What Happened Today: August 2, 2023
Tree of Life killer sentenced to death; Trump indicted again; U.S. credit rating downgraded
The Big Story
A Pennsylvania jury sentenced antisemitic murderer Robert Bowers to death on Wednesday for his attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 Pittsburgh worshippers in 2018. While there was some difference of opinion in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community over whether Bowers should be given the death penalty, or rot in a cell until his death, prominent members of the community have publicly backed the decision. Stephen Cohen and Barbara Caplan, co-presidents of the New Light Congregation, which lost three members at Bowers’ hand, supported the verdict, writing in a statement, “Too often in the past—and not just the recent past—governments and religious authorities have looked away when murder and mayhem occurred against Jews.”
Bowers’ lawyers attempted to plead schizophrenia in an attempt to spare their client’s life, citing testimony from several experts. But while the jury agreed Bowers had mental health challenges, they did not believe he had “committed the offense under mental or emotional disturbance.” According to reporting in The New York Times, the judge in the trial, Robert J. Colville, teared up while thanking the jury for their service, telling them he had never meant those words so much as in this particular case. For Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived the attack, it’s time to move on. Myers wrote, “It was a challenge to move forward with the looming specter of a murder trial. Now that the trial is nearly over and the jury has recommended a death sentence, it is my hope that we can begin to heal and move forward.”
In The Back Pages: It’s About Partnership
The Rest
→ Former president Donald J. Trump received another federal indictment on Tuesday from Special Counsel Jack Smith, on four charges related to his actions as president following Election Day 2020. The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and Attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Throughout the 45-page indictment, Smith brings a number of new facts and claims to light, including that then vice president Mike Pence had been keeping a diary of his conversations with Trump in the weeks prior to Jan. 6, at one point documenting Trump telling him that the DOJ had found “major infractions” with the integrity of the election. Included in other language in the document, Smith implies that Trump defrauded Pence in an attempt to get his vice president to refuse to certify electors on Jan. 6. Law professor Jonathan Turley wrote of the new indictment on Twitter, “If you take a red pen to all of the material presumptively protected by the First Amendment, you can reduce much of the indictment to haiku … I felt that the Mar-a-Lago indictment was strong. This is the inverse.”
Read More: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/01/trump-indictment-takeaways-00109309
→ Chinese medical company Prestige Biotech operated an unlicensed biolab near Fresno, California, from October 2022 until it was raided in March 2023. Inside, local officials found crowded into plastic bins hundreds of lab mice that had been adapted to carry the COVID-19 virus; biological samples of blood, tissue, and body fluids from humans; and samples of infectious diseases like malaria, COVID-19, tuberculosis, HIV, and multiple strains of herpes. As of Tuesday, the city of Reedley, California, has disposed of 5,000 gallons of biological waste from the lab. Who exactly was operating the lab, and what precisely they were doing there, remains unclear.
See the horror show, here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12358447/First-photos-Chinese-run-lab-California-experimenting-dangerous-viruses-engineering-mice.html
→ Speaking of China’s penetration of weak U.S. defenses, Chinese malware is being found inside U.S. military institutions—and it’s no longer programmed merely to spy, but also to potentially cripple basic infrastructure at bases worldwide, according to a story in The New York Times that broke over the weekend. One unnamed congressional official told the Gray Lady that the malicious code was “a ticking time bomb.” And “one of Mr. Biden’s most senior advisers” told the paper that the discovery, which may also be embedded in civilian infrastructure networks, “raises the question of what, exactly, they are preparing for.”
→ Graph of the Day:
While the Biden administration’s new border policies seemed to help reduce the number of illegal entries after their May 12 initiation, the month of July saw a 30% increase in crossings over June, the first full month the new policy was in place, with 130,000 arrests made. But according to administration officials, if the new policies were to be revoked, as one California judge is attempting, there would be an even greater surge of migrants “that will significantly disrupt and tax DHS operations.” The Department of Homeland Security estimates there are currently 100,000 migrants in northern Mexico at the moment, waiting.
