[Note: This is yet another reason for you all to subscribe to Haaretz, the equivalent of Israel’s New York Times. This article raises red flags, if they were not already noticed, of the danger of Tucker Carlson against American democracy, the well-being of American Jews and every minority community. Fox News is guilty of crass antisemitism as is Carlson.]

Fox News marked Holocaust Remembrance Day with a Tucker Carlson ‘Special’ glorifying Hungary’s white Christian nationalism and accusing Holocaust survivor George Soros of waging a ‘secret war’ on Western civilization. There should have been far more outrage

by Joshua Shanes –  Haaretz

Jan. 30, 2022 1:54 PM

Thursday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the United Nations on the anniversary of the day Auschwitz was liberated in 1945. All over the world, national leaders, international institutions and media outlets commemorated those terrible years, honoring the six million Jews who perished, as well as the millions of other victims of Nazism, while advocating for education and action to prevent future genocides. 

Not Fox News, though.

Instead, Fox News chose this moment to drop a new edition of “Tucker Carlson Originals” that “uncovers George Soros’ secret grip on Hungary and the media.” In preparation for its launch, Carlson spoke throughout the week about Soros’ “war” to make society “more dangerous, dirtier, less democratic, more disorganized, more at war with themselves, less cohesive – in other words, it’s a program of destruction aimed at the West.” 

They are, in other words, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day with a fear-mongering special about the world’s most vilified Jew – a Holocaust survivor no less – whom they accuse of using his nefarious “grip on Hungary and the media” to “wage a secret war” on Western Civilization. 

And they do this as part of a celebration of the authoritarian and deeply antisemitic prime minister of Hungary, Victor Orban, specifically celebrating his war against Soros and his alleged minions: the NGOs and international media that he allegedly controls.

This is, to be blunt, a reproduction of the most foundational myths of modern antisemitism, a fundamental part of the white Christian nationalist worldview that Carlson advocates. Their mainstreaming by Carlson and Fox News, and shockingly during this week, is dangerous and warrants more attention.

Carlson has a long history of accusing Soros of a malign plan to “remake” America. He is also an outspoken advocate of the antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory that posits white dominance in America is being undermined by demographic warfare orchestrated by (((globalist))) elites to “import” immigrants of color.

He is propagating precisely the antisemitic myths that sit at the heart of modern antisemitism and ultimately – when combined with the collapse of democracy – led to the Holocaust itself. It is also the antisemitic myth that led directly to the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh.

Modern antisemitism is a product of the 19th century, when ancient and medieval Christian myths about Jews (ritual murder, connections to Satan, poisoning wells) evolved with the additional element of race — the argument that Jewish “traits” were immutable and could not be changed via conversion. Ethno-nationalists began imagining the nation as an organic, racially homogenous community in which Jews might be tolerated but could never truly belong.

One of the most important features of this modern antisemitic mythology was the belief that Jews constituted a single, ontological being, organized for the purpose of destroying the world by undermining the sovereignty and strength of the national community to which they could never belong.

The powerful “international Jew” (the title of Henry Ford’s infamous tract) led a global conspiracy with claws or tentacles strangling the nation and the world. A century ago, the villain was Edmond de Rothschild, head of the most famous Jewish banking family of the 19th century and a symbol of international Jewish wealth and power for antisemites at the time. Today, it is typically George Soros, often portrayed (as in a 2021 Fox News cartoon) with imagery out of the 19th century, as a puppet master secretly controlling all levers of government, economy and foreign migration. In Carlson’s own words, this is about the “billionaire who wants to run your country.”

It is this last accusation – that international Jewry through its Rothschilds and Soroses is engaged in a war against the pure white race by facilitating mass migration of non-white immigrants – that most animates today’s antisemites. 

This myth has motivated killers throughout the past two centuries, from the Russian czar inciting pogroms to the Pittsburgh massacre. Even the assailant in Texas last week imagined the existence of an all-powerful Jewish cabal, headed in his imagination by a chief rabbi rather than a billionaire like Soros.

It is precisely this classic antisemitic myth – packaged with a fascist aesthetic promoting Orban’s authoritarian regime – that Carlson presents in his video special. 

The “Special” itself opens to a soaring soundtrack of Christian hymns and images of classic European architecture and white families playing happily. Then the tone shifts: violent music and scenes of darker-skinned immigrants intended to frighten.

