What Happened Today: December 22, 2022
Bibi is almost back; Zelenskyy takes the podium; Pelosi and her police
The Big Story
Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Israeli President Isaac Herzog just before midnight on Wednesday to tell him that he had successfully formed his coalition to lead Israel’s next government. And he may well have, but after excruciating negotiations, only one of his parliamentary partners has signed an official agreement: Agudat Yisrael, the Hasidic faction of the United Torah Judaism party. Lucky for Bibi, newly installed Knesset speaker Yariv Levin, a fellow member of the Likud party, shut the body down for a week on Tuesday, stalling for the boss. When the Knesset returns next Monday, members will officially hear the good news and then will have one week to get the new government sworn in. Much has been made of the incoming right-wing, religious coalition, and details are now coming to light about exactly what Netanyahu has promised his partners in exchange for a chance at his third stint in the big chair.
The far-right firebrand leader of the Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben-Gvir, got Netanyahu to agree to ditch a provision in the government’s “Basic Law” that prohibits those who’ve practiced “incitement to racism” from running for Knesset. As well, Ben-Gvir has secured unprecedented power over the Israeli police in his role as national security minister, an expansion of the previous post called internal security minister. Ben-Gvir secured three additional measures: a new law against incitement towards Haredim; the banning of Palestinian flag waving at institutions supported by the government; and a special Shin Bet unit focused on Israeli-Arab crime. The ultra-Orthodox parties secured guarantees for more funding for their Yeshiva students, the prohibition of prayer at the Western Wall that isn’t “halachic,” and a change to immigration law that will prevent those with only a Jewish grandparent from becoming citizens. Bibi also struck deals with Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party and Avi Maoz of the Noam party. Both are virulently anti-LGBT. Smotrich will have a role in the Defense Ministry overseeing “civilian matters” in the West Bank, and Maoz will be setting school curriculum.
Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave a speech calling the new government the most “extreme in the history of the state,” charging that it will dismantle the “foundations of Israeli society.” Bibi’s response? “You lost the election. Go home.” Meanwhile, Biden administration insiders say that the U.S. president’s approach will be to deal directly with Netanyahu and to hold the PM responsible for any actions taken by his ministers.
For more on Ben-Gvir, read Armin Rosen’s profile in Tablet:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/rise-itamar-ben-gvir-armin-rosen
In The Back Pages: The Fourth Night of Hannukah in Kyiv
The Rest
→ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke in front of a joint session of Congress last night, asking Americans across the political spectrum to continue sending money and weapons to Ukraine for its fight against Russia. The speech comes as winter sets in and after weeks of steady Russian assault on Ukraine’s power grid. Zelenskyy framed his requests not as “charity” but as an “investment” in “global security and democracy,” and he was clear that the funds were being handled responsibly. (Perhaps he felt this necessary to mention because Ukraine was the 122nd ranked country in the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, slightly ahead of number 136, Russia.) The speech was full of pathos and even some humor and was met with a raucous response from nearly everyone in the chamber, including 18 standing ovations. In spite of the clear support, there are also questions about how much more the United States can give. Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told reporters after the speech, “My position has never changed. I support Ukraine, but I never supported a blank check. We want to make sure there’s accountability for everybody, the money that is spent.”
Read More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/21/zelensky-biden-congress-speech/
→ Kristen Hentschel, a freelancer for ABC News in Florida, used her credentials as a journalist to help create inflammatory reports for an Alabama-based political consulting firm called Matrix LLC. She created clickbait footage of political candidates getting caught in seemingly damning situations, as in 2018, when she confronted a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, Toby Overdorf, about dead endangered tortoises, allegedly found at the construction site where he worked. A later investigation found no evidence of the tortoises, but Hentschel received $7,000 for trying to bring him down. In response to the NPR piece that broke this story, ABC said in a statement, “Kristen Hentschel was a freelance daily hire who never worked for ABC News on the political stories referenced in the NPR article.”
