Jen is a long-time friend. Once a member of my congregation in Los Angeles, I happily officiated at her marriage and had hopes that she would eventually rise to become the President of my synagogue’s Board of Trustees. But, she left LA for the Washington, D.C. area 20 plus years ago for a position at a law firm in Virginia and eventually became a prolific blogger at The Washington Post. She is a brilliant thinker and writer, and the list of writers (below) to her new Media Outlet called “The Contrarian” is exceptional.
I hope you will subscribe. I did so immediately upon receiving her email. Since then, Jen’s and Norm Eisen’s new media platform and outlet have been covered widely in the media. Details and links to subscribe are below in Jen’s initial email:
“Friends, relations:
Please excuse the group email. After 14 years at The Washington Post I quit today. Bezos’s decision to sacrifice journalism at the altar of self-interest (how many billions are enough??) meant I could no longer stay at ThePost. I have felt muzzled for some time, and recent events pushed me over the edge.
That’s why I couldn’t be more excited to announce the launch of a new independent media outlet: The Contrarian. With a large group of friends and colleagues we have started a platform that will be unabashed, unvarnished and irreverent. It will have political opinion, commentary, interviews but much more – cooking, film, books, and even dogs!
You can find the first edition of The Contrarianhere, alongside our launch video here. For those on social media please follow on Bluesky (account below).
Every weekday, you will receive at least two pieces of content: a daily morning column written by me [Jen Rubin], followed by a piece by Norm Eisen or one of our brilliant contributing Contrarians. Those voices include Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Andrew Weissmann, Andy Borowitz, Asha Rangappa, Barbara McQuade, Bob Kagan, David Litt, Esosa Osa, George Conway, Harry Litman, Ilan Goldenberg, John Dean, Jonathan Alter, Joyce Vance, Katie Phang, Karen Agnifilo, Kim Lane Scheppele, Professor Laurence Tribe, Lavora Barnes, Michael Podhorzer, Nancy Gertner, Olivia Julianna, Renato Mariotti, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Stephen Richer, Tom Joscelyn, and many more to come.
Please check it out, subscribe and take a few minutes to send to friends and family. I really need your help. This is a labor of love (and a little scary). Thanks in advance.
Many friends have reached out to me, and I and my family are grateful for your concern, love, and interest.
I’m writing at 6:30 am on Sunday morning, January 12th. Every day is dynamic and it’s impossible to know what fire threats are lurking ahead. What I write here is a snapshot in time and part of a much longer drama.
My wife and I are okay, as are our kids and grandchildren who are a bit further away from the fire than us.
As far as I know, none of my synagogue’s families has lost anything (yet). Other than the “Sunset Fire” that came within 3 blocks of Temple Israel of Hollywood, our members are safe and their homes are secure.
We’re watching the local news in all our waking hours, and waiting expectantly and anxiously for mandatory evacuation orders.
We live at the eastern edge of Sherman Oaks, a San Fernando Valley community nestled in the hills in a highly flammable fire zone. Our home is about 3-4 miles east of the current front of the Palisades fire, but that front could move in our direction and be here quickly when the Santa Ana winds pick up as they’re expected to do again in the next several days. This time they are expected to blow at a speed of between 40 and 50 mph over a period of three days (tonight through Wednesday), as opposed to the initial days of the fire that hit the Pacific Palisades and Altadena (near Pasadena) so ferociously when the Santa Anas were blowing at an unprecedented speed and power of between 80 and 100 mph.
We aren’t yet in the evacuation zone that keeps expanding east and north from Mandeville Canyon in West Los Angeles in the Santa Monica Mountains. We’ve packed essentials and are ready to evacuate when and if ordered.
The size and scope of the fires are unprecedented. Thousands upon thousands of homes are gone especially in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena communities. My high school (Palisades High) is gone [correction: I have learned subsequently that initial reports were misleading and though much of the school was destroyed, much also remains in tact], as are two synagogues (one in the Palisades and the other in Pasadena) and thousands of businesses everywhere have been destroyed. Smoke fills the air throughout the region and we’re told to stay inside as much as possible and wear the heavy-duty Covid masks if we venture outside.
