NY Times hires journalist who blamed Israel for Palestinian suicide bombers
By Emanuel Miller, HonestReporting/World Israel News)
The New York Times is once again facing tough questions about its objectivity and impartiality regarding its coverage of Israel, as it has emerged that one of its most recent hires previously sought to justify and excuse terrorism against and, more specifically, blamed Israel for the actions of Palestinian suicide bombers who murdered hundreds of Israelis in the 2000s.
On November 3, The New York Times announced that it was welcoming a new reporter to its Jerusalem bureau. The press release on the Times’ website described Raja Abdulrahim as an “experienced foreign correspondent,” a “native Arabic speaker” and a “strong storyteller and writer.”
In June 2002, while a junior at the University of Florida, Abdulrahim penned a guest column for the school newspaper, The Florida Independent Alligator, titled, “Palestinians driven to bombing,” in which she claimed:
“Another suicide bomber has attacked and the finger pointing has begun in every direction. But the fact is that the finger belongs not on the Palestinian Authority or some ‘Islamic militant group,’ it belongs squarely on Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces.”
The Alligator (Screen grab via HonestReporting)
This column was written during the most intense period of Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel.
Between 2000 and 2005, 141 suicide attacks claimed the lives of 587 people. In 2002 alone, there were no less than 47 lethal suicide bombings, which left 238 dead and many more injured. Among those killed were Holocaust survivors and pregnant women along with their unborn babies, as perpetrators deliberately targeted civilians.
They struck buses, cafes, discos, shopping malls and busy streets in a bid to kill as many Israelis as possible.
And yet, Abdulrahim sought to blame Israel — not the Palestinian Authority government or Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas — for the carnage.
There is a term for this: Victim-blaming.
For Abdulrahim, this was not an isolated occurrence. In September 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, she wrote a letter published in The Independent Florida Alligator contending that it would be erroneous to refer to Hamas and Iranian-backed Hezbollah as “fundamentalist” or “terror organizations.”
She continued by downplaying barbaric violence, risibly suggesting that these groups “are not ‘terrorizing’ Israelis, they are just defending their land and lives.”
In the same letter, Abdulrahim started a paragraph thus: “Ever since its occupation in 1948, Israel has killed innocent Palestinians…”
This phrase is deeply troubling as it suggests that the formation of Israel resulted in the ‘occupation’ of land it has no rightful claim to. This is clearly not the case.
Does Abdulrahim believe that the Jewish people has a right to self-determination within any borders in the Land of Israel?
Furthermore, given that she bristled at the words “murdered innocent Israeli civilians,” does Abdulrahim view ordinary Palestinians as innocent but not average Israelis killed while going about their daily business?
While the articles written by Abdulrahim date back two decades, it is important for her to at the very least address them now that she has been given a regular platform at The New York Times to report on Israeli-Palestinian affairs.
If these were the words of a hot-headed, opinionated student whose views were not yet fully formed, then she should say so, clearly and swiftly. If Abdulrahim now sees the world differently, it is imperative for her to reassure readers.
However, despite calls on social media for her to do just that, Abdulrahim has thus far remained silent.
News Outlets Must Vet Journalists Better
The buck does not stop with Abdulrahim.
Over the past year, HonestReporting has revealed numerous examples of contributors, essayists and journalists working for well-known news outlets who have espoused anti-Israel and antisemitic views. Many have conflated terrorism with ‘resistance,’ or sought to explain away violence directed against Israeli civilians. At least one repeatedly compared Israel with the Nazis.
The problem is not limited to traditional media, either.
Just last week, HonestReporting documented how Twitter’s new Editorial Curator Lead for the Middle East and North Africa, Fadah Jassem, has a history of anti-Israel tweets, including at least one which apparently cited notorious antisemite Louis Farrakhan.
After HonestReporting pushed for an explanation, Jassem issued an apology.
It is clear that lessons need to be learned: As a matter of basic policy, news outlets including The New York Times, the BBC and others need to stop acting as megaphones for those who espouse anti-Israel or antisemtic views, especially when the ostensible job of such individuals is to report objectively on issues related to the Jewish state.
Until then, the integrity of the media as a whole is liable to be comprised.
