New Poll on Jewish and Arab Israeli Attitudes

A new poll has recently been published providing a fascinating comparative account of Jewish and Arab attitudes in Israel.

One of the findings of the poll was that far more people self-identified as "Arab-Israeli" (46%) than "Palestinian-Israeli" (19%). Consequently most of the people circulating the poll are doing so to dunk on this IfNotNow tweet, published almost at the same time, apologizing for using the term "Israeli Arab" instead of "Palestinian Israeli".

(Another 22% of respondents simply identify as "Arab", and 14% as "Palestinian").

Certainly, I understand why folks want to take a victory lap on IfNotNow. But in doing so, they're ignoring the broader thrust of what the poll tells us -- one that is maybe less amenable to crowing about IfNotNow's naivete.

For as a whole, the poll tells a pretty sobering tale about the comparative state of Israeli Jewish and Arab attitudes. It reveals that Israel's Arab population is -- by sometimes shocking margins -- far more supportive of the basic public commitments Israel must commit to in order to retain any claim on being a liberal, democratic, and egalitarian states. Jewish respondents were, let's say, far more "conflicted" on these questions.

Let's give some highlights:

• 76% of Arabs say Jewish/Arab interactions in Israel are usually positive, compared to 53% of Jews (right-wing Jews were more likely to characterize relationships as "bad").
• Arab respondents were consistently more likely to believe cross-group cooperation could help create progress on various social issues (like the environment or workers' rights) -- generally around 70-75% of Arabs agreed such cross-group cooperation would be helpful, while for Jewish respondents the answers were in the low-to-mid 50s.
• 94% of Arabs recognize Jews as a "people", while only 52% of Jews recognize Palestinians as a "people".
• 47% (a plurality) of Arabs would vote for a Jewish party if it "represented your views", compared to just 4% of Jews who would do so for an Arab party that "represented your views".
• Just 35% of Jews conceded it would be "acceptable" for an Arab party to serve in the Israeli government (the majority coalition), compared 87% of Arabs (lest that seem like an obvious conclusion, it has often been asserted by Israeli Jews that the reason there hasn't been an Arab party in the government is because the Arabs aren't interested or wouldn't agree to it).

The fact of the matter is, it's Israel's Arab community that still believes in Israel's liberal promise. They're the constituency that still is willing to commit to the sort of cross-group cooperation and compromise that might make an egalitarian Israel function.

The Israeli Jewish community? It's in a far more precarious place now. Polls like this are just more evidence for what's become increasingly clear: there is no route to a liberal majority in Israel that runs through predominantly Jewish parties alone. The path to preserving Israeli liberalism, if such a path still exists, runs through the Arab community. If, as Benny Gantz and Blue & White have publicly asserted, this election will decide the future of Israel as a democratic state, then their public refusal to even consider a coalitions with the Arab parties will end up being the decisive factor determining what that future will be.

Racist and Antisemitic Graffiti Case in Oklahoma

Police have a suspect in a spate of racist graffiti incidents in Oklahoma. A woman was caught on surveillance footage spraypainting racist, antisemitic, and White supremacist messages on the Oklahoma Democratic Party headquarters.

Government offices of the Chickasaw Nation were also targeted with similar slurs, and most recently more graffiti was found at culture centers and local Democratic Party offices in Norman.

The epithets include “Gas the Jews,” the word “Jewess” painted in red on a statue that had swastikas painted over its eyes, and “hang n***er kids,” all decorated with swastikas.  The graffiti also made violent threats against prominent Jewish Americans such as academic Barbara Spectre and political commentator Bill Kristol.

Last week graffiti was scrawled in Oklahoma City on a building that is also home to state agencies, non-profit groups and businesses. The phrases included “Welcome to Germany,” “Trump hates Israel,” ”Gas the Jews,” and “The Goyim know,” as well as the number sequence 1488, which is a reference to Adolf Hitler.

Hopefully she is caught soon and brought to justice. In the meantime, keep the targeted communities in Oklahoma -- Jews, African-Americans, and American Indians -- in your thoughts.

What Last Night's Election Results Tell Us About 2020

There is a real chance Donald Trump will be re-elected.

I think a lot of Democrats haven't really processed this, in the same way we didn't process the possibility that he could be elected in 2016.

Between viewing the initial election as a fluke, and being buoyed by 2018's "blue wave", it's easy to think that Trump is destined to be a single-term president.

But I'm not sure. And I think some of last night's election results -- specifically, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race (in recount territory, but with the Republican candidate up by about 6,000 votes) and a Pittsburgh-area Pennsylvania state senate special election (a Democratic red-to-blue flip) -- can give us some hints about the 2020 electoral landscape.

Let's start with the basics: it is very likely that Democrats will do worse in 2020 than they did in 2018. Midterm elections often represent high water marks for the opposition party, and a monster performance in 2018 doesn't make 2020 a gimme for Democrats anymore than huge GOP victories in 2010 signaled a defeat for Obama in 2012. One could argue that Democratic constituencies tend to drop off in the midterms, but I think that effect is more than canceled out by the advantages midterms give to the opposition party.

And while Trump remains relatively unpopular, there hasn't been the widespread, broad-based repudiation of him that one might have hoped for were we an actually functioning liberal state -- indeed, his net approval rating has been remarkably stable for the past year at roughly -10 (currently it's 42/53). That's obviously pretty bad, but it's not disastrously so -- it hasn't reached that tipping point where "unpopular" turns into a rout.

So my baseline assumption is that Republicans are likely to overperform compared to 2018, and the question is how much Democrats can arrest that trend.

Begin by looking at Wisconsin. If 2018 gave us a narrow Democratic victory in the marquee statewide match up (the Governor's race), that doesn't give us a lot of breathing room in 2020. And lo and behold, the statewide race in 2019 -- a pivotal one, since it effectively determines the partisan composition of the court ahead of 2020 redistricting -- ends up yielding what looks like a squeaker GOP victory. And this was an election where the Democratic nominee had a lot of institutional support (including a massive spending edge), whilst the Republican had been hammered for anti-LGBT views.

This, to me, bodes poorly for 2020. In my "trendlines" post assessing the political movement of each (well, most) states, I put a big ol' question mark next to Wisconsin, and this is part of the reason why. Yes, beating Scott Walker felt great. But barely doing it in a year like 2018 actually wasn't that great a sign. Given Minnesota's increasingly-reddish tilt (albeit from a bluer base), it was hard to imagine that its more conservative neighbor would be more favorable, on net, to the Democratic Party in the immediate future.

A similar problem afflicts Florida. It was perhaps the only "swing" state where Republicans didn't see any drop off in support from 2016 to 2018. So it's hard to imagine that it will be friendlier turf for Democrats in 2020, where they're almost certainly going to have less momentum than they did in the midterms.

That's the bad news. Onto the better news: the Pennsylvania result. This was the first red-to-blue special election flip in 2019, and it was a good one to get -- and not just because it puts the Pennsylvania State Senate in play in 2020.  Of all the "blue wall" states that weren't in 2016, Pennsylvania to me seems the most likely to return to the Democratic column in 2020 -- and obviously that's a must-win state for the Democratic Party. And results like this show that Democrats are solidifying their appeal in districts like this one (suburban, recently light-red, well-educated, etc.). That bodes well for Democratic performance even outside of Pennsylvania where there is a considerable cache of voters in districts that share this profile.

So that's the good news. But where does that leave us? Suppose Wisconsin and Florida go red, and Pennsylvania and (we'll say) Michigan return to team blue. If everything else holds (including Trump sniping an electoral vote off Maine), that's still a 270-268 GOP victory. If Maine goes blue down the line, then it's a tie.

Where could Democrats pick up another state? The place where they've seen the best recent trendline is Arizona, followed by maybe North Carolina. But as heartening as Arizona's recent blue-ish shift has been, do you really want to hinge our presidential prospects on a Democratic winning Arizona for just the second time since 1952?

I actually think the popular vote -- for what that's worth, which is basically nothing -- is in good shape for Democrats, if only because of the huge Democratic margins we're likely to see in California. But the electoral college is a different story. The fact is, the tea leaves aren't looking good for Democrats winning either Florida or Wisconsin in 2020, and without those two states the map suddenly looks really, really difficult.

The Performance Art Piece Formerly Known as "Jexodus" Continues

The Exodus née Jexodus Movement (they dropped the "J" after it was gently pointed out to them that "Exodus" already is a pretty Jewish term) -- a self-described movement for young American Jews disenchanted by liberalism and looking to leave the Democratic Party -- is struggling mightily to overcome the ridiculous assumption that it's an obvious right-wing astroturf project. The fact that it is the brainchild of two men in their mid-50s, for example, seems to be a bit strange for a grassroots millennial initiative.

And their kick-off projects ... aren't exactly helping matters:

The Exodus Movement’s [Facebook and Twitter] cover image appears to be a stock photo - specifically, the first result when you search “Jewish woman” on the website iStock.