The destruction is dystopic in scope. Entire communities are gone, ash has settled everywhere and smoke fills the air. This fire reminds me vividly of the devastating 1961 Bel Air Fire when I was in the 6th grade at Kenter Canyon Elementary School and 450 homes were destroyed including those of many of my school mates. This series of fires, however, is exponentially worse. About ten people have been arrested for looting, two of whom posed as fire-fighters, but most people have been cooperative with fire officials and the police, followed instructions and are either evacuating immediately when ordered or are staying home. Those who lost their homes have moved in with family, friends or taken rooms in hotels temporarily until the fires cease and they can begin to think about what to do next.
People from everywhere have gathered spontaneously at Santa Anita Park, contributing and receiving clothing, diapers, food, and water for those who have lost everything. Also food and water are being delivered directly to firefighters and journalists reporting for extended hours on the front fire-lines.
Fire-fighting equipment (planes and choppers carrying water and fire retardants) have come from throughout California, Canada, Mexico, and every western state (Washington, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada). To watch on the local news how these fires are being fought strategically and professionally by thousands of fire-fighters is something extraordinary to behold.
President Joe Biden promised to fund for the next 180 days the entirety of the fire-fighting effort in LA County. California Governor Gavin Newsom asked the other western states and Mexico for help, and the Mexican President (the first Jew and first woman ever elected to the presidency in Mexico) sent 70 fire-fighters who arrived on Saturday afternoon at LAX and immediately entered the fire arenas to assist in the fight. Our LA Mayor Karen Bass and the County Board of Supervisors are coordinating everything across departments. The people of LA County (10 million souls of every race, ethnicity, nationality, religious, and secular background) and Ventura County to the north have come together as one. Everyone is focused on the same things – the safety of their families, friends, the status of the fire, their homes, communities, schools, religious institutions, and businesses.
As we decided what to take with us, most every material thing is insignificant in the grand scheme of our lives. What are important are the people we love – our family, friends, and community.
We aren’t yet out of danger. Last night, however, one LAFD Captain reported on the NBC local news (to our personal relief) that he did not believe that the Palisades Fire would cross east of the 405 Freeway. His positive and optimistic assessment was stunning to my ears after days of intense anxiety. As noted above, our home in Sherman Oaks is about 3 miles to the east of the 405 and one mile south of the 101 Freeway. However, the fires are threatening Encino (west of the 405 and a mile north and down the mountain from where the fires have progressed), and we have family and friends there who have evacuated their homes.
We breathed, guardedly, a great sigh of relief for the first time when we heard the opinion of the LAFD Captain. But, and it’s a big “BUT”, with the Santa Ana winds threatening to begin again in the next few days, anything is possible as embers are caught up in the wind and carried far away to ignite new fires.
There has been a great deal of interest in how these multiple fires began. Were their origins electrical in nature or caused by carelessness or arson? Investigators from the FBI, Police, Sheriff, and Fire Departments are seeking answers, but until the fires are under complete control and/or extinguished (and that still will take many many days), no answers are likely to come soon.
Patience, perseverance, love, and mutual support are required now from everyone. I’m grateful to my kids here in LA who have been so present for my wife and me, and our many friends who have written to me from Israel, Europe and around North America inquiring how we are doing.
Hopefully, the above gives a sense not only of our circumstances, but of everyone in this region. My personal gratitude is huge to the officials in all the departments of this city and county, and most especially to the fire-fighters, police and sheriff departments.
May the work of their hands continue to be effective as they seek with courage and strength to extinguish these fires and protect us all.
Orly Erez-Likhovski, the Director of the Israeli Religious Action Center (IRAC – the social justice arm of Israel’s Reform Jewish Movement), several weeks ago offered a power-point threat assessment on Israeli democracy by the most extreme right-wing Israeli government in the history of the state. Orly spoke to those of us on the International Advisory Council for the Israel Movement for Reform Judaism and gave me permission to post what she said. I added language only for the purpose of clarification.
Orly is a brilliant Israeli and American lawyer who has brought about significant legal achievements in Israel including making illegal gender segregation on public transportation, ending the Orthodox monopoly on state-funded salaries to rabbis, filing (and winning) the first ever class action suit regarding exclusion of and humiliating practices against women in Israeli society, and disqualifying racist candidates from running for seats in Israel’s Knesset (Parliament).
