Nothing could be further from reality.

Israel was established as a reaction to European colonialism, imperialism and oppression. Palestinianism, as distinguished from Zionism, had its origins in Nazi German colonialism.

The leader of the Palestinian cause before, during and even after World War II was Muhammad Amit Al- Husaini, who spent the war years in Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s protection.

He preached, “In Heaven Allah, on earth Hitler.”

Hitler’s goal was to colonize Palestine for the third Reich, as he colonized areas in Europe, Africa, and the Mideast.

Hussaini agreed with that goal.

Together they planned death camps for the Jewish residents of Palestine, employing killing machines of the kind the Nazis built in Poland.

Only the military defeat of Nazi Germany thwarted this jointly planned genocide.

Hitler regarded Arabs as racially inferior, subject to colonization of the kind he imposed on Slavic and other “subordinate races.”

He did not treat Palestinians as equal partners, as he did fellow Aryans.

But both Hitler and Husaini shared a common belief that Jews were subhuman, subject only to annihilation.

Despite their second-class status under Nazi racist ideology as “untermenschen,” many Palestinians displayed in their homes the picture of their nazi-supporting leader, sometimes along with Hitler’s.

This continued even after Husaini was declared a Nazi war criminal and had to escape to Egypt in order to avoid being tried and executed.

The origin of Palestinianism is therefore colonialism.

While the Jews of Palestine were fighting against British colonialism, the Arab leadership in Palestine was supporting German colonialism over the area.

The Palestinians did not want an independent state of their own, as Hussaini testified at the Peale commission in the late 1930s.

All they wanted was there must not be an independent Jewish state.

They favored colonial control over the region.

They were the colonialists.

The Jews were the anti-colonialists.

The Palestinian leaders were the advocates of genocide.

The Jews were their intended victims.

You wouldn’t know this well documented history if you listened to the ignorant accusations of “colonialism” directed against Israel.

Nor would you know that Israel is virtually the only anti-colonialist nation in the region.

Most of the others were creations of post-World War I colonialism.

Their artificial boundaries were drawn by European cartographers, and their leaders were selected by their colonial masters.

Only Israel is a democracy established, from the ground up, by hard working pioneers (chalutsim) on land historically connected to the Jewish people.

The UN partition of the stateless area that Romans had named Palestine allocated to the Jewish nation only that area with a majority of Jewish residents.

The remainder was allocated to the Palestinians, who refused to create their own nation, rejected the partition and joined the other Arab states in a genocidal attack against the newly declared Jewish nation.

The Jews fought back in defense of their democratic state and their families and won a hard-fought war against overwhelming odds.

This is not colonialism; it is democratic national liberation.

It is anti-colonialism. It is anti-imperialism. It is anti-genocide.

But the current false accusations against the Mideast’s only democracy are based on inversions of history and morality.

• Anti-colonialists are accused of colonialism.

• The victims of genocide are accused of genocide.

• Self-defense is called aggression.

The accusers are in fact guilty of the crimes of which they accuse their victims.

The accused may not be perfect — no nation or group is — but they are more deserving of support than are the hypocritical accusers.

In this pseudo world of inversion, facts and history do not matter.

Identity trumps all.

The phony concept of “intersectionality” divided the universe into victims and victimizers based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and other factors generally beyond the control of individuals.

Status is permanent, without regard to individual culpability or changing circumstances.

This is the propaganda many young people are being fed in high schools and universities.

It is not surprising that so many of them uncritically accept such nonsense.

If the historical truths were to be taught instead of these ahistorical polemics, the complex realities would be better understood.

There are rights and wrongs on all sides of history.

In the case of Israel, the historic rights overwhelm the wrongs.

The Jews were willing to accept a two-state solution in 1938, 1948, 1967, 2001 and 2007.

The Palestinian leadership rejected these opportunities because they wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than they wanted there to be a Palestinian state.

Until that view is categorically rejected, there will be no peace and no two-state solution.

Israel will carry on as an embattled but self-reliant democracy, while Palestinians will hopelessly rely on the pressures of other nations in the true spirit of colonialism.

The boot of colonialism is on the other foot.

The Fifth Amendment protects the innocent and the guilty alike. No one should infer guilt from anyone invoking that constitutional privilege. Had I been Dr. Fauci’s lawyer I probably would have advised him to do exactly what he did, despite the fact that many people will wrongly infer guilt from his refusal to testify.

The committee that was examining Fauci has an agenda. It is not seeking the whole truth. It is seeking partisan advantage.

Members of congress and their staff frequently use these hearings to bully witnesses. They often cut them off in the middle of their answers and refuse to allow them to comply with their oath to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Congressmen and their staff then have the ability to distort the testimony out of context and create soundbites for their campaigns.

Let me begin with Fauci’s constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Yes, he was pardoned for any past crimes but the pardon does not operate prospectively. The committee was trying to prove that he had committed crimes not only before his pardon but after it. He surely had the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment as to any potentially incriminating information that would allow prosecution for post-pardoned crimes. To refuse to answer is not to acknowledge guilt; it’s to acknowledge prosecutors can indict innocent defendants using evidence obtained in congressional hearings.

Senator Rand Paul tried to avoid this constitutional barrier by specifically asking him questions that are clearly covered by the pardon President Biden gave him. This may make it appear that Dr. Fauci had nothing to fear from answering questions limited to that period. But that ignores a line of Supreme Court cases that hold that if a defendant answers some questions about a particular subject, he may not refuse to answer other questions about that subject. He may not turn the spigot on and off. Once he opens the door by answering questions about a subject, he may not close it in response to other questions.

So any good lawyer will always advise a client who seeks to invoke the Fifth Amendment to invoke it across the board and not try to pick and choose safe areas. That’s what Dr. Fauci’s lawyer did here, and that’s what I would’ve done had I been Dr. Fauci’s lawyer.

There is of course a price to pay in the court of public opinion for invoking the Fifth Amendment in response to hundreds of questions. Opportunistic politicians are eager to cite the number of times a witness has invoked the privilege, without explaining that there is no real difference between invoking it once and continuing to invoke it as for every question. This tactic was used commonly during the McCarthy era, when witnesses refused even to give their names or dates of birth. Similarly, Dr. Fauci refused to answer questions about the color of his tie for fear that he might be waiving his Fifth Amendment right as to other questions.

So whether you like dr Fauci or not, all Americans who care about const rights should be supporting his fifth amendment right to refuse to incriminate himself.

The fact that Dr. Fauci was within his constitutional rights does not mean that he is out of trouble. The congressional committee may well recommend that he be held in contempt. And congress may vote to hold him in contempt. The Trump Justice department could indict him and he would have to litigate these issues. Although there is no guarantee that he will win, the law seems clearly to be on his side. Moreover it may take a considerable amount of time for this case to work its way through congress and the courts.