Its first words are Victor Orban telling the camera that Europe is George Soros’ “main hunting area.” He is waging a war, we are told: “[P]olitical, financial, and demographic” – spending “billions to undermine national borders and install puppets in power,” while Hungary – an “outpost of Western civilization” – is fighting against this “evil” to preserve its “Christian” character.  The Visegrad Group, a right-wing nationalist bloc including Hungary, promotes Carlson’s program

With demonic photos of Soros in the background, viewers are told that the threat posed by him is “subtle and harder to detect. This is the typical language of antisemites. Jews are cunning, we are told, puppet masters who operate in the shadows, particularly through their financial resources and control of the media, a charge Carlson and his Hungarian friends repeat often of Soros. “He attacks us with money, with media,” says Hungary’s prime minister. “Why shouldn’t we have the right to react?” 

Orban’s worldview is defended by an outside “expert,” Rod Dreher, a notoriously racist “postliberal” columnist for the American Conservative who has called immigrants from Africa and the Middle East a “Barbarian invasion” and, like Carlson (and Orban), defends white Christian cultural supremacy from those who seek its “disintegration.” 

Between sinister photos of Soros (bolstered by a Fox host in the video special describing him as “scary” looking) and frightening images of bloodied, dark migrants who bring “crime” and “filth and rape” – overlaid with discordant music – Carlson presents a long interlude about Hungary’s natalist policies. Here the music is sweet and beautiful with happy images of white families and children. They don’t want to import dirty migrants, they say. They want their own white, Christian grandchildren to inherit their country. 

This natalism, as George Mosse among many others have taught us, is a classic fascist aesthetic. Jorg Haider’s neo-Nazi Freedom Party in Austria used such images quite freely during his rise to power in 1999, as do similar parties all over Europe.  The battle between Soros and Orban is a “war between globalism and nationalism,” Carlson concludes, a classic antisemitic dog whistle for Jews. Another long-time antisemitic trope is that Jews constitute an international communist menace: Orban provides that one. “The international left will do everything they can to change our government,” he claims, but not to worry: he is ready to fight them.

True, it is not identical to a century ago. Carlson doesn’t explicitly note Soros’ Jewishness, as people did of the Rothschilds. He even spends a few seconds of the video denying that his attacks could be antisemitic, because Soros is (he claims) “an opponent of Israel.” (Soros supports Israeli organizations that promote democracy and human rights in Israel.) This is the flipside of defenders of antisemites like Orban denying their antisemitism by emphasizing their support for Israel’s rightwing politicians, not least Netanyahu. 

Nevertheless, the mythology – particularly when presented in such a stark fascist aesthetic in defense of an antisemitic, authoritarian leader – is clearly the same. The antisemitic message will be received, the hatred triggered and deepened.  

Tucker Carlson is a significant player. His program is the most popular cable “news” program in America, averaging over three million viewers. In fact, Fox runs seven of the ten most popular cable news programs, most of which push this demonization of Soros alongside Carlson. Very few politicians enjoy this level of influence.

The ADL helpfully condemned this program and has repeatedly called for Carlson to be fired over his promotion of white nationalism. This is welcome but more is needed. Far from firing their biggest star, Fox is promoting his antisemitic and racist hate mongering. This constitutes a serious danger, far more threatening to Jewish life than an ice cream boycott of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which somehow receives far more attention. 

Fox News is due a rebrand, at least in our discourse. It should be officially recognized as an outlet of antisemitism and white, Christian nationalism – deeply interconnected ideologies being propagated on the most popular cable news show in America – and the ADL’s campaign against Carlson more robustly supported in light of the antisemitic, and racist incitement and propaganda Fox is promoting. Nothing less than Jewish safety is at stake, and the safety of others in turn. 

Joshua Shanes is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston and Director of its Arnold Center for Israel Studies

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-tucker-carlson-s-anti-soros-crusade-is-a-clear-danger-for-american-jews-1.10576543?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=haaretz-news&utm_content=58aa571fc1

The brutality being perpetrated against Palestinians and the destruction of their property in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not representative of the Israel I know and love. Yet, tragically, this violence has become part of the story of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people. It is disheartening and infuriating, to say the least, and I am at a loss as to why the Israeli government and military authority allow it to continue with impunity.

What’s the evidence?

Every day there are reports that violent-extremist-Israeli-settler-terrorist-thugs (there’s no other way to characterize them – see links below) are attacking Palestinians and Jewish Israeli human rights activists in the West Bank with impunity.

Regularly we hear stories that the Israeli military authority has bull-dozed Palestinian homes it says were built without permits or are located in what are regarded as security zones.

Far too often we learn that rogue soldiers mistreat, injure, and sometimes kill innocent Palestinians.

Israel was not established to oversee a barbaric occupation such as what has occurred since the 1967 Israeli-Arab war.

