The Madmen and the Moderates in the Democratic Party

The DSA is triumphant, and has an agenda regarding Israel: “‘We are just getting started’: Midterm blowout normalizes anti-Zionism in Democratic politics,” by Luke Tress, Times of Israel, November 5, 2026:

Kiros said in an interview, “The American people are demanding not just that we withdraw our aid, but that we end this genocide with whatever leverage we have.”…

Let me repeat — despite what Kiros, and Chevalier, and Mamdani, and El-Sayed keep saying — there has been no genocide in Gaza. The total number of Gazans dead as a result of combat can be calculated thus: 75,000 total dead. Of those, 25,000 were Hamas terrorists. Another 24,000 died, based on historical data, from accidents and disease, that is, from non-combat related causes. Another 3,000-5,000 died from missiles and rockets launched at Israel by Hamas and the PIJ that misfired; we can reasonably estimate that figure of such 4,000. Let’s do the math: 75,000-25,000=50,000; 50,000-24,000=26,000; 26,000-4,000=22,000 is the number of civilian deaths in Gaza that resulted from combat. That is less than 1% of the Gazan population of 2.2 million. That is not what is meant by “genocide.”

And then there is the question of “intent” that lies at the heart of the charge of “genocide.” Has the IDF anywhere “intended” to commit genocide? If it did, then why would it have made a tremendous effort, by dropping millions of leaflets, sending millions of text messages, and making millions of robocalls, all to warn civilians away from sites about to be targeted? If it wanted to commit “genocide,” why would the IDF have facilitated the vaccination against polio of more than one million children in Gaza? If it wanted to commit “genocide” why did the IDF arrange for transferring Gazan children requiring specialized treatment from Gaza to hospitals in Jordan?

El-Sayed unapologetically campaigned with the antisemite and conspiracy theorist Hasan Piker, who among other intolerable remarks said that “America deserved 9/11.” El-Sayed himself said about an attempted terrorist attack on a synagogue and school filled with Jewish children that “hurt people hurt people,” seeming to justify the foiled attack on Jewish children in West Bloomfield, Michigan because the attacker’s relative in Lebanon, a Hezbollah terrorist, had been killed by the IDF.

But not all the news was bad. The sane Democrats, the ones whom we call “moderates,” who continue to support Israel and do not want to defund the police, open wide our borders, or socialize medicine, have also kept their seats, or won new ones.

Now the DSA has gone from two to seven members in Congress. Seven out of a total of 535 members is hardly an overwhelming performance. Like the frogs and toads that inflate their throats to ward off predators, the DSA members are exaggerating the significance of their victories, hoping thereby to intimidate the Democratic moderates who still retain control of committee assignments. But if we add to the number of DSA members those Democrats in Congress who are equally opposed to giving Israel what it needs to defend itself, one comes up another 35-40 members, which, given a total of 535 congressmen (100 Senators, 435 representatives), fails to impress.

Many or most American Jews are likely relieved by Tuesday’s repudiation of Trump. Polls have shown that US Jews are opposed to both Trump and Netanyahu. That doesn’t mean they are completely at home among Democrats.

Trump is a megalomaniac, a narcissist with mood swings and attention deficit disorder. Netanyahu is Israel’s most successful and longest-serving prime minister, who has guided the country during the most tumultuous time of its existence, when the IDF has been forced to fight a six-front war against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the jihadists of the Al-Sharaa regime in Syria, the terrorists in Judea and Samaria, and Iran. He’s been a steady hand on the till, quite unlike Donald J. Trump. But the media around the world has deliberately demonized him as “far right,” and too many American Jews have accepted this unfair characterization.