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November 17, 2024
Five Key Takeaways:
1) It's been 408 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; 101 hostages, many dead, some raped and possibly pregnant, remain captive in Gaza.
2) The 101 remaining hostages include seven Americans, four probably alive: Keith Siegal, Omer Neutra, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. A ceasefire conditioned on releasing all hostages must remain a top priority.
3) Trump wants to appoint the least qualified, most dangerous cabinet in U.S. history, and he wants the Senate to abdicate its constitutional responsibilities to help him do it. Some of his nominees are antisemitic and would weaken the U.S.-Israel relationship. We cannot accept what Trump is doing as normal or right. We must speak out at every turn.
4) Trump's proposal to abolish the Department of Education moves the proposed Antisemitism Awareness Act from a bad idea to a pointless waste of time. No Department of Education means no enforcement mechanism for Title VI, which means that no federal agency will exist to fulfill the Antisemitism Awareness Act's mandate that the flawed IHRA definition of antisemitism be used to assess antisemitic intent.
5) Trump will slam the door on refugees but until then, you can participate in a private sponsorship initiative that allows groups of five or more Americans to sponsor a fully vetted refugee or refugee family to come to the United States.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
All is not lost but all is not good. Trump is wasting no time confirming that our fears were justified. It's almost as if he's following a blueprint. It's now a race against time: Are the structures we have in place and the sheer size of our country strong enough to prevent or delay the worst until we can have something close to fair and free elections in 2026?
If we had a Republican Party loyal to the Constitution and not to Donald Trump, we wouldn't have to ask this question. But Trump and the GOP are now the same. That's not good for the U.S., Israel, or our other allies.
We cannot accept what Trump is doing as normal or right. We cannot pretend that this was just another election. At a minimum, we have to call it as we see it, not as Trump and his media allies would gaslight us into believing.
Trump will try to numb us with one outrage after another. Nearly any single one of his recent nominations should dominate the headlines for days, if not weeks. But he hopes we cannot keep up with all of them and that we'll throw up our hands and give up. Every day new affronts to our values and our country will push yesterday's outrages out of mind--if we let them. We won't. That's the key to winning in the end.
Trump is appointing the least qualified, most dangerous cabinet in American history. It is no wonder he wants the Senate to disregard its constitutional responsibility and go into recess so that he can bypass the Senate approval process. You want to know how bad these appointments are? Trump is worried that even the sycophantic Republican-controlled Senate might not be able to stomach the miscreants he wants to appoint.
Ruth Marcus writes that Trump's plan is a power grab hiding in plain sight. Max Flugrath explains that this is a major step toward a fascist government. David Rothkopf writes, "Trump is seeking to establish himself even before he assumes the presidency as a strongman, above the traditional advise and consent checks on presidential authority granted the Senate by the U.S. Constitution."
This newsletter is focused on Israel-related issues, so let's examine some of Trump's appointees through that lens.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Trump's choice for Attorney General, has a long history of antisemitism. He was among the 58 House members who voted against the bill specifically providing emergency aid to Israel (it was detached from aid to Ukraine) on April 20, 2024. More on Gaetz here.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Trump's choice for UN ambassador, supports the Great Replacement Theory, the same racist, antisemitic conspiracy theory that the shooter who killed ten Black Americans in Buffalo believed in. Stefanik backed Carl Paladino for Congress. She voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Imagine Stefanik in the UN lecturing other countries about antisemitism and democracy--assuming anyone can hear what she's saying over the laughter. The Nexus Project is right: Anyone or any organization that cares about fighting antisemitism must speak out against this nomination.
Mike Huckabee, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel, is a right-wing Evangelical extremist and a racist. He is a strong ally of the settler movement and supports Israeli annexation of the West Bank, which would effectively make Israel an apartheid state and weaken support for Israel in the U.S. and around the world. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said, "as a secular Zionist, I find nothing remotely appealing about the fundamentalism of Mike Huckabee.”
Tristan Sturn explains that the goal of Huckabee's ideology "is the removal of Palestinians from the biblically defined land of Israel to facilitate Christ’s return. ... Huckabee envisions a state of Israel that extends from the river to the sea: From the Mediterranean to the river Euphrates, and down to the River Nile." We'll have to wait and see to find out if Huckabee's vision of the end of days is theologically sound, but its practical implications for Israel and the Palestinians are horrifying.