What’s more, according to iStock, the photo - titled “Dramatic portrait of a young black-haired woman wearing a beret by the water” - was taken in Toronto, Canada, which would bely the organization’s claim of representing American Jewish Millennials upset with the Democratic Party’s alleged anti-Israel and anti-Semitic tilt.

[...] 

In the coming month, The Exodus Movement’s founder and president, model and former Trump campaign staffer Elizabeth Pipko, will be speaking at Yeshiva University and in Boca Raton for the Republican Federated Women of South Florida.

So just to recap: this organization for young American Jewish Democrats contemplating leaving the Democratic Party is run by a Trump campaign staffer speaking before Republican Jews in a city famous for its Jewish retiree population to promote a movement symbolized by a stock photo of a Canadian.

Best of luck to them.

The Consequences of Threatening Lifetime Sex Offender Registration To Juveniles

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against a school which allegedly terrified a teenage student into suicide after threatening him with a lifetime of sex offender registration while investigating whether he had a video recording of a sexual encounter with a female classmate.

While finding that the district hadn't broken the law, Judge Andrea Wood did criticize the district's interrogation of the student:

The judge, however, made it clear she was not condoning the way the interview was conducted. While it may have been legal for authorities to make Walgren think he could end up on a sex offender registry, it was not necessarily right to do so.

“The court’s determination that the individual defendant’s actions, as pleaded, are not objectively unreasonable for purposes of a Fourth Amendment analysis should not be understood as an endorsement of those actions by this Court,” Wood wrote. “Registration as a sex offender entails severe restrictions on a sex offender’s liberty. … And in Illinois, a juvenile convicted on charges related to child pornography could potentially be forced to remain a registered sex offender for the rest of his or her life.”

I have no quarrel with Judge Wood taking the time to make this aside. I've actually suggested judges should do this more often.

But here, I think we should reflect on how this incident and our reaction to it should shake our confidence not just in how the district behaved but also in the underlying legal rules the district was communicating. My understanding is that the district was not incorrect in telling the student that the conduct he was being investigated for (having a video recording of a sexual encounter with another student, taken while they were both minors) could result in him being placed on the sex offender registry for life. That, as best I can tell, was indeed a potential consequence under Illinois law.

If we think that consequence is too draconian, then the solution can't just be to tell school districts not to (accurately) communicate the legal consequences. The solution is to amend the law.

Obviously, the issue of minors making, possessing, and sharing recordings of their own sexual exploits with other minors is a serious one (the article doesn't indicate whether the female partner here consented to the recording, but if she didn't then it's more serious still). It needs a real response.

But there's little question that our criminal policies on sexual offenses -- especially relating to "ancillary" consequences like the sex offender registry -- have blown way past anything that could justified as either valid retribution or proportional deterrence. There are consequences that can be imposed on juvenile offenders that are adequately severe given the alleged wrong that do not entail lifetime registration on the sex offender registry (with all the attendant restrictions on personal liberty that carries). Here, as in many other cases in the criminal justice system (especially when dealing with minors), we need to think creatively and break our reliance on extreme punitive measures, and we should reject the false dichotomy that says hyper-criminalization is the only way to get "serious" about these wrongs.

In short: tragedies like this happen because of the reality of the law, not because that reality was relayed. If this feels like a tragic case, then it's the law, not the communication of the law, that needs changing.

Has Elvis Left the Building?

I'm wondering if we're reaching the end of the days where Elvis is a relevant cultural landmark?

Las Vegas, for example, still has Elvis impersonators and Elvis wedding chapels. But is he a meaningful figure for the next generation? Even kids of my era knew Elvis -- through our parents, yes, but many of us grew up listening to the "oldies" station and so knew all the songs of that era pretty well by heart. Today? I'm dubious. I'm sure kids these days know who Elvis is, and probably can do a good "thankyouverymuch" impression. But he's probably fading as a phenomenon. Even to me, he already feels pretty quaint.

Some of this, of course, is the inexorable march of time. But it is interesting to see which songs from that era have staying power and which don't. The obvious place to look is which songs show up in advertisements. "Happy Together" by The Turtles is a great example -- a solid but not transcendent hit which nonetheless seems destined to stay a part of our cultural life for years to come. Which of Elvis' songs fall in the same boat? I don't have one jumping to the forefront of my mind.

And looking ahead: how long before we're wondering the same thing about The Beatles? And then Michael Jackson?

Quebec Set To Ban Public Employees from Wearing Religious Garb

The ban would apply to, among other apparel, hijabs and kippot.

The frenzy of concern regarding various head-coverings -- going way beyond objecting to making them mandatory (as they are in some Muslim-majority states), and instead casting them as inherently antithetical to the values of the liberal state -- leads precisely to this. And it should surprise nobody with a sense of history that this sort of illiberalism-disguised-as-liberalism is taking Jews and Muslims down together.

Jackie Walker Expelled from Labour

In one of the highest-profile disciplinary actions pending before the party, former Momentum leader Jackie Walker has been expelled from Labour after a multitude of antisemitism allegations.

Walker's defense was a standard-Livingstone -- "I'm just criticizing Israel" -- so let's review what the core offenses were:

• Saying Jews were "chief financiers" of the slave trade;
• Complaining that Holocaust Memorial Day is biased towards Jews because it doesn't commemorate other genocides (it does, actually);
• Questioning the need for heightened security at Jewish schools and institutions because Jewish concerns about potential targeting were exaggerated or embellished.

You might note that none of these actually have anything to do with "criticizing Israel". Indeed, that's a characteristic she shares with the original Livingstone case, where the antisemitism charge also had nothing to do with Israel at all.

Walker had been a major standard-bearer for "Labour Against the Witchhunt", which insists that the bulk of the controversy over antisemitism in the party is falsified or made up, the plot of Zionists or even the Israeli government to damage the prospects of Jeremy Corbyn.

Well That's One Way To Put It

Mississippi is currently engaged in litigation over whether its State Senate district boundaries diluted the voting power of Black residents. Shocking, I know. A district court found that Mississippi had acted illegally, and the Fifth Circuit refused to stay the decision pending appeal.

Judge Edith Clement dissented from that decision. And she chose an interesting descriptor for the panel majority, whose opinion she believed was out-of-step with what the majority of active Fifth Circuit judges would have decided:

This case presents several extraordinary issues. Unfortunately, this court’s usual procedures do not appear to permit en banc review of this denial of a stay even if a majority of the active judges would otherwise grant it. I am afraid defendants have simply had the poor luck of drawing a majority-minority panel.

Now, to be clear, all three judges on the panel were White. Judge Clement is literally referring to the fact that the majority on the panel on the issue of a stay would have likely been a minority on this issue were it to go to the full court (while she doesn't say so directly, the logic is almost certainly that the case would break down on partisan lines and the Fifth Circuit currently has a GOP-appointed majority).

Nonetheless: this is certainly a striking phrase to use in a race discrimination/voting rights case. "Majority-minority" is not an esoteric term in this context; Judge Clement is well aware that it is almost exclusively used to refer to districts whose population is predominantly made up of racial minorities (literally: it is majority-minority). That is the evocation that any reader -- certainly any reader familiar with voting rights cases -- will hear.

And so its use here -- as part of a dissent where Judge Clement thinks the panel majority is being too solicitous towards minority voters in Mississippi -- does not feel accidental. It feels much more dog-whistle-y, and those whistles have been getting much more audible as of late.

Honeymoon Highlights

Greetings from Berkeley!

We're back from our honeymoon, feeling relaxed, refreshed, and (thanks to the miracle of time zones) actually waking up at a reasonable hour of the morning. Here are some of the highlights:

Hot dogs eaten: 5 (each). One of the selling points for this particular resort (the Sheraton Maui) was that there was a poolside hot dog stand. Even as we booked it, I remember thinking to myself "sure, a poolside hot dog stand sounds awesome in concept, but how much of a role will it really play in a honeymoon?" Answer: a massive one. Eating hot dogs and fries in a poolside cabana while watching March Madness on the iPad was the best way I can think of to spend an afternoon.

Fish eaten: 2. Jill and I don't really like fish, but we were on an island and figured why not try something a bit new? The Mahi Mahi tacos weren't really to our taste, but the Ahi Poke bowl was absolutely delicious -- I'd totally eat that again.

Fish seen: countless. We went snorkling! This is actually a big deal, as Jill has for as long as I've known her been deathly afraid of fish (this is independent of her not liking the taste of fish). But she was a very brave girl, and we actually both had a really nice time! The beach by the hotel was amazing for this, incidentally -- ten feet from the shore, and suddenly there are fish everywhere in all the colors of the rainbow.

