Israel’s strategic game of survival
By Caroline Glick
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s obscene call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ouster from power on the Senate floor on Thursday was the latest sign that Hamas’s strategy is working. On the “Caroline Glick Show” this week, U.S. Military Academy professor Col. John Spencer, who chairs West Point’s Urban Warfare Studies Program, explained that the terrorist organization’s goal for victory is a concerted political-military strategy.
Hamas, he said, knew that Israeli Defense Forces would respond with force to its Oct. 7 assault in southern Israel. “They wanted Israel’s counterattack, and then they wanted to hold in the tunnels and use the hostages just to buy time for the international community—namely, the United States—to stop the IDF in their operations.”
“Their only goal is to survive. … It’s all about time. They want to survive Israel’s attack against them, which gives them immense political power. If they survive in any way, they have strategically won the war,” said Spencer.
Hamas didn’t invent this strategy. This has been the Palestinians’ strategy for defeating Israel since at least the 1982 war in Lebanon. In that war, the PLO relied on the United States to force Israel to permit the PLO to survive to fight another day, by evacuating to Tunisia.
The Palestinians clearly identified Israel’s greatest strategic vulnerabilities and built their strategy around them. Its first vulnerability is its Jewishness. Israel is the Jew of the international community. As such, it is continuously scapegoated, just as Jews have been scapegoated throughout history. The United States is the only powerful nation that has ever been willing to stand up to international bigotry against the Jewish state. So the only thing needed to collapse Israel’s international position is for America to turn against Israel.
This goes double for military capabilities. Since 1973, Israel’s ability to maintain its war effort militarily has dependent on the U.S. resupply of arms during the course of war. By the Palestinians’ line of reasoning, if their many friends could convince Washington not to supply Israel with weapons in wartime, then they will survive.
Since all the Palestinians need to do to win is survive, their strategic aces in the hole are antisemitism and time.
Today, all aspects of U.S. policy regarding the Hamas war against Israel in Gaza and the larger Iranian-directed war to destroy the Jewish state are aligned with the Palestinian strategy.
The Biden administration’s insistence that Israel permit unlimited quantities of food, water, fuel, medicine and other goods to enter the Gaza Strip ensures that Hamas will maintain its control over the population.
America’s threats to end its military resupply to Israel has forced Israel to slow down its operations in Gaza in the interests of conserving munitions.
Biden’s demand that Israel not conquer Rafah—Hamas’s last conventional holdout, where a quarter of its forces and its military leadership are holed down—is a demand that Israel allow Hamas to survive with its leadership and that part of its army intact. In other words, it is a demand that Israel not only allow Hamas to survive, but that Israel permit Hamas to end the war with a victory parade.
Likewise, the administration’s obsessive focus on building a Palestinian state, which under all circumstances will be dominated by Hamas, with its opposition to continued Israeli military control over Gaza after the war indicates that not only is the administration opposed to an Israeli victory, but it seeks a Palestinian victory.
As Spencer explained, in prosecuting the war to date, Israel has managed to do the impossible. It has waged the war successfully on the tactical level despite the massive obstacles the Biden administration has placed against its operations at every turn.
Israel’s tactical prowess owes to the fact that the IDF is a citizens’ army. As such, it is able to tap into and utilize the unique skills of all sectors of Israeli society. For instance, in the weeks leading up to the ground invasion, the so-called Hilltop Youth—young men who live in isolated communities in Judea and Samaria—appeared at the mobilization base outside Gaza with their welding tools and metal beams. They fitted APCs and tanks with steel canopies that protected them from RPGs and other armor piercing projectiles. No one called them up to help. They just arrived. And their efforts saved the lives of countless soldiers.
Similarly, a high-tech engineer called up to reserve duty developed a drone capable of operating inside the tunnels. Cross-industry collaboration with the IDF led to the immediate production of the drones for deployment in the tunnels—to great effect. One of the IDF’s tactical innovations that most impressed Spencer was its success in turning Hamas’s tactical advantage—its tunnels—into a disadvantage by learning to fight inside them.
‘This is a conventional war’
Since Israel first bore out the accuracy of the Palestinians’ strategic assessment of its weaknesses by standing down in in the face of U.S. pressure in Beirut in 1982, Jerusalem has opted to avoid the strategic contest altogether and focused on achieving tactical advantage across time. Its tactical successes enabled life to go on in Israel as the Palestinian war against it festered.
The situation wasn’t desirable. Over the decades, the Palestinian-led political war against Israel’s right to exist constantly escalated in scale and destructive capacity in the international arena.
But on a day-to-day level, Israel prospered. Given the sharp differences of opinion among Israelis over the strategic goals vis-à-vis the Palestinians, by limiting the battle to the tactical arena, Israeli society remained unified sufficiently to fight limited wars in Gaza, as well as limited operations in Judea and Samaria.
The clash in Israel revolved around Israelis’ perception of Palestinian goals. Israelis on the left believed Palestinian demands were limited, and therefore, it would be possible to peacefully coexist if Israel appeased them by withdrawing from Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and giving them a state. Israelis on the right believed Palestinian demands were unlimited; therefore, Israel must have the national and strategic means to defeat them as a military and political threat by retaining perpetual control of Judea and Samaria, and granting the Palestinians limited autonomy.
The military scope and genocidal nature of Hamas’s assault on Israel on Oct. 7 did two things. First, it settled the argument between left and right. Domestic support for Palestinian statehood dried up. Depending on the poll, between two-thirds and 85% of Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) now oppose Palestinian statehood.
Oct. 7 also ended Israel’s ability to suffice with tactical successes and avoid a strategic victory. Hamas’s strike was strategic. The dimensions of their slaughtering and the jubilation with which it was greeted across Palestinian society mean that nothing short of total victory will suffice to ensure Israel’s survival.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration and its Democratic Party refuse to understand the strategic stakes. Spencer explained that the West—and specifically, the United States—will not acknowledge two fundamental facts about the war. First, this is a conventional war, not a counterterror operation. Hamas is not merely a terrorist organization. It is a large, fortified army that began the war with 30,000 soldiers organized in specialized, well-trained units operating under a unified command.
To understand the nature of the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, “you really have to go back to World War II-style battles,” said Spencer.
“Defense is always the strongest form of warfare … Hamas has had 15-plus years to build defensive positions. … Yes, they don’t have an air force. They don’t have armor and tanks. They’re mostly light infantry. But they’re in probably the most defensive terrain that could ever be created. They’re in literally bomb-proof bunkers underneath every house. … It’s 400 miles of tunnels that range from 15 feet to 300 feet underground where no military munition can reach.”
The IDF, Spencer noted, “has lots of drones and things above, but you can’t see through concrete. You can’t see underneath the buildings. It’s an immense defensive capability, but also the rocket supply. The fact that Hamas has launched over 12,000 rockets at Israel’s civilian sites—every one of them a war crime—is part of their combat power. … The fact that they’re sitting in their defensive positions, waiting for attack and have been planning for that for 15 years means it doesn’t really matter how big the IDF is or how powerful they are.”
The second fundamental feature of Hamas’s war against Israel that the United States refuses to acknowledge is that Hamas’s Oct. 7 operation was not a terrorist attack. “They did terrorist things, but that was a full division-level invasion of a nation, of Israel,” and “while Hamas is a terrorist organization, it’s also an army.”
The terrorists that carried out the slaughter that day didn’t “penetrate” Israel, like a suicide bomber who explodes himself in a crowded cafe. Hamas operatives invaded Israel with thousands of well-trained, heavily armed terror forces organized as light infantry and artillery units. Their goals were to seize whole communities, military bases and villages, and enact a premeditated plan of sadistic slaughter, gang rape, seizure of hostages of all ages, seizure of strategic targets, and, if possible, the holding of territory within Israel. The ground invasion was synchronized with a massive missile and drone strike, in addition to a cyber-attack against first-response systems and other critical infrastructure.
Three things Israel must do to win
Israel’s mini-war against Hamas in 2014 ended with a tactical victory and strategic stalemate. Ten years ago, Netanyahu was able to withstand the Obama-Biden administration’s demand that Israel capitulate and enable Hamas to win a strategic victory by mobilizing the support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which opposed Hamas.
Fearing Hamas’s mastermind Iran—and in light of the U.S.’s determination to enable a Hamas victory to empower Iran—today the moderate Arab states are unwilling to stick their necks out. In the absence of Sunni support, Israel is compelled to stand alone against the United States.
