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June 2, 2024
Key Takeaways:
- It's been 240 days since October 7, 2023, when, on Simchat Torah, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and murdered 1,200 people (including 44 Americans). More Jews were murdered on that day than on any day since the Holocaust. Hamas wounded 3,300 and took 240 hostage during a day of brutal savagery and unspeakable, undeniable sexual violence; 125 hostages, some dead, some raped and possibly pregnant, remain captive in Gaza today.
- These remaining hostages comprise five religions and 25 nationalities, including eight Americans, five probably alive: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Keith Siegal, Omer Neutra, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai.
- On Friday, President Biden called on Hamas to accept an Israeli proposal for an immediate ceasefire, release of all the hostages, and get more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Biden provided details and put the onus on Hamas to accept the deal. The "ceasefire now" crowd can have a ceasefire now if Hamas says yes.
- The Republican Party has declined and fallen a long way since its senior leaders told Richard Nixon it was time to resign. No Republican members of Congress are saying that with 34 felony convictions, it's time for Trump to step aside. No Republican members of Congress have criticized Trump for any of his antisemitic remarks. Ever. The GOP is a cult.
- The Republican Party will, for the third consecutive presidential cycle, nominate the most openly corrupt, antisemitic, and anti-democratic candidate ever nominated by a major American political party. Trump was not good for Israel when he was president and he won't be good for Israel if he wins in November.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and details about my appearance with Burt Siegel on Tuesday morning.
This newsletter is always free, but if you get something out of it, you can give something back by credit card or PayPal, by Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four phone digits are 9479), or by check. It's your choice.
Hi Steve,
When Donald Trump ran for president in the 2016 Republican primaries, Republican leaders knew who Donald Trump was. Republican Jewish Coalition Chair Norm Coleman wrote that he would never vote for Trump because Trump is ''a bigot, a misogynist, a fraud, and a bully." The RJC subsequently endorsed Trump for president in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections.
The truth went down the memory hole the day Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016. If you don’t think today's GOP is a fascist cult, watch this. The music is from the rally; it was not added. Note the right-hand salutes; remind you of anything?
Not one sitting Republican member of Congress and not one current Republican candidate for Congress has condemned any of Trump's antisemitic remarks. They've had plenty of chances since 2016.
Not one Republican member of Congress and not one current Republican candidate for Congress has said that maybe 34 felony convictions means Trump should step down or that Trump has lost their support--but some Republican senators threw a hissy fit after Trump was convicted. This is not the Republican Party whose leaders had the courage and decency to tell Richard Nixon that his time was up.
A small but vocal minority within the Jewish community dismisses Trump's crude vulgarity, criminal activity, and nonsensical comments as personality quirks. They say Trump is a shrewd businessman who knows how to get things done. He’s not a good businessman, he surrounds himself with incompetence, he's antisemitic, he’s not good for Israel, and he doesn't know how to get things done.
Thirty-four felony convictions (I'll concede that he knows how to commit felonies) will not stop some in our community from supporting Trump. After all, who among us has not falsified business records to prevent voters from learning about a sexual encounter with a porn actress that could have influenced the outcome of a presidential election? After the verdict, Trump tried to blame George Soros, repeating one of his favorite antisemitic tropes.
In case you missed Trump's press conference speech on Friday, here are 34 lowlights.
Trump supporters with a Manichean worldview prefer low-information politicians who see everything in black-and-white because they figure that if a politician was not reasoned into a position they like, that politician cannot be reasoned out of it. So misguided members of our community trust him based on the false premise that he has a soft spot for Israel and the Jewish people despite all evidence to the contrary.
You have to wonder what they think of themselves or of Israel to think that we'd better off with a crooked conman like Donald Trump than with a decent, intelligent, committed Zionist like Joe Biden, whose five-decade record of support for Israel and the Jewish people is unparalleled. They feign concern about members of Congress not in leadership and college protesters, but not the man who would be President of the United States, even though the pearl-clutching about certain members of Congress is based on accusations rea or imagined, that pale in comparison to what Donald Trump has said or done.
The only person or ideology that Trump is committed to is Donald Trump.
Rabbi Jay Michaelson has some questions for Jewish Trump supporters: Now that Trump is a convicted felon, "is support for Israel’s right-wing government more important than the rule of law and American democracy as we know it? Are there any red lines left? ... Have they gone so far down the road with this transparently obvious con artist that the cognitive dissonance of accepting the truth about Trump’s misdeeds is so great that they’ll believe any preposterous story that avoids it?"
Michaelson concludes that "if we rationalize Trump’s criminality and contempt for the law — then we have lost what we’re trying to protect. For the sake of a nationalist bowl of porridge, we will have given away our birthright as Jews."
The Republican Party will, for the third consecutive presidential cycle, nominate the most openly corrupt, antisemitic, and anti-democratic candidate ever nominated by a major American political party. No, he is not good for Israel. No, the law and order party does not mind that he is a convicted felon. But we should. A lot.
