What Happened Today: January 18, 2023
U.S. sends shells from Israel to Ukraine; Rare Earth metals in Sweden; There's a glut of rental properties
The Big Story
On Wednesday, as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told world leaders at Davos that he needed more wartime support, The New York Times broke the news that U.S. officials were tapping into American munitions held in Israel and sending hundreds of thousands of shells from Israel to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy’s comments came in the wake of a helicopter crash outside of Kyiv that claimed the lives of 18 people, including Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, Denys Monastrysky, the highest-ranking official to die since Russia invaded the country last February. The cause of the crash remains unknown, and as of Wednesday morning, no evidence had been presented that the helicopter was shot down by Russian forces, but Zelenskyy’s video address will likely resonate as Ukraine’s allies see a small window for Kyiv to crack the stalemate with the Russian military in Ukraine’s east and south. For the Pentagon, accelerating its arms support will mean going deeper into the reserves of a stockpile quietly held in Israel. The intense demand for ammunition to supply Ukrainian forces has drained the U.S. military’s stockpiles and outpaced American munition makers. That has pushed the Pentagon to tap into its alternative stocks of shells, which along with Israel includes a stock stored in South Korea.
At the start of the war, Israeli officials enacted what amounted to an embargo against weapon sales to Ukraine for fear that the aid would anger Moscow, which in turn would retaliate against Israel by directing its forces to thwart Israeli air strikes against Iran and Hezbollah militants in Syria. But American leaders wanted their bullets, and after a call by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to then Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz in the early days of the war, and the blessing of the Israeli cabinet and then Prime Minister Yair Lipid, Israel gave the green light for U.S. forces to move the bullets that they first began storing in Israel to support their effort in the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict.
In the Back Pages: Grandpa Sold Sheets to the Klan
The Rest
→ Microsoft joined the long list of top tech companies making major reductions in staffing on Wednesday, saying it would fire 10,000 employees. The climate for businesses has continued to deteriorate, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella wrote in a letter to employees, and the company, which boasted 221,000 workers last summer, would now have to “exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.” As did others across the tech sector, Microsoft tried to keep up with demand by plowing some of its newfound revenue into hiring sprees over the past few years. But 2022 and now 2023 have marked the long dramatic pivot toward belt tightening. Last year, according to the website Layoffs.fyi, tech companies let go of at least 150,000 workers.
→ The explosion of movie and television streamers has driven demand for more content, which increasingly comes in true-crime flavors with titles taking on real-life events for plot lines.
But showrunners and script writers are taking more liberties with the facts, sometimes fabricating whole-cloth events that involve real-life figures.
Real people are fighting to retake control of the narrative, and legal experts say if they can prove their public reputations are damaged by false portrayals, they have legal grounds to sue for defamation.
At the moment, Hollywood studios are keeping a close eye on the outcome of Linda Fairstein’s lawsuit against Netflix for its series on the Central Park Five case, accusing the platform for a “maliciously inaccurate” portrait of her involvement as a prosector in the case that saw five minority teenagers wrongly convicted and sentenced for the rape of a female jogger. Fairstein lost a book deal and resigned from several board seats because of the backlash she received after the series came out.
The federal judge in her case said five scenes from the series could substantiate her claim of defamation, then sent the trial to U.S. District Court, where a ruling could rein in the freedom studios have indulged thus far by adding vague disclaimers about content “inspired by real events.” Former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and former coach Jerry West made public condemnations of the falsified events depicted in the recent HBO series that dramatized their years as part of the Los Angeles Lakers—with West’s attorney demanding an apology from HBO for “falsely and cruelly” depicting West as “an out-of-control, intoxicated rage-aholic.”