Trump's choice for special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witcoff, has no diplomatic experience.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's pick for Director of National Intelligence, is a national security risk who has been an apologist for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Trump's choice for Secretary of State, voted against the emergency aid package to Israel on February 13, 2024. He was among the 26 Republicans who voted against; 22 Republicans supported aid to Israel. On final passage in April, Republicans voted for aid to Israel, 31-15. But not Rubio. Rubio again voted against aid to Israel (JD Vance also voted against emergency aid to Israel). In 2015, on Yom Kippur, Rubio held a fundraiser at the home of a donor who collected Nazi artifacts.
Anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's choice to head Health and Human Services, promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory about Jews and COVID.
But I'm sure they are all nice people and that if a Democratic president nominated people with similar stains on their records, our Republican friends would give them a pass. I don't mean to imply that anyone I did not name should be confirmed but I try to keep these newsletters to a reasonable length.
Another reason to oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act: Trump wants to abolish the Department of Education. The question is whether Republicans who support Trump and the Antisemitism Awareness Act are educated enough to add up two plus two.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act would require the Department of Education to take the IHRA definition of antisemitism into consideration in reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether there has been a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the basis of race, color, or national origin, based on an individual’s actual or perceived shared Jewish ancestry or Jewish ethnic characteristics as part of the Department’s assessment of whether the violation was motivated by antisemitic intent.
That won't work if Trump abolishes the Department of Education, which would render the Antisemitism Awareness Act pointless. If Republicans were serious about fighting antisemitism, they'd be speaking out against abolishing the Department of Education. But cultists don't speak out against their leader.
The Antisemitism Awareness Act was a bad idea to begin with. Now it's moot (if Trump gets his way). The Senate is under pressure to include the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act but House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would reject amending the Antisemitism Awareness Act to the NDAA. This is not the time to give Trump additional executive authority that is ripe for abuse pending his dismantling of the Department of Education. The Senate should not allow this misguided legislation to come to the floor.
You can help refugees before Trump takes office. Many of us are descendants of refugees. This year, the Biden-Harris Administration resettled 100,000 refugees, the most in three decades. This followed the Trump administration’s record low resettlement numbers, including the lowest cap in modern history: 15,000 in 2020.
The Biden-Harris Administration achieved this milestone in part by launching the Welcome Corps. This private sponsorship initiative allows groups of five or more Americans to sponsor a refugee or refugee family to come to the United States. Sponsorship means providing practical support and a sense of belonging for a newcomer’s first few months in the United States, including by welcoming newcomers at the airport, identifying short-term housing, and assisting refugees as they learn English, access benefits, sign up for healthcare, and seek employment.
Every sponsor group is paired with a private sponsor organization that provides support throughout the entire process. Right now, there is no fundraising requirement because a generous donor has created a fund to cover the cost of applying. This means groups do not need to do any fundraising to submit their applications and can focus on in-kind donations.
Any refugee (or refugee family) you sponsor with friends or colleagues to join your community will supplement existing efforts to resettle refugees through official channels, allowing even more fully vetted refugees to build new lives in the United States before Biden and Harris leave office. Go to Welcome Corps to learn more.
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) Dov Waxman: Why American Jews didn't join the Trump wave.
2) David Schraub: Yet more Trumpist humiliation of the ADL.
3) Jeff Tiedrich: A confederacy of dipshits: Donny picks his cabinet.
4) Jennifer Rubin: A 'republic if we can keep it.' Perhaps we cannot.
5) Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters: multipronged dark money effort by advisers to Elon Musk targeted liberals, Jews, Muslims, and Black voters with ads that were not quite what they seemed. Yet despite dirty tricks aimed at our community, the Jewish vote remained Democratic. The two most respected experts on Jewish polling separately found that 71% of Jewish voters backed Kamala Harris. Here and here.
6) Nearly 90 lawmakers called on Biden to sanction Israeli ultranationalist ministers.
7) Adam Grant: If you're sure how the next four years will play out, I promise: You're wrong.
Bluesky Post of the Week.George Takei.
Bluesky Thread of the Week. Tom Nichols.
Facebook Post of the Week. Drew Westen.
Video Clip of the Week. SNL cold open.
Vintage Music Video of the Week. Should I Stay or Should I Go?
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 why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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