Meanwhile:
An interesting twist: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=
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Richard – I recorded a special video for you but it goes against EVERYTHING that Democrats’ believe in… if they haven’t taken it down yet, watch now?
SECURE WATCH: TAP THE LINK TO WATCH NOW
Democrats and their ultra-lib tech friends take down and censor any video that goes against their socialist agenda. I need you to hear this message, it’s too important.
SECURE WATCH: TAP THE LINK TO WATCH NOW
Watch while you still can.
For America,
Greg Murphy, MD
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The Never Trump Journalists Russian Collusion Betrayal
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Move Over, Teachers Unions: There’s a New Special Interest Group in Town
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Hillary Clinton’s Russian Helpers
Durham uncovers evidence of Moscow’s attempts to influence the Steele dossier.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Special counsel John Durham’s indictments have turned any number of narratives on their heads, including the question of which 2016 presidential campaign was in bed with Russians. It wasn’t Donald Trump’s .
For five years, that’s been the story line. The original claim was that Russians had “cultivated” Mr. Trump as an asset and held blackmail evidence over his head. When those over-the-top accusations fell apart, Democrats shifted to arguing that Mr. Trump and his associates had secretly colluded with the Kremlin to win the election. The press strove mightily to unearth nefarious Trump campaign contacts with Russians, though it came up with little of substance.
Contrast this to the many Russians routinely interacting with Hillary Clinton campaign contractors and surrogates, as documented by Mr. Durham’s latest indictment. Only one of them is the defendant, Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who turns out to have been the primary source for the Steele dossier, and whom Mr. Durham now charges with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Think on that: The Clinton campaign ultimately paid a Russian to gin up the core allegations against Mr. Trump. The means by which that money flowed are convoluted, though the indictment makes the connections. It notes the Clinton campaign paid its law firm, which paid the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, which paid Christopher Steele, who “retained Danchenko as a contractor.” Whether or not Mrs. Clinton was aware of any of this, there is no question her campaign got a Russian assist.
Mr. Danchenko, meanwhile, got a lot of his information from other Russians, including a Russian “sub-source” who the indictment notes was a supporter of Mrs. Clinton. This subsource at one point asks a Clinton surrogate to “[T]ell her please she [Clinton] has a big fan in [Country-1]” (bracketed text in original), and in an email to a Russian associate lays out her hopes for a job in a Clinton administration State Department. Again, more Russians providing information that fueled an FBI investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s opponent.
Mr. Danchenko also obtained dossier dirt from a Clinton surrogate, public-relations executive Charles Dolan. The indictment delves into Mr. Dolan’s own deep and extensive ties with the Russian government. It notes he “spent much of his career” with a focus on Russia. That included helping handle from 2006 to 2014 “global public relations for the Russian government.”
The indictment also lays out Mr. Dolan’s frequent interaction with senior Russians in the lead-up to the 2016 election. As part of a planned October conference in Moscow, Mr. Dolan “attended at least three meetings at the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and communicated with Russian Embassy staff, including Russian Ambassador-1 and Russian-Diplomat-1.” He also communicated with the press secretary and deputy press secretary in the Kremlin.
The indictment even includes Mr. Dolan’s suspicions about Mr. Danchenko’s background. In a June 2016 email to an acquaintance he writes: “He is too young for KGB. But I think he worked for FSB”—the KGB’s postcommunist successor. “Since he told me he spent two years in Iran. And when I first met him he knew more about me than I did. [winking emoticon].”
Despite these suspicions, Mr. Dolan worked with Mr. Danchenko and both attended that October conference, which “featured several Russian government officials,” including from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The indictment notes “participants also attended meetings in the Kremlin.” This indictment revelation is pointedly followed by the following: “According to PR Executive-1”—Mr. Dolan—“individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign did not direct, and were not aware of” his meetings with Russian nationals.
Maybe not, but the indictment clearly spells out the danger of two people engaged with the dossier being so mixed up with senior Russians. It accuses Mr. Danchenko of lying to the FBI when he claimed that he’d never told any of his friends, associates or subsources that he was working for Mr. Steele. It includes evidence showing Mr. Danchenko had informed Mr. Dolan, his subsource and “acquaintances based in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia.”
