Blacks for Bush

But America in 2004 is very different from the America of 50 or 100 years ago. American Jews owe it to themselves to base their political loyalty on something stronger than force of habit. Those who vote for Democrats (or against Republicans) because that's what their parents and grandparents did ought to take a closer look: When it comes to the issues they care about most, their loyalty may be misplaced.

Bush likewise broke with the past by insisting that Palestinian democracy and tolerance, and a leadership ''not compromised by terror,'' are prerequisites to peace with Israel. Unlike John Kerry, who speaks of making the United Nations a ''full partner'' in US foreign policy, Bush is under no illusions about the UN's intense anti-Israel hostility. Nor has he had any difficulty recognizing the poisonous strain of anti-Semitism that runs beneath some of the most virulent denunciations of the Jewish state.

When the UN's self-styled ''conference against racism'' in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 turned into a grotesque anti-semitic debauch, Bush ordered the US delegation to walk out. When the prime minister of Malaysia opened an international summit by declaring that ''Jews rule the world by proxy,'' Bush personally rebuked him. In all this, he has come across not as a politician acting out of calculated expedience, but as a man acting on principle and conviction.

Bush got only 19 percent of the Jewish vote in 2000; he has known all along that most Jews would vote Democratic in 2004. Yet there is nothing anomalous about his ardent support for Israel or his firm stance against anti-Semitism. Unlike the Europe of Jewish memory, in the United States today it is the left that has increasingly set its face against Jewish interests. As poll after poll confirms, conservative Republicans are much more likely to self-identify as pro-Israel than liberal Democrats. It is no surprise that a man like Pat Buchanan has had to leave the Republican Party. Or that a man like Sharpton is at home among the Democrats.