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April 27, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
1) Today, April 27, is 569 days since October 7, 2023. The Hamas-led attack on Simchat Torah resulted in 1,182 fatalities (including 44 Americans) and over 4,000 wounded. 251 hostages (210 alive, 41 dead bodies) were taken during a day of brutal savagery and sexual violence. It was the largest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, with more than one in every 10,000 Israelis killed, and the third overall deadliest terrorist attack in the world to date.
2) The 59 remaining hostages include five Americans. Edan Alexander is the only remaining American believed to be alive. Hamas holds the bodies of Omer Neutra, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. Releasing all the hostages might not be priorities for Trump and Netanyahu but it's a top priority for us. We must continue to speak out.
3) What some misinterpret as division in the Jewish community about antisemitism is actually division between the Jewish community and the heads of some Jewish organizations who claim to speak for us. The consensus among Jewish Americans is that choosing between confronting antisemitism and upholding constitutional rights is a false choice. Weakening our democracy in the name of fighting antisemitism will make Jews less safe, and most Jews know it and therefore oppose Trump's actions in our name.
4) The question is not what you think of the people Trump is trying to deport, be they migrants or university students. The question is whether you think the American way is to deny due process based on who people are or what their views are.
5) The Jewish community in Georgia continues to strongly support Sen. Jon Ossoff.
6) I updated my paper on why we should oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Even if you previously supported it, now is not the time to adopt it.
This newsletter supports the Constitution. You can support this newsletter by credit card or PayPal, by Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four phone digits are 9479), or by check. Thank you.
Hi Steve,
It doesn't matter what you think of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García. It doesn't matter what you think of Mahmound Khalil. I don't know if they are saints, sinners, or something in between. Nor do I care.
What Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said regarding Ábrego García applies to all these cases: "I want to be very clear—I'm not vouching for the man. I'm vouching for the man's rights. His constitutional rights to due process."
Presidents Obama and Biden deported millions of people. If someone deserves to be deported after they have been accorded due process, so be it. Trump's repeated denials of due process are the problem.
Trump's refusal to bring Ábrego García back after admitting he was mistakenly deported and then defying court orders, including from the Supreme Court, to facilitate his return, is morally reprehensible.
This should shock the conscience of every American. We cannot let ourselves become numb to the Trump administration's daily abuses and assaults on our liberty.
Maybe you think Columbia and other elite universities did not enforce their rules correctly or should have had better rules. You might be right. The answer is not to undermine the universities by cutting contracts and funds for research that have "led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields [and have] made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer."
The answer is not to deport without due process the students who you wish had been disciplined by the university.
Targeting students because of their opinions violates the First Amendment and is like using the IRS to go after political opponents. Maybe the IRS will find a violation. Maybe it will turn out that they should be deported.
But opening an investigation based on the political beliefs of the target is wrong, just as targeting people for deportation because of their views is wrong.
Even for bad views? Especially for bad views, because unless you want those in power to decide who is "bad," a system that protects everyone's rights is the only system we can count on to protect our rights.
In the 1977, we defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, home to thousands of Holocaust survivors. We didn't do it because we thought they had a point or because we thought the Holocaust survivors were too sensitive.
We did because they had a constitutionally protected right to march. Under what guiding principle could their rights be taken away without opening up the possibility that our rights or anyone else's rights could be taken away?
In 1974, the British National Union of Students passed a motion recognizing "the need to refuse any assistance (financial or otherwise) to openly racist or fascist organizations or societies...and to deny them a platform. However, the conference believes that in order to counter these groups, it is also necessary to prevent any member of these organizations, or individuals known to espouse similar views, from speaking in colleges by whatever means are necessary (including disruption of the meeting)."
Who could be against banning racist or fascist speech? Many Jewish students supported the motion. They didn't anticipate that in 1975, the UN would pass a resolution equating Zionism with racism and that following the passage of that resolution, attempts would be made to apply the "no racism" policy to Zionists.
This British student motion would have been ruled unconstitutional if imposed by the government in the United States, and it would have violated the policy of any non-public university that held itself to First Amendment standards.
Restricting speech and not worrying about basic rights like due process seems appealing if we get to do the restricting and decide whose rights are not worth worrying about. Unless you've never picked up a history book, you know Jews eventually wind up on the receiving end of those restrictions.
Restricting basic rights is not good for the Jews, even if it might seem that way now. Max Boot challenges us to find a "moment in history when Jews anywhere benefited from a mix of rampant nationalism and repression. You’ll be looking awhile."
If we don't speak out for others--even those we might not like--who will speak for us when our time comes?
The last time I read the poem, the message was not that we should say, "First they came for Mahmoud Khalil and I did not speak out because I didn't like that guy."
If this clip is any indication, the ADL and others with similar views need to re-read the poem and remember that Hillel did not stop at "If I am not for myself, who will be?" He continued, "If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?"
We are understandably emotional and afraid. How could we not be? Trump's tactics might appeal to that part of our brains. Trauma can be real and still lead us down the wrong path. Something is not true or right because we strongly feel it.
Highly publicized incidents of antisemitism at a handful of elite universities can seem more threatening than the Trump administration's documented antisemitism, even though they're not.
Ben Samuels writes, "Trump and his administration do not care about antisemitism. By using antisemitism as the nominal pretense to exact personal and political revenge, what they’re doing is bad for Jews, bad for the fight against bigotry, and bad for the country."
Alex Pascal, who helped write President Biden's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, said in an interview last week that the "Trump administration’s so-called campaign against antisemitism is pretty transparently not at all about antisemitism. I think what it’s about is going after institutions of higher education, trying to weaken and kneecap colleges and universities, as well as going after immigrants and foreign students."
Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Harvard's complaint makes clear that the government "has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation."
