Shabbat shalom!
Happy January 6th everyone! I thought I would celebrate the anniversary of the darkest days of our democracy by gathering a few thousand friends and family, storm our local Costco, trash it, hang an effigy of the store manager, then blame Nancy Pelosi for lax Costco security. Then, after causing the death of 5 innocent employees and injuring another 140 in a desperate attempt to end democracy and pilfer all the free samples, I would perpetuate a big lie and a revisionist history to pump up the bruised ego of the country’s Cheeto-faced sore loser, and claim that the storming of Costco was just a civics picnic gone awry with maybe a few ants getting into the rotisserie chicken and potato salad. What a way to start the new year!
I must confess, when I first heard of the law suits to apply Section 3 of the 14th amendment to Trump and remove him from the ballot in some states, I was skeptical. I believed the best way to flush the orange turd from the country and relieve us of his past and ongoing stench was to do it the old fashioned way: at the voting booth. But, now I am not so sure. And my changing view has nothing to do with the current polls, which are not good. If we are truly a nation defined by laws and a constitution, there is ample evidence that Section 3 applies here. And what is interesting about the Colorado decision is that even the dissenting judges accepted the position that Trump is an insurrectionist! One position of the dissenting judges, and a popular objection from Trump supporters to Section 3 is that he was never convicted of insurrection, which can be a criminal offense under federal law. But this objection exhibits basic ignorance of how Section 3 is supposed to work — the provision defines a disqualification from office, not a sentence or punitive measure. You can’t be president if you’re not 35. Similarly, you can’t be president if you took an oath and engaged in insurrection. You could also be indicted for insurrection, but that’s an entirely different matter.
Meanwhile, back in Israel, while many countries rang in the new year with fireworks, Israel was greeted in the new year by a barrage of 27 rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza. Most were intercepted by the iron dome or fell on empty fields or desert, but a grim reminder of the tenuous situation in the middle east. We are getting closer to the war expanding to several fronts that are proxies for Iran, Hezbollah in the North being of most concern. Lot’s of diplomacy going on to contain any spread, not helped by the moron ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in particular, that keep publicly espousing ethnic cleansing policies for Gaza. Most people outside Israel don’t understand that the opinions of these ministers are meaningless and that all decisions are currently being made by the War Cabinet which does not include any of the far right whack jobs espousing these inane policies. Nevertheless, their public pronouncements are not helping on the global PR front, nor specifically within the US where the latest polls show that in the under 45 age group, more think that Israel has gone too far in Gaza vs those that think what they are doing is justified for their self defense (28% vs 24% respectively). Come on kids, start reading more than your dumb tiktok feeds.
Now what about the rest of the news for Jews you may be asking? Where are those selective segments of savory semitic stories stolen shamelessly from the likes of The Forward, Haaretz, Kveller, Jewish Boston, Times of Israel, and other fine Jewishy journals? Ask, and ye shall receive:
- Latest from the war…
- Three Israelis missing since Oct. 7 were confirmed to have been brought to Gaza as hostages, and at least one is believed dead. Ilan Weiss, 56, was confirmed earlier this week to have been killed during the Oct. 7 attack; his remains are being held in Gaza. Separately, Tamir Adar, 38, previously believed to have been taken hostage on Oct. 7, was also confirmed by his kibbutz to have died during the Oct. 7 attack; his remains were also taken to Gaza.
- Members of Netanyahu’s cabinet clashed after two ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, called earlier this week for the postwar “voluntary migration” of Gazans to other countries, a proposal that met with international condemnation — including from the U.S. — as violating international law. Ministers Miki Zohar and Yifat Shasha-Biton, in separate public interviews, critiqued the idea as damaging and “not realistic.”
- The religious magazine Shvi’i faced backlash over a cartoon that portrayed Ester Hayut, until recently the court’s chief justice, stabbing a prone IDF soldier in the back with a flag bearing judicial symbols. The weekly said it would republish the issue without the panel. The cartoon appeared after two Israeli Supreme Court decisions dealt blows to Netanyahu’s planned judicial overhaul, sparking concerns that the reintroduction of conflict over the controversial policy might cause rifts in Israel’s wartime unity government.
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken departed on his fourth trip to the Middle East since the outbreak of war as regional tensions rose after a senior Hamas leader was killed in a suspected Israeli action in Beirut. “We “don’t expect every conversation on this trip to be easy,” a Blinken spokesperson said. Separately, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told a U.S. official that Israel sees only “a short window of time for diplomatic understandings” to be reached with Hezbollah as a broader conflict with the group threatens to break out in Israel’s north.
- Police say fire at Toronto Jewish deli was likely a hate crime. A local rabbi is not surprised. In addition to the fire, International Delicatessen Foods was vandalized with graffiti reading “Free Palestine” on Thursday in the Toronto neighborhood North York, which is home to a Russian Jewish community. The area has seen at least two other antisemitic incidents in the past several weeks, said Rabbi Shmuel Neft, making the incident shocking but not surprising: “It’s all been building up to this,” Neft said. Read the story ➤
- The biggest question at the Golden Globes isn’t who will win, but what they’ll say about Israel. Sunday’s ceremony, “the drunk, European cousin of the Oscars,” is likely to be marked by at least some statements about the war, writes The Forward’s PJ Grisar. But what, exactly those statements are — and who, exactly, makes them — will help set the tone for the rest of awards season, in a moment of extreme political tension. “I’m excited to see what happens,” PJ writes, “even as I’m dreading it.”
- On Campus –
- A day after the resignation of Harvard’s president, Jewish alumni at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said they would withhold donations to their alma mater until it cracks down on antisemitism on campus.
- After the Hamas attacks in Israel, San Diego State University sent a campus-wide email supporting Jewish students. Now that email is at the center of a federal civil rights investigation, tied to a complaint that the school “promoted hate and racism against Arabs and Muslims.”
- An Israeli student filed a federal lawsuit against the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, alleging antisemitic harassment and discrimination. Meanwhile, a Jewish law school student filed a suit against Rutgers University for failing to protect him from a “hostile school environment.”
- There’s more to Madonna’s Jewish story than just Kabbalah and social media posts about Israel: Like her name and much of her music videos suggest, Madonna was raised Roman Catholic. But those who know her yearslong commitment to Kabbalah (and the controversial Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles), may be surprised to learn that her connection to Jewishness was more than faddish. In a new biography, Madonna: A Rebel Life, we learn that growing up in Michigan, Madonna’s family belonged to a Jewish-Catholic organization and even observed Passover.
Enjoy the weekend everyone! And don’t forget to be careful out there!
Brad out.
Jew News Review 