A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
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Jared Kushner and the Award That’s Not Good for the Jews |
By David Corn March 12, 2024 |
Jared Kushner with then-President Donald Trump at a conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2017. Evan Vucci/AP |
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“Is it good for the Jews?” For many years, we American Jews have asked this question about events in the world, in both serious and self-mocking fashion. (“Did you hear there’s a new butcher opening up in town?” “Yes, but is it good for the Jews?”) In recent months, I’ve been party to conversations when this phrase has been used in as-serious-as-it-gets fashion related to the war in Gaza. Israel’s horrific bombing campaign that has caused the tragic deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and devastated that community—launched in response to Hamas’ horrific assault on Israeli civilians—has not been good for American Jews. It has triggered a rise in antisemitism and intensified the conflation (sometimes purposeful, sometimes not) of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
While many Jews here have long considered their support for the Jewish state a crucial component of their Jewish identity, the appalling actions of the far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—which have prompted reasonable accusations of war crimes—have caused tremendous anguish. Not in my name—or in my religion—some want to scream, as they see the images of destruction and death emerging from Gaza.
It’s hard to peer into the future and see where this leads. Will Netanyahu’s war make Israel a pariah state for much of the world? How will Israel’s annihilation of Gaza and its continued blocking of humanitarian aid affect attitudes elsewhere toward Jewish people? Will the ongoing reign of right-wing fundamentalists in Israel—some of whom openly call for the elimination of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank—worsen conditions for Jews in the United States and other nations? Such extremism might even threaten the long-term existence of Israel itself. After all, how long could it last as an apartheid-like state?
These are big and troubling questions. And they cannot be set aside by sticking with a reflexive position in support of Israel. In his recent Atlantic piece, Franklin Foer explores how the Gaza war has led to an increase in antisemitism in the United States not only among right-wing racists but within progressive communities, such as college campuses, and he fears this could signal the end of the Golden Age for Jews in America. Perhaps. There certainly is much to work out here, as American Jewish liberalism clashes with Israel’s abhorrent counterattack and is challenged by assaults from the left and the right.
Yet within this whirl, I did spot a clear instance of an American Jewish action that is bad for the Jews. This past week, the Anti-Defamation League, the leading crusader against antisemitism in the United States, bestowed an award upon Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump.
The ADL honored Kushner for his work as a Trump White House official negotiating the so-called Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—and set the stage for a similar deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia (which was placed on hold following October 7). This diplomatic achievement was fine. Under the agreement, Israel could engage in commerce, tourism, and cultural exchanges with these Arab states. Trump, Kushner, and their pals hailed the accords as a breakthrough that would bring peace to the region. But these pacts left out a key element: the Palestinians. The accords did not mention them and included nothing to address the fundamental source of conflict in the region: the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian standoff. (Naturally, Palestinians across the Mideast protested the accords.) In overselling these deals, Trump and Kushner ignored the problem at the heart of the never-ending crisis. That did not help.
When it handed him a trophy, the ADL was rewarding Kushner for phony triumphalism and endorsing the misleading narrative he and Trump have pushed regarding their supposedly successful efforts in the Middle East. But this award was ridiculous for another reason: Kushner helped elect to the White House a man who has not been good for the Jews.
Trump has a long-documented record of promoting antisemitic tropes and hanging with antisemites. The list of his antisemitic remarks is long. (Here’s one compiled by the Washington Post in 2022.) Trump has repeatedly suggested that American Jews have dual loyalty to Israel and the US. Speaking to a group of Jewish Republicans, he referred to Netanyahu as “your prime minister,” and he accused Jews who didn’t vote for him of not loving “Israel enough.” In one interview, he commented, “People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel.” He has blasted billionaire philanthropist George Soros as a leader of “global special interests,” adopting the rhetoric of antisemites. This past September, Trump disseminated on social media a post that excoriated “liberal Jews” for voting “to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives!” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, declared Trump’s post was “dangerous and wrong.”
And let’s not forget that during Thanksgiving week in 2022 Trump supped at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West after the rapper had made highly publicized antisemitic comments. Also at the table was white nationalist Nick Fuentes, a Hitler fanboy. (Trailing Trump for years has been the unconfirmed report that he owned a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and occasionally read Hitler’s speeches.)
