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April 6, 2025
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
1) It's been 548 days since October 7, 2023. The Hamas-led attack on Simchat Torah was one of the largest terror attacks in history, resulting in 1,182 fatalities (including 44 Americans) and over 4,000 wounded. 251 hostages (210 alive, 41 dead bodies) were taken during a day of brutal savagery and sexual violence. It was the largest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, with more than one in every 10,000 Israelis killed, and the third overall deadliest terrorist attack in the world to date.
2) Trump has not secured the release of any hostages since the last hostages under the agreement Biden negotiated were returned on February 27, despite warning Hamas several times that there would be "all Hell to pay" unless they released the 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 cannot rest until all the hostages are released.
3) Trump is using antisemitism as a pretext to undermine democracy, defund universities, and deport foreigners. In reality, fighting antisemitism requires defending democracy.
4) The Nexus Project released a new comprehensive approach for protecting Jews and the democratic rights and liberties that truly keep us safe, including on college campuses.
5) Democrats must do what is right, not what is bipartisan--pretending that the GOP is a normal party is as foolish as pretending that any grants of authority to the Executive Branch will be implemented responsibly as long as Trump is president.
6) Chag Sameach! Pesach is next Sunday and the following Sunday. I'm not sure about the newsletter schedule, but don't look for it on the next two Sundays. And if Elijah comes to your door, warn him that 25% of Jewish voters still vote Republican, so he better have his papers.
This is an independent reader-supported newsletter. You're welcome to read for free, but if you get something out of this newsletter, you can give something back by credit card or PayPal, by Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four phone digits are 9479), or by check. Thank you.
Hi Steve,
I don't know about you, Steve, but I've had it with Donald Trump acting like he's fighting antisemitism when he's implementing authoritarianism. If he wants to deport antisemites, he can find plenty of suspects in his administration and the Republican Party.
Trump does not speak for the vast majority of American Jews. We don't want him to fight antisemitism, real or imagined, by denying due process to anyone. Yair Rosenberg explains that Trump is using antisemitism as a pretext to support deportations that are "part of a broader anti-foreigner agenda whose goal is to make America into a country for a narrowly defined set of citizens" and to defund American universities."
Rosenberg writes, "Jews constitute just 2 percent of the American population and are a famously fractious people. A minority of this minority supports Trump’s policies, seeking the shelter of a strongman amid the anti-Semitic storm. But the lesson most American Jews have drawn from their history as a persecuted people is that narrow nationalisms never end well for those who are different, because no matter their patriotism or contribution to the collective, their difference will always make them suspect. Jews may be inside the circle of concern today, but that circle is always shrinking, and Jews will ultimately not determine who it includes."
We don't fight antisemitism by restricting lawful speech, undermining due process and the rule of law, or impinging on free speech or academic debate. The fight against antisemitism is linked to the fight for democracy. They are inseparable. Trump is exploiting concerns about antisemitism to undermine democracy and cut funding for universities. If you want to increase antisemitism, that's a good way to do it.
The only Jews Trump speaks for are the small minority of Jews who don't understand that Jews don't fare well under regimes that don't respect democratic norms.
Don't be conned. Don't be a sucker.
Using a brilliant extended metaphor, Ron Kampeas illustrates how "American Jews are becoming Guy, the hapless malcontent in Hitchcock’s 'Strangers on a Train' whose failure to plainly repudiate the sociopath sitting across from him puts him and his reputation at grave risk."
The children of Michael I. Sovern, the first Jewish president of Columbia University (he served for more than 60 years), wrote that if their father "were alive today, he would be disgusted by the government’s coercion of Columbia, purportedly in the name of our religion. We do not believe President Donald Trump is sincere about protecting Jews from antisemitism."
Michael Koplow writes, "There are precious few, if any, examples from history of minority groups or opinions being targeted by a government that did not ultimately train its spotlight on Jews. What starts with others always ends with us. It is why the American Jewish fight against antisemitism has never been only about carving our protections for Jews, but about carving out protections for all minorities and all unpopular speech."
Alan Solomont explains that what happened to Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts, and many other international students, will not make Jewish students safer, nor is it fighting antisemitism
So if Trump's approach is wrong, what is the right way to fight antisemitism? The Nexus Project is becoming a leading voice on understanding the nexus between antisemitism and authoritarianism and on how to most effectively fight antisemitism, including on college campuses.