→ Variety just released its first list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time, and it’s an encyclopedia of the history of film. Seemingly representing every category and taste, as well as including many foreign films, the eclectic list includes The Graduate at No. 100, My Best Friend’s Wedding at No. 71, Titanic at No. 45, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho at No. 1. As the winter superstorm sets in, it seems like a perfect time to curl up with some slivovitz and latkes and finally watch Seven Samurai.
Read the whole list here:
https://variety.com/lists/best-movies-of-all-time/psycho-1960-2/
→ Three years after the Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution backing a federal commission to study reparations for slavery in the United States, the smaller Reconstructionist movement is following suit. In a new resolution, passed on Dec. 11, the movement calls for members to embrace “ongoing learning about systems of oppression and structural racism, and about how these systems have caused, and continue to cause, harm in our communities.” Rabbi Sandra Lawson, who is Black and also heads the movement’s DEI wing, told JTA that this step is about figuring out how to deal with the previous and ongoing harm that community members are experiencing. As far as any hesitancy that might come from some members of the community, Lawson said it’s not about their understanding of the problem, but that the fear of “solutions … is what frightens people.”
→ Arizona Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who lost to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs on Nov. 8, is challenging the results in court. On the first day of proceedings Wednesday, Lake’s team presented the court with evidence that many ballots were printed to 19-inch dimensions on 20-inch paper, causing reading errors on election day. Lake’s team says this shows deliberate election interference, while the lawyer defending Maricopa County (where the discrepancies occurred) countered that the ballots might have accidentally been too small due to the use of a “shrink to fit” setting on printers. Maricopa claims the ballots were still able to be duplicated and counted. Lake’s team also cited a witness statement that a contractor hired by the county to scan mail-in ballots on election night was not given vital “chain of custody” documentation and that employees of that contractor were able to add their own family ballots at that time. The judge hearing the suit has already dismissed 8 of 10 claims brought by the Lake campaign. Regardless of the outcome, Maricopa County clearly has issues in its elections department: An audit after the 2020 election required the county to buy new voting machines, costing taxpayers upwards of $3 million.
→ The same technology used by global governments to implement COVID-19 safety infrastructure is now being used to accelerate a move toward total citizen surveillance. The most obvious culprit here is China, whose strict lockdown apparatus uses cell phone data and QR codes to keep potentially infected people from entering public spaces. The data has also been used to prevent protestors from entering a city where they were set to protest or even from filing a complaint at a government office. And local provinces are creating more and more sophisticated applications that can link health, credit, and location data in a comprehensive social credit system. “It’s the governance model, the philosophy behind it is to strengthen social control through technology,” Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the AP. “It’s strengthened by the health app, and it’s definitely going to stay after COVID is over.” In Israel, where the internal security service, Shin Bet, had been using similar technology for years to track potential terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza, they turned it on their own citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic—even sending messages to Arab residents who were near the scene of a clash with police, whether they were participating or not. The messages read, “You have been spotted as having participated in acts of violence in the Al-Aqsa Mosque … We will hold you accountable.” In India, facial recognition tech was used to help the government fine individuals violating mask mandates. At this point, we’re not sure what to do except await the microchip brain implants, the nirvana of state-administered happy juice, and a sex robot Stasi. Oh yeah, Netanyahu recently bragged to Jordan Peterson in an interview about how he wants to create a genetic database of all Israel’s citizens to monetize for Big Tech research. “Anonymized” of course. No, we’re not kidding.