→ Number of the Day: $176,746
That’s the daily compensation paid to Geoff Morrell for four months of work at Disney, where he was hired as the top corporate affairs executive before he left amid a public relations nightmare when the company feuded with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over an education bill. Disney also plunked down $500,000 to cover moving Morrell and his family from London to a Southern California home, then another $500,000 to send them back across the pond, and then $4.5 million more to buy his SoCal pad at market value—a free-wheeling approach to executive compensation revealed Tuesday when Disney filed a report to shareholders outlining its defense against activist investor Nelson Peltz, who’s waged a war on the entertainment giant to obtain a board seat and revise what he describes as outlandish, “over the top” pay for executives.
→ Europe’s largest collection of rare earth metals—essential for making electric cars and consumer electronics—was discovered in Sweden by the state mining company LKAB in the northern region of the country, where it overlaps with the Arctic Circle.
Currently dominated by China, the worldwide rare-earth marketplace could shift dramatically as this newly discovered deposit of more than a million tons of metals anchors Europe as a major player in the field …
… with one catch: It’ll be at least a decade until LKAB can extract the metals and sell them.
The long wait from discovery to point of sale is thanks to the extensive environmental permitting and specialized processing of the metals that has made it a niche field dominated, now, by China and Russia.
Still, the new deposit will become Europe’s first large-scale mine effort and significantly decrease the continent’s reliance on Beijing and Moscow for the 27 metals that count among the rare-earth group.
Demand for rare earth metals has skyrocketed because they’re required in EV vehicles, wind turbines, and other green technology that nations are adopting to meet climate change standards.
→ Tweet of the Day:
Molly Sampson, a 9-year-old Maryland resident, made a historic discovery of the tooth of a megalodon, the extinct shark species known for being the largest fish to ever exist. The tooth is 15 million years old, but the once-in-a-lifetime find on the shores of Calvert Beach wasn’t pure luck. Sampson, a budding autodidact with aspirations to be a paleontologist, has been on the hunt for a megalodon tooth for a while, to add to her collection of some 400 shark teeth. One expert said the tooth belonged to a megalodon that was 50 feet long, typical for the species.
→ The land of milk and honey just got a little sweeter after 7-Eleven opened its first Middle East outpost in Tel Aviv. The U.S.-based convenience store slinger of Big Gulps and sundry budget snack options says it will open eight more Tel Aviv stores and 30 more across Israel over the next two years. Because the stores are set to remain open on Shabbos, they will not receive a kashrut certificate.
→ Vermont legislators are giving the cold shoulder to the local press, with nine state media outlets joining in a letter to lawmakers to loosen up what they say are unprecedented restrictions from congressional business. At least 3 reporters in recent days were turned away from committee hearings at the state house because of what legislators say are public health rules about room capacity enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Newsmakers say the concerns about public health are bogus theater for a government that’s increasingly made it difficult for reporters to get in-person contact with legislators and their staff. “These restrictions fly in the face of centuries of precedent and tradition in the Statehouse and violate the Vermont Constitution,” the group of media outlets wrote to congressional leaders.
→ Graph of the Day:
The graph shows new multi-family housing being built for renters (in the white) and single-family detached homes being built for buyers (in the yellow), with rental properties far exceeding the rate of production that preceded the housing bubble during the great financial crisis of the late 2000s. Rental properties became attractive to builders after the crisis as young Americans flocked to city apartments, holding at arm’s length any interest in suburbia or owning the types of homes that left millions in foreclosure. But rents are suddenly dropping, and demand remains intense for the undersupplied single-family properties. That could be very bad news for all the investors exposed to the rental market and might dry up the construction of new apartments. “The interesting question is not whether rent inflation is rolling over, because it is,” Kristine Aquino wrote in Bloomberg. “The interesting question is whether builders were lulled into thinking that the rent business would grow to the sky and therefore overbuilt new multi-family units as a result.”
Read More: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-01-12/five-things-you-need-to-know-to-start-your-day
TODAY IN TABLET:
The King and Queen of Israeli Pastries by Dana Kessler
Longtime staples of Jewish-Yemenite cooking, jachnun and malawach have become popular comfort foods across Israel, where their recipes have adapted to local tastes
Mahmoud Abbas’ Dissertation by Izabella Tabarovsky
The Palestinian leader’s scholarly abstract sheds light on the crude deformations of Soviet Zionology and how they are reflected in today’s universities
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.
