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Haaretz: A Surprising Effort to Build Bonds Between Arabs and Jews

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2024 //
6

Haaretz is an Israeli newspaper that is an invaluable source of news and opinion. It harshly criticizes the Netanyahu government and publishes articles critical of the war in Gaza. I began subscribing after the October 7 attacks by Hamas because I wanted to read the news firsthand from an Israeli source, especially one that did not parrot the government’s line. I have not been disappointed. The articles about Netanyahu are far more scathing than anything I read in the American media. And there are sometimes inspiring stories of Jews and Muslims who together seek understanding and peace. The following is one of those stories. This group—Standing Together— has participated in anti-war demonstrations. May they prosper.

It begins:

“You’re not alone,” said the Jewish woman to the Arab woman. Shedding tears, the two Israelis, who were meeting for the first time, embraced. The scene played out in the modest Lod apartment of the Arab woman, Isra Abou Laban Oudi. She’s a single mother, and her 3-year-old son, Tareq, scampered merrily among the 14 strangers, Jews and Arabs, who were guests in his home.

From the beginning of the school year, Oudi says, her son, who speaks only Arabic, had attended a municipal Hebrew-speaking preschool. After October 7, when the children returned to school, Tareq too was happy to reunite with his friends after what had been a two-week break. However, Oudi says, when she heard him speaking Arabic, his teacher hit him and demanded he not use “that language.”

Oudi filed a complaint with the police, which is still under examination, but since then, for some weeks, Tareq hasn’t been going to nursery school. The teacher, who denies hitting Tareq and claims that she only scolded him, also filed a complaint with the police, alleging that Oudi was accusing her falsely. She is still employed in the preschool.

The whole situation left Oudi feeling helpless and very much alone. That is, until the solidarity encounter that took place in her home, when members of Standing Together – an Arab-Jewish social movement that seeks to advance a beneficent, egalitarian society in Israel through joint grassroots activity – came to show their support.

Three days after that visit, Oudi and her toddler son attended an event organized by the movement in the nearby city of Ramle which, like Lod, has a mixed population. There, in a banquet hall that had no banquets to host, Arabs and Jews were working side by side to prepare food packages for Jewish, Muslim and Christian families whose source of livelihood had been truncated because of the war.

Oudi and her son did not join in the activity of Standing Together (“Omdim Beyahad” in Hebrew) by chance. It’s part of the “recovery plan” that the movement recommends for people who have been hurt by racism: to transform the affront into constructive activity. “It gives people the strength to translate the hurt into joint activity, restores a renewed sense of control and also brings us new and highly motivated members,” explains Omri Goren, 24, who oversees the movement’s activity in the Ramle-Lod area and also heads its student division.

After the volunteers finished packing all the food products, and just before the care packages were dispatched to addresses across the city, the 30 volunteers gathered in a dialogue circle. Goren asked them to introduce themselves and describe how they were feeling at this tense time.

One man, an Arab, related that his wife was frightened about the war’s implications for Israel’s Arab citizens and had gone abroad with one of their children, while another son, an electrical engineer, had been fired from his job because of “the situation.” A Jewish man sitting next to him said that for three decades he had been the proprietor of a store in Ramle where Jews, Christians and Muslims shopped, and that he had warm, close relations with all of them. “We are like brothers,” he said. “There is respect and genuine love. I am proud to be a Ramle resident who has friends in Ramle.”

A Jewish woman told the others that her niece was killed on October 7, and that she was worried about the shared future in Israel. “And that’s why I am here.”

Although many may be surprised – though the movement’s leaders are not among them – demand for Standing Together’s message of solidarity and vision of a shared future has been on a constant rise since the war started. Those who thought that the uptick in mutual suspicion between Arabs and Jews is causing the fragile fabric of Israeli society to unravel, is invited to take part in the movement’s activity and discover that they are wrong.

Standing Together, which was founded in 2015 and espouses values of equality, peace, social justice and socialism (and in normal times, is involved in environmental, educational and social issues, in a number of different campaigns), is currently gathering momentum. Its membership is growing daily. The purple color associated with the movement, and its newly minted slogan, “Together we will get through this,” can be seen in more and more places in both the real and online worlds. Most of the new joiners are young people, Arabs and Jews, the movement’s directors note. Since October 7, a dozen joint Arab-Jewish groups, dubbed “solidarity guards,” have been established across the country, joining the eight already active branches. Eleven student chapters have also been created, besides the nine that previously existed…

Tamar Asadi is someone who joined the movement in the wake of October 7. Asadi, 28, is from the village of Deir al-Asad, in the country’s north. She’s a homeroom teacher for 12th-graders at a Jewish high school in the area, where she’s worked for the past six years. She too says she has been “very worried” since the start of the war. “I also knew some people at the [Nova] party and in the Gaza border communities, and in general I was concerned about what would happen,” she says.

“In the social media,” she continues, “all the posts were dark and frightening, and suddenly I saw a purple-colored post, which said something about partnership, in both Hebrew and Arabic. I felt like someone had thrown me a lifebelt of grace. I wrote to the people behind the post, who were from Standing Together, to ask whether the movement had a branch in Deir al-Asad.

“They said they didn’t, so I decided to take the initiative and set up a solidarity guard of Arab and Jewish communities in the Galilee. Within hours, we had 350 new members. We held our first meeting via Zoom, and the feeling was so good that we decided to continue with a face-to-face meeting.”

Asadi continues: “We invited everyone to us, to the community center in Deir al-Asad. One of the people who came, from Kibbutz Tuval [nearby], apologized for having to leave early, because he had guard duty at the kibbutz – ‘to protect us from you,’ he said – and everyone laughed. I haven’t stopped talking about that remark, and I understood how important what we are doing in Standing Together is.

“Since then, my activity has only picked up momentum. We visited joint medical teams of Arabs and Jews at health-care facilities; we paid a solidarity visit to Maayan Sigal-Koren, five of whose relatives were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, two of whom are still being held in Gaza; I invited friends for an encounter at my place, which left me very emotional; and much more.

“Standing Together gives me a place to be who I am,” she explains, “along with the hope I have been searching for for a long time. My activity in the movement is also a message to my students. They see an Israeli homeroom teacher, an Arab woman, a Muslim, a Palestinian, who on the one hand identifies with Israel, yet is not ashamed of her [Arab] identity. The change has to come from the public. Our generation is confused about its identity, and is sad and fearful, but Arab society is behaving with solidarity, dignity and empathy at this time – not only out of fear, but mainly because of a shared destiny.”

Sigal-Koren, a resident of Kibbutz Pelekh, in the Misgav region, describes the solidarity visit that movement members paid her as “the most powerful and most hopeful I have experienced since all this started. The encounter touched me in a way that no other meeting in this period has,” she tells Haaretz.

