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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Sigh

I hate the discourse around Israel Gaza. It’s as depressing a situation as I’ve encountered in my whole life and I can’t see how it ends.

This man is in Lebanon.

And then this:

It’s just all so awful. Anyone who thinks this is morally simple beyond the obvious “all killing of innocent civilians is wrong and war is bad” is deluding themselves. It’s a horrifying mess.

The Offspring On The Stand

Trump’s three favorite children will be testifying over the next week. Which one is the smart one?

Waaaaaaaah!!!

If all goes according to plan, Donald Trump Jr. will testify at the Trump Organization’s fraud trial in New York on Wednesday, as the first of the Trump offspring to be called to the stand, Eric Trump is scheduled to appear on Thursday and Ivanka Trump will reportedly testify next week. Their illustrious father is himself slated to appear on Monday, which will actually be the second time Donald Trump has personally taken the stand in this case. The first of those was a brief appearance last week, when he was cited for violating the gag order imposed by the judge and ordered to pay $10,000. In any event, we can expect quite a show over the next week, with the Trump family band in full effect.

You may (or may not) recall a deeply strange Trump press conference after the 2016 election, when he claimed he was “turning over” the business to Donald Jr. and Eric, while insisting he didn’t need to do it but wanted to because he “didn’t like the way it looked.” His tax attorney, Sheri Dillon, spoke at length about the arrangement, standing before a table piled high with documents that Trump had supposedly signed but wouldn’t allow the press to examine. In fact, Trump never personally divested from the Trump Organization or his nested network of companies in any way, and continued to market his golf resorts and hotels from the White House — talking them up whenever he got the chance and staying in them wherever he traveled, often at significant cost to the taxpayers. Foreign agents and supplicants of all kinds filled the family coffers, spending millions of dollars at Trump properties to curry favor and gain access during his entire four-year term (and thereafter). It was the most flagrantly corrupt behavior of any president in American history.

But none of that is the actual subject of this fraud trial. Trump was a corrupt businessman for many decades before that, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has collected a massive amount of evidence, which the judge in this case has already determined to prove that Trump’s company has defrauded investors, banks and insurance companies of hundreds of millions over the years, largely by placing much higher values on their properties and businesses than the actual numbers could justify. The trial now taking place will determine what penalty the Trumps should pay.

James is asking for a $250 million fine, and also seeks to bar Trump and his company from any commercial real estate deals in New York or loans from any New York bank for the next five years. Furthermore, she wants to permanently ban Trump and his two adult sons from running any companies in the state. Justice Arthur Engoron has already ruled that the Trumps should be stripped of control over their signature New York properties, although that order has been stayed until this trial is complete. In other words, it’s a lot.

It’s likely that Donald Trump Jr. will testify that he really didn’t know much of anything about the company, and to be fair that’s probably true. He’s not the “smart one.” It actually appears that Eric Trump, despite his dunderhead reputation, was far more involved in running the place. He took the Fifth more than 500 times during his pre-trial deposition and also testified, “I pour concrete. I manage properties. I don’t focus on appraisals. It’s just not what I do in my day-to-day responsibilities.” But other testimony by Trump Organization employees has suggested he was highly involved and James has documents to prove it. And, please: There’s no evidence to suggest that Eric spent much time with the concrete mixer. That’s just ridiculous, even if the Trumps like to pretend that because they are in real estate they do construction work instead of sitting behind desks wearing nice suits like the pampered Richie Riches they’ve always been. 

But what about Ivanka, you ask? Where is she in all this? Well, Trump’s favorite got lucky once again when the courts decided she wasn’t a party to this case because her main involvement in Trump’s schemes took place outside the statute of limitations. At first, it looked like she could skip all this unpleasantness, but James has now called her as a witness and Engoron agreed that her testimony was relevant. (Ivanka’s lawyers have until the end of the day on Wednesday to appeal that decision.)

Honestly, if any family member knows the details of the Trump companies’ inflated valuations, it would be Ivanka. She was the main reason Deutsche Bank agreed to work with Trump in the first place, and bank officials apparently understood her to be the heir apparent. Forbes magazine dealt with Trump’s valuation problems for years, and Ivanka was right in the thick of it. As the magazine reported this week:

The attorney general will have plenty of questions for Donald Trump’s eldest daughter. Ivanka helped lead the acquisition of two assets at the center of the lawsuit, the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C. and the Trump National Doral golf resort in Miami. She also lived in another property caught up in the proceedings, a condo building named Trump Park Avenue in New York City.

