Empires don’t go down peacefully. They go down fighting.

So there was never any reason to expect AIPAC — now, along with ADL — the most despised special-interest lobby in American politics — simply to close up shop and go home. Too many people make too much money off the enterprise. Too many careers, reputations, and the ability to use Israel for influence peddling (like donors getting into a Senator’s office and then using the connection to get some regulation removed or tax exemption added).

Still, I have to give some credit to Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s leader for a quarter-century. He accomplished something AIPAC’s enemies could only dream of: he helped destroy the lobby by bringing to light what his predecessors understood had to remain in the dark.

Kohr’s great innovation was to make public AIPAC’s previously more discreet manipulation of American elections — boasting about targets, celebrating victories, advertising how much money was being deployed to defeat candidates who crossed the lobby. “We will spend $30 mill in the primary and then another $30 mill in the general to defeat El-Sayed.”

It didn’t start with Kohr. But he advanced the weaponization of the Israel lobby, made the weaponization public, and in doing so helped destroy the very thing he was trying to strengthen.

Good for him.

But still.

Back in 1982, on my first day working at AIPAC — yes, I know; if I had my life to live over again, I would never have gotten involved with AIPAC — the late Steve Rosen (later indicted for espionage), then AIPAC’s No. 2, handed me a note.

It read:

“MJ, a lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun. Remember, the walls have ears.”

That Rosen credo has since appeared all over the place, including in The New Yorker. But the original was handed directly to me by Rosen, and I later handed it to investigative reporter Chuck Babcock of The Washington Post.

I did not like Rosen, to put it mildly. But he understood something Kohr apparently did not.

A lobby like AIPAC survives by exercising power without constantly announcing that it is exercising power.

Bank robbers don’t issue press releases announcing which bank they’re hitting next. Inside traders don’t advertise their next trade. And political operatives who understand what they are doing don’t shout from the rooftops: Here is the next congressman we are going to destroy.

AIPAC did. AIPAC does.

And now it is paying the price.

Good riddance.

Which brings me back to the point about dying empires. AIPAC Inc. is not disappearing quietly. Its latest target is Hasan Piker, whom it and its allies are attacking for comments they characterize as antisemitic, a blood libel and even an incitement to violence against Jews.

Here is what Piker said:

“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.

“I don’t know how people don’t recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews. You’re running around basically tying your entire identity to a country that inevitably will be seen as Jewish ISIS and you’re saying, as Jews, this is all we care about. You’re making antisemitism worse.”

I would not have phrased it quite that way.

Piker should have made absolutely explicit that attacking American Jews for the actions of Israel — or for the behavior of American Jewish organizations — is evil and indefensible. I listen to him enough to know that is what he means.

But here is the great irony: stripped of Piker’s specific language, the danger he is describing is one that American Jews understand perfectly well.

For decades, the Israeli government and much of the organized American Jewish establishment, have worked relentlessly to blur the distinction between Israel and Jews.

That is the whole point of insisting that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

It is why Israeli flags are ubiquitous at American Jewish institutions. It is why synagogues and Jewish organizations proclaim “We Stand With Israel” on their front lawns. It is why prayers for the “success” of IDF “missions” are incorporated into religious services. It is why politicians (usually Muslim) who sharply criticize Israel are so often portrayed not merely as wrong about Israel but as enemies of the Jews.

The message, repeated endlessly, is unmistakable:

Israel is us. We are Israel. Attack Israel politically and you are attacking the Jews.

Well, you cannot spend decades telling the world that Israel and the Jews are one and the same and then express shock when some people — including dangerous people — believe you.

That is what scares me.

After Gaza, millions of people around the world have come to despise the Israeli government. And Israel itself. And there are violent people among them, just as there are violent extremists in every population.

What happens when one of those people takes the organized Jewish community at its word?

What happens when someone decides that if Israel equals the Jews, then some random Jew walking into synagogue on Rosh Hashanah is somehow responsible for what Israel does in Gaza?

That would be monstrous.

It would also demonstrate precisely why the conflation of Israel and Jews is so dangerous.

And we Jews ought to understand this better than anyone.

After 9/11, Americans repeatedly heard variations of the argument that Muslims collectively had to answer for Islamic terrorism. The fight over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero was saturated (often by Jews) with precisely that kind of collective guilt, despite Muslim leaders who explicitly condemned the attacks.

I have heard Jews say versions of “they’re all Hamas.” Anyone who has spent time in the Jewish community hears it all the time. (It’s why I avoid mainstream Jewish spaces).

So are we really going to pretend that collective guilt can only run in one direction?

If some Jews can look at Hamas and blame Muslims generally, why is it inconceivable that some extremist could look at Israel and blame Jews generally?

The answer is not to excuse antisemitism. It is to stop feeding it.

American Jews are Americans. We are not representatives of a foreign government. We are not responsible for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli cabinet, the IDF or anything Israel does. A Jewish child walking into Hebrew school in Bethesda has no more responsibility for an Israeli bomb falling on Gaza than a Muslim child in Dearborn has for October 7th.

That distinction should be shouted from every synagogue, every Jewish federation and every Jewish organization in America.

Instead, too many of those institutions have spent decades shouting the opposite:

We are one.

No, we aren’t.

And pretending that we are endangers us all.

That, underneath his phrasing, is what Piker was talking about.

And that is why Israel’s fanboys and fangirls attempt to silence him rather than confront the substance of the warning is so revealing.

The danger is not in saying that conflating Jews with Israel can produce antisemitism.

The danger is in doing the conflating. It’s not Hasan Piker. It’s Jonathan Greenblatt of ADL and whoever runs AIPAC now.

And when Jewish organizations do it themselves, knowing where collective guilt can lead, they are playing with the safety of the very Jews they claim to protect.

Frankly, I don’t think they care. Israel comes first.

This is one banger of a story from AXIOS. I’ll just repost it in its entirety because it is the best news ever about the decline and now fall of AIPAC. LINK.

Imagine, after spending $30-$50 million to defeat Abdul al-Sayed in the Democratic primary and having pledged to spend at least as much to defeat him in November, the Republican nominee Mike Rogers has told them to beat it. He fears the taint of AIPAC would defeat him.

This is not unprecedented. In the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was riding high, numerous candidates rejected their support just a few years after President Woodrow Wilson openly allied with them.

Scoop: Mike Rogers-AIPAC rupture roils Michigan Senate race

• By Alex Isenstadt

Allies of former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan’s GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, have asked AIPAC not to advertise on his behalf, triggering a rupture with the powerful but polarizing pro-Israel group, Axios’ Alex Isenstadt reports.

• Rogers spoke with AIPAC chair Michael Tuchin in Los Angeles last week. The next day, AIPAC shelved an already-cut video ad targeting Rogers’ Democratic rival, outspoken Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed.

Why it matters: The extraordinary tension underscores how far AIPAC’s political standing has fallen amid voters’ anger over the war in Gaza.

• Even Rogers — a staunchly pro-Israel Republican — fears the group’s public support could be a liability in the Nov. 3 election.

Driving the news: The move by Rogers’ team angered AIPAC officials, who had spent more than $30 million to try to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary and prepared to spend millions more to help elect Rogers, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Zoom out: El-Sayed made AIPAC a centerpiece of his successful primary campaign, using the group’s spending against him to portray Democratic opponent Haley Stevens as beholden to the pro-Israel lobby.

• El-Sayed has called Israel a “rogue state,” accused it of genocide and apartheid, and has declined to say whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

• That made defeating him a priority for AIPAC, which rarely mounts major spending campaigns in general elections.

Behind the scenes: Rogers’ team warned AIPAC before the Aug. 4 Democratic primary that it believed El-Sayed would beat Stevens, though AIPAC held out hope Stevens would prevail. The two sides agreed to keep talking.

• After El-Sayed narrowly won, AIPAC told Rogers’ allies it wanted to continue its advertising offensive into the Nov. 3 general election.

• But Rogers’ team believed AIPAC’s primary ads had backfired by giving El-Sayed a powerful foil — one he was eager to use again.

• “AIPAC, if you’re listening, come back and burn it again,” El-Sayed said before his primary victory.

Rogers’ allies urged AIPAC to get involved without putting the group’s name front and center, people familiar with the talks told Axios.

• One option: Directing AIPAC donors to a pro-Rogers super PAC instead of the group running its own ads, or a joint fundraising group the Rogers campaign has established with the national GOP.

• Rogers’ team also proposed hiring AIPAC’s political strategists to help guide its effort.

• But AIPAC officials weren’t satisfied: The group wanted a visible role in defeating El-Sayed and argued that because Rogers is strongly pro-Israel, El-Sayed would tie him to the pro-Israel lobbying group regardless.

State of play: Direct talks between Rogers’ team and AIPAC have now gone cold, prompting a broader GOP effort to broker peace. Jewish Republican donors with ties to both sides are acting as intermediaries, people familiar with the discussions said.

• Some national Republicans now worry that AIPAC — whose super PAC ended July with nearly $60 million in the bank — will sit out the general election entirely.

“I welcome any and all support from the pro-Israel community, and I’m proud to have their involvement,” Rogers told Axios.

• AIPAC representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.

17-year old Kareem Shlaldeh, slaughtered by settlers (guarded by IDF) in Hebron

His brothers and uncle mourn

Right from the beginning, I knew the Trump administration’s supposed crusade against campus antisemitism was bogus.

Not because antisemitism on some college campuses isn’t real. It is. Some Jewish students have faced intimidation and an atmosphere in which hostility toward Israel resulting from the Gaza genocide has crossed unmistakably into hostility toward Jews.

That, itself, was fueled—as it still is—by the organized Jewish community’s BIG LIE: that American Jews and Israel stand as one, which inevitably and unfairly leads some to blame all Jews for Israel’s crimes. After all, if we and Israel are ONE, we are implicated. The truth is we are not and were never ONE.

But there was always something totally phony about Donald Trump suddenly presenting himself as the great protector of Jewish students. The administration’s campaign was obviously an effort to use antisemitism as a weapon against universities it considered politically hostile. (In fact, this administration considers education itself to be the enemy, understanding that the more educated a person is, the less likely they are to fall for MAGA/GOP idiocy).

Now we know that the whole operation was even more corrupt than I thought.

As Marc Rod reported Tuesday in Jewish Insider (a valuable but right-wing Jewish publication), Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has opened an investigation into the Justice Department’s campus antisemitism probes, calling them “fake” and alleging that universities were essentially framed,

Raskin’s charges are based in part on disclosures from former Justice Department lawyers, including Haley Van Erem, a former career attorney in the Civil Rights Division.

Their allegations are devastating.

According to the whistleblowers, investigators were pushed to work on artificially shortened timelines that compromised their ability to determine whether accusations were actually supported by evidence. Investigations were opened with “little to no factual predicate,” creating the impression that the desired conclusions had been decided before investigators did their work.

Think about that.

The government wasn’t investigating universities to determine whether they tolerated antisemitism. It was starting with the desired verdict and then looking for evidence to justify it. (This is not much different from its efforts relating to African Americans and Muslims except in those cases the administration is openly using its power to promote ethnic hate rather than pretending to combat it).