To win, Israel must do three things. It must remain politically stable. Schumer’s broadside from the Senate floor was just the latest salvo in an all-out effort by the administration to destabilize Israel politically and replace Netanyahu with his chief rival Benny Gantz, whom they believe will agree to capitulate and accept the formation of a Palestinian state. Minister-without-Portfolio Gideon Sa’ar’s decision on Tuesday to ditch Gantz’s party and take his faction’s four Knesset seats into the coalition speaks to the near consensus view in Israel that Netanyahu is the only leader that will fight to victory despite U.S. opposition. On Wednesday, a new Direct Polls survey showed that U.S. hostility has strengthened Netanyahu and the right. Netanyahu leads Gantz 47 % to 37% in public support. His right-religious bloc of parties, (including Sa’ar) is polling a 62 seat-majority to Gantz’s leftist bloc of parties’ 48 seats.
The second thing Israel must do is mobilize U.S. public opinion on behalf of its goal of achieving strategic victory by eradicating Hamas and maintaining its security control over Gaza for the foreseeable future. According to last month’s Harvard-Harris poll. Americans support Israel against Hamas 82% to 18%. Netanyahu opened a campaign this week to secure public support with a slew of interviews to the American media and his speech to AIPAC’s annual convention.
Schumer’s hysterical attempts to walk his remarks back amid a furious storm of criticism from all quarters revealed that pro-Israel public opinion remains a factor in American politics.
Finally, Israel must conquer Rafah in defiance of the Biden’s redline and do so as quickly as possible.
As the weeks and months pass, and Election Day in America draws nearer, if Israel remains politically stable, if the IDF continues its brilliant fight in Gaza and if U.S. opinion remains supportive, just as Israel has turned Hamas’s tactical advantages into its own, it will turn the Palestinian U.S.-centered strategy on its head. For once, time will work in Israel’s favor, and Israel will win the strategic victory it needs to secure its survival.
Originally published at JNS.org.
And:
The Palestinian Terrorist AuthorityA new report reveals the insanity of entrusting Israel'ssecurity to Ramallah |
For western liberals, the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the only answer to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.
The Biden administration wants post-war Gaza to be ruled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). This is being resisted by Israel, one of its disagreements with the US over the conduct of the war for which the Biden administration is increasingly punishing it.
The US is impervious to the argument that the PA, no less than Hamas, would turn Gaza once again into a terror state. The Bidenites close their eyes to the copious evidence of PA incitement and rejectionism. They dismiss the huge salaries the PA pays to terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons and to the families of terrorists who have been killed.
They ignore the survey published 100 days after the outbreak of the Gaza war which revealed that around 82 per cent of Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria support the October 7 pogrom, and that support for Hamas among the Arabs in Judea and Samaria rose from 12 per cent in September 2023 to 44 per cent in November-December 2023.
Now a startling and important report by the Israeli group Regavim, which works to protect Israel’s land and resources in order to uphold its integrity as a Jewish state, illustrates the insanity of assuming that the PA is a route to peace and security in the region.
Under the 1995 Oslo Agreement, a broad Palestinian security apparatus was established consisting of the Palestinian Police and other security officials who are supposed to combat terrorism and collaborate with Israel on security matters. But the Regavim report, “Officers by Day, Terrorists by Night”, has identified at least 78 members of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF), many of them officers, who since 2020 have carried out terrorist attacks against Jews.
Since Regavim gathered its information from official PA statements and announcements, this figure is likely to be a significant underestimate.
In an interview following the October 7 massacre, Palestinian Security Services spokesman Talal Duweikat said:
In 30 years, the Palestinian Security Services have sacrificed more than 2,000 martyrs and hundreds have been arrested, some serving life sentences.
Jibril Rajoub, the former head of the Preventative Security Service in Judea and Samaria, said that 12 per cent of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails were members of the Palestinian security services. Hasin Hama’il, a spokesman for the leading party in the PA, Fatah, spokesman boasted about the high number of PASF officers in Israeli prisons and stressed that “the PASF do not arrest Munadhilin (Palestinian terrorists); to the contrary, members of the PASF are the very ones involved in the fight against the occupation”.
The Regavim report says that many PASF officers hold parallel positions in civil or military “resistance” movements such as the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades (the military arm of Fatah). Rather than upholding public order and preventing terrorism, they themselves carry out acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians and members of Israel’s security forces.
It says that more and more PASF members and officers are taking a significant role in encouraging and supporting terrorism. Children and other family members of PASF staff and officers are actively involved in terrorist activities, alongside PASF officers who personally carry out murderous attacks against Israel.
PASF officers also disrupt Israeli security forces’ operations in Judea and Samaria. After the outbreak of the current war, Fatah commanders serving in the PA security apparatus in Jenin issued a 24-hour ultimatum to Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), demanding that he declare a total and open confrontation against Israel “by any and all means” or else they would declare a military revolt.
The reports lists examples of Fatah “martyrdom” proclamations identifying terrorists from the ranks of the PASF. It lists PASF officers arrested for involvement in terrorism between 2004 and 2020; those arrested prior to 2020; those wounded while carrying out attacks against civilians or IDF soldiers; those PASF personnel who incite terrorism. The details are specific and copious.
Since the October 7 pogrom, there have been many suggestions that the catastrophic failure of Israeli intelligence to understand the signals that such an onslaught was in the making was due to “the conception”, group-think based on wishful thinking that persistently misinterpreted and fatally underestimated the intentions and capacity of the Hamas leadership. The report observes that this catastrophic “conception” is still alive and well in Israel’s security and political circles over the PA’s activities in the disputed areas of Judea and Samaria.
Around the time that the survey of Palestinian support for Hamas in the disputed territories was published, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant stressed “the importance of security coordination with the Palestinian Authority”. He declared:
At this time the Palestinian Authority is working to curb terrorism, to rescue Israelis who accidentally stray into territories under the PA’s jurisdiction, and I think that this effort is helping us — otherwise we will have to do it ourselves. If we reach a situation where they act against us — we will know what to do, but we’re not in that situation.
The report says, to the contrary:
It is not only Regavim’s contention that a reality in which the PASF turns its guns on Israel is not a futuristic scenario but is happening, increasingly, even now; senior officials in the Fatah Movement and the PASF have already made it very clear that the members of all branches of the PA security framework are actively involved in the struggle against “the occupation,” and proudly boast about the large and growing number of “martyrs” and prisoners from among their ranks.
The notion that on “the day after the war” the very same Palestinian “security mechanisms,” which are actually terrorist mechanisms, will bear responsibility for Judea and Samaria, as well as for Gaza is chilling; the very thought should be keeping every sane person awake at night. It is this same line of thought that brought the massacre of October 7th upon us.
The Palestinian Authority and its “security” mechanisms in particular believe themselves to be the hands entrusted with the dual mission of conquering Israel and eradicating the Jewish People. This is their operative plan and their ultimate objective. Any statement to the contrary, made in service of or by any other interest, is tantamount to burying one's head in the sand and poses a strategic threat to the State of Israel and the Jewish People.
The Biden administration and other western governments — as well as the Israeli establishment — have their heads very firmly stuck in this particular sand. That’s because it has suited everyone to pretend that there are “good” Palestinians who believe that fighting terrorism alongside Israel is in everyone’s interests. Just as wishful thinking about Hamas paved the way for the atrocities of October 7, this fantasy “conception” about the PASF has already been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks on Israelis. If the Biden administration has its way, it will pave the way for future pogroms.
The report by Regavim should be brought to the attention of the American public and their lawmakers, to alert them all to this further betrayal of Israel’s security that is being proposed in their name.
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The Elite War on the American Middle Class—and How to End It
Christine Rosen April 2024
Being middle class in America used to mean something—something socially transformative, something even revolutionary. The American middle class represented a form of national social order never before seen on this earth—cultural domination not by the very rich and very educated, or the political domination either by tyrants or the mob, but by a mass of people, relatively well-to-do, who felt themselves fortunate in their circumstances. That was what made the American middle class different from the French or English bourgeoisie. Its members believed, and the country believed, that they were the nation’s backbone, its true governing class, and its moral compass.
Throughout most of the 20th century, the term “middle class” signaled membership in an optimistic and growing group, most of whom had risen within memory from physically laborious jobs in farming or on factory floors to offices and small businesses they ran themselves. The middle class had enjoyed long periods of prosperity and stability, and each generation of politicians, on the left and the right, had enthusiastically pandered to it because they were the American majority, and it was from the American majority you could build a political consensus and a political coalition.
What were the core convictions of the American middle class? It valued its freedom and autonomy, was proudly patriotic, involved itself in its local communities, and was churchgoing without being fanatical about it. Its position at the dead center of American life was reflected in mass culture in ways that were both positively reinforcing and widespread. If you turned on any radio program in the 1930s and 1940s or any network television show before the advent of the cable era, you would likely find some benign portrait of the middle-class American nuclear family staring back at you. Providing that kind of mirroring comfort made cultural and financial sense in a country where approximately 61 percent of adults lived in middle-class households.
