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August 13, 2023
Key Takeaways:
- Right-wing antisemitism, including in government and politics, is the greatest threat to Jewish Americans. The U.S. is not located in Europe. The closest analog to antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party is Donald Trump's Republican Party, which is infected to the top with antisemitism. The Democratic Party, unlike Corbyn's Labour Party or Trump's GOP, marginalizes and condemns antisemitism within its ranks.
- Israeli journalists outlined the lies that Prime Minister Netanyahu likely told Democratic members of Congress who recently visited Israel on an AIPAC trip. Netanyahu has been ducking the Israeli press because Israeli journalists, unlike their American counterparts, are less likely to accept Netanyahu's statements at face value.
- Supporting and loving Israel does not mean supporting the government of Israel any more than supporting and loving America meant supporting Donald Trump when he was in power. Rather, it means standing for the values and ideals that led us to support Israel in the first place, which the current government is undermining. Failing to speak out is failing to support the Israel that shares our values.
- If you are against the deal the U.S. brokered with Iran to free American hostages, you are against Americans coming back home and you are against Iranian people having access to food and medicine--at no cost to American taxpayers.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
We must condemn all antisemitism in all forms from all sources, but not all antisemitism is created equal. The most dangerous form of antisemitism is government-condoned or government-sponsored antisemitism because no institution has the pulpit or the power of the government. For the same reasons, the best ally in the fight against antisemitism can be the government, which is why President Biden's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism is important substantively and symbolically.
Unfortunately, only one political party in the United States, the party of the left, the Democratic Party, is committed to fighting antisemitism. We might wish it wasn't so. But it is, and most Jewish voters know it. A June 2023 Jewish Electorate Institute poll found that Jews trust Democrats over Republicans to fight antisemitism by more than a 2-1 margin.
The danger of returning Republicans to the White House should be self-evident, especially on this, the six-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Donald Trump's declaration that white supremacists and neo-Nazis marching with tiki torches chanting "Jews will not replace us" were "very fine people." There are not two sides to every question and there were not "very fine people" on both sides. Not one Republican presidential candidate or member of Congress condemned Trump for these remarks or any of his other antisemitic remarks. This is what passes for acceptable political rhetoric in today's GOP.
Right-wing antisemitism is the greatest threat to Jewish Americans. Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, testified before Congress on May 16, 2023, that "according to data released earlier this year by the ADL, every single extremist-related murder in 2022 was committed by right-wing extremists. The vast majority of those were white supremacists. Over the past decade, 96 percent of the events in which extremists killed someone were committed by people with right-wing ideologies. In the same time period, three-quarters of the murders linked to extremism were committed by right-wing actors, while only four percent were linked to left-wing actors.”
Spitalnick testified that “unless we’re clear-eyed about the facts, the data, and the reality of the current violent threat — which every indicator tells us is disproportionately emanating from the far right — we will never be able to intervene and break the cycle of violent extremism.”
Those guards at our synagogues are not there to protect us from BDS supporters or people who want to condition aid to Israel. To cite but two examples, they are there to protect us from people like Robert Bowers, the right-wing antisemitic extremist who murdered 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue. They are there to protect us from the right-wing antisemitic extremist arrested on June 16, 2023, for planning a mass killing at a synagogue in East Lansing, Michigan.
The ADL's 2022 audit of antisemitic incidents, released on March 23, 2023, found a 36% increase in antisemitic incidents nationwide since 2021, of which white supremacist activity was the major component. A 2022 ADL report found "that as of August 10, 2022, of the 119 right-wing extremist candidates that participated in the primaries, about 25 percent of the candidates won their race." The report did not mention that all 119 right-wing extremist candidates were Republicans. Every single one of them.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has done incredibly important and valuable work fighting bigotry and hate. But no organization is perfect, as evidenced by the ADL's refusal to point out that when it comes to politics in America, one party, the Republican Party, is infected by antisemitism to the top and the other party, the Democratic Party, marginalizes and condemns antisemitism from within its ranks.
On August 8, 2023, the ADL released a report on antisemitism and radical anti-Israel bias on the political left in Europe. The report contains nothing about the rise of fascism and its brand of antisemitism in Europe so, assuming what the ADL says about the political left in Europe is true, there is no basis for comparison and no way of knowing whether political antisemitism in Europe is uniquely a left-wing phenomenon or an across-the-board manifestation of centuries-old European antisemitism generally.
For our purposes, the report's most serious flaw is its attempt to equate antisemitism on the political left in Europe with antisemitism on the political left in the U.S. The report devotes paragraph after paragraph to Jeremy Corbyn, stating that "under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the Labour Party welcomed and promoted anti-Israel radicals and consequently became a hotbed of antisemitism."
The Republican Party does not welcome and promote anti-Israel radicals in the traditional sense, although one could ask whether the GOP's rejection of a two-state solution and its failure to speak out for Israeli democracy is pro- or anti-Israel. But under Donald Trump's leadership, the GOP became a hotbed of antisemitism. The same is not true of the Democratic Party under Joe Biden's leadership or, for that matter, under any previous Democratic president's leadership in our lifetimes.
Naturally, the most prominent example in the report of antisemitism on the political left is one tweet from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from February 2019, more than four years ago. The report misrepresented the context of her tweet: She was talking specifically about AIPAC, not as the report states, "Israel’s allies in American politics," which includes many organizations other than AIPAC.
The report's failure to get the context right is ironic because the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism, which the ADL again endorsed in this report, calls for context to be taken into account.
Despite its endorsement of the IHRA definition, not once does the report use the IHRA definition to explain or analyze why any incident of antisemitism in the report was or was not antisemitic. Is that because one doesn't need the IHRA definition at all or because, as David Schraub wrote, the IHRA definition is “vague to the point of incoherency, and riddled with so much imprecision and hedging that it could justify labeling anything or nothing anti-Semitic"?