Raskin describes the operation bluntly. In his letter to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, he called the investigations of Harvard, Columbia and Brown a “pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature.”

At Brown, according to the whistleblowers, investigators concluded that the university had not violated the law — yet administration officials still shook them down for financial compensation.

At Columbia, they allege that the administration relied on unsupported accusations and constitutionally protected speech to manufacture a civil rights case. Not to mention deporting student Mahmoud Khalil for alleged antisemitism (actually opposition to the genocide). Khalil finally got back to New York but the administration is pushing hard to re-deport him.

At Harvard, federal funding was frozen before findings of wrongdoing had even been established, with the whistleblowers alleging there was no connection between the financial punishment and substantiated discrimination.

That isn’t civil rights enforcement. It is political extortion carried out under the banner of fighting antisemitism.

For years, conservatives have complained that accusations of racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry were sometimes cynically weaponized to silence political opponents. Yet the Trump administration, an administration riddled with real antisemites, (including the Vice President) and whose base is the racist and antisemitic MAGA movement— figured out that accusations of antisemitism can be weaponized too and enthusiastically embraced the tactic.

That does tremendous damage to the fight against real antisemitism which emanates almost entirely from the right, spread by Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, etc.—whose racist and antisemitic blabberings are heard and seen by tens of millions every day.

That is not protecting Jews. It is using us. It also endangers us. I’m looking at you, AIPAC. You are the most famous and despised interest group in the US, and you claim to represent us all.

Raskin has demanded documents and communications from the Justice Department and wants whistleblower Dhillon to appear before the Judiciary Committee. If Democrats regain control of the House, this investigation will become considerably more consequential.

It should.

Give Raskin credit for recognizing the distinction that the Trump administration deliberately blurred: combating antisemitism is a legitimate government responsibility. Using fake antisemitism as an excuse to intimidate universities and punish political enemies is something else entirely.

I knew from the beginning that this campaign was bogus. I mean, compare antisemitism on campus (or anywhere) with the racism African-Americans have always endured without a thousandth of the hullaballoo launched by Trump and his pals at the ADL over pretty much nothing.

Thanks to Raskin’s investigation — and to the reporting by Marc Rod and Jewish Insider — we may finally find out just how bogus it was.

One caveat: Raskin focuses primarily on the Trump administration, as he should. But mainstream Jewish organizations were its willing partners and allies in smearing all criticism of Israel as antisemitic and, even worse, spreading the libel that American Jews are just Israelis in exile who put the interests of Israel above those of the United States.

Yes, that is true of some of us, like those Jewish voters who say that although they agree with progressive Democratic candidates on all the issues relating to America, they will vote Republican this year because they disagree with some of them on one issue: supporting the Israeli government.

Call that Israel Firstism. Call it dual loyalty or, actually, just one.

Regardless, the Jews who endorse that view and organizations like AIPAC, AJC, ADL and all their pro-Israel satellites that encourage it are manufacturing the fuel for real antisemitism that threatens every American Jew, including the vast majority of young Jews who don’t much think about Israel at all. And are more likely to be pro-Palestine than pro-Israel, according to every poll.

That is no surprise. They are Americans, and they are smart. And, for some reason, don’t like the idea of a country in which one ethnic/religious group has all the rights and the other has none at all.

All the hasbara in the world can’t change that one indisputable fact about the State of Israel, as presently constituted. The only solution: one democratic state with equal rights for all, a solution that only the United States (once the Democrats are back in power) can impose.

I am not keen on having a Jewish president (too many fascists would be literally gunning for him), but I have to admit Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga) is the most impressive potential candidate I can think of for 2028.

Below I embed a YouTube of him destroying Pete Hegseth and reducing the War Secretary into the sweaty whining man-child he is.

And then there is this: the Jewish establishment in Georgia can’t stand Ossoff and consider him a traitor to…Israel.

Read the editorial in the official newspaper of the Atlanta Jewish community. Even though Ossoff is opposed in November by an open antisemite, they are focusing their ire on the Jewish guy who defies AIPAC and Israel. As if that will cost Ossoff votes!

********************************

From the Editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times:

Dear Senator Ossoff:

I apologize for being blunt, but please, stop lying to me and your constituents. I hear you claim, over and over again, that you support Israel — that your support is “ironclad.” It is not. You vote against Israel on the Senate floor in Washington, then come home to Georgia and make this untruthful claim.

Let me be clear and precise. When a rhetorical bill reaches the floor — condemning Hamas after Oct. 7 or affirming Israel’s right to defend itself — you vote with heartfelt sympathy for Israel. But when a bill offers Israel tangible strategic support — munitions, rifles, bombs, military and financial assistance — your record is abysmal, and you throw Israel under the bus. You are with Israel on the votes that cost you nothing, and against it on the votes that actually matter. All that heartfelt sympathy is smoke and mirrors.

Support for Israel does not come by voting to block its arms. As an example from last year, when you voted against Israel’s safety and then issued a statement rationalizing your vote, that statement is not evidence of support — it is merely an excuse for the absence of it [specifically: S.J.Res.41, Roll Call Vote 454, July 30, 2025, and your accompanying statement, which you can read here: https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/sen-ossoff-statement-on-jrd-votes/].

Your antagonism toward Israel has remained steadfast. You backed some of Senator Sanders’ resolutions to cut off Israel’s weapons in late 2024, again in July 2025, and on April 15, 2026, you went furthest yet — voting to block every sale on the floor. Your vote continues to demonstrate a lack of support for the Jewish state.

I also have to ask, Senator: when you spoke recently at the Voices of Muslims gala in Duluth — as you had every right and incentive to do — did you tell that room your support for Israel is “ironclad,” the way you tell your Jewish constituents? Or does the message change with the audience? Did you point to your voting record of denying tangible support for Israel? Tell me what your message was and I will gladly share it with your constituents and my readers.

You campaigned as a supporter of Israel. You were elected to stand with our allies. You continue to claim that you support Israel. Demonstrate your support with your vote on the Senate floor. If instead you choose to keep voting against Israel, at least do not come home and obfuscate your vote — own your record. Because if you are not telling us the truth about this, Senator, I am left to ask: what else are you not telling us?

Sincerely,

Michael A. Morris
Publisher, Atlanta Jewish Times

And now there is icing on the cake.

AIPAC has announced that it intends to spend as much in the general election as it did in the primary, probably more, this time to elect the right-wing Republican nominee Mike Rogers knowing that Rogers’ election could hold the Senate for Donald Trump.

That is good news because in 2026 being known as AIPAC’s candidate has proven to be the kiss of death.

El-Sayed won the primary, in large part, by never missing a chance to call Haley Stevens an AIPAC tool. (Not to mention the main reason he won: he is a brilliant candidate and a great campaigner).

In fact, Stevens was and is a lot more than an AIPAC tool. She is a solid progressive and an effective legislator.

Still, she made a deal with the devil: she would take millions of dollars from AIPAC in exchange for never deviating from AIPAC’s views on anything, including the Gaza genocide. 

She was thus defined as AIPAC, which turned out to be her undoing.

Voters across the spectrum—Democrats and Republicans alike–despise AIPAC and oppose its role both in pushing unconditional support for Israel and standing with Netanyahu in convincing the halfwit Trump to go to war with Iran for Israel.

My only worry is that Rogers might repudiate AIPAC’s support in some way to get that albatross off his back. But I doubt it. AIPAC may stink, but its money smells like roses.

I am not surprised by the organizational Jewish hacks who are rallying behind the Trump Republican by citing El-Sayed’s stance on Israel. They all say pretty much the same thing, best encapsulated by a Michigan spokesman for a Jewish organization who said this:

“I support Medicare for All, abortion and LGBT rights, abolishing ICE, labor unions, climate action, and every other progressive issue, but I won't vote for El-Sayed because of El-Sayed’s hostility to Israel." 

Perfect. The Israel First thesis once again proven. This man (and the lobby organizations themselves) openly say that they put supporting Netayahu’s agenda over anything related to the United States of America. That is what Israel First means.

The Michigan election is an even better test of the Israel First thesis than the Mamdani election in New York.

In both cases opposition to the Muslim candidate was based on the Israel issue but, in the case of Mamdani, the alternative to him was Andrew Cuomo, an unsavory guy but a Trump-opposing Democrat, progressive on most issues.

Jewish Democrats weren’t selling their souls to vote for him even if their motivation was stopping the guy who deviates from the Israel line.

This time there is no ambiguity. Mike Rogers supports Trump, ICE raids, repealing equal rights laws, etc, and will vote with Trump on everything.

He may very well provide the 51st Senate vote to ensure that anti-democratic, racist Trumpism continues unchecked for another two years.

It could be more. If Trump holds the Senate, he will use  it to help overturn the 2028 Presidential election if a Democrat is elected. And that, if it happened, would be the end of American democracy.

That is what it means to support Rogers over El-Sayed in Michigan for the sake of Israel: choosing Israel (not really Israel but Netanyahu’s version of it) over the country you live in.

Calling that dual loyalty is giving the Israel First voter credit for one loyalty too many.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Jews reject that thinking especially since October 2023.

The minority that puts Israel over the safest home Jews have ever had (infinitely safer than Israel by the way) are not only bad Americans, they are bad Jews–rejecting every Jewish value.

They can call themselves Jews, and they do, but they are Jews in name only.

Even if they are only 10% of our people, they are our shame.

I heard about a middle-aged man in the Midwest who killed a teenager in a car accident.

It wasn’t his fault. The 17-year-old boy ran out into a quiet street, one that had shrubbery on both sides, and literally darted in front of a car that was driving 25 miles an hour. He was in a hurry to get to his girlfriend, who was in her car, waiting for him.

The kid died in the hospital.

The driver was not charged. He had done nothing wrong.

Three years later, he committed suicide.

According to his family, the previously happy man was grief-stricken by the accident and never got over it. His suicide note apologized to his family and friends, and to the boy’s family, but he said he could not live with himself any longer.

He was obsessed with the thought that he should not have been driving so fast in a residential area, although he was driving five miles under the speed limit.

He also said that the face of the dead boy haunted his days and nights.

Obviously, he had PTSD or a form of it. Or it was just grief or misplaced guilt.

And yet the Donald Trumps, Marco Rubios, Pete Hegseths, and all the others who join in the decision to knowingly send young men and women off to die and kill—for nothing— act as if nothing happened. No guilt. Not about those they send to die or those they order to be killed. They revel in “enemy” kill counts. And brush off the deaths of their own soldiers as insignificant.

I’ll mention Netanyahu and everyone in his government only in passing. The point I’m making so obviously applies to the Israeli leadership and the genocide they are perpetrating—and the young men they send off to perpetrate it—that it hardly needs saying.

Like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and that whole neocon crowd, they kill hundreds of thousands with joy and go on with their lives as if nothing happened. As Putin likely will.

In fact, the only warmaker I can think of who suffered guilt, grief, and shame after pointlessly sending soldiers to die and to kill was United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who suffered from well-earned agony over Vietnam until the day he died (40 years after the war).

I have to wonder. Are all these world leaders sociopaths?

I’m not a pacifist. Obviously Lincoln and FDR fought just wars and felt grief over what they felt they had to do.