This matters, the indictment says, because the revelation of his work could “affect the likelihood that other individuals—including hostile foreign intelligence services—would learn of and attempt to influence” the dossier. In other words, the indictment lays out the possibility that Russians were aware of the dossier and using it to sow disinformation.
Mr. Danchenko pleaded not guilty this week, and his lawyer, Mark Schamel, issued a statement calling the indictment “a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence.” In response to a Veterans Day email seeking further comment, Mr. Schamel wrote: “In trial.” An attorney for Mr. Dolan didn’t respond to a request for comment.
We can’t know what the Kremlin’s goal was in 2016, or how much it accomplished. But the Danchenko indictment is making clear that this is a far more complex narrative than simply “Putin helped Trump.” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign carries its own Russian baggage.
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Can Israeli technology stay ahead of the curve?
Gamechanger to include hypersonic????
https://m.jpost.com/israel-
AND:
2022: The year Iran’s nuclear program becomes top priority for the Israeli Air Force
As Iran speeds up progress on uranium enrichment, Israel bolsters its own military strike contingencies.
By Yaakov Lappin
The year 2022 is set to be the year that the Israeli Air Forces places its long-range strike capabilities against Iran’s nuclear program sites at the top of its priority list.
Recent years have seen the IAF focus on its ability to strike regional Iranian entrenchment activities, particularly in Syria, as well as prepare attack plans against Hezbollah in Lebanon based on the concept of unleashing of thousands of guided munitions per day, while also engaging in frequent Gaza escalations. Now, however, the IAF’s planners have set their sights on targets Iranian soil.
Iran’s nuclear sites—the most famous of which are the Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment sites—are not only far away but also heavily fortified by advanced air-defense systems. In Fordow’s case, the facility is built deep inside a mountain.
Assessing the progress being made by Iran’s nuclear program is complex. On the one hand, the threshold for triggering an attack has obviously not been triggered, and for its part, Iran has announced a return to nuclear talks in Vienna with the United States and world powers.
But it’s not yet clear whether those talks will lead to an actual agreement. Even if they do, a return to the 2015 nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—would represent a very poor development for the region due to its short-term sunset clauses built into the arrangement, which would soon expire and pave the path for Iran to become a nuclear threshold state with full international legitimacy.
A better, longer deal does not seem to be on the table at this stage.
While Iran appears to have frozen parts of its nuclear infrastructure that it would need to break through to the nuclear weapon—developing an explosive mechanism and working to place that mechanism on a missile warhead—it has made alarming progress on the most challenging aspect of building a nuclear weapon: amassing sufficient fissile material.
Israel’s sped-up military preparations are therefore a direct reflection of Iran’s own speeding up of its nuclear program. Iran enriched more than 120 kilograms of uranium to the 20 percent level in October, according to the IAEA—a major jump from the 84 kilograms that Iran had previously enriched a month earlier. Iran is also openly enriching other, albeit smaller quantities of uranium to the 60 percent level, something no non-nuclear state would do.
Assessments of how long Iran would need to break through to an actual weapon range from between 18 months to two years. That’s not a long time in strategic terms.
Negotiations in Vienna over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the existing Iran nuclear deal, May 2021. Source: Enrique Mora/European External Action Service/Twitter.
‘We are working on these things’
The original 2015 nuclear deal, despite its many holes, did temporarily delay Iran’s nuclear progress, allowing the IAF to invest its resources in other missions and plans.
In 2018, after the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal and placed crippling sanctions on Iran, Tehran faced severe economic crises. Nevertheless, the regime began speeding up its uranium-enrichment activities in order to, as former Israeli National Security Adviser Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror put it, “make clear to the world what the cost of the U.S.’s exit from the agreement will be.”
Now, as the Biden administration seeks to draw Iran back to that very same deal, any delay that the JCPOA would cause Iran’s nuclear program would be very short-lived. Alternatively, Iran, which has found new ways to export its oil around the world and ways to survive sanctions, could be tempted to do away with any return to an agreement and secure its status as a breakout state instead.
One must hope, therefore, that the United States and Israel are quietly hammering out a side deal between them that would stipulate what actions would be taken if Iran approaches the breakout zone, in addition to ensuring that no one gets in Israel’s way should the hour arise for confrontation.
