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March 24, 2024
Key Takeaways:
- Last week, Donald Trump said that Jewish Democrats (that's 75% of us) hate Israel and hate their religion, the latest in a litany of antisemitic comments from Trump. The Republican response, as usual, was near universal silence.
- Instead of condemning Trump, some Jewish organizations attacked and misrepresented Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's speech about Israel.
- Former Israeli prime ministers and former Israeli Air Force pilots are among those supporting Schumer's speech. If all I knew about Schumer's speech was what I read in the right-wing press, I'd oppose it too. But what Schumer actually said tells a different story.
- On October 7, Hamas murdered 1,200, wounded 3,300, and took 240 hostage during a day of brutal savagery and unspeakable, unquestionable sexual violence; 134 hostages, half of whom are probably dead, some of whom might be pregnant, remain in Gaza 170 days later. More than five months after President Biden requested $14.3 billion in emergency aid for Israel on October 20, House Republicans continue to block a vote on the package. China and Russia vetoed a U.S. UN resolution calling for an immediate six-week ceasefire and release of hostages.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
Today is Purim! Did you drink enough last night to confuse Haman with Mordechai? This morning, can you distinguish Trump from Putin? It's not that easy. Both oppose democracy, both want Ukraine to lose, and neither is fluent in English.
The difference is that Trump is more openly antisemitic. Last week, Trump claimed that Jewish Democrats "hate Israel. And the Democrat [sic] party hates Israel ... Any Jewish person who votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed." As far as I've seen, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) is the only Republican Senator who flat-out condemned Trump for his latest antisemitic outburst.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said, "Luckily I don't know any Jews who look to Donald Trump for advice on how to be Jewish. After all, this is the guy who saw 'very fine people on both sides' of an antisemitic riot and entertained the neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes over at his house at Mar-a-Lago for dinner."
The best response to Trump was from JDCA CEO Halie Soifer live on CNN: "The feeling is mutual." Add this to Trump's long record of antisemitic rhetoric. Louis Keene documents every time Trump has accused Jewish Americans of disloyalty.
Trump will soon become the GOP nominee for president for the third consecutive time. The question is not why only 25% of Jewish Americans support Trump and the Republican Party that enables him. The question is why any Jewish American supports Trump or would vote Republican. I'm not sure even Charles Darwin could explain such a low instinct for self-preservation.
President Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, has served in public life for five decades without a whiff of antisemitism. The Democratic leadership team in the House and Senate never uses antisemitic rhetoric. Why is this so hard for Republicans? And why do we pretend that this is not a partisan issue when only one party selects leaders with antisemitic histories?
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's Israel speech looks better and better. I prefer to read rather than watch but Schumer's speech is one of the few worth watching (at normal speed) because the emotion is important, and emotion is driving unfair criticism of his speech.
Whether you read or watch, you can see that Schumer did not call on Netanyahu's government to hold elections in the middle of a war but "once the war winds down" and "after the threat of Hamas is radically reduced."
Israel is not fighting an "existential" war. This is not the Yom Kippur War. Hamas is a dangerous terrorist organization but Israel does not face annihilation, this is not a war of survival, and nevertheless, Schumer did not call for elections during the war.
Schumer's stated barriers to peace included Hamas and Netanyahu but Schumer said that the obstacles to peace he identified are "not the same in their culpability for the present state of affairs."
Anyone who read or watched the speech can tell from Schumer's rhetoric that he drew no equivalence between Hamas and Netanyahu. Nothing he said in his speech was inaccurate. Everything in his speech was infused with love for Israel and his goal of ensuring that the U.S.-Israel relationship endures, which requires that Israel itself endure as a Jewish, democratic state.
Not sure who to believe? Read or better yet watch Schumer's speech. Believe your eyes and ears. Believe former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who commended Schumer for his speech. Believe former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who said Schumer spoke truth to power. Believe the 1,700 former Israeli Air Force pilots who backed Schumer's speech, calling it "moral and necessary." Believe Knesset member Gilad Kariv. Believe former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk.
If you don't understand why Schumer wants Israelis to hold new elections and why Schumer sees Netanyahu as an obstacle, read Alon Pinkas. Without new elections, the government of Israel's opposition to a two-state solution and support for settlement expansion will continue, effectively dooming a regional peace deal and imperiling realization of a two-state solution once other obstacles to peace have been removed. Elections after the war are a key component of securing Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic state.
Schumer said, "As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice. There needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel after October 7. In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election." That's the language friends use when they are talking to friends.
Critics say that Schumer should have aired his concerns privately instead of giving a speech from the floor of the Senate (what a weird thing for a Senate Majority Leader to do). Right. Schumer should have called Netanyahu on a secure, private line and said "Hey Bibi, just between you and me, for your ears only, I think you are an obstacle to peace and you need to call elections after the war winds down." Yeah. That would have worked.
Schumer told the New York Times that he gave the speech because “This is so part of my core, my soul, my neshama. I said to myself, ‘This may hurt me politically; this may help me politically.’ I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do it.” His main purpose, he said, “was to say you can still love Israel and feel strongly about Israel and totally disagree with Bibi Netanyahu and the policies of Israel.” That's what I've been saying for years.