President Biden has done as much or more to fight antisemitism and support Israel than any president, but even a lesser candidate would be the clear choice over Trump.
Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, the GOP's nominee for the most powerful office in the world, repeatedly invokes Hitler and the Nazis. Trump's record of antisemitic rhetoric is longer than the record, real or imagined, of any member of Congress on either side of the aisle. If anyone sincerely worries about comments from a handful of Democratic members of Congress not leading the party, how can they dismiss comments from the leader of the Republican Party?
Donald Trump dined with Kanye West and white nationalist/Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Trump said that white nationalists marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us" were "very fine people."
We are not voting for college president and campus protesters are not running for Congress. We are voting for President of the United States, and only one presidential candidate, Donald Trump, uses antisemitic rhetoric. If you are concerned about antisemitism on college campuses, do you think the answer is to elect an antisemite to the presidency?
Donald Trump is not good for Israel. Trump attacked Israel and its leaders days after October 7. He's shown no sympathy--only callousness--for the hostages. If you think that Trump could have put together the coalition Biden assembled that saved thousands of Israelis from Iran's April 13 ballistic missile attacks, read what two hawkish Republican national security experts say about Trump's fitness for office.
Trump walked away from the Iran Deal while the deal was working and Iran was still in compliance. Then his “maximum pressure” strategy failed, his efforts at the UN to continue the arms embargo against Iran failed, and his efforts at the UN to snap back sanctions against Iran failed. Trump's Iran policy was a disaster.
Trump's moving the embassy to Jerusalem made Israel neither safer nor more secure. Few cared where the embassy was until Republicans decided it would bolster the presidential candidacy of Sen. Robert Dole (R-KA). Now it’s Trump’s antisemitic dog-whistle to right-wing Evangelicals.
Anshel Pfeffer wrote that Trump’s recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights was an empty gesture--"just as his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was. It won’t change the status of the Golan in international law and with the exception of a few client-states in Latin America, no other country is going to follow suit.”
Biden is the first president to visit Israel during wartime. The first president to directly defend Israel from attack with U.S. troops and assets--were it not for Biden, Israeli deaths from Iran's missile attack would have dwarfed October 7. Biden requested the largest emergency aid package in Israel's history, and while Republicans were blocking the vital aid for six months, Biden approved over 100 arms sales to Israel.
Biden vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Palestinian statehood. The administration told the world on May 16 that the only thing standing in the way of an immediate and prolonged ceasefire "is Hamas. Hamas could stop fighting today by releasing the first hostage." If you've forgotten all that Biden has done for Israel since October 7, refresh your memory.
On Friday, President Biden called on Hamas to accept an Israeli proposal for an immediate ceasefire and release of all the hostages. The proposal from Israel is very close to the last deal Hamas proposed. It was approved by Israel's war cabinet and by Netanyahu. Now we will see if Hamas is serious. Now we will see if the "ceasefire now" crowd wants a ceasefire now--if they do, they will start demanding that Hamas say yes now. If anyone thinks Israel is not serious, then Hamas can prove it by just saying "yes."
Read Biden's speech for yourself. After setting the record straight on Trump's 34 felony convictions, Biden details Israel's ceasefire proposal and what it requires of Hamas and Israel--and the benefits for Israel and the Palestinians. Biden notes Israel can make this offer because "at this point, Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another October 7th— one of the Israelis’ main objectives in this war and, quite frankly, a righteous one." Israel would retain the right to bring those who planned the October 7 attack to justice.
"For months," said President Biden, "people all over the world have called for a ceasefire. Now it’s time to raise your voices and to demand that Hamas come to the table, agree to this deal, and end this war that they began."
Commanders for Israel's Security called Biden's speech "the most recent manifestation of his decades-long commitment to Israel's security and to the solid bond between our countries."
But not everyone will like Biden's speech, Rob Eshman writes, "including the segment of college campus protesters whose favored solution is a Middle East with no Israel; Israeli Jewish supremacists, who want a Greater Israel with no Palestinians; and Palestinians who want to see Israel made an international pariah for its actions. But Biden understands what those groups do not: They are on the margins. A solid majority of Americans, 72%, want to see the United States forge a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter, I misspelled "Biden" as "Bide" in one instance.
In Case You Missed It:
- This short piece from Etgar Keret sums up the mood in Israel.
Tweets of the Week. Matthew Yglesias, Brian Klaas, Andrea Junker, and this--to make you smile.
Video Clip of the Week. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid.
Upcoming Event. On Tuesday at 10 am ET, I'll be appearing on Jewish Perspectives on the News and Politics, hosted by Burt Siegel, Vice Chair of Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania and past Executive Director of the Philadelphia JCRC. If you can't tune in live, you can listen to the podcast version at your leisure. Details here.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved 2022 and 2023 Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder. If someone forwarded this to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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