→ Video of the Day:
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1686588886129184768
The migrant crisis is apparent not only at the southern border, but also in New York City at the Roosevelt Hotel, where the legendary 1,000-room hotel is completely out of space due to NYC repurposing it as a migrant housing hub since May. At a news conference Monday, New York Mayor Eric Adams told reporters, “It’s not going to get any better. … From this moment on, it’s downhill.” Adams committed to making sure that migrants sleeping outdoors would be doing so only in areas controlled by the city, saying he didn’t want New York to turn into one of those “other cities” with massive tent encampments along highways and in public parks (as one now finds in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland … and, as it turns out, in New York City itself). Adams also called for the Biden administration to give the migrants the right to work legally.
→ Pfizer recently put out an ad that stated “3 out of 4 U.S. adults are at high risk for severe COVID-19. Do you know who they are?” Without going into detail—no, they are not. The study Pfizer cites doesn’t use the words “high risk”; it says “increased risk” and, as journalist David Zweig points out in his takedown of the ad, the data being used doesn’t account for prior infection or vaccination. Does Pfizer really think its shot is so useless? Anyway, fun fact: Only in the United States and New Zealand can you advertise pharmaceutical products direct to consumer.
→ Number of the Day: 50,000
That’s how many Ukrainians German prosthetic maker Ottobock estimates have lost a limb in the war with Russia. Hans Georg Näder, Ottobock’s chairman of the board, told The Wall Street Journal, “My grandfather founded our company in 1919 to help … German soldiers returning from World War I wounded by artillery fire, who lost their arms, legs or eyesight—this is exactly what we see in Ukraine.” The need for prosthetics and amputations is so overwhelming in Ukraine that many patients are waiting over a year for a new limb, including young children.
→ Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S. government’s debt on Tuesday, joining fellow ratings agency S&P, which made the same move in 2011 after a different debt-ceiling battle. But nobody seems to care. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called the move “arbitrary,” and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said, “It doesn’t really matter that much.” Meanwhile, Fitch projects the United States’ debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 118% in 2025, and the federal deficit this year is already up 170% over last year. Phew! We thought maybe Fitch was on to something!
TODAY IN TABLET:
Thinning the Ranks by Clayton Fox
Using vaccines as a political weapon, U.S. military leaders have wrecked the force’s combat readiness and morale, current and former soldiers tell Tablet
In Lebanon, Israel and America Are on Opposite Sides by Tony Badran
Israel backpedals, while Hezbollah grows bolder
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.
The publication on July 16, 2023, of an article by Jacob Siegel and Liel Leibovitz calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel opened a fresh debate over a topic dominated by outdated assumptions and emotional entreaties. To deepen the conversation, Tablet invited a group that includes a retired IDF general, U.S. Senators and members of Congress, former Middle East diplomats, and writers from various political persuasions to offer their thoughts on the issue. We will be publishing them in the Scroll this week.
It’s About Partnership
U.S. aid to Israel creates an ironclad bond between the two nations
By Amos Yadlin and Avner Golov
A year ago, in July 2022, President Biden and former Prime Minister Lapid, signed the “Jerusalem U.S.-Israel Joint Declaration,” emphasizing that the strategic partnership between the countries “is based on a bedrock of shared values, shared interests, and true friendship.” It also stated that Israel’s ability to defend itself, by itself, is not merely an Israeli interest but “vitally important to the national security of the U.S. itself.” Three essential components ensure that Israel will be militarily self-reliant:
A strong Israeli deterrence
Military qualitative edge in the region
An American diplomatic umbrella, particularly at the U.N. Security Council.
U.S. military aid is a framework to guarantee these components, and by doing so it allows the U.S. to avoid another great war in the Middle East and strengthens its interests in the region: save American lives, support regional stability, enhance energy security, counter anti-American forces led by Iran and terrorist groups, and save significant American resources for the great power competition with China, while allowing Israel to secure its place in the Middle East.
