Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee pushed through a voucher program in 2019 that was limited to two counties, Shelby and Davidson, which are where the two biggest cities, Memphis and Nashville, are located. A third county, Hamilton, was added this year. Under his leadership, Tennessee joined Arkansas and other red states in expanding vouchers.
Now Governor Lee wants to expand vouchers to every county in the state and to remove income limits. Florida and other states have enacted this program, known as universal vouchers.
There are two certain results of universal vouchers:
1. They are very expensive to the state. Most of the students who obtain them are already enrolled in private and religious schools. The state assumes responsibility for subsidizing the tuition of parents who can afford to send their child to private schools. The parents now paying $25,000-30,000 annually will be happy to collect $7,000-8,000 from the state.
2. The public school students who use them fall behind their public school peers because they attend religious schools or low-quality schools (not elite private schools) that do not have certified teachers. Michigan State University Professor Josh Cowen, who has spent two decades as a voucher researcher, has written that the academic impact of vouchers on these students is worse than pandemic learning loss.
A legal challenge to Tennessee’s private school voucher law is back on track after a state appeals court ruled that a lower court erred in dismissing the case.
The three-judge Court of Appeals said Wednesday that a trial-level judicial panel acted prematurely in 2022 when it declared that Davidson and Shelby county governments, along with a group of parents, had no legal standing to challenge the 2019 Education Savings Account law, which provides families with taxpayer money to pay toward private school tuition.
The appellate court, in sending the case back to the trial court, also said the case’s remaining legal claims are “ripe for judicial review.”
The unanimous decision breaks a string of legal victories for voucher backers in Tennessee, where Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is proposing an expansive new program that would ultimately make vouchers accessible to all students in all 95 Tennessee counties, without the family income limits that are part of the current program.
The second problem for Governor Lee’s expansion plan is that the test scores came back for the first year, and they dashed the expectation that going to a voucher school would produce impressive academic results. In other words, the scores were bad.
Meanwhile, Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told lawmakers Wednesday that the first state test scores of students using vouchers to attend private schools in Shelby and Davidson counties were lackluster.
“The results aren’t anything to write home about,” Reynolds told the Senate Education Committee. “But at the end of the day, the parents are happy with this new learning environment for their students.”
The first results came out of Davidson and Shelby counties in 2022-23, before the legislature added Hamilton County to the program this school year. According to data from the state education department, most of those 452 students performed worse than their peers in public schools after the program’s swift rollout early that school year.
Democratic legislators asked why the program should be expanded if the results were not good. But Republicans were not dissuaded.
Of course, if they conducted any research, they would find that voucher students who leave public schools typically fall behind their public school peers. This is not a one-time occurrence.
The biggest beneficiaries of vouchers are affluent families who get a tuition subsidy.
The new state commissioner of education, Lizette Reynolds, was asked whether the voucher schools would be held accountable as public schools are. She couldn’t give a straight answer. Because voucher schools will not be held accountable.
WATCH: “Any thoughts on if there should be accountability attached to @GovBillLee’s private school voucher expansion?”
Trump wants to run on the border issue. The last thing he wants is for Biden to reach a bipartisan deal on immigration.
She writes:
Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News confirmed this evening that although MAGA Republicans have insisted the border is such a crisis that no aid to Ukraine can pass until it is addressed, Trump is preventing congressional action on the border because he wants to run on the issue of immigration. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told a closed meeting of Senate Republicans that “the nominee” wants to run his campaign on immigration, adding, “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.” “We’re in a quandary,” McConnell said.
Jennifer Bendery and Igor Bobic of HuffPostreported that Trump today reached out to Republican senators to kill the bipartisan border deal being finalized, “because he doesn’t want Biden to have a victory,” one source said. “The rational Republicans want the deal because they want Ukraine and Israel and an actual border solution,” Bendery and Bobic quote the source as saying. “But the others are afraid of Trump, or they’re the chaos caucus who never wants to pass anything.”
“They’re having a little crisis in their conference right now,”
Thom Hartmann is at his best in this column. He writes about the current GOP obsession with a “Christian America” and compares it to what the Founding Fathers wrote about the role of religion in their new nation. Added to the current pandering is the fact that we now have a Supreme Court majority of six-three that elevates “religious freedom” above the Constitutional prohibition of “establishment” of religion. That means trouble for those of us who do not want to live in a theocracy.
He writes:
Monday, in addition to being Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, was National Religious Freedom Day. But what does that mean, and for whom? What would the “Christian America” that Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are calling for look like?
When I was a kid, my parents and our pastor taught me that Jesus specifically, and religion more generally, was all about peace, love, and people caring for each other. That’s what’s explicitly at the core of Jesus’ most famous and clear teachings at the Sermon On The Mount and in the Parable of the Goats and Sheep.