Sunglasses purchased: 1. I should be wearing sunglasses all the time -- I have an eye condition that makes me very sensitive to sunlight -- but I've never really gotten into the habit. But our poolside cabana came with a free trial pair of Maui Jims and whoa. It was like I was seeing colors for the first time. It was actually almost unnerving how much more vibrant the world was. So I bought a pair, furthering the inevitable convergence of my own sartorial style into my father's.

Waters submersed in: 4. Ocean, pool/lazy river, hot tub, and spa bath ritual. The last one might have sold me on baths, where those baths are in jacuzzis with perfect temperature regulation and some sort of magic passionfruit powder that made my skin super soft and not at all wrinkly.

Private dinners: 1. The most classically "romantic" thing we did -- other than perhaps the spa bath ritual -- was a private dinner on the lawn for just the two of us, looking out over the beach and cliff rocks. It was a really nice experience. They had four menus to choose from, and we kind of had to hack all four of them together to come up with a four-course meal that didn't include pork or shellfish, but it all worked out -- and that's what got us to try the Poke bowl.

New breakfast sensations: 1. Loco Moco! I'd heard of it before -- it's a ground beef patty over eggs and fried rice, with onion gravy -- but I hadn't tried it or even seen it served anywhere until we got to the hotel. But it is so good. And it doesn't seem like it requires any particular ingredients local to Hawaii, so how has this not made the jump to the mainland yet?

Bird alarm clocks: 1. There are many birds fluttering around Maui, singing their sweet little songs. There was also one particular bird who, from roughly 6:00 AM to 6:30 AM each morning, would just start shrieking at the top of its lungs like it just stumbled across the murder room in a horror movie. Thankfully, 6:00 AM Hawaii is 9:00 AM Pacific, so this was about the time we were getting up anyway. But still -- somebody get that bird to therapy. It's clearly seen some stuff.

Lizards in room: 1. Girls like swarms of lizards, right?

Hours spent off the resort: 0. We kept thinking about it. "Maybe we'll do an ATV tour of a neighboring island" (they never got back to us). "Maybe we'll go shopping in town" (we're spending enough here, thank you). "Maybe we'll go whalewatching" (the booking hut seems awfully far away when we're nice and comfy in our cabana). Ultimately, I'm content with our choice here.

Gap Day Predictions

I'm in the aforementioned gap day between my friends' wedding (it was great!) and my honeymoon (leave tomorrow!).

But I've been wanting to lay down my current take/prediction on the 2020 Democratic primary. Because it's never too early, and if I get it right now I will be seen as a God.

In short: I think the field will winnow down to Harris versus Sanders and I think Harris wins that head-to-head.

More specifically, and including potentials as well as the already-announced:

Joe Biden: I didn't think he'd run, frankly. There are two stories to his lofty status in the polls. One is that it's pure name recognition and that, much like all his other presidential campaigns, he'll crater once the race actually gets under way. The other is that Biden is widely liked, is viewed (rightly or not) as very electable, and will lock down the hefty portion of the Democratic primary electorate which misses the Obama years. I think story one will end up beating story two.

Bernie Sanders: I actually also didn't think he'd run (I'm off to a great start). Sanders is helped by a fractured field, because I think he has the largest core of support (though like Biden some of his backing right now is a name recognition thing), but I don't know how much growth he has once other candidates drop out. Twitter I think exaggerates both how much Sanders is loved and how much he is loathed among Democrats, but other than Warren, I'm not sure which other major candidates' voters would go to Sanders once they drop out.

Elizabeth Warren: Her oxygen seems to have been sucked up by Sanders, which I think is unfortunate. I'm also surprised by how much the Cherokee DNA test thing seems to be sticking to her -- not saying it's unimportant, but we have like nine million political scandals each week and this one doesn't immediately jump out as the one that matters. If Sanders wasn't in the race I'd have her as one of the front-runners because she straddles the establishment/insurgent divide very well. But I don't see a lot of Bernie backers jumping ship to her, and that will do her in.

Kamala Harris: I think she's the strongest of the more "establishment" flavored Democratic candidates. The left is hitting her on criminal justice issues, which isn't surprising, but I think she can and will cover that flank pretty well. And other than that, she has a lot of strengths and very few weaknesses. Like Biden, she scratches the "I miss Obama" itch very well without, you know, being Joe Biden.

Amy Klobuchar: The "mean boss" thing doesn't matter as much as the fact that she seems to be trying to position herself as the "moderate" in the race. That's going to be a mistake this time around.

Cory Booker: I always liked Booker, but Harris seems to be occupying his lane of "smart, wonkish mainstream POC liberal who kind of reminds us of Obama". In a large field, I'm not sure he'll have enough space to distinguish himself fast enough to make a real go of it.

Kirsten Gillibrand: I'm honestly not sure why she's not getting any traction. And to the extent it's "because of what she did to Al Franken", I'm outright angry that anyone is holding that against her. She might fare better if/when Klobuchar drops.

Beto O'Rourke: I don't think he should be running for President. If you'd asked me yesterday I'd have said his campaign is DOA, but the $6.1 million initial haul at least raised my eyebrow.

Stacey Abrams: The real wild card. Of all the unannounced candidates this side of Joe Biden, she has the largest potential upside in terms of generating real enthusiasm--in part because she seems well-liked by both establishment and insurgent sorts. But I can also see her ultimately petering out. It's hard to see Democrats, desperate to win in 2020, nominating anyone who lost her last race--no matter how inspiring the campaign was (that goes for O'Rourke as well).

John Hickenlooper: Even more annoyed he's running than I am at Beto. He should be taking a Senate seat from Cory Gardner.

Pete Buttigieg: I'm sure he's very smart, but mayor of South Bend, Indiana (smaller than Miramar, Florida, but you don't see me covering Wayne Messam) is a pretty big leap to President. Maybe try boosting Democratic fortunes in the Hoosier State first?

Julian Castro: Another rising star who probably should've found a different office to pursue before "President". Though, like Indiana, Texas is tough territory for Democrats to win high-profile office, so maybe this is his best option. Still don't see much of a route forward for him. It's a bad sign he's getting even less attention than Buttigieg.

Jay Inslee: In a sense he doesn't count since he obviously isn't running to win, but just to draw attention to climate change. A noble goal. And since there's no Senate race he should be focusing on instead, I'm okay with it--so long as he doesn't pull any sore loser routine or distract from the ultimate nominee.

Tulsi Gabbard: "There are many great candidates running for the Democratic nomination, and also Tulsi Gabbard."

John Delaney: Will never, ever break out of "who?" status with most Americans.

Andrew Yang: I refuse to find out who this person is.

The Honeymooners

I'm headed off to my honeymoon!

Technically, I'm leaving tomorrow for my friends' wedding in Durham, North Carolina (at 7 AM, since our original flight was grounded). We get back Sunday, and then Tuesday we fly out to Maui for the actual honeymoon!

But brief stop back home aside, it makes sense to view it as one continuous period where I'm out of commission. And while I don't plan to wholly detach myself from the world, I am going to try to make a conscious effort to unplug a little bit. It's a rare thing for me, but it'll probably be healthy.

I get back home -- for good -- Sunday, March 24. See you all then!

"Nah, You're Not Worth It"

The DOJ just announced 50 indictments in a massive bribery ring where wealthy parents paid to give their children an illicit boost in the college admissions process. The unlawful assistance included everything from falsely being "placed" on college sports teams (in sports they did not play), to falsification of test scores (or simply getting a smarter student to take the test instead). None of the students themselves are being charged, as the complaint alleges the parents were the primary actors.

Among those charged is Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman, and that led to this interesting little part of the story:

Huffman is accused of paying $15,000 — disguised as a charitable donation — to the Key Worldwide Foundation so her oldest daughter could participate in the scam. A confidential informant told investigators that he advised Huffman he could arrange for a third party to correct her daughter’s answers on the SAT after she took it. She ended up scoring a 1420 — 400 points higher than she had gotten on a PSAT taken a year earlier, according to court documents.

Huffman also contemplated running a similar scam to help her younger daughter but ultimately did not pursue it, the complaint alleges.

So I have to ask -- who comes out feel worse here? The older daughter, who now everyone knows had her college admission purchased by mommy and daddy? Or the younger daughter, who mom and dad considered "helping" in the same way but ultimately decided she wasn't worth the effort (hopefully -- hopefully -- because she was smart and talented enough on her own to not need it)?

Anyway, this is a massive abuse of the educational system by people already incredibly advantaged by their wealth and privilege, and I look forward to the results of the criminal process here.

Greetings, Fellow Jewish Youth!

A new organization has emerged, Jexodus, for Jewish millennials who want to "liberate" themselves from the Democratic Party. How exciting! To paraphrase one wag, now the "the grift of 'we speak for Millennial Jews'" has officially gone bipartisan. Watch, as they bask in the adulation of predominantly old conservatives (Jewish and non-) desperate to believe that the authentic wave of the Jewish future is exactly what they already believe, and delighted to find Jewish voices who will validate their decision to ignore the perspective of the Jewish community writ large.