Moreover, Trump has legitimized and advanced the politics of racism and hate, in which antisemitism can thrive. And Kushner, a key Trump aide during the 2016 campaign, is as responsible as anyone for helping him attain power. As for Kushner himself, besides neglecting the Palestinian issue as Trump’s envoy in the Middle East, he has been a devoted fan and defender of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the murderous and ruthless leader of Saudi Arabia implicated in the brutal 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. After the Trump presidency ended, Kushner received $2 billion in funding for his new private equity venture from the Saudi investment fund controlled by MBS.
Speaking at the ADL conference where he was honored, Kushner told the crowd of thousands, “You can think whatever you like about Donald Trump, but he’s not an antisemite.” Kushner, who is Jewish, added, “He blessed my wife converting to Judaism. He wore a yarmulke at our wedding.” And Greenblatt defended honoring Kushner by noting, “I really don’t care how you vote, but the Abraham Accords are a groundbreaking achievement.”
An achievement that missed the mark, as I explained above. But beyond giving Kushner a gold star for these pacts, the award normalized him and, by extension, Trump. As Peter Dreier wrote in the Forward, “That’s a misstep both because Trump has consistently emboldened those who hate Jews, and because the Israel-Hamas war has revealed the flaws endemic to Kushner’s approach to Middle East policy as a top Trump aide.” The headline on his article: “By honoring Jared Kushner, ADL suggests Trump is now kosher—and betrays its founding values.”
In the post-10/7 stretch, Greenblatt has spurred questions about whether the ADL has strayed from its core mission, as he has slammed media coverage of Israel’s bombing of Gaza and pushed the noxious notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. This has caused some staffers and others to complain the nonprofit was undermining its counter-extremism work. And in November, Greenblatt oddly praised billionaire alt-right bad-boy Elon Musk for his supposed “leadership in fighting hate”—after Musk’s own brushes with antisemitism. (Greenblatt apparently did so because Musk said the “from the river to the sea” slogan used by advocates for Palestinians implied “genocide.”) This all makes it seem that Greenblatt is equating defense of Israel with combatting antisemitism.
Whatever is happening within the ADL, hailing Kushner—as Trump runs for reelection on an amped-up agenda of bigotry and extremism—sends the wrong signal. When a leading Jewish organization embraces a top adviser of a racist demagogue who has winked at antisemitic conspiracy theories and promoted illiberalism, division, and prejudice, that is bad for the Jews. |
I know that like me you probably are besieged daily with emails from nonprofit groups, political candidates, and others declaring that they are facing dire financial circumstances and they need you to donate RIGHT NOW. Or else it could be kaput! I’m not going to push the fright button here, but I would like to share with you a fact: Our Land needs more premium subscribers. Across the entire media universe at this moment, readership and viewership are mostly down. (This is true particularly for right-wing websites.) And there’s been a small but noticeable trailing off in premium subscriptions for Our Land.
What does this mean for you? Folks on the business side of this enterprise want to discuss with me what they call “options.” This means fiddling around with the product to entice more people to plunk down a few bucks a month for the premium edition. Many people only subscribe to the free version. (And I thank you all.) But those who pay for the full Our Land get the complete shebang (more content, culture reviews, the interactive Mailbag, MoxieCam™, and other features). More important, they keep this enterprise afloat—and make it possible for the rest of you to receive the limited offering. Yet if not enough subscribers pony up, then the whole venture could be at risk.
Thus, the business pooh-bahs have suggested considering a list of “options.” Most of these include cutting back on the content in the limited edition. That could mean providing only a few paragraphs of the opening item as a tease, hoping that prompts readers to sign up for the premium version. It might also entail entirely ending the limited version after a trial period—or just sending out an issue every few weeks or once a month to non-premium subscribers. The bottom-line: giving you non-premium Our Landers less.
That runs against my own instinct. I take pride in what I write, and I want as many people to read it as possible. I enjoy residing within a wide Our Land universe. But I understand what the suits are saying. (Actually, none of them wear suits.) So who will decide what we do? In a way, you will. If we can bulk up premium subscriptions—which means you non-premies sign up—we can keep going as is. If not, we might have to try one of the “options.” This not quite a “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll shoot this dog” situation. But we do need you.
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The Next Our Land Get-Together: March 20 |
One perk for premium subscribers is that they can attend Our Land Zoom get-togethers. These sessions have been fun. We gather in our boxes and talk (or commiserate) about the events of the day, week, month, or century. I hope soon to bring in some special guests. The way it works is that on the day of the gathering we send out a Zoom link to premium subscribers only. All you have to do is hit the link at the right time. The next one will be on March 20 at 8 p.m. ET. So please join me and your fellow Our Land readers for an evening of good chat and camaraderie. Hint, hint: If you’re not a premium subscriber, there’s plenty of time to sign up and receive the invitation.