If the committee were seriously interested in learning the facts rather than going after dr Fauci, it could recommend that congress bestow total immunity on dr Fauci up until the present. This would not give him immunity from a perjury prosecution if he were to testify falsely, but it would immunize him from all other crimes and deny him the right to invoke the fifth amendment. But congress seems more interested in Fauci’s blood than in his truthful testimony.

We will never know the whole truth about the sources and causes of the terrible virus that killed so many people. But we can truly learn from our collective mistakes in responding to the pandemic once it occurred. Dr. Fauci almost certainly has useful information that would help in this process. So the best thing for our nation and for the world, would be to give Dr. Fauci total immunity and question him about everything he knows without giving him the right to refuse to answer question on the ground that his answers might tend to incriminate him.

Some Jews have also weaponized the term against their enemies: Ben Shapiro has accused, Tucker Carlson, of “goyslop” for falsely claiming that Jews want “goyim” to die defending Israel.

The original meaning of the word goy is neutral. It simply means “nation.” The Bible describes the Jewish people as “goy Kadosh” – a holy nation. In post-biblical eras goy has come to mean “gentile” – any person or nation that is not Jewish. In its linguistic meaning it is descriptive, neither pejorative nor positive. But in common usage, it has taken both connotations.

When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, our non-Jewish neighbors used to do favors for us by performing tasks on the sabbath that we were religiously prohibited from doing, such as turning on lights. We referred to these friend positively as “shabbos goys”– non-Jews who helped us evade our religious strictures. On the other hand, my grandmother who grew up among Polish anti-Semites in the old country, used to word more pejoratively: whenever I whistled, which I loved to do, she would refer to it’s as a “goyish” activity. She also referred to her once a month house cleaner as “the goya” – female for goy.

It all depended on who is saying it and what they intend to convey.

When Jeffrey Epstein used that word, as he frequently did in his emails, he meant it pejoratively, as he did when he used the word shvartza to refer to African-American people. Epstein was racist, in every sense of that horrible concept, and he was proud of it. I told him never to use either pejorative in my presence, but I couldn’t control his emails or his conversations with others.

I personally never use the word goy because of its possible negative connotation and the risk of being misunderstood, and I know that others do the same. Even Holocaust museums, which honor “righteous Gentiles”, stay away from using the technical Hebrew word for gentile (goy) and use the euphemism “righteous among the nations” which they translate into Hebrew as “chasidai umot haolam”– pious among the nations of the world.

So context is everything. When a Jew-hating organization names itself “the Goyim Defense League” – a takeoff on “The Jewish Defense League” – you don’t need a dictionary or history lesson to understand what they are trying to do: use the word goyim to disparage Jews.

In light of all this, can the biblical word goy or its derivatives goyim, goyish or goya now be used in its original neutral way? Or has it been so corrupted by its misuse and weaponization that it has become too loaded to employ without the risk of misunderstanding?

The Yiddish word svartza has suffered a similar fate. In its original definition it means “black person.” Svartch means dark or black. Many Jews are named Swartz, suggesting that their forebears were dark-skinned. The name Weiss suggests light skin, as the names Gross and Klein suggest tall and short. But polite people no longer call black people svartzas, because the connotation has become pejorative.

Language is a living organism with no fixed boundaries. So perhaps we should retire the word goy, rather than try to explain that it is not intended pejoratively. Fortunately, we have other synonyms – such as nation and gentile – which are less ambiguous and subject to misunderstanding and weaponization.

Communist countries provided arms and intelligence to Israel when it fought Arab nations in 1948 for its very survival. Shimon Peres was a featured speaker at many socialist gatherings.

This remained the case until the Soviet Union decided to court oil-rich reactionary Arab and Muslim dictatorships. Predictably, most domestic communist entities around the world followed the party line and turned against Israel. The academic left soon followed suit.

When this about-face took place, Israel was a socialist country with religious freedom, gender equality, freedom of speech, and an independent judiciary. Its Arab and Muslim enemies had not begun to reform. Saudi Arabia still had slaves, decapitated blasphemers, and denied women the right to walk in the streets without a male escort. No Arab or Muslim state had freedom or equality of religion, freedom of speech, gender equality, or an independent judiciary. Almost none had elections.

This disparity did not seem to faze left-wing followers of Soviet dictats. They slavishly changed sides, ignoring the reality that Israel’s policies were far more in tune with their own ideology than the policies of Arab and Muslim theocracies.

Suddenly Israel was transformed into a “colonialist,” “imperialist,” “settler” state that was occupying the land of its aboriginal population. This was never true: Israel fought British colonialism, and most Israelis are descendants of Middle Eastern Jews who had lived for centuries in the region. Even after Israel and President Bill Clinton offered a deal to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza – which began after it won its defensive war in 1967 – many on the left still denied Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.

We saw the toxic fruits of the intellectual subversion in October 2023. After Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians broke down barriers, crossed into Israel proper, and murdered, raped. and kidnapped thousands of Israelis (mostly civilians), the hard left doubled down in its opposition to Israel. More importantly, anti-Israel attitudes morphed from the hard left to many on the center left. The alleged justification was Israel’s response to the Hamas atrocities. New accusations – all false – were now directed against Israel: genocide, war crimes, aggressors.

Thoughtful Americans on the center-left, including Rahm Emanuel and Rep. Jamie Raskin, have now decided to cast their lot against Israel’s ability to defend itself, even knowing that the slanders leveled against Israel are false. They have said so. But they can’t resist the pressure from the hard left to join the chorus of condemnation against Israel.

Democrats in Congress know that if they are perceived as supportive of Israel, they will be primaried by a candidate from the Democratic Socialist Party. They saw what happened in New York where liberal supporters of Israel were defeated in Democratic primaries by rabidly anti-Israel opponents. They know which way the political winds are blowing in blue cities among Democratic primary voters. Many are prepared to compromise their long held pro-Israel principles in the interests of not being primaried out of office.

The New York Times and CNN also know that these accusations are false, but they pander to their readers and viewers in an effort to increase clicks and revenue.

Reasonable university professors, administrators, and students also know that Israel is not the villain it is portrayed as in campus demonstrations, newspapers, and often in classrooms. But many of them fear pushback and recriminations from radical Israel-haters among their peers.

Today it is much safer and more career-protecting to be mendaciously anti-Israel than to be honestly pro-Israel, even while expressing misgivings about Israel’s political leadership. Being anti-Israel has become good for politics, business, and friendships, much as being anti-Jewish served the interests of ambitious Germans, regardless of whether they believed the lies against Jews they were parroting.

There a few courageous Democrats willing to buck the prevailing tide in their party. Two bright lights, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, are willing to tell the complex truth about the world’s only nation-state of the Jewish people.

Hopefully others will arise.

During one of his Senate speeches this week, he quoted his late, great father Marcus Raskin. I also knew Marcus: I met him, a prominent left-wing intellectual, when he was indicted for conspiracy to obstruct the Vietnam War effort by encouraging young men to resist the draft. He coauthored a call to resist illegitimate authority and stood trial along with doctor Benjamin Spock and others who advocated the burning of draft cards, break-ins at draft boards and other unlawful actions to obstruct the war effort. Many young people did what was advocated and were punished for their unlawful acts.