By the early-21st century, however, the cultural and political power of the middle class had begun to erode—subtly at first, then rapidly. In his memoir of his time working for President Barack Obama, David Axelrod recalled chastising Obama in 2008 for his “clinical and bloodless” discussions of the country’s vast middle and reminded him of its importance to the Democrats’ election prospects. “I talk about the middle class all the time,” Obama peevishly insisted. Axelrod disagreed and advised Obama that he could not merely “sprinkle mentions of the middle class formulaically in speeches,” as he had been doing. He had to wage “a day-in, day-out campaign on the issue.”
It was good advice, as numerous signs at the time of Obama’s successful bid for the presidency were pointing to a downturn in middle-class fortunes—and all this before the financial meltdown of September 2008 that led to a decline of 35 percent in the wealth holdings of Americans. A 2006 report from the Brookings Institution found that “middle-income neighborhoods as a proportion of all metropolitan neighborhoods declined from 58 percent in 1970 to 41 percent in 2000.”
Even in the suburban neighborhoods favored by the middle class, the proportion of middle-class families shrank to 44 percent in 2000, down from 64 percent in 1970. “Suburban middle-income neighborhoods were replaced in roughly equal measure by low-income and very high-income neighborhoods,” the report concluded. By 2012, a Pew survey found “fully 85 percent of self-described middle-class adults say it is more difficult now than it was a decade ago for middle-class people to maintain their standard of living.”
Still, as late as 2013, Democratic political consultant James Carville and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg published a book titled It’s the Middle Class, Stupid! in which they congratulated themselves and the Obama campaign for successfully winning reelection on a message of helping the middle class. Their celebration proved short-lived. By 2016, as Pew Research noted in a post-election report, “the Republican Party made deep inroads into America’s middle-class communities.” Pew noted that “although many middle-class areas voted for Barack Obama in 2008, they overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump in 2016, a shift that was a key to his victory” over Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, “Democrats had more success retaining a loose ‘coalition’ of lower-income and upper-income communities.” The middle class was not only shrinking—according to Pew Research Center, “the share of adults who live in middle-class households fell from 61 percent in 1971 to 50 percent in 2021”1—it was also becoming restive.
As Max Weber said, “A class itself is not a community.” The middle class in the U.S. has always been as much an idea as it is a definable socioeconomic category. It has also served as an ideal, a goal to achieve for the working class, which sees in the rung above them on the social ladder wonderful and achievable things like home ownership, a safe neighborhood, and retirement comfortable enough to soothe an aching back garnered from decades of physical labor.
But both the idea and the ideal are under significant threat today, and not only from economic challenges such as inflation, stagnant wages, and higher housing costs. The common understanding of the middle class as the key moderating force in our culture and politics is also disappearing. We know this from the evolution of American mass entertainment. Popular culture has moved away from the values and interests of the middle as well. In Status and Culture, the critic W. David Marx describes how, in the mid-20th century, the middle class “enjoyed its own respectable taste world of Reader’s Digest, bowling clubs, and Lawrence Welk.” Those middle-class tastes and choices were mocked by the elitists of the time; the middle class was said to be living soulless conformist existences in “little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” as the folksinger Malvina Reynolds sang contemptuously in 1962. Efforts to shock the middle class out of its complacency came in the form of supposedly scandalous works like Peyton Place that presumed to show the dark truth behind the manicured lawns of Main Street USA.
Then came the 1960s and the elevation of transgressive behavior and mores. By now, there is almost no middle-class culture to mock. Today, Marx writes, “the twenty-first century economy has skewed media and consumption so decisively toward coastal elites as to be perceived among the lower middle class as a demeaning erasure.”
This erasure is significant because it speaks to thorny issues of status and dignity in a country with long-standing anxieties about class. The middle class found it could no longer rely upon or take pleasure in its creature comforts quite so readily, or find satisfaction in achieving a certain level of social standing. As Paul Fussell observed in his 1983 book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, “The special hazards attending the class situation in America, where movement appears so fluid and where the prizes seem available to anyone who’s lucky, are disappointment, and, following close on that, envy….The myth conveys the impression that you can readily earn your way upward, [so] disillusionment and bitterness are particularly strong when you find yourself trapped in a class system you’ve been half persuaded isn’t important.”
Fussell notes that poorer Americans “tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have,” but for the middle, markers such as education and the kind of work a person does are profound measures of self-worth as well: “Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior are indispensable criteria of class, regardless of money or occupation or education.”
The middle class had as its unstated goals to maintain a decent standard of living for itself and to pass on a stable, good life to their children. Prosperous but self-made, elite-adjacent but not elite themselves, it followed the rules while nurturing a belief in the ability to improve one’s circumstances no matter where you found yourself on the social ladder. Sometimes beset by envy of the wealthy on the one hand, and concern about the burden of supporting the poor on the other, the middle class nevertheless served as a stabilizing force, taming the extremes of wealth and poverty while going about its business as white-collar professionals, small-business owners, and mid-level managers.
In other words, the middle class, despite its anxieties, was supposed to prevent class warfare. Now, it look more likely to ignite a class war.
Consider the recent cultural and political shifts experienced by the typical middle-class American, shifts dramatic enough to be experienced as whiplash by many of its members. During the Covid pandemic, for example, the majority in the middle was told to listen to elite experts and follow the dictates of the institutions those elites controlled. Most did. But as those same elites mandated harmful business and school closures (while conveniently ignoring such restrictions on their own behavior by dining at the French Laundry, as Governor Gavin Newsom did, or sending their children to private schools that remained open), middle-class Americans watched their children’s educational and emotional well-being suffer as the public schools they attended remained shuttered.
The arbiters of culture increasingly ignore the middle to focus instead on minority groups of every stripe (the smaller and more bizarre the better), or on the tribulations of the luxury consumer. When given attention at all, the middle is treated as a bunch of exotic weirdos, despite still being the majority. Cultural products consumed by the middle—their favorite comedians, music, and television shows—often get only grudging or glancing attention from elite media. Increasingly, television shows depict the very wealthy (Succession, The White Lotus) or the poor or working-class (Dopesick, Maid) more than they do the lives of people in the middle. Richard Rushfield, who runs a Hollywood dope sheet called The Ankler, noted the following recently about a television show you may never have heard of:
Young Sheldon ambles amiably towards its denouement, absolutely unloved by anyone except for TV viewers. You could drive a semi-truck through every media office in New York without hitting an article about Sheldon’s final season. [But it] has sat in the Top 10 of most-watched shows throughout its seven-year run…and had ratings that approach latter-day Oscar numbers. Not only that, but it is the sequel to The Big Bang Theory, which previously dominated the ratings boards from 2007 to 2019. And it was just announced that after Sheldon concludes, it will be followed by another spinoff, centered on brother Georgie, making it likely that by the time that show wraps, the Big Bang universe will have quietly drawn audiences in the many millions for approaching 30 years.
Which is a decent run at a time when people and networks supposedly don’t want middle-of-the-road comedies anymore and you’d be hard-pressed to find a single one of its like across the entire Streaming Wars spectrum. It’s kind of a problem for us to entertain the world if we not only don’t watch what they watch, but we won’t even acknowledge their entertainment exists.
Rather than be catered to by the elites who seek to make their living off their tastes and wants, the middle class is more likely to hear the elite talk about it as a problem: Middle-class Americans are racist, they complain too much about how expensive everything has become, and they won’t get on board either with the left’s social-engineering schemes or the populist right’s rage-driven apocalypticism.
They are told that “no human is illegal” and that their concerns about an open border are evidence of their own bigotry. They see the poor and other designated “oppressed” receive sympathetic elite attention and government subsidies and programs, and services aimed at helping them. The elite champion the rights of criminals, illegal immigrants, and destructive Black Lives Matter activists who want to dismantle the police. They tell the rest of the country that they must call the homeless the “unhoused” and ignore any quality-of-life effects from that population’s drug use or instability. When the middle class complains, the elite often chide it for having fallen prey to “misinformation” or excessive “right-wing” media consumption.
The middle class is also frequently reminded that shoplifting is a victimless crime even as they see prices rise and goods placed behind locked cabinets—or, in many cases, entire stores shuttered after being scavenged for too long by thieves who go unpunished. In January, after coordinated groups of pro-Palestinian protesters shut down traffic to tunnels and bridges in Manhattan, disrupting the lives of millions of New Yorkers, the New York Post noted how many of the protesters were students at elite colleges such as Yale and Brown, whose activities were being lavishly funded by “the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation” as well as “a Rockefeller family foundation.”
