Joseph Lieberman, Centrist Senator and First Jew on a Major Presidential Ticket, Dies at 82

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Ron Kampeas

Joseph Lieberman, a longtime senator from Connecticut who as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 became the first Jewish member of a major presidential ticket, died Wednesday. He was 82.

A statement sent to former staffers and reported widely said Lieberman had suffered complications from a fall.

A moderate — some would say conservative — Democrat turned independent, Lieberman was known for his attempts to build bridges in an increasingly polarized Washington, sometimes losing old friends and allies along the way.

He also became one of the most visible role models for Jewish observance in high places, in contrast to the largely secular Jewish politicians who had preceded him on the public stage. In 2011, he wrote “The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath.” In it he wrote how on Friday nights he would walk the roughly four miles from the Capitol to his home in Georgetown after a late vote so as not to violate Shabbat — to the bemusement and admiration of Capitol police.

In announcing that he would not be running for reelection in 2012, Lieberman spoke in emotional terms about what it meant for the grandson of Jewish immigrants to be considered for a role just a heartbeat from the presidency.

“I can’t help but also think about my four grandparents and the journey they traveled more than a century ago,” he said. “Even they could not have dreamed that their grandson would end up a United States senator and, incidentally, a barrier-breaking candidate for vice president.”

That legacy, the first Jewish candidate on a major ticket, would be the Lieberman legacy to outlast all others, Ira Forman, the former director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, declared at the time.

“It was an electric moment,” Forman recalled of Gore’s choice of Lieberman in 2000. “It galvanized the feeling that everything is open to you.”

The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC memorialized Lieberman as “indefatigable in advancing pro-Israel policy and legislation.” He watched his onetime party drift away from his beloved Israel, and it pained him. Last week, in one of his last public statements, he excoriated Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Jewish senator from New York who called for new elections in Israel.

“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last Thursday crossed a political red line that had never before been breached by a leader of his stature and never should be again,” Lieberman wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

Lieberman’s religious orientation also came in to play when he emerged as a voice of traditional values within a party that he feared had surrendered the moral high ground to Republicans.

In 1998, he delivered a floor speech excoriating President Bill Clinton for his affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. He called his one-time friend “immoral” and said that Clinton had “weakened” the presidency.

The speech sent out shockwaves — news networks interrupted broadcasts to go to the Senate floor — but it also staved off calls for Clinton’s removal from office. It was credited with salvaging the presidency when the Senate subsequently rejected the U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment. Through a Democrat’s excoriation of a Democratic president, Lieberman seemed to have punished Clinton enough.

Lieberman’s reputation for outreach to the other side defined his career in the Senate after he arrived in the body in 1989, having been elected after serving as Connecticut’s attorney general. His break with Democratic ranks in backing the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 helped him later in the decade, when he rallied Republicans to support Clinton’s military actions in Kosovo.

In 1992, when Clinton’s campaign was cold-shouldering Arab Americans, the community reached out to Lieberman, despite pronounced differences with him over Israeli-Palestinian issues, because of his reputation for fairness.

James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, once recalled Lieberman’s outrage, and how after one phone call from the senator, Clinton’s headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, abashedly opened its offices to Arabs.

Yet it was at his very pinnacle — running for vice president — that signs emerged of how the subsequent decade would play out. He delivered an ineffective — some said even deferential — performance in his debate with Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s running mate. And during the recount, he undercut one of Gore’s best arguments — questionable absentee ballots from the military — when he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that they should be honored.

The real turning point came after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when the Bush administration launched a political and diplomatic campaign to make the case for war against Iraq.

Like many other Democrats, Lieberman steadfastly backed war. But while many of his Democratic colleagues came to regret their decision, he stuck by it, and even made it the centerpiece of his 2004 campaign for the presidency. He was bitter when Gore, who opposed the war, endorsed Howard Dean for president that year.

Lieberman’s adamant backing of the war led to an insurgency in Connecticut. Liberal Democrats descended on the state to back his anti-war opponent, Ned Lamont, helping him win the primary. It didn’t help that at this late stage, when the Iraq war’s failure had become conventional wisdom, Lieberman wrote an Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal backing Bush’s strategies.

Establishment Democrats, including a freshman senator from Illinois named Barack Obama, supported Lieberman in the primary but could not see a way to support him once Lamont prevailed. Lieberman ran as an independent, and with the Republican Party refusing to back its candidate, he won with votes from the GOP and independents.

In that election, Jewish Democrats were torn between their loyalty to the party and to Lieberman. Notably, the National Jewish Democratic Council stayed out of the fight.

That loyalty helped Lieberman capture a fourth term and proved he still had ties to the Democratic Party.