Marcus, who was charged only with inciting these unlawful acts by others, was represented by my mentor, teacher and dear friend, General Telford Taylor, who had been America's chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. I consulted with Taylor on Marcus' defense, which ultimately prevailed.

Unsurprisingly, the defense was that the First Amendment protected Marcus’ advocacy of resistance to the draft, even if such resistance then took a form of unlawful actions by others. Civil libertarians and liberals from all across the country rallied to the defense of “the Spock 5,” invoking the First Amendment.

The jury acquitted Marcus, and the court of appeals reversed the convictions of the other defendants. They were all saved by a broad reading of the First Amendment.

Several years later, Marcus was once again protected by a broad reading of the First Amendment, when he served as an intermediary between Daniel Ellsberg, who unlawfully stole the Pentagon Papers, and The New York Times, which published them despite their being classified. But for the First Amendment, Marcus would have been charged with conspiracy to publish classified material.

Now, Marcus’ son Jamie is quoting his father in a speech that would cut the heart out the very First Amendment that twice saved his father. If Jamie Raskin’s current view of the First Amendment had prevailed back in the day, his father would likely have been convicted of two felonies. If President Trump incited his followers to commit unlawful conduct, so did Marcus. I believe that neither incited violence and that both were protected by the First Amendment.

Nor is he alone. Hundreds of members of Congress, academics and ordinary Americans seem willing to compromise our fundamental freedoms of speech, expression and assembly in order to create a “Trump exception” to the First Amendment.

I would have thought that Jamie Raskin—in light of his history as a constitutional law professor, his family history under the First Amendment and his own protests against the 2016 election—would be leading the charge to protect the First Amendment. But no! He is leading the charge to compromise President Trump’s free speech rights—and thus the rights of all Americans to express controversial, even wrongheaded and provocative, views.

Jamie Raskin has sought to distinguish his father’s invocation of the First Amendment from Donald Trump’s on the ground that his father was an ordinary citizen protesting the actions of the government, whereas President Trump was the government itself. But the First Amendment recognizes no such distinction. Moreover, President Trump was protesting the actions of other branches of government—wrongly in my view, but constitutionally nonetheless.

Marcus Raskin’s broad invocation of the First Amendment to protect his advocacy of unlawful acts of protest sets the correct standard under which such constitutional protections for speech should be judged. Jamie Raskin’s far narrower and more partisan view of the First Amendment is inconsistent with that view. I hope that the next time Jamie Raskin quotes his wonderful father, he will remind his listeners how the same First Amendment that he is now seeking to narrow protected his father’s just and righteous protests against the Vietnam War—as well his own unrighteousness protests after the 2016 presidential election. Free speech for me and my father, but not for Donald Trump, is not the American way.

But some cynical self-servers who don’t really care about these issues have seen the increasing acceptability of Jew hatred as an opportunity to burnish their brands, increase their clicks, and make more money.

Take for example Tucker Carlson, who when he was at Fox News didn’t express the bigoted views he now promotes – at least not publicly. Before becoming the “antisemite of the year” (according to a monitoring group) and capitalizing on his newfound bigotry, Carlson had condemned antisemitism as an evil. I have no idea whether he was hiding his actual bigotry to keep his job at Fox. But after he was fired, he began to look for a new audience. He selected the rapidly increasing right-wing anti-Israel fringe of the Republican Party that shared some of the nativist and isolationist views he already held.

Turning those views into a full-blown anti-Israel and anti-Jewish ideology was not a long stretch. But by directing his nativism and isolationism squarely at the nation-state of the Jewish people and its supporters, Carlson guaranteed himself an automatic audience from hundreds of thousands or more Jew haters out there looking for a justification for their bigotry.

Similarly, Candace Owens has increased her clicks – and her income – by becoming more extreme in her anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bigotry. Other podcasters, comedians, and influencers have followed suit, recognizing that Jew hatred is good for business: David Chapelle, Michael Che, Tony Hinchcliffe, and Theo Von have faced criticism for either incorporating antisemitic tropes into their content or providing a platform to individuals who promote those views.

It hasn’t always been that way. Until recently, it was generally more advantageous to one’s brand and career to be pro-Israel or neutral. Today being even moderately pro-Israel is bad for business – especially if the business involves the media, academia, politics, or other public activities.

This change can be dated to Oct 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians broke down border fences and murdered 2,500 Israelis, nearly all civilians, and kidnapped several hundred more. Even before Israel responded to this brutal violation of an existing cease fire agreement by sending troops into Gaza to prevent threatened recurrences, the tide began to change. It began on university campuses, then in the media and eventually among politicians, especially Democrats. Now, it has come almost full circle. What used to be unprofitable to say and do has become good for business.

This change is not attributable solely to Israel’s military responses in Gaza, Lebanon, or Iran. It probably would have occurred even if Israel had done nothing in response to the increasing threats to its very existence. Israel’s military actions have provided an excuse for the increasing Jew hatred throughout the world. But even critics of Israel’s actions cannot plausibly deny that the exponential growth in antisemitism and anti-Israelism reflects a disproportionate and double standard response to Israel’s self-defense military actions.

What we are experiencing has little to do with human rights in general. If it did, the primary focus would be on far more serious human violators, such as China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Sudan. Israel is being targeted because it is the nation-state of the Jewish people, not because of its human rights record – which is better than most countries faced with comparable threats. Israel is the only country whose very existence is challenged by so many enemies. It is condemned not because of what it does, but because of what it is.

The selective condemnation is getting worse, as is the antisemitism that accompanies it. And it will get even worse if it is rewarded by clicks, money, and acceptance. As long as Jew hatred remains good for business, as it did in Germany in the 1930s, in many Arab countries in the 1950s, and in Europe and parts of the United States today, it will get worse.

I’ve known him casually from Martha’s Vineyard, where he is seen as “Caroline’s spoiled brat kid.” No one takes him seriously.

I once gave him some advice about law school, and then he reciprocated by posting the following about me: “Alan Dershowitz if you can hear me I need your help, I’ve been trying to reach out to you. I’m in deep s­-­-­t, dude. I’m all over the Epstein documents, there’s all sorts of credible evidence. Everyone knows I killed my wife, I’ve got a thousand sexual assault cases against me, I look like a human penis. I’m completely irrelevant and I’ve never had consensual sex … Oh wait, s­-­-­t, that’s you.”

These were of course complete fabrications, as he later admitted to me privately. He tried to apologize — again privately — claiming it was intended as a joke. But it wasn’t funny; it was nasty and libelous.

I could have sued him for defamation and won, but decided instead to write this column, because the best answer to bad speech is good speech and the best response to lies is truth. So here is the truth about Jack the joke. Or Jack the jerk. And why he should never become Jack the nepo congressman.