On the rare occasions when such protesters are arrested, they are immediately released and often valorized for their law-breaking, as Black Lives Matter protesters were in the summer of 2020 by soon-to-be–Vice President Kamala Harris. She urged the public to donate to the pro-decarceration Minnesota Bail Fund to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,” many of whom had committed arson, property crimes, and assault; the same fund later secured the release of a man who then murdered someone. As Matthew Crawford observed of these young radicals, many the children of privilege, who have become full-time protesters: “At bottom, we see a refusal of the ruling class to take responsibility for its rule, preferring to [role-play] at the barricades.”
By contrast, it is the middle class that sends its children off to the military to fight wars. The middle class is overrepresented in the ranks of the enlisted compared with upper- and lower-income groups. According to a study by the Council on Foreign Relations, “Most members of the military come from middle-class neighborhoods. The middle three quintiles for household income were overrepresented among enlisted recruits, and the top and bottom quintiles were underrepresented.” They are effectively serving a country that lately has shown little tolerance for their way of life or their values.
Meanwhile, they watch politicians like President Biden transfer the student loan debt of higher-earning Americans to those in the working- and lower-middle class. A 2020 report from the Brookings Institution, using data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance “confirm[s] that upper-income households account for a disproportionate share of student-loan debt—and an even larger share of monthly out-of-pocket student debt payments.”
No wonder they feel like suckers, betrayed and frustrated because things no longer seem to work the way they should. They are being played for suckers.
A savvy politician would appeal to this middle—would make them feel that they matter and are valued. Unfortunately, the incentive structure of our politics has changed so that elected officials now cater to the extremes within their coalition, rather than talking to the moderate middle. Our elites act like Marxists (focusing entirely on either the upper or the lower classes) when they should behave like Weberians—thinking about the stabilizing force of the middle. A recent article in The New Yorker by Evan Osnos is indicative of the trend, examining the many ways the word “elite” has become a pejorative deployed by populist wannabes such as Tucker Carlson to tar their perceived enemies (who are as wealthy and well educated as they are). Amid intra-elite squabbles, the concerns of the middle class receive no attention.
Instead, elite cultural mavens have decided to target the middle for reeducation, so that they might be cured of their backward, racist, homophobic, and transphobic views. Imagine being a mid-level manager at a large corporation. You are middle class but work among the elite-educated top of the economic scale and, as Thorstein Veblen taught, feel their disdain more acutely because of that proximity.
You are subjected to the indignities of diversity, equity, and inclusion training and bureaucratic oversight, and told to be grateful for the opportunity. Typical was the email sent out by the chief diversity officer at Johns Hopkins University. She discussed the “Diversity Word of the Month”—“privilege”—which she defined as “advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups.” Among the list of “privileged” groups she included, were the “middle or owning classes” (as well as the usual suspects: white people, Christians, heterosexuals, the able-bodied). More than 27,000 people have their day jobs at Johns Hopkins. Almost all are middle class. Every one of them got this memo.
As is true of our political class, the incentive structure of the elite has changed. Elites increase their status by virtue-signaling and valorizing the concerns of the supposedly oppressed, and as a result they no longer make a pretense of respecting the values of the vast middle. It is a peculiar new form of class warfare: The elite, claiming to represent the concerns of the poor and oppressed, array themselves against the middle, whom they insist must embrace elite values while they continue to refuse them elite privileges.
Finally:
Chief of Staff on Ramadan: 'We are in a multi-front war'
Chief Staff LTG Herzi Halevi visited the Binyamin region of Judea and Samaria and evaluated the forces' preparedness for Ramadan
He was accompanied by the Commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, Brigadier General Yaki Dolf, Commander of the Binyamin Brigade, Colonel Liron Biton, and additional commanders, who held a situational assessment and evaluated the forces' preparedness for Ramadan.
In addition, LTG Halevi met with IDF and Israel Border Police forces deployed in the sector on high alert for various scenarios.
"This is the first Friday, and it is not only on Fridays but the entire Ramadan. There have already been several attempted attacks in various places this week, and your challenge is to manage to guard this entire month, and afterward, because it doesn't end with Ramadan, but we are more deployed this month. You need to be very vigilant and meticulous, with very good security," Halevi stated.
He added: "We are in a multi-front war - Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria, and Gaza, and also farther away. Everyone, every soldier, IDF, Israel Border Police, working together, has responsibility over all sectors, because every event that happens on one of the fronts truly affects and can create a reaction in other regions."
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The Elite War on the American Middle Class—and How to End It
This dynamic plays out most clearly in the realm of education—and nowhere is the resentment of the middle class more justifiable. At the K–12 level, middle-class parents have watched as Democrat-controlled school systems, in the name of “equity,” have eliminated measures of academic merit such as standardized tests and Honors classes that these parents view as crucial to their children’s success. Now, talent and hard work matter less than the pursuit of elite ideological projects, with predictable results for children’s education.
As well, the long-standing path into the upper classes via entry into elite higher-educational institutions has now been effectively blocked for the middle class and their children. They still try to get their children into the best colleges possible, of course—colleges they often can’t afford. But what they fail to realize, and what elite institutions refuse to acknowledge, is that despite having the same grades and qualifications as middle-class children, the children of the wealthy are now twice as likely to be accepted at Ivy-Plus colleges as middle-class kids.
In 2017, the New York Times noted, with surprise, “Students at elite colleges are even richer than experts realized, according to a new study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records.” The study confirmed that “at 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League—Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown—more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.” Put another way, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attends an elite college.
A more recent study from 2023 from Opportunity Insights also found significant overrepresentation of the wealthiest on elite campuses—and an admissions system that casts itself as an engine of equal opportunity while heavily favoring the richest students. The study notes, “Children from families in the top 1 percent are twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores.”
The advantage was great enough that the researchers concluded, despite their claims to the contrary, “highly selective private colleges currently amplify the persistence of privilege across generations but could diversify the socioeconomic backgrounds of America’s leaders by changing their admissions practices.”
And please, please, please dismiss the arguments of the wealthy elite who benefit from this system and who argue that allowing larger numbers of wealthier children on campuses helps everyone by increasing the resources available to all. While those increased resources from wealthier families might allow for a small additional number of poor students to attend an elite institution than was the case in the past, it is the middle class that is paying the price—by being kept out almost altogether.
As a 2018 American Enterprise Institute report by Jason D. Delisle and Preston Cooper found, “Students from high-income families were a growing share of enrollment at these institutions in the mid-2000s. Meanwhile, the share of students at selective colleges who are from middle-income families has steadily declined over time, particularly students from the third income quartile.” Their conclusion? “The enrollment gains of high-income students in the mid-2000s came at the expense of middle-income students. . . . It is middle-income students, not low-income students, who are becoming less represented on these campuses” (emphasis added). In other words, the middle is disappearing from the very institutions whose gates are designed to allow admission into the American elites, even as low-income student numbers remain steady, and the number of wealthy students increases significantly.
This system affects everyone because elite institutions disproportionately funnel students into the most powerful political and cultural institutions, even as the worldview of graduates from these schools increasingly does not reflect the views of most Americans.
As Opportunity Insights found, “Attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average highly selective public flagship institution increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 60 percent, nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm.” A 2018 study in the Journal of Expertise explored the pipeline into prestige journalism and found a similar impact: “Only a handful of select schools feed the mastheads of the NYT [New York Times] and the WSJ [Wall Street Journal].” Among staff writers at the Times, for example, 52 percent attended elite schools.
As Rob Henderson notes in his recent memoir, Troubled, “At Yale, more students come from families in the top 1 percent of income than from the bottom 60 percent,” and this class chasm creates peculiar challenges. The moral universe of the elite is different from the rest of the country, and they view these beliefs as important markers of their status. “Today, luxury goods are more accessible than before,” Henderson writes. “This is a problem for the affluent, who still want to broadcast their high social position. But they have come up with a clever solution. The affluent have decoupled social status from goods and reattached it to beliefs.”
What kind of beliefs? One study cited by Henderson reveals, “Upper-class individuals cared more about status and valued it more highly than working-class individuals. . . . Furthermore, compared with lower-status individuals, high-status individuals were more likely to engage in behavior aimed at protecting or enhancing their status.” Henderson coined the phrase “luxury beliefs” to describe some of the things his classmates believed are harmless (defunding the police, decriminalizing drugs, abandoning monogamous marriage) because their privilege protected them from the impact of such choices—even as the poor and middle class suffered from those same policies. Worse, he found many students who suffered from a rather skewed moral compass: “My classmate and I discussed various moral dilemmas,” Henderson writes of a conversation he had at Yale. “And he said he would push a man off a bridge to stop a train from hitting five people. I asked if he would murder his mother to save five strangers. He promptly responded that he would. I doubted anyone I knew outside of college would have said yes to that question.”