But that bridge burned when he made it clear that he’d back his old friend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the GOP candidate, in the 2008 election. Lieberman’s announcement led to a tense, whispered conversation with Obama on the Senate floor in which Obama reminded Lieberman of how he had made time to campaign for him against Lamont.

Particularly galling for Democrats was Lieberman’s agreement to endorse McCain on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. McCain even considered Lieberman as a possible running mate.

“He put himself in a position where his longtime supporters, particularly the hard-core Democrats who had supported him over the years, could no longer defend him,” Marvin Lender, who raised money for Lieberman in 2006, recalled in 2011. “I say that recognizing he was a very loyal person to his old friend, but he crossed over a line when he did that and disappointed a ton of people.”

After the election, Obama made it clear that he wanted Lieberman to stay on his side. That meant Lieberman maintained his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee while caucusing with Democrats.

He still had a bridge or two left to burn: On health care reform — a signature issue for Jewish Democrats — Lieberman equivocated until the last minute, ultimately casting his vote in favor.

His relationship with Obama remained cordial but tense. Lieberman took the lead in criticizing Obama’s approach to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking as overly confrontational when Obama met last May with Jewish lawmakers.

Lieberman maintained his fierce independence until the end. His career cap was a nod to his more liberal sensibilities, when in the final weeks of 2010 he earned kudos from liberals for enabling repeal in the Senate of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule that had made it impossible for gays to serve openly in the military. Gay activists did not fail to notice that Lieberman stuck out the vote, even though it was on Shabbat.

Yet that also was a bridge burner of sorts. When Lieberman a few nights later attended a Republican Jewish Coalition party celebrating the GOP’s win of the U.S. House of Representatives, at least one GOP donor to Lieberman’s 2006 campaign buttonholed him and said he would never again give him money because of his success in leading the “don’t ask” repeal.

Lieberman smiled, said he had to do what he had to do and left the party.

“Senator Lieberman is a true mensch and a great American,” the RJC said in a statement at the time. “He showed that it’s possible to have a successful political career while doing what you feel is right — even when what’s right is not what’s in your political best interests.”

Last year he became a founding co-chair of No Labels, an independent group laying the groundwork to put a centrist “unity ticket” on the 2024 presidential ballot. After he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “No Labels Won’t Help Trump,” few Democrats were persuaded.

Joseph Isadore Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Henry, who ran a liquor store, and Marcia (née Manger). His paternal grandparents emigrated from Poland and his maternal grandparents were from Austria-Hungary. He became the first member of his family to graduate from college when he received a B.A. in both political science and economics from Yale University in 1964. He earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1967.

Lieberman served for 10 years in the Connecticut Senate beginning in 1970. From 1983 to 1989, he served as Connecticut Attorney General, emphasizing consumer protection and environmental enforcement.

Lieberman was first elected to the United States Senate in 1988, in a major upset over incumbent liberal Republican Lowell Weicker.

Following his retirement from the Senate, Lieberman returned to practicing law, and joined the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank as co-chairman of their American Internationalism Project. He also held the Lieberman Chair of Public Policy and Public Service at Yeshiva University, where he taught an undergraduate course in political science.

In August 2015, Lieberman became chairman of United Against Nuclear Iran, a group fiercely opposed to efforts by the Obama administration to broker a deal with Iran over its nascent nuclear program.

“While Iran’s leaders may be prepared to make some tactical concessions on their nuclear activities, they would do so hoping that this would buy them the time and space needed to rebuild strength at home — freed from crippling sanctions — while consolidating and expanding the gains they are positioned to make in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan,” he wrote in an oped in 2013.

Lieberman was married twice. He and his first wife, Betty Haas, were married in 1965 and had two children, Matt and Rebecca; the couple divorced in 1981. In 1983 he married Hadassah Freilich Tucker, who was previously married to Rabbi Gordon Tucker, the former senior rabbi of Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York. He is survived by his wife and their daughter, Hana Lowenstein; Matt Lieberman and Rebecca Lieberman and a stepson, Rabbi Ethan Tucker.

Antisemitism Steals Our Freedom: How Can We Respond?

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Jason Shvili

Jason Shvili

Many American Jews identify as Americans first and Jews second. This means, for example, that they vote for politicians who support their views on many issues, not just issues related to Jews or Israel.

Yet, since Oct. 7, Jews are increasingly being forced to address the importance of their Jewishness — because increasingly they are being targeted precisely for being Jewish.

Jewish college students are prevented from joining certain clubs or serving on certain boards. In fact, the proportion of Jewish students admitted to elite American universities is dropping precipitously. Attacks on Jewish institutions have skyrocketed, as have verbal and physical assaults on Jews.

