April 19: A Little Retaliation, as a Treat

U.S. sanctions Ben-Gvir ally; Protests at Al-Columbia; Admin drops new Title IX rules

Apr 19, 2024

The Big Story

Israel struck Iran last night, in what The Wall Street Journal described as a “limited strike aimed at avoiding an escalatory cycle that could push the countries closer to war.” Reliable details about the strike have been slow to emerge, but it appears to have been carried out by drones, rather than aircraft (some reports have claimed “drones and missiles”), and to have targeted an Iranian base in Isfahan, where the regime has a nuclear facility. ABC reported Friday that the IDF had targeted radar installations at the Isfahan nuclear site, although U.S. officials told Fox News that Israelis had targeted the base, not the nuclear site, and that “they hit what they intended to strike.” Iranian state media, meanwhile, claimed that Iran’s air defenses shot down the drones before they reached their target. Israel also appears to have struck a radar installation in Syria.

In other words, the Israeli reprisal seems to have been, as Itamar Ben-Gvir put it in a one-word X post, “lame.” Israeli officials and some of their media allies have sought to spin the attack as a sort of warning; one Israeli official told The Washington Post that the point was to “signal to Iran that Israel has the ability to strike inside the country.” And there’s been plenty of this on social media, claiming the strike as a “brilliant” victory:

Others have claimed that the intention of the strike was to shore up the coalition that helped defend Israel against Saturday’s attack and bask in what some people apparently believe is a wave of anti-Iranian sentiment in Western capitals. Here was The Times of Israel editor David Horovitz’s gloss:

By striking back at Iran in the way it reportedly did, Jerusalem apparently sought to underline the message that Tehran is vulnerable, and to respond to Saturday night without prompting wider conflict and without alienating the new coalition, the better to galvanize international support for tackling the paramount Iranian nuclear threat.

Iran, for its part, appears to be pretending that nothing happened—which may, we suppose, be an indication that it is so frightened it dare not retaliate. Or, more likely, it’s a hint that nothing happened or, at least, that the Iranians regard the current equation, in which they can launch hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel and receive only a limited strike in return, as a victory for them.

Tablet’s geopolitical analyst summed the takeaway as of Friday afternoon:

The Israeli strike was a deliberate dud based on the profoundly delusional conceit that “the world” will “now see the dangers of a nuclear Iran” and as a result will form a “powerful international coalition” led by the United States (!) to stop Iran’s nuclear program—which by this point is certainly operational.
After all the Sturm und Drang the past 15 years, this was Bibi Netanyahu’s big attack on Iran. Hershel Grynszpan did more damage to Hitler with his revolver in Paris.

IN THE BACK PAGES: Stuart Halpern on Harry Truman’s Passover seder message

The Rest

→But the Biden administration hasn’t let Iran’s missile barrage, or Israel’s counterattack, distract it from what’s really important: sanctioning Israelis. On Friday, the State Department announced sanctions on Ben-Zion Gopstein, an “extremist settler,” close associate of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the leader of Lehava, a West Bank settler organization. The move appears to have been coordinated with the European Union, which also announced sanctions against Lehava on Friday. The timing of the announcement—after all, what country in the world announces sanctions on its ally amid a dangerous round of escalation with its leading regional rival?—is a classic instance of the Obama-Biden “values feint.” As Tony Badran and Michael Doran explained in 2021:

The final flashpoint [between the United States and Israel over U.S. realignment with Iran] will be the Palestinian question. As tensions with Jerusalem rise over Iran, the administration will execute its values feint, criticizing Israel for choosing the path of “war.” But it will be over the Palestinian issue that the Biden team will deliver the harshest public scolding. The issue helps camouflage American rage over Israel’s independent Iran policy, presenting it instead as a righteous fight over “values.”