But the Republican Party, thirsting for more voters in the 1980 Reagan vs Carter election, realized that Southern Baptists had helped give the White House to Carter in 1976 (he’s a Southern Baptist). If they could just peel those voters away from Carter and the Democratic Party, they believed they could win big.
The issue the Reagan campaign decided to use to bring religious voters to Republicans in that election was abortion, a topic Jesus never discussed.
Up until that election, both former Governor Reagan and former CIA Director Bush had been open supporters of a woman’s right to choose; in the run-up to the primaries Reagan became an unabashed foe of abortion, and George H.W. Bush changed his position on the issue when he joined the ticket in 1980.The legacy of those decisions has brought us Trump, Qanon, and badly damaged large parts of what’s left of Christianity in America (church attendance is collapsing). It’s turned both religion and politics into armed camps. At the founding of our Republic, if there was any one topic that the Framers of the Constitution were mostly in agreement about, it was the importance of keeping religion separate from government.
More recently, even uber-Catholic Antonin Scalia wrote, in the 1990 Employment v Smith case rejecting Native Americans’ petition to overrule federal regulations and legally use peyote (an outlawed substance) for religious purposes:
“The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind ranging from compulsory military service to the payment of taxes; to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races. The First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty does not require this. …
“To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”
Don’t tell today’s Republicans that’s a bad thing, though: Scalia’s list is a good summary of many of the realms they’re currently targeting. The six Catholic extremist Republicans on the Court appear anxious to overturn any final semblance of secular primacy in law, using religion as their excuse.
It’s gotten so absurd and frankly obscene that a reporter recently spoke with a woman at a Trump rally sporting a crucifix and a tee-shirt that said “Hang Joe Biden For Treason”; she was essentially arguing that Jesus would be all in favor of watching Biden’s execution.
Monday was Religious Freedom Day because it commemorated the publication of Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. That early publication (he was 33) not only asserted that all citizens should be free to practice whatever religion they wanted but, more importantly, that nobody should be persecuted for holding either a religious belief or no religious belief.
Jefferson thought it was more important than his having been a two-term president: when he wrote his own epitaph, he only included his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, his founding America’s first free university (University of Virginia), and his Statute for Religious Freedom.
Jefferson and Madison had a philosophical debate over which would be more dangerous: a religious individual who wants to bring religion into government like Christian nationalist Mike Johnson, or the government endorsing or subsidizing any particular religious group or belief like Trump is promising.
Jefferson (a Deist) was worried about religious leaders (a letter of his is *footnoted below) corrupting government; Madison (a Christian) was more worried about government corrupting his beloved religion.
For example, on February 21, 1811, President Madison vetoed a bill passed by Congress that authorized government payments to a church in Washington, DC to help the poor. Faith-based initiatives were a clear violation, Madison believed, of the doctrine of separation of church and state, and could lead to a dangerous transfer of both money and political power to religious leaders.
In Madison’s mind, caring for the poor was a public and civic duty — a function of government — and must not be allowed to become a hole through which churches could reach and seize political power or the taxpayer’s purse.
Funding a church to provide for the poor would establish a “legal agency” — a legal precedent — that would break down the walls of separation the Founders had put between church and state to protect Americans from religious zealots gaining political power.
Thus, Madison said in his veto message to Congress, he was striking down the proposed law:
“Because the bill vests and said incorporated church an also authority to provide for the support of the poor, and the education of poor children of the same;…” which, Madison said, “would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, flatly rejected government supporting religion in any way whatsoever, noting in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston:
“We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government.”
He added in that same letter:
“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”
Now we see that both were right, although Madison probably had the edge: when the GOP offered evangelicals political power and big money in 1980, it so corrupted many conservative Christian churches that they’ve today put Trump above Jesus.
It’s gotten so bad that fully a third of evangelicals polled said they supported violence to advance political goals, which is quite literally the opposite of Jesus’ telling the Pharisees:
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Not to mention his extensive preaching about nonviolence. He was MLK’s role model, for G-d’s sake.
Instead, Trump’s followers are busily sharing memes of him as their savior, while Speaker Johnson and his fellow travelers on the Supreme Court are working as hard as they can to open the doors (and money) of government to religious leaders.
Religion has a lot to offer people and often fulfills a basic need to stand in awe of creation, to feel at one with everything and everyone. Every culture all the way back to the Neanderthals have engaged in religious rituals, particularly around funerals: no tribe or group has ever been found that entirely lacked what could be described as religious rituals.
But, as our founders pointed out, religion should be separated from government as far as possible. Jefferson’s Virginia Statute says it explicitly:
“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
Instead, Republicans are exploiting that religious urge built into us humans to cynically pander for the votes of those people who’ve put religion at the center of their lives.