As far I can tell, he never held a responsible job for very long. He apparently lives off his inheritance. I doubt he makes a living from his nutty social posts that include the following: “True or false: Usha Vance is way hotter than Jackie O” and implying that he’s having a “baby with the Second Lady.”

Trolling RFK Jr., Schlossberg previously wrote a recipe for a Make America Healthy Again “energy ball” cocktail, which he claimed should include: “2 oz of Jew blood (Ashkenazi not Sephardic), 4 cups of male jizz. Baked at 300 degrees until totally dry like your wife,” referring to actress Cheryl Hines.

His posts weren’t funny. They were sick and nasty. But even if they had been funny, that would not be a basis for running for Congress. He has simply done nothing to warrant being elected. Nor has he presented ideas that deserve serious consideration. They are platitudes and cliches not policies. They are simply done to get clicks by their very outrageousness.

With regard to the subjects on which he has sought to express views, such as Israel, he has been muddled and confusing. He seems uninformed on most issues, despite his Harvard law degree. He is campaigning on his face and name, not on his views and policies. He has ignored several invitations to participate in candidate forums, for understandable reasons.

Anyone thinking about voting for this name (that’s all you would be voting for) should look themselves in the mirror and ask why you have been duped. Is it because Nancy Pelosi foolishly endorsed him without giving any reasons, other than that he’s Caroline’s kid? Is it because you like the Kennedy name? It certainly can’t be on the merits, because there are several credible candidates running against him.

It would send a terrible message to young people about hard work, accomplishments and meritocracy if he were to beat these more qualified candidates, or even get a lot of votes while losing. So don’t vote for him. It would reflect poorly on you and our nation.

Very little of significance. And that is precisely why it was such a bad year. Not for what was done – but for what was not done that could have been done.

1935 was the year that Hitler began in earnest to try to conquer the world. He quietly reintroduced the draft and began to build up the German arms industry, both in clear violation of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I.

The other signatories to that treaty, which included Great Britain and France, did absolutely nothing. Moreover, the Olympic Committee allowed Nazi Germany to host the 1936 Olympics; Harvard and other American universities invited and honored Nazi academics and diplomats; and most of the world conducted business as usual with a regime whose leader had sworn to end the Jewish presence in Europe and to expand German “Lebenstraum” – living space – by conquering areas of Europe with German-speaking populations. Winston Churchill later described the period including 1935 as “when England slept.”

What could the world have done in 1935 to prevent the catastrophe that happened between 1939 and 1945 – a catastrophe that ended in the death of more than 70 million people, including the genocide of 6 million Jews?

In retrospect it seems logical that Great Britain and France should have demanded enforcement of the Versailles treaty, and when Germany refused to comply they should have taken military action. This would not have been a preemptive war which requires an imminent threat. This would have been a preventive war designed to halt what would likely have been a future existential threat.

Had leaders of France and England engaged in such a preventive war, history would have treated them badly, accusing them of not waiting until the threat was imminent. But waiting until a threat is imminent is often too late to prevent the damage it would do.

Because history is blind and deaf to the future, historians would not have known that a preventive war in 1935 might have saved 70 million lives between 1935 and 1945. It would have taken a bold, courageous and forward-looking leader to have risked his reputation by engaging in a preventive war for which he would be condemned rather than praised. This is especially the case when the immediate damage caused by engaging in a preventive war is far more visible than the future damage prevented by such a war. This reality also makes preventive wars unpopular with voters, who may suffer immediate damage, such as higher prices, from a war that would have prevented far worse future damages that are currently invisible.

The important point is that inaction when action is warranted can be as bad or worse than action when inaction is warranted. Failure to take action when action was warranted is called a false negative. Taking action when none was warranted is called a false positive. Striking the appropriate balance between avoiding both is the difficult job of world leaders. Churchill understood that. Roosevelt less so.

What does the failure to take military action against Nazi Germany in 1935 tell us about the current situation in regard to Iran? That is the difficult conundrum today’s world leaders face.

Iran has declared its intention to destroy Israel, which it calls “the little Satan,” and perhaps the United States, which it calls “the big Satan.” There is no doubt that it has been trying to develop a nuclear arsenal for many years, despite its denials and fatwas. If the United States and Israel were to continue their military attacks against Iran causing the deaths of innocent civilians, we would know about the deaths these attacks would cause. What we would not know is how many deaths were prevented by military actions that completely destroyed Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear arsenal in the near future. Also what we can’t know is whether allowing this regime to survive and to continue trying to develop in secret a nuclear arsenal will eventually cause many more deaths.

So the question is, will 2026 be remembered by future generations for its inaction in failing to prevent the Iranian regime from developing and deploying a nuclear arsenal? Will a “deal” with Iran be viewed by future generations the way we now look at the deal Chamberlain made with Germany at Munich in 1938?

Or will 2026 be the year when action against Iran saved an indeterminate number of lives while those who took the action were criticized rather than credited?

In her alleged reporting she relied on perjurers who she knew were making up false accusations. One example is Sarah Ransom, who had claimed she possessed sex tapes of Hilary and Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Richard Branson. She also perjuriously claimed that I was lawyer and had sex with her. I never met her. She ultimately admitted she made up her false accusations.

The New York Post refused to print her lies but Brown relied on her as a credible source.

In my letter to The Wall Street Journal, I documented instance after instance of deliberately false reporting by Brown. I wrote the following: “Pulitzer Prizes should not be given to journalists whose reporting places bias and result orientation over the truth.”

I wrote this letter when Brown was first nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2019. She was denied the prize back then, presumably because they credited my allegations, which were carefully documented and irrefutable. Now that seven years have passed, the committee apparently felt comfortable in ignoring the documented evidence of her mendacity and false reporting, hoping that no one would remember that she is a liar. I remember. And others should know the truth about her history of false reporting.

Shame on the Pulitzer committee, shame on Julie Brown and shame on any reader who believes her false journalism.

Since my high school years, my politics, my principles, ideology and values have been the same.

I’m a traditional liberal, civil libertarian, and civil rights advocate. I support equality, meritocracy, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and intellectual diversity.

I have not changed.

But the world around me has changed dramatically, requiring me to switch from being a Democrat critical of the Democrats to becoming a Republican.

Even as recently as 10 years ago I couldn’t have imagine myself uttering the words “I am a Republican.”

But recent events have pushed me away from the Democratic party and toward what I regard as the lesser of two evils – the deeply flawed but far better Republican Party

I still support much of the Democratic platform, especially with regard to domestic and social issues, such as abortion, immigration, separation of church from state and fair taxation.

But I cannot abide the dramatic shift of the Democratic leadership and much of its base away from its support for Israel and other critical foreign policy issues.

So if I could put an asterisk next to my registration form for the Republican party, it would say “foreign policy Republican.”

But registration forms require selection of one party over the other.

After I announced I was leaving the Democratic Party in 2024, for a short time, I became an independent.

