Tag Archives: column

Some critics might label two questions on a statewide test as intellectual dishonesty in our fourth largest state that is home to America's most sizeable Jewish population. Except that there was nothing intellectual about these questions.

As the competing votes tracked upward on the Congressional scoreboard last week, my memory summoned up a moment more than two decades ago when I spotted an anti-Israel sketch posted on a bulletin board at work. It featured a message that compared Israel to the civil rights struggles in the South.

When Eric Goldstein speaks, Benjamin Netanyahu must listen. Even more so than when others speak, such as U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, Israeli business executive Eynat Guez, 100,000-plus protesters in Tel Aviv and Israeli expats in New York and Los Angeles.

Our very first “Jew-ish” congressman established himself as a serial liar, a possible criminal suspect and a punchline. Until Tuesday. Now it is far worse: George Santos is scary, and maybe dangerous.

It was the devil…er, Itamar Ben-Gvir…who made me do it.

Nearly four years ago, Liz Cheney and 22 other Republicans voted against a motherhood, apple pie-style resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives denouncing antisemitism, Islamophobia, sexism, racism, homophobia and all other forms of bias.

Most American Jews and possibly almost half the Israeli electorate would concur with my neighboring diners that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich could be disasters waiting to happen. I do not sympathize with those diners or Palestinians as a society, though I certainly fear for peaceful, rational Arabs caught in the middle.

Top federal officials and Jewish leaders spoke to each other, and together they spoke to the public at large, the public that reads newspapers, watches television news programs and listens to those who run our government. But they did not speak to the people that count.

The Three Stooges of Mar-a-Lago launched a hate-fest that is hardly the first that is directed at Jews. Nor are Republicans alone in enabling antisemitism in America. Democrats have been restrained in responding to antisemites in their own ranks and advocacy groups have failed to deter antisemites and other bigots.

Jewish Texans, estimated to number 176,000, should probably worry about the deep in the heartlessness of the Texas abortion law - with the reporting of Amanda Eid’s near-death experience.

No question that American Jews should be anxious about the future of an Israel in Bibi’s hands. There will likely be two prime forces at work that can intensify the conflict with the Palestinians.

This week, Bruce Ticker recaps some of the Republican antisemitic incidents taking place around the country as we approach the 2022 midterm elections.

Trump's recent pronouncements have reopened the question of dual loyalty – that Jews here must ignore the everyday needs of their fellow Americans and, for that matter, themselves, while exerting all their energy and go What else could these words mean? “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – before it is too late!”

Perhaps these students had not advanced far enough in law school to recognize that the murder of women and gays is, well, murder.

It is astounding how Israel’s foes have assembled an immense if bulky movement in America and Canada to advocate for the Palestinian cause.

Nearly four years after 11 congregants were slain at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Dr. Mehmet Oz is demonizing his Pennsylvania Senate rival from nearby Braddock for seeking the release of more convicts from prison. In the process, Oz unwittingly triggers thoughts of an advanced approach to confronting gun violence.

A Detroit congresswoman, an Australian student editor and a sex-abuse survivor from Vermont escape from a sanatorium and regale us with stories cementing their standing as antisemites.

Natalie Abulhawa had multiple advantages going for her after she filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against a Main Line school: her own disingenuous voice, the aid and comfort of excuse-laden Arab-American spokespersons; and kid-glove treatment in a Philadelphia Inquirer story filed by an Arab-simpatico reporter.

We must wonder what Lina Abu Akleh refers to when she charges: “We don’t expect war criminals to investigate their own crimes.”

It should surprise us that a Jewish student at Altadena Middle School located in the southern tip of Phoenix experienced trauma for a longer period than she should have. Of course, she should never have experienced any of it, but school officials allegedly allowed the situation to persist.

Congregants at Temple Beth David in Palm Beach Gardens sacrificed their freedom of religion last Friday because of a Florida neighbor’s bid to escape justice – one of two antisemitic episodes fueled by Republicans last week.

Ilhan Omar will almost certainly return to Congress in January, but she barely broke 50 percent in Tuesday’s Democratic primary that allows her to move on to general election on Nov. 8. Her rival, Don Samuels, mused in The New York Times, after conceding, “If this was the general election, no doubt that we would have won this race.”

With apologies to Kal Mann and David Appell, late co-writers of the popular 1961 “Bristol Stomp” song….

As Andrea Mitchell interviewed her on MSNBC, Lina Abu Akleh took advantage of her forum to accuse Israeli higher-ups of ordering a soldier to kill her aunt, journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Mitchell asked Lina Abu Akleh during Andrea Mitchell Reports if the shooting was “intentional,” and the niece responded, “It …

Alito must have been absent the day his law professor reviewed the Preamble, which the dictionary defines as “the introductory part of a constitution or statute that usually states the reasons for and intent of the law.”