When IAF planners look at the challenge of reaching Iran, they must consider an enormous undertaking, requiring the most detailed planning, intelligence, ammunition selections, aerial platforms and refueling capabilities. There is no resemblance between such an operation and a short-range operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Such preparations take considerable time.
Israel’s defense establishment is increasingly vocal about those preparations. In September, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, told Walla: “We have greatly sped up our preparations for activities in Iran.”
He added that a “substantial part of the enlarged defense budget, as just recently summarized, is earmarked for this. This is highly complex work, requiring a great deal of intelligence and many operational capabilities. It requires many more ammunitions. We are working on these things.”
These comments reflect the true scope of the force build-up program needed specifically for a strike mission on Iran’s nuclear program. They also suggest that whatever plans the IAF had in place for such a mission in 2021 will be different from the plans that will be put in place in 2022.
Such strategizing, in and of itself, isn’t new. Israel first began developing its military capabilities for stopping Iran’s nuclear program in 2004—hasn’t stopped. As time goes by, the chances of Israel needing to deploy these capabilities appear to have risen, even if there is no immediate trigger for such action tomorrow.
The year 2022, with Iran’s progress, and pending decision on whether or not to engage in diplomacy, could prove to be a critical junction.
‘A military option is on the table’
To be sure, a strike would represent the very last resort from Israel’s perspective. Not least of which, this is due to the fact that a strike could see Iran quickly activate Hezbollah—its heavily armed proxy in Lebanon that is 20 times more powerful today than it was on the eve of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Hezbollah’s arsenal of more than 150,000 surface-to-surface projectiles is designed to deter Israel from launching the very strike for which the IAF is currently preparing contingencies.
Iran’s Shi’ite proxies in Syria and Iraq could also join the fray after an attack, setting the scene for a major Mideast war. Such a scenario is not inevitable and the nature of warfare is unpredictable, but it must be factored into any strike contingency.
The enlarged Israeli defense budget for the year 2021—some 62.3 billion shekels (and 60 billion shekels for 2022)—represents a sizable increase from 2020’s 57.5 billion shekels expenditure on defense.
Ultimately, it is vital that Iran understands that a military option is on the table, and since the American strategic focus has clearly shifted to the Far East, it falls to Israel to carry out this function.
In the past, Iran has taken military threats to its nuclear sites seriously, as is visible in the length that the Islamic Republic has gone to in protecting its nuclear infrastructure with air-defense systems and installing parts of it underground.
In 2003, when Iran saw American forces on its borders in Afghanistan and Iraq, it froze its nuclear program to avoid military action. Today, however, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, does not appear to be taking military threats from anyone very seriously.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (right) embraces Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Source: Khamenei’s Twitter account, posted May 24, 2021.
The placing of a credible and imminent military threat is therefore critical at this junction.
For Israel, this means also having to be ready for the full-scale conflict that could follow with Iran’s proxies such a strike.
Plans by Israel to unleash devastating firepower on Hezbollah—combined with a rapid ground offensive—would mean that it would take Lebanon years to recover from such a war.
The timing of these potential scenarios is not around the corner, but their relevancy is growing with time.
At the tactical level, it appears as if Israel’s growing fleet of F-35 fighter jets will have leading roles in such scenarios with their stealth capabilities, and ability to infiltrate deep into enemy air space and gather enormous amounts of intelligence, which can be sent back to fourth-generation F-15 and F-16 fighter jets to attack.
In some ways, the IAF is still coming to terms with the full range of capabilities possessed by the F-35 and how these can be combined with roles for F-16 and F-15 jets, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
‘Their dream of regional hegemony and beyond’
There are some who question whether it is even possible to really stop Iran on its patient, calculated nuclear march. Some argue that even if Iran becomes armed with nuclear weapons, it would not use them against Israel, and that the threat of retaliation and global reaction would kick in.
Such arguments are effectively dealt with by an examination of Iran’s likely strategy once it becomes nuclear; this would probably center on providing a nuclear umbrella for its ever-more confident proxies in the Middle East.