But I soon realized that it was something of a cop out.

Moreover as an independent I had no influence over either party.

As a registered Republican and contributing to its candidates, I hope to be able to exercise some influence over some of its policies with which I disagree.

This is a question of priorities – for me and for our country.

The Democratic party has become the most anti-Israel party in modern history.

It openly embraces antisemitism.

And this comes at a time when Jews are the most discriminated against and attacked group around the world.

Accordingly, anyone who regards themselves as a liberal, civil libertarian and civil rights advocate must prioritize opposition to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

You cannot join the crowds shouting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slogans -- nor can you stand by in silence as these thugs gain more power within the Democratic Party.

Good people must prioritize support for Jews and their nation-state at this time.

That is why I have decided to register as a Republican, ending my long association with the Democratic party and no longer describing myself as an independent.

At this time of increasing attacks on one group and one nation, staying “independent” is not an option for me.

I will lose even more friends than I did for defending President Trump’s constitutional rights.

Already I am getting emails, texts and calls from people urging me to reconsider my affiliation with a party that advocates many positions with which I disagree.

But I have made a choice – a difficult but necessary one.

Until the Democrat’s gain their sanity, I will do everything in my power to try to prevent the current Democratic party from taking control of the House, the Senate and the Presidency.

And I will choose to join the Republican Party because today it stands strong on some of the gravest issues facing America and the world.

Being “torn” between flawed democracies with duly elected leaders who Friedman regards as “terrible,” and an unmitigated tyranny ruled by unelected mass murderers is only the most recent manifestation of Friedman’s serious disease, namely Netanyahu and Trump “derangement syndrome.” More than 35 years ago, I began using the term “Israel derangement syndrome” to describe how the brains of otherwise intelligent people like Noam Chomsky become “scrambled” when thinking about Israel. This disease is highly contagious and spreading quickly, especially at the New York Times and other left-wing media. Its primary symptom is the double standard applied invidiously to the nation-state of the Jewish people. What is deemed to be self-defense when practiced by other nations, is called “genocide” when the IDF collaterally kills civilians who are being deliberately used as human shields. This is despite documented evidence that Israel has the best record of any army when it comes to the comparison between combatant and civilian deaths. collaterally kills civilians who are being deliberately used as human shields.

Critics of this insidious double standard derisively call it “what-about-ism”. But comparison is central to a single standard, and a single standard is an essential component of justice. All legal and moral judgements, demands that we ask the question “what about?,” of all the countries that are subject to comparative evaluation. Some are much worse and escape criticism, while Israel is singled out for unfair condemnation.

All criticism of countries should be comparative in our imperfect world, and a single standard is essential to all moral and legal judgments. Being torn between the victory or defeat of wildly non-comparable countries and their leaders is dangerous and wrong. Comparing Israel and the U.S., on the one hand, with Iran, on the other and being “torn” about who should win is like comparing Churchill to Hitler and being torn about who should have won World War II. Churchill was a deeply flawed colonialist, but Hitler was the worst butcher in history. Even if Netanyahu and Trump were both “engaged in anti-Democratic projects” (as Churchill had been) that would not justify being torn about defeating the most dangerous, anti-Democratic and anti-semitic tyranny since Nazi Germany.

By putting them in the same category and being “torn” over who should prevail, Friedman makes Iran seem like just another imperfect nation whose victory – which would entail its acquisition of a nuclear arsenal – would not pose an existential threat to Israel and a growing danger to the United States and its other allies.

Friedman knows better than to make such an immoral comparison, but his BDS and TDS (Bibi and Trump Derangement Syndrome) drives him to exaggerate his criticisms of Israel and America, while understating his criticisms of Iran. This is anti-“what-about-ism” with a sick vengeance.

No one should be torn about the preferred outcome of the Iran conflict. The ideal outcome would be total regime change and the substitution of real democracy for the cruel theocracy that now rules Iran with an iron fist. Short of such a change, Iran must be permanently prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal by removing all its enriched Uranium. The Strait of Hormuz must return to being an international waterway through which all shipping can safely pass. Iran must stop funding terrorist surrogates and must refrain from building and deploying rockets and explosive drones. Anyone who is “torn” about these admirable, peace-promoting goals cannot claim the mantle of morality. If Trump and Netanyahu can bring about these results, or anything close to them, deserves to be praised, even if that also strengthens them.

So keep reading Friedman’s often wise analyses of other issues, but when it comes to Trump and Netanyahu, put on a surgical mask to prevent you from catching his dangerous syndrome.

That is certainly the impression the playwright, actors and producers sought to convey. In that way they could present him as a complex figure who was willing to alienate many admirers of his children’s books because of his principled support of the Palestinian cause. Perhaps that is good drama, but it is bad history.

The ugly truth is quite different. Dahl was a fascist, a neo-Nazi and an extreme right-winger who came to the cause of Palestinians only because they were allegedly oppressed by the group he hated most: the Jews. The play presents it as a chicken-egg problem: which came first, his human rights support for Palestinians, or his antisemitism which grew out of that support. History provides a simple and sordid answer.

Dahl had no record of support for other minority, oppressed or marginalized group. In fact, he was antagonistic toward Blacks, immigrants and other minorities. He just hated Jews more than he hated them. He claimed that his opposition to the nation-state of the Jewish people grew out of his opposition to the war in Lebanon, but he was a strong supporter of Margaret Thatcher, who certainly was not anti-war.

Dahl’s hatred for Jews transcended Israel and the Palestinians. Mendaciously, he told people that Jews were cowards who didn’t serve in the British armed forces. Typically, he accused Jews of controlling the media, the banks and other institutions. Dangerously, he said that nations that persecuted Jews had good reasons for doing so. Even Hitler had some justification.

Sure, some of Dahl’s best friends were Jews, including his self-hating Jewish publisher. But the play, in its effort to attract audiences, focuses on his support for Palestinians, which is very much in vogue among theater goers.

Theater goers would not be interested in a play about Tucker Carlson’s pro-Palestinianism. They would see through his anti-Zionism cover for his obvious anti-Jewish bigotry. They would see no conflict justifying a theatrical presentation. They understand that most people who hate Jews automatically hate their state, and support the enemies of that state.

Israel is the Jew among states, and just about everything follows from there. No conflict. Well, Dahl presents no conflict either. Like Carlson, his hatred of Jews led him to claim support for the one minority with which the state of the Jewish people is in conflict. It’s really that simple and doesn’t deserve to be the subject of yet another literary effort to explore how Jefferson could have supported slavery, how Dostoevsky could have stereotyped Jews or why so many great men marginalized women.

Neither Dahl nor Carlson are great men. Their gigantic bigotry drowns out their smaller accomplishments. But you wouldn’t know that about Dahl by suffering through the mediocre play that is attracting Broadway crowds.

