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June 8, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
1) Today, June 8, marks 611 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 IDF recovered the bodies of three hostages last week, Israeli-Americans Judi Weinstein Haggai and Gadi Haggai and Thai national Nattapong Pinta. The 55 remaining hostages, 32 known to be dead, 20 thought to be alive, and three of unknown status, include the bodies of two Americans: Omer Neutra and Itay Chen. Releasing all the hostages might not be priorities for Trump and Netanyahu, but it's a top priority for us.
3) Antisemitism is real, it comes from the right and the left, and we cannot let our emotions and fears cloud our judgment about what is right and wrong.
4) Trump's statement following the attack in Boulder did not mention Jews or antisemitism. Despite well-publicized instances of violent antisemitism, Trump and the GOP refuse to increase funding for non-profit security grants.
5) Instead of fighting antisemitism, the Trump administration is using antisemitism as a pretext to implement a xenophobic, white nationalist agenda that includes tearing down institutions of higher learning.
6) The head of the ADL compared student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda and said protests against Israel were driven by the "same kind of nihilists" who participated in Black Lives Matter. The ADL is no longer the same organization it once was and does not deserve the respect it once received.
7) Check out the upcoming events section for details about the Nexus Project's June 17 noon ET event on protecting Jews and protecting democracy. Spoiler alert: None of the panelists will compare student protesters to ISIS or al-Qaeda.
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Hi Steve,
Last week, the Israel Defense Forces recovered the bodies of Israeli-Americans Judi Weinstein Haggai and Gadi Haggai. They were brutally murdered and kidnapped from the Kibbutz Nir Oz by terrorists from the extremist organization Kataeb al-Mujahideen. They were parents of four. Judy was 70 at the time of her death. Gadi was 72.
Later in the week, the IDF recovered the body of Thai national Nattapong Pinta, an agricultural worker who was kidnapped alive from Kibbutz Nir Oz and murdered in captivity. He was 36. He is the 14th Nir Oz resident to have been murdered in captivity.
In the U.S., two violent acts of antisemitism--the murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington, DC and the firebombing of peaceful marchers demanding the release of hostages held by Hamas in Colorado--have sparked fear and apprehension in the Jewish community. The antisemitic arson attack against Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro two months ago during Pesach seems like a distant memory.
Antisemitism is a virus that can be triggered by many factors and manifests in different forms. Israel's conduct of the Gaza war appear to have triggered recent well-publicized incidents of antisemitic violence. That's not an excuse for the violence or assignment of blame for antisemitism to Israel. The blame rests solely with the antisemites, regardless of what triggered them (they were not triggered by "blood libel" against Jews.)
According to the Nexus Document, it is antisemitic to hold "individuals or institutions, because they are Jewish, a priori culpable of real or imagined wrongdoing committed by Israel" and "it is antisemitic to attack and/or physically harm a Jew because of her/his relationship to Israel." If you are wondering whether something is antisemitic, your first stop should be the Nexus Project site. If you want to know how not to define antisemitism, take a look at the IHRA definition.
Jews throughout the world are not responsible for the actions of the government of Israel even to the extent that they support the State of Israel or its government. This can be confusing to some because the State of Israel uses Jewish symbols and calls itself the Jewish state. It is no secret most American Jews have a strong emotional attachment to Israel. We have American and Israeli flags in our synagogues, we say prayers for both countries in our services, and we encourage our kids to visit Israel.
None of that justifies violence or discrimination against Jews outside of Israel. As Mimi Rocah explains, targeting Jews because you don't like Israel is antisemitism.
The sole responsibility for antisemitism lies not with those who are hated, but with the haters. Jewish Americans are not responsible for antisemitism. Israel is not responsible for antisemitism. Whether we agree or disagree with certain policies of Israel's government, I hope we agree that it would be absurd for Israel to design its policies based on the impact it might have on antisemites throughout the world.
National Council of Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz described the pain Jewish Americans are feeling, concluding not with a call to ban speech, ban immigration, or deport people, but by reminding those who have remained silent in the face of antisemitism that "if you only show up for Jews in the wake of violence and not in every instance of antisemitism, you are not standing against hate. You are standing by."