As Amidror, the former national security adviser, recently stated in a paper for the IDF’s Dado think tank, “even if the Iranians do not use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel,” the nuclear umbrella in their possession “would make it easier for them to realize their dream of regional hegemony and beyond. With nuclear weapons in their hands, they could act against regional states, foremost among them, Israel, with far less concern regarding possible responses. It is fair to assume that they believe that when they possess nuclear weapons, Israel, too, will be deterred from acting against Iranian interests, even if Iran’s efforts will go towards nourishing their stranglehold mechanism that they wish to place around the Jewish state in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.”
Amidror warned that nuclear weapons would make Iran feel immune enough to destabilize the Middle East with much greater intensity than it does today, without having to worry about American retaliation or the threat of a Libya-style war for regime change.
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https://www.jns.org/pompeo-israel-has-duty-to-defend-itself-from-iran-absent-us-support/
Pompeo: Israel has ‘duty’ to defend itself from Iran absent US support
“It’s really dangerous what the administration is doing,” said the former secretary of state. “They will, if they head back into that deal, provide resources and money for a regime that has made clear its intentions to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. They want to destroy America as well.”
By Sean Savage and Ellie Cohanim
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believes that Israel has the “duty” to defend itself from Iran if Tehran takes actions that threaten Israel absent U.S. support.
“If the United States is not with Israel and the Iranians begin to take actions that threaten Israel, Israel not only has the right but the duty to defend itself,” Pompeo told JNS as part of an exclusive interview for “Global Perspectives with Ellie Cohanim” on the sidelines of the Republican Jewish Coalition conference last weekend in Las Vegas.
Pompeo, who was elaborating on comments he made last month that Israel may have to attack Iran on its own due to “U.S. appeasement,” said that the partnership with Israel is critical for America and that any gaps can put the Israeli leadership in a difficult position.
“We should be helping Israelis keep themselves safe and their country secure,” said Pompeo. “When there’s a gap real, perceived for both, it puts the Israeli leadership in a very difficult position, and we should never force Israeli leadership to be in that place.”
The former secretary of state’s comments come as Israel has become increasingly alarmed over the Biden administration’s push to re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said that Israel “will do what we need to do” to prevent a nuclear Iran, a recent address to the group United Against Nuclear Iran, as reported in The Jerusalem Post.
“Iran poses a strategic threat to the world and an existential threat to Israel, and [it] ought not to be allowed to get away with it,” said Bennett.
Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi told Israeli lawmakers this week that the Israeli military is ramping up its preparations for a possible attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Kochavi told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the IDF “is accelerating operational planning and preparedness to deal with Iran and the military nuclear threat. Thankfully, the budget that was approved [last week] makes it possible to contend with a variety of threats.”
Tehran continues to ramp up nuclear program
Talks on reviving the Iranian nuclear deal is set to resume on Nov. 29 in Vienna. Still, the Biden administration has expressed impatience with Iran and has suggested it has been looking at “other options.”
Negotiations between Iran and six powers, including the United States, wrapped up in June, and no date had been set for a seventh round of talks until now. They had been put on hold until after the Iranian presidential election on June 18, which ushered in hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi.
“It’s really dangerous what the administration is doing with Iran. They will, if they head back into that deal, provide resources and money for a regime that has made clear its intentions,” said Pompeo, adding that leaders of the Islamic Republic aims “to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. They want to destroy America as well.”
“We ought not to be engaging with the regime like that. We ought not to be funding and underwriting them as seeking to integrate these people into the global space,” he said.
“It’s been fascinating in the last few weeks to watch [foreign-policy officials] as the Iranians have rejected their outstretched hand repeatedly to watch them come to see that this is a regime that has intention of stopping its nuclear program,” added Pompeo.
Indeed, Iran has continued to ramp up its nuclear program. Last week, Iran said it had almost doubled its stock of enriched uranium in less than a month, while the International Atomic Energy Agency has said its oversight capabilities in Iran are being weakened. Iran has enriched uranium up to 60 percent, which is a short gap from weapons-grade 90 percent. Under the nuclear deal, Iran was barred from enriching above 3.67 percent.
Pompeo said that the United States needs to stand with Israel against the threat of Iran.