The article describe a meeting Forbes staffers had with Donald Trump  in 2015 when he tried to convince them he was far richer than he actually was. After the meeting began, they were “spontaneously” joined by “little Ivanka,” who proceeded to give them a totally bogus valuation on the National Doral resort mentioned above. She and Trump worked the room like a tag team, massively inflating the club’s worth and insisting it had no debt when in fact there were liabilities of more than $100 million. Virtually every detail of the Doral deal they presented was fiction. 

That, it would seem, was Ivanka’s job. She did it with condo sales in the Caribbean and Mexico, she did it with investment banks and she did it with the financial press. Nobody in the family, except perhaps Donald Trump himself, knows more about the Trump Organization’s systematic overvaluation of its businesses and properties than she does. It’s possible that she wasn’t intimately involved with the craptastic paperwork the Trumps submitted to the various entities that lent them money and sold them insurance, but her special relationship with Deutsche Bank would lead one to suspect she did.

If Ivanka were to take the stand and tell the truth, she could take down the company. She’s not on trial so she has no personal exposure, and at this point her husband, Jared Kushner, is now wealthier than Trump, what with all his payoffs — sorry, his financing — from the Saudis and other foreign entities he got to know well while working in the White House. Ivanka doesn’t need to inherit Trump’s money. But of course that’s not how it’s likely to go. It’s far more likely that Ivanka will have come down with the same case of amnesia that has afflicted her brothers. Through thick and thin, she’s still Daddy’s girl.

Salon

MAGA Mike: obscure no more

“The embodiment of white Christian nationalism in a tailored suit”

Speaker of the House “MAGA Mike” Johnson (l) and Michael Emerson as demon minion Leland Townsend from the series “EVIL” (r).

Democrats could find it a challenge to turn House Speaker “MAGA Mike” Johnson into a Republican boogeyman before the 2024 elections, the Washington Post suggests. His “mild manner” and previous low profile makes him less of a household name than Nancy Pelosi before the right tried to tag every Democrat running as a clone of “San Francisco liberal” Pelosi.

Nonetheless, the DNC and DCCC campaigns think publicizing “Johnson’s views on the 2020 election (he worked to overturn the results), abortion (he has talked of banning it nationally) and social programs (he has advocated cutting Social Security and Medicare)” can be a useful campaign weapon against Republicans.

There is lots of Beltway he said/she said in the Post story. “Republican strategists say Democrats are misguided if they think they can turn Johnson into a mascot for the entire GOP” even though Democrats have gotten a nice fundraising bump from Johnson’s elevation. Republicans helpfully caution that if Democrats focus too much on Johnson, “they will not be talking about issues that voters truly care about like the economy, crime and the border.” As if Republicans actually run on policy these days.

Oh, tut-tut, say Democrats:

“There is a very good chance he is going to end up being a boogeyman and/or he will end up being the embodiment of the MAGA extremism of the Republican conference,” said Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which coordinates the party’s House races.

MAGA Mike is not “a serious partner for American allies or for those who still believe that governing is not a petty little game,” declares David Firestone of the New York Times Editorial Board:

Specifically, he stripped money for Ukraine and Taiwan from the $105 billion package requested by President Biden, leaving only the $14.3 billion the administration wants to send to Israel. But then he imposed a condition on the Israel money: Mr. Biden must agree to cut the same amount out of the money the Internal Revenue Service uses to chase down high-income tax cheats. So essentially the U.S. can protect Israel as long as it also protects rich white-collar criminals.

Thomas B. Edsall jumps in to examine Johnson’s Christian nationalism:

“Johnson is a clear rebuttal to the overall liberal societal drift that’s happening in the United States,” Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, wrote by email in response to my query. “His views are far out of step with the average American and even with a significant number of Republicans.”

Yet significant Republicans such as Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, the engineer of the former speaker’s ouster, thinks Johnson (Gaetz calls him MAGA Mike) is just the guy for thumbing reactionary noses at the left and any Republicans who never jumped on the MAGA train.

“If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power in the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention,” Gaetz told Steve Bannon, calling Johnson “honorable and righteous.” Gaetz is an authority on honorable and righteous.

But I digress. Edsall continues:

Robert Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, described Johnson in an email as “the embodiment of white Christian nationalism in a tailored suit.”

What is Christian nationalism? Christianity Today describes it as the “belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’ — not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.”

Johnson’s election as speaker, Jones went on to say, “is one more confirmation that the Republican Party — a party that is 68 percent white and Christian in a country that is 42 percent white and Christian — has embraced its role as the party of white Christian nationalism.”