The Standing Together activists asked Sigal-Koren how they could help her and other families of the captives, and suddenly it occurred to her to that the campaign being conducted online and via posters and billboards calling for the captives’ release should be translated into Arabic too. That was in fact speedily done with the aid of members of the solidarity squad. Sigal-Koren was subsequently invited to tell her story at a meeting of Standing Together in the Arab town of Nahaf. Speaking before an audience of 300 Arabs and Jews, she called for the return from Gaza of her uncle, Fernando Marman, and Louis Har, her mother’s partner (her mother, Clara, was released on November 28).

Since that hellish Saturday, the movement has conducted more than a hundred activities, including joint conferences for Arabs and Jews in Hebrew and Arabic in Tamra, Nazareth, Abu Ghosh, Lod, Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv and other venues. They have visited hospitals to meet with wounded soldiers and speak to Jewish and Arab medical teams; cleaned out public shelters; sent food packages and other things to families whose source of income has dried up; monitored cases of racist violence in Israel; and made solidarity visits like the one in Oudi’s home.

One of their significant actions is the setting up of an emergency hotline, offering assistance to anyone who’s been harmed by racism or requires physical accompaniment in order to get to their place of work, the local clinic – or the police station in order to file a complaint about racism. The hotline, which operates seven days a week, has taken hundreds of calls from people whose cases are in various stages of treatment.

The hotline is currently being staffed by 90 volunteers, says Oded Rotem, their coordinator. Many more wanted to join, he notes, but the movement has declared a hiatus on accepting new volunteers, as it’s unable to meet the pace of training.

* * * 

Some 700 people showed up for Standing Together’s Haifa conference, held on November 4. Not unusually in these parts, the event took place only after an alternative was found to the original location, which they were forced to abandon following pressure by right-wingers. At the event, Sally Abed, who directs the movement’s resource development team, spoke about her mother, who works for the northern district of the National Insurance Institute (social security administration), which deals with the social-welfare needs of bereaved families and the families of the Gaza hostages. She related how, after a hard day of emotionally draining work, her mother comes home, turns on an Arabic news channel and sees what is being perpetrated against members of her family in the Gaza Strip.

“We’re told that we have to take a side,” Abed said. “But that choice inevitably denies the humanity of the other side. I refuse to have my humanity robbed. I refuse to be deprived of my Israeliness,” she declared, to the applause of the audience. After the meeting, Abed was approached by an elderly Jewish man wearing a kippa, who had tears in his eyes. Embracing her, he said, “Thank you, this is the first time I’ve breathed since October 7. You made it possible for me to feel pain for the other side and to feel like a human being again.”

The story continues. I hope you are able to open the link and finish reading. Standing Together is a candle in the darkness, an effort to bridge differences and build an awareness of common humanity. It has 5,000 members at present, with another 2,000 who join their activities. May their candle create light and hope.

Categories International

Heather Cox Richardson: Why the Houthis Must Be Stopped

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2024 //
48

Heather Cox Richardson has the gift of synthesis, which is the mark of a good historian. Very likely, we all saw the headlines about missile attacks on Houthi bases in Yemen. In all probability, few of us had ever heard of this group before October 2023. They are doing Iran’s dirty work. Her piece also cites Politico, which reported that in 2020 Trump warned the president of the EU that if Europe was invaded, the U.S. would not come to its aid and that NATO was dead.

She explains:

“Today, at my direction,” President Joe Biden said this evening, “U.S. military forces—together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands—successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways.”

The strikes came after the Iran-backed Houthi militia launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, including merchant shipping vessels that carry about 12% of the world’s oil, 8% of its grain, and 8% of liquefied natural gas, as well as other commodities.

While the Houthis claim their attacks are designed to support the Palestinians in Gaza, they are also apparently angling to continue and spread the Hamas-Israel war into a wider conflict. Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, all nonstate actors backed by Iran, would like very much to extend and enlarge the war to enhance their own power and win adherents to their ideologies.

The Arab states do not want the conflict to spread. Neither does the U.S. government, and Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have worked hard to make sure it doesn’t, sending two carrier groups to the region, for example, to deter enthusiasm for such an extension.

On October 19, shortly after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Houthis launched cruise missiles and drones designed by Iran at Israel, but when the USS Carney and Saudi Arabia shot the weapons down, they turned to attacking shipping. Fifty or so ships use the Red Sea waterway every day.

On November 19, Houthis seized a Japanese-registered vessel, the Galaxy Leader, along with its 25-member international crew, prompting the United Nations Security Council to condemn “in the strongest terms” the “recent Houthi attacks” and “demanded that all such attacks and action cease immediately.” The Security Council “underlined the importance of…international law.”

On December 3, Houthis struck another three ships.

On December 19, the U.S., the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and a group representing 44 allies and partner nations condemned the Houthi attacks, noting that such attacks threatened international commerce, endangering supply chains and affecting the global economy. Also on December 19, the U.S. and partners announced a naval protection group for maritime shipping in the waterway, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian.

When the attacks continued, the governments of the U.S., Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and the United Kingdom warned the Houthis on January 3, 2024, that their attacks were “illegal, unacceptable, and profoundly destabilizing,” delaying the delivery of goods and “jeopardizing the movement of critical food, fuel, and humanitarian assistance throughout the world.” They called for an end to the attacks and the release of the detained vessels and crew members, and they warned that the Houthis would bear responsibility for the “consequences” if the attacks continued.

“We remain committed to the international rules-based order and are determined to hold malign actors accountable for unlawful seizures and attacks,” the statement said.

Administration officials told the press the U.S. would strike the Houthis militarily if the attacks didn’t stop, although Biden has not wanted to destabilize Yemen further than it already is after a decade of civil war. “The president has made clear the U.S. does not seek conflict with any nation or actor in the Middle East,” John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said. “But neither will we shrink from the task of defending ourselves, our interests, our partners or the free flow of international commerce.” An administration official said: “I would not anticipate another warning.”

On Tuesday, January 9, the Houthis launched 21 drones and missiles in the most significant attack yet—one that directly targeted U.S. ships—and on January 10 the U.N. Security Council passed UNSCR 2722, a resolution condemning the attacks “in the strongest terms.” Eleven members voted in favor and none opposed it. Four countries—China, Russia, Algeria, and Mozambique—abstained, but neither China nor Russia, both of which have veto power, would veto the resolution.

Today the U.S. and the U.K., with coalition support, responded. Military strikes came from the air, ocean, and underwater, according to a defense official, and they hit weapons storage areas and sites from which the Houthis have been launching drones and cruise missiles.

The governments of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, the U.K, and the U.S. announced the “precision strikes,” saying they were “in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense, consistent with the UN Charter” and “were intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of international mariners in one of the world’s most critical waterways.”

“Our aim remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea,” the statement read, “but let our message be clear: we will not hesitate to defend lives and protect the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats.” Biden’s statement sounded much the same but added: “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

As the January 3 statement from the governments of the U.S., Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and the U.K. made clear, one of the key things at stake in standing against the Houthi attacks is the international rules-based order, that is, the system of international laws and organizations developed after World War II to prevent global conflicts by providing forums to resolve differences peacefully. A key element of this international system of agreements is freedom of the seas.