But this antisemitic cancer is rapidly metastasizing throughout American society. Identifying yourself as Jewish anywhere in the United States dramatically increases your chances of attracting scorn, curses or physical attack. Israel-haters generate much of this hate, but even Jews who shun Israel are not safe. In short, as it was in 1930s Germany, it’s time today for all Jews to acknowledge the mighty tide turning against us.

History reminds us that those who deny the danger — or their Judaism — will likely ignore the problem. But like millions in the Third Reich’s darkest days, few deniers will escape the storm.

Rather, it is for Jews who proudly embrace their Jewishness, especially those who support Israel, for whom the question looms: How can we respond to the alarming infringements on our rights to religious and other civil freedoms, as well as our physical safety?

Antisemitism is inescapable for American Jews. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the number of antisemitic incidents recorded between Oct. 7 — the day of the Hamas massacre in Israel — and Jan. 7 surged 361% compared to the same period one year prior. Between October and January 2024, 3,291 incidents were recorded throughout the United States — 56 physical assaults, 554 incidents of vandalism, 1,347 incidents of verbal or written harassment and 1,307 rallies that included antisemitic rhetoric, expressions of support for terrorism against Israel and/or anti-Zionism.

Antisemitism in the U.S. threatens Jews in meaningful, sometimes painful ways — from loss of civil liberties and ability to pursue happiness to abject physical danger. Critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, for example, have made antisemitism not just acceptable but fashionable, especially on college campuses but also in elementary classrooms. CRT sees Jews as white oppressors and Israel as a colonial state. Students or parents who disagree are routinely — sometimes even violently — silenced by left-wing extremists, who are often joined by Islamists in so-called red-green coalitions.

Recently, Young Republicans in Houston canceled an event where an Israeli consul general was to speak, due to threats made by pro-Palestinian activists. Late last month, an event at UC Berkeley, at which an Israeli attorney was scheduled to speak, was shut down by pro-Palestinian protesters, who broke into the event building, forcing an evacuation.

Even speaking out against antisemitism and/or anti-Zionism is risky. Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, for example, spoke out against antisemitism and anti-Zionism on his campus, only to be put under investigation himself.

Simply identifying oneself as Jewish can be perilous. According to the American Jewish Committee, 46% of American Jews have “changed their behavior” for fear of antisemitism.

This includes 25% who have avoided wearing, carrying or displaying things identifying them as Jewish. Not being able to safely express one’s Jewishness in public presents an affront not just to freedom of religion, but also security of person. Indeed, more than six in 10 Jewish Americans feel “less secure than a year ago” — a more than 20% increase from the previous year.

When should committed Jews respond to this growing threat? Every Jew has a choice: Sit idly by and do nothing … or fight back. Many Jews in 1930s Germany, for example, ignored the signs, disbelieved them or underestimated their danger. Initially, they did nothing; eventually, it became impossible to resist.

As the Third Reich gained steam, many Jews denied the significance of their Jewishness as a social or personal issue. Their “lack of Jewishness,” they thought, protected them. But the Nazis cared nothing for such distinctions, just as the Hamas barbarians who raped and beheaded kibbutz peaceniks on Oct. 7 didn’t. All Jews were targeted. It’s equally safe to say now that no Jew in America is immune from antisemitism.

Millions of proud American Jews do, however, take seriously the commitment to “Never Again.” We will oppose our persecution with urgency and undaunted determination. As Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

How can “regular” Jews respond to this ominous sea change in American culture? First, at a minimum, speak up: Write letters to the editor, our elected representatives, corporations, media and other bodies — protesting and holding them accountable for allowing any form of antisemitism, from DEI to CRT, from negligence on college campuses to hateful bias against Israel.

Second, support — financially and vocally — individuals and organizations fighting antisemitism and advocating for Israel.

Third, vote for politicians who support Israel and fight antisemitism, regardless of party affiliation. In the past, it may have made sense to put Judaism and Israel further down our list of priorities. But now the freedom we cherish as Jews is being stolen from us precisely because we are Jews. That changes all the political rules.

One thing is clear: If we fail to address skyrocketing antisemitism, the problem will worsen. Remember: First, they come for the Jews. When the Nazis took control of Germany, they didn’t just target Jews. They also targeted “deviants” — those who cherished and promoted civil liberties. Antisemitism not only threatens Jews — it threatens all who cherish freedom and the American way of life.

We have an obligation, not just as Jews, but as Americans, to work to stem the rising tide of antisemitism. The United States remains a free and democratic society only if we stand up, raise our voices and our fists. Now is the time.

Jason Shvili is a contributing editor at Facts and Logic About the Middle East.

Out of All the Israeli Hostages in Gaza, the One I Think about Most Is Keith Siegel

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Jane Gabin

Jane Gabin

When I first met Keith Siegel, he was the last of four siblings still at home. He was in high school, and I remember him pedaling off early in the morning.