→Speaking of criticizing Israel for choosing the path of war, here was former Obama National Security Council spokesman and Pod Save America cohost Tommy Vietor last night, as news broke of Israel’s strike on Iran:

→On Thursday, New York City police arrested more than 100 Columbia students while clearing the campus of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” Among those arrested and suspended was Ilhan Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, a junior at Barnard and an organizer with Columbia Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, whose X bio reads “angry black girl” followed by a hammer and sickle. And here’s a video of some of her comrades just outside the Columbia campus entrance, calling pro-Israel Columbia students “Nazi bitches” and promising that “the 7th of October” will happen “10,000 times.”

→And here’s another video from Columbia, which we’re presenting without comment:

→Isra Hirsi—who, we repeat, is Ilhan Omar’s daughter—also reposted on Friday a fundraising call for organizations “working on the ground w[ith] those on the ground in Gaza,” including Pal.Gaza, the Gaza Mutual Aid Collective, and Project Watermelon. We couldn’t find much about the Gaza Mutual Aid Collective—although it was one of the groups featured in a slideshow by a Yale dance collective in November, which also raised money for “Palestinian anarchist fighters” affiliated with Hamas—and Pal.Gaza appears to be run by a Gaza-based group called the Sanabel Team. Project Watermelon, meanwhile, is a fiscally sponsored project of the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarship, a California 501(c)(3) whose sponsors include the state-funded California Arts Council, Disney Voluntears, the Employees Community Fund of Boeing, and the American Film Institute.

→The Biden administration released its revised Title IX regulation on Friday morning. The new rule is 1,557 pages long, so we can’t pretend to have read the whole thing or to understand everything in it. What we do know is that the new rule expands the definition of “sex discrimination” to include discrimination on the basis of “gender identity,” which means that universities and primary and secondary educational institutions could lose federal funding over policies requiring students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their biological sex, or for failing to address “bullying” and “harassment.” The new rule also weakens the protections for university students accused of sexual assault or harassment, eliminating the requirement for live hearings, in which the accused can cross-examine their accuser, and making it easier for schools to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, rather than the higher “clear and convincing evidence” standard favored under the Trump administration. The new regulation punted, however, on the issue of trans students competing in sports.

Here’s the Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro with a quick reaction:

→The House of Representatives voted 316-94 on Friday to advance a $95.3 billion aid package containing military assistance for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. In a rare move, Democrats voted overwhelmingly with Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to push the bill forward over a split GOP caucus, although a majority of Republicans also voted to move the package forward. With this procedural hurdle cleared, the House will on Saturday hold four separate votes on different elements of the bill: defense aid to Ukraine, defense aid to Israel, defense aid to Taiwan, and a grab bag of several measures, including one forcing ByteDance to divest from TikTok.

→A man self-immolated outside of Trump’s trial in Manhattan on Friday. Video of the incident has been circulating on social media, but we won’t be linking to it here. The victim has been identified by police sources as Max Azarello, a self-identified “investigative researcher” who, prior to setting himself on fire, dropped pamphlets linking to a Substack titled “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.” The Substack, which appears to have been written by someone with schizophrenia or some other form of paranoid delusion, posits a grand conspiracy to create a “fascist kleptocracy” in the United States involving Peter Thiel, Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Epstein, and Simpsons creator Matt Groening, among others. That said, we’ll attempt to abide by the expert medical guidance of Drs. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa, who explained to psychiatry students at UCLA Medical School in an April 2 talk that perpetuating the “stigma of self-immolation” serves the “interests of power.”

TODAY IN TABLET:

King Khat, by Dana Kessler

A new film tells the story of the geeky scientist who developed the synthetic drug that took Israel by storm during the Second Intifada

SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.

Harry Truman’s Seder Message

His 1945 address to American troops drew a lasting connection between the Passover story and the nation’s consciousness

By Stuart Halpern

With Hamas still holding Israeli hostages and global antisemitism rampant, as Jewish families sit down to read the Passover Haggadah this year on Monday evening, April 22, the passage “in every generation, there are those who rise up to destroy us” will no doubt be particularly resonant. While most Jews are aware that the phrase—like the phenomenon of Jew-hatred it describes—is centuries old, few fully appreciate the role the Passover story has played in offering Americans of all backgrounds comfort and inspiration during difficult times. The Haggadah, in fact, has long been America’s guidebook for liberty.