If I were a bit younger, I would stand outside the theater and hand out a leaflet telling the truth about the antisemitic source of Dahl’s pro-Palestinianism, but I’m too old for that. So I write columns, leaving it to others to distribute my views.

Trump reasonably and understandably believed Iran was close to developing a nuclear arsenal, which the mullahs might have deployed against Israel in the near term, and perhaps eventually against the U.S.

Regardless of whether the potential timing of this threat fits the traditional definition of “imminent” — which is to say, right on the verge of happening — it was real and would have been catastrophic if carried out. Accordingly, both the U.S. and Israel had the right — indeed, the obligation — to regard the threat that Iran would soon develop and deploy a nuclear arsenal as sufficiently dangerous to warrant preventive military action. Had either country waited until this nuclear threat was truly imminent, it might have been too late to stop it.

We can say this from experience. We waited too long with regard to North Korea, and that rogue nation managed to develop a nuclear arsenal under our noses. As a consequence, the Hermit Kingdom has been constantly threatening the world, and we can do nothing about it.

Iran, the world’s top state exporter of terrorism, would pose a far more serious near-term threat than even North Korea.

Even the United Nations, in its 2004 report on “threats, challenges and change,” acknowledged that even a non-imminent threat of nuclear annihilation by a hostile country might justify preventive military action under the right circumstances. As the former foreign minister of Australia, Gareth Evans, who served on the panel, put it, “The classic non-threat imminent situation is early-stage acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by a state presumed to be hostile.”

It was such a justification that Israel used to preemptively destroy both Iraq’s and Syria’s nuclear weapons programs before their threats became imminent. An even stronger case can be made regarding Iran’s nuclear arsenal program, since Iran has threatened to use it against Israel — which its leaders have called “a one bomb state” — and might well threaten to use it against other nations as well. Once Iran obtains a nuclear arsenal, it will already be too late for prevention or preemption.

Iran would not hesitate to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv, as evidenced by its repeated targeting of Israeli metropolitan centers. But Israel would never retaliate by using nuclear weapons against Tehran, for two reasons: First, Israel never has and will never target an enemy’s large cities with a nuclear holocaust. The late hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whose family was killed in the Holocaust, put it well in discussing a scenario involving a nuclear strike by Iraq: “That is not our morality. … The children of Baghdad are not our enemy.”

The same would be true of the current Israeli leadership and the children of Tehran, many of whose parents are strongly opposed to its current regime.

Second, were Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal, a strike against it may also entail the release of enormous amounts of radiation in many parts of Iran.

Israel therefore has no choice but to act preventively instead of reactively. Iran knows that Israel cannot deter its use of nuclear weapons by merely threatening retaliation against Tehran.

Professor Michael Walzer, who generally opposes military actions except as a last resort, put it well. “The Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 is sometimes invoked as an example of a justified preventive attack that was also, in a sense, preemptive,” he wrote in September 2022. “The Iraqi threat was not imminent, but an immediate attack was the only reasonable action against it.”

According to other reasonable scholars, the justification for a preventive or preemptive attack involves more than merely the temporal immediacy of the threat itself; it is a function of the temporal opportunity for carrying out the preventive action, as well as the seriousness and irremediability of a nuclear attack against its civilian population. This view was reflected by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who initially condemned Israel’s attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor but went on to praise it years later.

The same was true of Kevin Adelman, part of the American delegation when the United Nations condemned Israel. He subsequently regarded the Israeli attack as “the most wonderful example of preemption in the modern era. … Thank God Israel did that, looking back at it. The idea of Saddam Hussein being the main Arab leader with nuclear weapons since 1985 is frightful.”

The decision of whether to engage in preventive military action against the impending development of a hostile nuclear arsenal requires a balance of at least three factors. The first is the likelihood that the enemy would soon develop and possibly deploy a nuclear arsenal; the second is the degree of harm that be caused by such deployment; and the third is the reasonable expectation that setting back this threat for a considerable period of time is feasible militarily, or in combination with war-ending diplomacy.

In this case, all three of these criteria have been met, even if the existential threat was not so immediate as to categorize it as “imminent.”

These partisans know that under current law only the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can invoke its provisions transferring power to the vice president for as long as the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” They know that this president is perfectly able to discharge his duties; they just don’t approve of the way he is discharging them.

They also know that the framers of the 25th Amendment did not intend it to apply to political differences over policy; it was designed as a neutral, non-partisan guardrail to be invoked in the event a president suffers a stroke or develops Alzheimer’s disease or some other objectively diagnosable mental or physical disability.

Weaponizing this safeguard for partisan advantage, as some Democrats are now seeking to do, weakens it and guarantees that the other side will try to weaponize it as well.

Knowing that it has no chance of currently succeeding against one of the most active and in-your-face presidents in history, why are these partisan Democrats deploying this particular weapon from an arsenal that includes so many more potentially effective tools? Because other partisan ploys have failed.

During President Trump’s first term, a Democratic majority in the house voted to impeach him, in violation of the text of the Constitution, which limits impeachment to “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” That impeachment resolution did not allege any of those crimes, instead it invoked broad, meaningless phrases such as abuse of power and contempt of Congress, criteria which the framers rejected and of which many former presidents have been accused. I argued successfully against the Senate removing President Trump on those unconstitutional grounds.

Having failed in their misuse of the impeachment provision of the Constitution, some of these same Democrats now seek to misuse the 25th Amendment for partisan political purposes. That too will fail, because the amendment provides safeguards that would make it virtually impossible to invoke against President Trump at this time.

The Democrats who are knowingly abusing the constitution understand that their threats have no chance of succeeding, but they don’t care, because their goal is simply to make political points by seeking to embarrass President Trump with false claims that he is somehow unable to continue to serve, suggesting – and in some instances saying – that he is mentally ill, senile or demented. They know, as anyone who has met with the president knows, that to the contrary, he is on top of his game, willing and able to answer media questions and to give as good as he gets. He is among the most energetic and confrontational presidents in history. That is precisely why they want to get rid of him.

They are simply lying in order to contrive a phony political case under the cover of the 25th Amendment. They seek to equate disagreement over policies and actions with incapacity to govern. Such an equation would gut the 25th Amendment as an important part of our institutional system of checks and balances,

Nor should they be allowed to get away with their deliberate abuse of the constitution, without themselves paying a political price. Crying wolf about the 25th Amendment threatens to weaken its use in situations for which it was intended. Turning it into a partisan weapon instead of its intended role as neutral safeguard against a physically or mentally incapacitated president, will make it difficult, if not impossible, to invoke successfully in cases of actual incapacity. If one side misuses the amendment to try to turn a competent president out of office, the other side will misuse it to keep an incompetent president in office.

We have experienced presidential incapacity in our history. Near the end of his second term, Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke, and his wife reportedly made some important presidential decisions. There are questions about Ronald Regan’s Alzheimer’s and when it began. As presidents continue to serve into their 70s and 80s, the likelihood of a truly incapacitated president increases. And incapacity is often a matter of degree and development over time. That is why it is imperative to maintain the 25th Amendment as a neutral, non-partisan guardrail against a president who is objectively unable to do his job, without regard to politics.