Also central to that rules-based international order is partnerships and allies. Two days ago, one of Europe’s leading politicians revealed that in 2020, former president Trump told European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen: “You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you.” According to the politician, Trump added that “NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” a threat he has made elsewhere, too.

In contrast, as soon as he took office, President Biden set out to support and extend U.S. alliances and partnerships. While that principle shows in the international support for today’s strike on the Houthis, it has also been central in the administration’s response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, managing migration, supporting African development, building the Indo-Pacific, and reacting to the Middle East crisis in general.

Today, Secretary of State Blinken finished a week-long trip to Türkiye, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank, Bahrain, and Egypt, where he met with leaders and reaffirmed “the U.S. commitment to working with partners to set the conditions necessary for peace in the Middle East, which includes comprehensive, tangible steps toward the realization of a future Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, with both living in peace and security.”

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Disruption, International

European Workers Are Fighting Elon Musk, Richest Man in the World

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2024 //
13

Forbes magazine regularly reports on the wealth of the richest people in the world. Elon Musk is #1, with assets of $250 billion. Despite his fortune, Musk despises unions.

In Europe, unions are taking action against Musk by refusing to deliver or service his Teslas.

The Washington Post reports:

MALMÖ, Sweden — Every day, port workers here in Sweden’s third-largest city unload shipping containers, oil, chemicals and building materials destined for places across the country. But there’s one thing they won’t touch: Tesla cars.

For six weeks, dockworkers at Swedish ports have refused to load or unload the electric cars made by billionaire Elon Musk. They’re part of a growing movement of workers across Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark who are protesting in support of striking Swedish Tesla technicians and their demand for a collective agreement on the terms of their employment.

“We’re going to take the fight all the way,” Curt Hansson, a 55-year-old dockworker here said in an interview during a break from unloading ships on a cold, gray December day. “Either he leaves or signs an agreement.”

Since October, when a subset of Tesla’s 130 technicians in Sweden first went on strike, tens of thousands of workers in Northern Europe have joined the largest coordinated labor action against Tesla since its founding in 2003. Norwegian and Finnish ports have likewise closed to Tesla shipments. Danish truck drivers won’t transport Teslas through their country. Postal workers have refused to deliver license plates to new Tesla drivers in Sweden, cleaners won’t work in the company’s Swedish offices and electricians won’t service its charging points here. On Friday, Swedish waste collectors added their support, refusing to pick up from Tesla’s repair shops across the country.

The solidarity blockades have the potential to disrupt Tesla sales in Northern Europe — a relatively small market compared with the United States and China, but a wealthy and environmentally conscious one, with some of the most electric vehicles per capita in the world. Even more, though, the labor actions are being watched as a test case for global efforts to crack Musk’s strict no-unions policy.

“Elon Musk isn’t making an agreement in Sweden because he’s afraid … it will create follow-ups in other countries, even the U.S.,” said Jan Villadsen, chairman of a Danish union that represents 50,000 transport workers, including truck drivers and dock workers blockading Teslas.

At Tesla’s super factory near Berlin, the company’s second production hub outside the United States, a growing number of the roughly 11,000 workers want to organize, German union officials say. And the United Auto Workers, fresh off its victory in strikes against Ford, General Motors and Chrysler-owner Stellantis, has said Tesla would be one of its next organizing targets.

“If Tesla gives in to the unions around this ongoing dispute, it could create a growing brush fire in Europe that eventually gets to the UAW and U.S. in 2024,” said Dan Ives, a New York-based analyst with Wedbush Securities. “It’s an important lightning rod issue around unions globally.”

Neither Tesla nor Musk responded to requests for comment. But Musk has weighed in publicly on the labor actions in Sweden. On his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, he replied to a post about mail carriers refusing to deliver license plates to his customers by writing, “This is insane.”
He has also been clear about his attitude toward unions.

“I don’t like anything which creates a lords-and-peasants kind of thing, and I think the unions naturally try to create negativity in a company,” he said at a conference in November. “If Tesla gets unionized, it will be because we deserve it, and it failed in some way.”

“Lords and peasants” is exactly the kind of relationship Tesla insists on having with its workers in Sweden, said Jānis Kuzma, 37, one of the striking technicians.

Kuzma said he joined Tesla in 2021 because he wanted to work on electric vehicles. He and his wife own a Tesla Model Y themselves. But as the company sold more cars in Sweden, the burden on its technicians increased, he said. He and the others at the Malmö service center had to take on a lot more work. The next-closest Tesla workshop was 170 miles away, so not a realistic alternative for most drivers.

After Tesla refused to give him a raise, Kuzma said, he decided to join the push for a collective agreement. The management didn’t seem to care that such agreements between companies and their employees are a central part of the Swedish labor market model, relied on in the absence of regulations such as a statutory minimum wage and credited with making strikes and other labor disruptions so rare. Kuzma said he was told, “Maybe Tesla is not for everybody.”

Several weeks into the strike, he said his manager called and accused him of leaking company secrets. The issue: Kuzma’s wife had criticized Tesla on X. “The craziest part is they were monitoring, they were checking my wife’s profile,” he said.

Kuzma pushed back with the help of a union lawyer, who argued that Tesla’s employee confidentiality provision, originally written for its U.S. workforce, could not trump Swedish free speech protections, which allow workers — and their partners — to talk about work conditions.

Today, about 65 percent of Swedish workers are part of unions, one of the highest rates in the world, and nearly 90 percent are covered by a collective agreement, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development…

It is not yet clear how the strike and sympathy actions will affect Tesla sales. The company’s Model Y crossover SUV was the best-selling car in Europe this year. In Sweden, it beat out Swedish-founded Volvo’s competing XC40, according to Mobility Sweden, an association of automakers and importers.

But Tesla no doubt is facing a public relations problem. The strike has been one of the biggest news stories in Sweden over several months, and opinion polls show the public is broadly supportive.

The unions are not backing down. Neither is Musk.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the United Auto Workers announced its plans to organize workers at Tesla, Toyota, and other non-union factories. The UAW won big pay increases at the Big Three factories in Detroit. In the past, efforts to organize auto workers have failed because many factories are located in the South, where anti-union sentiment is strong.

In a video announcing the campaign, UAW President Shawn Fain made the same arguments he did to Big Three workers this year as he rallied them to strike: Companies are making big profits while workers fall behind, he said.

“You don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay your rent or feed your family while the company makes billions,” Fain said. “A better life is out there. It starts with you: UAW.”

Many of the non-unionized companies, including Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and Volkswagen, have given their U.S. workers double-digit pay increases in recent weeks in what analysts call a clear attempt to ward off any unionization drive.