Grandpa Sold Sheets to the Klan
A Jewbilly’s Advice to his Big City Brethren
By Zaq Harrison
To my East Coast, Big City Liberal Jewish brothers and sisters: Please just shut up. Antisemitism is not rising; Hillary isn’t responsible for Jew hatred, and it didn’t suddenly appear after she lost the most winnable election in history. I get it—until 2016, the worst antisemitism most of you ever had to deal with was when you were a teenager and some knucklehead called you a Jew Bagel. Just because you never lived with antisemitism until recently doesn’t mean it wasn’t always here. You’re like the guy in Field of Dreams; you didn’t see the players on the field until one day, poof, they were there.
I am a Jewbilly, born and raised in Appalachia. Our Jewish community was so small and insignificant that even Chabad took a pass. I grew up in a strictly kosher home, and my family was in the ham business. Our Jewbilly roots run deep here: My kin have been walking them thar hills for more than four score and seven. As kids we went “swimmin’ in the crick,” and while I didn’t hunt like all of my classmates in school did, I looked forward to the second Saturday in April, which was opening day of trout season. How did we end up there, in quintessential hickville? The mule died.
Sounds idyllic but it wasn’t. What you call bullying today, my father called valuable life lessons. Most days I got my ass handed to me on the playgrounds and in the classrooms. Things changed for the better when I broke that kid’s nose in sixth grade. Pop was prouder of me on that day than he was at my bar mitzvah.
Pop had his trials as well. My uncle shared the story that a high school classmate told my pop during the war that he hoped Hitler would kill all of the Jews, then sucker-punched Pop and broke his nose. I asked my uncle what happened to the other guy, and he just smiled and said they took him to the hospital.
If you grew up in greater New York and went to public school, you likely had three days off for the Jewish High Holidays: two for Rosh Hashanah and one for Yom Kippur. If your school district wasn’t predominantly Jewish, then most of the teachers were.
In Appalachia we also had three days off for the hillbilly High Holidays: Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving and the Monday following, the first day of deer season, aka the hillbilly Yom Kippur.
So, yes, it’s true, my grandpa sold sheets to the Klan. James Bacon, the late journalist and famed “Mr. Hollywood Confidential” wrote about my Grandpa Sam in his nationally syndicated column decades ago. Jim Bacon told me the following: The townsfolk in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, pulled Grandpa aside one day and asked him, “Sam, we hear you are selling to those boys in the Klan.” Grandpa, who was a well-known peddler in the area, nodded his head. They said, “Sam, you realize these are not nice people. You understand they don’t like you.” Grandpa nodded his head.
They asked again, “So, Sam, why the hell are you doing business with these bastards?” Grandpa looked up and explained that “the sheets cost me a nickel apiece, I sell them ‘special order’ at $1.50 each. They need lots of sheets. מאכן א לעבן. Machan a Leban.” That’s Yiddish for I’m making a killing off of these idiots. Leave me alone to make my living.
The Jewbilly lesson I learned from Grandpa and Pop is when someone says or does something antisemitic, it is usually just them being stupid. Everyone has a job in life; for some it’s being stupid. No whining or complaining. Our job is to know who we are and never compromise that—never. If it comes down to it, don’t hesitate to protect yourself and your family. As for the locals … we might have been in the ham business, but Pop always said, “Don’t hold your breath. You’re never getting invited over for Christmas dinner.”
We had a strictly Kosher home and we sold hams for a living. Machan a Leban. I can live with that.
Zaq Harrison was a former IDF Lone Soldier whose Grandpa sold sheets to the Klan.
This is brilliant!!! Thank you, @Zaq Harrison for this! Funny and honest. Yay!
One (hill) billy to another, that is a fuckin wonderful piece o writin, ( my union ) Brother.
Just excellent. Thanks.