But the people running our country now are killers, who care not a whit about the killing and dying they are responsible for.

You probably would not kill yourself if, by accident, you killed another human being. But you surely would never forget it. You would replay the moment in your mind for years. You would wonder what you could have done differently, even if everyone told you there was nothing you could have done.

Yet the people who decide whether thousands of strangers, mostly young, will live or die seem to sleep just fine. Like Henry Kissinger, they attend fundraisers, give speeches, celebrate victories, write memoirs, and joke with television hosts. Guilt, grief? None.

Perhaps that is a prerequisite for power. Perhaps you cannot rise to the top unless you learn to silence your conscience, if you have one.

I only know that a man who accidentally killed one teenager could not live with himself, while those who knowingly unleash wars that kill thousands—or hundreds of thousands—carry on as though nothing happened despite being responsible for destroying countless people and ripping apart families forever.

Smiling monsters.

I pray there is a hell.

The New York Times has revealed something important about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s much-publicized promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to New York.

He already knew he couldn’t do it.

According to the Times, by the time Mamdani told the newspaper last week that he was in “active conversation” with his lawyers about whether he could arrest Netanyahu, those same lawyers had already informed him that he had no legal authority to do so. The NYPD had reached the same conclusion and was even prepared to issue a formal statement making clear that arresting a visiting foreign leader was beyond its authority.

In other words, the legal question had already been answered.

Yet Mamdani continued to leave the impression that the matter was still under review. Only after another round of headlines questioning whether he could actually carry out his campaign pledge did he release a carefully produced two-minute video acknowledging what he had known all along: New York City cannot arrest Netanyahu.

But that admission was only the beginning of the message.

Sitting solemnly between the American and New York City flags, Mamdani declared Netanyahu “a war criminal” and called on the federal government to recognize the International Criminal Court’s warrant and arrest him instead. The video quickly exploded online, drawing more than 64 million views on X and instantly becoming one of the most widely viewed political videos of the year.

The Times reports that Mamdani personally edited the video and that it was designed to reassure his supporters that, even if he lacked the legal power to fulfill his campaign promise, he remained unwavering in his condemnation of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Rather than allowing the legal issue to define the story, he transformed it into a political statement about the Gaza genocide.

The episode illustrates Mamdani’s strengths as a communicator. Once it became impossible to sustain the idea that he had the authority to arrest Netanyahu, he reframed the issue. The story shifted from what he could not do as mayor to what he believed the United States should do as a nation.

The strategy also elevated his standing on the international left. The Times notes that the video reinforced his position as one of its leading political voices at a moment when criticism of Israel’s conduct is a global phenomenon.

The reaction was swift and deeply divided.

Supporters praised Mamdani for standing on principle. Allies argued that even without the legal authority to execute an ICC warrant, it was important for the mayor to declare where he stood. Palestinian and Jewish activists welcomed the statement while urging him to go even further.

The official pro-Israel organizations, under direction from Jerusalem, responded very differently. The UJA-Federation of New York accused Mamdani of spreading distortions and making Jewish New Yorkers feel less safe. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, dismissed the entire episode as “a stunt,” saying Netanyahu would come to New York, address the General Assembly, and not be arrested.

Mamdani also stressed that his position was not unique to Netanyahu. He said he believes arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court should be honored regardless of who they target, including Hamas leaders accused of crimes related to the October 7 attack.

And, of course, blaming Netanyahu alone isn’t quite fair. The Gaza genocide had and has the support of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli people. And, of course, of the WE STAND WITH ISRAEL lemmings here,

The larger takeaway from the Times story is not the legal question. That was settled before Mamdani ever spoke publicly about it.

The real story is political. Mamdani knew from the beginning that he could not arrest Netanyahu. He just used the inevitable legal limitation to stage a highly visible declaration of his views—one that reached tens of millions of people around the world and further established the Mayor of New York as one of the most prominent pro-Palestinian elected officials in the world.

And NYC as the Jewish capital of the world.

One state is the only way to end Israel-Palestine conflict.

For decades, I supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I believed that the two peoples could, with enough courage and international support, divide the land between them and finally live in peace. It was never going to be easy, but it seemed both morally defensible and politically achievable.

I no longer believe that.

The tragedy is not that the two-state solution was a bad idea. The tragedy is that it was systematically destroyed by the racist settler movement, which systematically stole the lands that would have composed the Palestinian state.

Every American administration, every European government, and every Israeli prime minister dutifully repeated their support for two states while Israeli settlements expanded year after year, fragmenting the West Bank into disconnected islands surrounded by Israeli roads, military installations, and expanding Jewish communities.

Meanwhile, the United States ran a “peace process” that existed only to serve Israel’s interests.

There comes a point when reality overwhelms diplomacy. We passed that point years ago, perhaps on the day an Israeli rightist assassinated Yitzhak Rabin.

Today there are essentially four possible futures.

The first is permanent occupation. Israel continues to control millions of Palestinians who lack equal political and civil rights while destroying Gaza and carrying out a campaign of violent subjugation in the West Bank. That is the present system. It has radicalized both societies, strengthened extremists, almost completely isolated Israel internationally, deepened Palestinian despair, and made anything even resembling peace more remote than ever. Under this scenario, Israel continues evolving into Netanyahuland—a state dominated by crazed nationalists and religious fanatics. And both Hamas, Hezbollah, and various spinoffs continue to threaten Israel and the Palestinians.

The second possibility is expulsion. The Israeli far right openly advocates removing Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. Others speak euphemistically about “voluntary emigration,” although everyone understands that people don’t volunteer to abandon the land where their families have lived for generations. Ethnic cleansing is not a solution. It is a crime, just like its natural successor: genocide.

The third possibility is Israel’s destruction. It is equally unrealistic and equally immoral. Seven million Israeli Jews are not going anywhere. They have built families, cities, universities, industries, and institutions over nearly eight decades.

Whatever one thinks about Zionism or Israel’s history, those human realities cannot simply be wished away. Nor can the genuine Israeli culture, which like modern Hebrew, is unique to Israel and not some subset of Judaism that will relocate. Like the Palestinians, the Israelis have no other place to go, nor would either people ever agree to go.

If those three possibilities are unacceptable, and I believe they are, only one remains.

A single democratic state in all of historic Palestine, stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with equal rights for every citizen regardless of religion or ethnicity. Those rights will include both peoples’ right of return through a normal immigration process not based on national identity although Palestinians whose families were displaced by the Nakba or ethnic cleansing campaigns since would have preference before a Jew from New Jersey!

For years, that idea was dismissed as hopelessly idealistic. It is not (especially now that Israel’s standing in the United States has collapsed since October 2023 followed by the collapse of AIPAC and its satellites, exposed as one of the most corrupt lobbies in the United States, and the ONLY significant lobby that serves the interests of a foreign government. (The NRA is pretty terrible, but the gun owners it purports to defend are Americans not, say, Brits).

I am not suggesting that Israelis and Palestinians suddenly discover they love one another. Nations are not built on affection. They are built on institutions, laws, constitutions, and shared civic obligations.

Shared citizenship does not eliminate conflict. It creates rules for managing it without perpetual war. Belgium contains multiple linguistic communities. Switzerland contains several languages and religious traditions. Northern Ireland emerged from generations of violence that many believed would never end and is moving toward a full merger with the Irish Republic. None of these societies became perfect, but each demonstrates that bitter historical enemies can eventually share political institutions if those institutions are perceived as fundamentally fair.

The first principle of a new state would therefore be very simple: every citizen is equal before the law.

That sounds obvious, but it would represent a revolutionary change.

The state would not define itself as belonging primarily to Jews or primarily to Palestinians. It would belong equally to everyone who lives there. Jewish civil rights would be fully protected. Palestinian civil rights would be fully protected. The government would derive its legitimacy from citizenship rather than ethnicity.

That is not a rejection of Jewish identity or Palestinian identity. It is an acknowledgment that modern democratic states cannot permanently privilege one national community over another when both populations occupy the same territory.

One objection immediately arises. What happens to the settlers?

My answer is that they stay. (Although I think the fanatics would leave, given that their raison d’etre (domination of Arabs) would no longer be protected by law.

Those Jewish settlers who are willing to live under the laws of a democratic state and accept that their Palestinian neighbors possess exactly the same legal rights they do would have no reason to leave. Their communities would simply become ordinary towns within a democratic country.

Likewise, Palestinians would remain where they live today. Families in Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth, and every other city or village would become citizens of the same state. Alternatively, they could live in Tel Aviv as Jews could live in Nablus.

Nobody would be uprooted because of their religion.

The new government would almost certainly build upon existing Israeli institutions (and Palestinian institutions where they have been allowed to exist). That is not because Israel has always governed justly; it plainly has not.

But because the institutional infrastructure already exists. Israel possesses courts, ministries, hospitals, universities, tax authorities, transportation systems, regulatory agencies, and a sophisticated civil service. Those institutions evolved over decades, themselves drawing upon Ottoman law, Palestinian tradition, and the legal framework established during the British Mandate before being reshaped by successive Israeli governments. They would be reshaped, and where necessary, overhauled or dismantled again.

Their mission would change from serving a Jewish state primarily to serving a democratic one.

That would require a constitution explicitly guaranteeing equality before the law, prohibiting discrimination based on religion or ethnicity, protecting freedom of speech and assembly, guaranteeing an independent judiciary, and ensuring that elections are genuinely democratic.

Religion would enjoy complete equality.

Judaism, Islam, Christianity, the Druze faith, the Baháʼí faith, and every other religion would possess equal legal status. Holy places would be protected by constitutional guarantees and administered through arrangements negotiated with the relevant religious communities. Jerusalem would cease being the exclusive capital of one people and become the shared capital of all the country’s citizens.

Language presents another challenge, but hardly an insurmountable one. Hebrew and Arabic would become coequal official languages. Government documents, courts, schools, and public services would operate in both. Millions of people are already bilingual. Millions more would become so within a generation.

Education may be the hardest challenge of all.

Children cannot be expected to build a shared future if they are taught entirely separate histories that deny the humanity of the other side. Schools would have to teach the Holocaust honestly and completely. They would have to teach the Nakba honestly and completely. Neither tragedy disappears because acknowledging it makes one community uncomfortable. Mature societies confront history rather than censor it. And they acknowledge and accept responsibility for past crimes.

The present system cannot simply continue. Israel’s Law of Return gives every Jew in the world an automatic right to citizenship while denying that same right to Palestinians displaced during the wars of 1948 and 1967 and to their descendants. It is the codification in law of the Nakba. But many Israelis view changing it as an existential threat.

The solution is neither to preserve one exclusive system nor to replace it with another.

Instead, immigration should be governed by ordinary democratic law.

The Palestinians already living in Israel, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank would automatically become citizens because they already live in the country.

Future immigration, whether by Jews, Palestinians, or anyone else, would be administered through a single immigration authority applying laws enacted by the democratic legislature. Family reunification, humanitarian admissions, refugee policy, labor migration, and naturalization would all be governed by one legal code applying equally to everyone. Like other democratic countries, immigration policy would be subject to democratic debate and legislative revision rather than ethnic preference.

That would displease ideological purists on both sides. Democracy often does.

Security remains the issue that generates the greatest skepticism.

