I am a lifelong Democrat, a feminist, a progressive, and a Jew. I marched to Take Back the Night and canvassed for the Sierra Club in college. I volunteered with a domestic violence shelter as a young lawyer.

My children and I donned pink pussy hats as we chanted at the 2016 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. I held a “Jews for Black Lives Matter” sign at a BLM rally in Pittsburgh.

I became a foster mom during the pandemic. Last summer, I shared my home with a family of Muslim refugees from Afghanistan.

I’ve supported only Democratic candidates for president. You might think, then, that, as a resident of Squirrel Hill, I’d be voting in the upcoming election for Rep. Summer Lee, treasurer candidate Erin McClelland, Sen. Bob Casey and Kamala Harris. You would be wrong.

Voting Republican

After witnessing the horrors of Oct. 7 and after realizing that too many Democratic Party elected officials and constituents lack the moral clarity to respond effectively to the war Israel is fighting and to the threat of the political ideology of Islamism, I have decided to vote Republican.

On Nov. 5, 2024, I will vote for James Hayes, Stacy Garrity, Dave McCormick — and, reluctantly, Donald Trump.

Most people believe that this is an important election, that its results might even determine the future of our democracy. I agree with them.

And that is why I am voting for the party that is more likely to contain Iran and remind it and its terror proxies that America will defeat their threats to democracy and freedom; more likely to support Israel in its defensive, existential war; and more likely to protect civil rights by punishing unlawful acts of violence and antisemitic harassment on college campuses.

I am not voting for the party that abandoned the girls of Afghanistan and unnecessarily sacrificed the precious lives of our soldiers there. I am not voting for the party that condemns antisemitism on the right while excusing, and even spreading, leftist antisemitism and blood libels.

I am not voting for the party that is equivocal in its support for Israel as she fights to defend her borders, half the world’s Jews, some of the freest Arab citizens in the world, and western values, including democracy.

I am not voting for the party that chooses appeasement as its foreign policy. I am not voting for the party that took no definitive action as antisemitic violence raged on college campuses across the United States.

The threat coming from Iran and its proxies (including those who support them in the West) is a threat to women, LGBTQ+, Jews, and other minorities. It is a threat to liberal democracies across the world. We must elect those who will not tolerate an Islamist invasion of a liberal democratic ally and who will make it clear that Islamism will never defeat Western civilization.

Islamist poison

If the United States permits Islamists to spread their supremacist, misogynist, Jew-hating, freedom-hating ideology, they will do so. (I do not mean Muslims, like the family that lived with me, or Islam in general, but the fundamentalist ideology that dominates some states.)

While Israelis and others in the Muslim and Arab world are most vulnerable, it is only a matter of time until we are all at risk. Islamist ideology is a poison. It is not liberal. It is not progressive. It is not inclusive.

Islamists ban girls from school (Afghanistan). They brutally murder gay men, sometimes by throwing them off buildings (Palestinians, Islamic State). They rape, murder, mutilate, and burn Jews (Oct. 7). They kidnap non-Muslim girls into sexual slavery (Boko Haram, Islamic State).

They imprison, rape, and murder women who violate hijab rules by daring to expose their hair or neck (Iran). They stone women for having unsanctioned sex or pursuing forbidden love (Taliban, Iran). They kidnap, imprison, torture, and assault women as part of their plan to relegate women to the role of bearing child soldiers for their Islamist army (Houthis).

These are the ways of the “freedom fighters” in support of whom our college campuses have erupted.

The United States must recognize the imminent threat posed by Islamist ideology. It must defeat Islamists when they dare to cross a democratic country’s border.

If they are not stopped, they will continue to spread their vile ways in an Islamic Caliphate across the Middle East, Europe, and eventually, the Americas. They will institute the same regressive laws in other lands that they have instituted in their own.

Voting for democracy

Today, Israel is actively fighting this threat on seven fronts. If we do not ensure Israel wins these wars and if we do not help her to defeat the threat posed by Iran soon, we risk not only the lives of persecuted people and other minorities in faraway lands but, in time, our own.

It has been heartbreaking for me to realize that the party I believed would always defend the rights of women and minorities is not interested in defending them against the Islamists. This November, I will vote for those whom I believe will fight the hardest to protect democracy and Western civilization.

Rona Kaufman is an associate professor of law at Duquesne University’s Kline School of Law. The views expressed do not represent those of Duquesne University. She lives in Squirrel Hill.

First Published: November 2, 2024, 9:30 a.m.