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March 2, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
1) It's been 513 days since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel on Simchat Torah 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.
2) On Thursday, Hamas returned the bodies of four hostages. The 59 remaining hostages include five Americans. Edan Alexander is the only remaining American believed to be alive. Hamas holds the bodies of Omer Neutra, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. We don't know if or when any of the remaining hostages will come home. But we will continue to demand that all come home.
3) Trump sided with Putin to oppose a UN resolution supporting Ukraine. An Israeli official said that Israel voted against the resolution in response to pressure from Trump. On Friday, Trump and Vance embarrassed themselves and America in an Oval Office meeting with Zelensky.
4) Trump has made no progress (if he's even trying) in brokering a deal to secure the release of the remaining 59 hostages. Time is running out.
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Hi Steve,
The first phase of the ceasefire/hostage deal was completed on Thursday, with the return of the bodies of four murdered hostages: Itzik Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi, Shlomo Mantzur, and Tsahi Idan. Israel released the last of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The fate of the remaining hostages is in limbo. Those who are alive are living in horrible conditions and probably don't have much time left.
If you have lost a loved one before their time or if you know someone who has lost a loved one before their time, you know that the range of emotions includes guilt. No matter how irrational, no matter how much the grieving person knows that at the time, they did what was right and made sense, they still feel guilt. Even if they know the outcome was not foreseeable, they feel guilt. They cannot help thinking "what if I did this" or "what if I did that," and it does not help when they tell themselves or when you tell them that the feeling is normal and they should not feel guilt.
If anyone should be feeling every emotion in the world except guilt, it is Yarden Bibas, whose wife, Shiri, and children, Ariel and Kfir, were murdered by Hamas.
Yarden Bibas was freed from Gaza on February 1, after 484 days held hostage in Gaza under terrible conditions, only to find out a couple weeks later that Hamas had brutally murdered his family one month after kidnapping them to Gaza from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Yet he feels guilt. It's natural--and heartbreaking.
Read or watch the eulogy he delivered for his family. It's not long.
Eyal Winter, a professor at Hebrew University who lives in Jerusalem, wrote that right-wing newspapers in Israel referred to Oded Lifshitz, the 84-year old peace activist abducted on October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz, murdered in Gaza, and buried on Monday, as “naïve” and “delusive.”
Lifshitz, said Winter, "fought to secure permits for cancer patients from Gaza, allowing them to receive treatment in Israel’s best hospitals. When he succeeded, he would personally drive the sick, along with their family members, in his old car from Gaza to hospitals across the country. He saved hundreds of lives.
"Those who called him naïve seemed to address his posthumous identity, as if saying: You see, dear Oded? You thought these were decent people. You believed we could have peace with them, and yet here you are—abducted and brutally murdered despite all you did for them. Just like German-Jewish soldiers who fought for Germany in World War I, and were awarded the Iron Cross First Class, later perished in the ovens of Auschwitz along with all other Jews.
"And I see Oded, sitting calmly on a cloud at the gates of heaven, smiling at his critics and saying: Maybe. But I did what every human being in this ugly world should do."
Some will find this hard reading; others will find it common sense: Michael Koplow writes, "Railing against the moral rot on the other side is easy, particularly when their extremism is front and center. What’s hard is to guard against the moral rot on your side, especially in the face of extremism directed your way. We know that Hamas has no human decency, and we see many Palestinians failing that test too, but so are we."
What is Trump doing to free the remaining hostages?. Trump is posting absurd AI-generated fantasies about his Gaza-Lago plan while 59 hostages held by Hamas are languishing in horrible conditions.
Ilan Goldenberg writes that Trump "frittered away the past six weeks. Trump’s declaration of an entirely unrealistic and deeply immoral plan to remove all Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop it under U.S. auspices has been a massive distraction."
Rob Eshman writes that "the Bibas family has made it clear, as have other families who have suffered in Gaza’s tunnels, that the first priority must be freeing the hostages. American Jews who at least figuratively stood side by side in mourning with them must impress upon President Donald Trump that whatever else he has in store for Gaza, nothing matters more than freeing the 24 hostages believed to still be alive."