Categories Ethics, International, Unions

Timothy Snyder: Why We Must Not Abandon Ukraine

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2023 //
28

The MAGA faction of the Republican Party has made clear that it does not want to defend Ukraine. It does not see the point of helping Ukraine resist a Russian takeover. As foreign policy expert and national security specialist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said, “Ukraine is not our 51st state.” Like Trump, the “Freedom Caucus” does not want to pay to repel Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Trump thinks that Putin might be our ally if only we give him whatever he wants. (He has said he wants to restore the USSR.). You need only look at any photo of Trump and Putin together to see how Trump looks at Putin with a deferential and adoring expression.

Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, published this powerful article in the Kyiv Post. He should have published it in The Washington Post.

He writes:

Imagine that freedom was in decline around the world. Imagine that things had gotten so bad that a dictatorship actually invaded a democracy with the express goal of destroying its freedoms and its people. And yet… imagine that this people fought back. Imagine that their leaders stayed in the country. Imagine that this people got themselves together, supported and joined their armed forces, held back an invasion of what seemed like overwhelming force. Imagine that their resistance is a bright moment in the history of democracy this whole century. We don’t have to imagine: that attack came from Russia and those people are the Ukrainians. Would you sell them out?

Americans have an alliance in North America and Europe which has existed for more than seventy years, with the goal of preventing an attack from the Soviet Union and then from Russia. Imagine that, when the Russian attack came, the hammer fell on a country excluded from that alliance. Ukraine indeed took the entire brunt of the invasion, resisted, and turned the tide: a task assigned to countries whose economies, taken together, are two hundred fifty times larger than Ukraine’s. In so doing, Ukraine destroyed so much Russian equipment that a Russian attack on NATO became highly improbable. With the blood of tens of thousands of its soldiers, Ukrainians defended every member of that alliance, making it far less likely that Americans would have to go to war in Europe. Would you sell them out?

(If there is anyone out there who still thinks that NATO had anything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consider this: invading Ukraine made Russia far more vulnerable. If Russia actually feared NATO, invading Ukraine would be the last thing it would do. Russian leaders are perfectly aware that NATO will not invade Russia, which is why they can pull troops away from the borders of NATO members Norway and Finland and send them to kill Ukrainians.)

For this whole century, American politicians and strategists of all political orientations have agreed that the greatest threat for a global war comes from China. The scenario for this dreadful conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers could fight and die, is a Chinese offensive against Taiwan. And now imagine that this can defused at no cost and with no risk. The offensive operation the Chinese leadership is watching right now is that of Russia against Ukraine. Ukrainian resistance has demonstrated how difficult a Chinese offensive operation in the Pacific would be. The best China policy is a good Ukraine policy. Will we toss away the tremendous and unanticipated geopolitical gain that has been handed to us by Ukraine? There is nothing that we could have done on our own to so effectively deter China as what the Ukrainians are doing, and what the Ukrainians are doing is in no way hostile towards China. Ukrainians are keeping us safe in this as in other ways. Would you sell them out?

Imagine, because it’s true, that the whole world is watching the war in Ukraine. From everyone else’s point of view, whether they like us, hate us, or don’t care about us, Ukraine seems like an obvious ally and an easy win for the United States. Anyone around the world, regardless of their own ideology, knows that Ukraine is a democracy and America is supposed to support democracies. Anyone around the world, regardless of the state of their own economy, knows that our economy is enormous, far larger than Russia’s, and that economic strength wins wars. Anyone around the world can easily see that Americans are not at risk in Ukraine, and that Americans draw extraordinary moral and geopolitical gains from Ukrainian resistance. From the point of view of all observers, in other words, defunding Ukraine would demonstrate enormous American weakness. Is that the face we want to show the world? Do we want to tell everyone that we are unreliable and unaware of our own interests? Ukrainians, with American help, make Americans look sensible and strong. Would you sell them out?

Imagine that this is a winnable war, because it is. Russia’s main strategic objective, the seizure of Kyiv, was not achieved. Ukraine won the Battle of Kyiv. Russia was forced to retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts. Imagine the Russia’s campaign to take Kharkiv failed. Ukraine won the Battle of Kharkiv. Imagine that Kherson, the one regional capital Russia has taken in this war, was taken back by Ukraine. Ukraine won the Battle of Kherson. Snake Island, lost early in the war, has been taken back by Ukraine. Ukraine has taken back more than half of the territory seized by Russia in this invasion. Knowing that all is this is true, imagine that Putin knows it too. Russia’s main offensive instrument, the paramilitary Wagner Group, staged a coup against Putin and that Putin had to kill its leader. Imagine that Putin knows he cannot really take much more Ukrainian land — not without American help, anyway. Ukraine has a theory of victory that involves gains on the battlefield. Putin has a theory of victory that involves votes in the US Congress. Putin thinks that he has a better chance in the Capitol than he has in Kyiv. Should we prove him right?

Imagine a world food system with Ukraine as a major node. In normal times Ukraine can feed four hundred million people, and usually the UN World Food Program depends upon Ukraine. Ukrainian exports feed some of the most sensitive parts of the Middle East and Africa. Much of the instability in those regions is related to shortages of food. Russia has destroyed a major dam to destroy Ukrainian farmland. And mined Ukrainian farms on a huge scale. Russia targets ports and grain storage facilities with its missiles, and claims the piratical right to stop all shipping on the Black Sea with its navy. And yet… Imagine that Ukrainians resist here as well. Ukrainians farmers are hard at work. Ukraine still supplies food to the World Food Program. Ukrainians, through their own innovative weapons and clever tactics, managed to intimidate the Black Sea Fleet and open a lane for commercial shipping. That they are feeding the people who needed to be fed. Would you sell them out?

Imagine that we were a country that cared about war crimes. And imagine that there was a law, an international genocide convention, that defined five actions that constitute genocide, and that Russians have committed every one of these crimes in Ukraine. I cannot keep on writing about “imagining” when I have seen some of the death pits myself. I cannot say “imagine” when writers I know have been murdered because they represent Ukrainian culture. I cannot stay with my device when I read that the Russian state boasts of having taken 700,000 Ukrainian children to be russified, when every day Russian propagandists make clear that Russian war aims are exterminationist. And yet Ukrainians resist and persist. This is a genocide that can be stopped, that is being stopped. We are living within the scenario, the one we say that we have been waiting for, when American actions can stop a genocide, simply by helping the people who have been targeted, simply by paying their taxes. Whenever the Ukrainians take back land, they rescue people. This is how they think of their liberated territories: as places where no more children will be kidnaped, no more civilians will tortured, no more local leaders will be murdered. Would you sell out a people to a genocidal occupation? A people that has done nothing but good for you?

I have heard the excuse that Americans are “fatigued.” I have been in Ukraine three times since the war began. I have been in the capital and in the provinces. I have seen almost no Americans, fatigued or otherwise, in the country. And that is for the simple reason that we are not in Ukraine. How can we be fatigued by a war we are not fighting? When we are not even present? This makes no sense. It causes no fatigue to give money to the right cause, which is all that we are doing. It feels good to help other people help themselves in a good cause.