I was in a different world, graduate school, and was renting a room from his parents as I needed a quieter place for writing my dissertation than the graduate dorm. Keith was reserved like his father Earl, a professor of maternal and child health. His mother, Gladys, was lively; she had been a nurse, and now was busy with creating batik garments and attending board activities at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, North Carolina. I became like a member of the family.

Keith and I shared a bathroom. Gladys made my veil when I married more than four decades ago. It’s been several years since Earl passed away. Today Gladys lives in an assisted-living facility where the staff have done an excellent job of protecting her from knowing that her youngest son is a hostage somewhere in Gaza.

Two Siegel children, Lee and Keith, made aliyah to Israel many years ago. I knew where Kibbutz Gezer, where Lee and Sheli Siegel lived, was, but I was not aware of the location of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Keith and his wife Aviva lived — or how close it is to the
Gaza border.

Now I do.

On Oct. 7, an estimated 100 members of the Kfar Aza community were killed. Keith and his wife Aviva were driven into Gaza in their own car, taken captive along with some of their neighbors. Aviva was released in November, along with 100 women, children and non-Israelis as part of a 10-day truce. She said Keith’s ribs had been broken during their capture but that she was with him until the day she was told she was being sent home.

“I gave him a hug and I told him to be strong for me and that I’ll be strong for him,” she said.

I spent nearly all of last month in Israel, wanting to show solidarity as so many others have done, including my rabbi. I traveled alone, hoping to see my cousins — all native Israelis — some friends, and others who have made aliyah recently. I went on this trip ostensibly for them, to let them know Americans are with them. And I hoped, in my own small way, to help the Israeli economy. But I also went for myself. I wept as I watched the news and bristled as I heard report after report about antisemitism. I wanted to demonstrate strength, too.

Right at Ben-Gurion Airport, in the row of hostage posters arrayed alongside the iconic ramp that arrivals must traverse, one of the first faces to greet me was Keith’s.

I had recognized Keith in the portraits his friends and family painted as they sought to raise attention to his plight in the weeks after Oct. 7.

“He’s a kind, soft-spoken, reflective kind of person, very considerate, thinking of others. That’s his temperament, his way of being in the world,” his brother David said on “Good Morning America” in November.

Keith was about as gentle-spirited, decent as a guy you ever met,” Alon Tal, the former member of the Israeli Knesset who also grew up in Durham, told our local news channel. “A very kind person.”

Now I saw his face wherever I went. In Tel Aviv, Ra’anana, Netanya and Jerusalem — there was Keith, standing out among the dozens of other faces that Israelis see everywhere they go: on trains and buses, in restaurants, on the street, in shopping malls, in the window of an historic house, on banners strung between posts on Rothschild Boulevard.

In the United States, the hostage posters have been so often torn down, by people who probably couldn’t find Gaza or Israel on a map. In Israel, these signs are sacred.

I had promised friends at home that I would post something each day, and I did. Pictures of Keith and the other hostages dominated.

In Tel Aviv, I made a pilgrimage to Hostage Square, the area in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where I joined a huge outpouring. Lee and Sheli were there, too, but there was no way for me to connect with them in the overwhelming crowds. Thousands listened as a boy and his sister pleaded for the release of their grandfather. Keith, whom I kept thinking of as a teen, is a grandfather, too, five times over.

Aviva Siegel has been working unceasingly to gain her husband’s release, traveling to Geneva, testifying in the Knesset and speaking at rallies. Lee and Sheli, too, have been doing everything they can. They told me, when I saw them at their home at Kibbutz Gezer, that they have felt extremely supported by the U.S. Department of State — but not by their own government in Israel. They told me, too, that the spot on Keith’s forehead in the picture was henna, from a party he attended not long before the world changed.

Kibbutzim are cooperative communities, and Gezer seemed an idyllic place to raise children, as Lee and Sheli did. There is a dining hall, children’s centers (with an outdoor area for their rabbits), play areas, communal picnic sites, a ballfield (Kibbutz Gezer has baseball), a library, and many other delights. Lemons and other fruit grow abundantly right next to residents’ homes; I took a lemon, picked right from the Siegels’ tree, back to my home in North Carolina.

Others have taken back weightier relics of their visits: On the day I was at Gezer, Lee and Sheli shared Keith’s story with a visiting synagogue group from England, who promised to tell it in the United Kingdom.

This month, Keith’s sister Lucy and niece Hanna attended President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address as the guests of our senators in North Carolina. They wore yellow scarves like the other American family members of the Israeli hostages who also sat in the hallowed government chambers. Their presence eked out hope at a time when the prospects feel dim for another deal that could result in hostages like Keith going free, and as another one of the remaining American hostages was revealed to be dead.

Then I remember leaving Israel a few weeks ago. There was Keith again at the airport. He was no closer to being released than when I arrived.

