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November 23, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- Donald Trump's call to execute members of Congress is a direct threat to our democracy and our way of life. If Republicans cannot break with Trump, then all decent Americans must break with Republicans.
- Conflating "the left" with the Democratic Party leads to confusion and misunderstanding about where the parties stand on antisemitism and Israel.
- Most young people do not agree with certain legacy Jewish organizations that certain slogans are antisemitic.
- We should not dismiss prospects for a two-state solution based on polls showing that Israelis and Palestinians do not today support a two-state solution.
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Greetings!
Anyone who still supports Donald Trump and the Republican Party is woefully ignorant, willfully ignorant, or wantonly immoral. We are long past the time when reasonable minds can differ.
Some of our Republican friends will try to laugh off Trump's offensive remarks that are beneath the dignity of the presidency, such as calling a female reporter "piggy." We cannot let them laugh off misogyny.
But even they cannot laugh off, and we cannot let them laugh off, his threats to execute members of Congress in response to this video.
Here is Trump in his exact words. He could not have been clearer, even if the White House later tried to walk it back.These were not slips of the tongue.
Watch Sen. Elisa Slotkin's (D-MI) response to Trump's violent threats.
We must start taking the ideals and values of our country, including our democracy and our Constitution, seriously. That includes Republicans. Americans have serious policy differences with one another. That's fine. That's as it should be.
Where we must be unified is in our commitment to resolving our differences democratically, not with violence or threats of violence. This unity must transcend policy differences. That means taking seriously Donald Trump's threats to our democratic way of life.
As long as the Republican Party remains beholden to Donald Trump, as long as Republican members of Congress refuse to impeach and convict him, the Republican Party remains a threat to our democratic way of life. We must defeat it at the ballot box.
Some people love to pat themselves on the back, call themselves independents, and proclaim with pride that they vote the person, not the party. Today, a person's choice of party is the most important part of who that person is if that person is running for office. If that person is a Republican, and if that person refuses to support Donald Trump's impeachment and conviction, that person is unqualified to hold office. End of story.
We have one pro-democracy party and one fascist, authoritarian party. The choice should be easy, but for some of our friends it's hard because admitting to having been conned is hard (conmen count on that).
Don't abandon your Republican friends. Help them understand what this moment means to you and to our country, and what it should mean to them. Remind them that, as Jonathan Swift said, "You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday."
Joyce Vance wrote, "We can no longer afford to permit those around us to bury their heads in the sand and pretend this isn’t happening. It is all too real. It is all too risky, given that this president’s words have all too frequently become actions once spoken to his followers.
"This is about country, not politics."
Conflating "the left" with the Democratic Party leads to confusion and misunderstanding about where the parties stand on antisemitism and Israel. The latest example is this otherwise excellent analysis from Tom Friedman.
His thesis is irrefutable: "The Republican Party today has a neo-Nazi problem that it refuses to confront. The progressive left today has a pro-Hamas problem that it refuses to confront. And the Jewish people and Israel have a radical Jewish settler problem that they refuse to confront."
The problem is what he doesn't say. Parts of the progressive left have a pro-Hamas problem. But whereas the Republican Party does have a neo-Nazi problem, the Democratic Party does not have a pro-Hamas problem. Whereas the Republican Party refuses to speak out against settler violence in the West Bank, the Democratic Party is speaking out against it.
The Republican Party has been taken over by the worst elements on the right, epitomized by its leaders, Donald Trump and JD Vance. Even right-wing critics of antisemitism refuse to speak out against Trump.
The Democratic Party opposes the worst elements on the left. You can say what you want about Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), but you'll be laughed out of the room if you say that either is antisemitic or insufficiently supportive of Israel.
That doesn't mean that we ignore antisemitism or hate anywhere, including on the left, including on college campuses. It does mean that when we compare our two political parties, we don't ignore the reality that only one party, the Republican Party, provides a political home for antisemitism and hate.
Are these slogans antisemitic? You've heard them: Zionists not welcome. Free Palestine. Globalize the intifada. From the river to the sea. Resistance by all means necessary. We don't want no 48, we want all of it. Ceasefire now.
A poll of Jews aged 18-40 released last year but reported by Arno Rosenfeld last week found that a majority of young Jews either don't believe that any of these slogans are antisemitic or are not sure if they are antisemitic.
The poll is flawed because it overweights Orthodox Jews, who tend to be more conservative, and because its methodology fails to account for Jews of no religion, who tend to lean more to the left. If anything, these flaws mean that an even smaller percentage of young Jews consider these slogans antisemitic.