If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster: across all of these dimensions: food supply, war crimes, international instability, expanding war, collapsing democracies. Everything that the Ukrainians are doing for us can be reversed if we give up. Why would lawmakers even contemplate doing so?

If you happened to know lots of Ukrainians, as I do, you would know people who have been wounded or who have been killed. You would know people who get through their days with dark circles around their eyes, because everyone has dark circles around their eyes. You would know people who have lost someone, because everyone has lost someone. You would know people who are grieving and yet who are nevertheless doing what they can do. You would not know anyone in Ukraine who believes that fatigue is a reason to give up. Would you sell such people out?

I have heard the other excuse: that we need to audit the weapons we send to Ukraine. The expenses are minimal and the gains are great: a nickel on our defense dollar, achieving what we cannot ourselves do with all the rest. And here’s the thing: the weapons we send to Ukraine are the only ones in our stockpiles that are being audited. They are being audited not by accountants in suits and ties but by men and women in camouflage. They are being used and used well by people whose lives are at stake and whose country’s future is at stake. Ukrainians have used American air defense more effectively than anyone knew that it could be used.

Ukrainians are using American missiles that we consider outdated to destroy the most advanced Russian assets. Ukrainians are taking American weapons built in the last century and using them to defend themselves and the rest of us in this one. In large measure they are literally using arms that we would otherwise be paying to disassemble because we regard them as obsolete.

If that battlefield audit done by the Ukrainian army is not good enough: well, then, by all means, American lawmakers, come and visit Ukraine and see for yourself. You and your staffers would be very welcome. Ukrainians want you to come. It would be a very good thing if more of us visited Ukraine.

I will tell you what I witnessed in Ukraine: when Ukrainians see American weapons systems, they applaud. Would you sell them out?

Reprinted from @tashecon blog. See the original here.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, International

Russia Pounds Ukraine with Barrage of Missiles

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2023 //
29

Putin is determined to subdue and destroy Ukraine. He stepped up his ruthless offensive on the nation he claims to love, raining more death and destruction on the people who dare to defy his will. Putin continues to burn through his supply of weaponry and munitions.

The New York Times reported:

Russia targeted Ukrainian cities with more than 150 missiles and drones on Friday morning, in what Ukrainian officials said was one of the largest air assaults of the war. At least 30 people were killed, and more than 160 were wounded, according to the Ukrainian government, and critical infrastructure was damaged.

“This is the biggest attack since the counting began,” Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, said in a brief telephone interview, adding that the military did not track air assaults in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022.

For several hours on Friday, missiles, drones and debris slammed into factories, hospitals and schools in cities across Ukraine, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the east, straining the country’s air defenses and sending people scrambling for shelter.

Thanks to its powerful air defense systems, Ukraine has often been able to shoot down most, if not all, Russian weapons targeting cities in recent months. But on Friday the Ukrainian military said it had shot down only 114 missiles and drones out of a total of 158.

President Biden said in a statement that Friday’s attack — which he called the “largest aerial assault on Ukraine since this war began” — showed that after nearly two years of relentless fighting and huge numbers of casualties on both sides, President Vladimir Putin’s objectives in the war remain the same.

“He seeks to obliterate Ukraine and subjugate its people,” the president said. “He must be stopped.”

Oleksandr Musiienko, the head of the Kyiv-based Center for Military and Legal Studies, said that Russia’s complex barrage of weapons including hypersonic, cruise and air defense missiles on Friday was intended to overwhelm and confuse Ukrainian air defenses. “They’re changing the style of their attacks,” he said in an interview.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a statement, “Today, Russia was fighting with almost everything it has in its arsenal…”

Ukraine has long been lobbying its Western allies for powerful air defense systems to repel Russian attacks. Kyiv received its first Patriot systems this year, and more of the sophisticated missile batteries have since been delivered, including one this month from Germany.

Yet Republican lawmakers in Congress have declined to pass a new $50 billion security package for Ukraine unless the law also imposes new restrictions on migrants trying to cross the southern U.S. border, and negotiations are continuing. Washington said on Wednesday that it was releasing the last Congress-approved package of military aid currently available to Kyiv.

Mr. Biden said on Friday that “unless Congress takes urgent action in the new year, we will not be able to continue sending the weapons and vital air defense systems Ukraine needs to protect its people.”

Ukraine’s supply of surface-to-air missiles — key ordnance needed to down incoming Russian missiles — is now running short, forcing Ukrainian troops to juggle resources between the front line and cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Lviv.

Reacting to Friday’s attack, Grant Shapps, the British defense minister, said Britain would send “hundreds of air defense missiles” to replenish Ukraine’s stocks.

Categories Accountability, International

Benjamin Netanyahu Is a Maniac!

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2023 //
51

The continuation of Israel’s war in Gaza is madness. Initially, Israel’s invasion was a righteous response to the heinous atrocities of October 7. Israel has the right of self-defense.

But Netanyahu’s determination to eliminate every trace of Hamas is an insane goal. He will never succeed because the violence he is inflicting on Gaza is creating new recruits for Hamas.

He should declare success and end the war. There is nothing to be gained other than more hatred, more death, and more destruction by continuing to drop bombs on helpless people.

One day, he orders a million or so Gazans to move to the south of Gaza to avoid the bombing; then he bombs the south. No place is safe. Unless his goal is to kill all life in Gaza, his battle plan is madness.

The bombing is not only destroying civilians, it is destroying historic mosques, churches, museums, and precious cultural archives. Attacking such sites is contrary to international law and serves no purpose.

End the war. Stop the killing. Bring home the hostages. Talk peace.

Categories Cruelty, International

WSJ Reveals How Putin Got Rid of Wagner Chief

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2023 //
24

We have long known that Putin is a brutal dictator. Anyone who dares to oppose him mysteriously dies or disappears. His chief critic Alexei Navalny is currently “lost” in the Russian prison system; not even his lawyers know where he is.

Remember when the leader of the Wagner group staged a brief rebellion? Putin made peace with him and guaranteed his personal safety. Not long after, his plane crashed. Now we know why.

The Wall Street Journal reported today:

In the tarmac of a Moscow airport in late August, Yevgeny Prigozhin waited on his Embraer Legacy 600 for a safety check to finish before it could take off. The mercenary army chief was headed home to St. Petersburg with nine others onboard. Through the delay, no one inside the cabin noticed the small explosive device slipped under the wing.

When the jet finally left, it climbed for about 30 minutes to 28,000 feet, before the wing blew apart, sending the aircraft spiraling to the ground. All 10 people were killed, including Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner paramilitary group.

The assassination of the warlord was two months in the making and approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s oldest ally and confidant, an ex-spy named Nikolai Patrushev, according to Western intelligence officials and a former Russian intelligence officer. The role of Patrushev as the driver of the plan to kill Prigozhin hasn’t been previously reported.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in Prigozhin’s death, and Putin offered the closest thing to an official explanation for the plane’s fiery crash, suggesting a hand grenade had detonated onboard.

None of that was true.