The report fails to mention that other tools can be used to identify antisemitism, retreating from the progress made by President Biden's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which not only mentions the IRHA definition but "welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts" to raise awareness and increase understanding of antisemitism.
Amazingly, the report recommends challenging "antisemitism in a whole-of-government National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism" but doesn't mention that someone--President Biden--released a whole-of-government National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism on May 25, 2023. The report does not link to that strategy even though its recommendation lifts the title of the Strategy word for word, nor does it mention President Biden, the leader of the Democratic Party, at all (but Jeremy Corbyn rates several mentions).
The report both-sides a political problem that, in the United States, manifests itself primarily on the right and in one party, the Republican Party. Both-siding a problem inappropriately is taking a side. Removing partisanship from a partisan issue is a form of partisanship.
The Republican Party, not the Democratic Party, is the analog to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. If lessons are to be learned from antisemitism in Europe, those lessons have yet to be learned by America's GOP and, apparently, by some organizations whose mission is to fight antisemitism. The Jewish community has enough real problems to solve. We don't need to add imaginary ones to our list.
24 Democratic members of Congress visited Israel on an AIPAC trip. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) led the trip, which included Reps. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Becca Balint (D-VT), Yadira Caraveo (D-CO), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), Don Davis (D-NC), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Robert Garcia (D-CA), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Rob Menendez (D-NJ), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Wiley Nickel (D-NC), Brittany Pettersen (D-CO), Pat Ryan (D-NY), Andrea Salinas (D-OR), Hillary Scholten (D-MI), Eric Sorensen (D-IL), Emilia Sykes (D-OH), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), and Jill Tokuda (D-HI).
Amir Tibon writes that "the official purpose of the trip was to strengthen the 'special relationship' between the United States and Israel. However, the real motivation behind it was partisan: to expose the lawmakers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arguments in favor of his judicial overhaul."
Tibon addresses the biggest lies Prime Minister Netanyahu likely told the U.S. lawmakers point by point. In a similar vein, Alon Pinkas analyzes "some of the duplicitous and manipulative things" Netanyahu said in 22 interviews with various U.S. media outlets.
Haaretz explains in an editorial that far from pulling back on the judicial overhaul, Bibi is proceeding with its key element and that "the goal the government seeks to achieve through its legal overhaul is dismantling democracy. Netanyahu is doing this to extricate himself from his criminal trial, and in the process, he has sold the country to racists, nationalists and draft-dodgers."
Supporting and loving Israel does not mean supporting the government of Israel any more than supporting and loving America meant supporting Donald Trump when he was in power. Rather, it means standing for the values and ideals that led us to support Israel in the first place, which the current government is undermining. Failing to speak out is failing to support the Israel that shares our values.
You can speak out now by urging your member of Congress to cosponsor Rep. Schakowsky's (D-IL) resolution in support of the pro-democracy movement in Israel. Politics with Dana and Steve, Jewish Democratic Council of America, Jewish Democratic Outreach of Pennsylvania, J Street, Israel Policy Forum, UnXeptable, Partners for Progressive Israel, Ameinu, NY Jewish Agenda, Americans for Peace Now, Union for Reform Judaism, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, National Council of Jewish Women, and T’ruah have endorsed the resolution. Read the Dear Colleague letter for more information.
The U.S. brokered a deal with Iran to free American hostages. In exchange for the release of five dual-citizen American hostages, the U.S. will free Iranian nationals held for violating sanctions with Iran and release $6 billion in Iranian assets via safeguards that guarantee the money can only be used for humanitarian purposes (this won't cost American taxpayers anything and the process complies with Trump-era sanctions). If you are against this deal, you are against Americans coming back home and you are against Iranian people having access to food and medicine.
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 opened with "Since 2106" when I meant to say "Since 2016."
One reader wrote to me that "I have not been wondering since 2106 because if I live so long, I will be 150 years old!" Another reader wrote that "I don’t believe we have seen 2106 yet. Time travel would be interesting to see how Trump is viewed by historians!"
In Case You Missed It:
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Bret Stephens sums up today's Republican Party: "The trouble for Republicans does not lie in the difficulty of holding together a fractious coalition of MAGA and non-MAGA conservatives. That would be politics as usual in any major party. It lies in the depressing combination of MAGA bullies and non-MAGA cowards."
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GOP Megadonor Gives $1m to AIPAC SuperPAC, Likely to Fuel Friction With Democrats: "Unlike the vast majority of the U.S. Jewish establishment, AIPAC has not issued a public statement expressing concern [about Israel's judicial overhaul]. Instead, it has focused on Iran and echoing official government talking points that the protest movement demonstrates the vibrancy of Israel’s democracy rather than representing an existential crisis."
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The largest ‘pro-Israel’ lobby in the US is hurting Israeli democracy: 'AIPAC, with $88.6 million in its annual budget, is dedicated to not only refraining from any criticism of the Israeli government but to pouring millions of dollars into US campaigns to defeat any candidate who does. (It is probably not surprising that AIPAC is not troubled by the threat to Israel’s democracy since, after all, this is the same organization that backed 109 Members of Congress who refused to certify President Biden’s election. Democracy is obviously not a core value)."
Tweets of the Week. Puns and Michael Harriot.
Twitter Thread of the Week. Sen.Chris Murphy (D-CT).
Video Clip of the Week. Sam Morril--The Alligator Story.
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My most popular Times of Israel posts are How Not To Define Antisemitism and Pro-Israel Or Pro-Bibi? I periodically update my Medium posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism. You can read my most recent effort to define "pro-Israel" here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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