Israeli Jews understandably fear becoming a vulnerable minority in a region that has witnessed repeated wars and terrorism. Palestinians understandably fear that Israeli security institutions would continue treating them as enemies rather than citizens.

Those fears are real.

For that reason, I do not believe a transition could succeed without substantial international involvement.

The United States, the European Union, the United Nations, NATO, and major regional powers would almost certainly have to supervise implementation, guarantee constitutional protections, monitor elections, oversee security reforms, and provide peacekeeping forces during the transition. The objective would not be permanent foreign occupation, but temporary guarantees until confidence in democratic institutions became firmly established.

Some readers will dismiss this as impossible.

But history repeatedly surprises those who mistake today’s political reality for tomorrow’s.

Apartheid in South Africa once appeared permanent.

The conflict in Northern Ireland seemed endless.

The Berlin Wall looked immovable until the day it vanished.

None of those transformations occurred because hatred disappeared. They occurred because political systems built on permanent inequality eventually exhausted themselves.

That is precisely what I believe is happening in Israel and Palestine.

The present system cannot continue indefinitely without producing ever larger explosions of violence. The Gaza genocide has already spread instability throughout the region, contributing to direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, disrupting global shipping, threatening energy markets, drawing the United States deeper into regional conflict, and increasing tensions far beyond the Middle East. What began as a conflict over one small piece of land now repeatedly threatens international peace and the world economy.

The international community, therefore, has interests that extend well beyond humanitarian concern, which impel them toward the one-state formula.

I have no illusions about the difficulty of creating such a country. It would require extraordinary political leadership, unprecedented international involvement, enormous economic investment, constitutional creativity, and, above all, courage from two peoples who have learned to fear one another more than they trust themselves.

But difficult is not the same as impossible.

The real question is whether any other future offers a better chance of allowing both peoples to live with dignity, freedom, security, and equal rights.

After decades of watching every other proposal fail, I have come to believe the answer is no.

One democratic state is not merely the most just solution that remains.

It is the only one that still makes political, moral, and historical sense.

It is also a solution many, if not most, Palestinians already favor.

Most Israelis do not, but that will change once they recognize that the United States is no longer Israel’s lifeline. Especially with AIPAC so discredited that identification with the lobby is the kiss of death for candidates.

Bottom line: the planets are in alignment for the one-state reality. There really is no alternative…except a single entity that looks the way Gaza looks now. Or much worse.

What JFK called “the peace of the grave.”

The new line coming out of an increasingly worried AIPAC is that it is no different from every other interest group seeking to influence American elections.

Here is the argument, voiced by one of AIPAC’s most loyal allies in the Senate, Cory Booker. Booker now says he will no longer accept money directly from AIPAC.

That sounds significant until you realize that, like many Democrats publicly renouncing AIPAC donations, he remains free to raise unlimited sums from wealthy individual donors who finance AIPAC's political agenda.

Booker put it this way:

“There are Iranian Americans that bundle money. There are Turkish Americans that bundle money. There are a lot of ethnic groups that bundle money, and often for things that I don’t agree with. But somehow AIPAC seems to be drawing a lot of attention, and that’s problematic to me.”

In other words, Booker argues that AIPAC is simply another ethnic lobby.

It isn’t.

The first difference is scale.

AIPAC and its closely affiliated political organizations have already poured tens of millions of dollars into the 2026 election cycle, and that figure will climb sharply before November. According to the Associated Press, AIPAC and its political network have spent more than $221 million since December 2021, making it one of the largest outside spenders in American politics.

This year alone, AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent roughly $20 million in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary to defeat Abdul El-Sayed and elect its tool Haley Stevens. (Stevens, by the way, was also its choice to defeat Congressman Andy Levin in 2022, who, although Jewish and “pro-Israel,” outraged AIPAC because he said he supported Palestinian rights.

In 2024, they spent approximately $15 million to defeat Jamaal Bowman and another $8.5 million against Cori Bush. This year, they spent about $2.3 million targeting Congressman Tom Malinowski in New Jersey, despite the absence of any major dispute beyond the fact that AIPAC simply considered him insufficiently reliable. The campaign also sent a clear message to other candidates: even politicians supportive of Israel could become targets if they deviated in any way from AIPAC's preferred positions.

These are staggering sums. The ethnic organizations Booker invoked rarely spend even a fraction of that. Most never approach $1 million in an entire election cycle. More importantly, no one has built anything remotely comparable to AIPAC’s political machine.

There is another difference.

Every foreign government that hires representatives to lobby in Washington is generally required to operate under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, disclosing its activities to the Justice Department, and is prohibited from participating directly in American election campaigns. AIPAC, however, insists it is not lobbying on behalf of Israel but merely representing Americans who support Israel. That utterly fake distinction has allowed it to operate free of the restrictions imposed on organizations representing foreign governments. The last president to challenge that claim was John F. Kennedy.

Most lobbying organizations, however controversial, advocate policies they believe benefit Americans. The National Rifle Association fights for what it defines as the gun rights of Americans. Farm groups fight for American farmers. Oil companies fight for American energy producers.

AIPAC is different. Its sole mission is to advance the interests of one foreign country. It works to ensure continued American military, diplomatic, and financial support for Israel—support that Israeli leaders themselves have repeatedly described as indispensable to their country’s security. It intervenes in American elections to reward candidates who support those objectives and punish those who do not.

Booker’s comparison also collapses under scrutiny for another reason. Egypt receives billions of dollars in American aid every year. So do numerous other allies. Yet none has built an electoral operation. Egypt is not spending a dime to elect Abdul El-Sayed, despite his Egyptian-American background. Denmark does not finance campaigns against members of Congress who support Trump’s plan to occupy Greenland.

Israel stands alone.

That is why AIPAC attracts scrutiny unlike any other lobby. The issue is not that it represents an ethnic community or that Americans who support Israel participate in politics. Every American has that right. The issue is that no other organization devoted exclusively to advancing the interests of a foreign country has amassed financial power over American elections.

Booker wants Americans to believe AIPAC is just another lobbying group.

The evidence points to the opposite conclusion. It is unique in its purpose, unique in its spending, unique in its political influence, and unique in the immunity it enjoys from the rules that govern organizations representing every other foreign government. Pretending otherwise is not an argument. It is an excuse.

Booker and others deeply ensconced in the AIPAC camp (like Josh Shapiro) will continue raising money from donors aligned with AIPAC's agenda while helping preserve the flow of American military, diplomatic, and financial support to Israel. Saying they will not directly accept AIPAC cash is as meaningless as their blaming the Gaza genocide on Netanyahu and not the country that overwhelmingly supports their prime minister’s policy toward Palestinians. It’s utterly bogus.

Note: I think AIPAC is on track to defeat El Sayad. Not only will it spend amounts the El Sayad camp can’t even touch, but they are paying for ads (run incessantly) that use clever editing and maybe AI to show President Obama endorsing Stevens. It’s a lie, made up of old clips of Obama and Stevens years ago, but voters are buying it. And, give AIPAC credit, no one other than Donald Trump lies as effectively as they do.

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Barack Obama hasn’t endorsed a Michigan Senate candidate. An AIPAC-linked group is spending millions on ads with him anyway

By CNN

David Wright

Former President Barack Obama has not endorsed in the contentious Democratic Senate primary in Michigan – but voters there could be forgiven for getting that impression.

Supporters of Rep. Haley Stevens have spent $5 million airing an advertisement nearly 4,000 times that features Obama praising her work as chief of staff for the US Auto Rescue Task Force during the 2008 financial crisis.

It’s run more than any other political ad in the Wolverine State over the last year, according to data from AdImpact. The campaign is part of a determined effort to link Stevens to the former president in a state where Black voters made up around a quarter of Democrats in the 2022 midterms and remind voters of her part in the effort to save Michigan’s iconic industry.

In the final weeks of an intense race between the more moderate Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, a former Detroit public health official hoping to build on earlier progressive victories this primary season, the ad campaign is drawing pushback from opponents who argue it could mislead voters.

“We’ve seen some examples of folks saying, ‘Oh, I thought that Obama was supporting her in this race,’ because they’ve seen these ads,” said Denzel McCampbell, a Detroit City Council member who is backing El-Sayed. “I think it is concerning for me because this may be the only time that folks are tuning into the race.”

“What are they complaining about? It’s not a lie. He did say that. So, give credit where credit is due. He’s a hot ticket,” countered Keith Williams, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus and a Stevens supporter.

Amplifying the messaging gap, outside groups backing Stevens have plowed more than $50 million total into the contest, while El-Sayed, who has sworn off corporate PAC money, has seen less than $1 million in outside advertising support.

The source of some of the ads – funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, during a Democratic reckoning over US support for Israel – is another flashpoint in the latest showdown between the party’s rising progressive insurgency and its establishment wing.

Amid questions of ideology and electability in the battleground state, the stakes in Michigan stretch well beyond the August 4 primary. The winner will face former Rep. Mike Rogers, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, in a general election Democrats almost certainly must win to have any hope of retaking the Senate.

“She was there. She was a critical part of my team that helped the American auto industry come roaring back,” Obama says in the clip, promoting Stevens’ first US House campaign. Another pro-Stevens group, which has not yet disclosed any fundraising information, is up with a similar ad, featuring the same Obama soundbite. “If President Obama trusts her, so do I,” a voiceover at the end of that ad concludes.

David Axelrod, a veteran Democratic strategist and CNN political analyst, pointed to Obama’s popularity within the party as a reason “why candidates continue to imply his support even when he hasn’t made an endorsement.”

Axelrod said the use of old campaign footage was a “shrewd” strategy, “especially in a state where as much as a quarter of the primary vote may come from African Americans.

One of the most persistent myths in American politics is that nobody really knows what democratic socialists want. Republicans insist they’re closet communists. Moderate Democrats portray them as anti-Israel obsessives and losers.

Democratic socialists themselves often speak in broad moral language about fairness, justice, and equality while leaving their long-term goals somewhat undefined.

Ross Douthat’s lengthy New York Times interview with Bhaskar Sunkara changes that. Not because Douthat catches Sunkara in some devastating contradiction, but because he gives one of America’s leading democratic socialists every opportunity to explain, calmly and at length, exactly what he believes.

The interview should be required reading for every Democrat trying to understand where one of the party’s fastest-growing factions hopes to lead it.

The first surprise is what Sunkara is not. He isn’t defending Stalin, one-party rule, or Soviet-style central planning. He repeatedly embraces constitutional rights, pluralism, competitive elections, and civil liberties, while explicitly rejecting the notion that democratic socialism requires abolishing markets. Anyone expecting a twenty-first-century Lenin comes away disappointed. But anyone expecting nothing more than a more generous version of capitalism should also rethink that assumption.

Basically, the social-democratic vision sounds like FDR’s 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th terms—if only he had not died at the beginning of his 4th.

The reason is simple. Sunkara is refreshingly honest about the destination. He repeatedly describes today’s agenda—Medicare for All, stronger unions, expanded public housing and a much larger welfare state—as reforms within capitalism, not the final objective.

The final objective comes later. Asked directly whether democratic socialism is ultimately compatible with capitalism, Sunkara answers, “In the long term, no.”