The Trump administration now claims that it sent its letter to Harvard by mistake, a claim that would be unbelievable if it were made by any administration not as inept and incompetent as this one (i.e., any administration in history).
True to form, the administration is nevertheless not backing down from the demands it says were made "by mistake."
On Thursday, Senators Schumer, Blumenthal, Schatz, Rosen, and Schiff demanded that Trump stop weaponizing antisemitism and protect students on campus. Their letter asked the questions we should all be asking.
The consensus among Jewish Americans is that we should reject the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy. On April 15, a coalition of ten organizations representing a broad swath of mainstream American Jewry--including three of the four denominations--issued a statement unequivocally condemning "the exploitation of our community’s real concerns about antisemitism to undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule of law, the right of due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press, and peaceful protest."
The only denomination that did not sign on was the Orthodox, which accounts for only 9% of the Jewish population in the U.S.
Polling released on Thursday by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 72% of Jewish voters disapprove of Trump's job performance, 71% oppose Trump’s orders allowing the government to deport people without a court hearing, and only 31% approve of how Trump is handling antisemitism.
Yet Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) asked local federation CEOs to urge their affiliated Jewish Community Relations Councils not to sign on to the statement.
JFNA and the ADL are speaking for someone on these issues, but they are not speaking for me, nor do they represent the broad consensus among Jewish Americans.
Suzanne Nossel writes, "Whether in apartheid South Africa or the civil rights era South, there has always been a minority of Jews who aligned themselves with repressive authorities hoping that proximity to power would keep them safe.
"But in both of those instances, most Jews sided with the causes of freedom and equality, standing up to repression in the name of values — such as commands to repair the world and pursue justice — that are rooted in Jewish traditions. Steeped in their own history, Jews should position themselves on the right side of it."
I couldn't agree more, and if you haven't read Nossel's piece, what better time than a Sunday morning?
Jewish voters in Georgia continue to support Sen. Jon Ossoff. You might not know that if you listen to the small but vocal minority of Jews in Georgia who say otherwise, but it’s true. Ossoff cast a symbolic vote on a resolution opposing the sale of certain weapons to Israel that would have had no impact (the deadline for congressional action had passed). He wanted to send a message--without blocking the sale of a single bullet--that Israel's current government is diverging from our shared values. He saw these resolutions as an opportunity to do so.
Yehuda Cohen, the father of one of the hostages currently being held by Hamas, thanked Ossoff and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) for their votes.
It’s fine if you disagree with Ossoff’s reasoning, but his commitment to Israel’s safety and security is beyond dispute. Last year, Ossoff voted for the record-setting $14 billion emergency arms package for Israel. Most Republicans voted against it in February 2024. On final passage in April, nearly a third of Republicans voted against it, including Marco Rubio and JD Vance. Those votes mattered. They were not symbolic.
On Thursday, I spoke with Valerie Habif, the Chair of the Atlanta-based Jewish Democratic Women’s Salon. She told me that “a strong majority of Jews in Georgia support Jon Ossoff because like Ossoff, they want to see the hostages come home and they want the war in Gaza to end. They understand that Ossoff’s votes were not against Israel but against the way the Netanyahu government is conducting the war.
“As American Jews, we identify strongly with Israel; we hold Israel to a high standard because we hold ourselves to a high standard. More than that, we know that only an America with strong democratic institutions can be depended on to protect our Jewish community in the U.S. and to support Israel.
"A safe and secure Israel is a priority to the great majority of our Georgia Jewish community, but Israel can never be safe or secure without a functioning democracy in the U.S., and it is ever clear to most of us that in the current political climate, that requires a Democratic Senate.
“Our Georgia Jewish Democratic community knows with certainty that Jon Ossoff is our best hope for keeping this crucial Senate seat. We won’t support a primary challenger to Ossoff, and we certainly won’t vote for any Republican over Ossoff in the general election. The stakes are simply too high.”
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter, I incorrectly attributed the article about the movies October 8 and The Encampments to Rob Eshman. It was written by Andrew Silow-Carroll. They are both great writers whom I frequently cite in my newsletter, but that's no excuse.
In Case You Missed It:
1) If you read nothing else, at least read--and share--this from Ilan Goldenberg on Democrats, Republicans, and double standards on Israel and antisemitism.
2) Please read my updated paper on why we should oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act.
3) If you are seeking clarity on Trump's negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program, read Shemuel Meir's analysis.
4) JDCA CEO Halie Soifer's Yom HaShoah warning.
5) Nexus Project National Director Jonathan Jacoby on the first Yom HaShoah of the second Trump administration.
6) We Visited Rumeysa Ozturk in Detention. What We Saw Was a Warning to Us All, by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA).
7) Secretary of State Marco Rubio promoted an interview last week with a conservative influencer who has praised Hitler online.
8) The Trump administration named Michael Anton to lead the technical team in negotiations with Iran. In 2020, Anton wrote an essay about an impending Democratic coup tied to George Soros that swept online spaces popular with conspiracy theorists and QAnon believers.
9) Deborah Lipstadt agreed to be interviewed by Isaac Chotiner.
10) Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced his retirement last week. Illinois is known for its great orators (Lincoln, Dirksen, Simon, Obama), but none ever gave a speech more eloquent than this. (I mentioned this to him when I saw him at a Wrigley Field event during the Democratic National Convention, and he chuckled at the memory of it.)
Social Post of the Week. Trump's Easter message (this is real). The State Department's Easter message didn't sink to those levels, but neither was it normal.
Video Clip of the Week. I don't know how I missed this: Elder Millenials of Zion on whether Elon's salute was a Nazi salute.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. The Dirty Mac - Yer Blues (John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell).
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder (yes, I wrote it). If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on the IHRA definition of antisemitism and on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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