Jewish Americans are feeling more than the trauma that Katz describes. As Rabbi Jay Michaelson reminds us, liberal Zionists are balancing support for Israel with opposition to Israel's conduct of the Gaza war. We support progressive policies and demand that progressives condemn antisemitism. We know that not all anti-Zionism is antisemitic, and we know that attacking Jews or Jewish institutions to protest Zionism or Israel's conduct is antisemitic.
Michaelson's key point is to remember that while our fear feels real, "fear doesn’t tell us what’s right or wrong, what threats are real, or what to do about them...This may mean walking yet another tightrope: of vigilance but not paranoia, security but not panic, honoring our emotions without handing our lives over to them. To fear is human, but to find resilience, strength, and balance on the tightrope is what some mean by the Divine."
So what should we do? Suggesting that slogans like "Free Palestine" and "From the rivers to the sea, Palestine will be free" are inherently antisemitic is like saying kippot and tzizit are inflammatory symbols because West Bank settlers terrorizing Palestinians and Jewish youth in Jerusalem attacking Palestinians wear them.
The same slogans can have different meanings to those who use them. How would you react if someone suggested banning "Am Yisrael Chai" because, as Michael Koplow points out, "violent Jewish extremists sing it while beating up Palestinians in their West Bank villages and IDF soldiers spray paint it on destroyed homes in Gaza"?
Even if they were inherently antisemitic--and some slogans like "globalize the intifada" and "by any means necessary" probably are--we could not ban them for the same reason we cannot ban swastikas: that pesky First Amendment to the Constitution.
We need to fight speech with speech. That means condemning antisemitic speech wherever it occurs and insisting that others join us. This does not mean banning speech from the right or the left that we find offensive or theoretically dangerous. Who decides what speech to ban? Who draws the line?
Moreover, as Arno Rosenfeld writes, "Stochastic terrorism is unpredictable. I don’t see evidence that the pro-Palestinian movement is more culpable for the recent acts of violence than the pro-Israel movement is for the murder of 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, the shooting of Palestinian college students in Vermont or the Israelis shot in Florida because a man thought they were Palestinian."
We need to fight actions with actions. The attacks against Jews in the Pennsylvania governor's mansion, outside the Capital Jewish Museum, and on the streets of Boulder were antisemitic. But even if they weren't, even if they were politically motivated violence, they are still unacceptable because violence for any reason is unacceptable.
We can't ban speech except in limited circumstances. But while acknowledging that speech can lead to violence--hence the need for all of society to speak out against antisemitic speech--we can fight actions.
Pogroms happened in Europe because the government condoned them or looked the other way. We are not living in Tsarist Russia or Anatevka, the fictional shtetl created by Sholom Aleichem. Not yet at least.
We need to elect a government that takes fighting antisemitism seriously and that will take action to counter antisemitism and fight violence against Jews, regardless of whether such violence is characterized as antisemitism.
The Trump administration is failing to protect Jewish Americans. Yes, this is political. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that antisemitism (or any hate) "becomes dangerous in any society when three things happen: when it moves from the fringes of politics to a mainstream party and its leadership; when the party sees that its popularity with the general public is not harmed thereby; and when those who stand up and protest are vilified and abused for doing so."
Despite these well-publicized incidents of violent antisemitism, Trump refuses to increase funding for nonprofit security grants.
If you want evidence of how little Trump cares about our security, consider that the Trump administration appointed Thomas Fugate, a 22-year-old who graduated from college a year ago with no apparent national security expertise, as the Department of Homeland Security official overseeing the government’s main hub for terrorism prevention, including an $18 million grant program intended to help communities combat violent extremism.
If you want evidence of how little Trump cares about antisemitism, consider that Trump's statement following the antisemitic attack in Boulder failed to mention Jews or antisemitism.
Why is it so hard for Trump to say what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said, what AOC said, and what Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said? If you want progressives speaking out against antisemitism, there you have it--I don't think any senator is more progressive than Sanders and there can't be many House members more progressive than AOC or Jayapal.
Trump is looking for any excuse to continue his deportation policies and crack down on free speech, especially in universities.