Jones argued that “while Johnson is more polished than other right-wing leaders of the G.O.P. who support this worldview, his record and previous public statements indicate that he’s a near textbook example of white Christian nationalism — the belief that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians.”

As is Edsall’s habit, he cites polling and several other academics. What does it mean for the country that dominant within the GOP are Christian nationalists with a mandate from God to turn the U.S. into an anti-democratic, authoritarian theocracy? Democrats with the stomach for it could turn that into one helluva set of explosive campaign ads.

And how does a Christian nationalist justify undying support for Donald Trump, self-absorbed, amoral hedonist?

Perhaps Johnson thinks of Trump the same way Trump thinks of evangelicals: “as a means to an end, people to be used, suckers to be played.” Good luck, MAGA Mike, in getting the better of Trump in that deal.

I don’t know. The photo of mild-mannered Johnson that the Post placed atop its story immediately evoked Leland Townsend, the similarly mild-mannered, conservatively dressed ally of demons in Paramount’s EVIL. Mild-mannered and conservatively dressed can be creepy as hell.

A relief valve opens in Gaza, but….

EU foreign policy chief “appalled” by civilian casualties

The Guardian this morning:

The Rafah crossing has opened to allow a limited number of people to cross from beseiged Gaza into Egypt. It is expected that foreign nationals, dual-passport holders and some of the most seriously injured will be allowed through by Egyptian authorities, in a deal said to be brokered by Qatar.

Images showed families and vehicles queueing up to exit Gaza, amid reports that Egypt would allow in 81 seriously injured people. A line of ambulances was seen waiting to take the sick and injured.

AFP reports it was not immediately clear how many people managed to leave via Rafah on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, but live footage from the scene showed crowds of people entering the Palestinian side of the terminal. It said 400 foreigners and dual nationals were expected to make the crossing.

Like relief supplies trickling into Gaza, it’s not enough.

“Laws of war and humanity must always apply”

Seconds ago:

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has issued a strongly-worded statement stressing that he is “appalled” by casualties at the Jabalia refugee camp and “laws of war and humanity must always apply.”

In a thread posted to social media he wrote:

Building on EU Council’s clear stance that Israel has the right to defend itself in line with international humanitarian law and ensuring the protection of all civilians, I am appalled by the high number of casualties following the bombing by Israel of the Jabalia refugee camp.

UNSG António Guterres reminded that IHL [international humanitarian law] cannot be applied selectively, including the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. The right to self-defence should always be balanced by the obligation to spare civilians to the greatest extent possible.

Laws of war and humanity must always apply, including when it comes to humanitarian assistance. With the unfolding tragedy in Gaza, the European Union has been calling since last week for humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs.

With each passing day, as the situation becomes more and more dire, this is more urgent than ever. The safety and the protection of civilians is not only a moral, but a legal obligation.

Borrell is not the only one appalled. According to The New Republic, “CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was left stunned on Tuesday as an Israel Defence Forces spokesman confirmed that Israel was responsible for the bombing of a refugee camp in Gaza.” The Jabalia refugee camp lies north of the so-called safety zone declared by the Israelis.

The attacks “left scores of dead and wounded…. The Gaza Health Ministry and the director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital said hundreds of people were killed or injured in the attack,” per the Washington Post:

The blasts left a deep crater and crumbled buildings. Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defense emergency services, said about 20 buildings were destroyed. The breakdown of dead and wounded was not immediately clear amid ongoing rescue efforts.

You were warned

“We…were focused on this commander,” IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told Blitzer.

TNR:

“But even if that Hamas commander was there amidst all those Palestinian refugees who are in that Jabalya refugee camp, Israel still went ahead and dropped a bomb there attempting to kill this Hamas commander knowing that a lot of innocent civilians—men, women, and children—presumably would be killed?” Blitzer asked. “Is that what I’m hearing?”

“That’s not what you’re hearing,” Hect replied. “This is a very complicated battlespace. There could be infrastructure there, there could be tunnels there. We’re still looking into it.”

“But you know that there are a lot of refugees, a lot of innocent civilians—men, women, and children—in that refugee camp as well, right?” Blitzer asked again.

“This is the tragedy of war, Wolf. We as you know, we’ve been saying for days, move south. Civilians who are not involved with Hamas, please move south.”

“Yeah I’m just trying to get a bit more information. You knew there were civilians there, you knew there were refugees, all sorts of refugees, but you decided to still drop a bomb on that refugee camp attempting to kill this Hamas commander.”