This wave of violence is NOT the Jewish way, and it is unbecoming to the Jewish and democratic State of Israel that is, arguably, the greatest accomplishment of the Jewish people in 2000 years.

The Israeli government and military administration must stop all the injustices being perpetrated in its name against the Palestinian people and hold those guilty of violating Palestinian human rights to account. Yes, maintaining security is always necessary and sometimes force is unavoidable. But, unjustifiably abusing innocent Palestinians is a crime and cannot be allowed to continue. That which is allowed, essentially, is condoned and such behaviors will continue to metastasize.

Here are several pieces that show explicitly what is now happening far too regularly in the occupied territories:

The NY Times reported the death of a Palestinian in Israeli hands this past week – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/world/middleeast/palestinian-american-detain-israel-dead.html

Ali Velchi on MSNBC recounted the dire effects of the occupation and Israel’s illegal settlements, and a moving tribute to Haj Suleiman of Um al Kheir who was killed by an Israeli tow truck last week – https://www.msnbc.com/ali-velshi/watch/velshi-a-palestinian-shepherd-peacefully-resisted-the-israeli-occupation-and-now-he-s-dead-131462213973

Jewish terrorist thugs attacked Palestinian and Jewish human rights activists this past Friday, January 21^st in the village of Burin. These activists were planting trees together with their friends from the Olive Harvest Coalition and Palestinian farmers – https://twitter.com/HShezaf/status/1484476027170660353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1484476027170660353%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.com%2Fisrael-news%2Fisraeli-minister-calls-settler-attack-on-activists-terrorism-1.10558919

I’ve been thinking of late, given the deadly persistence and spread of Covid and its “Greek” variants, our shuttering in place (again!), the political and violent threat of Trump Republicans against American democracy, the rise in violent antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia, an ever-worsening climate crisis, and a crumbling of communal ties in a toxic and polarized America.

Over the past eleven plus years, as a means of keeping my sanity, gaining perspective over events large and small, expanding my reach beyond my own community to help educate, provoke, and (at times) inspire, I’ve been writing this blog without let-up.

As a kind of personal mini-Yom Kippur, I thought it worthwhile now for me to take a step back and assess the state of this blog relative to my initial goals. Are they what they once were and are they relevant still?

Eleven plus years ago I had four goals:

1. To bring to light what I considered issues of importance facing the American Jewish community, Israel, and the United States from the perspective of liberal American values, liberal Jewish values, and progressive Reform Zionism;
2. To reflect on Judaism as a fertile font from which our liberal Jewish identity as ethical and spiritual beings can be clarified, nurtured, and enhanced;
3. To glean general take-away lessons on a wide variety of large and small life events and challenges;
4. To offer quotations that enlighten, give food for thought, provoke, and focus our thinking and activism on behalf of the common good.

I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to think out-load on this platform, to discipline my thinking to what I believe is essential to any particular argument, event, or matter, and to advance a point of view that’s positive, life-affirming,  and consistent with core liberal American and progressive Jewish values.

My son, Daniel, urged me at the beginning to avoid writing anything longer than 800 words because most people ‘s attention span is short. I’ve tried to do that.

There’s a Jewish tradition of citing sources called “l’shem omro – in the name of…”, and I’ve done this too. Not only is it ethically right to give credit to others, but doing it nurtures the virtues of humility, generosity, and gratitude that are, I believe, among the predicates for attaining well-being in one’s life.

I’ve used many blogs, perhaps too many for some readers, to discuss progressive Reform Zionism and the State of Israel. I’ve done so because Israel and Jewish peoplehood are in my DNA, and because I believe that to be a Jew in the 21^st century means struggling to understand our relationship with the modern State of Israel, arguably the greatest accomplishment of the Jewish people in two thousand years.

For forty years, I served as a congregational rabbi, and my central task was to live a life that I believed was worthy of the highest values and virtues in liberal Judaism. These blogs helped me think through issues that confronted me, my colleagues, my lay-leadership, and my fellow Jews and Zionists over the years. For that, for them, and for the tradition out of which we come, I’m grateful.

Have I held to the four larger original goals? I think I have – but I’ll let you who follow what I write decide for yourselves. Thank you for reading.

I do not know Rabbi Charlie Citron-Walker of Colleyville, Texas personally, but I love and respect the man. His ordeal against this most recent antisemitic attack, it seems to me, ended as it did without physical harm coming to him and the other hostages as a consequence of his empathy and capacity to relate lovingly with people, his studied calm in facing danger, and his instinct for taking advantage of a single moment to escape after he and his fellow hostages concluded that their survival was ultimately on them alone to act when the moment presented itself.