Hours after the incident, a European involved in intelligence gathering who maintained a backchannel of communication with the Kremlin and saw news of the crash asked an official there what had happened.

“He had to be removed,” the Kremlin official responded without hesitation.

The dirty deed was done by Putin’s right-hand man.

And this is the man that wants to take control of Ukraine: a bloody, power-mad dictator who kills people the way others throw out trash.

Categories Accountability, Evil, International

Stuck Between All Sides: A Young Woman Reflects on the War in Gaza

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2023 //
8

I discovered this post by a young Jewish woman about her reaction to the conflict in the Middle East. This was the post that helped me formulate my own views because I resonated with hers.

Rose Win is a blogger and digital nomad. She recently settled in Boulder, Colorado after two years of writing and traveling solo around the country. She grew up in Seattle and lived in Israel as a child and young adult. She shares here her reflections on the state of the war in Gaza.

She writes:

I wrote in my last post that I have been plagued by writer’s block. That is true, to an extent. There have been a lot of stories in the past couple of months I’ve wanted to write about. My parents came for Thanksgiving. Karina visited. I went back to San Marcos to see Kasey and Evie. I joined a rock climbing gym. I got deathly ill. One subject, however, has stood in my way like a giant, impenetrable barrier. War.

I can’t get past it. Everything else seems ridiculous, and trivial, and out of touch in comparison.

Specifically, I’m talking about the war in Gaza. I don’t know how many drafts I’ve written trying to cohere my thoughts, distill my feelings. My head swims and my heart aches, but I can’t find ethical, or intellectual, or emotional clarity. I keep getting stuck in a labyrinth of contradiction, locked between layers of devastation. So this post is a mishmash, a dumping, a meandering reflection of the competing and overlapping circles in my head.

The foundational layer of devastation, as I wrote before, is the sadistic slaughter of Jewish lives. The maiming, the raping, the abducting, the wholesale massacring. From there emerge the layers wrought by the world’s response. The mindboggling, Orwellian universe where murder becomes a “justified act of resistance,” where killers are “victims of oppression,” and rapists are “freedom fighters.” Or maybe they’re not rapists at all, because for some reason, violence against Jewish women isn’t believable. For some reason, Jewish women need to make their own pathetic hashtag to be heard: #MeTooUnlessYoureAJew.

There’s a new layer of consciousness: the sickening realization that the antisemitism of the 20th century never went away. It just lay dormant, hidden under the surface – waiting for the right opportunity to shapeshift and rear its ugly head. “The Jews are parasites living on other people’s lands. They deserve to die,” said the antisemites of the 20th century. “The Jews are occupiers of other people’s lands. They deserve to die,” say the antisemites of the 21st century.

There’s the hubris of the left which, using the lens of intersectionality, casts the war in racialized terms, white people oppressing brown people. Never mind that more than half of Israel’s Jews are “brown,” hailing from Arab counties that expelled, or, “ethnically cleansed” their Jewish populations in the late 1940s and 1950s following Israel’s creation.

Today’s liberal college campuses preach “language is violence.” Students police speech to minimize “harm.” Except speech against Jews. Because for some reason saying “genocide to Jews” is not violent, or hateful, or harmful. For some reason, chanting genocide to Jews is okay “depending on the context.”

I watch people condemn Israel for committing genocide against Palestinians. I’d like to know why Hamas’ charter, which, in no uncertain terms calls for the annihilation of the Jews and the establishment of an Islamist state in Israel, is not also condemned as genocidal? Why are the Palestinians seen as the rightful, indigenous inhabitants of the land when the Jews, whose presence predates the Palestinians, are not? Why is it that, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Jews were the world’s refugees, but following the creation of the state of Israel, they are the world’s most reviled colonizers? Why is a Jewish state with a Palestinian minority deemed racist, but a Palestinian state with a Jewish minority deemed righteous?

The questions seem simple. The answers are anything but. I want to defend Israel. I want to rage at the hypocrisy and blatant double standards. But I’m stopped. I can’t. Because look at Gaza. Neighborhoods razed to the ground. Wholesale cities decimated. Thousands and upon thousands of women and children dead. Eighty percent of the population displaced – facing polluted water, starvation, overcrowding, flooding, freezing, and rampant disease.

Israel told over a million people in northern Gaza to flee to the south. Then they bombed the south. “Gaza becomes a graveyard for children” reads one headline. “Nowhere is safe” says the next. Here’s another: “We have the right to live.”

I want to demand “ceasefire now!” because this level of humanitarian catastrophe is so breathtakingly horrific it’s hard to even fathom. Because this level of collective punishment cannot be justified. Because this destruction, this sheer loss of civilian life, cannot go on.

I want to demand “ceasefire now” because I despise Benjamin Netanyahu and the thugs and zealots that rule his repulsive right-wing government. Netanyahu is cut from the same cloth as Putin. He knows Israel holds him responsible for the attacks on Oct 7. The end of the war spells his demise. So, the war will wage on. Because narcissistic demagogues never willingly cede power.

I want to demand “ceasefire now.” But I haven’t.

Does a ceasefire mean Hamas will remilitarize – rearm and resume its genocidal charter to wipe out the Jews? Does a ceasefire leave Hamas’ sprawling tunnel system – built underneath hospitals, grocery stores, schools, universities, private homes, and graveyards – intact so they can infiltrate Israel and terrorize its citizens again? Does a ceasefire condemn the remaining 115 Israeli hostages to death? Does a ceasefire send a message to other Arab countries, waiting in the wings, that Israel is weak, and the Jewish state can be destroyed?

Are any of these questions justifiable? I don’t know. I don’t know.

When the world accuses Israel of being an apartheid state, I want to push back. Apartheid refers to the brutal system of institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa. Israel, albeit flawed, is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, muti-cultural democratic state, where a fifth of the population isn’t Jewish yet has the same civil and legal rights as every other citizen.

But. That only rings true for those living within Israel’s green line – the 1949 armistice border. Following the war of 1967, Israel gained the Golan Heights from Syria, Gaza from Egypt, and the West Bank from Jordan. With the exception of Gaza, where Israel pulled out in 2005, those territories have been occupied ever since (though Israel, along with Egypt, maintained control over Gaza’s borders).

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal under international law. It never annexed the West Bank, because giving Palestinians Israeli citizenship would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. So one Israeli government after the next left Palestinians in stateless limbo, while sanctioning illegal Jewish settlement construction that zig-zagged through contiguous territory and punctured holes through the dream of Palestinian statehood. All the while Israel offered Jewish settlers – often messianic, often self-righteous, often violent – full rights of Israeli citizenship and subjected Palestinians to military rule.

So, yes, Israel can claim it’s the only pluralistic democracy in the Middle East. But also, no, it cannot.

In his book documenting bereaved families of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, author Colum McCann talked about his decision to title his book Apeirogon:

“Apeirogon is a weird word, I know. An apeirogon can’t really be drawn, it can only be suggested… But I loved it from the moment I heard about it. The idea that it had an infinite number of sides was attractive to me because I knew it wasn’t a two-sided situation, that it wasn’t balanced.”

