Last week I received an email from a woman I have never met. She told me she had lived in Israel earlier in her life and that, while critical of some of its policies, loves the country in ways she can scarcely express. Then she outlined her problem: Her niece has declared herself an anti-Zionist. Not a critic of Benjamin Netanyahu or of Israeli settlements ...
Earlier this month, a revealing spat broke out on Twitter. David Sirota, a left-leaning journalist who once worked for Bernie Sanders, announcedthat he had uncovered something while mining campaign-finance data: “Beto O’Rourke is the #2 recipient of oil/gas industry campaign cash in the entire Congress.” Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress and a former domestic-policy adviser to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, pushed back. ...
If you want to understand the divide inside the congressional Democratic Party on Israel, consider two events from earlier this week. On Sunday night, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, sat on stage at the Israeli-American Council, an organization funded, in part, by Sheldon Adelson. Alongside Schumer and Pelosi sat another IAC benefactor, Haim Saban. Saban’s name graces an AIPAC program for college ...
For several years now, commentators have wondered if Democrats—who have shifted left on domestic issues—would shift left on foreign policy, too. We now know the answer; the shift is under way. The clearest evidence yet is the Senate’s vote last Wednesday to move forward a bill that would end America’s role in the war in Yemen. It signals the birth of a post-Obama Democratic foreign ...
Since George H. W. Bush’s death, many observers have noted that he embodied a less rancorous, less polarized political era. But underlying that civility was something deeper: Bush was the last person to occupy the Oval Office whose opponents saw him as a fully legitimate president. …
Donald Trump does not. “You think our country is so innocent?” he asked Bill O’Reilly soon after taking office. He wasn’t being critical. Trump’s point was that America doesn’t need to be morally superior to be worthy of loyalty and love. America is precious simply because it is ours. In a world of gangsters, America should not strive to be the police. It should be the toughest, ...
The Anti-Defamation League has a disease. It suffers from an acute — and potentially fatal — form of moral schizophrenia. The ADL was founded 105 years ago during the anti-Semitic conviction and later lynching of Atlanta business owner Leo Frank with a dual purpose. It was created “to stop…the defamation of the Jewish people” but also — crucially — “to secure justice and fair treatment ...
A few years ago, the Brookings Institution scholar Thomas Mann said that during her time running the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi had proved to be the “strongest and most effective speaker of modern times.” To understand why, just look at the way Pelosi has engineered her likely return to the job over the past week. …
It turns out that Ilhan Omar, who this month became the first Somali American and the first Muslim refugee ever elected to Congress, modulates her views to fit her audience. In other words, she’s a politician. …
Last Saturday night, a Fox News contributor named Kat Timpf was at a bar in Brooklyn. As she recounted the incident to National Review, a man asked her where she worked. A while later, she said, a woman began “screaming at me to get out.” Timpf walked away, but the woman followed her around the bar while other patrons laughed. Fearing physical attack, Timpf left. She told National ...