The outpouring of loving support to Charlie and his fellow hostages from the Colleyville religious community of Christians and Muslims, the American Reform movement and Jewish people around the world, and all decent Americans, was as a consequence, in the first case, of Charlie’s years of work befriending and finding common ground with his fellow clergy colleagues from across religious lines in Colleyville, and then from the close organizational and communal support system developed over the past century in the American Reform Jewish movement, and from the Jewish people’s millennial tradition of feeling responsible for and acting in support of one another.

None of these consequences is automatic. Creating community on both the small and large scale takes deliberate and consistent effort at every level of community organization, in every endeavor, by individuals and small groups, by leaders and those behind the scenes who are the connective tissue of relationships and the builders of community.

Rabbi Charlie showed the world this past weekend what he is made of as a Jewish leader, and in that he taught us all about how to be fully present in the moment, to stay true to himself as a rabbinic trailblazer, and to confront an adversary with courage, strength, grace, dignity, intelligence, and common human decency. Rabbi Charlie became a model of leadership for many far beyond his community that already knows and loves him. He is an inspiration, and if there is any silver lining to be found here, it is this – that Rabbi Charlie Citron-Walker set the very best human face of the Jewish people before the world.

When the hostages escaped, all who value human life breathed a sigh of relief. I pray that Rabbi Charlie and his family, the other hostages and their families, and his Colleyville community will find healing and added strength of purpose in the wake of this ordeal.

Kamatz v’eimatz.

Also posted at the Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/thoughts-after-colleyville/

Dr. Martin Luther King spoke from the bimah of Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles on Shabbat evening, February 26, 1965, only five days after the assassination of Malcolm X.

Security was tight around the synagogue on that evening. Sharpshooters were placed on the apartment building across the street on Hollywood Boulevard. Dr. King delivered his sermon with two large body guards standing directly behind him.

The Sanctuary was filled to capacity with 1400+ congregants. Rabbi Max Nussbaum reminded the congregation that since it was Shabbat, applause following Dr. King’s remarks would be inappropriate. He said: “You will wish to applaud, and you will not do so!”

This existence of the recorded speech was discovered by the wider Los Angeles Jewish community and was noted in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal before Martin Luther King Day in 2007. National Public Radio learned of it from the LAJJ article and requested permission to air it nationally that year. It was aired both in 2007 and 2008.

The speech borrows from many other addresses Dr. King delivered over the course of his career and is an example of the eloquence, passion, and deep intellect that was Dr. King. He was 35 years old when he delivered it.

You can listen here – http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlktempleisraelhollywood.htm

[Note: What follows is today’s (January 13) daily newsletter by Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian and professor of history at Boston College. I read it daily for details on whatever is happening nationally. It is excellent and I highly recommend it. Google her newsletter and subscribe if you find what you read here today worthwhile.]

“The struggle between the Trump-backed forces of authoritarianism and those of us defending democracy is coming down to the fight over whether the Democrats can get the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act through the Senate. 

It’s worth reading what’s actually in the bills because, to my mind, it is bananas that they are in any way controversial. 

The Freedom to Vote Act is a trimmed version of the For the People Act the House passed at the beginning of this congressional session. It establishes a baseline for access to the ballot across all states. That baseline includes at least two weeks of early voting for any town of more than 3000 people, including on nights and weekends, for at least 10 hours a day. It permits people to vote by mail, or to drop their ballots into either a polling place or a drop box, and guarantees those votes will be counted so long as they are postmarked on or before Election Day and arrive at the polling place within a week. It makes Election Day a holiday. It provides uniform standards for voter IDs in states that require them. 

The Freedom to Vote Act cracks down on voter suppression. It makes it a federal crime to lie to voters in order to deter them from voting (distributing official-looking flyers with the wrong dates for an election or locations of a polling place, for example), and it increases the penalties for voter intimidation. It restores federal voting rights for people who have served time in jail, creating a uniform system out of the current patchwork one. 

It requires states to guarantee that no one has to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.

Using measures already in place in a number of states, the Freedom to Vote Act provides uniform voter registration rules. It establishes automatic voter registration at state Departments of Motor Vehicles, permits same-day voter registration, allows online voter registration, and protects voters from the purges that have plagued voting registrations for decades now, requiring that voters be notified if they are dropped from the rolls and given information on how to get back on them. 

The Freedom to Vote Act bans partisan gerrymandering.

The Freedom to Vote Act requires any entity that spends more than $10,000 in an election to disclose all its major donors, thus cleaning up dark money in politics. It requires all advertisements to identify who is paying for them. It makes it harder for political action committees (PACs) to coordinate with candidates, and it beefs up the power of the Federal Election Commission that ensures candidates run their campaigns legally. 

