The Jew News Review – June 1, 2024 – “What goes around, comes around”

Shabbat shalom! 

And a big tip of the kippah this week to the 12 jurors who literally have risked their lives by delivering a guilty verdict on the orange turd’s attempt to buy off a porn star in pursuit of the 2016 election. We may actually find out how the orange turd will look in an orange jump suit, but not likely. And if he should go to jail, how will he smuggle in all his beauty products?

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right of all accused criminals to a trial by a jury of their peers. The orange turd has lived most of his adult life as a privileged grifter who has cheated, defrauded, assaulted, bullied and abused thousands of people, weaving in and out of ethical and legal boundaries along his gilded life. So it was a fitting bit of justice that 12 ordinary people, chosen by lot, should finally be able to deliver some long-overdue accountability which the political and legal elites of this country have not been able to do on so many occasions. 

The news of his guilt and potential for the orange turd to finally be flushed, reminded me of an internal Arthur Andersen conference I attended in the 80’s. The kickoff speaker was a prominent partner/leader who started his speech with a prop: a rubber hose that looked like something he pulled off the back of a washing machine. He began his speech by creating a circle with the hose and declaring: “What goes around comes around”. And this is hopefully one of the lessons for Trump and MAGA world: If you act like a narcissistic asshole for most of your life, it’s bound to catch up with you eventually. In this case, the slow and grinding wheels of justice finally rolled over the Donald and delivered a 34 count gut punch that the 24/7 news cycle is cashing in on big time. MSNBC is having a ratings erection, and the rest of mainstream media is also joining in the news orgy while Fox called upon its viewers to “vanquish the evil forces that are destroying this republic”. Yikes. Our venerable Speaker of the House, Mike “knee pad” Johnson asked the Supreme Court to step in! To do what god only knows, but this is the fucked up, crazy world we live in.

Meanwhile, buried beneath the deranged Trump news avalanche, grandpa Biden announced his support of a new Israel-Hamas deal that he claims comes from Nut-and-yahoo himself. It was Biden’s most direct and forceful appeal to the people on both sides of the conflict, saying, “It’s time for this war to end and for the day after to begin.” Biden provided some context around the issue, and provided some leadership which so far, at least regarding an end to this madness, has been sadly missing, as Israel seems more intent on the tactics of crushing Hamas than with developing or even discussing an endgame strategy. 

The President outlined a new 3-phase hostage/ceasefire deal Israel is offering to Hamas. The deal calls for the release of all living hostages, withdrawal of Israeli troops, a “surge” of humanitarian aid, the eventual release of deceased hostages’ bodies, the establishment of a permanent ceasefire and the reconstruction of Gaza. His remarks seemed to focus more on the Israeli people, saying that Hamas has already been so badly degraded that they are “no longer capable” of carrying out another 10/7 attack. A large majority of Israelis still support completing the Rafah war effort and removing any further threat from Hamas, as they rightly view Hamas as an existential threat. Not surprisingly, Hamas already responded that they would only accept a deal that begins with a permanent ceasefire. 

And here is the bald, naked truth of any agreement resembling a two state solution: It’s not what Palestinians want. What they really want, and are fairly transparent about, is for the Jews to go away, disappear, or even better, be victims of a jihadist genocide. Only then will they get what they really want, from the River to the Sea. Sad but true, not just today, but throughout history.

Also in Israeli headlines, war cabinet minister Benny Gantz’s centrist party proposed on Thursday a bill to dissolve parliament, showing the growing strains in Nut-and-yahoo’s government even if the prime minister has enough lawmakers to keep him in office. The move follows an ultimatum Gantz issued in May, demanding that Netanyahu agree to a day-after plan for the Gaza war by June 8. He threatened to quit the coalition if no such agreement was forthcoming, although the prime minister’s Likud party and hard-right allies still have a majority of seats without Gantz. On top of that bit of news, hostage families on Friday accused Netanyahu of sacrificing their loved ones for the Rafah operation. Wow, it sure sucks to be Bibi these days. 

Before I get to this week’s roundup, some good news: It looks like Mexico will elect a Jewish woman President of the country! The frontrunner is Claudia Sheinbaum, a former governor of Mexico City and a protégée of current President López Obrador. She has a PhD in energy engineering. If elected, she would be Mexico’s first Jewish president. Hmmm, let’s compare: US elects a convicted rapist who has never read a book and recommended treating Covid with bleach. Mexico elects a woman scientist with a PhD. Sounds about right. 

Ok, I hear you. Let’s get to the rest of the news for Jews across the Jew S of A and the world. Here then, finally, is your weekly buffet of baffling, beguiling, and sometimes bitter news for the Jews copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, Kveller, Times of Israel, The Jewish Chronicle, JTA, and other reputable sources of all things Jewish-y.  