Jane Gabin is an educator, counselor and writer living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

War Is Hell. Everywhere

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Ben Cohen

Ben Cohen

“War,” the Union Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman is famously said to have told a group of army cadets some years after the American Civil War, “is hell.” More than a century and a half later, there is nothing to suggest that Sherman’s assessment would be any different were he to survey the state of war in our own time.

Yet as much as this quote attributed to Sherman sounds like a pacifist rallying cry, it isn’t.

Sherman knew only too well that some wars can be just, even if their impacts are painful to observe. “You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out,” Sherman stated in a letter to Confederate commander Gen. John Bell Hood. “But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.” Preventing that outcome was, in Sherman’s view, the Union’s overriding goal in its quest to defeat the slave states in a just war that nonetheless took some 600,000 lives.

For as much as war was hell, still is and always will be, so are some wars just and some manifestly unjust. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is a perfect example of the former. It is just because Israel would not have launched its military operations had the murderers and rapists of Hamas not butchered more than 1,200 Israelis and foreigners during its Oct. 7 pogrom. It is just because Israel is fighting an enemy that has never hidden its goal of destroying the world’s only independent Jewish state. It is just because without an Israeli response of the kind that we have seen over the last few months, Hamas and its Iranian overlords would have no qualms about launching another Oct. 7, and then another, ad infinitum, until its goal was achieved.

That doesn’t mean that Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip aren’t suffering. They are — and that is a truth we can acknowledge even if we are rightly suspect about the casualty numbers churned out by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. Wishing for a cease-fire so that this bloodshed can at least be paused is a humane response to the scenes we are witnessing. But those who are calling on Israel to announce a cease-fire now — among them the same discordant voices who falsely accuse Israel of prosecuting a “genocide” in Gaza — don’t want a cease-fire in the sense that term is conventionally understood. They want Israel to unconditionally, unilaterally surrender as the first step towards its eventual elimination. Put another way, the keffiyeh-clad demonstrators clogging our streets are outraged by the sight of dead Palestinian children but have no reservations about wishing a similar fate on children in Israel.

What is especially depressing about this situation is that while this tired debate drags on — incorporating more and more antisemitic tropes as tempers fray — other, more terrible wars and conflicts around the globe are simply being ignored. We read and hear a great deal less about Ukraine these days, and when we do, it is rarely about the suffering inflicted by the invading Russians on Ukrainian civilians, including rape and the kidnapping of children, and almost always about how that war has impacted upon America’s domestic political divisions as we head toward a presidential election in November.

The same goes for Sudan, where the rebel Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group continues to inflict unimaginable horrors in its racist campaign of “Arabization” targeting the Masalit people in the west of the country — the same location as the Darfur genocide of 2005, which at the time mobilized American Jews in a nearly unprecedented campaign of political solidarity and humanitarian assistance in a conflict halfway around the world.

Ditto for Haiti, where criminal gangs now roam and rule the streets, leading one top U.N. official to compare the scenes in Port-au-Prince with the apocalyptic movie “Mad Max,” though that utterance, unlike the statements of U.N. officials on Gaza’s plight, failed to spark a single demonstration or act of protest. And that’s not mentioning the wars in West Africa’s Sahel region, where military juntas face off against Islamist terrorists; or in Nigeria, where Christians are being mercilessly targeted by Islamist bandits, among them the 87 people, mainly women and children, abducted in Kaduna State last week; or in Burma/Myanmar, where the junta that seized power from a democratically elected government in a coup three years ago is stepping up its repression.

The above list is far from complete, and that, perhaps, is the point. All wars are hell, but only one — the just one currently being waged by Israel — is explicitly identified as such through a constant stream of global media coverage; ill-informed and increasingly violent pro-Hamas demonstrations; hand-wringing by elected officials worried about losing votes; and U.N. bureaucrats following the same anti-Zionist script that has guided that institution since at least the 1970s.

That is why I have a few questions for those Jews who feel increasingly pressured to demand a cease-fire in Gaza in the name of human decency.

It is completely understandable, even laudable, to fervently desire an end to the suffering of Palestinians there. But have you given serious thought to how all this attention lavished on the Palestinians is placing those suffering elsewhere in the shade? Are you concerned that the slogan “Palestinian Lives Matter” is being interpreted as “Only Palestinian Lives Matter,” and that the lives of Ukrainians, Haitians and Black African communities in Sudan somehow matter less? Can you summon the courage to challenge your detractors on their shameful silence when it comes to these other conflicts? When you read a commentator like Pankaj Mishra in the latest London Review of Books claiming, “Many of us who have seen some of the images and videos coming out of Gaza … have been quietly going mad over the last few months,” are you not moved to ask why these other conflicts have failed to generate a similar madness? Indeed, do you not feel compelled to educate others about these conflicts, to “heal the world” in accordance with the noblest traditions of Judaism?

