalition, a Jewish-Hindu alliance can be the start of something very important indeed.
David Brog is the CEO of the Maccabee Task Force and the co-founder/former Executive Director of Christians United for Israel.
He was the head of Christians United for Israel. Now he’s running as a Jewish candidate for Congress
David Brog is hoping his understanding of the Middle East and his advocacy for Israel will win him the primary for a House seat in Nevada
David Brog, a former executive for the largest pro-Israel evangelical group, is seeking to return to Capitol Hill, close to 20 years after serving on Capitol Hill as a Senate staffer to Sen. Arlen Specter. To do that he will need to win a crowded Republican primary in Las Vegas in a party dominated by Donald Trump.
Brog, who is Jewish, describes himself as an economic nationalist and a believer in Trump’s America First policy agenda, but with a history of working across the aisle to pass key legislation and to foster bipartisan support for Israel. He served for close to a decade as executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a Texas-based evangelical pro-Israel group.
“Despite all this cynicism about politics, I still think that elected officials and legislators who are there for the right reasons with the right values can and do make a difference,” Brog, 56, said in an interview.
He is one of eight candidates running in a GOP primary to challenge the incumbent Democratic Congresswoman, Dina Titus, in Nevada’s 1st District, which includes most of Las Vegas and has become more competitive as a result of redistricting. Brog has raised more than $300,000 since he launched his bid in mid-February and has more cash-on-hand than any of the other candidates – which includes Mark Robertson, an Army veteran; and Carolina Serrano, a former Trump campaign staffer – according to the recent first quarter FEC filings.
Trump has yet to pick a favorite candidate in the June 14 primary, and the Republican Jewish Coalition traditionally doesn’t intervene in intra-party contests. But Brog has received the backing of former Trump administration officials David Friedman, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and Elan Carr, the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, who co-hosted a virtual fundraiser for him last week. The National Republican Congressional Committee placed him on their list of seats it hopes to pick up in the midterm elections.
If elected, Brog would increase the Republican Party’s Jewish representation. There are currently only two Jewish members in the Republican caucus, Lee Zeldin from New York and David Kustoff from Tennessee. Zeldin is retiring from Congress and running as the Republican candidate for governor of New York. Max Miller, a former Trump White House aide, won the GOP primary in Ohio’s 7th District last week. Brog’s goal is to form a group of Jewish House members to fight back against the rise in antisemitism and work together on issues of mutual interest.
Jewish upbringing and family background
Brog was born and raised in Margate City, outside of Atlantic City in New Jersey, to secular parents. His father, Eugene, went to Temple Beth El synagogue only twice a year – on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Eugene’s parents were immigrants from Poland and Lithuania, who lost family members in the Holocaust. That trauma made Eugene lose some faith, yet he instilled in his children the pride of being Jewish.
Brog is a little more observant. He doesn’t work on Saturday to mark Shabbat as a day of rest, a commitment he is keeping during this campaign. He occasionally goes to the local Orthodox synagogues, Young Israel Aish HaTorah and Chabad. “I feel like I’m carrying on my dad’s search and trying to succeed in the mission he gave me of connecting with my faith, being a Jew who practices and takes his faith seriously,” he said.
After graduating from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was classmates with former President Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Brog spent a few years in Israel working for a law firm – Meitar, Littman Nechmad (now Meitar Law Offices) – which specializes in commercial law and hi-tech.
Brog discovered that he was a third cousin of Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel, in the late 1990s. The two shared a great grandfather, Simon. Brog had already admired Barak, who was Labor leader at the time, a distinguished soldier in Israel’s history and an advocate for peace in the Middle East. Barak changed his surname from Brog to Barak in 1972, using the Hebrew word for lightning.
The two first met when Barak visited the U.S. as prime minister in July of 1999 and met with a group of Jewish members of Congress and their staffers. As Barak was greeting everyone, Brog introduced himself as his cousin. Barak “put his arms around me, points at me and just says to nobody in particular, ‘This is my cousin, my cousin,’” Brog recalled. Brog has stayed in touch with his family in Israel, including Barak’s brother Avinoam, who still carries the surname Brog.
Brog began studying Zionism as a student at Atlantic City High School after reading the book “The Revolt” by Menachem Begin, who was the leader of Irgun, the Zionist paramilitary group, and later became Israel’s sixth prime minister. He found it in his school’s library after searching for an autobiography of former President John F. Kennedy for an assignment. “That really impacted me and turned me into a Zionist,” he said.
Leading America’s largest pro-Israel group
After serving as policy director during Specter’s short presidential campaign in 1996, as well as the senator’s chief counsel and chief of staff, Brog wrote a book “Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support Israel,” which was based on his experience traveling through central Pennsylvania and meeting evangelical Christians. In the process of writing the book, Brog visited pro-Israel churches across the country and listened to a series of speeches given by Pastor John Hagee, a televangelist and founder of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.
Brog became friends with Hagee, who asked for his help in launching Christians United For Israel (CUFI). Brog saw it as an opportunity to change the way Israel was being perceived in Congress as merely a Jewish issue and broaden the base of support for Israel.
At the time, the Republican Party was at a crossroads, with Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, isolationists on foreign policy, attracting a lot of conservative support that could have influenced the party’s stance on Israel. Brog and Hagee saw it as their mission to strengthen evangelical support for Israel as a way of winning conservatives for at least a generation. CUFI now has over 10 million members and has lobbied successfully for pro-Israel legislation, including the passage of the Taylor Force Act, which cuts U.S. funding to the Palestinians as long as the Palestinian Authority pays subsidies to the families of terrorists.
In July 2015, Brog left CUFI and was tapped to head a new group called the Maccabee Task Force, an initiative launched by the late Sheldon Adelson and Israeli-American media magnate Haim Saban, to combat antisemitism on college campuses. Brog said Adelson was determined to provide students with the support and resources they need to fight antisemitism and took it on as a personal project.
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