But if you're going to start a conservative millennial Jewish liberation front, you have to start it right. So let me present the most on-brand fact about Jexodus you'll ever see:

Jexodus is the brainchild of Jeff Ballabon — a longstanding fixture in Republican Jewish circles — and an assortment of like-minded activists like Bruce Abramson, Ballabon's frequent op-ed coauthor. 

Yes, this voice of millennial Jewry was founded by Jeff Ballabon, age 57, and Bruce Abramson, age 55. Greetings, fellow youth indeed.

In the tradition of "Blexit", I'm sure this will gain a ton of media attention and maybe even some support from Russian bots, along side approximately zero support from young Jews who weren't already Republicans.

I can't wait.

The Trouble with (Jewish) Anger

If you read contemporary political theory publications, you've probably seen that "anger" is having quite the moment as a political emotion right now. As against a skeptical literature where anger is viewed as necessarily destructive or reactionary, a bunch of theorists have sought to identify and promote the uses of anger as a tool of public mobilization, asking what anger can do or promote under appropriate circumstances.

Whenever I go to talks or read articles on that subject, though, I always find myself a bit perplexed. The authors seem to concentrate on defending the thesis that anger is powerful -- they suggest that anger (again, in the right circumstances) can accomplish things that might otherwise be out of reach. But it seems to me that the classical knock on anger isn't that it isn't powerful -- virtually everyone concedes that (how many fantasy novels tie anger to a powerful dark side that allows access to eldritch magic?). The problem with anger is that it's hard to control. Anger is difficult to contain and difficult to cabin. Once it is unleashed, it is hard to bottle back up. It ends up hurting those one doesn't intend to hurt, it lashes out in unpredictable and uncontrollable directions. And, of course, anger has the difficult property of being self-generating against critique -- trying to persuade someone that they should be less angry only makes them more angry (convenient, that!).

The Jewish community in America is, I think it is fair to say, getting angry. What are we angry about? Well, a few different things, I suspect:

• We're angry that a community and a politics that we've long called our own seems to be increasingly comfortable with the promotion of antisemitic stereotypes, and is indifferent, at best, to our feelings of hurt and fear at that fact;
• We're angry that we've been unable to muster any significant public attention towards or mobilization against antisemitism from the mainstream political right, no matter how much effort we expend trying to raise it, and we're angry that media sources who are utterly indifferent when we try to talk about right-wing antisemitism only perk up when we talk about left-wing antisemitism;
• We're angry at left-wing antisemitism because we're angry about antisemitism generally but this antisemitism is in our home, and also because this is the antisemitism where we actually seem able to touch it and make people pay attention to it and make its perpetrators take notice of us, and so all the anger over the antisemitism where we can't make anyone care about it gets displaced and funneled into this one social arena where somebody will pay attention to it, even as we realize how unfair that is and we're angry about that too;
• We're angry that we're blamed for how other people talk or don't talk about antisemitism, and we're angry that people seem less interested in hearing what Jews have to say than in cherry-picking the Jews whose views are consonant with the narrative they want to draw and trumpeting to high heaven;
• We're angry that any time we try to talk about antisemitism in a case that's within a half-mile of "Israel", we're accused of being unable to tolerate "any" (any!) criticism of Israel, or of being in the bag for Likud, or of proving the point that maybe our loyalties are in doubt;
• And, I think, we're angry that the Israeli government has been racing off to the right, busily making some -- some -- arguments that once were outlandish now plausible, and putting us in increasingly difficult positions. We're angry that we've been basically powerless to stop this decay of liberal democracy in Israel, we're angry that a community and a place that we care deeply about seems not to care about us in return and is mutating into something unrecognizable to us, and we're displacing that anger a bit.

That's a lot to be angry about. It's not unreasonable to be angry, about any or all of that. And I think it's the case that to some degree, anger has fueled some genuine counterattacks against all of these things. Jewish anger has, certainly, prompted some people to issue apologies who otherwise would've continued about their business, engendered some discussions that otherwise wouldn't have have begun, prompted some solidaristic bonding that might not have otherwise occurred. One could, I think, fairly say that Jewish anger has greased the path towards some accomplishments for the American Jewish community.

But anger, as powerful as it is, is also difficult to control. I don't like the political-me when I'm angry -- and more than that, I don't trust the political-me when I'm angry. My tactical choices are often unwise. And when I look out and say how angry we're getting, I worry. I worry that we're not going to be able to bottle it back up. I worry that it is going to burst its bounds and rage beyond control.

People have been making a lot of (premature, in my view) comparisons between the Democratic Party and UK Labour. But there is one parallel that concerns me right now. British Jews are angry at Labour, and they're by no means unreasonable to feel that way -- I've been quite vocal in calling out the disgusting cesspool of antisemitism that has taken over the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's watch. That's legitimately anger-inducing. And one could even argue that Jewish anger about this has played a significant role in forcing Labour to come to the table and take what (meager) steps it has taken to tackle antisemitism in its ranks.

But I also worry that this anger and bitterness has gotten so deep that it's almost impossible to imagine any set of steps by which Jews and Labour might reconcile. Even when Labour officials do issue statements or take steps that seem genuinely positive as expressions of the importance of tackling antisemitism, the mistrust runs so thick that they're often immediately rejected -- "what good is this statement or that commitment coming from so-and-so, who's been so terrible to us in the past?"

I'm not saying that these statements or commitments will always be followed through on or even that they're always offered in good faith. I'm saying it almost doesn't seem to matter any more, the efforts that are offered in good faith and would be followed through on are swept away just as decisively by the omnipresent feeling of woundedness and mistrust. At a certain level, what Jewish anger wants out of Labour is for it to have never done such awful things in the first place. But there's nothing Labour can promise to satisfy that demand -- and so the anger can never be placated. And that, ultimately, can only lead us to a destructive place, where Jews and the left must be enemies, because there is no longer anything that can be said or done that is interpreted to be a gesture of friendship (even the most perfectly worded statement can be dismissed as a front or a guise, or insufficient given past sins).

American Jewish anger, I worry, is pushing us towards a similar precipice -- one where we can't stop being angry, where there's no plausible pathway through which our anger can sated. 

Consider reactions to the Democratic leadership delaying a proposed antisemitism resolution, with the suggestion that it be redrafted to more explicitly tie the fight against antisemitism to other forms of bigotry. 

One interpretation of this move is that it helps dissipate the notion that Ilhan Omar is being unfairly singled out, and sends a decisive message that the fights against antisemitism, racism, and Islamophobia are united struggles -- they are not in competition with one another. Another interpretation is that it "All Lives Matters" antisemitism, implies that antisemitism cannot be opposed for its own sake but must be laundered through other oppressions in order to matter, and overall represents a capitulation to those who are upset that Democrats are acknowledging the existence of left-wing antisemitism at all.

Which interpretation is right? Well, one would have to see the newly-drafted language, first of all. But I suspect that the answer will be that there is no one right answer. Either interpretation will be plausible. 

So it's up to us to choose which hermeneutic world we want to live in. We could declare, decisively, that we view such a resolution as not excusing left-wing antisemitism but also not singling it out; not suggesting that antisemitism only matters insofar as it can be tied to racism and other bigotry but rather rejecting the claim that vigorous opposition to antisemitism in any way, shape, or form is hostile to opposing these other hatreds. 

And to some extent, our declaration of interpretation will generate its reality. If we choose to believe that this is what the resolution means, that it is an expression of solidarity and of unity, then that is what it will come to mean. If we choose to believe that it means something else, that it is an insult and a capitulation, then it will mean that instead. It is both weird and, when you think about it, not so weird that it is fundamentally up to us whether any such resolution is an act of solidarity or not.

Viewed that way, the right answer is clear. But I think anger is pushing us toward the wrong choice. Yet know this: there is no resolution the Democratic leadership could write that would make it so that we weren't in this anger-inducing reality where such a resolution felt necessary to begin with. If that is our standard, we will never be placated. So the question is how do we move forward in a damaged world? Does anger get us there?

I think not. Anger doesn't look for common ground. It doesn't look for the positive or the best in people, it doesn't offer much foothold for rebuilding. It hurts those we don't actually want to hurt. Like a fire, it rages past borders and over barriers. Even when anger does do its "job" of mobilizing or organizing or signaling the degree of woundedness a given practice is generating, it doesn't easily return to its cage. Often, anger slaps at hands that really are just trying to reach out, really are trying to figure out how to do better. Which, of course, generates anger of its own. And so a cycle emerges, that is very hard to escape from.

As I mentioned above, one of the most difficult aspects of anger as a political emotion is that telling people to be less angry only makes them more angry. Even still, and even recognizing that we have grounds to be angry, I still find myself imploring my community that we need to let go of our anger here. It's rapidly losing whatever productive attributes it has, and I fear that if we don't bottle it back up now, we will completely lose control over it. 

