The Democrats' Dilemma
Washington State Rep Tana Senn on why the choice is still clear
Rep. Tana Senn (D-41st) is a state Democratic delegate, the co-president of the National Association of Jewish Legislators, and an advocate for Jewish concerns in the Washington legislature. I reached out to her before the presidential debate to get her thoughts on the direction of the Democrats, given the leftward tug of some in the party especially in light of a post-October 7th world.
“I’m in this stuff for the long term”
The Cholent: I hear from a lot of people who are disillusioned with the Democratic party. What’s your perspective on the party? How are you feeling?
Tana Senn: How am I feeling? I would just answer “tired.” The anti-Semitism has just really got me down. The Holocaust Center was spray painted with “genocide in Gaza.” It’s just constant, so I’m tired. I think that the Democratic party has actually been very supportive of the Jewish community and of Israel. I think some of the Democratic allies and rank and file have not been right. And I think that's where the split comes.
Can you elaborate?
The BIPOC community in particular, I think the Jews feel really abandoned by them. We're always standing up for civil rights and for equity and against Trump and the Muslim ban and the Women's March and this and that. And then the Women's March is anti-Semitic, the BIPOC folks call us colonists. And then the whole Wing Luke thing. That one hit home the most for me, because every single year we do a Day of Remembrance [about Japanese internment]. We do a wonderful, moving Day of Remembrance celebration on the house floor. The younger, lower level staff at Wing Luke are basically conflating Jewish Americans just like we did with Japanese Americans. I'm like, are you actually kidding me? It hurts so much. That's the where the allyship has fallen apart. We have just been there without question forever, and then in a blink of the eye, boom, anti-Semitism takes over.
How do you respond to the argument on the left that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism?
From a DEI perspective, other people don't get to define what anti-Semitism is to the Jewish community. If we're saying that anti-Zionism and the phrase “river to the sea” is anti-Semitic, other people don't get to tell us that that's not anti-Semitism. If somebody says, “oh, that's racist, how you just treated that black person,” we wouldn't say, “no, that's not racist, you’re wrong.” The minority group gets to define what is the strike against them. The other thing is intent versus impact. People might think the intent is to only be anti-Israel, but your impact is anti-Semitic. When you say “ceasefire,” but you don't say “release the hostages,” you might have the intent, “well, of course I want to release the hostages.” Then say that. Why are you not calling out Hamas? There's no marching in the streets right now to get Hamas to sign the ceasefire agreement.
It comes down to this argument about systems and power, that it’s the powerful people that need to be held accountable. In this matrix, the powerful people are the “Zionists,” and it's an American imperial war. So the onus is on the people in power to stop this. And a lot of people are saying those people are Jews. So we end up in this bind.
I would say probably the majority of the Jewish community is calling for a ceasefire and the release of hostages and the assurance that Hamas is not in power. I think the majority in Israel is calling for this. I think the rub is and has been the conflation of genocide or the labeling of genocide. The balance of power and the seemingly lack of understanding of the situation in the Middle East. If someone calls for no more military supplies to Israel, I’m like, okay, so let's just walk through that for a moment. No more rockets to defend the Iron Dome. Then everybody knows — including every single Muslim country in the Middle East, who will then bomb Israel to bits because they're all within firing distance, and they don't now because they know Iron Dome's going stop it — if they know Iron Dome doesn't work, then they will [bomb Israel] and it will work because Israel's the size of a postage stamp. So right there, there isn't the nuance or that deeper understanding. It’s just Western values applied to the Middle East and the cursory understanding based on what we think as Westerners. I think the Jews are more informed. We study, we learn about it, and of course we're biased also, but we also do have a lot more information than 98 percent of the people who are chanting or marching or whatever.
I call this Western intellectual colonialism. We assume everyone in the Middle East wants our values.
Now, the Democratic state convention is coming up on Saturday, and there will be three resolutions that I'm pretty sure will pass that are about Israel and Gaza. [Note: the resolutions, including for a ceasefire and an end to US military aid, passed.] I'm very frustrated. I would again say that that is more rank and file than it is the Democratic party. Who cares what the state platform says? Except that it will be very hurtful.
History is long, and we've seen crazy people come into different parties and try to blow things up, but we self-correct pretty well here in America. But do you feel like there is sort of a generational split, a sea change coming up?
As we get bigger and bigger, we create more and more fractures. When we were just 50 of us, we were lockstep. [As you grow], you get like four or five people who want to vote separately. That's diversity. You have more conservatives and you have more progressives, and you're going to have different opinions, and so you're going to have some fracturing. I think for the most part, people are like, “okay, sure, let's protest Israel. But how about we feed kids and build housing and protect choice and protect the environment.” This is a distraction. I think for the most part, people still care about the bread-and-butter issues that is life today. And that's where the Democratic party wins. Protecting women's right to choice, protecting LGBTQ rights, access to services, recognizing climate change. Genocide’s bad, and people dying is bad. And so is trying to annihilate an entire democratically elected country. There's so many things that are true at the same time.
I want to briefly address the Holocaust education bill, which failed. You were involved with it. How do you feel about how that went down?
I think in the end it was probably good that it didn't pass, given all the machinations of it, because we already have a very strong law. It was painful. I think, frankly, it also pointed out the Republicans didn't fully understand the implications, and then some of the Democrats didn't, and then the Senate didn't understand the implications of what the House had done. I think if anything, it just pointed out that this whole thing is complicated.
The other lesson is we Jews are not nearly as organized as the opposition. I'm not kidding. The coordinators of the protests, the advocates against the Holocaust bill, all were super well organized. I don't know if we're asleep at the wheel. I don't know if we've been feeling complacent. I think we were taken by surprise. Again, we are here for everybody. They're going to be here for us, right? I hope that we just go back to being vigilant and always assuming the worst.
