It’s morning in America. I waited a couple of days to write that, just in case it was all a dream. Turns out it wasn’t. Turns out that that total stranger who looked over at me as we exited our cars in the market parking lot yesterday, who smiled and asked, “Aren’t you feeling great today?” wasn’t just commenting on the spectacular fall weather.1
To see a collage of front pages proving my point - this collection is a real keeper - scroll down or click on the footnote.2 It really happened.
My faith in humanity has been redeemed. I feel like I have my country back, that I can fly from JFK to LAX without having to hold my nose and not look down for five hours. I can’t wait for my next visit to True Blue North Carolina - and to Texas, and Ohio, and - yes Dorothy, we call all go home again to Kansas. Kansas isn’t “Kansas” anymore. America has been made whole.
My admiration for American and Israeli voters has been restored. My awe is unbounded especially for the courage of minorities - Israeli Arabs, southern Blacks, Texan Hispanics and others - who defied age-old prejudices, voter suppression, judicial setbacks and attempts by the rich and powerful to deny the legitimacy of their victories;3 doggedly refusing to accept the systematic crushing of their rights, standing up to ICE, calling out Callais and resisting the subversion of the US Justice Department and Israel’s Shin Bet by the most corrupt Israeli and American politicians of all time. The array of obstacles was formidable, but no match for the organizational people power of ordinary yet extraordinary individuals, who to this moment in Mississippi are simultaneously curing their votes and curing the country.
Make no mistake about it, the Iran war and high prices were significant, but at its heart, as one person put it, this was “a rights based surge4,” and when a new John Lewis bill is signed someday soon, we can say that it began with the oppressed voters of Mississippi, Texas, Georgia and South Carolina - and their compatriots coast to coast.
I saw it on Election Day, where I was honored to serve as a Poll Chaplain and Peacekeeper, as part of a national program to counter voter intimidation,5 at a polling station in a public library in Philly. Below is a photo of me with a fellow chaplain at the library.
There was no tension there at all, but my stint was hardly boring. I got to meet some wonderful people. An eight-year-old boy came in to return a book and was fascinated by the voting booths (one wasn’t working, but no matter - the lines weren’t long). He got a quick civics lesson and was amazed. “I can’t wait to turn 18!” he said. One man sat next to me and talked about his love for Jews - especially Governor Josh Shapiro - and all my concerns about wearing a yarmulke were wiped away. There was a little tension with one voter. He came in wearing a Sixers jacket and I let him know I’m a Celtics fan. But we both came together in our admiration for Jaylen Brown.
As I drove from Connecticut last Monday, I imagined John and Samuel Adams traveling on a similar route when they headed from New England to Philly 2 1/2 centuries ago 6 (though in those days, they weren’t counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike).
Election Day was our true America 250 celebration.
Still, in both America and Israel, democracy remains at the cliff’s edge, especially in Israel, where despite two thirds of the incoming Knesset pledging to evict Netanyahu, led by Gadi Eisenkot, a rock of integrity, the chances of forming a stable opposition government are shaky. But they are determined to succeed, and while Netanyahu will press his election denial all the way to a potential January 6 conflagration, his abandonment by Trump and the decimated GOP will compound his isolation.
That abandonment, exemplified in DC by JD Vance putting Israel near the top of his list of reasons for the GOP’s “extinction level event,” has its benefits, but also grave dangers for American Jews. You think antisemitism is bad now, on the left and the right? Wait until it is featured in the nightly greatest hits on Truth Social. It’s only a matter of time before Trump goes full Fuhrer on us.7 It’s one thing to be resented, suspected and excoriated - it’s quite another to be scapegoated following an unprecedented humiliation. Just look at how German Jews became the backstabbing scapegoats-of-choice following World War One. Someone aside from Pete Hegseth is going to have to take the fall for this one, and for a party that revels in antisemitic, supremacist tropes, Israel is the lowest of low hanging fruits, especially after Netanyahu’s messianic military excesses.
Today we are JD Vance’s scapegoat, tomorrow, the world’s.
And scapegoating Jews is at the core of the very definition of antisemitism:
The third example in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism states, "Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews."
Scapegoating is the message of Vance’s statements on the right and on the left, the despicable Cenk Uygur ad pinning high prices on US support for Israel, whose content was belatedly disavowed by Abdul El-Sayed. That scapegoating will only accelerate as the right wing haters come out of their shock after the election. They can’t say it was rigged. The margin was too big to rig. So that just leaves Jews as they try to explain this collapse. And Trump will lead the way. Watch your back, Israel. He’s a wounded animal who will never take responsibility for this - or any - defeat, especially since 70 percent of Jews still voted for Democrats - nearly identical to the prior election - despite the full-court press stoking their tensions and fears.