Orly cited the important work of Kim Lane Scheppele, an American scholar of law and politics at Princeton University, who describes 8 means to dismantle liberal democracies from within and cement authoritarian rule. Scheppele has studied Turkey, Hungary, and the United States (see her essay – “Autocratic Legalism” in The University of Chicago Law Review – https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/autocratic-legalism). Orly suggests that Scheppele’s analysis is applicable to what is taking place in Israel today:
Winning democratic elections followed by an attack against democratic institutions (e.g. the judiciary, the media, the prosecutor’s office, the tax authority, and the election commission);
Dismantling the mechanisms that restrict the ruling government;
Controlling the Parliament through intimidation of its members thereby turning it to irrelevance as an independent government branch;
Subordinating the courts to the government through so-called “reforms”;
Gaining control over media outlets and spreading “fake news”;
Placing loyalists in key positions throughout the government and in the media;
Delegitimizing opponents of the government by calling them traitors;
Changing election laws to ensure future victory.
Introductory notes:
Understanding Israeli politics, political parties, and Israel’s “parliamentary democratic government” is challenging because there is no rigid constitution in Israel, though there have been continuous efforts to write one since the earliest years of the state. Many laws still on the books are founded upon Ottoman and British Mandate law that were in use before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. To take the place of a written constitution, Israel passed since 1950 fourteen “Basic Laws” (i.e. laws which are supposed to be of a higher status than regular laws but in fact can be enacted and changed like any other law). Most of these laws deal with the various branches of government. Two basic laws constitute Israel’s “Bill of Rights” but again – they can be changed by a simple majority in the Knesset. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Laws_of_Israel).
Here is Orly’s power-point presentation:
Israeli democracy is already weak and vulnerable:
There are no checks on the power of the Israeli government, except by the courts.
Israel’s separation of powers is thin since the government controls the Knesset through its coalition majority (i.e. the current extreme right-wing government has 68 Members out of a total of 120 MKs (57 percent).
There are no democratic mechanisms of checks and balances in Israel that exist in other democratic countries:
No 2 houses of parliament;
No regional elections;
No federal system;
No presidential veto power;
No international courts that the government must adhere to.
The right-wing Israeli government’s narrative and the assault on the courts:
The current right-wing government advocates against the independence of the Supreme Court claiming the Supreme Court is too active in striking down laws and government decisions, thereby preventing the elected government from implementing the will of the people.
The reality is that only 24 laws have been struck down by Israel’s Supreme Court in the past 30 years. The Supreme court is exceptionally cautious and will intervene only in exceptional circumstances.
The claim that the courts do not allow the government to implement the will of the majority disregards 2 critical characteristics of a democracy: the separation of powers and the protection of human rights, especially minority rights.
2023 – The “Judicial Coup”:
In December 2022, the government, led by PM Benjamin Netanyahu, took power.
In January 2023, the government’s Justice Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin announced the intention of passing a series of laws dramatically weakening Israel’s democracy, especially in limiting the government’s Judicial Review in the following ways:
Taking away the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down Basic Laws that conflict with Israel’s democratic principles (meaning, any law could be shielded from judicial review simply by giving it the title “Basic Law”).
Severely limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down “regular” laws.
Giving the Knesset the power to override a court decision and reenact a law that previously had been struck down by the Supreme Court.
Changing the process of nominating judges:
Today, to assure non-partisan balance, new judges are nominated by a committee comprised of 3 Supreme Court Justices, 2 Government Ministers, 2 Members of Knesset, and 2 lawyers. 7 of the 9 members of the committee are required to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. The Chief Justice of the Supreme court is nominated by a majority of the above and traditionally the most senior justice has been chosen to be Chief Justice.
However, the “Judicial Coup” aims to give the ruling coalition complete control over the judicial selection committee that would include 3 politically appointed ministers, 3 government coalition MKs, 3 justices, 2 opposition MKs, and for any nomination, 6 out of 11 majority would suffice.
The Attorney General (AG) and Legal Advisors of Government Ministries:
Currently, the AG is nominated by a professional selection committee. The AG is the ultimate authority regarding the legality of governmental actions. The AG’s opinion about the legality of the government’s actions binds the government. The AG represents the government in the courts. The same is true about legal advisors to the government ministries who are all subordinated to the AG and not to government ministers.
The “Judicial Coup” would allow the government to disregard the legal opinions of the AG and of legal advisors altogether and to choose a private lawyer to represent the government in court.