On Wednesday, Trump announced a travel ban fully restricting entry of nationals from 12 countries and partially restricting entry from seven countries. Even by its warped internal logic, this makes no sense. The suspect in the Boulder attack was born in Egypt and lived in Kuwait before coming to the U.S. Egypt and Kuwait are not included in Trump's ban.
Emily Tamkin writes, "Rather than taking a holistic approach to combat it, President Donald Trump’s administration is weaponizing claims of antisemitism to enable its anti-democratic agenda — effectively turning Jews into scapegoats for fury over those efforts’ costs.
"Those crackdowns do not appear to be leading people to take antisemitism more seriously. In fact, per a Brookings report from earlier this year, people instead increasingly see the label of 'antisemitism' as a term used to delegitimize political opponents and critics of Israel — not one that refers to a real and present threat to Jews. A poll from last month suggests that most American Jews think that deporting people for pro-Palestinian speech increases antisemitism. I agree with them."
Here is that poll.
On June 3, Peter Baker documented Trump's long history of antisemitism and surrounding himself with antisemites, including in his administration. At a time of rising antisemitism, how is this remotely acceptable? How can any Jew or any decent American continue to support Trump?
This is political, but that doesn't mean we should play political games with antisemitism. As Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) said in response to a National Republican Campaign Committee hit piece, "Blaming a Jewish member of Congress for the recent murder and attack of Jews. This is not politics, it’s trash."
None of this excuses left-wing antisemitism. If that's what you've taken away, you need to re-read today's newsletter. The motivations might be different, and hence how we combat it might be different, but we cannot accept antisemitism from anywhere.
This newsletter is about politics. The political reality is that while left-wing antisemitism is real, the Democratic Party is demonstrably better at fighting antisemitism than the Republican Party, which nominated Donald Trump three consecutive times for President of the United States despite his long record of antisemitism.
If you take antisemitism seriously, why would you vote for a party whose leaders, from Trump on down, refuse to take it seriously other than as a pretext for a xenophobic, white nationalist agenda that includes tearing down institutions of higher learning?
Let's commit to condemning antisemitism wherever we see it, not letting our emotions lead us to dark places, and demanding that our government fight antisemitism, not embolden it or use it as a pretext for other agendas.
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. No one pointed out any errors in last week's newsletter.
In Case You Missed It:
1) The head of the ADL compared student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda and said protests against Israel were driven by the "same kind of nihilists" who participated in Black Lives Matter. The ADL is no longer the same organization it once was and does not deserve the respect it once received.
2) Remember when Republicans misrepresented Nancy Pelosi's "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" quote? It turns out that Republicans did not read Trump's Big Beautiful Bill before they voted for it.
3) Halie Soifer: Don’t Ban, Defund, Deport in Our Name.
4) Ilan Goldenberg: What I learned from 10 days in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
5) Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel is providing weapons to a Jihadist group in the Gaza Strip affiliated with ISIS.
6) Dozens of Democrats are backing a resolultion calling on the Trump Administration to use all diplomatic tools at its disposal to ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians in Gaza and to bring about the release of the hostages.
7) Jeremy Ben-Ami: Don't allow calls for unity to shut down dissent and debate.
8) J.J. Goldberg: Shavuot, the Zeppo (Marx) of Jewish holidays.
9) Dana Milbank: Let us count the 3,515 ways in which Democrats are lame.
10) Joe Walsh: From the TEA Party to the Democratic Party.
11) Joel Rubin: A primer on the recent history of the nuclear file. For the latest on the Iran nuclear talks, this tweet from Ali Vaez.
Social Posts of the Week. JoJo from Jerz and Mark Wahlberg talking dirty in Hebrew.
Social Post Replies of the Week. Nimrod Novik and another from Nimrod Novik and another from Nimrod Novik. He's like a one-man fact-checking machine.
Random Post Illustrating the Idiocy of Trump's Tariff Policy of the Week. Aaron Rupar.
Video Clip of the Week. Naked Gun--the original and the spoof.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. The Rolling Stones in 1964.
Upcoming Event: Protecting Jews, Protecting Democracy. The Nexus Project invites you to join a Zoom conversation on Tuesday, June 17, at noon ET with Congressional Jewish Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Civil Rights Strategist Eric Ward, and Former U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism Hannah Rosenthal. Register via this link.
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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