Or is the goal now simply to “heal” Palestine at the expense of Israel, and let the rest of the world sort itself out? I fear, and I am not alone in this, that the answer to this last question is “yes.” I wait to be proved wrong.

Ben Cohen writes a weekly column for JNS on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics.

Conversations About Israel Aren’t Easy

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Marcia Bronstein

Marcia Bronstein

I was walking to work the other day when an acquaintance caught up with me and said, “Boy, your president is really making a mess of the Middle East.”

Caught off guard, I said, “Do you mean Biden? And he said, “No, I mean Netanyahu.”

I told him I hoped he was not assuming that all American Jews are loyal to Israel and responsible for its policy. After all, that would be trading in the antisemitic trope about dual loyalty, which goes back centuries and has underpinned Jew hatred around the world.
“Oh no,” he replied, looking a little abashed. “I was just so concerned about all the death and destruction.”

I sensed there might have been an opportunity to explore some common ground. But then I asked him who was responsible for the tragedy that continues to unfold in Gaza.

He told me it was because of the “occupation.” Never mind that Israel had pulled out of Gaza in 2006. But then he pivoted to a talking point used by so many anti-Zionists to justify Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 men, women, children and babies on Oct. 7: It was part of a resistance, he said.

I persisted and asked whether he knew about the expulsion of Jews from Arab nations after World War II — he did not. Nor did he know about the numerous occasions Palestinians rejected the opportunity to have their own homeland.

It soon became apparent he had no interest in learning about history. He was more comfortable spewing uninformed rhetoric.

Blissful ignorance is what has led to antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents on campuses, in the workplace and on the streets. Even Jews who live thousands of miles from Israel can feel like they are under siege.

Since Oct. 7, Jews have been forced to endure chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a rallying cry for terrorists like Hamas, which calls for the erasure of Israel from the world map.

At the same time, radical leftist women’s groups effectively countenanced the rape of Israeli women and girls because they were on the side of the perceived enemy. Nothing is more ugly and inhumane than those who wish to explain 10/7 as legitimate resistance — the rape, the torture, mutilation and bodies burned all part of weaponized sexual violence. All part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence can never be legitimate resistance. It is a war crime.

I asked my acquaintance why he believed so many people are critical of how they view Israel’s treatment of Palestinians yet overlook how Palestinians are mistreated by other Arab states. And what about the oppression of other ethnic groups like the Rohingya and Uyghurs. Crickets.

That Israel is being held to a different standard than other nations is nothing new. The very idea of a Jewish state is still too much for some nations and bad actors to bear.

I have been more vocal since 10/7. It seems abundantly obvious that we must speak out. And one either stands with Israel and the thousands who have been murdered, wounded, raped and kidnapped by Hamas or one stands on the side of the terrorists. One either supports the right of a sovereign nation to live in peace or one stands with murderers who carried out a modern-day pogrom.

And targeting Jews cannot be tolerated — it’s what drove my grandparents out of Europe to seek refuge in America and it’s why my family and so many Jews support the state of Israel as a homeland for Jews. Never again will we be targeted as stateless and vulnerable!
Hamas’ charter calls not only for the destruction of Israel but the annihilation of all the world’s Jews. Yet we are told Israel has no right to defend itself, and that Israel must commit to a unilateral cease-fire even though it was Hamas that broke an existing cease-fire on Oct. 7.

I sensed all that was lost on my acquaintance. As we said goodbye, he thanked me for talking. Indeed, the path to understanding may be reached one conversation at a time.
That does not mean the conversations will be easy — when it comes to Israel, they rarely are. But we need to have them. Only then can ignorance yield to understanding.
The blowback following Oct. 7 was startling, even scary at times. However, as Jews, we have stopped running. And we will not hide.

We will not let the wanton hate, the blind prejudice and the eagerness to play the blame game diminish our role in American society. We will continue to live freely and proudly as Jews.

Marcia Bronstein is the director of the American Jewish Committee Philadelphia/SNJ.

Presidential Candidates Trolling for Dollars

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At a time when all eyes in the political world and beyond are focused on the precarious financial circumstances of former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his ability to navigate the consequences of the massive monetary judgments against him in the New York courts and ever-growing legal fees and expenses with no end in sight, the significant differential between the reported financial war chest of President Joe Biden’s campaign and that of Trump is worth noting.

According to reports filed by the two campaigns on March 20, Biden’s re-election campaign had $71 million on hand at the end of February, which was more than double the $33.5 million in Trump’s campaign account. As reflected in those numbers, Trump added $3 million to his campaign account in February, while Biden added five times that amount, or $15 million.