The “Reasonableness Doctrine”:
The Supreme Court can intervene in administrative decisions judged “unreasonable” (i.e. arbitrary, capricious, having bias, and showing conflict of interest). The Supreme Court rarely rules that a government decision is “unreasonable” (averaging only 1.6 times/year since 1995).
The “Judicial Coup” intended to prevent the Supreme Court from declaring any governmental or ministerial decision “unreasonable”.
What happened to the “Judicial Coup” legislation?
Before October 7, 2023, due to the unprecedented nearly year-long public protests of hundreds of thousands of Israelis across political parties and religious streams, all but one of the components of the “Judicial Coup” legislation failed to become law. The only component of the “Judicial Coup” legislation that the Knesset approved (in July 2023) is abolishing the “Reasonableness Doctrine”.
However, in January 2024, the Supreme Court struck down this law that abolished the “Reasonableness Doctrine” (sitting for the first time in Israel’s history in a full panel of 15 judges – suggesting how important the Supreme Court Justices understood this government action to be). This was also the first time the Supreme Court ever struck down a Basic Law. It did so on the grounds that the government’s action contradicts fundamental values in Israeli democracy (i.e. separation of powers and the rule of law).
The current government continues to promote a “Judicial/Regime Coup” post-October 7 – Why change the law if we can ignore it?
Court packing – Since October 2023, 3 liberal justices (of the total of 15 Supreme Court Justices) retired at the mandatory retirement age of 70. The right-wing Justice Minister Yariv Levin refuses to convene the judicial selection committee to nominate 3 new justices because he does not have the votes to appoint the right-wing judges that he wants.
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court – Justice Minister Levin refuses to follow the seniority rule and to obey court orders that have called for the appointment of a new Chief Justice, for the same reason above. The most senior judge who would become Chief Justice is a liberal, and Levin, consequently, has refused to act. For the first time in Israeli history, Israel has an interim Chief Justice.
Ethics of Judges – There is an attempt to have the Knesset nominate a Commissioner in charge of judges’ ethics, thus providing for the political removal of judges.
The Attorney General (AG):
The government wants to disregard the AG’s opinions. For example, ignoring the Supreme Court ruling regarding the draft requirement of Ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the army or the illegality of providing State subsidies to Ultra-Orthodox men who avoid army service.
The government employs a private attorney to represent it in the courts thereby side-lining the AG altogether.
There has been intensive incitement and threats against the AG (Gali Baharav-Miara), who was appointed in 2022 by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Gideon Saar. She has been summoned by extremists in the current government to a government “hearing” and there are numerous right-wing calls for her to be fired simply for doing her job and upholding the law (although the government lacks the authority to do so).
The current government passed a law to force senior legal advisors to government ministries to retire, thus enabling it to appoint legal advisors who will act as “yes-men”.
Politicization of the Police:
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is a racist follower of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. In a democracy, there should be a high wall between government ministers and the professional operation of the police. Ben Gvir has crashed that wall, and he intervenes regularly in police work (e.g. investigations, arrests, and nominations that include promoting violent officers).
There is selective enforcement of laws – harsh treatment of anti-government protesters as opposed to lenient treatment of extreme right-wing violence against Palestinians.
There is a petition pending before the Supreme Court challenging the law that allows the minister to intervene in police investigations.
Attack on Academia:
A bill is being presented to the Knesset that would force universities to fire professors based on expressions of “supporting terror,” but without due process, thus enabling political persecution without having to bring evidence or secure a conviction.
Universities that fail to fire such professors will be denied state funding.
A similar law regarding teachers in schools was already approved.
The person in charge of enforcing this law would be the government’s right-wing Education Minister Yoav Kisch, thereby dramatically restricting free speech.
Attack on the Media:
The right-wing government is presenting favorable regulation of pro-government TV stations such as Channel 14 (Israel’s equivalent of America’s “Fox News”).
The government strives to weaken media outlets critical of the government (e.g. the Public Broadcast Authority, Haaretz, and Galei Tzahal – the official radio station of Israel’s army).
The government is striving to turn regional radio stations (most privately owned by moguls connected to the government) into state-wide stations as a favor to owners.
The government is striving to change the rating system of media stations (as implemented by an independent, not-for-profit organization that measures viewership data to determine ratings for television channels and programs) to be controlled by the government.
After October 7, 2023, the government passed a law allowing the government’s Communications Minister to shut down media outlets – Al Jazeera was shut down in April 2024.