“We can prevent that,” he said. “We can be alongside of them, and we can help them do what they need to do to take care of their own people in the Jewish homeland.”
.Please click here to watch the full interview with Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
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Are they too dumb to continue their irrational fealty? Most can't even explain their hypocritical commitment. They just love Streisand.
It’s time for Jewish Democrats to ditch the hard left
Obsequious groveling to please progressives comes with a huge cost. Continue to empower them, let them set your agenda and fashion your policies, and you will lose more elections.
By Thane Rosenbaum
The recent gubernatorial election in Virginia, with its upset win by a Republican upstart against a pillar of the Democratic establishment, is being discussed as a harbinger of election cycles to come.
Don’t bet on it.
Yes, Virginians sent a message to the Democratic Party: Obsequious groveling to please progressives comes with a huge cost. Continue to empower them, let them set your agenda and fashion your policies, and you will lose more elections. And there’s a message for Jewish voters, too: It’s time to vote your own parochial interests, ditch the hard left and insist that elected officials speak as Jews and for Jews.
Democrats could start by taking back their party from “The Squad.” The four female Representatives didn’t adopt a military name for nothing. The intention was always to start wars, take hostages and Occupy Wall Street—not the progressive movement, but an actual occupation. And they have been banking on the obtuse acquiescence of party leaders all along.
What we learned in Virginia and in other local races where seats were flipped or where blue-state Democrats barely escaped losses is that the culture war, social policies, spending habits, invisible borders and, perhaps most of all, the America-bashing educational curriculum of progressives is completely incompatible with how most Americans feel about their country.
And isn’t that the point: Democratic Socialists are wielding disproportionate power in Joe Biden’s presidency? Candidate Biden presented himself as a sure-handed moderate and national unifier. Yet, from the very first days of his administration, he signaled a leftward lurch from the center. “Green New Deal,” “Build Back Better,” “Systemic Racism,” “White Supremacy”—all penetrated the national discourse, and none relied on the vocabulary of a political moderate.
Progressives were rewarded for helping secure Biden’s victory. Black Lives Matter blanketed the Democratic Party. And the president, perhaps owing to his advanced age, demonstrated that he possessed neither the muscle nor mettle to hold progressives back. Some predicted such a turn of events, but the desire to see Donald Trump leave the White House overcame any fear of what may have been waiting in the wings of the West Wing.
Imagine if Rev. Jesse Jackson had hijacked the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, possessing outsized influence in setting the economic and cultural agenda of the United States during the Clinton presidency.
That’s what’s happening now. This recent election is either a serious backlash or a mere blip—an aberration owing to the eruption at the Loudoun County School Board meeting. Suddenly, across the country, parents began to question the racial determinism of what their children are being taught in school—a curriculum predicated on deprogramming children of a race-neutral, equal opportunity, merit-based, liberal-minded view of America.
Have we had enough of the nonsense? Do we not realize that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is seated in Congress only because she resides in a diversity-rich district of millennials, Twitter-users, woke-warriors, climate-worriers, statue-topplers and law-and-order skeptics? A perfect electoral storm brought her to Washington, but it was in no way a bellwether of larger American attitudes.
Immediately after the election, Democratic leaders reassured the party that the economic overhaul will continue. And it would coincide with the larger culture war played out in our politics and schools. Democrats believe they are better educated than Republicans. Perhaps. But it doesn’t make them smarter. Among Democrats, there is a long history of slavish loyalties, tired tropes and repetitions made out of habit.
For instance, Jews are known for their commitment to education. And yet the leaders of the grassroots movement to undo the teachings of critical race theory do not appear to be especially represented by Jews. Is that because they all agree that America is a racist nation?
Exit polls in Virginia indicate only a modest increase in Jewish voters abandoning the Democratic Party. Since the days of FDR, the party can always depend on, if not altogether take for granted, Jewish support. Not rising inflation, supply chain failures, southern border laxity, a forsaken Afghanistan, rising anti-Jewish bigotry, or the impending revival of the Iran Deal will apparently change the composition of the Jewish vote.
If Democrats aren’t selling it, then a majority of Jewish Americans aren’t buying it. After all, it’s not like Republicans, even Jewish ones, aren’t trying to make a sale.
