In a sermon decrying anti-Semitism, Central Synagogue rabbi Angela Buchdahl calls out the left for demonizing Israel by demanding that young Jews renounce Zionism in order to take part in social justice causes. But Israel is a liberal ideal, she says, “Jews have always been at the forefront against oppression.” And Israels killings of unarmed Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border is “complicated.”
The Department of Education’s new anti-Semitism standard that bars calling Israel a racist endeavor shows the sheer arrogance of the Trump-Netanyahu axis. They are going for broke. And the liberals who obsess about Putin’s supposed control seem unable to spot which groups really have influence on Trump.
In his new book, Bob Woodward says that Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine NATO and NAFTA and agreements with South Korea were threats to American national security and Trump was heroically foiled by his own aides. But when it comes to Trump’s destruction of the Iran deal, Woodward all but approves it, portraying Iran as a “malign” threat to world order and an “existential threat to the Jewish state.”
If the Oslo peace process between Israel and Palestine had succeeded, Donald Trump would not have been elected, says the eminent Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar. He surely imagines a scenario in which neoconservatives did not push the Iraq war, which helped Trump defeat Clinton in 2016.
NY State Democratic Party mailer smearing Gov. Cuomo’s challenger Cynthia Nixon as an antisemite cites a real difference between the two, Nixon has backed boycott of a West Bank settlement, while Cuomo has been outspoken against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, BDS campaign.
Andrew Gillum, the progressive star who is running to be Florida governor, supports McCarthyite legislation to restrict BDS. Ayanna Pressley, a MA progressive running for congress, also disappoints. But there’s good news too: the New York Times and NPR have both run stories with positive references to the movement for equal rights.
Everything that Trump is doing in Israel/Palestine, from moving the embassy to telling Palestinians to accept Jordanian sovereignty, is in line with the agenda of his biggest backer, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who thinks Palestinians don’t exist and they should never have a state. The pattern is clear. But the press ignores the story.
Support for the Israeli government no matter what still defines the official American Jewish community. Just look at this long list of rabbis celebrating AIPAC, the Israel lobby group, from their altars, despite AIPAC’s support for the Iraq war and fierce opposition to the Iran deal. AIPAC might as well be a Jewish holiday!
After taking the Jerusalem issue off the table, Trump wants to do the same with Palestinian refugees by denying their right to return. The fiat is not only dangerous and reckless, James Zogby writes, it is cruel and insensitive, and violates international law and covenants.
A long New Yorker profile of Paul Singer, Trump’s big donor, plays down the fact that Singer’s major political interest is Israel, and leaves out the word “neoconservative,” though Singer has funded countless thinktanks that favor regime change in the Middle East and pushed that policy in Iraq.