In their recent piece, “End U.S. Aid to Israel,” Jacob Siegel and Liel Leibovitz rightly pointed out two important observations: the benefits of the relationship with Israel have grown larger for the U.S.; and under the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016, nearly all military assistance to Israel “consists of credits that go directly from the Pentagon to U.S. weapons manufacturers,” thus subsidizing American military contractors. Their conclusion—that the U.S.-Israel relationship should have a transactional nature—is also noteworthy. However, their analysis missed the fact that the current “special relations” between Israel and the U.S. are already based on a successful win-win bargain which effectively strengthens their strategic partnership.
The yearly $3.8 billion military aid is a framework to advance the countries’ shared values and interests. It guarantees supplying the IDF with advanced American weapons, thus preserving Israel’s qualitative military edge—one of Israel’s main national security pillars. It also enables joint efforts on developing future weaponry, including air defense capabilities—such as Arrow, Iron Dome, and David’s Sling—which saved countless lives, both Israeli and Palestinian, and could save many more in a possible future military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran. Iron Dome protects American troops in the region, and Arrow batteries are expected to protect Germans in the coming years. Israeli air defense incentivized U.S. partners to normalize relations with Israel and to expand the “peace wave” in the Middle East to improve their defensive capabilities.
More than anything, the aid symbolizes America’s commitment to Israel’s security, which dramatically affects Israel’s and America’s deterrence posture and avoids a military confrontation in the region. Iran will be more brazen should its regime conclude that the U.S. will not stand by Israel in a future confrontation. It might also consider breaking out to a bomb in light of the absence of a credible threat from the U.S. and Israel. Hezbollah will be less deterred and even Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, would be less restrained in promoting terror attacks in Israel if the U.S. commitment to its security is undermined. Altogether, the U.S.-Israel military partnership serves as a stabilizing force and prevents further security deterioration and its humanitarian costs.
Not only should the American-Israeli partnership not be changed—it actually suits contemporary U.S. strategic priorities, as the administration is resolved to allocate more resources to the Indo-Pacific while optimizing its assets in the Middle East. Israel’s “defend itself by itself” approach, enables the U.S. to effectively use its regional posture to build a regional pro-American coalition that counters Iran’s malign activities while enhancing U.S. influence and diminishing China’s and Russia’s.
Assessing U.S. security aid to Israel by its influential impact—whether it constrains Israeli policy—is likely to overlook its importance to both countries’ national security. Simultaneously, it will be a grave mistake to see the military assistance package as an obstacle to enhancing the relations even further. The aid signifies the bond between the countries and the framework for cooperation between them, and should serve as a basis for future upgrades that better reflect the nations’ interests in the 21st century.
In fact, during President Biden’s visit to Israel last year, he announced the launch of U.S.-Israel Strategic High-Level Dialogue on Technology in critical and emerging technologies, led by their national security advisers. This dialogue should be an opportunity to fortify Israel’s commitment to preserve U.S. technological superiority, while promoting its own tech hub and boosting their mutual innovation ecosystems. By doing so, the U.S. and Israel could create a new pillar which invigorates their common partnership in light of the great U.S.-China rivalry, and deepens the relations between their peoples.
As Israeli society faces a struggle over its democratic nature, an immense grassroots liberal force has emerged. This force consists of the majority of Israelis—right, center, and left wings alike. Its chief international ally is the U.S., and its vision is to make Israeli democracy stronger, which would further deepen the moral bond Israel shares with America. This is yet another opportunity to bolster the bonds between the nations. Forming new U.S. policies regarding Israel, while focusing only on its current government, will be erroneous and dangerous for the interests of both countries.
That Chinese lab that was discovered sounds more like it was a processing center, where orders were put together and shipped to “customers”. There most likely is a website attached to it, along with a customer base, etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more, many more such “fulfillment” centers of its like located elsewhere.
It should be National Security priority and investigated to the max. Question is: will it? And how would we ever know? Very scary stuff.