He envisions what he calls “a society without capitalism.” That exchange may be the single most important moment in the interview. For years, many Democrats have presented programs like Medicare for All as pragmatic reforms. Sunkara makes clear that, for him, they are also stepping stones toward a fundamentally different economic system.

One of the interview’s most interesting exchanges comes when Douthat presses him on the difference between markets and capitalism.

Markets, Sunkara argues, existed before capitalism and could continue to exist after it. What he rejects is private ownership of productive assets by individuals or corporations that employ workers for profit.

His preferred system would replace private ownership with worker-controlled enterprises financed through public institutions while still allowing competition and market pricing. Whether one finds that convincing or not, it is a considerably more sophisticated argument than either supporters or critics of socialism usually offer during political campaigns.

That same candor appears when the discussion turns to taxes. Near the end of the interview, Douthat asks the question politicians almost always avoid: Who is going to pay for all this?

Sunkara deserves credit for refusing to insult the audience’s intelligence. He doesn’t pretend that taxing a handful of billionaires will finance an expansive welfare state. Instead, he openly acknowledges that taxes on middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans would eventually have to rise.

His argument is that citizens would receive more valuable public benefits than they surrender in taxes. Whether voters ultimately accept that tradeoff is another matter, but at least he admits the tradeoff exists.

The interview also reveals how much today’s democratic socialist movement has become intertwined with the politics of the Gaza genocide. Sunkara argues that support for Palestinian rights flows naturally from a century of socialist opposition to imperialism and militarism.

In his telling, Israel’s overwhelming military dominance, its shift to the political right, and the devastation of Gaza have transformed the issue for younger progressives.

Douthat raises an important question: has opposition to Israel become so central that it now serves as an organizing principle for the movement itself? Sunkara never quite answers yes, but he comes remarkably close, arguing that the issue increasingly separates establishment Democrats from the Democratic Party’s emerging leadership.

He also notes the direct correlation between stances on progressive economic issues and stances on Israel.

We see that in the “Mamdani is an antisemite” movement in New York, which is funded by real estate developers, investment bankers like Goldman-Sachs, and others for whom Medicare-For-All is as scary as pro-Palestinian activism on campus.

The Manhattan rabbis who are the public voices against Mamdani happen to lead synagogues and temples whose Boards are dominated by, as Bernie would say, “millionaires and billionaires”—the very people who pay these fancy rabbis multi-million-dollar salaries.

One of the interview’s more unexpected moments comes when the conversation turns to identity politics.

Here Sunkara sounds noticeably different from many progressive activists. He argues that the left hurt itself by portraying America as fundamentally irredeemable and by framing universal economic programs primarily through the language of racial disparities rather than universal benefits.

He even expresses a desire to recover some of the optimism many Americans felt during Barack Obama’s presidency. That doesn’t make him culturally moderate. He remains firmly on the left on immigration, abortion, and LGBTQ+ rights. But he clearly believes the Democratic Party lost its way when symbolic (and often silly) cultural battles overshadowed the economic concerns that originally fueled the movement.

Housing offers another revealing example of how today’s democratic socialists differ from old stereotypes. Rather than simply attacking developers, Sunkara supports making it easier to build through upzoning and other regulatory reforms while also expanding public housing and rent stabilization.

On artificial intelligence, he rejects both utopian enthusiasm and apocalyptic panic. Instead, he argues that A.I. should be regulated while ensuring that productivity gains benefit workers and society rather than flowing almost entirely to shareholders. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly sounds less like a revolutionary than someone trying to persuade skeptical voters that socialism can govern competently.

That, ultimately, becomes Douthat’s central question. Can it?

Again and again, he pushes Sunkara away from theory and back toward the realities of governing. Can democratic socialists run cities? Can they administer police departments? Can they balance budgets? Can they win elections outside progressive strongholds? Can they survive contact with political reality?

Sunkara’s answer rests heavily on New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. If Mamdani governs successfully, he believes Americans will become far more receptive to democratic socialist ideas. If he fails, the movement’s momentum could evaporate just as quickly as it arrived. (Hence, the “he’s a Jew-hater” incitement against him).

The broader significance of the interview is that it shows how much the Democratic Party’s internal debate has changed. For decades, Democrats argued largely over tactics. Should the government be somewhat larger? Should taxes rise modestly? Should health care be expanded incrementally? Increasingly, those debates are giving way to a more fundamental question: Is capitalism itself the problem, or merely something that requires stronger regulation?

Bhaskar Sunkara leaves little doubt where he stands. Capitalism is not the destination. It is the transition. Whether Democratic primary voters fully understand that—or eventually embrace it—may determine not only the future of democratic socialism but also the future of the Democratic Party.

One thing, however, should now be beyond dispute. The democratic socialist movement is no longer speaking in hints. It is telling Americans exactly where it hopes to go. Now the country can decide whether it wants to make that journey.

The answer isn’t obvious. The electorate clearly hates centrist do-nothing centrism, but are they ready for a real alternative? And will big money allow that alternative to be presented to them at all when they control the airwaves, along with pretty much everything else.

And, no, I’m not just talking about AIPAC. They just stand out because they are so egregious about bragging about their power to destroy progressives. The real threat comes from those who don’t brag, but have quietly gone about the business of destroying progressive reform since the days of William Jennings Bryan and, more seriously, FDR.

The spectacular implosion of Graham Platner’s Senate campaign has produced exactly the conversation you would expect. Democrats are asking how someone with so many personal liabilities became their nominee in one of the country’s most important Senate races.

According to New York Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn, they’re asking the wrong question.

The more important story isn’t why Platner fell apart. It’s why he rose so quickly in the first place.

Cohn argues that Platner’s personal scandals and ultimate withdrawal should not obscure a remarkable political achievement. Before his campaign collapsed, Platner transformed himself from an unknown into a candidate who overwhelmingly defeated Maine’s Democratic establishment—including a popular sitting governor—in a state that is the opposite of a left-wing bastion.

The striking part, Cohn writes, is that Platner didn’t accomplish this by appealing to the activist left. Polling showed that as many self-described moderates supported him as well. Only a small minority of Democratic voters viewed him as “too far to the left,” even though he was embraced by progressive activists and championed policies such as Medicare for All while, like Zohran Mamdani in New York and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, openly condemning Israeli apartheid and the Gaza genocide.

Cohn argues that Platner occupied what amounts to an emerging middle ground inside today’s Democratic Party: economically populist, and aggressively anti-corporate, disdainful of political elites, but largely avoiding the cultural messaging that often dominates ideological battles within the party. He contends that this combination proved considerably broader than many Democratic strategists assumed.

That observation fits into a broader argument Cohn has been making for some time. He points to polling showing widespread dissatisfaction with America’s economic system and argues that candidates emphasizing economic populism has a larger constituency than many party leaders recognize.

Cohn also notes that Platner’s campaign differed from earlier progressive insurgencies. Unlike Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign or Zohran Mamdani’s New York coalition, Platner did not encounter the same resistance from so-called moderate Democratic primary voters. Instead, most of the opposition came from the party leadership and the donor class, while moderates appeared willing to support him.

None of this excuses what ultimately ended Platner’s candidacy. But, as Cohn makes clear, his downfall stemmed from personal conduct and allegations—not from the political message that first propelled him to victory.

Whether Democrats embrace Cohn’s analysis remains to be seen. The AIPAC wing of the party hates Platner, AOC, Mamdani, and El Sayad almost as much for their anti-corporate as their anti-Israel views. And they have the resources to destroy threats to their special interests. (I am not optimistic about El Sayad’s chances, especially after seeing the lying ads AIPAC is flooding Michigan with).

But the two lessons one should take from Platner’s rise and fall are (1) embrace the progressive message that won Platner the nomination and (2) be alot more serious about vetting who we allow to serve as the messenger.

Democrats should distinguish between Platner the candidate and Platner the political phenomenon. One collapsed because of personal failings. The other, showed the way to connect with the clear majority of Americans who are utterly disgusted by traditional politicians and centrist mush in general.*

*Did you notice the centrist Democrats in Congress praising Lindsey Graham as “someone you could work with” and “a good friend and colleague” rather than keeping silent or, better, condemning him as a lifelong supporter of the mass killing of kids, especially if they had dark skin. Good riddance.

An ICE Murder Here, And An ICE Murder There, And Pretty Soon You’re Talking About Enough ICE Murders To Incite The American People To Take To The Streets En Mass

And that’s when, just as he’s been planning to do all along, Trump declares a state of emergency or invokes the Insurrection Act. And that’s also when the music stops

Diane Stamm

Jul 14, 2026

There’s been a lot of chatter about all the havoc Trump plans to incite around the November elections, havoc being defined to include election disruptions and interventions, and even military action against We the People.

Whatever the Trump regime has in store, I suspect we are much closer to military action than is commonly thought, at least here in Washington, DC.

Here, all you have to do is understand the way the Trump regime is “fort”-ifying our public spaces and creating Fortress White House, and the unique relationship between the U.S. government and the National Guard.

It’s Fortress White House now

Previously, the street right outside the White House fence – Pennsylvania Avenue – was publicly accessible. People could snap a photo to memorialize their proximity to one of our greatest national treasures and symbol of power and good. With only a few interruptions for official guest visits and such, locals could walk right by the White House as part of our everyday lives.

Now, our country’s reputation for good is in tatters, and the White House is fenced off, and you can’t get anywhere near the place anymore. It’s all off-limits to the American people and everyone else all the way from Constitution Avenue on the south to the farthest perimeter of Lafayette Square on the north – fully 82 acres of public land – almost a mile from south to north.

In the center sits Fortress White House, protected by the grand Treasury building on the east side and the even grander Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the west. And the regime is building a huge bunker to replace the more modest but perfectly serviceable one under what used to be the East Wing, which Trump summarily and viciously ripped away from the American people and our history.

Might Trump be planning to stay after his expiration date?

The regime is either expecting something very bad, planning something very bad, or both

In any case, it’s all a great big tell that the regime is either expecting something very bad, planning something very bad, or both.

I’d bet on both.

I’d bet that the regime is planning to take actions that, cumulatively, will be so anathema and intolerable to democracy-loving people across the country, including here in Washington, DC, that they – we – We the People of the United States – will be compelled to take to the streets to protest the regime’s increasingly unacceptable, antidemocratic, anti-American actions.

The cold-blooded murder of migrants

Among those actions are the continued cold-blooded murder of migrants.

Last Tuesday, ICE agents in Houston, Texas murdered 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo – who sounded like an exemplary human being to me and exactly the kind of migrant we should be grateful to have among us. The county medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

And just yesterday, ICE agents in Biddeford, Maine murdered 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who was here legally – he reportedly had a valid work authorization and a Social Security number.

These ICE murders do not happen in a vacuum. The regime has signaled it will not only not discourage such acts, it tolerates them and appears to protect the murderers.

Just try to get an honest report out of them. They don’t even wear body cameras.¹ That, alone, signals the cover ICE offers its agents and tells you how little accountability ICE demands of its agents’ actions.

Some people self-select to be nurses, such as Alex Pretty, who was murdered by ICE agents in Minneapolis in January. Some people self-select to work for ICE.