And that thought terrifies me, because I cannot imagine that a Jewish community that is uncontrollably angry at the political community we've long called home will be a healthy, or happy, or productive place to live.

How To Avoid the Trap of the House Antisemitism Resolution

Here's a truncated timeline of certain events today:

1. I read story about the House considering introducing a resolution on antisemitism, "in response" to certain comments by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D). The story indicated that the resolution came about in part due to a letter from Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL.
2. I called my contact at a major American Jewish organization and left a somewhat frank voicemail suggesting that, unless the House Resolution made crystal-clear that it was not solely addressing Omar but equally targeted antisemitic remarks emanating from Republican representatives -- most notably, the Soros-style "wealthy Jewish financiers 'own' us and are pulling the strings behind the scenes" conspiracy theories -- there would a massive backlash and it would be entirely deserved.
3. Draft text of the resolution was released (it does not mention Omar, or any other elected official, by name).
4. The official at the aforementioned Jewish org called me back and I had the opportunity to provide a bit more color to my suggestions regarding how they should handle this situation.
5. I read a statement from Bend the Arc arguing that the House Resolution is a "trap", in that it functions to single out Omar without any sort of concurrent condemnation of antisemitism from elected Republicans like Jim Hagedorn, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Jordan.

So, as the day closes, here's my question: How do we avoid the trap? How do we tackle antisemitism in a way that does not give succor to the false narrative that the problem of antisemitism in America is solely represented by Ilhan Omar, and not the vicious antisemitic conspiracy mongering flying through the political right?

The thing is, believe or not -- lots of us fully see the trap. That includes the mainline Jewish organizations. They're frustrated by what seems like the endless foot-in-mouth/apology/foot-back-in-mouth cycle Omar is going through, but they're also frustrated at the expectation that the primary subject of their counter-antisemitism energy should be Ilhan Omar. There are many, many other antisemitic things in the world, and they understand how bad a look it is that Omar seems to be catching the brunt of all the attention. 

We should be casting scrutiny on the Soros-style antisemitic conspiracy theories that run riot through the GOP at its highest levels. When we condemn antisemitism, that should be front and center in our attentions. The fact that it isn't represents a real problem, and Omar and her backers have a legitimate grievance here. There's a reason why I opened my column on Omar by talking about Jim Hagedorn, and there's a reason why nonetheless nobody seems interested in having me write a column or giving a quote on Jim Hagedorn. The "bad look" is, at least in part, a product of a bad reality.

But how do you change that reality?

The text of the House Resolution doesn't single out Omar. It doesn't single out anyone; it names no names. Yet nonetheless, there is no question that it is perceived as a swipe (albeit a sub silentio swipe) at Omar, specifically. Nobody is reading this resolution and saying "wow, the House Democratic leadership is really turning the screws on Jim Jordan!"

Is that reading unfair? The text of the resolution is a bit meandering, but on the whole it focuses on the type of antisemitism -- allegations of "dual loyalty" -- that Omar is alleged to have engaged in. There is no significant mention of Soros-style conspiracy theories; these are at best very briefly alluded to and then dropped. In context, I can't say that readers are unfair in viewing the resolution as targeting Omar. And then we're right back to where we started: a very legitimate grievance Omar and her backers have that alleged antisemitism doesn't seem to matter unless it's being done by people who look like her, in a political climate where there is very real and very dangerous antisemitism that is an exceptionally live part of mainstream conservative discourse.

So the first step -- an obvious step, a step I can't believe I have to suggest because it's should have been blindingly self-evident step -- to avoiding the trap is that the resolution should dedicate equal time to the type of antisemitism that we see on the mainstream political right: conspiracy theories about wealthy Jewish financiers pulling the strings on political and social campaigns, "owning" certain politicians or slyly controlling American society from the shadows. Such antisemitism has a deep historical pedigree in America -- dating at least to Henry Ford, and almost certainly beyond that -- and there is a straight-line between it and such atrocities at the Tree of Life massacre. 

Or put differently, and with apologies to Max Rose, the House shouldn't write a chickenshit antisemitism resolution. The first step to changing the bad optics of the resolution is to change its bad reality, and that makes holding the active forms of conservative antisemitism accountable too.

Would that be enough? It's hard to say. We've gotten very keyed into a narrative whereby if we're talking about antisemitism in American politics, we're talking about Ilhan Omar, and the media hates giving up a perfectly good narrative without a fight. If a few paragraphs about that sort of antisemitism were inserted into the resolution, it still likely wouldn't be seen as an equivalent swipe at GOP antisemitism, even if that was the intent, and even if that was the fairest reading of the resolution. Something has to be done to break the narrative. Somebody has to stop playing the part the narrative insists that they play.

And so my suggestion to the Jewish organization went. I suggested that, if they really wanted to avoid the trap -- if they really were as tired as they said they were about being perceived as one side of a "the Jews vs. Omar" controversy -- they needed to take a bold step:

They needed to insist -- explicitly, and publicly -- that they will not back the House Resolution unless it clearly condemned the Soros-style antisemitic conspiracy-mongering which is the other prominent antisemitic trope currently raging through our polity. They needed to come out and say that an resolution purporting to fight antisemitism is not acceptable unless it speaks out clearly and decisively against that form of antisemitism too.

That'd be a man-bites-dog story. That'd be a case of someone not playing their role. That might actually break the narrative of "the Jews vs. Omar." Might. I'm not confident, because fundamentally I don't believe that the behavior of Jewish groups exerts much influence on how the non-Jewish pres talks about Jews.

Still, as an added bonus, one thing it almost certainly would do is get a change in the resolution text. One has to think that the Democratic leadership thinks that it is satisfying the mainstream Jewish community with this resolution; its concern is how it will be received on its left flank. If it doesn't even have the backing of mainline Jewish groups, and the reason it doesn't have such backing is because the resolution needs to be adjusted to satisfy the concern that it is too soft on the right, then all the vectors of political pressure are in accord, and the resolution will change in a positive direction.

The fact is, it is a trap to agree to premise that the fight against antisemitism in America boils down to a fight against Ilhan Omar. It is a trap stemming from the right -- which wishes to pretend as if their own antisemitism isn't real and doesn't matter; and it is equally a trap emanating from the left -- which wishes to frame the fight against antisemitism as nothing more than the fight to silence politicians like Ilhan Omar. The right wants us to believe that if the House condemns antisemitism in America, they are condemning nobody but Ilhan Omar. And the left wants us to believe the exact same thing.

We need to avoid that trap. I can't make it happen. But if the big Jewish organizations have the guts to do what is necessary and step out from their default roles -- we may just manage to avoid it.

A Month of Black Jewish History

At the start of February, a Twitter friend of mine -- Shawn Harris -- issued a challenge: for the entire month, write one post a day on some aspect of Black Jewish history. I interpreted that broadly -- to include everything from historical articles, to academic essays, to simply linking to the profiles of Black Jewish writers whose work I've enjoyed or learned from over the years.

My thread begins here. But I also thought it might be worth collecting the month's worth of posts in one spot, on the blog.

A good chunk of the entries were simply promoting Black Jewish figures. That included some prominent academics and writers, like Lewis Gordon, Julius Lester, and Jamaica Kincaid, Rabbi Capers Funnye of Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, as well as personal friends like Jake Grumbach (soon to be an assistant professor of political science at the University of Washington) and Twitter connections like Blewish. My last entry of the whole month was dedicated to Shawn Harris herself, in honor of her inspiring the thread in the first place.

For others, I linked to a particular essay that had spoken to me -- this included Adam Serwer on Tamika Mallory and Louis Farrakhan, Stacey Aviva Flint on the Movement for Black Lives platform, Tema Smith on Ilhan Omar, and an omnibus collection of Black Jewish reflections on MLK Day. My book recommendation, MaNishtana's "Ariel Samson: Freelance Rabbi", and academic article recommendation, Carol Conaway's "Journey to the Promised Land: How I Became an African-American Jew Rather Than a Jewish African American", also fall into this category.

One entry that particularly tickled me was this interview with rapper "Young Gravy" -- mostly because I was the guy who suggested doing such an interview to the Forward's culture editor in the first place. Other musical entries include rapper Nissim Black and the spoken word poetry of Aaron Levy Samuels.

Black Jews are Jews. That is the case inside the Jewish community and outside as well. On the former, consider this profile on Ilana Kaufman, focusing on her work trying to further foster the elevation of JOC voices in American Jewish leadership positions, or Shekhiynah Larks on doing "Birthright while Black". On the latter, here's Michael Twitty saying the Shehecheyanu while accepted the James Beard award, and a list of Black Jews nominated for NAACP image awards.