They’re reinventing America as a country where religion dictates women’s healthcare, specifies who can marry whom, and destroys the lives of people who weren’t born heterosexual.
They’re promoting movies/vids portraying Trump as the incarnation of Jesus, a bizarre sort of Second Coming worthy of North Korean propaganda.
They’re using religion as an excuse for bigotry, a rationale for government tax subsidies of churches that promote Republicans from the pulpit, and a weapon to wield against those they condemn as being insufficiently pious.
In the process, they’re harming both religion and our government.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders spoke to a summit of Christian school leaders and pledged to them that the state would not prevent them from discriminating against students or teachers or families if they accepted students with vouchers. Governor Sanders, who previously served at Trump’s press secretary, pushed through legislation launching vouchers and protecting the state against indoctrination and “critical race theory,” even though there was never any evidence that teachers were “indoctrinating” students or teaching “critical race theory.” Nothing quite so satisfying as battling non-existent demons, ‘cause you always win. But Governor Sanders had to reassure the church folk that they could go on discriminating.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders made her support of Christian education crystal clear Monday at the Arkansas Christian School Summit held at the Capital Hotel — even hinting to a superintendent that she would fight to allow schools to set their own rules.
Brad Jones, the superintendent of Fayetteville Christian School, told Sanders of being forced to display an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission poster that includes sexual orientation as a protected class.
“We were like, ‘Whoa!’ Of course we discriminate, we’re a Christian school,” Jones said, then asked if that non-discrimination requirement could find itself in the LEARNS Act down the road with future administrations.
Sanders said there’s certainly going to be things that are fluid in the future.
“As much as we want things like the banning of indoctrination and CRT that we put into Arkansas LEARNS, that doesn’t mean that a future legislature administration can’t come up behind us and make changes down the line,” she said.
She urged Jones and the others in the room to be diligent about engaging and continuing to build those coalitions of support “to make sure like-minded people are representing you” in the Arkansas Legislature.
One comment said:
It’s disgusting they’re so open in their disdain. Imagine being proud of that.
Ruby Bridges was chosen as the first child to integrate a public school in New Orleans. Six years old, she walked to school surrounded by federal marshals. After Norman Rockwell illustrated the photo, it became an iconic image as “The Problem We All Live With.”
Ruby Bridges was interviewed by Stephen Colbert, and it was a moving interview. He asked her if she was afraid when she saw the crowds of screaming white parents outside the school. She said, “No, I thought it was a Mardi Gras event.” When she entered the school, the crowd rushed in and withdrew their children, leaving her the only student in the school.
It’s a wonderful short interview, and she is a very impressive woman.
A far-right influencer who was accused of instigating bomb threats against a school library in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last year has been named an adviser to a state library committee, the head of the state Education Department announced Tuesday.
Chaya Raichik, who runs the incendiary Libs of TikTok social media accounts and is not an Oklahoma resident, was appointed to the Education Department’s Library Media Advisory Committee.
“Chaya is on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about — lowering standards, porn in schools, and pushing woke indoctrination on our kids,” state Superintendent Ryan Walters said in a statement. “Because of her work, families across the country know just what is going on in schools around the country.”
Raichik’s Libs of TikTok accounts have more than 3 million combined followers on X and Instagram. Its content — which is often laced with bigoted rhetoric — generally singles out LGBTQ people, drag queens and their employers, and it criticizes them for promoting diversity, inclusion and equity efforts.
In addition to last year’s scare in Tulsa, posts by the account have preceded several bomb threats to schools, libraries and hospitalsacross the country in recent years.
Raichik did not respond to a set of questions. The Libs of TikTok account replied to a request for comment on X with a compilation of drawings seemingly from young adult novels that depict sexual encounters and asked: “Do you think this is appropriate for kids in school?”
Walters said in a statement, “Chaya Raichik and I have developed a strong working relationship to rid schools of liberal, woke values.”
In August, Union Public Schools, a school district that covers parts of Tulsa and some of its suburbs, said it received bomb threats for six consecutive days. The threats came after Raichik shared a critical video about one of its school librarians.
The video Raichik posted showed a school librarian walking next to a bookshelf, and it was captioned: “POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies but you are still just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school.” The video replaced the librarian’s original caption, which read: “My radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind — hbu??”
This article in Politico is a must-read. It describes Donald Trump’s strategy of using the courts to undermine the rule of law. He has been doing it for 50 years, with great success. His lawyers come and go but Trump loves the courtroom. Much as some might challenge his intellect, the fact is that he is a brilliant legal tactician. He has figured out how to turn the courtroom into his personal stage, where he defies the law, the prosecutors, even the judge, where he mocks them all, ignores their decisions, appeals and appeals.