All these murders, and the murder of Renee Good, also in Minneapolis in January, resulted in anti-ICE and anti-regime demonstrations.

Even though ICE has reportedly paused traffic-stop arrests, it almost undoubtedly remains part of the regime’s plan to continue to perpetrate extreme, outrageous acts the nature of which we have never even imagined before in our democracy.

It can’t happen here is no longer true. It’s happening here, now.

A tipping point is coming

One day, the collective outrage at the callousness and inhumanity of the regime will reach a tipping point where We the People of the United States can simply take it no longer, and we will take to the streets en masse.

The regime will use that as an opportunity to incite an incident that will be just the excuse the regime has been waiting for to declare a state of emergency or to invoke the Insurrection Act. And that will bring out the National Guard.

The president has direct command over the DC National Guard

Partly due to antiquated laws and partly due to its weak and undistinguished leadership, DC is particularly weak vis-à-vis the American government, especially in the face of a bully like Trump. Trump knows he can push us around, and he does.

Most importantly, unlike in states, where governors command their National Guard troops, the president has direct command over the DC National Guard. This means he has the immediate authority to deploy these troops, which makes DC ground zero for a regime clampdown.

Trump long ago seeded DC with National Guard troops, both to accustom the populace to the presence of the military, and to be a constant, belligerent reminder of who’s in charge.

Trump ordered the formation of a Quick Reaction Force, which is now operative in every state and in DC

Last August, Trump ordered the creation of a National Guard Quick Reaction Force (QRF) for “rapid nationwide deployment.” The QRF was created in October.^2,3

Since then, over 23,500 National Guard troops have been trained in all 50 states and DC, and in all U.S. territories with the purpose of containing civil unrest. They have been equipped with body shields, expandable riot batons, and shin guards, and they have been trained in riot control, including use of the batons, Tasers, and pepper spray for the purpose of “Crowd Control/Detainee Ops” and “Hasty Checkpoint Ops.”⁴

As Retired Army Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, a former senior Guard commander, told the Wall Street Journal, “… the creation of dedicated units for crowd control … risks blurring the military’s traditional separation from domestic politics. There is no need for this. No mission requires this.”⁵

Required or not, this means that Trump has prepositioned military assets and capabilities in every state and DC, and in every U.S. territory to be used against the American people at his command.

Special training for DC National Guard troops

At Trump’s orders, members of the DC National Guard have undergone specialized training, but instead of a standard quick reaction force, the Pentagon directed the DC Guard to form and train a specialized military police battalion dedicated to civil unrest and public safety.⁶

While, previously, there were around 2,500 National Guard troops here, the number was more than doubled to 5,150 on the excuse that they were needed to patrol July 4th festivities.

Now, you see them every day, everywhere, and their increase in number under the cover of a national holiday is an ominous sign and one that should be understood for what it is.

And what it is is a signal that the regime is planning to use them for a purpose. And that purpose has nothing to do with any democratic principle known to be extant.

Notably, last week, a Pentagon official confirmed that National Guard troops will stay activated in DC through Inauguration Day 2029, prompting neoconservative Bill Kristol to say this: “Military troops, under the direct control of Trump and Hegseth, will be on the streets of our nation’s capital for the rest of Trump’s term. The rationale they’re here to help with a crime emergency is laughable. But, of course, the real reason is ominous.”⁷

The government is opaque now, and that’s not good

One final point.

The U.S. government is opaque now, and that’s especially ominous.⁸

The regime communicates through encrypted messaging services, so information is closely held.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth barred nearly the entire Pentagon press corps from the building by imposing strict escort requirements, redesignating the press office as a classified space, and moving workspaces outside the Pentagon. He also formed a joint task force with the DOJ to prosecute media leaks.

Except for leaks, who can know what’s really happening and what steps the regime is planning to drive a stake through the heart of our democracy?

All this is unprecedented and emblematic of the dictatorship the regime is trying to impose on the United States. And DoD is not the only opaque government entity.

Ominous is the operative word

Taken together, all these factors bode very badly for Washington, DC and the country as a whole. Yes, there are millions of people exercising their First Amendment right to free speech to express opposition to the current regime.

But Trump has ice water and venom flowing through his veins.

Do not forget January 6, 2021. Who else but Trump could have instigated a mob to attack our U.S. Capitol, then sit for hours watching events unfold on TV, as Capitol and DC police were attacked viciously, and the Capitol defaced with feces and broken windows and furniture, while members of Congress and even the vice president were hunted by the mob, and belligerently refuse to call out the National Guard?

Conservative judge Michael Luttig said that in attempting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power, Trump committed “perhaps the gravest constitutional crime that a president could ever commit.”⁹

Understand that a person who can do that can do even worse. He simply does not care about this country. He cares about power and survival.

And now, Trump is feeling the heat and humiliation of failure, both nationally and internationally. Half the time he looks like a buffoon and half like an evil clown. He is an embarrassment to the country. But also a grave danger.

And he’s angry because he knows full well the House and possibly the Senate might go Democratic in November, and then the game is up for him. And he can’t let that happen and he will do whatever it takes, no matter how ruthless and no matter who and how many get hurt, to stay in power.

And have no doubts: He will take the entire country down with him if that’s what it takes. It is naïve and delusional to think otherwise.

And what happens when Trump orders out the Guard, in DC or anyplace else, and people are gunned down in cold blood?

What are we to do then?

That is the ominous cloud hanging over this country.

What are we to do then?

* * *

¹ Although late reports indicate that policy is being updated.

² https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/29/pentagon-memo-quick-reaction-forces; be sure to see the memo in the left-hand margin.

³

In My View

The Trump Regime is Moving toward a Military Dictatorship at Warp Speed Now, and Still, the American People and our Elected Representatives Sleepwalk toward the Precipice

“Revealed: Pentagon orders states’ national guards to form ‘quick reaction forces’ for ‘crowd control’ – Pentagon memo details plan to train over 20,000 national guard members across the US to carry out Trump’s order on subduing civil unrest” – The Guardian…

Read more

10 months ago · Diane Stamm

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In My View

The Quick Reaction Force Becomes Operational Today. Happy New Year!

News broke yesterday that Trump abandoned efforts to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles, reportedly motivated by last week’s Supreme Court ruling that he could not deploy troops to Chicago over the objections of Illinois officials…

Read more

8 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Diane Stamm

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In My View

The Endgame Is Declaring Martial Law and Creating the Dictatorship Trump Has Repeatedly Signaled He Craves

The endgame of the lawlessness and trampling of human rights and human life by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Control goons at the behest of the Trump regime is to create an excuse to declare martial law and the dictatorship Trump has repeatedly signaled he craves…

Read more

7 months ago · 2 likes · Diane Stamm

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⁴ https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-orders-national-guard-to-establish-quick-reaction-forces-for-civil-unrest-riots-f602b193.

⁵ https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-orders-national-guard-to-establish-quick-reaction-forces-for-civil-unrest-riots-f602b193.

⁶ https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-orders-national-guard-to-establish-quick-reaction-forces-for-civil-unrest-riots-f602b193.

⁷

For years, Hakeem Jeffries has been one of Israel’s most dependable flunkies in Congress. He has defended military aid, opposed efforts to condition assistance, and repeatedly emphasized America’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security.

Which is precisely why his “Dear Colleague” letter this week deserves close attention.

Jeffries urges Democrats to vote against Thomas Massie’s amendment, cutting off aid to Israel. But the real story is everything else he felt compelled to say.

This is not the letter of a politician who is a true believer (if he ever was one).

It is the letter of a party leader who recognizes that the political ground has shifted beneath his feet.

The most striking sentence comes almost in passing:

“American policy in the Middle East must change.”

Jeffries doesn’t stop there. He blames the “far right” Israeli government for isolating Israel internationally, severely damaging its standing in the United States, jeopardizing regional normalization, and undermining prospects for peace. He concludes bluntly:

“A major reset is necessary.”

He goes on to endorse an independent Palestinian state, calls for immediately beginning a process to achieve it, declares West Bank settlements illegal under international law, demands an end to settler violence, and insists those responsible be sanctioned and prosecuted.

Just as remarkable is what he says about military aid.

For decades, support for the ten-year Memorandum of Understanding providing Israel with American military assistance has been virtually untouchable in Democratic leadership circles. Jeffries now argues that, because Israel has an advanced economy and can finance its own sophisticated weapons, any future security arrangement should resemble those America has with other Western allies and must strictly comply with U.S. human-rights laws and values.

That is a profound departure from the assumptions that have governed the U.S.-Israel relationship for decades.

Most significant of all, he says:

“We are not whipping this vote.”

Leadership rarely abstains on an issue it considers politically settled, as all votes on Israel were until October 2023. Jeffries acknowledges there are “strongly held views throughout the Caucus” and that members will vote “in a variety of different ways.” In other words, Democratic leadership recognizes that the Democratic caucus has changed and is no longer prepared to enforce the old one-sided cash-on-the-barrel-head, AIPAC-dictated orthodoxy.

He is telling Democrats that it’s okay to vote their consciences.

Jeffries is still trying to occupy the political middle. He rejects Massie’s amendment while reaffirming Israel’s right to exist and its qualitative military edge. But that balancing act itself tells the story.

He understands that the era in which Democratic leaders could simply defend Israeli government policy without qualification is over.

This is what “the handwriting on the wall” looks like.

It doesn’t begin with leaders suddenly embracing positions they opposed yesterday.

It begins when leaders who spent years defending the old consensus start publicly explaining why that consensus has to change.

Hakeem Jeffries is still trying to slow the political tide.

But his own letter makes clear that even he knows it is unstoppable and, for his own political good, he’d better not stand in the way.

JEFFRIES LETTER:

Dear Colleague:

I write in connection with United States policy toward Israel, the Palestinian people and in the Middle East.

Consistent with the position articulated by Ranking Member of the Appropriations Committee Rosa DeLauro, Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee Greg Meeks and pro-peace organizations like J Street, I will be voting no on Republican Amendment #8 being offered to the National Security, Department of State and Related Programs Appropriations Act. As written, it is overly broad in that it prohibits or would limit the use of funds for longstanding initiatives related to humanitarian aid, refugee resettlement, peace-building and U.S. Embassy operations. In addition, the so-called Massie amendment would restrict our country’s ability to confront Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in the region who are sworn enemies of both the United States and Israel.

In my view, there are more decisive ways to achieve the urgent change necessary when it comes to the far-right Netanyahu government. Republican leaders are desperately trying to weaponize an amendment they do not support for nakedly partisan reasons. However, given the strongly held views throughout the Caucus in this important area of foreign policy, we are not whipping this vote.

Based on the extensive conversations we have had as a Caucus, there are good faith reasons that will result in Members voting in a variety of different ways with respect to the amendment. Moving forward, it is my strongly held view that for the good of Israel and the Palestinian people, American policy in the Middle East must change.

Commitment to a Just and Lasting Peace

The far-right Netanyahu government has isolated Israel from much of the world, severely damaged its standing in the U.S., jeopardized normalization efforts in the region and repeatedly undermined prospects for peace. A major reset is necessary based on two core principles.

