The Fall of the Soviet Empire Was a Victory for Israel

June 11 2019

On June 4, 1988, Poland held its first free elections since before World War II, and Solidarity, the anti-Communist party, won 99 percent of the vote. To Sever Plocker, the date marks the beginning of the end of Communism and therefore of the cold war in Europe. He takes the recent anniversary of the election to reflect on the implications for the Jewish state:

Israel gained a great deal from the collapse of the Soviet empire. Post-Communist governments initiated full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, followed by economic and strategic ties. The arms race to keep up with Soviet armaments, [which flowed freely into the hands of Israel’s enemies], also ended.

In a casual conversation in 1988, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told the American Jewish oil tycoon Armand Hammer that he would “allow all Jews who want to emigrate to Israel to do so,” and the report [of the conversation] was published as a scoop in [the Israeli paper] Yediot Aḥronot. The more than one million immigrants who have arrived in Israel since then have enabled, among other things, the flourishing of Israeli high-tech, which brought the country at least $450 billion in revenue. Were it not for the sweeping victory of the anti-Communist revolution of 1989, Israel would not be what it is today. It is worth remembering this.

Read more at Ynet

More about: Israeli history, Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian Jewry, Soviet Union

The Democratic Party Is Losing Its Grip on Jews

Since the 1930s, Jews have been one of America’s most solidly Democratic ethnic groups. Although, true to form, a majority again voted for Kamala Harris, something clearly has shifted. John Podhoretz writes:

Over the course of the past thirteen months, Jews in America have been harassed, threatened, seen their ancestral homeland derided as a settler-colonial genocidal state. They have seen Jewish kids mistreated on college campuses. And they have seen the Biden administration kowtow to Muslim populations hostile to Jews and the Jewish state in Michigan. They have heard the criticisms of Israel’s efforts to defend itself, and have noted the silence from the administration when it came to anti-Semitic assaults and the refusal of college presidents to condemn the treatment of Jews and Jewish topics under their ambit.

And Jews have acted.

The initial evidence from last night’s election is that there has been a significant shift in the Jewish vote from previous elections, a delta of anywhere from 10 to 40 percent overall.

Read more at Commentary

More about: 2024 Election, American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Democrats, U.S. Politics