As reported in Axios on Monday, a new blueprint by the Nexus Project could give colleges and universities another path to combat antisemitism while protecting Jewish students and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs amid funding threats.
This new report presents a comprehensive approach to protecting Jews and the democratic rights and liberties that truly keep us safe. It is anchored in the understanding that fighting antisemitism requires defending democracy, building solidarity, ensuring concrete measures for Jewish security, and promoting education about Jewish history.
The report outlines how political and civil society leaders, including those at the helm of American Jewish organizations, should seek to protect Jews by speaking up against antisemitism and other hatreds, standing up for freedom of speech, pushing for more resources to counter extremism, and promoting further education.
I strongly encourage you to read it.
To the extent Jews on some campuses have been held to a double standard where they are not afforded the same protections as other groups, the solution, writes Matt Bai, "isn’t to join the ranks of protected groups that can’t abide being discomfited or having their worldviews challenged, as if the very point of a college campus weren’t to do exactly that. The remedy is to speak up loudly for everyone’s right to free expression, hurtful or not, so long as it doesn’t veer into threats of violence."
We must do what is right, not what is bipartisan. Some Democrats fetishize bipartisanship, as if the test of whether a policy makes sense is not whether it makes sense but whether Republicans will agree to it.
Today's Republican Party exists to serve Donald Trump, not to serve the American people.
We are not polarized. "Polarization" implies that both parties have moved to the extremes. The Democratic Party is what is has been for decades: a center-left party that hews to basic American norms.
The Republican Party is what Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein described in 2012: "ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."
Mann and Ornstein quoted Mike Lofgren, who wrote in 2011 that "the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe."
What do you prove with bipartisanship? That spineless politicians who don't value democracy are on your side? We are not polarized. One party, the Republican Party, has gone off the deep end.
The need to fight antisemitism is urgent. We cannot dilute our efforts in the hopes of getting Republicans on board. We cannot pass legislation giving authority to the Executive Branch as long as that branch is run by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
We are not living in normal times. We cannot pretend otherwise. Instead, we should do what is right: welcome any Republican who wants to join us rather than sacrificing American and democratic principles for the sake of Republicans who refuse to uphold the oath they swore when they took office.
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.
In Case You Missed It:
1) Trump's tariffs included 17% on Israel--only one day after Israel unilaterally removed tariffs on American exports, and higher than the 10% Trump imposed on some of Israel's autocratic neighbors. Danny Behar writes that this is a BDS dream come true. The Economist outlined the economic illiteracy of Trump's tariff policy. Paul Krugman walked through the malignant stupidity of the whole thing. Not only does Trump's tariff formula make no economic sense, but the Trump administration applied its own formula incorrectly.
2) On March 15, Trump's national security team included a reporter on an unsecured group chat where they disclosed sensitive intelligence obtained from Israel in connection with an imminent attack on the Houthis. After all that, the attack did not achieve its goals.
3) Instead of attending the dignified transfer to honor the four soldiers killed in Lithuania, Trump flew to Florida to watch a golf tournament and attend a reception being hosted at his resort.
4) Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said "Hineni," donned a hostage pin, and mentioned Edan Alexander, the Israeli-American soldier from New Jersey who is a captive in Gaza, during his record-setting Senate speech.
Here's a look at his speech by the numbers.
5) The ADL reversed its support for Trump's student deportations. Rob Eshman writes that now that the ADL has "reconsidered its unjustifiable initial support for the detentions, it’s time for others who may also have been seduced into believing such draconian measures are 'good for the Jews' to speak out against them."
6) From JDCA: Donald Trump's abandonment of Israel and Donald Trump's abandonment of the Jews. But the real question is when will the shrinking minority of Republican Jews wake up and abandon Trump.
Social Post of the Week. Ami Fields-Meyer.
Thread of the Week. I wrote this three years ago, and most of it holds up remarkably well.
Facts of the Week. The eight worst days ever for the Dow all occurred under Donald Trump. Of the 11 recessions since 1950, ten occurred under Republican presidents. And another might be on the way.
Video Clips of the Week. Val Kilmer's best line and the trailer for the most anticipated movie of 2025.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. Johnny Cash does Elvis Presley.
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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