A new bill will grant the government more sweeping powers – allowing the government to shut down internet sites.
Bills againstPalestinian Citizens of Israel:
A law is being proposed that will make it easier to disqualify Arab Political Parties and Arab candidates from running in elections for the Knesset thus ensuring a majority for the current right-wing government in future elections. Twenty percent of Israel’s total population is Palestinian-Israeli citizens. Only once was an Arab Political Party (Ra’am) part of a ruling Israeli government coalition (in 2021-2022). Eliminating Arab Parties from the Knesset would tip the balance of the total 120 Knesset members to right-wing control of the government. Israeli law requires that much evidence must be presented to support disqualifying a political party or a candidate on the basis of terrorism. This new law would only require bringing “one case” or “one statement” to disqualify said party or candidate, while in order to disqualify racist right-wing parties one would need to present a heavy case of evidence.
The government is striving to abolish the need for the state attorney’s approval of police investigations on incitement offenses. It is certainly legitimate to investigate support for Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7, but it is another matter to investigate someone who publicly expresses concern for Palestinian well-being in Gaza as a consequence of the war. This law would have a chilling effect on Palestinian free speech in Israel. There is already selective enforcement for incitement offenses against Palestinians since October 7, 2023 and this would make the situation worse.
Efforts are being made to prevent the General Security Service from using administrative custody towards Jews accused of terrorism and allowing it only to be used against Palestinians accused of terrorism.
Additional Dangers:
Civil Service – changing the way the non-partisan Commissioner of Civil Service is nominated to gain governmental control over the nomination.
Bar Association – weakening the Israeli Bar Association in order to influence its representatives on the committee nominating judges.
Rabbis’ Law – adding hundreds of state paid rabbis, all of whom are Orthodox men chosen by the government, thereby deepening the Orthodox monopoly and discrimination against other non-Orthodox religious streams (e.g. Conservative, Reform, etc.).
Rabbinical Courts – promoting a bill that will give rabbinical courts jurisdiction over civil matters (currently they have jurisdiction only over matters of marriage and divorce), thereby promoting a theocracy over Israel’s democracy.
Military Draft – promoting a bill that will grant exemption from the military draft to Ultra-Orthodox Jews, contrary to Supreme Court decisions.
Settler Violence against Palestinians – extreme Jewish settlers’ violence against Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank which is not treated in an equivalent manner to Palestinian violence against Jewish settlers.
West Bank Status – the civil responsibility for the West Bank is being transferred from military officers to people affiliated with the extreme right-wing Finance Minster Betzalel Smotrich thus paving the way for de jure annexation of the West Bank into Israel.
What is IRAC (the Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center) doing in the face of such dangers?
In the Knesset, our lawyers are attending committee meetings, filing position papers, and opposing dangerous bills that would harm Israeli democracy.
Our Israeli Reform movement is participating in public campaigns to raise awareness to all the above dangers.
We are working in cooperation with other Israeli NGOs and human rights organizations to create a stronger impact and effective messaging against all threats to Israel’s democracy.
We are protesting alongside hundreds of thousands of Israelis from across the religious streams and political parties who regard seriously the dangers posed against Israeli democracy by the current extremist government and refuse to be silent.
In appropriate cases we are challenging all the dangerous policies and laws in court.
We must remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence over that by the good people.”
We will not be silent but act to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic State.
I have listened to both sides of the argument (legal and moral) about whether Joe Biden should issue blanket pardons to all office holders, journalists, and everyone else that Trump and his revenge-retribution sycophantic machine expects to target, including such American heroes as Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, the entire January 6 Congressional Commission, many journalists and traditional media organizations such as MSNBC, ABC etc. etc. etc.
For the sake of our democracy, free speech, freedom of the press, and the personal well-being of the targets of Trump’s sickening promises and campaign, I hope that President Biden will issue across the board pardons to the above before he leaves office to spare these good Americans so targeted the expected enormous financial expense that defending oneself will be required, their physical safety, and their good names.
American democracy has its flaws, to be sure, but our national aspirations are built upon freedom of speech, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, separation of powers, and generally our constitutional order and democratic institutions and norms and should not be sullied by the likes of Trump any more than possible. President Biden can stop some of Trump’s awful blood-letting before he leaves office.
If you have access to President Biden and/or to your Senators and Congressional Representatives, please use whatever influence and agency you have to try and compel President Biden to issue these pardons before it is too late.