The Freedom to Vote Act also addresses the laws Republican-dominated states have passed in the last year to guarantee that Republicans win future elections. It protects local election officers from intimidation and firing for partisan purposes. It expands penalties for tampering with ballots after an election (as happened in Maricopa County, Arizona, where the Cyber Ninjas investigating the results did not use standard protection for them and have been unable to produce documents for a freedom of information lawsuit, leading to fines of $50,000 a day and the company’s dissolution). If someone does tamper with the results or refuses to certify them, voters can sue.  

The act also prevents attempts to overturn elections by requiring audits after elections, making sure those audits have clearly defined rules and procedures. And it prohibits voting machines that don’t leave a paper record. 

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA) takes on issues of discrimination in voting by updating and restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) that the Supreme Court gutted in 2013 and 2021. The VRA required that states with a history of discrimination in voting get the Department of Justice to approve any changes they wanted to make in their voting laws before they went into effect, and in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court struck that requirement down, in part because the justices felt the formula in the law was outdated.

The VRAA provides a new, modern formula for determining which states need preapproval, based on how many voting rights violations they’ve had in the past 25 years. After ten years without violations, they will no longer need preclearance. It also establishes some practices that must always be cleared, such as getting rid of ballots printed in different languages (as required in the U.S. since 1975). 

The VRAA also restores the ability of voters to sue if their rights are violated, something the 2021 Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee decision makes difficult. 

The VRAA directly addresses the ability of Indigenous Americans, who face unique voting problems, to vote. It requires at least one polling place on tribal lands, for example, and requires states to accept tribal or federal IDs. 

That’s it. 

It is off-the-charts astonishing that no Republicans are willing to entertain these common-sense measures, especially since there are in the Senate a number of Republicans who voted in 2006 to reauthorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act the VRAA is designed to restore. 

McConnell today revealed his discomfort with President Joe Biden’s speech yesterday at the Atlanta University Center Consortium, when Biden pointed out that “[h]istory has never been kind to those who have sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights. And it will be even less kind for those who side with election subversion.” Biden asked Republican senators to choose between our history’s advocates of voting rights and those who opposed such rights. He asked:

“Do you want to be…on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?  Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?

Today, McConnell, who never complained about the intemperate speeches of former president Donald Trump, said Biden’s speech revealed him to be “profoundly, profoundly unpresidential.”

The voting rights measures appear to have the support of the Senate Democrats, but because of the Senate filibuster, which makes it possible for senators to block any measure unless a supermajority of 60 senators are willing to vote for it, voting rights cannot pass unless Democrats are willing to figure out a way to bypass the filibuster. Two Democratic senators—Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV)—are currently unwilling to do that. 

Nine Democratic senators eager to pass this measure met with Sinema for two and a half hours last night and for another hour with Manchin this morning in an attempt to get them to a place where they are willing to change the rules of the Senate filibuster to protect our right to vote.

They have not yet found a solution.

This evening, Senate Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that he would bring voting rights legislation to the Senate floor for debate—which Republicans have rejected—by avoiding a Republican filibuster through a complicated workaround. When the House and Senate disagree on a bill (which is almost always), they send it back and forth with revisions until they reach a final version. According to Democracy Docket, after it has gone back and forth three times, a motion to proceed on it cannot be filibustered. So, Democrats in the House are going to take a bill that has already hit the three-trip mark and substitute for that bill the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. They’ll pass the combined bill and send it to the Senate, where debate over it can’t be filibustered.

And so, Republican senators will have to explain to the people why they oppose what appear to be common-sense voting rules.”

I’m fairly certain that anyone reading what I write is already persuaded by what Max Boot argued in the Washington Post last October. If you have friends who continue to support the Republican Party because that is what they have always done and because they are legitimate political conservatives (like Liz Cheney), share what I post below from Boot’s telling op-ed:

“I’m no Democrat—but I’m voting exclusively for Democrats to save our democracy.I’m a single-issue voter. My issue is the fate of democracy in the United States. Simply put, I have no faith that we will remain a democracy if Republicans win power. Thus, although I’m not a Democrat, I will continue to vote exclusively for Democrats—as I have done in every election since 2016—until the GOP ceases to pose an existential threat to our freedom…. It is mind-boggling that a defeated president won’t accept the election outcome…. What is even more alarming is that more than 60 percent of Republicans agree with his preposterous assertion that the election was stolen and want him to remain as the party’s leader. ”

-Max Boot, Washington Post, October 11, 2021 – Boot is a Russian-American specialist in foreign affairs who identifies as a conservative but no longer supports the Republican Party.