Perhaps all the talk about white privilege has convinced Jews that they are not entitled to ask for anything. They must step aside in shame. Check their privilege and keep their mouths shut. No longer are they a distinct group of Americans with concerns vital and unique to their community. The “inclusiveness” of this moment, tellingly, does not include Jews.
And matters are made worse when Jewish elected officials are too timid to sound the alarm on behalf of their people. Jews beaten on the streets of New York, Los Angeles and Miami after Israel’s last Gaza war. Jewish students intimidated and silenced on college campuses. The ceaseless blood libeling of Israel. Calls to defund America’s support for the Iron Dome. BDS talk that escalated from whispers to a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream boycott in the West Bank.
Where’s the Jewish leadership on these issues? Why isn’t there a Jewish “Squad”—a group of governmental leaders unafraid to stand in solidarity with their tribe, unified against antisemitism in its various modern guises.
Jewish officials never fail to join a Black Lives Matter protest. But would they cross the street to embrace a beleaguered, bullied Jew?
What to call a Jewish counterpart to “The Squad”? The Chosen Squadron. Bagel Brigade. G.I. Jews. It only matters that some auxiliary force exists, comprising Jewish leaders willing to openly defend Jews. The grim obstacle to any such enlistment, however, is that anti-Semitism is not, for the time being, a progressive priority. Until that changes, they will want little part in protecting Jews.
Recently, five members of Congress called upon cable television providers to offer more Jewish-themed programming. The idea is to expose Americans to a distinct minority that is not merely “white-adjacent.” The prejudice against Jews happens to predate all other bigotries. Even today, despite all their success and presumed privileges, they are the targets of more hate crimes, by wide margins, than any other group.
And the five legislators behind this initiative to combat anti-Semitism? Only two are Jewish. And none of them have the last names: Schumer, Nadler, Feinstein, Schiff, Raskin, Cardin, Ossoff, Rosen, Blumenthal and Sanders.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. His latest work, “Saving Free Speech … from Itself,” was just published. He can be reached via his website.
This article was first published by the Jewish Journal.
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Tobin hangs in there.
Is there a future in bipartisan advocacy for Israel?
Nikki Haley’s demand that AIPAC snub Democrats who aren’t fully supportive of Israel won GOP applause. Still, efforts to preserve or revive what’s left of a shattered consensus must continue.
JONATHAN S. TOBIN
(November 8, 2021 / JNS) Former Ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was preaching to the choir when she fired a shot over the bow of AIPAC at the annual conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas this past weekend. Along with other GOP 2024 hopefuls and political celebrities, Haley was at the RJC event to reach out to the pro-Israel community and demonstrate her pro-Israel bona fides. Like the other speakers there, she was eager to deride the Biden administration, woke leftists and warn about the dangers of the Democratic Party’s influential anti-Israel faction. But Haley struck a nerve when she mentioned AIPAC.
“I have spoken at AIPAC events many times, and they’ve always been unbelievably supportive to me,” she said. However, she then added that “if a politician supports the disastrous Iran deal, opposes moving the American embassy to Jerusalem and is embraced by anti-Semites who support the BDS movement, then your pro-Israel group should have absolutely nothing to do with him.”
That was catnip to the RJC, many of whose activists have given up on AIPAC and what they consider its unhealthy obsession with bipartisanship. They think that the lobby’s belief in bipartisanship as the foundation for the pro-Israel community’s influence is at best outdated, and at worst, merely a cover for a slow-motion abandonment of Israel.
Jewish Republicans view most Democrats’ embrace of former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal as an act of treachery that undermined the security of Israel and the West. They regard Jewish Democrats, who used to loudly cheer false promises by past presidential candidates from both parties about moving the embassy to Jerusalem but then dismissed former President Donald Trump’s historic tilt towards Israel on that issue and others, as hypocrites. Just as important, they are shocked by the tolerance that many liberal Democrats have demonstrated for influential members of their party who are open Israel-haters and anti-Semites, like “Squad” members Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). They say it demonstrates that not only do they care more about partisanship than the Jewish state but that their claims to sound the alarm on Jew-hatred are utterly insincere.