At 5 p.m. on March 26, 1945, in Washington, D.C., Vice President Harry S. Truman addressed the annual Passover service at the Jewish Welfare Board during WWII. The speech, broadcast to the Jewish men and women in the Armed Forces, praised both the miracle of Jewish historical survival and the contributions of Judaism to the West. It encapsulates how the story of the Exodus has left an indelible imprint on the American consciousness.

“Since biblical times,” Truman began, “people of the Jewish faith have made great contributions to the moral code of mankind.” He then described how, for centuries, the Jewish faith has served as an ethical beacon for humanity. “From the revelation of the Ten Commandments by Moses to the philosophical teachings of modern Jewish scholars,” he continued, “there has been a constant search for a better way of life for the benefit of all.” Fighting against the worship of “pagan idols,” the Jews “preached eternal faith in one God—the God in whom we all put our trust.”

The vice president then took the occasion, the beginning of the Festival of Freedom, to express gratitude, on behalf of America, for the gifts bestowed by the God of Israel. “All God-fearing people,” he said, “can well join with those of the Jewish faith to thank the Almighty for the many blessings received.” Millions of people, across Europe, Asia, and Africa, had already been “liberated by the forces of freedom.” Though the conflict was ongoing, great progress had been made toward victory over the Nazis.

Chapter 11 of the Book of Exodus describes how, during the Plague of the Firstborn, Jewish homes were protected while the tyrannical Egyptians were struck down. Harking to this episode, Truman observed that “[t]oday the Angel of Death is again passing over the house of the modern tyrants,” slaying the forces of evil while sparing the “moral principles, for which the United Nations fight.”

Alluding to the horrors of the Holocaust and millennia of prior persecution, Truman expressed admiration for not only Jewish resilience but for the support Jews have given to others experiencing discrimination:

Having suffered persecution for centuries, the Jewish people steadfastly adhered to their ancient faith—the faith which gave them courage and fortitude to withstand man’s inhumanity to man. Furthermore, the Jews were frequently in the vanguard of the fight to aid other oppressed minorities.

Truman then turned to Hitler and his hateful dehumanization of the Jews. Hitler, Truman said, sought their destruction as a means to “pave the way for his plans for world domination.” Yet, he added, Hitler did not “reckon with the courage and endurance of a race hardened by centuries of oppression, and strengthened by a firm faith that ultimately another Moses must come to lead them out of their modern bondage and into the Promised Land.”

Identifying the American worldview with the desert aspirations of the liberated ancient Hebrews, Truman expressed the collective seeking of a “Promised Land, where intolerance and bigotry do not exist.” In such an era, there would be “peace and security, where all good people can dwell together in harmony as brothers.” This, Truman argued, could only be achieved by proper planning to counter ignorance and the intolerant.

Perhaps alluding to the Passover Seder’s emphasis on education from generation to generation, Truman emphasized that the “general education” that would be needed in a post-Hitler world would be a “long and endless process.” The journey, like that arduous march out of Egypt, would require those of good will to “work together for the promotion of racial and religious harmony among all people, so that we may ultimately achieve the Promised Land on this earth which our Creator surely expects.”

Truman then concluded with another call for all Americans to appreciate their blessings on this day, and to pray for lasting peace.

According to the Truman Library Institute, among those who heard the speech were two Jewish American soldiers stationed in Dahn, Germany. Chaplain (Maj.) Eli Bohnen was a rabbi serving with the U.S. Army’s 42nd Infantry Division. Cpl. Eli Heimberg was his assistant. That night, they would lead their division in the recitation of the Passover service using a Haggadah the two had designed especially for the occasion. Their prayer book is believed to be the first printing of a Jewish liturgical text in Germany since the Nazis rose to power in 1933.

The Passover story, described by Vice President Truman and recited that evening by Bohnen and Heimberg’s troops, continues to serve as the prism through which Americans may envision fulfillment of their nation’s promise. Its tale of miraculous liberation and the divinely inspired aspiration for the moral betterment of mankind serves, ever still, as a source of faith for those seeking freedom for the benefit of all.