Shabbat shalom!
Well, the navel examinations and finger pointing continues as to why so many of our fellow Americans could vote for a traitorous rapist and convicted felon for President of these somewhat united states. Substack and all forms of media are overflowing with essays explaining the end of the world as we know it. It’s like an all you can eat feeding frenzy at the Cheesecake Factory. So, I will defer from adding my own glib perspectives and instead, draw upon the wisdom of Sam Harris, who with much clarity and eloquence noted the following:
I’m not going to spend the next four years obsessing about Donald Trump. As I’ve said before, I consider him one of the greatest opportunity costs for humanity to appear in my lifetime. The fact that we’ve had to think about this man continuously, for a decade, is just an incredible piece of bad luck. So, I’m going to do my best to pick my moments. I’m sure there will be many over the next four years, but I am just not willing to give more of my time to politics than is absolutely necessary.
Amen brother Harris. And taking that cue, I am also vowing that after this post, I will try and avoid any reference to or obsessing over the orange turd, no matter how much of his chaotic bullshit fills the swamps and cesspools that have become our media. Here is more from brother Harris:
If you are a Democrat who voted for Harris, please absorb this: You lost more people of color than you ever have in a presidential election, while running against Archie Bunker. Worse, Trump is actually supported by real racists and white supremacists—and that still wasn’t enough of a problem. Who do you think your identity politics is for? You’re really going to keep celebrating pornographers of racial grievance, like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi? Should we just give another Pulitzer Prize to the 1619 Project and congratulate ourselves? You really think racism is the problem in America—and that what we saw this week was just a victory for white-male identity politics? That’s how you’re going to explain Trump’s popularity at this point? Trump gained support from every racial group except white people, where he lost one percentage point when compared to 2020. You’re going to chalk that up to racism?
So let’s stop with the “this country will never elect a woman of color” nonsense. It’s just that. The data doesn’t lie.
Sam continues:
Of course, I blame Trump and social media for how divisive our politics have become. Trump is what you get when 51 percent of a society declares bankruptcy on core moral values, political principles, journalistic ethics, and necessary institutions. There is no real defense of Trump and Trumpism. All his defenders act like his critics just don’t like the man’s style—he’s just too crass or bombastic. Or they think we’re worried about hypothetical things that might never happen—we’re worried that he might become a fascist in the future. And, needless to say, these concerns are tell-tale signs of “Trump derangement syndrome.”
But none of that is true. The problem with Trump isn’t his style, and it’s not merely what might happen in the future. The problem is what has already happened. It’s the damage that Trump has already caused to our democracy. And it’s the fact that he has turned the Republican Party into a personality cult that celebrates all this damage as a sign of progress.
Hence, the real question remains, why did a majority of Americans not see what a feckless prick and flaming a-hole he is and what damage he has already done, and how can they not see how much more damage and chaos he will bring? My short answer is to blame the right wing media ecosystem. Because if it is a perception issue, those perceptions are fed by and formed by the garbage diet of right wing processed smack food poisoning the electorate’s mind, body and soul. This year it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media and as noted in The New Republic this week, “they speak in a clear and consistent voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”
TNR continues,
If you’re of a certain age, you have a living memory of revolutions in what we used to call the Third World. Question: What’s the first thing every guerilla army, whether of the left or the right, did once they seized the palace? They took over the radio or television station. First. There’s a reason for that.
It’s the same reason Viktor Orbán told CPAC in 2022: “Have your own media.”
The sooner libs and dems understand the enormity of this problem, and one that is only growing worse, the sooner an effort can be made to counter it. Meanwhile, Donny-dumb-fuck (DDF) will do his best to distract everyone’s attention with shiny crazy objects that will flow from his foul anus-like mouth like the effluvium exhaust from his deranged and aging brain. DDF sparked outrage Wednesday when the feckless prick made another reckless cabinet pick by selecting Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general. The Florida Republican has a history of drug use and is under investigation for sleeping with underage girls, exactly the profile one looks for in the country’s top cop. He is such an a-hole, even MAGA Republicans are flinching at the selection!
Fasten your seatbelts everyone. It’s going to be a wild ride for the next four years.
Meanwhile, in the race to the bottom of the bad news contest, Israel and Jews are winning the battle. And so, without any further ajieu, here is this week’s generous selection of Jewie journalistic gems, culled and carefully curated, and copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Kveller, Jewish Boston, Haaretz, and other Jewish journals:
- Day 406 of the war – More than 28,000 rockets have been fired at Israel since October 7th, 2023. That is a rocket every 19 minutes for an entire year. Some 14,150 of these came from Lebanon and Syria, 13,200 from Gaza, 350 from Iran, 180 from Yemen, and 150 from Iraq. And this is just the rockets. It does not include non-stop attacks from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, nor all the drones, of which Hezbollah has fired about 1,200, or Iran’s ballistic missile attack, or any other 300 terror attacks a month that Israel faces. Over 80,000 people have been displaced from their homes within Israeli sovereign land. Does the scale of this onslaught get reported in the mainstream media? Nowhere else would a year of such sustained rocket and missile fire, often deliberately aimed at civilian population centers, not be headline news. It is as if Israel is just expected to live with this, when no other country would even think about doing so. What does get reported? Israel’s counter attacks against enemies that have sworn to a genocide against Jews.