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The Watch, Read, and Listen List
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Criminal Record. I’m not a big fan of police procedurals. Not a Law & Order aficionado, nor a CSI (name the city) devotee. My last love affair with TV cops was The Wire, which remains one of the all-time great television series. All that said, I fell for Apple TV+’s Criminal Record. This show pits new cops against old cops. A young London detective named June Lenker, a Black woman, comes across a tip phoned in anonymously by a domestic abuse victim that suggests a Black man convicted and imprisoned years ago for brutally murdering his girlfriend might have been innocent. It’s an awkward lead, since it means the coppers who cracked that case could be rotten. And the head of that team, Daniel Hegarty, is now a top commander in the force.
What ensues is a delicious cat-and-mouse game between Lenker (Cush Jumbo) and Hegarty (Peter Capaldi). And it plays out in the unsettled atmosphere of a metropolitan police force with a reputation for abuse that is undergoing long needed reforms to address DEI and social justice concerns.
Hegarty and his old-timer mates are none too happy with what’s going on within the department, and they certainly resent the poking around by this young cop of color. Hegarty pulls strings to get her off the case, and his buddies mount schemes to intimidate Lenker. Still, she persists—even though her obsession with this case places strain upon her marriage to a psychiatrist, a white guy. With his thick Scottish accent, Capaldi, who once played Dr. Who, casts a brooding presence across the series. At times, Hegarty appears to have a conscience that separates him from his anti-woke chums. Then again, maybe he doesn’t. When shit happens, is it because of the racism that underlies this case (and much of everything), or is it just because shit happens? The series does a wonderful job of not providing easy answers and keeping a viewer on his or her toes through all eight episodes.
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The Smoke in Our Eyes, James Grady. James Grady is best known as the accomplished crime and thriller author who gave us the 1974 classic Six Days of the Condor. (The title was cut in half when director Sydney Pollack turned it into a movie starring Robert Redford). Since then, he’s written over a dozen hard-boiled novels of noir and espionage. One of my favorites is Mad Dogs, a rip-roaring tale about troubled CIA operatives who have been institutionalized in a secret facility and who must break out to avoid being framed for a murder.
Grady is an old friend, who helped my own tiny career as a fiction writer by inviting me to contribute to an anthology of crime short stories, Unusual Suspects. My addition to the volume, “My Murder,” as well as Grady’s, was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award. We both lost. But he has accrued many accolades and honors for his ever-expanding body of work.
Grady’s new novel, The Smoke in Our Eyes, is something of a mystery story, but much different than his previous work. The tale, drawn from his childhood in Montana, is set in a Big Country small town in 1959. The protagonist is 10-year-old Lucas Ross, and he’s faced with a most fundamental mystery: understanding the world of adults. There’s lots to fathom. His sister is involved in an accident that kills a local teenager. His friendship with an indigenous teen brings about his first encounter with racism. His father’s job as manager of a local trucking company may be endangered. And a new teacher tries to widen his horizons. In this lovely novel, Grady nails the difficult task he assumed: writing from the perspective of a child whose eyes are being opened to several of the harsh realities of life. Lucas’ cosmos is compact but it’s all he knows, and Grady brilliantly shares it with us.
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Read Recent Issues of Our Land |
March 9, 2024: Trump’s back on top, and this is not fine; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Mark Robinson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
March 5, 2024: The threat to democracy from white rural rage; the common flaw of Maestro and Napoleon; Tierney Sutton’s jazzy take on the racial wealth gap; and more.
March 2, 2024: Barbara McQuade on disinformation in 2024; Richard Lewis, RIP; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Tommy Tuberville); the Mailbag; MoxieCam; and more.
February 27, 2024: The new “It Can Happen Here” project; the darkness of True Detective: Night Country; and more.
February 24, 2024: The racism is the point; the Smirnov affair; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
February 21, 2024: The great forgotten betrayal of the Trump years; the fifth season of Fargo gets political; the Black Keys get funky; and more.
February 17, 2024: A refresher on Trump’s porn-star/hush-money case; a farewell message from Alexei Navalny; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Jared Kushner); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
February 13, 2024: Joe Biden’s age and how the media covers it; The Greatest Night in Pop lives up to its title; Slow Horses and For All Mankind and the challenge of producing high-quality television; and more.
February 10, 2024: Biden or Trump and the memory hole; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Marjorie Taylor Greene); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. February 6, 2024: Joy Reid and a civil rights love story; a new biography of Lou Reed; and more.
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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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