How does he do it? Read the article by Michael Kruse. Trump learned at the feet of Roy Cohn, who served not only Senator Joe McCarthy but the Mafia and a rogues gallery of unsavory defendants. From Cohn he learned to fight back aggressively, suing whoever sued you, never compromising or giving in.
The article begins:
NEW YORK — What happened in Room 300 of the New York County Courthouse in lower Manhattan in November had never happened. Not in the preceding almost two and a half centuries of the history of the United States. Donald Trump was on the witness stand. It was not unprecedented in the annals of American jurisprudence just because it was a former president, although that was totally true. It was unprecedented because the power dynamic of the courtroom had been upended — the defendant was not on defense, the most vulnerable person in the room was the most dominant person in the room, and the people nominally in charge could do little about it.
It was unprecedented, too, because over the course of four or so hours Trump savaged the judge, the prosecutor, the attorney general, the case and the trial — savaged the system itself. He called the attorney general “a political hack.” He called the judge “very hostile.” He called the trial “crazy” and the court “a fraud” and the case “a disgrace.” He told the prosecutor he should be “ashamed” of himself. The judge all but pleaded repeatedly with Trump’s attorneys to “control” him. “If you can’t,” the judge said, “I will.” But he didn’t, because he couldn’t, and audible from the city’s streets were the steady sounds of sirens and that felt absolutely apt.
“Are you done?” the prosecutor said.
“Done,” Trump said.
He was nowhere close to done. Trump’s testimony if anything was but a taste. (In fact, he said many of the same things in the same courtroom on Thursday.) This country has never seen and therefore is utterly unprepared for what it’s about to endure in the wrenching weeks and months ahead — active challenges based on post-Civil War constitutional amendments to bar insurrectionists from the ballot; existentially important questions about presidential immunity almost certainly to be decided by a U.S. Supreme Court the citizenry has seldom trusted less; and a candidate running for the White House while facing four separate criminal indictments alleging 91 felonies, among them, of course, charges that he tried to overturn an election he lost and overthrow the democracy he swore to defend. And while many found Trump’s conduct in court in New York shocking, it is in fact for Trump not shocking at all. For Trump, it is less an aberration than an extension, an escalation — a culmination. Trump has never been in precisely this position, and the level of the threat that he faces is inarguably new, but it’s just as true, too, that nobody has been preparing for this as long as he has himself.
Trump and his allies say he is the victim of the weaponization of the justice system, but the reality is exactly the opposite. For literally more than 50 years, according to thousands of pages of court records and hundreds of interviews with lawyers and legal experts, people who have worked for Trump, against Trump or both, and many of the myriad litigants who’ve been caught in the crossfire, Trump has taught himself how to use and abuse the legal system for his own advantage and aims. Many might view the legal system as a place to try to avoid, or as perhaps a necessary evil, or maybe even as a noble arbiter of equality and fairness. Not Trump. He spent most of his adult life molding it into an arena in which he could stake claims and hunt leverage. It has not been for him a place of last resort so much as a place of constant quarrel. Conflict in courts is not for him the cost of doing business — it is how he does business. Throughout his vast record of (mostly civil) lawsuits, whether on offense, defense or frequently a mix of the two, Trump has become a sort of layman’s master in the law and lawfare.
“He doesn’t see the legal system as a means of obtaining justice for all,” Jim Zirin, the author of Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits, told me. He sees it rather as a “tool,” said Ian Bassin, a former White House lawyer in the administration of Barack Obama and the current executive director of Protect Democracy, “in his quest to command attention and ultimately power.” But it’s not merely any tool. It’s his most potent tactic and fundamental to any and all successes he’s had. “There’s probably no single person in America,” said Eric Swalwell, the Democratic member of Congress from California and a former prosecutor and Trump impeachment manager, “who is more, I would say, knowledgeable and experienced in our legal system — as both a plaintiff and as a defendant — than Donald Trump.”
Many have been confounded by the legal system’s inability to constrain Trump, by his ability to escape at least thus far any legal accounting for behavior that even some leaders of his own party excoriated — and why that reckoning might never come. To understand this requires seeing Trump in a new mode — not as a businessman-turned-celebrity-turned-politician, or as a nationalist populist demagogue, or as the epochal leader of a right-wing movement, but rather as a legal combatant. “This is not a political rally — this is a courtroom,” the judge admonished him at one point in November in New York. It was only in the most technical sense correct. Just as he had upended the norms inside the New York courtroom, Trump has altered the very way we view the justice system as a whole. This is not something he began to do once he won elected office. It has been a lifelong project.
Please read the article. You will understand the present moment far better if you do.
