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July 20, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- Today, July 20, marks 653 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.
- The 50 remaining hostages, 27 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 is clearly not a priority for Trump and Netanyahu, but it's a top priority for us, and it is beyond outrageous that after all this time, they are still languishing in tunnels with no outside contact.
- We are on the verge of losing our democracy, the government is rounding up innocent people and imprisoning them under inhumane conditions, and our system of checks and balances is broken. Too many of us are acting as if this is normal instead of calling it out as the crisis that it is.
- Unlike Democrats, Republicans are good on neither Israel nor antisemitism, even if they sometimes seem to talk a better game.
- The Democratic Party is not changing its values; Israel's current government is creating a disconnect that did not previously exist.
- Zohran Mamdani is not antisemitic. We might have as much to learn from him as he might have to learn from us.
- Kinney Zalesne is running for DC's non-voting seat in Congress. I'm supporting her, and you should too.
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Hi Steve,
Has the whole world gone crazy? We are on the verge of losing our democracy, and we are letting ourselves get distracted. Masked gestapo ICE agents are rounding people up without cause, and the administration is imprisoning them under inhumane conditions or deporting them, all without due process.
Never again is now, but it's not happening to us--yet. We wonder how the Germans who did not join the Nazi Party could have let the Holocaust happen (the Holocaust did not start with concentration camps). Now we know.
Republicans have eviscerated the separation of powers that was designed to prevent abuse by the Executive branch. The Supreme Court is stacked with six hacks who rubber-stamp nearly anything Trump wants to do. The GOP-controlled Senate and House roll over for Trump more often than the best-trained puppies.
The Republican big whatever-you-want-to-call-it bill gives tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and robs millions of Americans of access to quality, affordable healthcare. Today's Republican Party represents the antithesis of American and Jewish values.
Unlike Democrats, Republicans are good on neither antisemitism nor Israel. Matt Nosanchuk pointed out in his testimony at last week's antisemitism hearing that the Trump administration's approach to supposedly fighting antisemitism "reveals a fundamental contradiction: claiming to fight antisemitism while systematically dismantling the infrastructure needed to combat it." You should read all of his testimony. If you don't have time to read all of it, at least read the section on why the current approach fails.
At the same hearing, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) said, “If the majority wanted to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish students, they should condemn antisemitism in their own party and at the highest level of government...
“Have any Republican colleagues here today condemned these acts of antisemitism from the president and members of the administration or called for the removal of these individuals from office? No, because that would require real and meaningful commitment to rooting out antisemitism from the top down. Instead, my [Republican] colleagues are weaponizing the real problems of the Jewish community, a community I am an active member of, in furtherance of their attacks on and plans to defund colleges and universities.”
Jay Michaelson writes that "it is now obvious that antisemitism was never the real reason for the Trump administration’s attacks on universities." For a deeper dive on the Trump administration's use of antisemitism as a pretext to attack higher education, read this Washington Post exposé.
And Israel? Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller wrote, "In the first six months of his administration, Trump has opened direct negotiations with Hamas without Israel’s knowledge; cut a bilateral cease-fire with the Houthis that Israel learned about after the fact; lifted sanctions on the Syrian government over Israel’s objections; and negotiated with Iran—including floating the prospect of some Iranian enrichment. And his repeated Truth Social posts showing impatience over Israel’s (and Hamas’s) unwillingness to end the fighting in Gaza increased the daylight between the two allies."
Republicans used to whine about daylight between the U.S. and Israel and imagined U.S. interference in Israeli politics. Not anymore, not since Trump and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee took Netanyahu's side against Israel's judicial system.
It now appears that of the three Iranian nuclear sites that Trump told us he "obliterated," two may have been degraded only to a point where nuclear enrichment could resume in the next several months if Iran wants it to.
Iran was at least a year away from obtaining enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb when Trump withdrew from the Iran Deal during his first term. Trump's military strikes achieved little other than disincenting Iran from trusting diplomacy and encouraging Iran to obtain nuclear weapons for its own protection. Trump is not playing three-dimensional chess. He's not even playing Candyland.
On Wednesday, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) said that Israel's "unnecessary strikes [in Syria] must end immediately." Sounds like daylight to me. But it's not as if he's running for mayor. He's only a member of Congress who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.
On Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced an amendment to end funding for Iron Dome, David's Sling, and David's Arrow. Sounds like daylight to me. But it's not as if she's running for mayor. She's only the member of Congress who chairs the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.).
Jewish Congressional Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote that "the only amendment coming to the floor in the [Department of Defense] funding bill that cuts funds for Israel’s security—including programs like Iron Dome—is being offered by a Republican, not a Democrat."
If you can stomach it, watch Greene's speech.
The good news is that the Democratic Party is not changing. The bad news is that Israel is changing. Democrats are applying the same values they've always held, not to the Israel that once was, but to the Israel that is.
Some of us cling to the myth of the Israel portrayed by Leon Uris in Exodus, an Israel that never existed. Some of us with gray hair still see Israel as the plucky underdog fighting for its existence in 1967 and 1973. Some of us see Israel as they remember it under President Clinton, when it was led by tough-as-nails soldiers like Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak willing to take risks for peace, only to be rebuffed by Yasser Arafat.
Younger Democrats, including younger Jewish voters, and including Mamdani, have only known Israel governed by Likud and Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel's current government rejects a two-state solution. It is committing and planning atrocities in Gaza. It is on its way toward a one-state solution that will preclude Israel from being Jewish and democratic.
It makes me cringe when well-respected and well-qualified Israeli Jews who cannot possibly be accused of antisemitism write that Israel is engaged in genocide or apartheid.