Apologies to those offended, but Hecht’s comments made me think of “Baghdad Bob.

Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.

Brother Against Brother

This isn’t the first time that’s happened in this country

We truly are living in a cold civil war — and it’s heating up quickly:

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said he was disowned by his family after he left Congress and “lost the trust” of Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“So, I had family that sent a certified letter disowning me,” Kinzinger said in a CNN interview Monday. “They said I’ve lost the trust of great men like Sean Hannity, which is funny, but they believe that. They said I was a member of the devil’s army.”

The prominent critic of former President Trump said his decision to leave Congress over his disagreements with the GOP caused waves of death threats against himself and his family.

“You know, we had people that would call and threaten to kill my, at the time, 5-month-old child, or say they wish he would die,” he said.

The former congressman was previewing his new book, “Renegade,” which was released Tuesday.

Kinzinger also said it’s a “tough question” whether he still considers himself a Republican.

“I do, only in that because I don’t wanna give up on that fight. And this country needs two healthy parties, a healthy Democratic Party and a healthy Republican,” he said. “So I’m not gonna give up that title.”

But he committed to voting for President Biden if he faces a rematch against Trump in 2024, saying another Trump term would be “authoritarianism,” warning about the potential for a second insurrection in the style of Jan. 6, 2021.

I don’t think there’s much hope for the Republican party personally but if a disaffected GOPer does think it’s worth saving this is the approach they should take. You don’t say you’re going to sit it out or that you might vote for Trump because you can’t stand the Democrats. The situation is clear and it is dire. Anyone who enables Trump is part of the problem.

Freedom In A Hail Of Bullets

Jamelle Bouie asks what freedom means in a country the fetishizes guns:

In Anthony Mann’s 1950 western “Winchester ’73,” a rare and much-desired Winchester rifle brings misery and death to the unlucky souls who manage to bring it into their possession. In the West as brought to you by Mann — and his star, a troubled and morally ambiguous Jimmy Stewart — the gun isn’t a symbol of freedom as much as it is a curse, destined to ruin everyone who covets its power.

It was a theme echoed that year in the Joseph H. Lewis noir “Gun Crazy,” a take of sorts on the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Our protagonists in this film are two young people so enamored of the power of guns — and the freedom they seem to provide — that they go on a wanton spree of theft and murder. It ends, predictably, with their own deaths.

In both films, guns become truly dangerous when they become a fetish: an object worshiped for its supposed power and symbolic meaning. Guns, Mann and Lewis seem to say, aren’t actually totems of freedom or liberty or youth; they are instruments of death and should be treated accordingly.

I thought of both movies last week during the manhunt for Robert Card, the 40-year-old suspect in a mass shooting that killed 18 people at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine.

For nearly two days after the shooting, no one knew where Card was. He was armed and dangerous and on the run. To prevent any more loss of life, law enforcement authorities urged tens of thousands of residents of Southern Maine to shelter in place with their doors locked. He was found on Friday night, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

Card is believed to have used an AR-15-style rifle in the shootings. Introduced to civilian buyers in 1964, the Armalite Rifle 15 Sporter and its offspring are now some of the most popular rifles in the United States and a potent symbol of what guns mean to tens of millions of Americans. “It’s an icon,” one owner told The New York Times in a 2018 feature on the AR-15 and similar weapons. “It’s a symbol of freedom. To me, it is America’s rifle.”

That, in fact, is how gun manufacturers have promoted the rifle — not as a tool for hobbyists and sportsmen but as a lifestyle accessory that stands for freedom, individualism and masculine self-sufficiency. “Stand out and blend in all at the same time,” reads one 2011 advertisement for a camouflage-finished assault-style rifle.

It’s not just about the AR-15, of course. For many Americans, the right to own a gun is liberty itself — the very definition of what it means to live in a free country. But the question raised by the Maine shooting, and especially the lockdown that followed, is just how free that freedom is.

How free are you really when you know that a trip to the grocery store or a morning in prayer or a day at school or a night at the movies can end in your death at the hands of a gun? How free are you really when you protest on behalf of a cause you believe in and are met on the street by armed counterdemonstrators? How free are you really when state authorities have to lock down a city so that they can stop a mass shooter from striking again?

You are not free at all. Your speech certainly isn’t free when it means that any nut with a gun can point it at you and tell you to shut up. Your freedom of assembly isn’t free when you go to a protest and a bunch of gun-wielding zealots is standing to the side menacing you. Your aren’t free to exercise your religion when bigots and crazy men can enter your house of worship and gun you down. And you also aren’t free when you can’t go to school or a bowling alley or a nightclub or a movie theater or a grocery story without looking over your shoulder and being prepared to run and hide when you hear a loud pop because some insane person with a semi-automatic weapon might have decided that he needed to express his fealty to the constitution that day. That’s a funny definition of freedom.