In a decision that was a happy surprise, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Biden administration’s view that federal law controls international borders, not state law.
The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voting with the three liberal justices.
Governor Greg Abbott ordered that razor wire and buoys be strung across the Rio Grand at locations where migrants were crossing from Mexico to Texas. The U.S. Botder Patrol was blocked by the Texas National Guard, which took control of policing the border. Three migrants, a woman and her two young children, drowned while the Texas National Guard watched and prevented the Border Patrol from rendering assistance.
The Biden administration sued the state of Texas, asserting the primacy of federal law. The federal district court ruled in favor of the federal government. Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative in the nation, which ruled in favor of Texas. Many legal scholars thought that ruling was bizarre.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government and against Texas, meaning that the U.S. Border Patrol will resume their duties. This decision is a knock on the secessionist inclinations of far-right firebrand Greg Abbott and the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
This decision knocked down the claim that state law could override federal law and that a state on the international border could take control.
What’s truly shocking is that four justices were willing to give states the authority to overrule federal law. Shades of 1860!
In part 1 of his two-part series, Yoav Fisher explains why Israel lost the war. In part 2 of his two-part analysis, Yoav Fisher explains why Hamas lost the war.
Conclusion: there are no “winners” in this war. Israel must accept a two-state solution, agreeing that Palestinians must have their own autonomous state. Hamas must abandon its core belief that Israel ought to be eliminated. Both sides must sit down and negotiate in good faith. Clearly, this will not happen with the current leadership on both sides. For the sake of peace, outside forces (including the U.S. and Arab nations) must intervene to bring about a robust and lasting peace. This situation is yet another reason to oppose the return of Donald Trump; he is close to Netanyahu and will do nothing to betray his friend.
The links in his article did not appear when I laboriously copied it, paragraph by paragraph. Open his article to see his links to sources.
Fisher writes:
Hamas lost the Domestic Front
The alleged goals of Hamas, specifically freedom for Palestinians, failed miserably. Palestinians are no more free now than they were on October 6th. Actually, Palestinians in Gaza are significantly worse off than they were before. Every single dead Gazan would be alive right now had Hamas not instigated a war (#facts).
Hamas has had a stranglehold on Gaza from the day they came to power — neglecting the basic needs of citizens, hoarding resources and foreign donations for themselves and their Jihadi terrorist aims, neglecting infrastructure, and using civilians as human shields.
Palestinians themselves have been aware of this for years, and more and more voices of Palestinians themselves are starting to speak out against Hamas, chipping away at the false narrative that Hamas actually cares about Gazan citizens.
At any point in time, the Palestinian government in Gaza can halt the continuous loss of Palestinian lives. They simply need to release the hostages and announce their surrender. By not making this choice, they are opting to cause further Palestinian casualties.#ThankYouHamas
Hamas also failed domestically regarding the Arab population in the West Bank and in Israel. Hamas expected the West Bank to flare up, which it didn’t. Hamas also hoped that Arab Israelis would rise up as well. In fact, the exact opposite happened. Arab Israeli have largely stayed loyal to Israel.
Arab Israelis are supremely practical, aware, and knowledgeable about the situation in the Middle East, infinitely more so than privileged white kids on TikTok. They all know that being an Arab Israeli in Israel is a hell of a lot better than being in any of the neighboring countries
Do you think that Hamas represent us as a Palestinians?
You can hear the answer from Gaza people themselves.
Contrary to what everybody is seeing on social media, Israel is not an Apartheid state. Arab Israelis have full legal protection of their civil liberties. Arab Israelis, particularly women, enjoy freedom, economic opportunities, education, and healthcare in ways that are unheard of in neighboring countries, and more and more of them are speaking out against the Hamas narrative.
It is true that this war has economic ramifications for Israel, but even on this front Hamas failed. The Israeli economy has mastered the war-life balance and is already showing signs of future success. Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger went on the record publicly lauding the resiliency of the Israeli economy, and is about to quadruple-down with a $25B infusion into the economy.
Case in point: Elbit’s stock price. What happened on the 31st of October? The whole world saw Israel shoot down a Houthi ICBM from the stratosphere. You know what happened Nov 1st? The whole world called Israel and placed orders for more Israeli tech.
So yeah, Hamas lost. The only thing they “won” is more dead Palestinians that they can use as clickbait to pull heartstrings and purse strings.
Hamas lost the Arab front
Below the surface there have been some interesting activities.
First, all of the Arab countries did not come to bat. Sure, they make grandiose speeches and some fire rockets, but none actually committed themselves to Hamas’ aims. Not even Hizballah and Iran (not yet at least). Instead, the Arab countries are letting Hamas take the fall, ultimately at the expense of Gazan civilians.