And yet, the elite who control our institutions still expect the middle class to yield to their supposed wisdom. This has unexpected political implications.
Economically, the view from the middle reveals a landscape where at least the poor can stitch together all kinds of benefits via government programs, and are considered victims of systemic injustices, thus gaining attention and status in a society that valorizes victimhood. The wealthy have the resources to weather most if not all economic challenges. That leaves the middle class paying full price for most things, and still trying to play by the rules, while feeling as if they are barely getting by—all while being scolded by an elite that tells them they should stop complaining about the price of groceries and gasoline. No wonder a recent ABCNews/Ipsos poll found a steep decline in the number of Americans who still have faith in the American dream of “if you work hard, you’ll get ahead.” Sixty-nine percent said that is no longer true.
These differences in circumstances, education, and worldview have policy implications as well. Polling from RMG Research by Scott Rasmussen recently explored the views of America’s cultural elite (defined as those with a postgraduate degree who earn more than $150,000 a year and live in “high-density” areas). These Americans are “wealthier, more highly educated, and attended the best schools,” and they trust the government “to do the right thing.”
Their views of American principles, however, are starkly different from those of their middle-class fellow citizens: “Nearly six in ten say there is too much individual freedom in America,” for example, double the rate of all Americans. Sixty-seven percent of this group also favors “rationing of vital energy and food sources to combat the threat of climate change,” and “somewhere between half and two-thirds favor banning things like SUVs, gas stoves, air conditioning, and non-essential air travel to protect the environment.” These are the people running our elite political and cultural institutions, and yet they have little understanding of how regular people live their lives, or what they believe, or the things they value.
What, then, is to be done for the middle class?
There are practical steps that can be taken in higher education that would offer immediate relief to the middle class and restore more socioeconomic diversity to elite college campuses. First (and this is already happening), schools from elementary to high school and universities everywhere must restore standardized testing as a vetting mechanism for admission. When higher-education institutions went test-optional and when secondary schools eliminated blind testing, they effectively decoupled merit from admissions for the middle class. Conveniently, they left in place admissions preferences for protected classes of students (such as minorities) and the wealthy (who could still boast more extracurricular activities, private-school résumés, or who could, as a last resort, simply buy their child’s way in via donations). Tests such as the ACT and SAT give middle-class applicants a path into competitive elite educational institutions by demonstrating their ability to succeed. And testing for admission to the best public high schools eliminates the ability of administrators to self-select the student bodies they think are more racially and culturally suitable.
Second, with affirmative action now effectively ended by the U.S. Supreme Court, it’s time to end legacy admission preferences as well in higher education. There isn’t even an argument to be made that these preferences do anything other than benefit the wealthy. As schools such as MIT, which does not grant legacy preference, demonstrate, ending legacy preferences leads to a more socioeconomically diverse campus.
Third, it is time to stop giving so many admissions spots to foreign students, many of whom, as we have seen in the wake of the events of October 7, bring to American campuses a toxic brew of radical politics, disdain for American values such as free speech, and anti-Semitism. A survey by Tablet found that up to 25 percent of the students on elite campuses are not American citizens and come here solely to study (paying full freight, and often on the dime of their authoritarian governments). This is a violation of the civic duty of American universities to educate Americans to the highest degree possible. Congress could play a role here by passing legislation that would limit the number of foreign students admitted to colleges and universities that accept federal funding.
Culturally and socially, the challenge is more complicated. But it is not unresolvable: If you want to stop making the middle class feel as if their own country has turned against them, then the arbiters of culture need to stop turning against the middle class. For several years now, corporations and cultural institutions have pandered to elite values—values that, as we have seen, are not shared by most Americans and that have cost many companies the business of the majority. Don’t make the mistake Target did, pushing “tuck-friendly” trans swimsuits and LGBTQ-themed baby clothes to consumers who simply want well-priced goods. Given the state of the culture, the authentically transgressive move (to say nothing of the financially sound move) would be to sell to the vast middle, whose members are largely uninterested in waging a culture war via their infant’s onesies.
Politically, to restore the respect owed the middle class, politicians might find unexpected success by listening not to their cheap sloganeering consultants but rather by following the evidence of their own eyes and pitching their message not to their most extreme (and often online) partisans but to the people who want this country governed with some common sense. From 2015 onward, Donald Trump has had a distorting effect on the national political conversation in myriad ways, but one that is often overlooked is how the “Resistance” that rose to challenge his polarizing behavior then provided cover for the advancement of a more radical progressivism on the left. The left’s embrace of extreme and unpopular views about gender, the border, race, and fossil fuels had unexpected force in part because they were attached to a more traditional Democratic opposition to Trump. But this has also moved their party much further away from the views of the average American voter. If you doubt this, listen to then–Senator Barack Obama talk about America’s need for a secure border; by the standards of today’s progressive left, he would be judged a right-wing nut.
Our politicians need to sell their ideas for improving the country to the majority, to move away from the volatile, dysfunctional way of doing politics that starts from the fringes and moves inward. We do not need leaders who start from the elite premise that this country has too much freedom or from the populist premise that America has descended into an evil that only top-down populist solutions can save us from. Rather, they should be asking how they can ensure that people live good lives and flourish with as little elite interference as possible—including interference by their own government.
These are not partisan proposals. Rather, I am talking about modest steps toward a politics and culture that might once again enjoy greater stability, prosperity, and commonsense wisdom. Embracing middle-class politics is neither exciting nor revolutionary, but at a time of simmering resentments and instability, it may be just the prescription to save the country from its sometimes seemingly incurable ailments.
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The worm squirms:
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Schumer provides cover for Biden’s smears of Israel
The self-proclaimed “shomer” of the Senate is at odds with Israel’s people, not Netanyahu, in order to convince Israel-hating Democrats not to defect.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN (JNS)
In a city packed with cynical opportunists, few people in Washington can match the cynicism and opportunism that are on display when Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks. He’s been in public office continuously since the age of 25, and the 73-year-old Senate Majority Leader has spent his adult life grandstanding for the cameras and the press while always seeking some momentary political advantage as he schemed, back-stabbed and bloviated his way to the top of his profession.
Yet in a career replete with disingenuous rhetoric and Machiavellian maneuvering, nothing Schumer had done before was ever quite as loathsome as his most recent speech on the floor of the Senate. In it, he demanded a change in the government of the State of Israel and for the Jewish state to change its policies on the war against Hamas. He also pushed for post-war policies that the people of Israel adamantly oppose.
That’s not just because the substance of his remarks was deeply misleading in terms of his claims about what the obstacles to peace in the Middle East are, as well as highly inappropriate, especially when you consider how much we Americans resent foreigners interfering in our own political life.
Appeasing the Israel-haters
This was a disgraceful performance because, despite Schumer’s much-ballyhooed stance as Israel’s guardian in Congress, the point of the effort was not to bolster its alliance with the United States or to lend support at a time of unique peril to the Jewish state and a surge in antisemitism in America. To the contrary, his agenda was to lend assistance to the Biden administration’s tilt away from Israel to curry favor with the Democratic Party’s left-wing Israel-haters.
That’s the only reason why a senator supposedly devoted to protecting the Jewish state against its foes would choose this particular moment to launch a full-scale attack on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and essentially call for regime change in Jerusalem. Contradicting both the facts and his rhetoric about loving the Jewish state, he placed equal blame for the lack of peace on Israel’s elected leaders, and drew a moral equivalence between them and the tyrannical Palestinian Authority, in addition to the genocidal Islamists of Hamas.
Exhibiting the sort of insufferable condescension towards the opinions of the Israeli people that is generally the preserve of those who have little sympathy for them, he also backed up Biden’s immoral demand that the Jewish state agree to a Palestinian state as part of a postwar plan—something that would grant a reward to Hamas for having committed the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
Yet even worse than all that was Schumer’s decision to echo the libelous attacks on Israel being aired by the Biden administration. For Israel’s supposed best friend in Congress to join with the mob of antisemites who have been howling about “genocide” and to validate their unfair smears, coupled with Hamas propaganda about the campaign being waged against it in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, was truly beyond the pale.
What could have possibly motivated Schumer to have done this? Unlike the band of Obama administration alumni who run foreign policy for Biden, the senator was not known to hold a grudge against Netanyahu for his opposition to the disastrous 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Nor is he someone who routinely engages in scapegoating Israel, as do some members of the Senate Democratic caucus.