Schumer said after the speech that he deliberately did not call for or even mention the possibility of the U.S. conditioning or cutting aid to Israel in his speech. The U.S. has many tools other than aid. His point was that under Netanyahu, Israel is going down a dangerous path that could cause a rift with the United States, and he felt an obligation to warn before it is too late. Read what he said in the speech carefully:
"If Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down, and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing U.S. standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.
"The United States’ bond with Israel is unbreakable, but if extremists continue to unduly influence Israeli policy, then the Administration should use the tools at its disposal to make sure our support for Israel is aligned with our broader goal of achieving long-term peace and stability in the region."
Remember, this is coming from Chuck Schumer, whose record on Israel is unimpeachable. The first paragraph is a prediction, not a threat. It's reality. The next paragraph reiterates our unbreakable bond with Israel and recommends aligning our broader goals with our support for Israel, not withdrawing our support for Israel. That's the right message, especially when read or watched in the context of his entire speech, which is essential.
Trump makes an outrageous statement, frequently an antisemitic statement, nearly every day. But too many in our community focused more on Schumer than Trump last week. Too many organizations are afraid that if they issued statements condemning Trump every time he said something antisemitic, these organizations would appear biased against Trump and Republicans. They'd be condemning Trump and Republicans nearly every day and never condemning Democratic leadership for antisemitism. But instead of explaining the disparity by pointing out that Democratic leadership never engages in antisemitic rhetoric and Republican leadership frequently does, they choose silence.
By refraining from condemning Trump and looking for opportunities, any opportunities, to attack Democrats to balance it out, these organizations are putting their thumbs on the Republican side of the scale and normalizing antisemitic rhetoric. If it happens frequently the correct response is to be outraged frequently, not to ignore it because it happens so often on the Republican side of the aisle.
That's the worst form of bias, and that's why you should listen to those who don't play that game. And if the only organizations calling out Trump every time are the organizations without a Republican donor base, so be it. And if the only organizations calling out Trump every time are partisan, so be it. It is partisan, and it's time to stop pretending otherwise. If so-called non-partisan organizations who nevertheless have to appease Republican donors can't play the game fairly then they should sit the game out.
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 brought any mistakes to my attention last week, so it looks like last week's newsletter was perfect.
In Case You Missed It:
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Eric Edelman, writing about Trump's and the GOP's increasingly isolationist foreign policy, explains that "questioning American alliances and depicting them as purely economic transactions — or, more crudely, as protection rackets — will inevitably bleed over into discussions of the U.S.-Israel relationship. As the America First faction grows in power inside the Republican Party, the antisemitism that accompanies it will begin to undermine support for Israel over the long haul." That's why we should focus on defeating the scores of MAGA Republicans and insurrectionists in Congress rather than on a handful of out-of-pattern Democrats whose votes make no difference whatsoever on issues pertaining to Israel or antisemitism.
- On March 18, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that "the President has rejected — and did again today — the strawman that raising questions about Rafah is the same as raising questions about defeating Hamas. That’s just nonsense. Our position is that Hamas should not be allowed a safe haven in Rafah or anywhere else." The Biden administration continues to reiterate Israel's right and need to defeat Hamas. The issue is reconciling legitimate military objectives with legitimate humanitarian concerns and the urgent necessity of releasing the hostages, who have been held by Hamas for 170 days. Click the links in the following bullets for analysis along these lines.
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Anshel Pfeffer explains the problems with Israeli hasbara, a problem shared by many pro-Israel organizations in the U.S.: "Hasbara means that you don't have to ask yourself hard questions, just try to explain better what you already believe in. Hasbara means being too busy with coming up for excuses for Israel instead of asking why it's been getting so many things wrong." We should learn to advocate for the real Israel and internalize that Israel does not have to be perfect for us to love it and support it.
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Matthew Yglesias writes that if we want to make the case for Israel, we "have to care about how Israeli choices influence global public opinion. Instead, the Israeli public is so deeply marinated in the theory that Israel is criticized by irrational haters and anti-Semites that they believe there is no reason to care about such things ... it's not true that every single Israel critic is mindlessly repeating anti-Jewish incantations. And you play into the hands of those who are by acting like that’s what’s going on." War is politics by other means. If we are blind to the political implications of how Israel conducts the war, we will be ineffective advocates for Israel.
- Several Jewish organizations wrote on March 19 that codifying the IHRA definition of antisemitism would weaken the fight against antisemitism for many of the same reasons we don't codify definitions of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination and that "the Jewish community itself has yet to reach a consensus on the definition of antisemitism or what constitutes antisemitic speech. We believe it is not suitable for Congress to codify a specific definition, as this issue continues to be a matter of internal discussion within the community." We should oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act.
If you've read this far, you deserve this: A very brief guide to not losing your sh*t right now.
Tweets of the Week. Bob Dylan interview answer and Gail Simone.
Serious Video Clip of the Week. Donald Trump has shown us who he is, time and time again.
Short Impeachment Hearing Video Clips of the Week. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL).
Fun Video Clip of the Week. Richard Lewis and Don Rickles.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved 2022 and 2023 Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder. If someone forwarded this 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 why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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