Hamas has also caused massive disruptions in the Middle East, disruptions that are causing economic damage to many of the countries in the region.
Take the Houthis for example — the Jihadi sister-wife of Hamas. Their recent provocations in the Gulf of Aden are actually most irksome to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Saudi Arabia exports billions of dollars of refined oil from Yanbu, through the Bab Al-Mandab straight to Asia. Egypt collects over $9B in transfer fees from usage of the Suez Canal, a key source of liquid cash flow. So don’t be surprised if the Houthis suffer a quick blow from another Muslim country.
Cracks are beginning to show in the broader Muslim world. Hamas, ISIS, and all the other Jihadi extremist groups have been slaughtering other Muslims for decades, and people are starting to speak up.
حماس والحوثيين وحزب الله بيادق في طاولة الشطرنج الايرانية تستعملها كما نستعمل ورق التواليت نظام الجمهورية الإسلامية في إيران نظام جبان لا يدخل أي حرب وجها لوجه لانه يعلم أنه سيخسر الحرب من أول جولة ولأنه مكروه ومرفوض عند الشعب الايراني فهو يحكم الشعب بقوة السلاح . هذا… pic.twitter.com/GaMC6ukmzx
The majority of people across the MENA region want to wake up in the morning and deal with the mundane — send their kids to school, make some money at work, etc… Hamas and Jihadi terrorism has been interrupting progress in the greater MENA region since the day Islam was created.
Raheel Raza and Mohammed Rizwan summarize this point recently in the National Post:
Support for Palestinian cause comes from a fear that if Israel is allowed to exist in peace and security, its democratic values will eventually permeate the region.
Ouch.
Hamas lost on the Global front
Over the last two decades Hamas, and the larger Jihadi terrorist umbrella, have done an excellent job of indoctrinating Western white kids to hate Israel and to hate Western/European Liberal values.
Over the last two decades Hamas, and the larger Jihadi terrorist umbrella, have done an excellent job of indoctrinating Western white kids to hate Israel and to hate Western/European Liberal values.
But Hamas, and the larger Jihadi terrorist umbrella have lost the Global front because that mask is coming off — and more people are becoming aware of the dangers.
The whole world now knows that Hamas actually committed war crimes: Murdering civilians, including children and babies, mass rape, and taking hostages. Even those that deny these things happen know these atrocities actually did happen.
We know now that Jihadi terrorism has been pumping cash to American universities for years.
We know now that Students for Justice in Palestine is a Jihadi death cult, with no interest in Justice and no interest in Palestine except when used as an excuse to let out some violent Anti-Jewish steam.
We know now that SJP is backed by American Muslims for Palestine, which is run by 4 known Hamas operators, most notably Hatem Bazian, lecturer of the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. (side note — AMP is tied to multiple organizations that have taken in donations from Americans and used them to fund Hamas militancy — Bazian is tied to all of them. Go down the rabbit hole if you dare).
The world is becoming acutely aware of the ugly side of Islamic Jihadi extremism — the violence, the brutality, and the lack of respect for basic morality and rule of law, all driven by the desire to establish a global caliphate of Sharia law.
It has spilled over into all corners of the world and it is a global problem.
The harsh truth is that it is not Jews who threaten to attack churches on Christmas.
It is not Jews who attack police in New York or Berlin and burn down cities in “peaceful” protests.
It is not Jews who make bomb threats to elementary schools.
It is not Jews who harass children at a public mall and shout death threats.
It is not Jews who coordinate mass rape on the streets of Cologne.
Jews don’t massacre 200 Christian civilians over Christmas in Nigeria.
Jews don’t ban girls from getting educated beyond sixth grade.
Jews don’t troll the streets shouting to gas or kill other religions.
Jews don’t go on TV to justify child marriage like this guy:
The world is quickly becoming aware of the insidious nature of militant Jihadi extremism, and is starting to take action.
Italy is shutting down Mosques that preach violence and the primacy of Sharia law over civil law.
Years of violence in the streets of the Netherlands (again — not Jews) led to the election of Geert Wilders, who has this to say about Islam:
To many people in Europe, the US, Canada, and elsewhere, Islam has a problem with violence. It has a problem with homophobia. And it definitely has a problem with treatment of women. Every single one of the 54 UN-designated terror organizations is Muslim.
As Jimmie Akesson, leader of Sweden’s 2nd largest political party stated recently:
“We must confiscate and demolish mosques where anti-democratic, anti-Swedish, homophobic and anti-Semitic propaganda is spreading in Swedish society.”
Hamas gave legitimacy for the extreme, violent and militant aspects of Islam to act out. And the world is watching.