To begin with, America’s commitment to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and homeland for the Jewish people must remain ironclad. Equally significant, the United States must strongly support the creation of an independent Palestinian state that provides dignity, respect and self-determination for the Palestinian people. A process to achieve that goal, ultimately including regional partnerships similar to the Abraham Accords, should be set into motion forthwith.

Gaza and the West Bank

There must be a complete reconstruction and modernization of Gaza. Humanitarian assistance should be surged to alleviate the suffering that Palestinian civilians have experienced as a result of the devastating war. Hamas must be disarmed and removed from power. Financial resources to support peace-building efforts between Israel and the Palestinian people should be enhanced. Economic development efforts in the West Bank and Gaza must be substantially strengthened.

As outlined in H.R. 3045, legislation I support, West Bank settlement activity and expansion is illegal under international law. The reprehensible settler violence against the Palestinian people must end. All perpetrators of this violence, settlers or otherwise, should be sanctioned and held criminally accountable.

The Future of the Memorandum of Understanding

The current 10-year Memorandum of Understanding entered into by President Barack Obama and the Israeli government in 2016 expires imminently. A meaningful change in direction is needed.

Israel has an advanced economy and is capable of paying for its own sophisticated weapons, as the Prime Minister recently acknowledged. Accordingly, any future security arrangement between our two countries should be structured consistently with defense agreements that exist with our other Western allies and strictly adhere to our human rights laws and values.

At the same time, a new security arrangement should undergird the maintenance of Israel’s qualitative military edge against Iran and other malign actors in the region. Mutually beneficial joint technology, innovation, research and further development of defensive programs like Iron Dome, Arrow and David’s Sling should be

prioritized.

Thank you for your continued leadership. I look forward to undertaking the important work we have to do together to uplift a safe and secure Israel living side by side with an independently prosperous Palestinian state.

Sincerely,

Hakeem Jeffries

Democratic Leader

THIS IS FROM THE AMERICAN PROSPECT.

When in Doubt, Moderates Veer Left

Haley Stevens espoused progressive ideas in Michigan Senate debate. That’s a familiar pattern.

by David Dayen

The debate between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens for the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat was feisty. Stevens, who is behind in the polls, was desperate to deliver a set of well-rehearsed attack lines about El-Sayed not releasing his taxes, wanting to be a “celebrity” through podcasts and speaking engagements, doing nothing to boost Kamala Harris in the 2024 election (this one isn’t true; El-Sayed endorsed and campaigned for Harris), and having his father-in-law run a super PAC on his behalf. (For the record, the father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, has put in $200,000 for a modest digital ad and direct mail campaign; Stevens has more than $30 million in support from super PACs in this campaign, including more than $7 million from AIPAC’s super PAC.)

El-Sayed stayed on the issues that have animated his campaign, exemplified by the slogan “Get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, and Medicare for All.” He returned to the theme again and again in saying that status quo politics and status quo politicians like Stevens were inadequate to the challenges facing the country.

What I found more interesting were the relatively rare moments when Stevens wasn’t avoiding questions to launch her attacks. Because when that happened, she said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed and has made Jewish people less safe, that ICE is out of control and agents must be held criminally accountable, that America needs paid family leave, that billionaires should pay higher taxes, that data centers should be forced to pay utility and water bills for individuals, that the Social Security payroll tax gap should be scrapped, that Social Security Administration workers should be rehired, and that she would “stand up for the little guy.”

It’s not that I believe much, or maybe any, of this. Stevens is an ideological moderate who would slot in as a reliable vote for Chuck Schumer’s policy agenda if he manages to drag her across the finish line. She opportunistically capitalized on Netanyahu calling her out by name in a CNN interview, but her standing with pro-Israel donors, who helped her keep her House seat to the tune of $5 million in a member-on-member race against Andy Levin in 2022, is undisputed.

What’s more interesting is that the last refuge of Democratic candidates who face defeat is to veer to the left. Scrapping the Social Security cap is a Bernie Sanders policy. So is taxing billionaires.

This trip to the left has a long history. Al Gore decided in 2000 at the Democratic convention to make his presidential race about “the people versus the powerful,” after falling behind. Obama made his somewhat uncomfortable turn to populism in 2012 when it looked as if Mitt Romney might win. Frequently this campaign season, super PACs backing candidates with big dollars paint them as taking on ICE.

The Michigan race this year is sometimes characterized as part of a larger battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. If that’s the case, judging from Stevens’s words the progressive side has already won.

The reason it’s not believable coming from Stevens is because of the points El-Sayed has elevated in his campaign, to great effect: The same promises from the same politicians buoyed by the same money is not going to lead to different results. El-Sayed is focused on money in politics because it’s a good heuristic for how to assess candidates whose ideas and promises have begun to converge. In this telling, getting money out of politics is a key to unlocking every policy door.

“I think we need to think differently. That means standing up to Wall Street, not taking their money to fund your campaigns,” El-Sayed said last night. “As long as we are taking money from those corporations then we are not going to regulate them.”

The old era exemplified by legendary California Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh saying that politicians have to be able to “take their money and then vote against them” is impossible to square with the last two decades of political stasis and small-ball solutions when the money is brought to bear. I wish it were different, but it’s not. In the end, El-Sayed has simplified the stakes, in his race and in Democratic politics: Do you want a candidate who is bought, or not?

A remarkable report by Lisa Lerer in The New York Times, reinforced by additional reporting from Haaretz and Reuters, describes an incident that would have been almost unimaginable only a few years ago. It is also one more piece of obviously unnecessary evidence that something has gone profoundly wrong with Israel.

Representative Ro Khanna of California, a progressive Democrat openly considering a 2028 presidential campaign, was touring Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank when armed Israeli settlers surrounded his vehicle, blocked the road, taunted him and prevented him from leaving for well over an hour. The target was not Palestinian children, Palestinian activists, foreign journalists or United Nations officials. It was a member of the United States Congress.

According to The New York Times, Khanna and his staff became trapped after armed settlers blocked the narrow road leading out of the abandoned Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta. The settlers shouted insults in Hebrew and Arabic and kicked the tires of their minibus. Khanna later described the weapons in even starker terms.

“Israeli settlers, brandishing American-made M4s, detained me and other Americans on my trip to Palestine,” he wrote on X.

Speaking to Reuters, Khanna said, “These hoodlums come in with machine guns—M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.”

According to both The New York Times and Haaretz, Khanna says Israeli soldiers arrived but sided with the settlers rather than clearing the road. His aide said the group appealed to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem before Israeli police eventually intervened and allowed them to leave.

Khanna’s reaction was revealing. “I felt powerless in that situation,” he told The Times. “Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes.”

Israel, of course, disputes parts of the account. An Israeli security official told Haaretz that Khanna had failed to coordinate his visit with Israeli authorities and therefore had not been provided security.

That explanation, however, misses the larger point. Whether Khanna coordinated the visit with the IDF is irrelevant. The issue is that armed settlers apparently felt comfortable enough to surround and effectively detain a sitting American congressman carrying out an official visit, while the military’s reaction was not to protect the American lawmaker but to accommodate the settlers. That is extraordinary.

The larger political significance may be even greater. For generations, ambitious American politicians traveled to Israel to demonstrate solidarity with America’s closest ally in the Middle East. Such visits were practically mandatory for anyone with presidential ambitions. Now the politics have been turned upside down.

As Lisa Lerer observes, Democratic presidential hopefuls are increasingly traveling to Israel and the West Bank not to demonstrate support for Israeli policy but to sharpen their criticism of it. Khanna said what he witnessed would shape both his politics and any future presidential campaign.

“I have something unique to offer about the injustices of Palestinians,” he told The Times. “I’m going to go to every corner of America... and tell their stories.”

Reuters quoted him even more bluntly: “If you’re unwilling to speak up for Palestinian human rights, if you’re unwilling to speak up against the genocide in Gaza, the apartheid in the West Bank, then you are morally compromised.”

The political significance is undeniable. These are no longer fringe views inside the Democratic Party. They are increasingly being voiced by politicians with national ambitions. And even by the Republican Vice President who clearly is betting that being seen on Team AIPAC is a loser among Republican primary voters. (He is willing to allow the new Governor General of Venezuela, Marco Rubio, to wear the mantle of Israel alongside his Liberator of Cuba uniform.

The numbers tell the same story. Reuters, citing Ipsos polling, reports that Israel’s favorability among Democratic voters has collapsed from 59 percent in 2018 to just 22 percent this past May.

For decades, bipartisan American support was one of Israel’s greatest strategic assets. Today, Israel is systematically dismantling that consensus through its own actions.

Khanna himself said the trip convinced him that even a two-state solution would require removing “a lot of violent settlers.”

“The on-the-ground reality is so much more brutal and hard and difficult,” he told The New York Times.

Israel today has alienated the very American political coalition that sustained it for generations. Every incident like this reinforces the growing conviction among Democrats and some Republicans that supporting today’s Israel—and any association with AIPAC—has become the third rail of American politics.

Perhaps the most revealing line came at the end of Khanna’s interview. Offering what he called “free advice” to Israel, he joked: “It’s not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates. Not how you’re going to build goodwill with the next American president, whoever that is.”

It was a joke, but it was also a warning. For years Israel has acted as though American support was permanent and unconditional. If armed settlers now feel confident enough to intimidate members of Congress—and if Israeli authorities appear unable or unwilling to stop them—that is not a sign of national confidence. It is a sign that a country has lost its grip. And its sense of limits.

Meanwhile, most non-Israeli Jews, along with the brave Israeli left, can hardly believe what the Israeli government and its enablers here have done, and alternate between rage and shame. These people are not us. And Jews only in name.

Here is what I think.

The Trump administration is preparing for a far more authoritarian (and violent) phase once the November election is behind it. And it anticipates the possibility that Americans, encouraged by the growing leftwing caucus in Congress, could react by taking to the streets in large numbers and march on Washington, and particularly the White House.

The administration believes it has as little as two years to consolidate its racist and anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional agenda before political realities catch up with it. That would explain why it is fortifying the White House, erecting security barriers, and, by Trump’s own account, constructing underground bunkers beneath the now-demolished East Wing.

I struggle to find another convincing explanation for these extraordinary “security measures.” This is not simply another exercise in gilding the White House or remaking it according to Trump’s revolting taste. If that were the goal, we would be seeing marble and gold, not barricades and bunkers.

To me, these preparations point to their expectation of serious domestic unrest and a determination to insulate the presidency from it. If the administration is planning actions after November that it expects will provoke widespread public opposition, then these fortifications would make sense. They are preparing for the possibility that Americans will resist in large numbers.

One thing is certain: they will deliver reasons for mass resistance. Less likely is that we, the American people, will do anything more organized than hold random “No Kings” rallies at random intersections.

But one never knows. They are taking no chances.

FROM WASHINGTON POST

Trump officials propose fencing off public spaces outside White House

The administration hopes to permanently fence Lafayette Square next year as a security measure. Fencing Pennsylvania Avenue is also under consideration.

July 10, 2026 at 4:29 p.m. EDTToday at 4:29 p.m. EDT

People gather on a section of Pennsylvania Avenue on July 4, 2021. The planned fencing would give officials more control over this space. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

By Dan Diamond

The Trump administration is seeking to permanently fence Lafayette Square — the public park across from the White House, where tourists and protesters often congregate — as officials say they are seeking to balance Americans’ access to the famous grounds with the need to protect the president, according to a proposal released Friday afternoon.