Did Trump pressure Israel to oppose the UN resolution supporting Ukraine? An Israeli official said, “There was a lot of pressure from the U.S., they really insisted. It came at all levels, at the U.N., in Washington and in Israel.”
The resolution “is not our position,” the official added, and the vote, the first time Israel voted against Ukraine and with Russia since the beginning of the war, “wasn’t easy for us … We preferred to avoid this situation. We had no choice but to take a side.”
Only 16 countries voted with Trump and Putin against the UN resolution.
JDCA CEO Halie Soifer describes how Trump's "abandonment of Ukraine isn’t just a stunning reversal of U.S. foreign policy, it’s indicative of a larger trend – Trump is turning the United States away from democracy and toward dictatorship at home and abroad."
Israel might be more dependent on the U.S. for its security than Ukraine is dependent on the U.S. Forcing Israel to side with Trump and Putin in opposing a resolution affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and condemning Russia’s invasion is not pro-Israel. If Trump pressured Israel to vote against Ukraine, it would be an astonishing abuse of power and a betrayal of two allies, Israel and Ukraine, in one stroke.
A member of Ukraine's parliament wrote, "Israel cannot be held responsible for the about-face in U.S. policy on the war in Ukraine. Israel has its own interests to protect. And while I cannot approve of Israel's vote, I fully recognize its logic."
Is this how we treat our allies now? Watch how disrespectfully and childishly Trump and Vance bullied Zelensky on Friday in the Oval Office. Here's a longer version for those who want context.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in his statement, “It is the duality of Trump that he is both a laughingstock and an existential danger...It is not President Zelensky who disrespected the United States in the Oval Office. It was Donald Trump--behaving exactly like the two-bit mob boss we've known him to be.”
Garry Kasparov said that Zelensky "is a wartime leader watching his people suffer and die under Russian attacks every day. To be lectured and lied to by Trump and Vance, as they defend the war criminal dictator committing these atrocities, is unimaginable agony. An everlasting shame for America."
If you are tempted to defend Trump and Vance's despicable behavior, you can save yourself considerable embarrassment by reading Tom Nichols's analysis before you share your thoughts with others.
Do you think Trump wouldn't turn on Israel on a dime if Putin told him to? Do you think Israel is the one ally exempt from Trump's racketeering and extortion?
As Soifer reminded us, "last year, Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton told The New York Times that '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.”'
Lest anyone doubt whose corner Trump is in, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions.
Anyone checked the price of eggs lately?
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, so I guess it was perfect.
In Case You Missed It:
1) Arno Rosenfeld explains why the ADL is encouraging Jews to invest in Tesla. This is disgraceful on so many levels.
2) Jonathan Rauch makes a convincing case Trump is engaging not in authoritarianism but in patrimonialism and that Democrats should use the Newt Gingrich playbook to pursue a relentless, strategic, and thematic campaign branding Trump as America’s most corrupt president. Garry Kasparov describes Trump's Putinization of America.
3) Ilan Goldenberg writes that insisting that Gaza be governed by neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas is a recipe for no deal, no more hostages out, Hamas in control, and perpetual fighting.
4) Elon Musk congratulated the leader of Germany's hard-right party.
5) Jonathan Jacoby urges Jewish leaders to disrupt the circle of antisemitism. If you don't understand why Steve Bannon's recent comments were antisemitic, read this from Emily Tamkin.
6) The Antisemitism Awareness Act--who could be against that, right? Well, actually, we should all be against it, no matter how politically attractive it might seem.
7) Iran moved closer to acquiring nuclear weapons after Trump withdrew from the Iran Deal during his first term. Iran has moved even closer since Trump was elected to his second term. Maybe Iran is not worried about the price of eggs.
8) RFK Jr is implementing his anti-vaccine agenda.
9) Trump's 13 biggest lies of his first month back in office.
Social Post of the Week. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL).
Thread of the Week. Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL).
Video Clips of the Week. Weird that SNL did not include its best monologue in its 50th-anniversary special.
And this suddenly prescient Seinfeld scene.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. Handle Me With Care.
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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