This is not normal, people. The whole country is living in a state of subliminal terror all the time because greedy gun manufacturers and stupid asses with insecurities are holding us hostage with their need for dominance.

The Stongmen Who Are Making Us Weak

That exchange was horrible. If you see the whole thing, Big Man Hawley hammers Mayorkas about an employee at DHS who apparently posted support for Hamas on October 7, demanding that he explain how this could happen and refusing to let him talk.  Hawley is a jackass but his attitude is reflective of this crude, macho attitude that’s fueling the rise of authoritarianism. 

I really hope most Americans understand this much at least:

Roughly 80 percent of Israelis blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition government for the Hamas catastrophe, according to a poll by the Hebrew newspaper Maariv. During the unfolding pogrom, and in the days and in the weeks after, the utter lack of effective, empathetic action by the government has left Israelis fuming. (Government inaction left a void that volunteers, including thousands who participated in pro-democracy protests, are now filling.)

After an announcement of a new phase in the Gaza military action (about which many Israelis have mixed emotions), Netanyahu declared at roughly 1 a.m. on Sunday, “Contrary to the false claims: Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of Hamas’s war intentions.” He added, “On the contrary, all the security officials, including the head of military intelligence and the head of the Shin Bet, assessed that Hamas had been deterred and was looking for a settlement. This assessment was submitted again and again to the prime minister and the cabinet by all the security forces and intelligence community, up until the outbreak of the war.”

In saying so, Netanyahu is both crediting Hamas with the element of surprise and daring supporters to remain mum in the face of his self-serving comment. This was very much akin to four-times indicted former president Donald Trump’s declaration that Hezbollah was “very smart.”

The reaction was fierce and immediate. Benny Gantz, the leader of a major opposition party who agreed to be part of a special war cabinet, denounced the tweet. “On this morning in particular, I want to support and strengthen all the security forces and [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers, including the IDF chief of staff, the head of military intelligence, the head of the Shin Bet,” Gantz added early Sunday. “When we are at war, leadership must display responsibility, make the correct decisions and strengthen the forces in a way that they will understand what we demand from them …. [T]he prime minister must retract his statement.”

Likewise,“Netanyahu crossed a red line tonight,” said opposition leader Yair Lapid. “While IDF soldiers and officers are fighting bravely against Hamas and Hezbollah, [the PM] is trying to blame them, instead of supporting them. The efforts to evade responsibility and place blame on the security establishment weakens the IDF while it is fighting Israel’s enemies.”

Former intelligence and military leaders also weighed in. And, for a brief moment, it seemed that Netanyahu might be at risk of losing power during the war, as some foreign policy critics have urged.

Utterly cornered, Netanyahu did something he rarely does: He apologized. “Facing a barrage of criticism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deleted a controversial social media post on Sunday in which he blamed the defense and intelligence establishment for giving him faulty assessments before the deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7,” Haaretz reported. “The prime minister then published a new tweet. ‘I was wrong,’ he wrote, adding that ‘the things I said following the press conference should not have been said, and I apologize for that. I fully support the heads of [Israel’s] security services.”

He did not, however, take full responsibility for the calamity.

Shortly after Netanyahu took down his tweet, I received an email from a trusted Knesset source: “Netanyahu’s tweet last night as a new low point. When you think it can’t get worse … it does.”

Boy, did that sound familiar to anyone who has witnessed Trump’s career. Just when you think Trump cannot do more damage to undermine democracy, debase political language, sow violence and enable racism, he, too, hits new lows.

The controversy of the Israeli prime minister’s tweet reminds us how much Netanyahu resembles Trump. These are men who continually insist only they speak for the country, only they can shield it from harm. They dehumanize and demonize any opposition and cannot display a modicum of empathy. And when their own incompetence leads to avoidable deaths (e.g., a Hamas attack, a raging pandemic), they deflect and cast blame elsewhere. Impulsive, afraid of humiliation and tone-deaf, they never learn their lesson, as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) incredulously claimed Trump would do after his first impeachment. They never improve; they only get worse.

