Re-post - Longtime Dem lawmaker becomes a Republican as party has ‘turned their back on Jews & Israel’

Via BizPac Review.  Another Democrat has left the party following the lead of Tulsi Gabbard, Jeff Van Drew and Meisha Mainor.

A longtime New York Democrat lawmaker and Jewish community leader has reacted to his party’s embrace of antisemitic elements by crossing the aisle and becoming a Republican, stating that today’s Democrats have become “radicalized” and have “turned their back” on Jews and Israel.

“It’s official: My wife and I have switched our party affiliation from Democrat to Republican!” Dov Hikind, a former New York State Assemblyman who represented his Brooklyn constituents for 35 years wrote on Twitter along with a short video of himself and his wife Shani in which they explained their decision to abandon the rat-infested Democratic Party ship.

“Ppl have long been asking, ‘Dov, when are you gonna leave the Democratic Party?’ Well, the time has come bc the Dems have turned their back on Jews & Israel, so it’s officially done!” Hikind added.

“I have been a lifelong Democrat. My family, my parents. But that’s over. That’s finished,” Hikind said in the video. “I have decided to register as a Republican. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has become so radicalized, so radical, run by the radicals, that people who are moderates or conservative Democrats are not welcomed in the Democratic Party… and I’ve had enough.”

Hikind said that the far-left party “turns its back on its friends like Israel,” as seen by the policies of the Biden regime which has made a major break from his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump who was widely seen as the best friend that the Jewish state has ever had in the White House.

“I am delighted to join the Republican Party,” he continued.

“This is about sending a message — a message to the Biden administration, a message to the Democratic Party,” he added. “We’re losing the American people because you are not representing our values. You are not representing the Democratic Party that my parents were so proud of.”

Hikind’s party change comes after one of the top House Democrats, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) who heads up the influential Progressive Caucus, denounced Israel as a “racist state” during the Netroots Nation convention in Chicago last weekend, a sentiment shared by a growing number of the new radically socialist crop of lawmakers who will soon take leadership positions as the geriatric old guard shuffles out to pasture.

Nine House Democrats led by thought leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her fellow “Squad” members Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and antisemitic bomb-thrower Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) refused to vote for a resolution affirming support for Israel on the eve of Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke before a joint session of Congress.