The negativity and unethical basis of revenge that lurks in the dark side of the human character has been commented upon by many over the centuries. Here are a few thoughts worth considering:
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
“Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind… Revenge is sweeter than life itself. So think fools.” -Decimus Junius Juvenalis, known in English as Juvenal (b. 55 C.E.)
“Those who plot the destruction of others often perish in the attempt.” -Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
“Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of forgiving their enemies.” -Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
“You know we live in light and shadow.That’s what we live in – a world of light and shadow – and it’s confusing.” (ascribed to Tennessee Williams)
At this season every year, I think of Tennessee William’s simple truth, and I’m drawn to it especially this year because of the stark confusion and suffering experienced by so many across the planet in these days.
For our Christian brothers and sisters, Christmas comes to rekindle the light of faith and hope. For the Jewish people, Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, reminds us of our capacity for hope despite the bitter reality that we’ve endured time and again.
These two winter holidays coincide this year, and I’ve asked myself what might this coincidence suggest. Perhaps it is this, that in kindling light, a disarmingly simple act, we transform our homes, holy places and lives with sparks of eternity that illuminate a vision of the world redeemed of its horror and pain.
Chag Orim Sameach to my Jewish friends, and Merry Christmas to my Christian friends.
This blog was posted by J Street on Friday, December 6
By Rabbi John Rosove and Sam Berkman
We wish we weren’t here. We wish October 7 had never happened. We wish all the hostages were home and that all had survived. We wish thousands of Palestinians had not fallen victim in this terrible war. We wish the fighting would stop and Israelis and Palestinians could know freedom and security–peace. But that’s not where we are today.
As this devastating war rages on, it’s time to confront a hard truth: Supporting Israel doesn’t always mean unquestioning endorsement of its government’s actions or the automatic provision of foreign aid. True support sometimes requires breaking from convention. Simply supplying military assistance – without tackling the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – may temporarily mask the symptoms for Israelis, but it won’t deliver lasting peace and security.
Ignoring those deeper issues undermines the US-Israel relationship and risks the lives of Israelis and Palestinians alike—a reality we’ve seen tragically play out over the past year.
This was the context for the US Senate’s vote last month on a series of resolutions to disapprove certain arms sales to Israel—measures that were largely symbolic, as the deadline to block the sales had already passed. While the resolutions failed, as expected, the vote sent a clear message of dissent of how the Netanyahu government has conducted the war in Gaza, its disregard for US laws, and the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict.
Nearly 14 months into this war, over 100 hostages remain in Gaza. Israeli security experts – including Israel’s recently ousted Defense Minister – have said that continuing the war in Gaza serves no strategic purpose. Meanwhile, President Biden’s repeated appeals for Netanyahu to take stronger action on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza have largely gone unanswered.
Israel has had no greater friend over the last year than President Joe Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist. From visiting Israel during wartime to providing critical military aid and even moving US military personnel and equipment into the region, Biden has consistently demonstrated America’s unwavering support for Israel.
And what has this loyalty yielded? Reportssuggest that Netanyahu’s government is closer to advancing plans for rebuilding Israeli settlements in Gaza than securing the return of the hostages. Even most Israelis believe it is more important to secure a hostage deal now than continue the war.
So what more can be done? How do we help those Israelis who desperately want to break the stalemate and end the war, bring home the hostages, stop the suffering in Gaza, and set forth on a path toward regional peace and stability?
The answers do not lie in the empty rhetoric offered by those who opposed the Senate resolutions. Paying lip service to platitudes of peace while giving Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government carte blanche hardly seems like the course of action a good friend to Israel should take.
Last month’s vote revealed something important: Leveraging US law to promote a shift toward policies that benefit Israel’s long-term security is not anti-Israel—it is profoundly pro-Israel.
Nineteen senators, all pro-Israel, stood up for US law and for their principles in the face of the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Among those who voted a symbolic ‘yes’ to disapprove the sales were the second-highest ranking Democrat–the Senate Majority Whip, four Democratic leaders, the incoming ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 vice presidential running mate. Notably, three of these senators are Jewish.
All 19 senators have long condemned Hamas and the horrific October 7 attack and reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. They have called for the release of all hostages. They have voted for tens of billions of dollars of security aid to Israel throughout their careers. None of them are calling for anything approaching an arms embargo, and all of them endorse continued support for Iron Dome and other defensive systems.