The Democrats who are now trying to misuse that important guardrail of governance must be stopped before they cause irreparable damage to our constitutional system of checks and balances. Cooler heads within their party must make it clear that the leadership of that party does not support this unconstitutional ploy, which could someday be misused against a Democratic president, as some Republicans tried to do against President Joe Biden. The 25th Amendment is like the axe in the glass case marked: “For emergency use only.”

But if no final agreement is reached during this hiatus, Iran can again threaten to close them to ships from nations unfriendly to them, as it did over the past several weeks.

Iran may have the military power to close the straits of Hormuz to all shipping, but it shouldn’t have the power to decide who can go through and who cannot.

The United States should declare that if Iran were again to close the straits to some ships, the U.S. would close it to all ships.

In other words, Iran has the power to decide to close the straits, but it does not have the power to keep it open to selectively itself and its friends.

The U.S. has the power, through a military blockade, to close the straits to all shipping, including Iran’s.

Such a total closure would require all the shippers of Gulf oil to find alternative ways of getting it to its customers.

Such efforts are already underway.

Closing the straits to Iranian-approved ships unless Iran opens it to all ships would raise the price of oil in the short term, but lower and stabilize it in the long term, as oil producing companies find alternative routes and deny Iran the power to raise prices by closing one route that accounts for 20% of oil shipments.

Iran’s closure of the straits to some shipping is clearly illegal, since the straits are an international waterway with open access to all.

Iran has chosen to engage in illegal action by blocking the straits to some.

It would be entirely lawful for the United States to respond to Iran’s illegality by closing the straits to all and conditioning its reopening on Iran’s agreement not to pick and choose who can use this international waterway.

This would be tough justice, because those countries now allowed through the straits would be denied access.

But Iran has no right – as a matter of law, policy or morality – to decide who is and is not allowed to use this international waterway.

A partial blockade can be responded to by a total blockade.

The biggest loser would of course be Iran itself, which would be denied the payments it is now getting for its selective permissions.

It would also be denied its own use of the straits to transport its own oil.

Although Iran does not need the straits to transport its oil, since it has access to other waterways to its south, it will still be hurt financially.

That would be a good thing.

I’m not an economist and so it’s possible that I’m not considering all the economic ramifications of such a closure, but on its face, it seems like a good idea for the U.S. to impose an all or nothing condition on the use of the straits: all go through, or nothing goes through.

There is also the military option to reopen the Straits and keep it open by force.

But that too has problems.

All it takes is one attack, or even threat, to deter ships from going through.

Closing the Straits by military force or threats is much easier than opening them.

So why not try the all-or-nothing economic threat before deploying the uncertain military and dangerous military option.

If that doesn’t work, the military option is always available.

It’s possible, of course, that Iran will decide to keep the straits open to all – at least soon.

But it can always change its mind and close it again on a selective basis.

That is a good reason for the U.S. to announce now that it will never allow Iran to pick and choose who is allowed through.

The all-or-none policy will deter Iran from doing what it did during the recent military action. It will also show the world that Iran does not alone control the Straits of Hormuz.

The United States is, however, indirectly impacted by the closure because of the increase in the price of oil which, at least until now, has been globally determined. But why is that so? Oil is a commodity like many others, and nations sell many commodities, with private companies or individual governments setting different prices, depending on many factors. That’s called competition and the open marketplace. But under current practices, oil prices are not subject to the usual competitive marketplace but rather to a price based on a single global market determination.

There may be good reasons for such global price fixing, but they are not inherent in the nature of the product itself or in the nature of world markets in general. Most informed people with whom I have discussed this issue have no idea why the pricing of oil is not subject to the usual competition involving most other commodities. Even local gas stations compete with other over the retail price of a fill up, so why should the wholesale price of oil fixed by global conglomerates? An understandable explanation — more than just “that’s the way it’s always been” — is required.

So President Trump’s next challenge is to figure out a way of delinking the price of American oil from the fixed global price, if that can be feasibly done. American companies would then be free to charge lower prices to friendly buyers, including American gas stations. This delinking would fit into Trump’s general belief in competition through open markets rather than fixed prices. It might require legislative or administrative action limiting the power of private American oil companies to profit unfairly, but there is precedent for that in the anti-trust laws, and especially in response to military and or enemy misuse of the global price fixing power to achieve improper military of diplomatic advantages.

Under the current global price fixing regime, American companies are getting windfalls by charging excessive prices that reflect higher costs by other oil companies that ship their oil through the Straits, but not by American companies that don’t. The American gas consumers are the victims of this unfairness, and the law should be capable of remediating this situation.

Israel has suggested yet another alternative: to reroute oil currently shipped through Hormuz in overland pipelines in nations that would not misuse their geographical power over international waterways as part of a military strategy. This would obviously take time and regional cooperation. Delinking the price of American produced oil from the price of oil produced by foreign countries could probably be done more quickly.

I’m not an economist, so I may be unaware of considerations that may make such delinking unworkable, but American consumers of artificially high-priced gas are entitled to a commonsense explanation we can understand. It’s not enough to say “that’s just the way it is, and has always been.”

Both of these ideas are better than the current alternative and warrant serious consideration. Neither would be easy to implement and maybe they aren’t feasible. But on their face, both provide better options than the military ones currently under consideration, or simply abandoning the straits and allowing the status quo to continue.

In his recent speech, president Trump suggested that the countries whose oil shipments are being blocked from going through the Straits of Hormuz should be the ones who take military action to remedy what is essentially their problem. That seems right. But in the meantime, Iran is succeeding in turning American voters against our just military actions by causing pain at the pumps. If we can take economic and geopolitical actions that reduce the price of gas to American consumers, we should consider doing so. So let’s put on our thinking caps and try to figure out ways of discouraging Iran from illegally using military threats to raise the price of gas to American consumers.

Originally posted on Real Clear World: https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2026/04/03/the_straits_of_hormuz_should_not_be_a_us_problem_1174648.html

Any fear that President Trump’s presence would influence the justices was immediately belied by the nature of the justices’ questions – which suggested some hostility to the Solicitor General’s argument limiting birthright citizenship.

The argument itself was highly technical, focusing on the text, history and interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and particularly the words “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which modify the general grant of citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Although it is often difficult to predict Supreme Court decisions based on oral arguments, in this case it seems unlikely that the court will fully accept the administration’s interpretation.

My own view is that birthright citizenship is wrong as a matter of policy, especially if applied literally to virtually anyone born in the United States. Under that interpretation, if a pregnant European woman flying to China suddenly has labor pains requiring an unscheduled stop in the United States, where she gives birth and then immediately goes on to China, the baby is automatically a US citizen, even if it never sets foot in this country again. As a matter of policy, such a view of citizenship is absurd. Almost no other country accepts it, and it is doubtful that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended such a result in a case like that one. But that is not the typical case that affects thousands of children born in this country to illegal aliens who have lived here for many years. If these children are brought up in the United States and are subject to its laws for many years, their argument for birthright citizenship is far stronger.