- More on the war:
- CEASE-FIRE/HOSTAGES: Palestinian Islamic Jihad has released for the second time this week a video of Israeli hostage Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov, the fourth such video since his abduction from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. It is unclear when the video was filmed by the sick bastards.
- Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that the issue of the hostages “remains a priority in Russia’s discussions with the political wing of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations.”“‘In my view, he’s not in Gaza. Once he died, he went to the place where he was meant to be,’ says Liat Atzili, whose husband Aviv was murdered by Hamas on October 7. ‘His body has no significance to me, and I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to risk their lives to bring back a body. It’s much more important to focus on the people who might still be alive‘” – Nir Hasson
- ISRAEL-LEBANON: Hezbollah will review the key points of a draft cease-fire proposal aimed at stopping the war in Lebanon and will submit its comments to the Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Beri, Al Jazeera reported.
- U.S. President-elect DDF has “signed off on” a proposed Lebanon cease-fire plan after being briefed by Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, the Wall Street Journal reported, adding that Trump also “expressed hope that it would get done before he enters the Oval Office” on January 20.
- The plan, according to the report, includes Hezbollah withdrawing its forces and weapons from the border with Israel to north of the Litani River, with the Lebanese military and UN peacekeepers tasked with ensuring that they do not return.
- Iran will support any decision taken by the Lebanese government and Lebanon’s “resistance” in current talks on a cease-fire, a senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Larijani, said after meeting Lebanese caretaker PM Najib Mikati and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, adding that Tehran is “not looking to sabotage anything. We are after a solution to the problems.”
- Orange Turd 2.0:
- President-elect DDF has promised to bring back school prayer, and threatened to eliminate the Department of Education. “Regardless of who Trump taps to lead the department, Jewish groups and education experts are concerned about the president-elect giving wide berth to Christian nationalists who believe the country needs more religious influence on public education,” writes The Forward’s Lauren Markoe. Read the story ►
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., DDF’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has a history of antisemitic rhetoric, including a 2023 claim that “COVID had been ‘ethnically targeted’ to avoid ‘Ashkenazic Jews and Chinese.’” (JTA)
- Colorado’s Jewish governor, Jared Polis, who earlier this week announced he would co-chair a group to help states push back against DDF’s policies, initially greeted Kennedy’s nomination with enthusiasm before clarifying that he opposes “RFK’s positions on a host issues.” Kennedy’s response? Thanking “Governor Polish.” (ABC News, Colorado Sun, X)
- Elon Musk, who has taken on a key role in managing DDF’s transition to the White House, reportedly met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations earlier this week to discuss reducing American tensions with the Middle Eastern power. (New York Times)
- More on Israel:
- Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz — who is new in the role after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s firing of his prominent critic Yoav Gallant last week — approved the issuance of 7,000 new draft notices to Haredi Jews, escalating tensions over the recent end of their longstanding exemption from the draft. (Times of Israel)
- Several freed hostages met with Pope Francis in Rome to advocate for a deal to free the hostages who remain in Gaza. (Associated Press)
- Almost 90 Democrats in Congress called on President Joe Biden to sanction the far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir during his lame-duck period. (JTA)
- “Israeli authorities on Thursday completed the demolition of a village at the heart of a yearslong struggle by members of the country’s Arab Bedouin minority against relocation plans,” reports the Associated Press. (AP)
- GERMANY: Police in Germany have issued a warning about potential attacks on the Israeli embassy in the coming days, the German newspaper Bild reported, claiming that the threats originated from Hamas and were circulated via the terrorist group’s Telegram channel, which stated that there should be a “siege on the embassies of the Zionist entity and the countries supporting it.”
- Oh woe is Ye – A new lawsuit claims that the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, accused his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, of having “Jewish masters” — the latest in Ye’s long history of antisemitic scandals. (Variety)
- President-elect DDF sparked outrage Wednesday when he picked Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general. The Florida Republican has a history of clashing with Jewish groups, including when he invited a Holocaust denier to the 2018 State of the Union.
- Earlier this year, Gaetz voted against emergency military aid to Israel, and opposed a bill aimed at addressing rising antisemitism on college campusesbecause it rejected the notion that Jews killed Jesus.
- Gaetz, who was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct until he resigned on Wednesday, called the Anti-Defamation League “racist” in 2021 after the group urged Fox News to fire Tucker Carlsonfor promoting the Great Replacement Theory.
- “Gaetz has a long history of trafficking in antisemitism,” said the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt. “He should not be appointed to any high office, much less one overseeing the impartial execution of our nation’s laws.” Rep. Max Miller, a Jewish Republican from Ohio, called it “a reckless pick.”
Had enough? I know I have.
Let’s be careful out there.
Jew News Review 