In its defense, AIPAC’s focus on building a broad coalition of supporters of Israel regardless of party affiliation was the foundation of its success. The conceit of AIPAC was to encourage people across the ideological spectrum to befriend politicians from both parties. With AIPAC’s help, officeholders came to understand that joining the ranks of the pro-Israel movement didn’t just help them raise money from Jewish donors, but placed them in the mainstream in a country where love of the Jewish state is baked deep into America’s political DNA.
That formula worked well for decades. In a country in which there are two major parties that have exchanged control of Congress and the White House several times in the last 30 years, it made no sense for supporters of Israel to concentrate on one to the exclusion of the other.
Though AIPAC’s mythic status as the all-powerful “Israel lobby” that Jew-haters obsessed over was highly exaggerated—its influence did not compare to lobbies that represented various powerful industries and didn’t cancel out the support that the Arab lobby could count on in the State Department and much of the government bureaucracy—the group’s ability to get results was real.
But the AIPAC formula that was conceived and first achieved success in the 1970s and 1980s is no longer working.
Part of the reason for that is that the two parties have more or less exchanged identities on Israel in the past half-century. Democrats were once the solidly pro-Israel party. Now, its members are deeply divided over it with its left-wing activist wing increasingly influenced by intersectional ideology that falsely claims that the Jewish state embodies “white privilege” and that the Palestinian war to destroy it is somehow akin to the struggle for civil rights in the United States.
At the same time, the GOP is now nearly unanimous in its affection for the U.S.-Israel alliance. That trend reached its apotheosis under Trump, who can lay claim to being the most pro-Israel president to date, even if Democrats and the majority of Jewish voters give him no credit for it.
While the congressional leadership of the Democrats still firmly identifies as pro-Israel—as demonstrated by the determination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer not to let the opposition of the so-called progressive wing of their party stop funding of the Iron Dome missile-defense system earlier this year—members of the party as just as likely to be found among Israel’s most fervent ideological opponents as its friends.
It is wrong to label all Democrats as being as bad as the “Squad.” But when push has come to shove on key issues of interest to the pro-Israel community, most of them fell short. That meant that some who are not only Jewish but who have long claimed to be Israel’s most ardent defenders either joined the other side on the Iran deal—as did former Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.)—or simply acquiesced to their party’s betrayal, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did.
With courageous exceptions to this standard few and far between, such as Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), who both opposed the Iran deal and called out Tlaib and others for their anti-Semitic invective during the House debate about Iron Dome, it’s possible to argue that perhaps those cheering Haley’s comments are right about AIPAC’s failure and the need to reject bipartisan advocacy.
Yet it’s both premature and unwise to completely write off AIPAC.
It is deeply wrong for Jewish Democrats to accuse their GOP counterparts of politicizing the issue of Israel since it was their party, and not the Republicans, which failed on Iran and Jerusalem, as well as by their cowardly refusal to reject the anti-Semitism of the progressives. But the goal of pro-Israel advocacy can’t be to convince all Jews to become Republicans. That would be true even if it were possible, which it isn’t, given the fact that most believe so-called social-justice issues are actually more important than Israel and fail to see that anti-Semitism is as much a danger on the left as it is on the right.
The objective for the pro-Israel movement is not to destroy the Democrats, but to get them to return to their former stance of strong support and revive a consensus that the left is destroying. That means that efforts to cultivate moderates and even some progressives—and to convince them to back the Jewish state—is still both the right thing to do and good politics must continue. At the moment, that looks like a losing battle, as the party’s growing progressive wing has fallen under the spell of toxic ideas like critical race theory that give a permission slip to anti-Semitism.
In American politics, change is a constant. The left may have thought the future was theirs after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the defeat of Trump. But the party’s radical tilt may herald its impending defeat in future elections and a necessary course correction that will eventually bring it back closer to the center. At that point, if AIPAC is still doing its job, pro-Israel Democrats will be there to reap the benefits.
That doesn’t mean Republicans shouldn’t continue to oppose the left’s anti-Israel invective and Biden administration policies that undermine the alliance. Yet in the long run, the pro-Israel community will be stronger if AIPAC is capable of vindicating its bipartisan strategy. If it can’t, then that will be a tragedy for the Democrats, the lobby and Israel.
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