The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June 2015, we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it. But that’s not the full story. If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly ...
When it comes to Palestinians, the American Jewish establishment is in the ignorance business. The average American synagogue has never hosted a Palestinian speaker. The average “pro-Israel” activist has never read a book by a Palestinian author. The American Jewish philanthropists who fund Birthright send thousands of young American Jews to Israel each year, on a program that systematically excludes the voices of 50% of ...
Now it’s the GOP’s turn. “I can only hope that the Democrats do tone down the rhetoric,” said New York Republican Congressman Chris Collins after the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and five others at an Alexandria, Virginia baseball field. “The rhetoric has been outrageous—the finger-pointing, just the tone and the angst and the anger directed at Donald Trump, his supporters. Really, then, ...
A plastic curtain separated my father from his neighbor in the geriatric emergency room. The man, who wore a velvet yarmulke and sported a beard, lay on a gurney. His wife talked on the phone in Yiddish. Then she began speaking to me: “We came here last night from a wedding, our grandson.” I said “Mazel tov.” Why didn’t I just say “Congratulations”? Her external ...
The way James Comey describes it in his statement to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, you can easily imagine the movie. On January 27, Donald Trump invites Comey over for dinner. Expecting there will be others, Comey is unnerved when he realizes that he and the new president are dining alone. Worried that Trump is trying to “create some sort of patronage relationship,” Comey ...
Every year for the past six, I’ve spent an early summer weekend camping with several dozen Jewish parents (mostly fathers) and their elementary school aged kids. We all live in the New York area, but roughly one-quarter grew up in Israel. The other three-quarters hail from the United States or other parts of the Diaspora. …
The narcissism generally comes first. Early Saturday evening, an hour after first retweeting a Drudge Report alert about the London terrorist attack, Donald Trump declared that, “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!” In other words, London proves him right. Everything does. When ...
President Trump’s recent trip to Israel did not matter. He wants to broker the “ultimate deal” — Israeli-Palestinian peace — and thinks the Saudis, who share Israel’s fear of Iran, can help. But the Saudis can’t make Palestinians endorse their own subjugation. Peace requires freedom for the millions currently living under Israeli control without citizenship, free movement, due process or the right to vote for ...
Donald Trump has coined a term to describe terrorists like those who murdered 22 people on Monday in Manchester: “Losers.” White House officials claim he came up with it on his own. …
Donald Trump appears to have envisioned his speech on Sunday in Riyadh as an answer to Barack Obama’s 2009 address in Cairo. And reading the two side by side is illuminating. The speeches differ in many ways, but none more striking than this: Trump’s speech was far more politically correct. …