PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh’s Jewish community is putting the Harris-Walz campaign on notice as they head toward Election Day: Stand with anti-Semites and you’ll face Democratic defection at the ballot box.
The backlash has been growing since the Harris campaign hosted speakers at Steel City rallies Israel blamed for October 7 attacks Despite clear pleas from the Jewish community, 1,400 Israeli civilians were killed.
The campaign ignored those pleas, a person familiar with the conversations told The Post, and gave speaking roles to Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and Allegheny County Executive Sara Inamorato.
Gainey and Iannamorato have come under fire from Pittsburgh Jewish voters after they co-signed a statement with Squad member Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) saying Israelis were responsible for the Holocaust. Claimed: “The violence did not start on October 7.”
The statement, released on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 vote, drew sharp condemnation from Jewish community leaders in Pittsburgh, where a large portion of the swing state’s 400,000-strong Jewish population is set to vote Tuesday.
With those votes, Democrats’ alliance with anti-Israel politicians could mean losing Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes — and the entire 2024 presidential election — to Donald Trump.
That’s not a distant possibility, as several Jewish Democrats in Pittsburgh tell The Post they think. Betrayed by my own party – and are considering voting for Trump on Tuesday.
Aviva Lubowski, 45, a mother of two, is not one of them — but tells The Post that Democrats are right to fear losing Jewish voters this cycle.
He said, “If the Democratic Party wants to retain its Jewish voter base, they must avoid and condemn the extremists in the party.” “The rhetoric they are making is dangerous for the safety of my children. It’s pushing people to vote for Trump who otherwise would have voted for (Harris).
“It makes me question whether I should vote Democrat,” he said.
Jennifer Mortazaishvili, a Jewish political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh who studies foreign policy and political division, isn’t surprised to hear these sentiments from Jewish voters.
“The mainstream progressive left has a big problem on its hands,” he told The Post, adding that about 60% of his liberal Jewish friends in Pittsburgh are considering voting for Trump because he doesn’t want to secure Israel’s future or Harris can’t be trusted to fight anti-Semitism. ,
“How can we discern what her policies are other than the people she surrounds herself with?” he asked, pointing not only to Gainey and Innamorato, but also to Harris’ national security adviser philip gordonWho supported the Iran deal under the Obama administration, which restricted Iran’s nuclear program while releasing billions of dollars to a regime that seeks Israel’s destruction.
“What does this say about how Kamala Harris is going to run the country? I think that’s why Jewish Americans have so many questions right now,” he said.
Jewish voters, long considered a Democratic mainstay, are showing up nationally lowest support For Democrats from the Reagan era. And 62% of Jews are concerned about anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party as Israel enters its second year fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
“There are voters in the Jewish community that I never thought would be undecided,” one Jewish Democrat in Pittsburgh told The Post, adding that more than 30 people with ambivalence toward Harris voted for the Jewish holiday in October. Services had contacted them, and there was uncertainty on how to vote on election day.
“These are Democrats, not just registered Democrats but (people) who voted for Obama, Clinton and Biden.”
“The lack of moral clarity is giving people pause,” he said, referring to Harris’ CNN town hall. Avoided answering whether she would limit US support for Israel’s war in Gaza And will she be more pro-Israel than Donald Trump?
Another anonymous Jewish Democratic voter, who told The Post that she was seriously considering voting for Trump, cited the “failure of moral clarity” that the Harris campaign promotes at its rallies as the reason for moving away from the Democratic Party. Cues Genny and Inmorato embracing.
“They clearly understood how dangerous it would be for Summers to be there,” he said, referring to Rep. Lee, who attended campaign rallies but did not appear on stage.
“They are aware of the issue. They could have distanced themselves,” he added, and accused the veep of pandering to anti-Israel voters, many of whom are threatening boycott the vice president At the ballot box.
But the No. 1 issue that is driving this Jewish voter to Trump is the fear that a future Harris administration will fail to prevent the Islamic State from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Issues involving anti-Semitism and anti-Israel policies are particularly poignant among Pittsburgh’s Jewish voters because their community suffered the deadliest attack on Jews in American history in 2018, when a gunman opened fire at the city’s Tree of Life. Eleven people were murdered in the synagogue.
And just a few months ago there were three Jewish students at the University of Pittsburgh attacked On campus, like anti-semitic incidents There has been a 360% increase in cases in the US since the terrorist attacks on October 7 a year ago.
“When you’re faced with the kind of violence that our community has faced here and when you’re faced with the kind of violence that Israel is facing, it seems horribly non-existent,” Mortazashvili said. ” “It was shocking to see that language from the mayor after seeing what happened to Jewish students in his own city.”
Harris supporter and Tree of Life massacre survivor Audrey Glickman did not blame the Harris campaign for trying to reach Arab and Muslim voters and defended the vice president’s support for Israel and the Jewish community.
“Kamala Harris is not a squad member. She has come to Pittsburgh more than once and spoken to us more than once and worked on anti-Semitism as an issue,” Glickman said, though she was saddened that the mayor would engage in anti-Semitic rhetoric. Will be attached.
Still, Lubowski, who desperately wants Harris to win, stressed that party leaders need to condemn anti-Israel voices in the party to win back disaffected Democrats.
“I have never voted for a Republican in my entire life. “I will be running for office for the first time in this election,” Lubowski said.
While she still supports Harris for president, she will cast her vote for Republican James Hayes, who is trying to unseat Lee in Pennsylvania’s 12th District.
“American liberal Jews don’t have a political home right now,” he said.
(Tags to translate) politics
