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November 5, 2023
Key Takeaways from a longer-than-usual newsletter (don't blame me--a lot happened last week):
- A cease-fire is inappropriate until Hamas is incapacitated and all hostages are released. Anything less is victory for Hamas, leaving a brutal terrorist organization armed and dangerous on Israel's border (not thousands of miles away like Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11).
- Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, and refuses to allow innocent Palestinians to leave. Arguing that Israel cannot bomb those targets is arguing that terrorists can grant themselves immunity by operating from civilian areas and that victims of terrorism cannot defend themselves with force.
- The Biden administration, Democratic leadership, and the overwhelming majority of House and Senate Democrats continue to strongly support Israel in its war against Hamas.
- House Republicans passed a bill conditioning emergency aid to Israel on weakening the IRS's ability to find tax cheaters. Using Israel as a bargaining chip while Israel is at war is not pro-Israel. This comes a month after Republicans voted to cut aid to Israel by 30%. Democrats are better on Israel than Republicans. The record--which is longer than these two stunts--proves it.
- Urge your members of Congress to oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act and other legislation that refers only to the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition was not drafted for this purpose, cannot stand alone, and invites abuse. We have better definitions created after the IHRA definition was drafted, including the definition in President Biden's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.
- Democrats overwhelmingly back sanctions on Hamas but Republicans amended a Hamas sanctions bill in committee to weaken certain provisions, causing some Democrats who support sanctions to vote against it. They will support the bill when the Senate fixes it.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
On October 7, Hamas deliberately and barbarically murdered 1,400 people in Israel, wounded 3,300, kidnapped more than 240, and tortured and raped many of their victims, from babies to the elderly. Israel's unreleased video of Hamas's attack and this Israeli first responder's tending to the body of a baby burnt in an oven is hard reading but we have to understand the threat that Israel faces not thousands of miles away but on its border. Would you expect the U.S. to tolerate this on its borders--and how do you think a U.S. government that did tolerate it would fare in the next election?
October 7 was not Israel's 9/11. It was, in terms of population, the equivalent of about ten 9/11s. Armchair generals are lecturing Israel about how to conduct the war and urging Israel to learn from the mistakes the U.S. made after 9/11. They are forgetting that Afghanistan and Iraq do not border the U.S. No one in Afghanistan or Iraq was firing missiles into the U.S. every day. Israel knows Gaza far better than the U.S. knew Iraq or Afghanistan.
Hamas's terrorism is not "resistance." Nothing the government of Israel has said or done, real or imagined, is justification for Hamas's crimes against humanity.
Calls for a cease-fire are calls to leave Hamas and its infrastructure in place. Unless you see no moral difference between Hamas and Israel, leaving Hamas armed and dangerous is unacceptable, and so is a cease-fire. Carly Pildes brilliantly unpacks the moral bankruptcy of calls for a cease-fire.
The destruction and suffering in Gaza is horrendous. It would stop if Hamas released the hostages and surrendered. No one is calling for that. Why not? Because everyone knows that Hamas would never release the hostages or agree to end terrorism: that's its raison d'etre. And that's exactly why Israel cannot allow Hamas to remain in power.
If you don't want to take my word for it, listen for yourself to Hamas. Hamas used the last cease-fire, which it violated on October 7, to plan the horrific terrorism that Israel is responding to. Hamas would use another cease-fire to rest, re-arm, and plan its next wave of terrorism.
Hamas has "a stockpile of more than 200,000 gallons of fuel for the rockets it fires into Israel and the generators that provide clean air and electricity to its network of underground tunnels." The fuel is there. But no one is calling on Hamas to provide it to the Palestinians. Hamas is the government of Gaza and it is responsible for its citizens. It chooses not to care for them or protect them. We took care of German citizens after World War II but we did not stop fighting Germany despite massive civilian deaths in Germany. We fought a just war, and that's what Israel is fighting.
After the war, the world can and should help Gaza rebuild. During the war, certain types of humanitarian pauses may be appropriate. A cease-fire is different from a humanitarian pause, which could last only hours and only in certain areas. We must not oppose humanitarian pauses necessary to secure or hasten the release of hostages or that allow aid to innocent Palestinians without impeding Israel's war efforts.
The Biden administration understands these concerns. If you have any doubt, read Secretary of State Antony Blinken's opening remarks at his press availability in Tel Aviv on November 3. I know that gloom and doom is fashionable these days, but let's remember that the Biden administration is firmly supportive of Israel and its needs.
Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, and refuses to allow innocent Palestinians to leave. Arguing that Israel cannot bomb those targets is arguing that terrorists can grant themselves immunity by operating from civilian areas and that victims of terrorism cannot defend themselves with force. No country, no civilized world, can accept that conclusion, which means that the premise is flawed: Israel can and must destroy Hamas military targets. Israel must do what it can to avoid civilian casualties, but Israel is not at fault legally or morally if, despite its efforts, civilians are harmed. Yesterday, Hamas attacked Israeli troops as they worked to open an evacuation corridor for Palestinians.
Knowing what is happening during a war is hard for the best journalists. The worst journalists take Hamas claims at face value. Israel does not always report accurate information, whether by intention or mistake. That's true of all democracies, especially during wars. But uncritically accepting claims made by Hamas is irresponsible at best, malign at worst. At least listen to Israel's account before drawing conclusions about the airstrike on Jebaliya.
What is Israel's end game? I don't know. I don't know if Israel knows. "End game" is a chess term. If you play chess, you know that if you don't get through the opening and the middle game, the end game doesn't matter. You play the opening and the middle game without knowing how you'll play the end game until you get there. Regardless of what Israel will do in the end game, it must first defeat Hamas. But for Israel's sake, any end game must not require Israel to indefinitely occupy Gaza or to prop up a regime that cannot survive on its own.
Support for Israel's efforts in Gaza does not imply support for Israel's activities in the West Bank. A two-state solution remains the only solution, and that means stopping settlement expansion, dismantling settlements, and cracking down hard on the settler movement. The two greatest internal threats to Israel's democracy remain the settler movement and the ultra-Orthodox. Progressives in the U.S. should be thinking about how they can support kindred spirits in Israel following the inevitable fall of Israel's current government, the worst in Israel's history.
Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel. Republicans proved it again on Thursday when they conditioned emergency aid to Israel on cutting funding to the Internal Revenue Service to make it easier for tax cheats. President Biden asked Congress for $14.3 billion in emergency aid for Israel on October 20. It should have been on his desk on October 21.
But the House could not act because Republicans ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on October 3 without thinking five minutes ahead about who their next Speaker would be. It took them until October 25 to elect Mike Johnson (R-LA) Speaker of the House.
Instead of acting on President Biden's request as soon as they re-opened the House, Republicans waited until November 2, and then they decided not to vote on Biden's package but to strip out humanitarian assistance and urgent aid to Ukraine and add cuts to the IRS that would add $12.5 billion to the deficit by enabling tax evasion. Good for Republican donors/tax cheats, not so good for Israel.
Twenty Jewish members of Congress said that "no House Speaker has ever pitted American support for democratic allies and global security against domestic expenditure in this way."
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) noted that "Republicans, who have too long irresponsibly tried to use Israel as a political, partisan wedge, are now requiring aid to Israel be conditioned on their partisan demand to defund the IRS. Reflecting the cynicism of this move, their condition for supporting Israel will not pay for the aid our ally desperately needs, it will actually cost American tax payers an additional $12.5 billion." In urging his colleagues to vote no, Schneider--one of the best and most knowledgeable friends of Israel on either side of the aisle--noted that "the Senate will pass a robust, bipartisan aid package."
The White House warned that "threatening to undermine American national security unless House Republicans can help the wealthy and big corporations cheat on their taxes—which would increase the deficit—is the definition of backwards. Playing political games that threaten the source of funding for Israel’s self-defense—now and into the future—would set an unacceptable precedent that calls our commitment to one of our closest allies into question. We cannot afford to jeopardize that commitment as Israel defends itself from the evil unleashed by Hamas."
Nearly all Democrats voted against this stunt. Let's hope that House Republicans will get it right the second time and support the full Biden package with no strings attached: Aid to Israel, aid to Ukraine, and humanitarian assistance for the Palestinians. As Secretary Blinken wrote in a recent oped, “we don’t have to choose between defending Israel and aiding Palestinian civilians. We can and must do both. That is the only way to stand firmly by one of our closest allies, protect innocent lives, uphold the international rules of the road that ultimately benefit the American people, and preserve the sole viable path to lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians: two states for two peoples.”
Republicans conditioned aid to Israel instead of passing a clean aid package barely a month after 198 House Republicans — 90% — drafted, brought to the floor, and voted for legislation that included cutting aid to Israel by 30%, which would have violated our Memorandum of Understanding with Israel. Democrats unanimously opposed the 30% cut and it failed despite overwhelming GOP support.