“Netanyahu displays the classic strongman attributes of prioritizing self-preservation,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told me. “He was laser-focused on ‘judicial reform’ to the detriment of national security, and he allied with extremists such as Itamar Ben Gvir who were a destabilizing influence.” She continued, “Add in the strongman syndrome of not listening to experts (from intelligence and military sectors) who warned him of the consequences of his actions and we have another case of toll of autocratic models of leadership.”

These personality traits are not unique to Trump and Netanyahu. A psychology study in Nature journal found:

Given authoritarians’ general willingness to submit to traditional authorities, combined with their intolerance of ambiguity and need for closure, it is perhaps unsurprising that right-wing authoritarianism predicts tolerance for, and susceptibility to, misinformation. Authoritarianism also fosters conspiratorial thinking about politics, especially if the conspiracy supports the status quo. … [T]hose who are high in right-wing authoritarianism will go to great lengths to protect the in-group — including believing the unbelievable and other ‘alternative facts’ propagated by in-group authorities. The implications of right-wing authoritarianism thereby extend beyond out-group perceptions and into areas that impact public health and safety.

Consider another example: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Surrounding himself with flunkies unable to tell him he is wrong, cut off from objective sources of information, convinced of his own infallibility and lacking any empathy, he blundered into a brutal, bloody and unwinnable invasion of Ukraine. The ensuing war is bringing his country massive deatheconomic ruin, social implosion and international isolation.

Netanyahu’s outburst can serve as a warning to Israelis. Authoritarian figures of his ilk never learn, never reform and never take responsibility. If Israeli society wants to recover and avoid repeated errors perpetrated by strongmen, it must get new leadership — preferably before more damage can be done.

It is delusional to believe that narcissistic strongmen like Netanyahu and Trump can keep a nation safe. They only care about themselves. Since they literally believe “l’etat, c’est moi” everything they do is calculated for how it will affect them. This seems so obvious to me that I can’t believe it needs to be said. But it needs to be said.

It’s Getting Very Ugly Out Here

Hate is on the rise

Good Lord. The FBI director testified in congress this morning and said that 60% of religious based threats are antisemitic. And that was before the war in Israel. I’ve never seen this in America. I’m not sure it’s ever been this bad:

History is flashing warnings to the world.

Outbursts of antisemitism have often been harbingers of societies in deep trouble and omens that extremism and violence are imminent.

So the wave of global hatred directed against Jews – intensified by Israel’s indiscriminate response in Gaza to horrific Hamas terrorist murders of Israeli civilians on October 7 – should not just be seen as a reaction to the Middle East yet again slumping into war.

It is also a reflection of destructive forces tearing at American and western European societies, where stability and democracy are already under pressure.

The Hamas attacks – a pogrom against Jews that killed 1,400, mostly civilians – have initiated a sequence of events that have left Jewish people around the world feeling threatened. And now that the Israeli government has sought retribution through air strikes and operations in Gaza targeting Hamas, the scenes of carnage in Palestinian communities threaten to further drain public sympathy for Israel abroad and, in some cases, contribute to an atmosphere that risks worsening harassment of Jewish people.

In the United States there is a climate of growing fear.

Jewish day schools have canceled classes. Synagogues have been locked. Social media has pulsated with hatred against Jews, leaving a community that can never escape its historic trauma yet again wondering where and when it can ever be safe.

Rising hate is tangible. The idea that Jewish Americans studying at Cornell University could so fear for their lives on their Ivy League campus in rural New York that they couldn’t even eat together in 2023 seems almost impossible to believe. Yet it’s the case after death threats were posted online. Tensions were already high after a Cornell professor said he was initially “exhilarated” over the Hamas attacks at a pro-Palestinian event because the group had changed the balance of power. He later apologized for his choice of words. Police Monday stepped up patrols and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, traveled to campus to vow that “we will not tolerate threats, or hatred or antisemitism.” But a feeling of fear pervades Cornell, said Molly Goldstein, co-president of the Cornell Center for Jewish Living. “Jewish students on campus right now are unbelievably terrified for their lives,” she told CNN. “I never would have expected this to happen on my university campus.”

The frightening online threats at Cornell, which are just part of the spate of antisemitism exacerbated by the fallout of the Gaza war, has many Jews wondering if their safety can be guaranteed in the United States — let alone in Israel where the attacks shattered illusion of security for the Jewish people. Pro-Palestinian protests at some universities have crossed over the line into antisemitism and prompted Republicans and some Democrats to warn campuses are in the grip of far-left radicalism.