Hamas was the catalyst for all of this because they decided to video everything and share it with the world. And now the world is seeing what Jihadi Islamic extremism looks like on their own soil. And for those that still don’t know, Hamas did the world a favor and documented the whole thing, so we will be able to watch in horror for generations to come.
There are many who may see this as Islamophobia. But there is an increasing amount of people out there who question if Islamophobia is even a thing, or just another PR push. Statistically, Islamophobia has actually been decreasing over the last decade.
So what now?
To recap, Hamas launched a war, and now they are subsequently losing a war. Hamas did not “free Palestine”, they did not eliminate the state of Israel from the River to the Sea. All they did was cause the death of thousands of Gazans, which they used as clickbait to fuel a global Antisemitic PR campaign.
But there is no such thing as a free lunch… this came with a steep cost.
Hamas did not get the results they want from Arabs in the West Bank, and certainly not from Arab Israelis. Hamas did not get support from their friends, and left a trail of massive internal upheaval within the Arab world.
Hamas was also the catalyst for violent and insidious protests and criminality by Islamic extremisms all over the world, and also the subsequent blowback.
The vast majority of Muslims are not Jihadi militants, but those that are, like Hamas, are causing irreparable damage to the greater MENA region, to the world, and to the image of Islam as a whole.
The only way out of this is for the Arab world to rise up and rid themselves of their extremist, violent members.
The idea that "the West and the Jews are the reason why we have dysfunctional countries in the Arab world” is a dishonest deflection.
How many innocent women and girls are supposed to be murdered by their families in the name of honor for us to realize that our problem is… pic.twitter.com/unoPlokoJx
(N.B— why is it that when any Muslim dares to question the given narrative, they are immediately either harassed, issued death threats, or actually killed? Doesn’t that just prove the point that Islam has a problem? In normal countries, issuing death threats lands you in jail. Killing someone who just has a different opinion lands you in jail. In Muslim countries killing someone who just has a different opinion on Islam gets you TikTok followers and a commemorative SJP t-shirt.)
While rummaging around the Internet, I came across two connected articles by a writer I had not heard of. I was so impressed by his clarity that I wanted to share his analysis with you. Fisher is Head of Health Innovation at HealthIL.org in Tel Aviv.
We will cover how Israel lost on the domestic front, on the Jewish Community front, and on the Global front. And then some ideas of what to do.
Harsh truths coming your way…
Make sure to read Part 2 on how Hamas Has Lost The War — as I have stated before, it is imperative to look at both sides.
ISRAEL LOST THE DOMESTIC WAR
On Oct. 7th Hamas Terrorists instigated a war — killing civilians, including children and babies, and taking hostages — of which over 100 are still in captivity.
Israel responded by launching an assault on the Hamas Terrorists in the Gaza strip, of which thousands of Gazan civilians have also tragically perished.
Israel effectively lost the second they decided to respond because they played directly into Hamas’ well-known trap of forcing a strong response from Israel, which galvanizes Jew Hatred, which forces Israel to back down and let Hamas replenish for the next round. Lather, rinse, repeat.
As Tom Friedman suggested recently in the NYT, maybe it would have been better for Israel to think strategically instead of instinctively and let the atrocities of Hamas resonate across the globe and create an alternative plan with the help of allies (what few remain).
But Israel’s true failure isn’t tactical, it is internal.
Ever since Netanyahu started his 16 year choke-hold on Israel, his government has failed to treat Hamas as the Jihadi terrorist organization it really is, turning a blind eye toward repeated warnings, and all for the sake of narcissism, holding on to power, appealing to far right settler/ultra-orthodox crazies, and actively avoiding any conversation about “Peace.”
In fact, in the weeks before Oct 7, the Netanyahu government moved soldiers from the Gaza border to the West Bank, allegedly to “protect” a bunch of settler crazies who wanted to build a Sukkah in the West Bank to provoke the Palestinian population.
And then everything blew up.
The longer-term result of the October 7th Massacre is the complete destruction of internal trust. Israelis no longer trust the government to protect them. Israelis no longer trust each other — and there is a fear that the already tenuous relationship between Israeli Jews and Muslims will erode into chaos.
And Israelis no longer trust in the future of the country.
There is little doubt that this Netanyahu government will screw it up, and there doesn’t seem to be any plan for the future — whether it is dealing with Hamas, dealing with Hizballah, or anything else. So far Israelis have received no cogent plan for anything; just pomposity and calls from crazy right wingers to create new settlements in Gaza.
Israel Lost the Jewish Front
…Let’s be real for a second. Israel, and Jews, have lost credibility. It doesn’t matter how many times Israel (or Jews) call out blatant one-sided hypocrisy, it falls on deaf ears.
Support from the global community is quickly waning, and even Israel’s historic allies like Canada, Australia, and the UK are backpedaling.