If you are in the top 1% and you want even more, if you don’t know anything about economics, if you don’t care about Israel (or for that matter, climate change, gun violence, our democracy, or reproductive freedom), then yes, you should vote Republican. But if that's not you, Steve, you are voting Democratic in 2024. Look at the record for yourself: Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act is a step backward in the fight against antisemitism. Urge your members of Congress to oppose H.R. 6090. This is the latest version of a bill that has been killed in previous sessions of Congress but keeps coming back like something out of a bad vampire movie. This time, sponsors are hoping to play on our legitimate emotions and fears about well-publicized antisemitic incidents on college campuses since October 7.
The fundamental problem is that the bill requires the Department of Education to take into account the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism (the IHRA definition) in determining antisemitic intent. But the IHRA definition is, as David Schraub wrote, “vague to the point of incoherency, and riddled with so much imprecision and hedging that it could justify labeling anything or nothing anti-Semitic.” According to the IHRA definition, everything depends on context, which means that anyone who can’t identify antisemitism without the IHRA definition will not be able to identify antisemitism with the definition. It cannot stand on its own. The IHRA definition exemplifies how not to define antisemitism.
Even worse, the bill mentions President Biden's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism and implies that its goal is to further the aims of the strategy, but it undermines the strategy referencing only the IHRA definition. The National Strategy has a better definition and notes that "there are several definitions of antisemitism, which serve as valuable tools to raise awareness and increase understanding of antisemitism." The National Strategy specifically "welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts." The Antisemitism Awareness Act doesn't mention the Nexus Document or any other efforts. Its sole purpose is to require the Department of Education to use the IHRA definition in its enforcement activities. This is why the Antisemitism Awareness Act and the IHRA definition are the wrong solutions to real problems.
Another page from the Republican playbook: A favorite Republican tactic is to clutch their pearls, ignore where the overwhelming majority of Democrats are, and feign outrage when some Democrats are out of pattern. The latest example occurred on November 1, when 45 Democrats voted against the Hamas and Other Palestinian Terrorist Groups International Financing Prevention Act. Oh, no! Who could be against that?
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) spoke for many of the "no" votes when he said on the House floor, "I unequivocally condemn Hamas's attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,400 innocent people and the kidnapping of hundreds of hostages, including American citizens. The United States has rightly designated Hamas as a terrorist organization since 1997, and I have fully supported sanctions on Hamas when they've come before the House in the past...
"As originally written, this bill included a broad humanitarian exemption that would have protected the provision of food, medicine and other lifesaving supplies into Gaza. The State Department and the Treasury both supported that exemption, which aligned with the Biden administration's goals to weaken Hamas without causing undue civilian suffering and deaths. Unfortunately, the primary [Republican] sponsor of H.R. 340 offered an amendment during committee markup that removed that exemption, replacing it with a case-by-case waiver that will impede the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza... If the humanitarian exemption that was originally in this bill was restored, I would fully support H.R. 340."
You can agree or disagree with this reasoning, but Castro's position is not anti-Israel. The adults in the Senate will likely fix the bill and when it comes back to the House, nearly all of those who voted "no" will join the others and vote "yes."
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. In last week's newsletter, I misspelled Nicholas Kristof's last name. Not all of the 1,400 murdered in Israel by Hamas terrorists were Jews. Matthew Miller is a State Department spokesperson, not a White House spokesperson.
In Case You Missed It:
- Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL): Stopping future crypto-financed terrorism. We have to shut down those crypto networks that are being used to finance terrorist activity. We also have to make sure that the bills that passed through the Financial Services Committee this year to make money laundering easier never see the floor.
- The Senate overcame Republican objections and confirmed Jack Lew as U.S. Ambassador to Israel with unanimous Democratic support and only two Republican votes.
Tweets of the Week. Steve Sheffey, Nimrod Novik, Noa Hoffman, and Sharar Azani.
Twitter Thread of the Week. Jacob Magid.
Video Clip of the Week. Nancy Pelosi responds to pro-Palestinian hecklers. Who did it better--Pelosi or Sam Morril?
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 Medium posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on why the Antisemitism Awareness Act and the IHRA definition are the wrong solutions to real problems. You can read my most recent effort to define "pro-Israel" here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
I hope you enjoyed today's newsletter. Donations are welcome (this takes time to write and costs money to send). If you'd like to chip in, click here and fill in the amount of your choice. If you see something that says "Save your info and create a PayPal account," click the button to the right and it will go away. You don't need a PayPal account. Or you can Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four phone digits are 9479). You can send a check too. But no crypto or gold bars.
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