We often hear that oppressed people get to determine what speech is offensive to them. I don't think we should determine what is antisemitic by majority vote, even among Jews. But we should understand that it is reasonable for non-Jews, in good faith, to believe that certain slogans are not antisemitic when most young Jews don't think they are antisemitic.
Some Jewish organizations have taken positions contrary to what most young Jews believe. That's fine. They have every right to speak for themselves, their boards, and their donors, but not necessarily for the Jewish American community, either on Israel or antisemitism--because in many cases, they don't speak for most Jewish Americans.
If we don't go by majority vote or by Jewish legacy organization decree, how can we determine whether a slogan is antisemitic? The best place to start is the Nexus Project's Campus Guide to Identifying Antisemitism in a Time of Perplexity.
T'ruah's Very Brief Guide to Antisemitism is another excellent resource, as is Rabbi Jill Jacobs' analysis of how to distinguish criticism of Israel from antisemitism. The answer, as in so many cases, is that context matters.
It is clear from these resources that Nexus and T'ruah were correct in condemning last week's protest outside New York City's Park East Synagogue, where some of these slogans were chanted.
The protesters objected to the synagogue hosting Nefesh b'Nefesh, an organization that has been criticized for helping Jews move to West Bank settlements that some consider illegal under international law (they also help Jews move to Israel).
Regardless of one's views on any issue, including Israel or West Bank settlements, antisemitism is never an appropriate response and as JDCA stated, must be unequivocally condemned.
Separately, Nexus condemned the blatantly antisemitic “Israel’s Friendsgiving Dinner” protest that took place at Union Station in Washington, D.C., last week.
Speaking of polls: Gerhon Baskin explains the foolishness of dismissing prospects for a two-state solution based on polls showing that Israelis and Palestinians do not today support a two-state solution.
Baskin explains that "war time polls have no real relevance regarding a longer perspective of where the publics might be a year after the war. I caution that all polls are a snap shot of a moment in passing time. War time polls reflect a high level of emotion and in our cases also trauma. There is usually a rallying around the flag and the almost thoughtless acceptance of mainstream narratives fostered by leaders and the media...
"Support for the war effort, perceiving the troops, especially the fallen fighters as heroes, limiting or marginalizing criticism of one’s own side – these are all very common trends in war time polls and they were very apparent in the Israeli and Palestinian polls over the past two years. I don’t find the polls during wartime to be particularly important when trying to understand longer-term potentials of political processes."
But what if the polls will never change? I would ask that if you think that Palestinians hate Jews and will always hate Jews, why in the world would you want to doom Jews in Israel to forcibly ruling over an equal number of people who hate them in perpetuity?
Wouldn't you want to separate from them, with one state for Palestinians and one state for Jews? Or do you have so little faith in the IDF that you don't think Israel can live alongside a Palestinian state, but have so much faith in Israel's internal security forces that one de facto or de jure state for Jews and Palestinians is a better answer?
Here's What Else You Need To Know:
- Hamas has yet to return the bodies of Suthisak Rintalak, Dror Or, and Sergeant Major Ran Gvili.
- My latest in the Times of Israel includes an updated profile picture. How do I look?
- Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s nominee to serve as the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (yes, it's been nearly a year and the Trump administration still doesn't have one), is unqualified and should not be confirmed by the Senate. Read more from Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and others and New Jewish Narrative.
- The Washington Post responds to Trump's appalling comments about the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Read more about Trump's remarks in PolitiFact.
Republican Antisemitism of the Week. Republican antisemitism is so common that we don't consider it news anymore. That has to stop.
This week's losers are Donald Trump and JD Vance. JDCA reports that last weekend, "when faced with a choice between rejecting extremists or pandering to them, Trump chose to defend Tucker Carlson for his controversial interview with Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist, Holocaust denier, racist, and antisemite. Trump then claimed that he 'didn’t know much about' Fuentes, even though Trump hosted Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago in 2022."
JTA reports that "Vance has not delivered any rebuke to Carlson, Fuentes and the growing antisemitic 'groyper' movement on the right. Instead, he has drawn concern over what his critics say is a weak response."
To make this manageable, this feature focuses on Republicans who hold, or are the GOP nominee for, federal or statewide office and who have said or done something antisemitic in the past week. I'd do the same for Democrats, but I'd have too many long stretches of nothing.
Tweets of the Week. Jason Kander, Mike Nellis, Daniel Bral, and Tyson Brody
Video Clip of the Week. Jonathan Pie
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. This turned out to be the last time Sonny & Cher sang "I Got You Babe."
The Fine Print. I read every reply to this newsletter. I reply as often as I can. All I ask is that you read the Fine Print before you reply or send me anything.
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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Unless stated otherwise, my views do not necessarily reflect the views of any candidates or organizations I support or am associated with.
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