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October 20, 2024
Five Key Takeaways:
1) This Friday is Simchat Torah. It's been 380 days since last year's Simchat Torah when, on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and murdered 1,200 people (including 44 Americans). More Jews were murdered on that day than on any day since the Holocaust. Hamas wounded 3,300 and took 251 hostage during a day of brutal savagery and sexual violence; 101 hostages, many dead, some raped and possibly pregnant, remain captive in Gaza today.
2) The 101 remaining hostages include seven Americans, four probably alive: Keith Siegal, Omer Neutra, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. A ceasefire conditioned on releasing all hostages must remain a top priority.
3) Sinwar's death removes the main obstacle to achieving a deal that would bring home the hostages. Kamala Harris said,"the United States, Israel, and the entire world are better off as a result" of Sinwar's death.
4) Trump waited a day before saying virtually nothing about Sinwar in response to a question. Republicans resurrected debunked claims about the administration opposing operations in Rafah. The truth is that the U.S. worked with Israel to track down Sinwar and the administration never opposed Israeli operations in Gaza, including the one that killed Sinwar.
5) The Biden-Harris administration has provided unprecedented levels of military aid to Israel. After voting to cut aid to Israel by 30% two weeks prior to October 7, Republicans blocked emergency aid to Israel for six months. If Israel is your issue, the Republicans are not (or should not be) your party.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
Justice came for Yahya Sinwar on Wednesday, as Sukkot began. The yahrzeit of the more than 1,200 people he and Hamas murdered is this Friday, Simchat Torah. May their memories be for a blessing. Simchat Torah is one of the most joyous holidays on the Jewish calendar. It will never be the same.
Sinwar's death removes the main obstacle to achieving a deal that would bring home the hostages. State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller said on Thursday that for the past year, Sinwar "refused to return home the hostages who have been separated from their families for more than a year; refused to agree to a ceasefire proposal endorsed by the United Nations Security Council and countries around the world; and in recent weeks refused to even negotiate at all on a ceasefire and an end to the war."
Kamala Harris said "the United States, Israel, and the entire world are better off as a result" of Sinwar's death. Read or watch her full statement. Harris said, yet again, "Israel has a right to defend itself, and the threat Hamas poses to Israel must be eliminated."
She again said that the Gaza war must end "such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination." That succinctly and accurately defines the pro-Israel position on Gaza.
Harris noted that "American special operations and intelligence personnel have worked closely with their Israeli counterparts to locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders, and I commend their work."
Supporters of a strong-U.S.-Israel relationship should commend the Biden-Harris administration for the unprecedented levels of support it has given Israel since October 7, including by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year.
The Israeli soldiers who killed Sinwar did not know it was him until after he died but combined American and Israeli intelligence flushed Sinwar out of the tunnels and made his death possible.
Yet Republicans are falsely claiming that the administration opposed Israeli operations in Rafah, where Sinwar was killed. The truth is that the administration has repeatedly made clear that Israel has every right to pursue Hamas and others responsible for the October 7 massacres. Israel has conducted countless operations in Rafah with no objections from the administration, including this latest operation.
Israel would not be conducting limited operations in Rafah, such as this one, if the administration opposed them.
This nonsense about the administration opposing Israeli operations in Rafah stems from May 2023, when more than 1 million Palestinians were sheltering in Rafah, having been forced there by Israeli operations in Gaza during the previous seven months. The U.S. had been cautioning Israel not to launch a major offensive in Rafah without credible plans to avoid mass casualties. At that point, Israel had not presented such a plan.
Israel never launched the operation that the administration warned against. Instead, Israel followed U.S. advice and launched targeted operations that minimized civilian casualties.
The administration never opposed limited operations in Rafah, which Israel has been conducting since May without any objections from the administration. National Security Advisor John Kirby said in May that the administration opposed a particular type of operation in a particular place at a particular time, not operations in Rafah generally.
The State Department said on Thursday, "we always made clear that we supported Israel conducting counterterrorism operations to target the leaders of Hamas and to target Hamas militants. And not only did we make clear we supported it, but we provided active intelligence support for those operations."
Events since then have proven that the administration was right. Had the IDF invaded Rafah with a huge force, Sinwar would have stayed underground with the hostages. The more targeted raids applied pressure while goading him to move. The U.S. military’s proposed strategy worked. This result--with far fewer civilian deaths-- is better than what could have been achieved via a massive operation that could have also killed more hostages in the process.