For more on Jews and Scapegoating, see my prior Substack posting, “Antifa” is just another word for “Let’s just blame the Jews”8
Meanwhile, Israel has lots of work to do to restore its standing among Democrats, Republicans and American Jews. Eisenkot is off to a good start, but he would be wise to send over Yair Lapid or Naftali Bennett as soon as he can to begin showing Americans the true face of the post-Bibi era. They also will need to show progress on the West Bank. If they can do that, the new Congress, which has overwhelmingly pro post-Bibi-Israel DNA, will be all ears.
Israeli Arab parties in the Government?
Isn’t it fitting that the current argument in Israel over the empowerment of the Arab minority centers on two numbers that are also the most significant years in the nation’s history: ‘48 and ‘67. 48 is the number of mandates the Israel legacy media counted for the opposition - excluding the Arab vote, a discriminatory practice that has been their manner since 1948, when Arab citizens were considered a potential fifth column, with some justification. Israeli Arabs have proven that those fears are no longer valid. They are checking all the loyalty boxes that Eisenkot is placing before them. If Bibi is concerned that Arabs in the government will pose a security risk, he could start by evicting Qatari agents from among his closest advisors.
Here’s the update Eisenkot sent out to the Israeli people on X at the beginning of the week:
Note that his stipulations have nothing to do with identity or ethnicity, and only with policy. That’s a huge step. The key leaders of the Arab parties reaffirmed their commitment to helping show Netanyahu the door - and not to reopen it. (BTW “Abu Yair" is what some mockingly call Netanyahu, whose Don Jr-esque son is named Yair.)
As it looks now, the Arab parties will play a key role in the new government, giving passive assent from the outside. It’s not ideal, but if Eisenkot can deliver to them on economic and security issues - especially with regard to crime - it will show that this democracy thing could work for them, as creaky as the machinery may be.
And so now, it appears that on Sunday, President Herzog will give Eisenkot a chance to form a government and regardless of progress on that front, on Wednesday they will peacefully take over the Knesset agenda and begin passing laws to protect Israeli democracy.
Which is just what Congress needs to do in January, on day one.
America and Israel dug this hole, and together, they can begin climbing out of it.
Dawn is breaking all over the world. But as George Carlin used to say in his bit as the Hippy Dippy weatherman, “Tonight’s forecast: Dark.”
But, as Al Sleet adds, “… with scattered light in the morning.”
And the weather around New England has been glorious this week…
Front page evidence. Yep, it really happened.
How Netanyahu tried to upend the elections
Rights-based surge, plus Cindy Hyde-Smith’s greatest, non-protein-related f**k up:
Faith United Poll Chaplain program:
From John Adams by David McCullough. Copyright © 2001 by David McCullough.
There had been a rousing send-off in Boston, on August 10, 1774, and in full view of British troops. Samuel Adams, never a fancy dresser, had appeared in a stunning new red coat, new wig, silver-buckled shoes, gold knee buckles, the best silk hose, a spotless new cocked hat on his massive head, and carrying a gold-headed cane, all gifts from the Sons of Liberty. It was thought that as leader of the delegation he should look the part. In addition, they had provided “a little purse” for expenses.
It had been a triumphal, leisurely journey of nearly three weeks, with welcoming parties riding out to greet them at town after town. They were feted and toasted, prayers were said, church bells rang. Silas Deane, a Connecticut delegate who joined the procession, assured John Adams that the Congress was to be the grandest, most important assembly ever held in America. At New Haven “every bell was clanging,” people were crowding at doors and windows “as if to see a coronation.”
In New York they were shown the sights — City Hall, the college, and at Bowling Green, at the foot of Broadway, the gilded equestrian statue of King George III, which had yet to be pulled from its pedestal by an angry mob. The grand houses and hospitality were such as Adams had never known, even if, as a self-respecting New Englander, he thought New Yorkers lacking in decorum. “They talk very loud, very fast, and altogether,” he observed. “If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again — and talk away.”
Truly he was seeing the large world, he assured Abigail in a letter from the tavern at Princeton, a day’s ride from Philadelphia. “Tomorrow we reach the theater of action. God Almighty grant us wisdom and virtue sufficient for the high trust that is devolved upon us.”
If you have a sense of humor, you’ll love this parody. If you don’t, move on.
It always comes back to the Jews. It’s the Orban playbook. According to the BBC, the Hungarian illiberal leader was advised to make Soros into a hate figure for political gain by a Jewish American political consultant. Those accusations were denied by the Hungarian government. But whoever proposed it, Orban went all-in. And Trump dutifully followed.
The demonization of George Soros is classic antisemitism. Trump promotes it openly. According to Vox, the constant attacks on Soros have turned him into a “stand-in for a certain kind of Jewish ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ that allows politicians to appeal to antisemitism without having to do so explicitly.”
Whenever you hear the phrase “Soros-backed,” think Protocols of the Elders of Zion.Think Shylock.
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