Why Do Democrats Hate Israel?

I think it was Milton Himmelfarb (but I’m only 40% sure of this, so happy to be corrected) who quipped that “Jews live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.” I haven’t checked the exit poll crosstabs, but I suspect that Hillary Clinton got around 90 percent of the Jewish vote in 2016. There have been some important deviations from this pattern, such as the 1980 election, when Ronaldus Magnus got around 35 percent of the Jewish vote in the aftermath of Jimmy Carter’s obvious hostility to Israel and his general incompetence.

But how long can Jewish voters really stick with Democrats in light of these new findings from the Pew Research Center:

Republicans and Democrats Grow Even Further Apart in Views of Israel, Palestinians

. . . Since 2001, the share of Republicans sympathizing more with Israel than the Palestinians has increased 29 percentage points, from 50% to 79%. Over the same period, the share of Democrats saying this has declined 11 points, from 38% to 27%.

The latest national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Jan. 10-15 among 1,503 adults, finds that 42% say Donald Trump is “striking the right balance” in the situation in the Middle East, while 30% say he favors Israel too much (just 3% say Trump sides too much with the Palestinians; 25% do not offer an opinion).

At a similar point in Barack Obama’s presidency, 47% of Americans said he had struck a proper balance in dealing with the Middle East; 21% said he sided too much with the Palestinians, while 7% said he favored Israel too much.

This chart is a shocker:

So why are Democrats so hostile to Israel? Are they that far gone into liberal guilt?

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