An even more absurd version of this Republican claim is that the administration was wrong to propose a ceasefire, as if we'd forget that calls for a ceasefire by the administration (and by the hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrating every week) were always in conjunction with the release of all the hostages.
Sinwar is responsible for refusing to accept the administration's proposal. The administration was right to propose it. The administration did not "pressure" Israel to accept a ceasefire unless you define "pressure" as record amounts of military assistance.
Wondering what Donald Trump said about Sinwar? Trump did not say anything about Sinwar on Thursday. He had more important things on his mind. He did not say anything until Friday afternoon, and then only in response to a question. Nothing about hostages. No emotion. No substance. Not qualified to be president.
The hypocrisy of Republicans attacking the Biden-Harris administration is astonishing. It's as if they are running not to win the election but to replace the kid who murdered his parents and asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan as the paradigmatic example of "chutzpah." Israeli Americans for Kamala would like to have a word with those Jewish Republicans.
On September 29, 2023, 198 Republicans — 90% of all House Republicans — voted to cut aid to Israel by nearly 30%. It failed because 21 Republicans and 211 Democrats voted against it. No Democrats voted for it. Ten percent of Republicans opposed it because the cuts were not large enough.
Republicans then blocked emergency aid to Israel following October 7 for six months.
JD Vance was one of the relatively few Republicans who voted against the package that included $14 billion in emergency aid to Israel twice, on February 13 when it could have passed and on April 23 on final passage. Trump chose Vance as his running mate anyway.
John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, is probably more hawkishly conservative than any of your undecided friends. Bolton said in April, "Trump’s support for Israel in the first term is not guaranteed in the second term, because Trump’s positions are made on the basis of what’s good for Donald Trump, not on some coherent theory of national security.”
On October 3, 2024, Bolton noted that Trump said "that this conflict between Iran and Israel is like two kids in a school yard fighting. And that's about a typical Donald Trump assessment of a complex, international problem. Those who think he's going to be reflexively supportive of Israel really should think again."
Trump does not deserve a second term. We cannot afford to give him one. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are outstanding on all of our issues, especially Israel, Iran, and antisemitism.
Your key resources for the next 16 days: This new JDCA fact sheet comparing Harris and Trump on Israel, Iran, and antisemitism.
Harris is better than Trump on Iran, from Ron Klein and Robert Wexler, two former members of Congress who served on the House Foreign Affairs and were among the most pro-Israel members of Congress on either side of the aisle. Trump's entire Middle East policy was a failure; if anyone asks, "what about the Abraham Accords?" tell them to read Dalia Dassa Kaye's new article.
The Democratic and Republican platforms on Israel and antisemitism.
Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism.
Harris’s record of fighting antisemitism, including on college campuses.
Be sure you and your friends stay up to date. Share the sign-up links for my newsletter, Julie Zebrak's Kamala News Jews Can Use, and the official Jewish Voters for Harris-Walz newsletter.
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 or my mid-week special report, so I guess both were perfect.
In Case You Missed It:
1) Statements on Sinwar's death from Hostage Families Forum, President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Blinken also called Israeli president Herzog), Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and the most senior Jewish member of the House, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
2) If you have any politically conservative Jewish friends who won't listen to you, they might listen to two of their own: Bill Kristol and Dr. Eliot Cohen. Here's the full recording. If they don't convince your friends, maybe Charlie Sykes will.
3) Abe Foxman, a Holocaust survivor who headed the ADL for 28 years, endorsed Kamala Harris.
4) The empathy Harris has expressed for innocent Palestinians in Gaza, which all decent people should share, should not be mistaken for any substantive differences from current policy or ideas about the path forward.
5) Jewish cases for Kamala Harris from Pennsylvania state representatives, Georgia's Valerie Habif, David Meyers, Esther Sperber, and the Jewish Exponent.
6) But what about the Abraham Accords? Shouldn't we at least give Trump credit for that? Dalia Dassa Kaye explains that "normalization is in and of itself a positive development. But the way the Accords unfolded did little to advance a genuine region-wide peace" and overall, Trump's policies in the Middle East failed.
Tweet of the Week. Israeli Americans for Kamala.
Twitter Thread of the Week. Explaining the New York Times coverage of Trump.
Video Clips of the Week. Lewis Black's message to undecided voters and this classic from Norm Macdonald.
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 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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