What’s more, he is someone who has condemned the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism. Further, he has acknowledged the reality of the left-wing mobs that have targeted Jews on college campuses and in the streets of American cities while calling for the destruction of Israel and terrorism against Jews wherever they live.
The ‘shomer’ of his own ambition
The only plausible explanation for the speech can be found in the plight of his party’s leader. A week after his hyper-partisan State of the Union speech that Democrats hoped would revive his re-election campaign, President Joe Biden has seen no bump in the opinion polls. His favorability ratings are disastrous for an incumbent hoping for another term. And he’s trailing former President Donald Trump in head-to-head matchups and in surveys where third-party candidates are also considered and in the battleground states that will decide the election.
Part of the problem is the distinct lack of enthusiasm for the president being shown by the party’s left-wing activist base because of their distaste for any support being given to Israel by Biden. A full-scale civil war has been raging inside the Democratic Party over the Israel-Hamas war. That has led administration officials, congressional staffers and even those working on Biden’s re-election campaign to sign petitions demanding that Israel be abandoned.
In response, Biden has sought to appease left-wing Democrats like the pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn, Mich. But merely talking out of both sides of his mouth about the war while still providing Israel with the arms to fight Hamas has not proven persuasive. Hence, the switch in the last week to an effort to blame Netanyahu for the continuation of the war was part of a vain effort to justify a pivot away from his post-Oct. 7 stance of support for Israel’s efforts to eradicate Hamas.
And that’s where Schumer comes in. As anyone who has covered New York politics in the more than 40 years during which the Brooklyn native has served in both the House and the Senate, Schumer never tires of telling Jewish audiences that a Hebrew translation of his name means shomer or “guardian.” That makes him, he likes to say, a guardian of Israel—a line that is followed with a solemn pledge that he will ensure that no harm comes to the Jewish state on his watch.
Leaving aside the dubious nature of his linguistic claim and whether even an ardent pro-Israel senator should be speaking in a way that validates dual-loyalty smears, this particular piece of schtick has become his calling card for Jewish voters.
That stance was already called into question by his devious behavior during the debate about Obama’s Iran deal. He declared his opposition to a measure that empowered and enriched Israel’s most lethal enemy but then undermined it by declaring that he would take no actions to try to persuade any other senator to join him, thus ensuring that his stance would be seen as meaningless. That helped guarantee the passage of Obama’s policy while also doing no harm to his plan to become Senate Democratic leader in the next Congress. That stance made it obvious that the only thing that he has ever been the shomer of is his own unquenchable ambition.
The ‘shomer’ of his own ambition
The only plausible explanation for the speech can be found in the plight of his party’s leader. A week after his hyper-partisan State of the Union speech that Democrats hoped would revive his re-election campaign, President Joe Biden has seen no bump in the opinion polls. His favorability ratings are disastrous for an incumbent hoping for another term. And he’s trailing former President Donald Trump in head-to-head matchups in surveys where third-party candidates are also considered and in the battleground states that will decide the election.
Part of the problem is the distinct lack of enthusiasm for the president being shown by the party’s left-wing activist base because of their distaste for any support being given to Israel by Biden. A full-scale civil war has been raging inside the Democratic Party over the Hamas-Iran war. That has led administration officials, congressional staffers and even those working on Biden’s re-election campaign to sign petitions demanding that Israel be abandoned.
In response, Biden has sought to appease left-wing Democrats like the pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn, Mich. But merely talking out of both sides of his mouth about the war while still providing Israel with the arms to fight Hamas has not proven persuasive. Hence, the switch in the last week to an effort to blame Netanyahu for the continuation of the war was part of a vain effort to justify a pivot away from his post-Oct. 7 stance of support for Israel’s efforts to eradicate Hamas.
And that’s where Schumer comes in. As anyone who has covered New York politics in the more than 40 years during which the Brooklyn native has served in both the House and the Senate, Schumer never tires of telling Jewish audiences that a Hebrew translation of his name means shomer or “guardian.” That makes him, he likes to say, a guardian of Israel—a line that is followed with a solemn pledge that he will ensure that no harm comes to the Jewish state on his watch.
Leaving aside the dubious nature of his linguistic claim and whether even an ardent pro-Israel senator should be speaking in a way that validates dual-loyalty smears, this particular piece of schtick has become his calling card for Jewish voters.
That stance was already called into question by his devious behavior during the debate about Obama’s Iran deal. He declared his opposition to a measure that empowered and enriched Israel’s most lethal enemy but then undermined it by declaring that he would take no actions to try to persuade any other senator to join him, thus ensuring that his stance would be seen as meaningless. That helped guarantee the passage of Obama’s policy while also doing no harm to his plan to become Senate Democratic leader in the next Congress. That stance made it obvious that the only thing that he has ever been the shomer of is his own unquenchable ambition.
Appeasing the leftist base
That is the proper context for understanding his speech, which doubles down on Biden’s effort to blame the prime minister for his decision to back away from Israel. At the heart of this dilemma is the way a false narrative about the IDF committing “genocide”—based on the lies of Hamas, a terror organization—has not merely been spread by a corporate media that is deeply biased against Israel but is being validated by statements by Biden and now Schumer.
While the senator paid lip service to the basic truth that Palestinians have rejected peace and started this war with attacks so barbaric that many refuse to believe them, that apparently proved the set-up for a series of smears against both Netanyahu and Israel.
For Schumer to claim, as he did in his speech, that preventing Palestinian casualties should be a higher priority for Israel than defeating Hamas is—despite talk about supporting its right to self-defense—to articulate a policy that would prevent it from exercising that right. To say that it is causing a “humanitarian catastrophe” and that it is “falling short” of upholding “Jewish values” honored by Diaspora Jews like himself is both deeply offensive and a brazen falsehood. Schumer knows that the Israel Defense Forces do far more than any army, including that of the United States, to prevent civilian casualties. And he also knows that Hamas, not Israel, is responsible for everyone harmed in this war.
The speech’s “analysis” of the problems of the Middle East also puts him squarely in the same camp as the very same Israel-bashers that he has previously denounced for legitimizing antisemitic attacks on Jews.
The notion that Oct. 7 was part of a “cycle of violence” that Netanyahu will not act to end is just as wrong. It is a deliberate misreading of what has caused the Palestinians to reject numerous offers of peace and statehood, and to launch terrorist wars like the one that began five months ago with Hamas’s spree of murder, rape, torture and kidnapping in 22 southern Israeli communities.
His advocacy for a two-state solution that would guarantee that Hamas—which, contrary to the mendacious claims of both Biden and Schumer, has the support of most Palestinians—survives doesn’t so much put him at odds with the prime minister as it does with the overwhelming majority of Israelis from one end of the political spectrum to the other. They know firsthand what happens when Palestinian terrorists are granted power; retrying that experiment in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem would be not so much ill-advised as suicidal.
For Schumer to essentially echo the claim that there is some sort of moral equivalence between Netanyahu and his democratically-elected government, and the undemocratic Palestinian leadership that seeks the destruction of the Jewish state and its people, is as malicious as it is wrong.
But the problem here is not just that Schumer is playing Jewish wingman to Biden.
Shifting the blame for the war and the problems with the United States solely on Netanyahu is a way for the pair to signal their party’s activist base that they are on their side. Democratic activists hate Israel because of their indoctrination in critical race theory and intersectionality, which holds that Israel and the Jews are guilty of being “white oppressors.” These “progressives” will never be satisfied with Biden’s “even-handed” stance, though Democrats hope that it will be enough to convince them to turn out to support Biden over Trump in November. Schumer toeing this line gives Biden cover with pro-Israel voters who would normally decry any American leader buying into this kind of false moral equivalence.
Advocating regime change
Yet what made Schumer’s speech truly newsworthy—and appalling—was his open call for a change of government in Israel. While he claimed that he only wanted to give Israel’s people a “choice,” they gave the current coalition a clear majority only 16 months ago. It’s been a stormy term for Netanyahu, and the fact that the Oct. 7 disaster happened on his watch may ultimately end his political career.
But even though Americans like Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been trying to interfere in Israeli politics for decades, never has a U.S. official been so brazen in demanding that Israel’s democratic system bow to Washington’s wishes that it produce a government more amenable to the diktats of the White House on the Palestinians and Iran.
That isn’t merely hypocritical, given the nonstop bleating of Democrats over the past eight years about Russian efforts to intervene in U.S. elections. Schumer thinks that Netanyahu should condemn Israeli politicians who are part of his coalition, like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, because of their extremism. But has Schumer done the same to the antisemitic extremists in his own party of the left-wing “Squad” or sought to expel its members from Congress?
