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June 22, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- Today, June 22, marks 625 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.
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The 53 remaining hostages, 30 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.
- The U.S. bombed three nuclear sites in Iran yesterday.
- The June 14 New York Times editorial on antisemitism made some good points, but erred by drawing false equivalencies between Democrats and Republicans and by resurrecting Natan Sharansky's flawed 3 D test for antisemitism.
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Hi Steve,
We tried diplomacy with Iran under President Obama. The Iran Deal seemed to be working until Trump ripped it up during his first term. Now we're about to find out how well war works.
As of this writing, Iran has not (yet) retaliated following U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordow, and we don't know the extent of the damage that the strikes caused or the extent to which Iran may still possess highly enriched uranium.
We do know, as Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) pointed out, that regardless of the merits of the U.S. intervening or not intervening, Trump did not have the constitutional authority to carry out this attack. In a nation of laws, that should matter.
We don't have the answers to the vital questions raised by Senate Democratic leadership. We don't know whether these attacks deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons or incentivize Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Or maybe this attack will succeed beyond our wildest dreams. We don't know nearly enough to declare these attacks a strategic success.
Whether the U.S. should have intervened militarily in Iran is not a question of whether one is pro-Israel or not. It's a question of whether one believes that our intervention will make a nuclear-armed Iran more or less likely. We should judge the efficacy of military action by the same standards we judge diplomacy.
James Acton reminds us that "in the United States and particularly on Capitol Hill, diplomatic agreements are scrutinized. The weaknesses that inevitably result from compromise are highlighted, debated and assessed — and rightly so. But as America’s decisions to go to war in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq attest, military options are routinely held to a much lower standard. That’s a very dangerous pattern, especially because serious questions about the effectiveness of a U.S. attack on Iran abound."
We should also, as Dan Shapiro recommends, avoid the trap of reaching "for convenient historical analogies that reinforce our own positions, or [interpreting] current events exclusively through the lens of the recent past."
About that New York Times editorial on antisemitism. It made some important points. It called attention to the significant surge in antisemitism and the importance of calling it out. It accurately noted that "the political right, including President Trump, deserves substantial blame" for rising antisemitism, including Trump's use of antisemitism for political purposes and his normalization of hatred.
It pointed to the existence of antisemitism in some quarters of the progressive political left, but it drew a false equivalence by referring to the "bipartisan nature of the problem." Both parties are not equally to blame. Not even close.
The Democratic Party has no equivalent to Donald Trump in its leadership. Unlike the Trump administration, the Biden and Obama administrations were not filled with white nationalists or purveyors of antisemitic myths.
The Democratic Party is, by any objective standard, better than the Republican Party on antisemitism. Calling out "both sides" can give an editorial the veneer of objectivity. I get it. In this case, it's not true.
Antisemitism has manifested itself on some college campuses (not among Democrats in Congress) in conjunction with protests against the war in Gaza. Unfortunately, the Times erred in recommending Natan Sharansky's 3 D test for determining whether criticism of Israel, including on college campuses, crosses the line into antisemitism.
Sharansky created his 3 Ds before better definitions existed. It is puzzling that the Times ignored them. The Nexus Project has a library of references that help clarify when criticism of Israel veers into antisemitism, including on campus. The Times could have better served its readers by using the Nexus guides.
Sharansky's 3 Ds are demonization, delegitimization, and double standards.
Sometimes mnemonics are great. "My Very Enthusiastic Mother Just Served Us Noodles" is a wonderful way to remember the planets. But mnemonics don’t work so well with complexity or nuance. Sometimes the 3 Ds identify antisemitic criticism of Israel. But too often, they mislabel criticism of Israel as antisemitism, and that’s where we have to be careful.
“Delegitimizing Israel” can and might often be antisemitic, but not always. Delegitimizing the Jewish people’s right to self-determination while affording that same right to Palestinians is antisemitic. Anti-Zionism may be as well. But not always.
Ken Stern, the lead author of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, asks us to “imagine you are a Palestinian whose family was displaced in 1948—and not merely displaced but also dispossessed from your home and from a sense of control over your own identity and life. The exercise of Jewish self-determination clearly had a negative impact on you and your family, not only on your past but your future. Is your objection to Zionism because you see a Jewish conspiracy [which would be antisemitic], or because someone else’s national expression harmed you and your national aspirations?”