Anyway, read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-police-government-surveillance-covid
→ In the furor over Jan. 6, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed that she had no “power over the Capitol Police.” But a new report from House GOP members, with collected text messages and emails between Pelosi’s office and the police, shows that in fact Pelosi had immense influence on security arrangements at the Capitol, which she apparently failed to exercise. Pelosi staff started meeting with the House Sergeant at Arms in December 2020 in preparation for Jan. 6 to discuss security plans, and her top aide even edited some of the plans. The report also shows that those meetings excluded Republican lawmakers. “Documents provided by the House Sergeant at Arms show how then-House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving carried out his duties in clear deference to the Speaker, her staff, and other Democratic staff,” said the report. But that doesn’t mean the Capitol Police didn’t also—independently—totally drop the ball. Even after receiving detailed intelligence about chatter between extremist groups on their potential plans for the day, the leadership of the USCP did not inform the rank and file of what to expect on Jan. 6, and as a result, many came to work unprepared. Collected testimony also shows that “optics” were a cited reason for not calling in the National Guard and that for the same reason, Capitol Police were told not to wear their helmets or carry batons. The blame game continues.
→ Tweet of the Day:
After all the compounding evidence released from the Twitter files about FBI interference in operations at Twitter—the FBI’s clearly communicated, if not explicitly explicit, desire to target certain accounts (or say, crush a story about a certain presidential candidate’s son), and FBI payments to Twitter for its services—an FBI spokesperson made this statement to Fox News:
The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.
The spokesperson went on to say that “conspiracy theorists” are “attempting to discredit the agency.” Hey, guys, J. Edgar called. He said, “Keep up the good work, fellas!” For some reason he also wanted to know if Twitter had any dirt on Martin Luther King Jr.
TODAY IN TABLET:
Eight Thoughts on Israel’s Political Crisis by Matti Friedman
The rise of Middle Eastern culture in Israel is to be celebrated. The rise of Middle Eastern politics will make our fate identical to that of our neighbors.
Profound and Pious by Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Decoding what made Abraham Joshua Heschel such a complicated and unique man—in the Jewish world, American culture, and our family—50 years after his death.
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.
Hanukkah in Ukraine, Night Four
Zelensky got his ammunition—and a ride
By Edward Serotta
Edward Serotta is the director of Centropa, a Vienna-based Jewish historical institute, and the producer of the podcast series, “A Ukrainian Jewish Century.”
I’ve come across my fair share of Chabad-sponsored menorahs between New York and Vienna, where I live. Nearly all of them were powered by electricity.
I have never seen a menorah, however, driven by a massive portable generator, but that is what I came across earlier tonight in the center of Kyiv, in Maidan Square, where the Festival of Lights is being celebrated in a country plunged into darkness as Russian missiles seek out and destroy as much civilian infrastructure as possible.
In Kyiv, some street lighting came back on today. In the Podil district, where I’m staying, two blocks have their power fully restored, while two others are completely dark and cold. The elegant office building across from my hotel was lit up inside for a while, so I could watch office workers scurrying about, typing on computers and filing papers. The lights went out a few hours later.
Cafés that offer light, heat, and power are often swamped; university students have been charging phones, doing homework, chatting with friends, and reading books.
This afternoon I had coffee with a foreign ministry official not far from Maidan, and we met in Hlek, a restaurant I’d love to see relocated to Vienna. Aside from a very creative kitchen (ever had a gingerbread torte with porcini mushrooms and raspberries?), I found one room taken up by diners, a bar area where two techies were working on furniture design software on their laptops and, in the back room, a cinema club meeting. About 18 adults were sitting and watching a large screen projecting a new Ukrainian film. Afterward, they would discuss it. Tomorrow, the waiter said, there’s a book club.
My friend from the foreign ministry sat down, smiled widely, and shared with me what I had already heard: President Zelenskyy was now winging his way across the Atlantic to meet his American counterpart and address Congress. He said his ministry had no inkling about it, that it had been a closely held secret.
In fact, just yesterday Zelenskyy was on the front lines of the war, handing out medals and talking with soldiers, the sound of artillery punctuating the air.
Back in February, when things looked lost for Ukraine, someone in the Biden administration offered to rescue Zelenskyy and bring him to safety. His response: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Now he has both.