Sometimes, I just don't want to hear it. It's sometimes hard not to wish that if they think that, they'd keep it to themselves. The temptation to look the other way and shift the conversation to Israel's cuisine, its beaches, and its scientific achievements is almost irresistible.
Effective pro-Israel advocacy requires that we not look away, if only because others will not look away. These experts cannot be dismissed as antisemites, haters of Israel, or misinformed college kids.
The Palestinians don't have clean hands either. Palestinian terrorism is real. October 7 happened. If we expect others to join us in condemning it, we can't expect others to look at only Israel through rose-colored glasses.
When former prime minister and former Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert accuses Israel of war crimes, when former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon accuses Israel of "ethnic cleansing," and when thinkers like Rabbi Jay Michaelson accuse Israel of genocide, can we at least understand why some in America might draw the same conclusions?
Some are concerned that a new generation of Democrats who call it as they see it, not as we see it, seems to be gaining prominence (even though none of this has seeped into Congress, where Democrats remain objectively better on Israel and antisemitism).
The answer is not to silence Democrats who criticize Israel, rightly or wrongly, unless their criticism crosses the line into antisemitism. The answer is to do all we can to help Israelis elect a government that better reflects our values. The answer is to make clear the distinction between the State of Israel, whose safety and security we support, and the current government of Israel, whose polices we oppose, and not misconstrue criticism of the government's policies as delegitimization of the state--whether the state is Israel or the United States.
And that brings us to Zohran Mamdani. On the existential domestic issues mentioned above, he is with us. He has never said anything antisemitic. He's not where I am on all things Israel.
However, I looked it up, and it turns out that contrary to what you might be forgiven for thinking amid all the noise, New York City does not have its own foreign policy, and the mayor's office is not part of the State Department.
The Republicans who are destroying our country look like the politicians we are used to seeing: white, middle-aged or older people with business backgrounds. Maybe they're breaking a few eggs, but they won't let anything too bad happen, at least not to us, will they? (You'd have to be woefully ignorant of history to believe that, but many of us make that implicit assumption, at least when it's convenient.)
So instead, we focus on the young socialist Muslim immigrant who easily won the New York mayoral primary. That's the problem we have to solve? To a small extent, it's understandable. We hold Republicans to a low bar because we know they are not capable of much, but the GOP is home to few Jewish Americans. The Democratic Party is our home. We want to be comfortable in our home.
Mamdani supports a state of Israel with equal rights for all, presumably one state comprising Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. On what planet is equal rights for all antisemitic? A Jewish, democratic state, which I support, is possible only if Israel finds a way to cede the West Bank and Gaza. The Likud opposes a two-state solution, which means that if their policies continue, a Jewish, democratic state will be impossible.
Want to prove Mamdani wrong for not supporting a Jewish state of Israel? Show him a realistic scenario under which settlement expansion, settler violence, and other Likud policies designed to prevent a two-state solution will not continue. I have not given up hope for a two-state solution, but the window is closing, and some people think it has already closed.
Mamdani does not use the phrase "globalize the Intifada." He explained as recently as Thursday night in a TV interview on Spectrum News that New Yorkers who use the slogan mean civil disobedience, protest, and calls to end the occupation.
In that same interview, he explained that many Jewish New Yorkers hear it very differently. For them, it brings to mind bus bombings and restaurant attacks in Israel, engendering a fear that the slogan is calling for the same attacks happening in New York City. That distance, he said, between what some intend and what others hear, is "a bridge too far," which is why he does not use the phrase and discourages its use.
You'd think that we'd be relieved to know that to most of the people who use the phrase, the phrase (which most of us never heard of until after October 7, 2023) is not a call for violence but a call for Palestinian freedom. Yet some organizations claim to know better than the people who use the phrase what it means because the only intifadas they are familiar with are the ones that occurred 20 years ago. They think that what they hear (and fear) is what everyone hears.
As Jay Michaelson writes, we need to ask ourselves, "How angry, fearful, confused, or traumatized do I feel right now? How might I be vulnerable to exploitation? Am I making decisions based on reason, or emotion? It is perfectly legitimate to disagree about whether a comment, protest, person, or group is antisemitic. Jewish New Yorkers are experiencing such a disagreement right now. But for that disagreement to be valid, it must be rooted in evidence and reflection, not reflexive, emotional reactions that are — again, quite understandably — shaped by a long history of Jewish trauma and pain."
Mamdani can be a badly-needed bridge between the Jewish and Muslim communities--if we let him, and if we entertain the possibility that we might have as much to learn from him as he might have to learn from us.
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 substantive errors in last week's newsletter. There was one inconsequential typo.
In Case You Missed It:
- More than 600 rabbis, educators, and Jewish communal leaders from the United States and Israel signed a letter condemning settler violence following the killing of a Palestinian and a Palestinian-American.
- The NEA rejected a recommendation that the NEA not partner with the ADL, noting that "not adopting this proposal is in no way an endorsement of the ADL’s full body of work" and "calling on the ADL to support the free speech and association rights of all students and educators."
- Unless it's to point out GOP hypocrisy, Democrats need to stop aping Republican talking points on the debt and the deficit. Required reading for everyone who aspires to economic literacy: Does the National Debt Matter?
Social Posts of the Week. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), Jonathan Lemire, and Daniel Bral.
Twitter Reply of the Week. The tweet. The reply.
Facebook Post of the Week. Seth Frantzman.
Video Clip of the Week. Punctuation marks hanging out.
Modern Music Clip of the Week. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA).
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues (considered the first music video).
Vintage Music Parody of the Week. To get it, you first need to spend two minutes watching the above Bob Dylan clip. Then watch this. H/t Steve Simels for pointing out that every verse is a palindrome. Totally brilliant on many levels.
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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