It's ironic, because I hear from the opposition — it's almost an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory — the Jews are organized. They don't say the Jews, they say Zionists, but you know, we’ve got all this money and all this power we've amassed, and we're “white.” And I'm always like, what?
We’re organized on helping people and having great events. But again I think we just got taken by surprise that our allies were not there with us. I think we just thought we were so organized and helpful with everybody that they would just be with us. And so we didn't have to organize, because we had all these allies.
What would be your words of advice for Jewish people who are sort of floundering right now and saying, “I'm politically homeless”?
A few things. One is that being an ally and a friend does not always mean 100 percent lockstep agreement. It means 100 percent support, but it also means pushing back when you think somebody's gone out of line a little bit. Frankly, you've got protestors in Israel who are being more forceful than Americans about how we push back on Israel. And then I would also say, we have a very binary choice. Trump would carpet bomb Gaza. Biden and the Democratic Party have our values and our long-term interest in mind. And we might have disagreements along the way, but that's also a sign of a good friendship.
There are people who are like, I don't like Trump, but I think that he might be the secure choice for Israel. What do you say to that argument?
When I went to Israel three years ago, what I could not believe was how much the Israelis did not give a flying you-know-what about American Jews. They loved Trump. And I'm like, let us not forget that Trump said that there were “good people on both sides” [after Charlottesville]. This is a fight for Israel, but this is also a fight for the Jewish diaspora, for Jews in America. I actually don't think Trump is better for Israel. I think he will be Netanyahu. I don't think people want Netanyahu. The Israelis don't want Netanyahu.
And so to me, in this case, we're not playing it out two steps further. All my Republican friends call me and they're like, “How are you doing?” And I so appreciate that. That's not going make me vote Republican. I so appreciate their support and I'm feeling loved by the Republicans, by some of my colleagues. But you know what? I only started feeling that in October, November. I'm sorry, but I'm in this stuff for the long term. The Democrats are here for the long term, and they've been with us for the long term.
Post script: after the debate, I reached back out to Rep. Senn to see if any of her feelings about supporting the Biden administration had changed.
I keep thinking about the argument against Biden: he is old. I think about the arguments against Trump: another appointee to the Supreme Court, abortion rights, climate change, voting rights, trans rights, church state separation…not to mention the 34 felonies. It’s easy. I’m voting for the old guy who has been an amazing president and values democracy.
Photo: housedemocrats.wa.gov/senn
In other news…
The Seattle Police Department deemed that graffiti scrawled on the Holocaust Center for Humanity reading “Genocide in Gaza” is not a hate crime.
According to the Seattle Times, “a Seattle Police Department bias crime detective investigated and determined there was no crime because the graffiti did not convey an explicit threat and was wiped clean ‘without causing damage or expense,’ the department said in a statement Friday.”
According to the US Department of Justice, “The term ‘hate’ can be misleading. When used in a hate crime law, the word ‘hate’ does not mean rage, anger, or general dislike. In this context ‘hate’ means bias against people or groups with specific characteristics that are defined by the law.”
Crime “is often a violent crime, such as assault, murder, arson, vandalism, or threats to commit such crimes.”
An example of this loose definition, as provided by the Justice Department, is as follows:
Overnight, unknown persons broke into a synagogue and destroyed several priceless religious objects. The perpetrators drew a large swastika on the door and wrote “Death to Jews” on a wall. Although other valuable items were present, none were stolen.
Multiple things happen in this scenario. Which one makes it a hate crime? The targeting of the synagogue, the destruction, the graffiti, the verbiage of the graffiti, the cost, the ease of cleaning it up, or all of them combined?
Holocaust Center director Dee Simon agreed with the SPD, which, if I had to bet, was a conciliatory gesture given the level of partnership between Jewish institutions and law enforcement. (Neither Simon nor SPD have returned a request for comment.) But this has to have stung, as the Center even has a law enforcement training program to help officers improve their bias awareness through the lens of WWII history.
Despite the best efforts of our partnerships and educational efforts, I have to wonder, is this how Jewish safety ends? When the people tasked to serve and protect rule that vandalism targeting Jewish buildings across the country is a mere political speech and not a threat to the community?
***
Meanwhile, in an op-ed in the Seattle Times, the executive director of the Wing Luke Museum shares his reflections on the staff walkout and closure of the museum. “Crises are not without their rewards,” Joel Barraquiel Tan writes. “When reflecting on the events that unfolded over the last month at the Wing Luke Museum, those rewards come from the strength gained and lessons learned from holding space for diverse and often conflicting beliefs in high-pressure and volatile situations.”
Tan’s list of “humble reflections” is nice, but it’s too little, too late. How did we get to the point where a few lines in an exhibit about the lived reality of Jews in this country could lead to the near collapse of a venerable and established museum? Tan should be commended for holding his ground and standing by the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, but “holding space” for “diverse” views only allows Jewish communities to be further isolated and fortifies another foothold for ignorant, recalcitrant activists. We can expect to see fewer partnerships as museums and cultural institutions realize what’s at stake when they work with the Jewish communities.
In the end, the exhibit is changing locations.
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Shoutouts
Loved your issue featuring Tracy Brazg. —Karen K
Shoutout to the Jewish Federation and JCRC - Solly Kane and Max Patashnik’s incredible support to the WSJHS during this time of navigating the Confronting Hate Together exhibit. —Lisa Kranseler
Disappointing that Senn repeats the Dem talking point about Trump re: Charlottesville. This is what he said: "There were very fine people on both sides, & I'm not talking about the Neo-nazis and white supremacists because they should be condemned totally."
Were the Wing Luke employees who walked out on the exhibit fired?