The damage Schumer is doing to the U.S.-Israel relationship is evident from the condemnations that his speech has received across the board from Israelis, including chief Netanyahu rival Benny Gantz. The irony is, as Gantz knows well, that by seeking to oust Netanyahu by unfairly attacking the IDF’s war effort and saving Hamas, as well as by demanding a two-state solution that Israelis from right to left oppose, Biden and Schumer are helping rather than hurting the prime minister. They are making new elections—something that is not going to happen in the middle of a war—even less likely than before.
Treating Israel as a client state that must sacrifice its security for the sake of discredited policies like a two-state solution that has been tried and failed is bad enough when it comes from those who don’t pose as advocates of the Jewish state as Schumer does. Yet his stance is rooted entirely in partisan political interests rather than principle. This is one of the most perilous times in Jewish history, when Jews are being attacked for backing Israel, and others are fighting and dying to ensure that the Jewish state will live. For Schumer to speak in this disgraceful manner and to undermine Israel in wartime for the sake of helping Biden hold onto office is a decision that should permanently associate his name with that of betrayal and dishonor.
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Ordman reveals Israel is open for business despite the impact of the Hamas War.
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JDI - Israel's Positive Newsletter to 17th Mar 24
The abbreviation JDI and Just Do It! are trademarks of the products of a well-known company, but they have entered the English language to mean "Get on with it" and "Don't delay". Israelis and their supporters have perfected the art of Just Doing It. They respond to item requests from IDF soldiers by Just 3D-printing it; to a request for volunteers by Just creating a volunteer’s online resource center. The biggest complaint in the IDF is to Just let us get on with it. And even while Hamas is still firing rockets at Sderot, one of the city’s main supermarkets has Just re-opened
Other examples:-
Use experimental phage therapy to treat dying patients? – JDI.
Make Aliyah to alleviate the shortage of doctors? – JDI.
Find a cure for Parkinson’s where no-one thought of looking? – JDI.
Bring together Jews & Arabs to play chess? – JDI.
Use bacteria to keep food fresh? – JDI.
Create head protection for IDF dogs? – JDI.
Reposition and relaunch a product after previous business failure? – JDI.
Make some of the best pizzas in the Middle East? – JDI.
Dance with a new Torah scroll in Gaza? - JDI.
Become a father at 88? - JDI.
If this email arrives in your spam / junk folder, please mark it as "NOT SPAM".
Please recommend www.verygoodnewsisrael.
In the 17th Mar 24 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
- A student engineer has 3D-printed thousands of items for the IDF.
- Israeli researchers have found a new approach to curing Parkinson’s.
- Israeli Jews and Arabs are good mates at chess tournament.
- An Israeli company uses bacteria to keep food fresh.
- Israel’s fast-charging EV battery still works well in the freezing cold.
- Israel’s Free Trade Agreement with Guatemala goes into operation.
- Israeli cyclists are in winning form.
- An 88-year-old Israeli Rabbi just celebrated the birth of his first son.
- Please click here, to donate (a small or large amount) to help me publicize VeryGoodNewsIsrael.
POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
Christian Embassy donates 4 ambulances. The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has donated four new ambulances to help replace the dozens of Israeli ambulances destroyed on and since Oct 7. One is an advanced military ambulance for Gaza border communities. One will serve Holocaust survivors in the North.
https://www.jns.org/wire/
Reservists complain – let us fight. Israel’s military ombudswoman Brig. Gen. (res.) Rachel Tevet-Wiesel has found that most of the 1,316 complaints during the first three months of the war (Oct-Dec) were civilians seeking to return to reserve duty after receiving exemptions and reservists asking to be moved to a combat unit.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
The largest ever IDF enlistment of Yeshiva students. The upcoming IDF recruitment cycle will include a record 1,000 fighters from the Hesder yeshivot (300 to combat units); another 300 from Zionist yeshivot gevohot (post high school yeshivot); and hundreds more from religious pre-military preparatory schools.
https://www.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Volunteering changed her life. On Oct 7 Yocheved Ruttenberg was in Dallas Texas waiting for her lone soldier brother to return from Israel so they could start a business in the USA. Now Yocheved is co-founder of NGO Sword of Iron – Israel Volunteer Opportunities, helping others organize their Israel volunteering trips.
https://www.israel21c.org/how-
https://www.facebook.com/
You need it, Ariel 3D-prints it. Ariel Harush is an engineering student at Israel’s Ben Gurion University. He 3D-printed a radio connector for a friend in the IDF and suddenly army commanders were asking for 1,000 of them. He and 400 volunteers have since printed 43,000 items, from knee pads to night-vision rifle adaptors.
https://nocamels.com/2024/03/
Latin America solidarity mission. A delegation of governors and mayors from Panama, Uruguay, Honduras, Chile, and Guatemala, traveled to southern Israeli cities targeted on Oct 7 and met with family members of Israeli hostages during their four-day trip.
https://www.jns.org/latin-
IFCJ funds 123 bomb shelters. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (FCJ) is funding more than one and a half million dollars to place 123 shelters alongside bus stops serving 42 northern Israeli communities, amid Israel’s ongoing conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
https://www.jns.org/ifcj-
Sderot supermarket re-opens. The first supermarket in Sderot has reopened more than five months after the Israeli city was mostly evacuated due to the war with Hamas. Its owner, Prosper Peretz, said, “I worked throughout the war, even though my house was hit by a rocket. I didn’t give up and I didn’t leave the city.”
https://unitedwithisrael.org/
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Phage therapy combats antibiotic resistance. The Israeli Phage Therapy Center (IPTC), led by two Hebrew University of Jerusalem professors, has used a bacteriophage PASA16 on compassionate basis to treat tough Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in 16 patients. It has shown promising results with an 86.6% success rate.
https://en.huji.ac.il/news/
https://www.cell.com/med/
How do some viruses get nasty? Tel Aviv University researchers discovered a mechanism used by viruses to decide whether to kill their bacterial host. These phages monitor the health of the cell they are occupying. They also check that there are no viruses residing in nearby cells that the phages wish to occupy.
https://foodsecurity.tau.ac.
https://www.nature.com/
Clues may lead to a cure for Parkinson’s. Researchers at Haifa University have discovered that sufferers of Parkinson’s disease have brain cells that are deficient in mRNA and proteins that build the extracellular matrix (ECM). It is the ECM that provides brain cells with structural and biochemical support.
https://www.israel21c.org/
500 doctors to make Aliyah. Nefesh b’Nefesh’s Medex event held in Teaneck, NJ was a huge success. Nearly 500 medical professionals attended from 30 states and provinces in the US and Canada, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, dental hygienists, and many more. A European event is scheduled end-March.
https://www.israelhayom.com/
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
Tech startups hire more women in R&D. A survey by the Israel Innovation Authority and Israel’s Reichman University has determined that 38% of women in the Israeli tech industry held R&D positions last year. This compares to 28% in 2013. Women now hold around one-third of all high-tech positions in the Jewish State.
https://www.jns.org/israeli-
Israel relocates orphanage from Gaza to Judea. At the request of German authorities, Israel facilitated the transfer to Bethlehem of approximately 60 orphans, aged 3 to 15, from a German-funded Gaza orphanage that ceased operations due to the war. https://www.ynetnews.com/
Brave Moslem women speak up for Israel. (TY Ted Belman) Anila Ali (Pakistan) and Soraya Deen(Sri Lanka) have dedicated themselves to resisting radical Islamist oppression of women and hatred of Israel and Jews. Anila spoke at a side event of the United Nations sponsored by the Israeli mission to the U.N.
https://www.jns.org/two-
https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/
Chess tournament unites Jews & Arabs. (TY Yanky) The Israeli Open Chess Championship in Acre brought together Jews, Arabs and Druze in friendly competition. The 132 chess players ranged in age from 9 to 78 and included some 20 international masters and grandmasters.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Good relations with Liberia. Representative Moimah Briggs Mensah is Chairperson of Liberia’s Israel Allies Foundation Caucus. She expressed her fervor for reinforcing Liberia’s diplomatic ties with Israel, which could even include establishing its embassy in Jerusalem by the end of 2024.
https://israfan.com/2024/03/
Three new African ambassadors. Israeli President Herzog thanked the incoming ambassadors of Equatorial Guinea, Burundi and Eswatini for their support of Israel and in protecting Irael’s observer status in the African Union. “We believe in Africa. We love Africa,” Herzog told the ambassadors.
https://www.jns.org/israeli-
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Brain Science Prize winner. Prof. Haim Sompolinsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard is the first Israeli to be awarded the Brain Prize - the largest and most prestigious international prize for brain research. The prize is awarded annually by the Lundbeck Foundation of Denmark.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
So sweet! (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s Incredo (formerly DouxMatok see here previously) has unveiled Incredo Sugar G2, a concentrated version of its award-winning Incredo Sugar. The new product is more sustainable because it can be produced, stored and manufactured in smaller quantities.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/
Using bacteria to keep food fresh. Israel’s LiVA uses “good” bacteria to increase the shelf life of fresh food by at least 100%. LiVA’s stickers contain a patented pre-biotic blend of bacteria that grows quickly and prevents “bad” bacteria and fungi from forming. It’s “survival of the fittest”. A clever (Israeli) idea.
https://nocamels.com/2024/03/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Controlling pesticides. New to this newsletter - DriftSense, and its tool to help farmers decide when to spray their crops; Palm Robotics, which detects pests and diseases using remote sensing and other technologies; Fungit Biosolutions’s fungal microorganism-based biocontrol agents and BetterLeaf’s botanical biopesticides.
https://www.israel21c.org/8-
https://palmro.com/ https://fungitbio.com/ https://olivetechltd1953.