Such resumes do not reflect an anti-Israel fringe. These are serious lawmakers who represent mainstream positions, including those within the American Jewish community– a recent poll of Jewish American voters found that 62 percent support withholding certain offensive arms to press for a ceasefire and hostage deal.
The positions taken by these courageous senators, which were couched in the spirit of supporting Israel, challenge traditional thinking in American politics and within the American Jewish community. But it is precisely this strategy we must embrace if we are committed to a future where Israel remains secure, vibrant, democratic, and Jewish, living in peace with its neighbors.
We applaud these legislators, and we will continue to push for an Israel that reflects our highest Jewish and democratic values—and for US policies that champion this vision.
Doing this is many things: It’s American. It’s democratic. It’s Jewish. It’s pro-Palestinian. It’s pro-peace. It’s pro-Israel.
I have spent the last month licking my wounds, steering clear of having to listen to Donald Trump’s voice, reading only headlines in the NYTimes and Washington Post about what he’s doing to populate the American government and malign our democracy, and listening to a few well-chosen podcasts that focus on what went wrong for the Democratic Party in the election and what we who are supporters must do going forward towards the mid-terms. I have avoided watching the news on Cable TV (CNN and MSNBC) for my sanity’s sake.
On my early morning walks, I listen for a while to the podcasts noted above (e.g. Pod Save America, the War Room with Al Hunt and James Carville, Hacks-on-Tap, and The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller) until I’ve had enough. I also listen to podcasts out of Israel (e.g. The Times of Israel Daily Briefing, The Promised Podcast, and Haaretz Weekly), and then I listen to classical music mostly. I also walk quietly, watch the squirrels and birds and listen to their songs, and commune with the coyotes who seem to have grown more numerous in our neighborhood in Sherman Oaks. I mostly just try and “be” or I spend time “thinking” about God knows what? (family mostly and ideas I’m mulling around).
And I photograph some of the extraordinarily beautiful images of first light as I see it is emerging into day above me. I’m attaching below a few of those images.
I find myself signing off emails these days since the election saying simply “Stay safe and sane!” and I wish that for all of you.
Apologies for former blog in which Ruth Messinger’s Op-Ed was not accessible. Here is the entire article.
Despair is not a strategy. Here are 4 things those mourning the election results can do right now.
By Ruth Messinger, The Daily Forward – Op-Ed – November 25, 2024
This essay was adapted from remarks the author delivered at her synagogue, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, and at a conference of the Jewish women’s group Elluminate.
Three weeks after the disastrous election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, I am, first and foremost, grieving. Grieving the failure of the second female candidate of a major party to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling, grieving the continuing and ongoing series of threats to our democracy, grieving the inadequacy of our organizing efforts, grieving the vast chasms among our citizenry that so desperately need healing they are unlikely to receive in this administration.
Our Jewish traditions that guide us through the loss of loved ones can help us with this kind of grief as well. The ritual of shiva, the seven-day period of intense mourning after a funeral, is well known. When it ends, the mourners are meant to get up and walk around the block, a cathartic reentry into the world, into their new normal, accompanied by members of their community.
So instead of playing the blame game about what went wrong, we must get up and focus instead on where we go from here.
Bottom of Form
First, in the spirit of this week’s holiday of Thanksgiving, we can start with some gratitude.
We held a free and fair election, without evident scandal or corruption. Boards of elections, poll workers, and various state and local bodies did their jobs. There was open debate, and there will soon be a peaceful and lawful transition of power.
This is not something that we should take for granted, in a world full of despots and coups. It is something that should be treasured and defended.
The result of the election is terrifying to me. Trump made clear in the campaign and has confirmed through his appalling cabinet appointments that he is determined to reshape our world through his own brand of racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia. He intends to target and tear apart immigrant communities and is committed to launching mass deportations. He continues to profess a denial of the climate crisis. He will attack Jews, Muslims, trans people and protesters of all kinds.
Despite our best field outreach and organizing efforts, his party will control both houses of Congress, and he will expand the conservative majority on our Supreme Court, leaving little hope for the checks and balances the Constitution is supposed to provide against the abuse of power.
There is plenty to mourn, but after the grieving must come strategic thinking that leads to action. And as I first said in a synagogue speech after Trump’s first victory in 2016, “despair is not a strategy.”