This is how I feel when I write and think about Israel. Sides upon sides upon sides upon sides. Overlapping truths. Overlapping contradictions. Questions without answers. Problems without solutions.

There’s a reason why I’ve written draft after draft after draft. Everywhere I turn I’m stuck. I want to take a stand, but every stand I take conflicts with another. That’s why I haven’t written. That’s why I must write.

Categories Injustice, International, Justice, Personal

An Israeli Professor at Yale Denounces Efforts to Squelch Palestinian Protests and Harass University Leaders

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2023 //
31

Naftali Kaminski is a professor of medicine at Yale University and an Israeli. He speaks out here in the Israeli publication Haaretz against efforts to shut down Palestinian protests, as well as the vilification of university presidents who insist on free speech.

Dr. Kaminski writes:

In the flurry of denouncements, op-eds, and social media posts that followed the testimony in Congress by three elite university presidents’, the subsequent resignation of Elizabeth MaGill president of the University of Pennsylvania, and the unprecedented congressional resolution calling on Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth to also resign, a picture began to emerge, one that eerily reminded me of a poem we read when I was a boy in Israel.

The poem, written in 1943 by Nathan Alterman, one of Israel’s most beloved poets, uses the Greek philosopher Archimedes’ statement about the law of the lever “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth” as a metaphor for the role of antisemitism in politics. He suggests demagogues and tyrants use antisemitism as the ultimate “Archimedean Point”, a leverage point allowing them to achieve their most outrageous goals.

This, I think, is what we are experiencing, but now the Archimedean Point is the claim that university presidents are “not doing enough about antisemitism”. It is used with the immediate aim of suppressing pro-Palestinian voices as well as the strategic and, as now is being more explicitly stated, long- term ominous aim of reversing progress towards diversity, equity and inclusion at American universities.

I am aware this is a far-reaching statement. As an Israeli, a son to Holocaust survivors, my family history is one of oppression, discrimination, and genocide. Before joining Yale, my family lived in Pittsburgh and were members of the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh, site of the deadliest attack ever on Jews on American soil.

The Hamas atrocities of October 7 triggered fears and thoughts I never thought I had. I find displays of support or efforts to minimize them despicable. I fear the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. and believe it should be fought. I also feel that the current rage against university presidents of elite institutions is not indeed targeting antisemitism. And this feeling is colored by my own experiences in the last few months.

Waking up on that cursed morning in October and hearing about the Hamas attacks, I was immediately caught up in a flood of communication as I frantically sought to confirm that friends and family in Israel were safe, offer help, sympathy, horror and support.

But then I received a different kind of message myself. It was from an American Jewish faculty member at Yale. There was no expression of concern or empathy, no check-in about my well-being or the safety of my friends and family. Instead, it spoke about “Yale antisemites” and requested we “act preemptively” to “alert” Yale leaders. The message suggested a campaign of letter writing. It was obvious to me its intention to help foster an atmosphere that would label any pro-Palestinian expressions as antisemitic.

That message and those that followed were deeply distressing to me. They sounded as if they assumed that the president of Yale, himself Jewish with strong ties to Israel, would not do anything unless cajoled and pressed. There was never an expression of concern about me, or other Israelis on campus, except in one context – fighting the perceived threat of antisemitism by using the horrors to score ideological points.

In the following days, as the unfathomable extent of Hamas atrocities was coming to light, my attention was all on the suffering and killing in the region. I helped the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Office at Yale School of Medicine organize a solidarity event in which Israeli members of the Yale community who had family or friends who were victims of October 7 attack spoke, and shared their experiences. The event was well publicized and attended and supported by leadership.

On subsequent days, I was on a previously scheduled lecture tour — five talks in ten days at different institutions and venues. I felt I could not simply speak about science and medicine, and decided to start each talk by introducing myself as a Jewish Israeli, and saying “I am shocked and infuriated by the atrocities launched last week in southern Israel, I am also deeply concerned and horrified by the ongoing violence and exponentially escalating threat to civilians in the region. I hope and pray that violence ends, those abducted are released and threats to civilians are stopped and that all people in the region, regardless of ethnic or religious identity, will finally be allowed to live in peace, freedom, and dignity.” The statement was accepted nearly universally with applause.

In the meantime, at Yale, there were pro-Palestinian demonstrations, pro-Israeli vigils, as well as educational events; I did not attend most, and if I did, I might have probably not agreed with everything said, but I doubt I would feel unsafe. Indeed, despite the attempts by some provocateurs, the events were decidedly non-violent. On one Friday, at the Beinecke Plaza at Yale, there were three contrasting events, including an Israeli Palestinian Humanity vigil, attended by Israelis and Palestinians on campus, but there were no conflicts or arguments. There were no calls for genocide or threats of violence.

At the Yale-Harvard football game, I was walking to my seat, when a pro-Palestinian protest erupted; the students waved flags, chanted their slogans, but there was no sense of threat. There was definitely no call for genocide for Jews. Some in the crowd cursed the protesters and one even spit at them, but they did not respond, and the protest ended with the opposing students staging a walk out.

On that day I also saw the infamous doxing van, showing photos of young students, naming them as Harvard or Yale’s top antisemites. I felt it was a blatant and despicable “attempt to intimidate and harass” students as Yale’s president said.

At a panel discussion on the Public Health Implications of the Israeli-Gaza war, at Yale’s School of Public Health, discussions were concrete, professional and somber. One heckler was quickly silenced, and the rest of the event was very civil. This past Saturday, a pro-Palestinian protester hung briefly a Palestinian flag on a public Hanukkah Menorah in New Haven. The protester quickly removed it at the urging of other participants in the protest. This event met with wide condemnation by the organizers of the protest, Yale president and local officials, and local vigils were held in response

On social media, I have received multiple solidarity notices from colleagues and friends, Jewish and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian. I have gotten some antisemitic responses, but mostly from bots. Notably, most of the personal attacks I experienced were from self-proclaimed friends of Israel, even colleagues of mine, especially when I expressed support for the first ceasefire and hostages release, when I expressed concerns about the toll on Gazan civilians from Israel’s response or when I mentioned that Palestinians in the West Bank were targets of an unprecedented wave of violent attacks by Jewish settlers.

When one such acquaintance attacked me, I did not hold back, and reminded them that unlike them, I had served in the Israel Defense Forces, and had saved Israeli lives as a physician. The argument ended there, but I couldn’t help but reflect, if this was how I was treated as an Israeli, a tenured professor, how are Palestinians being treated? Are they silenced by the fear of being tagged as antisemitic, for expressing their anguish?

I am not making this digression to dismiss or minimize the rise of antisemitism or threat and isolation of Jewish faculty, staff and students feel, but to highlight how my own experience allowed me to realize that the anguish experienced by Jewish students and communities has been weaponized to suppress and delegitimize pro-Palestinian voices.