Under the plan, which was jointly crafted by the Secret Service, the White House and the Interior Department, officials laid out two options that they say would allow them to quickly close the park if they identify a security risk. The fences would be eight to nine feet tall and would replace the current “piecemeal” system of relying on temporary fences and bollards, the proposal says. It also says that the Secret Service anticipates “phased implementation” of the fences next year.

“The objective is to enhance long-term safety, preserve the park’s identity as a significant [National Park Service] landscape, and maintain public access to this nationally symbolic space,” according to the administration’s proposal, which was posted to the Commission of Fine Arts’s website. The commission is set to review the proposal Thursday.

The White House and the Secret Service did not immediately respond to questions about the proposal on Friday afternoon. Administration officials have said they are reassessing White House security after repeated threats to President Donald Trump, including a shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner in April.

The plan also says the administration is considering building new fences where Pennsylvania Avenue NW intersects 15th and 17th streets NW outside the White House, but it offers few details.

The White House and Secret Service would also be able to close those new fences and prevent pedestrian access in front of the White House if they determine there are security risks, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

Some activists also said they worried about a chilling effect on free speech if new fences are installed around the White House.

“Lafayette Park and Pennsylvania Avenue are critical for First Amendment activity,” said Melissa Byrne, a progressive activist who has helped organize demonstrations outside the White House. “These changes remove all real sight and sound access. It also hinders the tourist experience.”

The idea of a permanent fence around Lafayette Square was privately discussed during the first Trump administration, including when protesters thronged the park in the days after the death of George Floyd in May 2020, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal administration conversations. After protesters breached temporary fences around the White House complex, Trump was briefly taken to the White House’s underground bunker for security.

Friday’s proposal also calls for repaving Lafayette Square, saying that the current pavers can come loose too easily and could be used as “projectiles” during periods of unrest.

The White House has long relied on temporary barriers, staffed by Secret Service personnel, to shut down Lafayette Square and Pennsylvania Avenue to pedestrians. Secret Service officials have previously suggested building permanent fences around Lafayette Square and on Pennsylvania Avenue but faced resistance from past administrations over the perception of restricting public access to the White House, the people said.

s

Antizionism is a whole other thing, except when it is used as a cover for antisemitism, which definitely is a reality on the crazy fringes of right and left—but not in mainstream politics by, say, candidates who want to defund Israel and treat it like any other foreign country.

By the way, the term antisemitism is not a generalized term about Semitic people in general.

The history of the word itself makes its meaning clear. When German publicist Wilhelm Marr coined and popularized the term Antisemitismus in Germany in 1879, he was not creating a general label for hostility toward all “semitic” peoples.

He was trying to give anti-Jewish prejudice a modern, pseudo-scientific, racial veneer. Marr argued that Jews constituted a distinct and dangerous race whose influence threatened Germany, and he deliberately chose “Semite” as a racial category to replace older religious language about Jews.

Arabs played no role in his writings or political campaign. His organization was called the League of Antisemites, and its sole purpose was opposition to Jews. The word’s etymology may seem broader than its meaning, but its origin leaves little doubt that its creator intended it to refer specifically to hostility toward Jews, not Arabs.

FROM THE JEWISH FORWARD by Seth Rogovy. The Forward, which is free and relies on donations, is a very good newpaper.

He was a shy, retiring, Jewish record store manager. How did he come to manage the world’s biggest rock band?

By Seth Rogovoy

July 7, 2026

Brian Epstein was a most unlikely candidate to discover the Beatles playing in a subterranean music club in Liverpool and manage them toward becoming the biggest pop-rock band in the universe. The somewhat shy and retiring record store manager and classical music aficionado was convinced by an employee to join him during a lunch break to walk over from his family-owned NEMS record shop to the Cavern Club, where he stood out for his age (he was 27; the group’s oldest musician, John Lennon, was 21 and the crowd consisted largely of teenagers), his outfit (a formal suit and tie), and his mature deportment.

But despite being a fish out of water in the grungy club and with no experience working with musicians, within just a few weeks of getting to know the members of the Fab Four, Epstein signed them to a management deal for the purposes of getting them gigs, attracting a record deal, and freeing the foursome from business and logistical concerns. Along the way, Epstein cleaned them up, convincing them to trade their leather outfits for suits and ties, to all cut their hair in the same bowl-cut style that garnered them the nickname “mop-tops,” and to stop eating, smoking and cursing out the audience while performing.

Who was this character, and why did the Beatles put their trust in him?

The 5th or 6th Beatle

Brian Samuel Epstein was born on Sept 19, 1934, which happened to be Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, when Jews traditionally fast and spend the day in synagogue in an annual ritual of atonement. In some small but significant way, atonement would prove to be one of the themes of Epstein’s short, enigmatic life.

Brian’s paternal grandfather, Isaac Epstein, emigrated from Lithuania to Manchester, England, in 1894. He eventually moved to Liverpool, where he opened a furniture shop. The family expanded the business by taking over a nearby shop called North End Music Stores, which became the famous NEMS chain of furniture and record stores. Paul McCartney’s father once bought a piano from NEMS, and teenage Paul — along with his pals John Lennon and George Harrison — often went to NEMS to hear the latest pop and rock ‘n’ roll records from America.

Isaac Epstein’s son Harry married a woman named Malka Hyman (hence her nickname, “Queenie,” as “Malka” is Hebrew for queen), and the two became “prominent and popular members of the largest Jewish community outside London.” Brian and his younger brother Clive were raised in a household that kept a kosher kitchen and had weekly Shabbat dinners.

After briefly attending RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, where he had hopes of becoming an actor, Brian Epstein returned to Liverpool and went to work for his father, managing the NEMS record outlet.

As Beatles biographer Philip Norman recounts in Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles, Brian led something of a double life from a young age. He was gay at a time when engaging in homosexual activity was against the law as well as frowned upon socially. Epstein lived his gay life mostly in the shadows, attracted as he was to anonymous trysts with “rough trade,” which could and often did wind up with him getting into trouble with the law as well as being beaten up, robbed, or blackmailed. To make things worse, Epstein was a heavy drug user and drinker who combined alcohol and sleeping pills, and he was hospitalized several times for depression and drug abuse.

Nevertheless, Epstein steered the Beatles to fame and fortune, first in England, then in America, and then all around the world. He was tenacious in trying to score them a record deal in London. Bringing them to the attention of Parlophone staff producer George Martin proved to be auspicious. Although Martin had previously specialized in recording comedy records, he saw something in the Fab Four (who, at least in their early years, were something of a comic group — or at least John Lennon fancied them as such) that was distinctive and showed promise. Martin convinced the upper brass at EMI, which owned Parlophone, to take a flyer on the group. The pairing of Martin and the Beatles would prove as significant as anything Epstein did for them, and when talking about “who was the fifth Beatle?” the only honest answer is both Epstein and Martin (or one was the fifth and the other the sixth — take your pick). Martin’s influence on the Beatles’ musical development and his support of their more experimental tendencies in the recording studio would prove to be an essential ingredient in their magical mixture.

A genteel and not-so-genteel antisemitism

In early 1963, a Jewish Londoner named Helen Shapiro was one of the biggest pop stars in England. Epstein got the Beatles attached to a nationwide tour headlined by Shapiro, which wound up laying the groundwork that would evolve into the full-fledged Beatlemania that would erupt by the end of the year. By early 1964, Epstein convinced American TV variety host Ed Sullivan to have the Beatles appear as guests on his weekly program for three consecutive weeks, lighting the fire of Beatlemania in the U.S., on their way to total domination of the world’s airwaves.

Epstein also worked with Jewish-American concert promoter Sid Bernstein to get the Beatles booked at Carnegie Hall in New York City and later at Shea Stadium, for two massive concerts in 1965 and 1966. In the meantime, Epstein hooked up the Beatles with Dick James (born Isaac Vapnick) for the purposes of creating Northern Songs, a publishing company for their original compositions. Epstein also midwifed the Beatles entrance into moviemaking, making a deal with United Artists to make several films, including A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, both directed by American-born filmmaker Richard Lester (born Richard Lester Liebman). Lester, like George Martin, had previously worked with Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, two of the Beatles’ favorite comedians.

For Epstein, it was not always smooth sailing. It was a time when a kind of genteel (and not-so-genteel) antisemitism permeated British life and culture, a time when the words “Jewboy” and “Yid” came tripping off the tongue. When Paul McCartney told his father that the Beatles were thinking of partnering with Brian Epstein, pere McCartney replied, “Jews are good with money,” leaving it to our imagination if this betrayed antisemitism or was meant as a compliment.

Even with his commercial and financial success, Epstein found certain doors closed to him. According to Norman, “As a permanent London base, [Epstein] favored the city’s two most exclusive neighborhoods, Knightsbridge and Belgravia, but for him, as he well knew, it wouldn’t be just a question of studying an estate agent’s brochure and requesting a viewing. Antisemitism flourished nowhere more vigorously than among those elegant white squares, many of whose ritzier apartment blocks made clear without stating explicitly they did not welcome Jews.” Brian recounted the anti-Jewish taunting he fell victim to in school in his memoir, writing, “even now [antisemitism] lurks around the corner in some guise or other.”

No one was crueler to Epstein about being Jewish and gay than John Lennon, who, although perhaps best known for singing about peace and love, could be violent and cruel to those closest to him. Norman writes that Lennon treated Brian “abominably, at one minute sarcastically over-reverential, at the next blisteringly rude to his face about his clothes, his hair, his accent, his sexuality, even his religion.” When Epstein hired Tony Barrow to be the Beatles’ press agent, Lennon asked him (with Epstein within earshot), “If you’re not Jewish and you’re not queer, what are you doing working for Brian?” And when Epstein asked the band members what he should call his memoir, Lennon replied, “Queer Jew.”

Nevertheless, when Cynthia Lennon gave birth to Julian, the Lennons asked Epstein to be the boy’s godfather. And immediately following Julian’s birth, Lennon and Epstein went on holiday together for two weeks in Spain, where it has long been assumed the two of them had sexual relations of some sort.

When the Beatles decided to retire from touring in 1966, Epstein was left wondering what remained for him to do for them, since so much of his work had revolved around booking concert tours and negotiating deals. With the focus of the Beatles work now dedicated to the recording studio, Epstein spiraled. His drinking and drug use, as well as his expensive gambling habit, grew to epic proportions. He was found dead in his bed on August 27, 1967, at the age of 32. Surrounding him in bed were items of correspondence, the script for the Yellow Submarine animated film, and a novel called The Rabbi by Noah Gordon. Published in 1965, the American author’s debut was an instant hit, spending 26 weeks on The New York Times’ bestseller list.

An inquest ruled that Epstein died from an “incautious” drug overdose. On Oct. 17, a memorial service for Epstein was held at the New London synagogue in Abbey Road, attended by the Beatles, Cilla Black, George Martin, Dick James, and members of the Finchley Jewish Youth Club, for which Brian had served as president. Writes Norman, “The Beatles wore black paper yarmulkes which kept slipping off their shaggy hair.”