Elsewhere, in one of many other incidents, a Beverly Hills home of a Holocaust survivor was daubed with antisemitic graffiti reading “F— Jews.” There have also been multiple cases of antisemitism in Europe, which was often criticized by US officials in years past for doing too little to crack down even as the scourge was metastasizing in America. In one of the most shocking scenes, a crowd of people stormed an airport in Russia’s mostly Muslim region of Dagestan, where a flight from Israel arrived on Sunday, chanting, “There is no place for child-killers in Dagestan.” These are scenes with chilling echoes of the 1940s – a decade of destruction and carnage that has already been evoked in the last 18 months by Russia’s onslaught against civilians in Ukraine.

Nearly a century after the rise of Nazism and the beginning of the Holocaust, which killed at least 6 million European Jews, descendants of the dead are yet again being threatened because of who they are, their history and how they worship. Nations that often vowed “Never Again” at Holocaust memorial events now face a responsibility to tackle antisemitism at home, just as they were forced to mobilize against anti-Muslim rhetoric, violence and prejudice after the September 11 terror attacks in 2001 by al Qaeda – which is also still a threat today, as President Joe Biden noted in his Oval Office address on October 20, after returning from a trip to Israel. “We reject all forms of hate, whether against Muslims, Jews, or anyone. That’s what great nations do, and we are great nation,” he said.

Biden on Monday unveiled new measures to tackle antisemitism on college campuses and senior officials underscored the need to combat anti-Jewish hate. “It’s dangerous, it’s unacceptable –- anywhere in the world, certainly here in the United States of America,” John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said on “CNN This Morning.”

But efforts to combat the situation with added security may struggle while the horror in the Middle East continues to unfold. In an ideal world, criticism of Israel’s military response would center only on its government and not rebound against Jews around the world – many of whom oppose the country’s hardline government.

But in practice, antisemitism could grow more pervasive in the coming weeks.

A widening problem in the United States

In recent years, antisemitism has often been driven in the United States by far-right groups. The hate of White Nationalism was encapsulated by the haunting chant by marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 of, “Jews will not replace us.” Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, played into an antisemitic trope by suggesting that American Jews were plagued by dual loyalties to the US and Israel and that they should be more grateful to him for his policies on the Jewish state. But reaction to the deepening crisis in Israel and Gaza has shown that antisemitism is also boiling on the far-left. Some pro-Palestinian protesters in the US, for instance, appeared to embrace Hamas, a Palestinian militant group categorized by the United States as a terrorist organization that itself has imposed repression on Palestinians in Gaza and perpetrated the Israeli massacres.

Academic studies have shown that antisemitism often spikes amid crisis points in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This suggests that it is a latent force below the surface in US society and only needs the spur of an event to erupt. The Anti-Defamation League, for example, has catalogued a 400% increase in antisemitic incidents in the US since October 7. That said, organizations like the ADL also charted rising hate toward American Jews in recent years during a comparative period of calm in the Middle East, suggesting that domestic forces and the rise of extreme rhetoric and violence-fueled hate are also driving the problem. The organization detailed 3,697 antisemitic incidents in the US in 2022, up 36% year-on-year and the highest on record.

Still, the increasingly fraught and divided politics in Western nations already rocked by extremism makes the nuanced handling of the Israeli-Palestinian issue nearly impossible. Toxic dialogue on social media and a flood of inaccurate information makes the problem worse while partisans predisposed to support Israel or Palestinians often equate the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government with civilians who have no control over them.

Alongside the threats and harassment experienced by Jews in recent weeks, Americans were also traumatized by the shocking fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Chicago boy of Palestinian descent, allegedly by his family’s landlord, which is being investigated by the Department of Justice as a hate crime. The senseless killing was a reminder of the murderous reach of historic antagonisms in the Middle East and underscored the magnitude of the region’s massive human tragedy in which civilians — Israelis and Arabs — are often caught up in horrific events in which they have no role or responsibility.

Middle East history is a moral maze

The Israeli-Palestinian question is one of such historic, geographic and political complexity that it is easy for domestic politicians in the West to latch onto any one aspect of the conflict as they seek to advance their own political ends. Each murder, war, massacre or conflict sows the seeds of its successors in the region.

That reality is being reflected in the domestic politics spawned by the conflict in the US and Europe.

Since the attacks in Israel, protesters who back Palestinian rights and worry about civilian casualties in the packed urban areas and refugee camps in Gaza have often been accused in conservative media of supporting terrorists. In the past, Israel’s most committed supporters have often and inaccurately tried to paint any criticism of Israel by politicians or journalists as antisemitism. Some on the left, in calling for an immediate ceasefire in recent days, have appeared to question Israel’s right to defend itself at all after the appalling civilian carnage.

