Carville: Republicans support Israel because of white racism

James Carville. Credit: JD Lasica/Socialmedia.biz via Wikimedia Commons.

Long-time Democratic political strategist James Carville thinks he has figured out why Republicans are so supportive of Israel — simple white racism.

Carville, the “Ragin’ Cajun” who became prominent as chief strategist for Bill Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign, offered his assessment on the Aug. 15 episode of the “Politics War Room” podcast.

He told co-host Al Hunt that “the reason I suspect that most of these people describe themselves as pro-Israel is because the Jews are whiter than the Palestinians, which drives a lot of what I think they are.”

He added that “it’s really about the misogyny and the racism that drives the thing, and we got to recognize that. It’s not about any policy prescription.”

Carville was responding to a question of how a party that “openly embraced” the far-right and neo-Nazis could portray itself as the pro-Israel party.

Moshe Phillips, national chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel, responded that “the majority of  Israelis are not white; they’re of Jewish Middle Eastern or Jewish African heritage, meaning that they are just as much ‘people of color’ as Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

“It’s disturbing that a political strategist who is so ignorant about Israeli demography would nonetheless offer policy analysis about the subject. We urge James Carville to publicly acknowledge his egregious error.”

Republican support of Israel is largely credited to the prevalence of evangelical Christian voters, who feel there is a Biblical mandate to bless Israel and the Jewish people, and who cite shared values of freedom and democracy, along with national security, for their support.

As the Democratic National Convention gets underway, Carville said the Republicans did not face the same level of anti-Israel protests that are anticipated in Chicago because, according to what an activist told him, they felt they would not be able to influence the Republicans, but the Democrats “would be more open-minded about this.”

He expressed frustration at that view, saying it is “dumb— political s—” that will “hurt the person that actually has the best chance of resolving this issue in a satisfactory way because you can’t influence the other person.”

Before the primary in Michigan, where the administration made explicit outreach to the large Muslim community, Carville criticized the protest vote for “uncommitted” in the primary because of continued U.S. support for Israel under Biden.

About 100,000 uncommitted votes were cast on Feb. 27, about 13 percent. In recent presidential primaries, about 20,000 Democrats had voted uncommitted. In 2008, almost 240,000 voted uncommitted after the state moved its primary earlier in defiance of the national party’s rules.

Carville had already created controversy with comments around Israel in March when he said that it would be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fault if Biden, who was then running for re-election, lost in November.

Citing a conspiratorial theory that Netanyahu is prolonging the war against Hamas to put off reckoning in personal legal battles he faces, he said the Democrats are “gonna have to tell Bibi Netanyahu, ‘Hey dude, we’re not gonna lose our election because you’re scared to go to jail’.”

At the time, he added that if the war against Hamas “don’t get calmed down before the Democratic convention in Chicago it’s going to be a very ugly time in Chicago.”