American Jewish groups have, for the most part, condemned the Trump administration’s policy of separating parents from their children at the border. Good. So why can’t they condemn the Netanyahu administration’s policy of destroying villages like Khan al-Ahmar? …
Barack Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a lot in common. They’re both courteous, charismatic and wonky. They’re both people of color who rose from modest means in part because their mothers fought to get them a decent education. They were both community organizers. And at tender ages they both challenged older, entrenched House Democrats, though Obama—in his 2000 race against Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush—lost. …
There are many reasons for American Jews to reject Donald Trump’s inhuman treatment of the undocumented families who cross America’s borders. The Torah emphasizes the value of all people. (It doesn’t begin with Jews. It begins with Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel and Noah, who hail from no nation or tribe). The Torah repeatedly stresses our responsibility to the stranger. And, in modern times, Jews have often needed the very refuge ...
There are plenty of reasons to downplay the ideological significance of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset win yesterday over House Democratic powerbroker Joseph Crowley. Even by the standards of congressional primaries, turnout was low. In a district of roughly 650,000 people, Ocasio-Cortez won with only 16,000 votes. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory can also be chalked up to ethnic succession. Crowley is an Irish American representing a district, in Queens ...
Are Democrats walking into a trap on immigration? Three of America’s most astute and iconoclastic political commentators—David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, and Fareed Zakaria—all immigrants themselves, fear the answer is yes. In recent days, each has made a version of the same argument. Yes, they acknowledge, President Trump’s policy of separating families at America’s southwestern border was monstrous. Democrats were right to protest it. But now, by opposing ...
For congressional Democrats, it’s payback time. Ever since 2015, when Barack Obama struck a nuclear deal with Iran, prominent Republicans—including Donald Trump and his top foreign policy advisers—have accused Obama and his Democratic supporters of, in Mike Pompeo’s words, “surrender.” They’ve accused Obama of signing a deal that doesn’t meaningfully restrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, by seeking a warmer relationship with its regime, of betraying ...
The last few days—as President Donald Trump has savaged America’s allies over trade, demanded that they readmit Russia to the G7, and embraced North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un—make something clear: Cold War conservatism is dead. What’s replacing it resembles less the foreign-policy outlook that has animated conservatives since World War II than the sentiment that prevailed before it. …
Donald Trump is an ignorant, egotistical man. And in his summit on Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, those character defects may be America—and the world’s—best hope. …
Not many in the media are noticing, which is understandable given the burden of keeping up with Donald Trump, but in the shadow of Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernie Sanders is dramatically challenging Beltway discourse on Israel. In 2020, when Sanders likely runs for president, and journalists begin paying attention, they’re going to be shocked. The Israeli government and the American Jewish establishment will be ...
The United States has a long history of intervening overseas to solve one problem and inadvertently creating others. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration armed rebels fighting Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government only to find that some of them later targeted the United States. During that same decade, America armed the government of El Salvador in a gruesome civil war against leftist rebels that spawned the migration that produced ...