Neither the amounts raised monthly nor the reported balances in campaign accounts reflect money raised by both candidates through joint fundraising committees, which will not file financial disclosure reports until mid-April. Nor do those numbers include funds contributed to the candidates’ campaign efforts by independent, third-party funding sources. For example, the numbers don’t include the $120 million pledged to the Biden campaign from the League of Conservation Voters, a leading environmental advocacy organization not directly tied to Biden’s campaign. But the pledge is part of the expected $2 billion the Biden campaign hopes to raise and plans to spend on his re-election effort.

Big dollars, for sure. And Republicans are likely to raise and spend a similar amount to support Trump. But with Trump, there is an additional, disturbing dynamic, reflected in a new fundraising agreement between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. That agreement directs that a portion of donations to campaign events coordinated through the RNC are to be sent first to the campaign itself, then to a political account Trump uses to pay his legal bills, and only after those amounts are deducted will funds go to the RNC itself.

Thus, for example, in connection with megadonors to the Trump 47 Committee who are invited to a big event next month in Palm Beach, Florida, where donors are being asked to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars per person to attend, the first $6,600 will go to Trump’s campaign. The next $5,000 will go to Trump’s Save America PAC, which paid more than $50 million in legal and investigative fees for Trump in 2023. And only after those amounts are deducted will the remainder go to the RNC. Those same campaign and legal fee deductions will apply to smaller RNC event donors as well, with the tithe to Trump’s legal fees taking a bigger bite out of the donor’s contribution.

The Trump Save America PAC should more properly be called Trump’s Litigation Funding PAC, since that’s where most of its money is being directed. Quite simply, campaign donors, rather than Trump himself, are paying to fund Trump’s multiple legal battles.
Trump’s convoluted campaign fund distribution plan may be legal. And the donors who participate in the dance may be doing so to help their candidate. But like so much about the Trump campaign, it neither smells nor feels right.

The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

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The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History (Photo by Barry Halkin/Halkin Photography)

On March 20, nine Senate and House lawmakers announced the initiation of a process to move Philadelphia’s Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History from its independent status to a museum under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institutions, the world’s largest museum and research complex. That’s a big deal. If the effort succeeds, the Weitzman would be the only Smithsonian museum focused on Jewish Americans.

Under the bill — sponsored initially by five senators and four members of the House — the first steps in the transfer effort would involve the establishment of a congressional commission to study the proposed move. The commission would have representatives selected by the House and Senate leadership along with nonvoting members appointed by the museum’s board. After the commission process, another round of legislation would be needed to complete the transfer. However, it is anticipated that a comprehensive proposal by a bipartisan commission would receive broad support in Congress.

The time is right for the consideration of such a move, and we happily join in support of the effort. We applaud Sen. Bob Casey (D.-Pa.) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) who have taken the lead on the legislation. Both have cited the importance of paying tribute to the role that the Jewish community has played in the growth and expanded international influence of America over the past two centuries at a time of mounting concerns regarding the surge of antisemitism in our communities and beyond.

The Weitzman was established in 1976. It is the only museum in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to exploring and interpreting the American Jewish experience. It is a private, nonprofit entity, that is “affiliated” with the Smithsonian, but not a part of it. The legislation proposes to make the Weitzman the 22nd museum of the Smithsonian Institutions and to add a valuable resource to the institution’s extensive reach and research capabilities.

We understand that bringing the Weitzman to the Smithsonian will not solve the problem of rising antisemitism. Nor will a broader understanding of the Jewish community’s experience and success in America ease the animosity toward our community. But increased exposure of the Jewish experience in America as told by the Weitzman through the Smithsonian along with expanded coverage of the Weitzman’s programs, exhibits and activities will unquestionably enhance the public perception of the story of America’s Jews which it tells.

The Weitzman is much more than the tens of thousands of visitors who come to visit the museum each year. It is both a symbol of Jewish American pride and a source for the sharing of historical information about the development of Jewish life in America and the growth and success of America’s vibrant and diverse Jewish community.

Jewish history in America is a developing story. We look forward to continuing to learn and experience that story through the Weitzman Museum as part of the Smithsonian Institutions for many years to come.

Letters: Some Friend

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Closeup of letters on writing desk at home
IPGGutenbergUKLtd / iStock / Getty Images Plus

With friends like Chuck Schumer (“Schumer’s Speech,” March 21), we don’t need enemies.
Bowing to the anti-Israel far left “progressives” now dominating the Democratic Party, Schumer capitulated to keep his personal power.

Hamas has stated that its mission is to kill every Jew. The full embrace of this is reflected in the recorded phone call of one of the joyous Oct. 7 murderers:”Dad, I killed 10 Jews with my own hands!”