The Ethiopian Jewish community is by no means the only part of Black Jewish history, but it does matter. My first entry in the whole series was on the efforts of Ethiopian Jews to help serve their European compatriots during the Holocaust. Other entries focused on the Ethiopian Jewish community include this one by Haftam Yitzak-Heathwood on racism against Ethiopians in Israel, and profiles of Pnina Tamano-Shata (the first Ethiopian Israeli women to be elected to Knesset), "Miss Israel" Titi Aynaw. and Mehereta Baruch-Ron (former Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv). There also is a vibrant Jewish community and history in Africa outside of Ethiopia, as this conference sought to emphasize.

It's important to not overstate "conversion" as an element of the Black Jewish experience, but certainly that is an important of some Black Jewish stories. Here's the conversion arc of former NFLer Calvin (now Yosef) Murray.

And finally, for my birthday, I stretched a bit and plugged my own article: White Jews: An Intersectional Approach, which is forthcoming in the Association for Jewish Studies Review.

UNHRC Releases Report on Rights Violations in Gaza "March of Return" Protests

The UNHRC has released the results of its investigation into alleged human rights violations that occurred during the "Great March of Return" on the Gaza/Israel border last year (see my contemporaneous post on use-of-force issues written at the time of the protests). It concludes that there is "reason to believe" that Israeli forces committed human rights violations related to the excessive use of lethal force against protesters. Pro-Israel NGOs, unsurprisingly, rejected the findings.

I read the report. And I have some quibbles with some of its conclusions, which I'll mention at the end. As has become usual in these cases, it was unable to take testimony from the Israeli side (because Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation, arguably with good reason). In general, I take a relatively dim view of the UNHRC, and I think it is fair to appropriately discount any of its findings simply based on the source. The UNHRC, as a body, really is structurally biased against Israel.

Still, at the end of the day? I read the report. And I think it's pretty fair. It does mention Palestinian rights violations (notably, the use of incendiary devices to torch the Israeli countryside, but also violent attacks on Israeli border guards). It expressly considers cases where Israeli soldiers resorted to lethal force in circumstances where there was an ongoing or imminent attack, and declines to find cause for a rights violation in those cases. Where someone is firing a rifle at Israeli soldiers, the Israelis are allowed to fire back.

But the big problem here is that the Rules of Engagement Israel put in force for dealing with the protests really were too loose. I agree with the commission that the March of Return cannot, in toto, be cast as a military operation -- it was primarily a civilian campaign, albeit one that at various times Hamas tried to infiltrate into a military one (this is one of my quibbles -- the report doesn't treat with sufficient seriousness the problem of Hamas' admixture of its military operations into civilian protests -- a decision which bears significant responsibility for putting the protesters at risk).

In such a circumstance, Israel is acting in a law enforcement capacity, and can only resort to lethal force in cases where there is an imminent threat to life or limb. "Imminent" threat, as the Commission correctly notes, is measured as a matter of "moments", not hours.

Yet the Israeli RoE was considerably more expansive -- it effectively authorized the use of deadly force as a riot dispersal technique, including targeting "main inciters", which was recklessly irresponsible and predictably would lead to the use of lethal force in inappropriate circumstances. Even assuming marchers breaching the fence could constitute an "imminent" threat, it does not warrant the use of deadly force against persons who are still a football field's length away.

The problems with the RoE are one of the reasons why I'm less (not un-) concerned that the commission wasn't able to get the Israeli "side" of the story. Yes, that might make a difference in assessing individual cases. But there isn't much serious dispute regarding what the RoE was, and it is reasonable to infer that an RoE which viewed riotous protests at the border as tantamount to an "imminent" threat would at least somewhat predictably lead to uses of lethal force that are indefensible under international law.

The common objection to reports like these is that they act to "second-guess" on-the-ground military decision-making in a hot zone. And in a sense, they do -- though, again, it seems wrong to characterize the entirety of the protests as "hot" in the relevant sense. The widely shared clips of violence occurring by protesters are, if not irrelevant, than certainly incomplete. In cases where protesters were violent, that can warrant the use of deadly force; but the existence of violence among protesters does not create a blanket authorization for firing live ammunition anywhere and anywhere. Again, this is the point of the "imminence" requirement: lethal force is justified in particular moments characterized by a particular threat; the justification of using lethal force in this spot at this moment does not transfer to any use of lethal force at any time during the broader protest. Indeed, the core of the problem is the proposed transitivity, which is what ends up getting you to Avigdor Liberman's "there are no naive people in Gaza" claim and sanctions anyone and everyone as a target.

But more broadly: the reason we have rules regarding laws of war and international humanitarian law is, in a sense, to do that "second-guessing". It is to judge conduct in precisely the sort of situations that occur here. To dismiss such judgments as second-guessing is to moot this entire arena of law. That simply cannot be right.

This broad endorsement of the report is not wholly unqualified. I mentioned one problem already -- the report in my view gives the short-shrift to the manner in which the intentional mixing of military or otherwise violent actors into the civilian protests played a role in creating dangerous conditions for the civilians. Likewise, the report doesn't seem to take much account of the obvious fact that bullets travel and sometimes miss their intended target -- it is too much to assume that any bullet that hits any civilian actor is necessarily aimed at that actor. While some of the incidents described in the report attempt to paint a reasonably full spatial picture of where the victim was in relation to other protesters (most importantly, those who were acting violently or in ways that otherwise could have warranted a lethal response), the authors were inconsistent on this score.

Yet, reading the report holistically and taking theses shortcomings into account, they do not ultimately negate the core conclusion -- that there are reasonable grounds to believe (which is not, it is worth noting, the same as "definitively proven") that Israeli forces -- likely as a result of decisions made regarding the rules of engagement -- violated international law regarding excessive use of lethal force against Gazan protesters.

I remarked in my post from last year that too many people who style themselves "pro-Israel" seem more concerned with calling the IDF "the most moral army in the world" than in it being such. To be a "moral army" requires actually adhering to certain rules and standards, and punishing people when they violate them. It's not simply a matter of assertion; there is no law of the metaphysical universe which makes it conceptually impossible for the Israeli army to commit rights violations. We figure out whether they did or did not by investigating the possibility seriously, and without predisposition to either a "guilty" or "innocent" verdict.

In terms of that project, it is indeed unfortunate that the UNHRC has shot its credibility to hell and back on the matter of Israel; it makes it easy to reflexively dismiss this report based on its provenance. But dismissal and then silence should not be an adequate response -- indeed, it is just as partial and biased as the UNHRC is (fairly) accused of being. If one does not trust the UNHRC investigation, the right call is to launch one whose partiality is less questionable. Either the results will confirm that Israeli forces fired only when there was an imminent risk of death or serious injury -- or they won't. We cannot prejudge that outcome based on what we hope the answer will be.

Chris Williamson Suspended from Labour

The most antisemitic member of the UK House of Commons almost certainly isn't Jeremy Corbyn.

It's Chris Williamson.*

Basically, if there is an antisemite on the left, Williamson has been there to defend them.

When Jackie Walker -- currently suspended from Labour after (among other things) accusing Jews of being the primary backers of the slave trade, complaining that Holocaust Memorial Day is too Jew-oriented, and challenging the need for heightened security at Jewish schools and synagogues as the product of exaggerated and embellished fears -- sought a venue to host her new film "Witchhunt" (guess who the witch-hunters are?), Williamson happily offered to give her a room in parliament -- a decision the Board of Deputies of British Jews likened to an act of "trolling".

When Ken Livingstone -- who said that Hitler was a "Zionist" -- was suspended from the Party, Williamson was manning the ramparts demanding that he (and Walker) be let right back in.

When Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was accused by Marc Wadsworth of being a right-wing operative because she was challenging antisemitism in her party, Williamson accused Smeeth and her backers of being the faces of "White privilege" (Wadsworth was eventually expelled from Labour).

When people were organizing to deplatform vicious antisemitic musician Gilad Atzmon, Williamson signed a petition ... defending Atzmon and urging that he be permitting to perform (Williamson did apologize for that one, saying that he -- somehow -- didn't know of Atzmon's antisemitic record, despite that being the only reason he's of any public prominence at all).

Williamson has said that he's "never seen antisemitism in the Labour Party," -- a fascinating argument coming from someone who's twice had to apologize for his own antisemitic dalliances. Perhaps he doesn't own a mirror?

But today, finally, Chris Williamson was suspended from Labour after telling a cheering crowd that his party -- which just saw a mass exodus of members prompted in part by worries of institutional antisemitism -- had been "too apologetic" about antisemitism.

Apparently, the suspension occurred only after an intervention by Corbyn himself. Not to facilitate the suspension to show that Labour was done soft-playing antisemitism in its upper ranks. Rather, Corbyn was trying to shield Williamson from consequences for his actions -- perhaps not surprisingly, since he's naturally one of Corbyn's most vocal allies in the party.

A massive blowback from within the Labour Party forced Corbyn to back off. And so, for now, Chris Williamson is under suspension.