Antisemitic threats, meanwhile, often arise out of a conceit that all Jews, by definition, must somehow share responsibility for what is seen as the denial of Palestinian statehood or hardline settlement building policies on Palestinian land in the West Bank that have been pursued under successive Israeli governments.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday tried to pinpoint the moment at which opposition to Israeli policies crosses into antisemitism. “I’m sickened and frightened by the news that has come out of Cornell University,” the New York Democrat said, warning that the threats were “utterly revolting” but not isolated. “We must condemn all forms of hate. Nobody denies that people of goodwill can have disagreements about the conflict in the Middle East, but the red line is crossed when these disagreements lead to violence or threats of violence.”

One lesson Americans learned in recent years is their country is not immune from political turmoil and hatred that many thought had no place in the 21st century in a modern, democratic, developed country. After all, the United States recently suffered a mob attack on Congress fueled by false claims of a stolen election.

Antisemitism is no exception.

“Many of us did not expect to see these events unfolding right here America – but the fact of the matter is that it could happen here,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told Kasie Hunt on “State of the Race” on CNN Max on Monday.

“A mob tearing through an airport in Russia searching for Jews to lynch is terrifying, but it is equally terrifying for a student from Cornell to find on the general message boards these posts to ‘slit the throat of Jews.’”

“This is antisemitism, this is threatening Jews worldwide.”

History does not end. It merely slumbers, then repeats itself.

I guess I’ve come to expect this from the fringe right. We’ve seen groups of Nazis marching around with torches in recent years chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Watching some elements of the left go that way makes me want to vomit. I know people feel passionate about this issue and there are legitimate reasons to be hostile toward the Israeli government. But this is something else. Celebrating terrorism, no matter who does it is grotesque. Celebrating war is grotesque as well. It inevitably leads to bigotry and racism, beliefs and behaviors the left tells itself it is against. Some people need to take a gut check.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the same coin and there’s no excuse for any of it. I think a lot of this is being fed by social media which is a total hellscape at the moment. It’s created a conduit for hate.

About Those “Single Issue” Bills

Matt Gaetz insists that the House can no longer combine different bills together and instead every issue must stand alone so it must be done. As you know, he’s the decider. It turns out that’s not exactly true. He’s fine with different issues being combined after all. As long as a bill contains GOP hobby horse spending cuts, combine away:

A few years ago, Representative Mike Johnson, now Speaker of the House, told an audience that democracy is bad. “By the way, the United States is not a democracy,” he explained. “Do you know what a democracy is? Two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. You don’t want to be in a democracy.”

This is an extremely common view among American conservatives, who — unlike right-of-center parties in most democracies worldwide — have largely refused to accept the legitimacy of democratic decision-making over economic policy. In particular, they regard the government’s tax-and-transfer power as an abusive and illegitimate infringement on the right of rich people to keep their income.

That belief is vital to explain Johnson’s new maneuver, which is to tie any new funding for Israel to a demand to reduce IRS enforcement of wealthy people’s tax compliance.

House Republicans have framed this demand for weakening the IRS as a deficit-cutting measure. Johnson “has said the new expenditure must be covered by other spending reductions to avoid adding to the debt,” reports the Washington Post. Representative Chip Roy, a right-wing Republican, claims, “I support Israel, but I am not going to continue to go down this road where we bankrupt our country and undermine our very ability to defend ourselves, much less our allies, by continuing to write blank checks.”

But cutting IRS funding does not avoid bankrupting our country. In fact, it hastens it. IRS funding is used to increase collection of tax payments. In theory, the IRS could be funded so lavishly that additional funding does not yield any net tax revenue, but reality is nowhere close to this level.

Research suggests that every additional dollar in IRS funding yields many times more dollars in revenue, through both direct enforcement and by deterring fraud. One recent paper estimates that a dollar of funding yields $12 in revenue.

The Congressional Budget Office, which issues official budget estimates, is required by law to use far more conservative estimates of the budgetary impact of IRS funding. Even so, its conservative methods would predict the GOP plan to reduce IRS funding will increase the deficit by about $30 billion.

So Republicans are saying this is a plan to “pay for” Israel aid. But that description is close to the opposite of the truth. It’s not a pay-for, it’s an add-on. Democrats and anti-Russia Senate Republicans want to add Israel spending to spending for defending Ukraine. Johnson and the House Republicans want to take out the Ukraine spending and throw in a big handout to rich tax cheats.

MAGA Mike is ready to start hostage taking. Did you expect anything else?