1. Trump blames Soros for guilty verdict – Of course he does. And despite the obvious anti-semitic trope, republican Jews still support the a-hole! Speaking outside the Manhattan courthouse where his trial unfolded over several weeks, Trump blamed Jewish billionaire George Soros, invoking a trope that Jewish organizations have denounced as leading to antisemitic violence. Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, said the real verdict would come on Nov. 5, Election Day. Voters “know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here,” said Trump, who is the presumptive Republican candidate for president. “You have a Soros-backed D.A. and the whole thing, I didn’t do anything wrong, I am a very innocent man.” Soros’s connection to Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor, is tenuous. Soros, long an advocate for criminal justice reform to reduce incarceration rates, has donated money to Color of Change, which helps campaign for liberal prosecutors. He gave to the organization years before it backed Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor, when he ran for office in 2021.
2. Latest on the war…
   • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted it was a “tragic mistake” that an Israeli strike that killed two senior Hamas figures also reportedly killed dozens of Palestinians at a displaced persons camp in Rafah.“For us, every uninvolved civilian who is hurt is a tragedy,” Netanyahu said. “For Hamas, it’s a strategy. That’s the whole difference.”
   • Only 19% of Israeli Jews believe an Israeli and a Palestinian state can peacefully coexist — one of several headline-making findings in a new Pew study released Thursday. Among the others: 77% of Israeli Arabs and 66% of Israeli Jews are worried about the war “lasting a long time.”
   • Israel said it had gained complete “tactical control” over Gaza’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi corridor, and found some 20 tunnels in the area; it aims to cut off external supply lines to Hamas. Separately, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said he expects the war to last through at least the end of the year.
   • Deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza have dropped by about two-thirds since Israel began a ramped-up operation in Rafah earlier in May, said the United Nations. Separately, the Palestinian Red Crescent, an aid organization, said two of its employees were killed Wednesday while crossing into Rafah to retrieve injured people. And, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies called Wednesday for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying a pause is desperately needed to allow aid deliveries.
   • U.S. officials said a $320 million temporary pier set up to allow aid deliveries, damaged by bad weather, would be operational again next week after parts undergo repairs in southern Israel.
   • Demonstrators at a Wednesday protest outside the Israeli embassy in Mexico City threw rocks and Molotov cocktails, causing some fires around the building and injuring 18 police officers, law enforcement said.
   • Brazil called back its ambassador to Israel. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been a vocal critic of the war, drawing backlash in February after comparing the Israeli campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust.Only one hospital remains functional in Rafah after multiple humanitarian operations, including a field hospital, have been forced to shutter this week.
   • The Mossad said Thursday that criminal enterprises in Europe had worked as proxies for Iran to strike Israeli targets, including in the lobbing of two grenades at the Israeli Embassy in Belgium last weekend.
   • Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, reportedly told hostage families on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would not end the war in exchange for the release of all the hostages who remain in Gaza.
   • Slovenia became the latest European country to endorse a motion to recognize a Palestinian state.
3. ⚖️  Nail the jerk! A Texas judge ruled Wednesday that a Jewish college student’s defamation lawsuit against Elon Musk can proceed. Ben Brody, 23, says Musk amplified a false accusation that he attended a neo-Nazi rally last year. (Reuters)
4. 😓  Say it ain’t so Canada, eh? A Montreal Jewish school was targeted by gunfire Wednesday; no one was injured, but at least one bullet hit the building. Separately, Toronto’s mayor was among attendees at a rally at a Jewish girls’ school that was targeted by gunfire last weekend. (CBC, JTA)
5. 🏫  Oy! Harvard learns a hard lesson – Harvard said on Tuesday that it will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues, after months of grappling with a campus fractured by debate over the Israel-Hamas war. (Crimson)
6. Seinfeld breaks down recalling his December trip to Israel – “It was the most powerful experience of my life,” he said. On a lighter note, he thinks it’s funny that pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt his shows. “It’s so silly,” he said. “They want to express this sincere, intense rage, but it’s a little off target,” noting that comedians don’t have much political power. The conversation about Judaism, antisemitism and Israel starts at around the 22:30 mark.

Finally, some news that doesn’t suck, this item from Jessica Yellin’s News Not Noise Substack:

What’s Puszta? Here’s some news that doesn’t suck (unless you were the competition): 12-year-old Bruhat Soma won this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee in a record-shattering tiebreak round. In only the second-ever “spell-off” speed round, Soma managed to spell 29 difficult words in 90 seconds. The previous record was 22. Some of the mind-bending winning words included puszta, heautophany, caixinha, and ramoneur. 

As Porky Pig use to say at the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon, “That’s all folks!” And hey, let’s have a great weekend in this gorgeous weather, be safe out there, and remember, what goes around, comes around.

Brad out.