* Incidentally, the most antisemitic member of the UK legislature is not a Labour member. That would have to be Baroness Jenny Tonge, formerly of the Liberal Democratic Party (though she was suspended and eventually resigned under a cloud of her own antisemitism controversies).

What if Everything is Antisemitic?

We've been talking a lot about the avoidance of antisemitic "tropes" when criticizing Jews or Jewish institutions. Aside from very obvious expressions of antisemitic hate, there are lengthy lists of words or concepts to avoid when talking about Jews, because they are linked up to historical antisemitic beliefs about Jews -- e.g., Jewish wealth, Jewish conspiracies, Jewish cabals, Jewish bloodlust. It's fine to be critical of Jewish institutions, but if you use such words or concepts (tropes) in doing so you start to wander into antisemitic territory. So just avoid the tropes!

This makes sense, in its way. But there's a big lurking problem nobody really wants to grapple with: what negative or critical assessment hasn't been attached to an antisemitic ideology at one time or another?

The almost-infinite mutability of the content of antisemitic ideology as one of the most striking features of antisemitism over time. Moshe Lilienblum's 1883 remarks, where he described how Jews were cosmopolitans to the nationalists and nationalists to the cosmopolitans, radical free thinkers to the religious and close-mindedly superstitious to the atheists, conservatives to the liberals and liberals to the conservatives ... on and on forever, is compelling illustration.

I think all "-isms" display this mutability to at least some degree -- think of racist iconography of Black men as happy-go-lucky simpletons right up until they're bestial brutes -- though it's possible that antisemitism represents an extreme case. The fact of the matter is, though, that for pretty much any negative (or potentially negative) human characteristic you can name -- greed or miserliness, violence or cowardice, close-minded religiosity or arrogant secularism, univeralism or particularism, licentiousness or frigidity -- somebody has associated with the Jews.

One upshot of this is that it gives a hint as to the causal story of stereotypes: it's the hate that drives the stereotyping, not vice versa. People dislike Jews, and so associate Jews with things they dislike. If the hatred stays constant but the dislikable characteristics change, the stereotype shifts to match.

But if this is true, it creates a practical dilemma for the "just avoid antisemitic tropes" advice. Because if any negative evaluative concept has been imputed to Jews in an antisemitic way, then there might not be a clear way to speak in negative evaluative terms about a Jewish institution.

And that's a dilemma; one I haven't quite figured out how to solve. Obviously, the answer can't be "we can't speak negatively about Jewish institutions, because it will always be antisemitic." But it also seems wrong to say "antisemitic tropes are so omnipresent that it's unfair to cite them in a particular case." So what to do?

One potential solution is to say that, just because a given concept has been used as an antisemitic trope, that doesn't mean its usage in a particular case is motivated by antisemitism. It could just be happenstance, and indeed if every negative evaluative concept is associated with antisemitism, but only some usages of that concept are motivated by antisemitism, by definition there is a significant set of cases where a given evaluative concept, assessed against a Jewish actor, only by happenstance is associated with antisemitism.

This, I imagine, is what many of those who are charged with relying on antisemitic tropes wish to rely upon -- "yes, I said AIPAC was greedy and money-grubbing -- but it has nothing to do with their association with Jewishness! Sometimes greed is just greed!" -- but it comes with problems. The most immediate issue is that, if the prevailing question is one of intent, under normal circumstances the use of an antisemitic trope is among the most probative bits of evidence we have as to motive. We can't see into the hearts and minds of men, and so if we decide that the use of tropes associated with antisemitism are no longer evidence about one's heart or mindset towards Jews, we're left with a situation where antisemitism's ubiquity paradoxically makes it virtually impossible to prove (outside a small set of cases where the perpetrator admits to the crime).

The bigger problem is that this entire outlook depends on motive being the dispositive question. Yet antisemitic tropes still retain their antisemitic power even when used innocently. Antisemitism is familiar and in tune, it makes things "ring true". Those who argue -- fully free of antisemitic intent -- that AIPAC is greedy and money-grubbing nonetheless are more likely to have their argument "taken up" because of the antisemitic trope that Jewish-identified institutions are greedy and money-grubbing. It fits into our web of belief better than a comparable claim would in a epistemic network where such a stereotype was not present.

This, to me, suggests a need for a more fundamental reframing. Rather than trying to divide up our discourse into kosher and treyf -- this statement is permissible, that one is antisemitic; this phrasing is fine, that one is a no-no -- we would do better to think of antisemitism as permeating the social sphere. Or put differently, instead of asking what antisemitism is, better to ask what antisemitism does. Antisemitism mobilizes, unifies, and encourages. It makes the unreal real and the implausible plausible. The practical consequence of this is that it is simultaneously true that there will be plenty of cases where a given "antisemitic trope" deployed critically against a Jewish institution will be both validly arrived at through non-antisemitic motivational pathways while also being true that even in those cases the antisemitic character of the trope alters how that trope is received and the impact it has on the deliberative community.

Ultimately, the "everything is antisemitic" dilemma is a dilemma primarily because we think we can successfully create a sort of "clean room" in our discourse about Jews where antisemitism can't infect, and that such a discursive state is the success condition of a proper epistemic state of affairs regarding Jews. The goal is to cordon off antisemitism, demarcate and isolate it, so that we can stay away from it and for the remainder of the conversation no longer think about it. I suspect the solution will ultimately run in the opposite direction: we will have to think about antisemitism a lot more often and in a lot more depth, because it really is everywhere. There is no "clean room". The flip side is that we also need to develop criteria for talking about Jews in a world where antisemitism has not and cannot (for the foreseeable future, anyway) be extirpated. If antisemitism is everywhere, it also lies in the places and cases where Jewish actors are doing bad things that need and deserve criticism. The fact of the latter doesn't negate the former, but the fact of the former can't delegitimize the latter.

Yes, I'm Alive

A couple of days ago, I wrote a column for Haaretz on the Netanyahu-facilitated merger of the far-right Jewish Home Party with the neo-Kahanist Jewish Power party. Since -- back in the 1980s -- prominent members of the Jewish community (including leaders of the AJC) analogized Kahane to Louis Farrakhan, and since we've all over the past year or so gotten very adept at declaring what one's obligations are when a Louis Farrakhan enters our political orbit, I suggested that it was "put up or shut up" time for Jewish community groups that regularly take stances on Israel-related issues.

Anyway, I sent the column to my editor Wednesday afternoon, so it could run Thursday morning. Then I did a bit of work, and then I tried to go to sleep.

Only to realize that somehow, all of the sudden, I was experiencing one of the worst head and chest colds I've had in my life.

It was frankly astonishing how fast it snuck up on me. I'd love to tell a story about how I pushed out this column with my last bit of strength before succumbing -- but actually I felt pretty much fine all of Wednesday afternoon into the evening. It just felt like a light-switch -- one moment I was fine, and the next it's 4 AM and I haven't even gotten a wink of sleep because my entire face is more congested than a Bay Area freeway.

The immediate upshot was that I basically wasn't able to follow any conversations that might or might not have occurred over my column. I was able to write a quick update when the AJC finally did release a statement on Jewish Power (they had not written one at the time it was published, and had indicated they would not be commenting) -- which really was my last gasp of energy, and after that I ended up staying in bed until 5:30 PM (yes, PM).

Anyway, I'm finally feeling a bit better (a lingering cough seems to be the long tail of this whole ordeal). So what did I miss?

Well, let's see: the White House is considering appointing William Happer to a climate change committee. Who is William Happer?

"The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler," Happer said on CNBC. "Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews."

"Just like" it. You know, I've heard of Jews being dehumanized by being compared to animals, or even vermin. But this must be the first time we've been reduced to the level of a gas molecule.

In conclusion, I kind of want to just go back to sleeping all day.

Not My President's Day Roundup

Our apartment's water heater is being replaced tomorrow. That means my one true joy in life -- long, languid, hot showers -- will also have to go for the day. It will be terrible.

* * *

China's crackdown on religious liberty threatens the tiny but ancient Kaifeng Jewish community.

One of the few Black mathematicians in American academia recounts the microaggressions and subtle racism which alienated him from his own discipline.

I think the tone of this column is a little off, but the broad point -- that leftist anti-Zionists have no friend more highly placed in Israel than Netanyahu himself -- is on the mark, and it's important that someone like Eric Yoffie is saying it.

Alabama newspaper editor urges the return of the KKK in order lynch Democrats (and insufficiently conservative Republicans). Yes, really.

Apparently, Louisiana has a bad habit of not releasing prisoners after they've finished serving their sentences.

"As a Jew, I’m either furious or eating. Sometimes both."

For all the talk of "creeping Sharia", the fact is that the American Muslim community is actually experiencing something very different: creeping liberalism. For a community that, for much of recent electoral history, at least leaned Republican (especially on social issues), the rapid embrace of feminism, gay equality, and sexual liberation among the younger generation is coming as a bit of a shock to the more conservative old-guard.