Moreover, and worse, for some groups this looked like the perfect opportunity to reverse the progress American Academia has made towards more diversity, inclusion and equity. And now this coalition of populists, rich donors, politicians known to be enemies of science and democracy and other bigots, is feverishly hoping that their Archimedean point will bring them a first achievement: the reversal of one of most impressive achievements for equity for women in recent American academic life – by forcing the presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT to resign.

Watching that congressional hearing felt like revisiting the public hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy Years. The presidents made powerful statements, expressed shock at Hamas atrocities, denounced antisemitism and described actions they took on campus. But what followed was a highly orchestrated circus, with targeted questions, aimed to trap them into indefensible answers. In the public eye, the five-hour hearing, crystalized into 30-second viral clips, based on misrepresentations and lack of nuance made the university presidents look indecisive and equivocal, while their previous statements and actions were not.

And when I watched the public shaming of these amazingly accomplished women, one voice kept ringing in my head, that of Counsel Joseph Welch words to Joseph McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency?”.

I hope the decision by Harvard to retain President Claudine Gay, despite the powerful campaign and false allegations against her, will once be remembered the same way Joseph Welch’s statement is now remembered, a turning point. A moment in which voices of reason, rejected the use of the justified fear of antisemitism as an Archimedean Point, and allowed all of us to focus on continuing making our universities and colleges more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and safe for all.

Naftali Kaminski MD is an Israeli Physician-Scientist and Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. On Twitter/X @KaminskiMed 

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Education Reform, Higher Education, International

John Thompson: Why Does the Media Love to Publish Bad News about our Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2023 //
20

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, noticed that the mainstream media loves bad news about public schools. Even when the news is good, the media somehow twist it into an indictment of public schools, teachers, and/or kids today. This drumbeat of negative coverage feeds into the narrative of the privatizers like DeVos and Koch. The latest example, he notes, are the recently reported scores from an international test.

He writes:

I recently wrote about the two tales of the Oklahoma school Report Card – the alt facts used by State Superintendent Ryan Walters to disparage public education, and the more nuanced view of a serious journalist. This is about the more subtle, but more important, two tales of the OECD’s PISA test scores.

I have become more worried that the newspapers I most respect are paying more attention to winners and losers of edu-political horse races, as opposed to the complexities of public schooling. Then, it was called to my attention by The Grade that “big international wire services tended to emphasize the dismal overall results (Reuters, A.P.). Mainstream national outlets tended to highlight the poor showing from U.S. kids, especially when it comes to math (New York Times, Washington Post, Axios).”So, I followed its links.

I also worry that this might be part of a larger pattern where the press is paying relatively more attention to polling data and attention-grabbing bad news for the Biden administration, such as inflation, immigration, and populist anger, and under-reporting the often more upsetting, complex, problems in other affluent nations.

Starting with the A.P. coverage, it began with “the average international math score [which] fell by the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of learning. Reading scores fell by the equivalent of half a year.” Granted, there are flaws in the way that those numbers are reached, but these “setbacks spanned nations rich and poor, big and small, with few making progress.” And the A.P. quickly noted that Germany, Iceland and the Netherlands “saw drops of 25 points or more in math scores.”

Then, it reported, “In the U.S., which historically has lagged in math, the average math score fell by 13 points.” But its reading and science “stayed mostly even, in contrast to an international drop of 10 points.” The A.P. then explained that the U.S. “improved to No. 26 in math, up three spots from 2018. It ranked No. 6 in reading and 10th in science, up two and one spots, respectively.”

Moreover, the A.P. addressed the endless headlines about learning loss during Covid, which are continually used as weapons against educators; School closures “didn’t always lead to lower scores.” There was “no clear difference” in performance trends between countries that had limited closures, including Iceland and Sweden, and those with longer closures, including Brazil and Ireland, according to the report.” And the A.P. quoted the OECD, “Many other factors impacted learning during this period, such as the quality of remote teaching and levels of support granted to struggling students.”

Similarly, Reuters quoted OECD director of education Andreas Schleicher who said, “Covid probably played some role but I would not overrate it.” Moreover, “Poorer results tended to be more associated with higher rates of mobile phone use for leisure and where schools reported teacher shortages.”

The New York Times began with, “The math performance of U.S. teenagers has sharply declined since 2018, with scores lower than 20 years ago, and with American students continuing to trail global competitors.” Two paragraphs later, it reported, “The bleak math results were offset by a stronger performance in reading and science, where the United States scored above average internationally.” But for the next 5 paragraphs, the Times focused on the bad news for U.S. schools, as well as saying “Countries that kept schools closed longer generally saw bigger declines.”(In fairness, however, the Times also reported, “In a surprising result, the PISA test did not find a growing gap in math and reading between the highest and lowest U.S. performers during the pandemic.”)

The article briefly reported:

The United States lost less ground than some European countries that prioritized opening schools more quickly. And the United States held steady in reading and science.

The United States even moved up in world rankings — largely because of the declines of other nations.

However, the next 15 paragraphs focused on math declines, which admittedly are extremely upsetting, while often implicitly criticizing schools. It wasn’t until the last paragraph that this context was added:

On other measures, the United States stood out for having more children living with food insecurity (13 percent, compared with an average of 8 percent in other O.E.C.D. countries), more students who are lonely at school (22 percent, versus 16 percent) and more students who do not feel safe at school (13 percent, versus 10 percent).

I also agree with criticism of Axios’ coverage, but I’d push back on the complaint about the Washington Post, at least for now. The Post’s headline, justifiably, was alarming, “Math scores for U.S, students hit all-time low on International exam,” but its subtitle was, “Even so, U.S. students performed better relative to their peers than in past years.” Its article was shorter, not leaving room for details about European declines, but it quoted Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics on the math declines, “Only now can we see that it is a global concern.”

The most balanced report was published in Chalkbeat, which gave equal space to how “The U.S. ranked sixth in reading and 10th in science among the 81 school systems that gave the PISA last year. In 2018, the U.S. ranked eighth in reading and 11th in science.” Moreover:

The steady reading results among U.S. high schoolers run counter to the significant reading declines observed last year for younger students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Academic recovery in reading has also been uneven. Carr said that could indicate that the NAEP has a higher difficulty level than the PISA.

Chalkbeat also quoted U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona who:

Pointed to the results as an indicator of the impact of the federal investments made in schools during the pandemic, much of which was spent on academic recovery initiatives, such as tutoring and mental health support for students.

That spending “kept the United States in the game,” Cardona said. Without it, he said, the U.S. would be “in the same boat” as other countries that didn’t spend as much and saw steeper declines. .

And that brings me back to my wider worry that the press, in a time when the presidential race could determine whether our democracy survives, is headlining American problems, without revealing that affluent European nations are doing worse in many areas where President Biden is being blamed for not solving long term challenges, ranging from inflation to anti-immigrant-driven populism.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Fake News, International, Media, Standardized Testing
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