That thinking is why the brutality was so overwhelming — not simply killing but hideous torture before death.

The world is on fire with wars and threats of more wars, yet Schumer devoted 40 minutes to criticizing Israel. What a disgrace. He provided more fodder for our enemies and more dangers for the Jewish people.

Roberta E. Dzubow, Plymouth Meeting

You Should Know: Lex Pe’er Horwitz

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Lex Pe’er Horwitz

Ellen Braunstein

Lex Pe’er Horwitz, who identifies as transgender, played varsity men’s squash at Bowdoin College in Maine. It wasn’t his first squash team at the private liberal arts school in Maine.

Horwitz, who alternately uses binary and nonbinary gender pronouns, had switched from the women’s team to a place where he found greater affirmation and acceptance.

In his first job out of college, where he majored in gender sexuality and women’s studies, he became a special ed teacher and case manager. Horwitz said he experienced repeated incidents of antisemitism, transphobia and homophobia in the teaching job.

Those experiences deeply affected Horwitz and he would make it his mission to help create more supportive and affirming places for LGBTQ+ individuals. “My experiences in athletics and social services led me to this role,” said Horwitz, 27.

He is now a consultant, public speaker, researcher, workshop facilitator, curriculum creator for educational institutions, nonprofits, medical centers and businesses in Philadelphia and beyond. He also coaches squash in local schools.

Horwitz, who lives in South Philadelphia, specifically identifies as a “queer, non-binary transgender Jewish human.”

Of his women’s squash experience, Horwitz said, “Language was not creating a space where I was reflected or being heard. It’s difficult for me to use a women’s locker room when walking into that space was not affirming and felt very invalidating to my identities.”
Horwitz pairs a lived experience with an academic background to engage with the community to promote LGBTQ+ rights and awareness and best support the queer community.

“That experience guided a lot of the work that I do today. It was at school that I was finally able to exist and live and be my authentic self,” said Horwitz, who was the first out athlete in Bowdoin and the first out college squash player. “That took having access to language that showed identity as expansive and more than binary, where it was safe to be nonbinary, trans and queer.”

After experiencing discrimination “where I no longer felt mentally, emotionally or physically safe in those spaces, I chose to leave that job and find a way to advocate and educate for the queer and trans community, to be able to work to combat what I had experienced in those settings.”

Among his clients are the School District of Philadelphia, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the American College of Physicians and Temple Health and the Human Rights Campaign.

The topics he focuses on center are gender and sexuality, intersectionality and community support.

Another one of his workshops concerns self-advocacy and a third is about the athlete experience called Trans and Athletics Inclusion.

“We break down the debate on inclusion and trans athletes and look at the misinformation that is fueling fear and the hatred of trans athletes,” he said.

“What we’re seeing is not only transphobia but also sexism, misogyny, racism and ableism,” he said.

Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior.

Horwitz said his Judaism intersects with the LGBTQ+ work. “I grew up Jewish, and I’m spiritually connected to my Jewish identity.”

In his youth, he attended services every weekend and had a b’nai mitzvah with his sister at Beth Tikvah-B’nai Jeshurun in Glenside.

“My Jewish identity is at the center and core of who I am and who I know myself to be.”
Horwitz said his Jewish identity is “centered on tikkun olam and tzedakah, the values and those teachings that I grew up learning at home and at my synagogue.

“That’s not only my responsibility, but it’s a gift to be able to live life in that way and to support others and our world,” he said.

Horwitz participated last year as a fellow in Tribe 12, an organization for entrepreneurial Philadelphia Jews in their 20s and 30s. He occasionally attends synagogue at Kol Tzedek, a Reconstructionist congregation in West Philadelphia.

The political climate and environment are threatening to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly nonbinary transgender people.

Horwitz said that if one follows politics, it’s obvious that legislation is being passed “that primarily targets nonbinary and transgender folks.

“It’s much easier for us to all come together and to honor and cherish our differences and the diversity that is human existence and be able to uplift one another in that capacity versus create these divides,” Horwitz said.

He said there’s a systematic attack on the LGBTQ+ community.

“We are still fighting for overall equality and equity,” he said. “Every single realm that exists whether it’s schools, curriculum, housing, health care, education, access, job stability, every single area has much more work to be done to create spaces where members of the LGBTQ+ community are not only surviving but thriving.”

Horwitz recommends that everyone look at what is happening in their school, city, district and state.

“What are the ways in which you can advocate for inclusive policy, that you can create affinity or other types of group spaces for folks to be able to exist in community together?

Use your power and your potentially different privileges to be able to advocate and support nonbinary, trans and queer folks,” he said.

“My biggest gift is to have folks feel seen and represented and heard and validated in hearing my story to know that they, too, can have this amazing and meaningful life and path ahead of them.”

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance writer.