ABSTRACT
Between 85 and 90 percent of Jews who voted last November voted for the Democrats, so the people have spoken, and they have formed a unified and coherent Jewish political front–remarkably unified, given the Jewish capacity for argument and dissent. The choice between right and left has been made, and the choice is for the near-left, the center left, which is a sensible choice, it seems to me; the near-left is where the Jews should be and where most Jews have been, ever since emancipation. The occupation and settlement of Gaza and the West Bank after 1967 was a political and moral mistake of huge dimensions–and it was driven in large part by religious fantasies that should never have figured in political decision-making. The political toughness and realism that is supposed to mark the secular left requires also that we recognize the greater power, and therefore the greater danger, of Islamic zeal in the world today.