Holding Israel to a double standard is sometimes, but not always, antisemitic. What do double standards even mean? Is every critic of Israel required to first criticize every country doing something worse before they can criticize Israel?
Imagine if, when we were marching for Soviet Jewry, someone had criticized us for not marching for people who were even more oppressed, or for not protesting the policies of countries that treated their citizens worse than the Soviets treated theirs. Were we guilty of double standards? Is any critic of any country required to find the very worst country on earth and criticize that country first?
Of course not. We had every right to focus on the Soviet Union’s treatment of Jews. Can we blame Palestinians for focusing on Israel? Is it per se antisemitic for non-Palestinians to focus on Israel? Rabbi Jill Jacobs wrote that "Human rights activists and organizations almost always choose a focus for their efforts. (One may reasonably work to end the genocide of the Rohingya community in Burma, for instance, without simultaneously addressing Assad’s slaughter of his people in Syria.)”
Jacobs explains that it might be reasonable to conclude in some cases that Israel attracts disproportionate attention not because of antisemitism, but because it is a top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. It is the only Western democracy “currently carrying out a military occupation of another people. Its territory is sacred to three major world religions. The existence of a strong U.S.-based lobby dedicated to promoting the policies of the Israeli government unsurprisingly generates a counterresponse. And Palestinians have built a national movement over the past five decades, unlike more recently displaced people.”
Social media is filled with memes attacking critics of Israel for not talking about the situations in China, Russia, Sudan, and Venezuela. Imagine if, on October 8, 2023, we had been accused of double standards for focusing on 1,200 murdered and 251 kidnapped, along with sexual violence, instead of atrocities in China, Russia, Sudan, and Venezuela. I wonder how many people posting those memes have ever spoken about human rights abuses in other countries.
Israel holds itself to a higher standard, the standard of a Western democracy, not the standards of China, Russia, Sudan, or Venezuela, or its Arab neighbors. Yet even if they are not antisemitic, the double standards to which Israel is held often cross the line into deeply callous and offensive.
The most recent example is the muted world response to Iran's deliberate targeting of an Israeli hospital with no military value compared to the outrage when Israel bombed hospitals in Gaza that Hamas used for terrorism.
Demonizing Israel, depending on the language, is most often likely to be antisemitic. Characterizng Israel as a global evil force or comparing Israel to the Nazi regime is antisemitic. Accusations against Israel of “apartheid” or "genocide" are not, by themselves, antisemitic tropes or demonization.
At least three former Israeli Prime Ministers, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Ehud Olmert, used the word “apartheid” to describe where Israel was headed if it did not find a way to exit most of the West Bank and achieve a two-state solution. Are we comfortable saying that Rabin, Barak, and Olmert used antisemitic rhetoric?
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 say those accusations are antisemitic, no matter how wrong we think they might be?
Most glaringly, the editorial glossed over the fundamental differences between violence motivated by classic antisemitism and violence triggered by the animus toward the State of Israel.
Both are dangerous, but different strategies and frames are required when antisemitism arises in connection with Israel because the risk of confusing disagreeable or offensive speech with antisemitism is greater and qualitatively different.
“If we don’t understand the differences,” Jonathan Jacoby, national director of the Nexus Project told me, “we can’t develop effective strategies, and that weakens the fight against antisemitism.”
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.
Someone unsubscribed because I "send too many emails." Everyone who signs up for my newsletter gets an automated reply telling them to look for it bright and early every Sunday. How few emails was this guy expecting? Does he live on Venus? Here on Earth, every Sunday means once a week.
In Case You Missed It:
- If you want examples of antisemitism in connection with Israel, look no further than Col. Nathan McCormick of Trump's Joint Chiefs of Staff, who referred to "Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies" and pro-Israel activists in the United States prioritizing “support for Israel over our actual foreign interests.”
Social Post of the Week. Donald Trump.
Thread of the Week. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT).
Facebook Post of the Week. Elad Nehorai.
Video Clip of the Week. Even funnier and more relevant today.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. The Who sing The Beach Boys.
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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