What Happened Today: March 15, 2022
What Happened Today: March 15, 2022
A brutally familiar attack; Ukraine ‘must admit’ no NATO; Saudis cozy up to China
The Big Story
Fitting what’s become a familiar pattern connecting violent hate crimes in New York, Tammel Esco, 42, the man charged with the brutal beating of a 67-year-old Asian American woman, has a lengthy criminal record—including a number of arrests for violent crimes. The attack, which left the victim suffering from bleeding of the brain, multiple contusions to her head and face, and facial bone fractures, took place last Friday and was caught on the surveillance video of the building where Tesco and the victim both live in Yonkers, an area just north of New York City. It began when, seemingly at random, Tesco called the woman an “Asian bitch” as she walked past him toward the front door. The woman ignored him. A report from the Yonkers police describes what happened next: “The suspect approached from behind and punched her in the head, knocking her to the floor; he then stood over her and proceeded to punch her in the head and face more than 125 times with alternating fist strikes before foot-stomping her seven times and spitting on her.” Prior to savagely beating his neighbor, Tesco had 14 previous arrests, half of them for felonies and three of them for violent crimes, including a stabbing in 2010 for which he served 42 months in prison. Just a year ago, in February 2021, Tesco pushed a woman through a glass storefront window. He was reportedly given a conditional discharge and served no jail time for the assault. Hate crimes and violent crimes are both up dramatically in New York. The number of anti-Asian bias incidents in the city increased by 339% in 2021 over 2020, according to data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. As The Scroll has pointed out when covering previous hate crimes, increases in racially motivated violence are correlated to more general increases in crime. Put more simply: It’s not necessary to solve the ideological or cultural motivations behind the attacks in order to curtail them by using more effective policing and prosecutions to reduce the overall crime rate.
Read it here: https://www.newsweek.com/convicted-felon-charged-hate-crime-allegedly-hit-woman-125-times-1688211
In The Back Pages: Lessons for Being a Minority in an Existentially Threatening Environment
The Rest
→ Ukraine “must admit” that it won’t join NATO, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday, a remark that touches on one of Russia’s key demands and could be an overture toward a cease-fire. Ukraine’s potential entry into the U.S.-led NATO alliance, which was originally established to counter the Soviet Union, has been a major grievance for Russia. Kyiv agreeing not to enter NATO is one of the terms of the cease-fire proposal that Moscow has floated—though the Russian deal also includes more maximalist demands like the complete demilitarization of Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian delegations head into their fourth round of talks on Tuesday to negotiate an end to the war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine. While Zelensky’s comments about NATO suggest the potential for progress, Russian President Vladimir Putin is reported to have told European Council President Charles Michel in a call on Tuesday that Kyiv is “not serious about finding mutually acceptable solutions” to the war.
→ As Russian forces continue their bombardment of Ukrainian cities, they are reportedly making gains both in the country’s east and in the suburbs around Kyiv, tightening the vice around the capital. “Heavy artillery barrages again shook the city early Tuesday, and a firefight overnight lighted up the western horizon with tracer bullets,” according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. While the outnumbered Ukrainian military has managed to keep Russian forces out of the capital, the situation is more dire in other parts of the country. Recent drone footage taken over Mariupol, a port city on the Black Sea, shows bombed-out buildings and smoking wreckage throughout the city, which has been punished by heavy artillery and missile strikes. Ukrainian officials say that as many as 2,500 civilians have died in Mariupol, and 350,000 remain trapped in the city without water or heat after power was cut off March 1.
→ For those keeping score as the United States’ global power declines and China’s rises, the latest news involves Saudi Arabia inviting a Chinese delegation to Riyadh and planning the same red-carpet treatment for Beijing that was previously extended to President Trump in 2017. Saudi Arabia was a key U.S. ally for decades but got restless watching Washington, D.C., pursue its bid for a new grand alliance with its regional rival, Iran—an effort that was led first by the Obama White House and now by President Biden. The potential consequences of a Sino-Saudi strategic partnership are enormous because China is the world’s leading oil importer, and the Saudis are the biggest global exporters.