Unthinkable Thoughts, Part II: What if the Democratic Party Corbynifies?

Today, seven British MPs -- including Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna -- announced they were leaving the UK Labour Party and would sit in Parliament as independents. It is, as I understand it, the biggest breakaway of sitting MPs from Labour in recent history (the last comparable action was in 1981, when four senior Labour officials -- two of whom were MPs -- left to form their own party).

There were quite a few issues that prompted these MPs to decamp, including perhaps most prominently the almost complete failure of Labour to commit to fighting against Theresa May's Brexit catastrophe. But of course, looming large on the horizon was the ongoing problem of antisemitism -- a disease ripping through Labour at both the grassroots and at the most senior levels.

The Democratic Party in the United States is not like UK Labour. People who try to argue otherwise are acting in transparent bad faith -- and not just because three-quarters of Jews voted Democratic in the last election, while Corbyn's Labour party polls below 20% in the Jewish community. It is insulting to the American Jewish community to suggest that we can't see antisemitism before our eyes; if the Democratic Party was a toxic place to be a Jew, we -- by which I mean Jewish Democrats, the Jewish majority, not whatever ZOA hack is tweeting their 304th comment of the week at Ilhan Omar -- would be saying so. In reality, Jews remain well entrenched in the Democratic community. Antisemitic incidents remain quite rare, and when they do occur they're handled with considerably more grace and decisiveness than comparable acts across the aisle.

However, as I stressed in my last post, this is not a series about what is, or even what is likely. Unthinkable Thoughts is about what could be, what is now within the realm of possibility. The question, then, is what happens if the Democratic Party becomes "Corbynified"?

Last week, referring to the great Ilhan Omar "AIPAC!" controversy, Anshel Pfeffer declared that Jewish Democrats had just experienced their first "Corbyn moment". The main feature of that moment was not what Omar said, exactly, or in how it was responded to by the Democratic Party as an institution. Indeed, along those metrics, this scandal was a rather minor affair: she did trade upon antisemitic tropes, but she quickly apologized and the party as a whole disavowed them. Can't ask for a better result.

Rather, the scary portion of the incident was in the metadebate -- the discourse about the incident that coursed through sectors of the internet in the hours and days following. It was here where things went well beyond (fair) critiques that Omar's words are the subject of a multi-day media frenzy whilst GOP antisemitism of comparable gravity are given a pass. Instead, we saw the development of a narrative where Omar did nothing wrong, and the contention otherwise is yet another case of Jews smearing good patriots with illegitimate "antisemitism" charges, acting as Israeli stooges, being the face of American racism, and just in general sabotaging the left. Along side this condemnatory narrative was a celebratory one -- that Omar was speaking forbidden truths, that she was telling it like it is, and -- most importantly -- the fact that it made Jews uncomfortable is a point in her favor. In this corner of the internet, Omar scored points because of, not in spite of, how she upset the Jewish community.

This, for me, is the heart of what I mean by "Corbynifying" (at least along the axis of antisemitism). It denotes a state of affairs where Jewish terror and misery is part of the point -- it's an active desideratum, it signals that one's orientation towards the Jewish community is on track. With a few exceptions (exceptions who are both quick to be trotted out but whose loyalty to the cause is always kept under close watch), in a Corbynified party Jews are viewed as part of the enemy camp, and so complaints from Jews about antisemitism are viewed much the same way as complaints of racism are heard by the GOP -- presumptively in bad faith, and if anything a signal that the party is getting things right.

This is, as I've written before, the antisemitism that keeps me up at night. And we're at the point where this future is, if not yet "likely", than certainly "thinkable".

It's worth noting that a "Corbynified" Democratic Party does not necessarily mean a friendly Republican Party. More likely, it'd mean a Democratic Party and Republican Party that are deeply hostile to Jewish values. I've remarked before that trying to imagine what I'd do as a Jewish voter in the UK is the one thought-experiment that generated sympathy for the predicament of "Never Trump" Republicans, and that sentiment carries over.

And it must be stressed: right now the Democratic Party as an institution is not "Corbynified", or anything close to it. It's just not, and the people insisting otherwise are almost exclusively those for whom Corbynification is clearly their desired political future.

Yes, there is a loud cadre of self-described leftists on the internet that is ecstatic about any seeming break-up between Jews and Democrats. Then again, there's also a loud cadre on the internet that is screaming "Barbara Lee is a sellout!" because she endorsed Kamala Harris instead of Bernie Sanders. I feel pretty confident the latter will be very disappointed by the outcome of the 2020 primary. Loudness on the internet is not a reliable proxy for actual popular support.

But still. It's easy to forget that when Corbyn first entered the race to head up Labour, he was considered a fringe joke (a mistake that was also made about our current President). It turned out there was a very large swell of latent progressive energy waiting to be activated, and -- worse yet -- one of the things that activated and mobilized them was the antisemitism. Again -- this is central to Corbyn's appeal in the same way that Trump's racism was central to his appeal. Part of what Corbyn's voters like about him is that they view him as putting the Jews in their place. And so the question is whether there is a similar latent energy in a sector of the American people that burns with a similar desire.

It is a feature of Jewish history that these things can seemingly turn on a dime (I just read an account of how Jews reacted to emergent antisemitism in late 19th century Germany that felt alarmingly topical -- one of the main themes was how the community went from "we're basically fine, outside a few cranks anti-Jewish sentiment is a thing of the past" to having a 5-alarm fire raging around them). Yes, right now Jews are well entrenched in the Democratic Party. But can I imagine a world where Jewish Democrats are systematically targeted for primary challenges -- always somehow being viewed as "too conservative", "too accommodationist", "too establishment", "too Clinton-esque"? I can. I don't think it's likely, and I don't think they'd necessarily succeed. But yes, I can imagine it.

More importantly, we need to reflect seriously on how antisemitism can generate votes and energize coalitions. Too often it is taken as an article of faith that "antisemitism hurts our movement" -- that an antisemitic party is weaker than the one which is successfully fighting antisemitism. I don't think this can be taken for granted. Antisemitism is one of the most powerful mobilizing forces the world has ever seen. It seems wholly within the realm of possibility that a political movement which successfully harnesses antisemitism will be more successful than one that does not. The effectiveness of the "Soros" line of attack is demonstrative of this -- antisemitism, right now, is aiding conservative political movements in America. The Republican Party at least seems to believe that deploying these antisemitic tropes makes it stronger than it would otherwise be.

Indeed, the ties that bind antisemites together often cross normative partisan lines, and that creates significant opportunities for political growth. Antisemitism links together a range of vaguely "anti-establishment" and "anti-elitist" perspectives that, paradoxically enough, mean antisemitism is likely a great entry point for a host of new Democratic voters (consider the left-right convergence around the French "yellow vest" movement).

It would not remotely surprise me if there is a decent-sized clutch of independent-to-right-leaning voters who are suspicious of big financial institutions and angry about what they see as corruption in Washington, who tend to associate Democrats with coastal elitism and "New York money", and for whom Jews represent at least a plausible avatar of what connects what they think is wrong with America and what they think is wrong with Democrats. If this is right, then the path to resolving the  "What's the Matter with Kansas" question is making a grand gesture that says "I reject coastal financial domination." We joke about how antisemitism is the "socialism of fools", but the reason it's earned that label is because the easiest way to signal "I'm standing up to the banks", "I'm standing up to the elites", and "I'm standing up to the unaccountably powerful" -- all in one go -- is to signal "I'm standing up to the Jews". Such a message, it's plausible to imagine, be very well received among that set. It offers a pathway to turning reddish-purple voters blue.

Finally, it has to be emphasized that this is not solely a home-grown problem of the left. The right -- and particular Bibi Netanyahu -- shares a sizable chunk of the blame. Indeed, it is actively and I think intentionally trying to accelerate these dynamics. Much of contemporary politics is organized around negative partisanship, and the brazen of alignment of Netanyahu with Trump and other forces of far-right reactionary politics has very predictable effects. We can have a thousand conversations about nuance and Israeli society not being a monolith, but the fact is low-information voters aren't going to know much more about Israel than what it's government is doing, and if the government of Israel is blasting "WE, THE JEWISH STATE, ARE JUST LIKE TRUMP, ORBAN AND BOLSONARO" at 160 decibels, it's going to leave a sour impression on those people for whom Trump, Orban, and Bolsonaro are not friendly faces.

But the fact that blame would be overdetermined is not much of a consolation for ensuing political homelessness. If the Democratic Party ceases to be a home for the Jews, it would signal more than just a realignment. It would almost certainly mean that the liberal politics that much of the Jewish community has rallied behind for the past half-century will have finally failed. And it's hard to imagine that any of the candidates that might emerge in its place -- from Corbynista socialism to Trumpian authoritarian populism -- will be particularly favorably disposed to the Jews.