And can you blame them? How do Israeli politicians expect anybody in the world to trust Israel? The country has a prime minister who is a criminal, but is un-convicted. It has far right settler crazies who go on violent rampages in the West Bank but are never prosecuted. And very recently, Simcha Rothman, an ultra-conservative member of parliament (Knesset) submitted a proposed bill to the government denying due process to Hamas terrorists.
This creates a moral conundrum: is Israel a country that respects the rule of law for all, or is the rule of law selective only to Jewish Israelis? Keep in mind this is the same Simcha Rothman who was put in charge of ramrodding the preposterous Judicial Reform in Israel — moving the country markedly away from Democracy and toward a theocratic dictatorship.
Long gone is the Israel of the Biden generation — when Israel granted even Eichmann a trial and due process of law, and even paid for Eichmann’s legal fees (!!!). The Israel of today, as seen from the global lens, is one where morality is tossed aside in favor of courting favor with far-right extremists and Ultra-Orthodox religious fanatics, all so Netanyahu can maintain his seat on the throne.
David Ben Gurion spoke passionately of Israel as the “Light Unto the Nations” — a moral and social beacon in the middle of a violent and backwards Middle East. Over the last two decades Israel has had a number of opportunities to rise above and build long term strategic plans to ensure stability and possibly even Peace. Instead, Israel decided to cave to the short-sighted whims of far right extremists and the Ultra-Orthodox.
Turns out that Israel isn’t a “Light Unto the Nations”, but is just as crappy as every other country…
So what to do now?
This part is much easier said than done.
1. Halt all expansion in the West Bank; immediately and permanently.
This is not a PR trick. Continued Israeli expansion in the West Bank is untenable in the long run, politically, morally, and economically. (I wrote that article in 2014! Think how much worse it is now). I don’t know what to do with the settlements going forward, but stopping expansion needs to happen now.
2. Get rid of the crazies.
All of the fanatic right wingers need to leave. They are causing material damage to Israel, politically, economically, internationally. Of course, this requires voting them out (yes, Israel is a democracy).
3. Support non-Jewish Israelis
This may come as a shock to many readers, but Israel is not, in fact an Apartheid state. Non-Jewish citizens get full rights as Jewish citizens, as protected by law. But (big but), inequalities are persistent and have been neglected for decades. Israel needs to do more to address inequality for Arab Israelis (Muslims, Christians, Druze, etc…). They are a vital and vibrant part of the country and represent over 20% of the population.
4. End this silly “Judicial Reform”
Obvious.
5. Stop bankrolling Ultra-Orthodox idleness
Israel is a global powerhouse of technological innovation in all sectors. Every single country in the world benefits from Israeli innovation, directly or indirectly. I firmly believe that shared economic well-being can be a major impetus toward coexistence (see Israel and the UAE). The Israeli health-tech sector (near and dear to my heart) has the potential to improve lives across the globe, especially across the greater MENA region.
But tech innovation and the shared prosperity and progress that comes with it has one major prerequisite — smart human capital. Every cent that goes toward unproductive aims — like massive subsidies to the Ultra Orthodox — do damage to Israel’s future.
Plus, I don’t want to live in a theocracy.
6. Admit you can’t “Destroy Hamas”
I get the need to rally around the flag, but it is also impossible. You can’t “eliminate Hamas” because Hamas is not a person or a group — it is an ideology. Much like ISIS was never really eliminated.
This means Israel needs to shift focus toward strategic longer term approaches and not pure militant approaches.
Good luck to all of us.
My view: I endorse Yoav Fisher’s views. But I would go even farther than him regarding the West Bank settlements, which is easy for me to say since I don’t live in Israel. I think they should be completely removed from the West Bank, because that area would be part of any future Palestinian state. Ariel Sharon dismantled Israeli settlements in Gaza in 2005, despite angry protests. But he knew it had to be done. The West Bank settlements don’t belong there; they were intended to be an obstacle to a new Palestinian nation.
And as a note to readers, I want to explain Fisher’s reference in point 5 to “Ultra-Orthodox idleness.” These groups, known as Haredi in Israel, believe that boys and men should devote themselves to studying Torah. They are exempt from military service, and they pay little, if any, taxes. Their wives, who are second-class citizens, work at low-wage jobs to support the family. The Haredi are politically powerful, even though they are only 10% of the population (and growing), and they are subsidized by the government.
An article in Foreign Policy—written before October 7– claimed that Haredi power had peaked, but that may have been wishful thinking. After that fateful day, some Haredi volunteered and some even joined the military. But secular Jews like Fisher nonetheless believe that the government should not subsidize their life of Torah study.
Diane Ravitch's blog 