Know where to go. Tel Aviv-based Atly (previously called “steps”) allows users to publicize their “new favorite places” such as eating out, hiking and even where to take a date. Atly has just added maps for gluten-free and celiac dining. Gluten-Free Eats has 28,000 places in the US and is vetting a further 300,000.
https://nocamels.com/2024/03/
https://www.atly.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Securing 7 million networks. Israel’s Sam Seamless Networks (see here previously) protects the 7 million networks of Verizon, Virgin Media, Orange and Bezeq – some half-a-billion devices. CEO and co-founder is Sivan Rauscher. She was a former officer in Israel’s elite 8200 Military Intelligence cyber unit.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
https://www.ourcrowd.com/
Speeding up AI development. Some 80% of Artificial Intelligence projects fail, for many reasons. Israel’s Dataloop AI (see here previously) has launched Marketplace – an intuitive platform that streamlines processes, and accelerates workflow efficiency for AI teams, resulting in more efficient AI application building.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/
A headset for military dogs. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Silynxcom (see here previously) has developed a protective headset for military dogs such as the IDF’s K9 unit in operation in Gaza. The headset also enables seamless command transmission via radio directly to the dog.
https://www.silynxcom.com/
https://www.thedefensepost.
A word in your ear. On the heels of its previous announcement for dog headsets, Israel’s Silynxcom has just reported that its new in-ear headset has completed trials and been purchased by the European law enforcement customer that tested the equipment. The system is compatible with a wide range of encrypted radio devices.
https://www.silynxcom.com/
A cold start? No problem. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s StoreDot (see here previously) has reported that at -10°C its superfast-charging EV battery cells charged to 80% capacity and delivered over 85% of their full range capacity. Even in the extreme cold of -4°F (-20°C), the cells still provided over 70% of their full range capacity.
https://www.store-dot.com/
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Free trade with Guatemala. (TY Atid-EDI) The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that Israel signed with Guatemala in 2022 (see here previously) has just come into effect. Guatemala has the largest economy (GDP & population) in Central America. It joins seven Latin American countries that also have FTAs with Israel.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/
Big increase in apartment sales. Despite the war, the number of apartments sold in Israel has increased by 14% year-on-year. There were 8,053 real estate deals in January, the highest figure since September 2022.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Who’s flying to Israel? One site with information about how to get to Israel and what to do when you get there. https://www.touristisrael.com/
A space to build space-tech. JNF-USA funded the Mitzpe Ramon Hub in the Negev for startups developing technology with relevance to outer space. The first to take up the offer is Israel’s Creation Space, a group dedicated to promoting technology in New Space. It also helped turn the landscape into a replica of Mars.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Best Microsoft Contact Center. (TY Atid-EDI) At the CX (customer experience) awards hosted by CX Today, Israel’s AudioCodes (see here previously) received the award for Best Microsoft Teams Contact Center Solution for its Voca Conversational Interaction Center (Voca CIC). Judges were independent industry experts.
https://www.audiocodes.com/
Saliva pregnancy testing kit hits the market. After rollout in England, Ireland, and Sweden, Israel’s Salistick (see here previously) is finally available in Israel. It will be sold in 285 branches of Super-Pharn for just under 25 shekels. The product detects the hormone Beta-hCG and has sold 100,000+ units in the UK since July 2023.
https://www.israel21c.org/
The sweet smell of success. Israel’s iRomaScents (see here previously) couldn’t sell its “scented movies” to the entertainment industry. So, it re-positioned the product as an aid to choosing perfume. Its AI Wizard was a knockout at CES Las Vegas where it accurately recommended fragrances to the public.
https://www.israel21c.org/
Exits, takeovers and mergers – to 17/3/24: Israel’s Wiz is acquiring Israel’s Gem Security for $350 million. Multinational Ashley Home has acquired Israeli co-founded Resident Home for $1 billion. America’s Zscaler is acquiring Israeli startup Avalor for $350 million. Israel’s Cycode has acquired US-based Bearer for around $10 million.
Startup investment – to 17/3/24: Empathy raised $47 million; Fijoya raised $8.3 million;
CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT & SPORT
Jerusalem Biennale returns home. The sixth Jerusalem Biennale is finally set to return to the Israeli capital five months after the war in Gaza forced the organizers to take the art platform on a world tour. (see here). It has been updated to give broader recognition to female artists and include more works created post-Oct 7.
https://www.israel21c.org/
Top pizza restaurants. (TY Atid-EDI) Two Israeli pizzerias have been selected to be featured in the annual 50 Top Pizza ranking in the Asia-Pacific category. The Fresca pizzeria from Kibbutz Afikim, located south of the Sea of Galilee, was ranked 37th in the guide, and the Jerusalem-based La Piedra was ranked 39th.
https://www.israelhayom.com/
https://www.50toppizza.it/en/
https://www.50toppizza.it/en/
The winds of change. Israel’s entry in the Eurovision song contest had to be changed, as the European Broadcasting Authority objected to the original lyrics referring to Oct 7. Let’s hope that the new version, entitled “Hurricane”, blows the audience away! https://www.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Tour de Taiwan first stage winner. Israeli cyclist Itamar Einhorn of Israel Premier - Tech Cycling Team, won the opening stage of the Tour de Taiwan in Tapei, becoming the first Israeli to wear the yellow jacket in one of Asia’s oldest races. https://unitedwithisrael.org/
THE JEWISH STATE
Firstborn son at 88. Rabbi Tzvi Kushlefsky, a Rosh Yeshiva in Yerushalayim, has just fathered a firstborn son at the age of 88 years old. He became a widower at the age of 82 and remarried a 50-year-old woman who had several children previously. The baby was born at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center.
https://anash.org/
Rave survivors & rescuers pray at Western Wall. Five months after the devastating Hamas massacre at the Nova Music Festival, survivors gathered to pray at the Western Wall. Notes from survivors were carried from Reim and placed in the cracks of the Kotel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
https://unitedwithisrael.org/
Soldiers receive new Torah scroll. Soldiers from the Hakotel and Yaffo Hesder Yeshivas, together with their peers from the Nachal Brigade, welcomed a new Torah scroll at the Netzarim Corridor in the Gaza Strip.
https://www.
How to help Israel. Here are some sites where newsletter readers can donate to Israeli organizations that provide vital help to Israelis at this difficult time. Many thanks to those who have already contributed and to those who are helping by donating their own valuable time and resources.
Friends of the IDF (US donors): https://www.fidf.org/
or IDF Soldiers Fund in Israel: https://www.ufis.org.il/en/
American Friends of Magen David Adom (US donors): https://afmda.org/
or Magen David Adom (Israel): https://www.mdais.org/en/
Zaka (US donors): https://donate.zakatelaviv.
or (Canadian donors): https://www.canadahelps.org/
United Hatzalah: https://israelrescue.org/
Leket Food Israel: https://www.leket.org/en/
JNF USA - https://my.jnf.org/gaza-
Orthodox Union - https://www.charidy.com/
Schneider Children’s Hospital: https://www.fos.org.il/en/
https://system.smartgiving.
https://chaischneider.org/
Hadassah Hospital Israel: https://www.hadassah.org/
Laniado Hospital (Netanya) https://my.israelgives.org/en/
And many more charities here:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Buy Israel Bonds to support the Jewish State. (TY Larry B)
https://www.
USA - https://www.israelbonds.com/
Europe - https://israelbondsintl.com/
Canada - https://www.israelbonds.ca/
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