So the question remains: which paradigm should govern – the weak case involving a child accidentally born here with no other connection; or the far stronger case of the child who has known no other country but this one for many years.

Perhaps the answer should not depend alone on the ambiguous and general words of the 14th Amendment that were written in a different historical context, but on contemporaneous legislation designed to implement and make current sense of these words. Indeed section 5 of the 14th Amendment explicitly provides that “the Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the provisions of this article.” It would make sense therefore to leave to Congress the definition of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Congress could make refined distinctions among children born in the United States — distinctions that make more sense than the geopolitical accident of birth alone. Children born here who have no real connection to this country should not get the benefits (or burdens) of citizenship. Congress could legislate that they are not subject to our jurisdiction. The harder questions involve the children of non-citizens who are here illegally. There are arguments on both sides of that fraught issue, most of which are dependent on the specific facts of every case. That is precisely why it is better to base decisions on specific, fact based, legislation than on general abstract concepts, such as “jurisdiction.”

It is possible therefore that there will be a majority upholding birthright citizenship, but dicta suggesting that Congress can limit its application by more narrowly defining which categories of children born in the United States are subject to its jurisdiction. Such a Solomonic division of the babies born here might well come closer to achieving broad consensus than an ideologically divisive abstract ruling.

President Trump’s presence in the Supreme Court was likely intended to send a message to his base rather than to the justices. But the real audience should be Congress, which may have the power to resolve this contentious issue with compromises that reflect the current values of our nation, including our history as a nation of immigrants.

Indeed, had similar preventive military action been taken against the Nazi regime in the 1930s, it might have saved as many as 50 million lives. If the military attack against Iran succeeds in preventing it from developing a nuclear arsenal, it too may prevent millions of deaths — we will never know how many.

We will only learn the deadly numbers if this attack fails and Iran develops and deploys nuclear weapons.

Preventive military actions are always controversial and often unpopular, because history is blind to the probabilistic future. If prevention succeeds, we never know its benefits. If it fails, we learn its costs the hard way.

Prevention failed in the run-up to the second World War, and we know its horrible costs. Had Great Britain and France engaged in a preventive war and destroyed the Nazi regime before it was fully armed, the preventive war itself would likely have caused thousands of deaths, for which those who precipitated it would have been condemned. They would not have been praised for preventing the millions of deaths that ultimately followed, however, since we would never know about them.

A similar lack of predictive knowledge shrouds the controversial decision by President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch the preventive military action now underway. We know of the 13 Americans, dozens of Israelis and the thousands of Iranians who have been killed during these actions. There have been many injuries as well. Every such death and injury is a tragedy, but we don’t know how many deaths and injuries have been and may be prevented. If this military action succeeds, we may never know.

Trump has said if the U.S. had not bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities back in June, Iran would already have a nuclear bomb and would have used it. That may or may not be accurate. We can never know for certain. But do we have to take that risk, and does Israel? Or are these two nations entitled — or perhaps obligated — to eliminate or at least reduce that risk by preventive military action? Should they have to wait until it is imminent, which may mean too late or almost too late to prevent it?

Britain and France waited too long to prevent Nazi Germany from taking over Europe. Had they not waited until the threat was already upon them — indeed, until after it manifested itself in the invasion of Poland — they might well have prevented World War II.

There is now talk of a possible deal to end the current military action. If a negotiated resolution succeeds in preventing the major harms that the military action was designed to prevent, that could be even better than a purely military victory — at least as long as the resolution is not a Munich-like surrender that encourages further aggression.

Trump has said that Iran has now agreed to end its quest for a nuclear bomb. A paper agreement is not enough, of course — Iran had previously said it would never try to pass the nuclear red line, and that was not true. Iran would have to surrender all of its nuclear material and subject itself to intrusive inspections that would absolutely guarantee that it could never obtain a nuclear weapon.

If this goal is accomplished, though — if Iran is truly prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future — then this preventive military action will have been a crucially important success. This would be true even if other goals, such as regime change in Iran, are not accomplished.

Eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat would be success enough. And such a success, produced by a combination of military action and diplomacy, would vindicate the concept of a preventive war conducted with precise goals in mind — in this case the elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat.

Then suddenly everything changed. I committed the cardinal sin of representing President Trump against his unconstitutional impeachment on the floor of the Senate, though I was a loyal Democrat who had voted for every Democratic presidential candidate since John Kennedy. But I do not choose my clients or constitutional causes based on party loyalty or affiliation. I choose them on the basis of the importance of the constitutional issue. I helped defend President Clinton when he was unconstitutionally impeached and would have offered to defend President Biden if he had been improperly impeached. I also represented Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy and Alan Cranston.

But that wasn’t enough to dissuade John and Linda Henry from ending our long friendship and canceling me. I am no longer welcome in the owner’s box at Fenway. Indeed John and his wife Linda haven’t spoken to me and my wife since the day I defended Donald Trump. I guess the constitution of Red Sox Nation doesn’t include the right to have a different opinion on legal issues.

I could of course anonymously pay for a seat on the green monster and root for the Sox, but I would feel unwelcome and uncomfortable knowing that the Henrys would not want me to be there.

I am sure many Red Sox players and fans would agree with my representation of President Trump. Even those who disagreed would not want me ejected from Red Sox Nation after a half-century of loyal support for Boston’s team. But Red Sox Nation is not a democracy. It is a tyranny whose actions are determined by only two people: John and Linda Henry.

I will continue to root for the Red Sox, and even occasionally attend a game if I am allowed into the hallowed grandstands of Fenway, but I will not feel welcome. Nor should Red Sox fans who do not agree with the Henrys’ high-handedness in canceling me and presumably others who don’t adhere to their political line.

The Red Sox are more enduring than their temporary owners, who seem to care more these days about British soccer than Boston baseball. Their attempt to punish me will not dissuade me from continuing to defend people with whom they disagree. That is the American way, that’s the Boston Red Sox way, it’s just not the Henrys’ way.

I could have accepted the undeserved punishment in silence, but I think I owe it to my fellow Red Sox fans to let them know the full truth about the Red Sox’s primary owners: they are intolerant and do not support the principles underlying our Constitution or the diverse values of the Red Sox fan base.

Moreover, this issue transcends the Red Sox and me. It reflects the broader intolerance so many on the left have displayed toward those who do anything that contradicts their political correctness. It also reflects the growing divisiveness on our culture, politics and personal relationships. This intolerance for political and constitutional differences is bad for our nation. I will continue to fight against it regardless of the personal costs. I hope other will join me and let John and Linda Henry know that they disagree with the cancellation of those who dissent from their political correctness. The Red Sox and baseball fans in general have a diverse political and ideological base that their owners should respect.