People in the most vulnerable situations in our society and around the world cannot afford for us to wallow in despair, and the teachings of our tradition won’t let us do that either.
So here are four first steps that can start to shape a path forward:
Drill down on a single issue. Whatever moves you most: trans rights, the environment, Israel. Get focused, and get involved. And don’t go out and create a new nonprofit to address your cause. Find the right group and be ready to work with others on the issue you’re passionate about wherever and however it arises. Be an ambassador, an educator and a lobbyist for the issue.
Focus on the midterms. We cannot afford to wait until the 2028 presidential cycle to turn the tide. The entire House and a third of the Senate will be on the ballot in 2026, and history suggests the opposition party will have major opportunities to flip seats. Find a candidate you care about and start giving and canvassing. There are even elections in 2025: the Wisconsin Supreme Court, for example, and open seats for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey. Each and every ballot in this divided country is essential.
Invest in education for a democracy. One lesson from this campaign is the curse of misinformation and disinformation in a fractured, filter-bubbled media landscape. We have endless new ways of communicating, and we must ensure that reliable, trustworthy, fact-based content reaches broad audiences. Support nonprofit and local journalism, invest in the teaching of civics and media literacy, share reliable information on candidates and issues across social media and other channels.
Engage in/with the resistance. Maybe you are not the type or no longer in the mood to march on Washington. Fine. But when Trump follows through on his promise of mass deportation — when he deploys the National Guard to remove the newest New Yorkers from the hotels where they have been sheltering, or to empty the synagogues and churches and mosques that have provided sanctuary — we will each have to decide whether to stand in the way or stand silently and watch. Think now about how much you are willing to risk, how much you would sacrifice, for the lives and rights of people more vulnerable than you are.
It may sound daunting. It may feel easier to stay in mourning; it may seem too hard to walk around the block. But we have faced crises before and survived, both as Jews and as Americans.
As Jews, we know that for millennia our ancestors lived under governments that ranged from friendly to hostile, welcoming to brutal. We have not only learned how to survive, but developed the tools to thrive, to be there for each other’s safety, and to experience the joys of life under any circumstance. We know that our responsibility to continue to work for justice is central to our tradition.
So get up we must. If your steps are unsteady, be guided by the teaching of the Chinese philosopher Lu Xun. “Hope is like a path in the countryside,” he wrote more than a century ago. “Originally, there was no path, yet as people walked all the time in the same direction, a way appeared.”
Ruth Messinger is right – read her op-ed in the Forward (November 25, 2024) in which she describes a path on which we dispel our despair after a period of mourning (as in the Shiva process) after the election and on which we then rise up and commit ourselves to do all we can as we anticipate the mid-term elections in 2026.
“America has split, and flipped, by education levels. Democrats have largely lost the working-class voters who elected Barack Obama, and college-educated professionals are shifting away from the Republican Party.”
So reports Axios (by Erica Pandey – November 11, 2024) on the percentage of Americans who voted for Donald Trump who do not have college degrees and the percentage of Americans for Kamala Harris who do.
By the numbers: College graduates made up 43% of the electorate, and 55% voted for Vice President Harris, per exit polls.
56% of voters without degrees voted for President-elect Trump.
The states below that level are almost all reliably red, and the states above it are almost all reliably blue.
And several of the states that hover right around the middle are closely watched battlegrounds.
As Trump prepares to eliminate the Department of Education, it becomes clear what his and the right wing’s attempt to dumb-down America mean generally and specifically on matters of race and gender – namely, to keep America divided between red and blue states and to sway swing states into red states in order to create a permanent right-wing red state dominated federal government.
Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, explains in her “Letters to an American” the history, purpose and specifics of funding that the Department of Education provides for K-12 students. Controlling what and how students learn and don’t learn by allowing states alone to set the standards for public education serves the extreme right wing of the MAGA Republican Party that relies on voters with less education to elect its state and federal leadership.
I can only hope that after 4 years of the Trump presidency that the next president (should he/she be a Democrat) will reestablish the Department of Education, federal funding of K-12 schools for a variety of important purposes, and the open and inclusive values that are the mission of thhe the Department.
Here is Dr. Richardson’s piece from yesterday (November 16, 2024):
“One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do.
The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science.
But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.
After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values.
When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the Covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.
Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault.
In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination.
After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.
When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars.
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.
In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
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