→ Faced with a surge in violent crime around a satellite office in downtown Seattle about a half mile from its main headquarters, Amazon has decided to relocate its employees. Insider reports based on data from the Seattle Police Department’s Twitter account say, “There have been at least three shootings, two stabbings, and one carjacking in the area since February 21.” Is this a new trend in the United States’ “Brazilification” as those who can afford to flee high-crime cities do so, leaving them even less policed and more violent? And what about the people who stay, often because they can’t leave? Maybe they need to get jobs with Amazon. The next step could be to combine the current crime relocation policy with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ new space travel company. Too many murders ruining your neighborhood? No problem! Bezos rockets will relocate you to a nice, safe galaxy somewhere far from all this urban decay. Bet there’s an Amazon factory hiring there.
→ Breathtaking. It reminds me of the time I watched those C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
→ Germany will buy 35 F-35 fighter jets from the United States, the biggest purchase the country has made since pledging 100 billion Euros to military spending in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These Lockheed Martin jets, like the German Tornados they’ll be replacing, are capable of carrying nuclear weapons stored on American bases in Germany and are central to NATO’s nuclear capabilities in the region. Germany’s purchase of the cutting-edge F-35 increases its ability to coordinate with other NATO nations: the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Denmark, and Norway all possess F-35s, and Switzerland and Finland recently acquired the jets as well.
→ Amazon is poised to purchase MGM, the storied movie studio that produced hundreds of classic titles, including Gone with the Wind (1939), Ben Hur (1959), and the James Bond franchise. This purchase, which still needs approval from the Federal Trade Commission, could put Amazon’s Prime Video in league with streaming rivals like Netflix and Disney+. The FTC, chaired by Lina Khan, is currently probing Amazon’s retail and cloud products to assess whether they violate antitrust laws. In 2017, Khan penned a widely read piece in The Yale Law Journal, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” arguing that Amazon was cobbling together monopolistic power over too many parts of the economy, from technology to entertainment to logistics. Much of Amazon’s power, Khan noted, comes via its exclusive access to customer data. With the purchase of MGM, Amazon would be adding 4,000 titles to its streaming platform, including new Oscar nominees and a trove of classics. This would surely attract more viewers and subscribers—in other words, more data.
→ The city of San Francisco is now boycotting doing business with 28 states—more than half the states in the county. The first of these boycotts was passed in 2017 in response to states with “anti-LGBT laws.” San Francisco barred city contracts and official travel from more than a dozen states at the time and did not include carve-outs for LGBT-owned or -allied businesses. A few years later, the city boycotted a handful more states in response to restrictive abortion laws, and it has now added two more to the list in opposition to restrictive voting laws, bringing the total tally to 28. These policies have real impacts on the city’s budget, reducing competition and driving up costs and production times.
Rabbi Stuart Halpern on the Book of Daniel’s Rejection of Assimilationism
Want to win Best Costume this Purim? Here’s a hot tip: Go as Daniel.
Who? First, let’s ponder the when and where as recounted in the Megillah, also known as the Scroll of Esther, which tells the story of Purim and is recited aloud every year on the evening and subsequent morning of the holiday. The story, you may recall, takes place in Shushan, where Jews face an existential threat at the hands of a genocidal Persian regime and where many double down on assimilation, changing their names and hoping for the best. In other words, a place not at all like anything that may feel familiar to us here and now.
The heroes of the story are Mordecai and Esther, two reluctant saviors whose names were inspired by Marduk and Ishtar, two pagan gods—suggesting they were no strangers to keeping a low profile and living life in fear. But whereas Esther lounged comfortably in the palace until her people were on the brink of extinction, Daniel stood tall, a proud Jew throughout.
Blink and you’ll miss his cameo in the Megillah. He is introduced to us as Hatach, the messenger who ferries all these furious notes between Esther and Mordecai. But those ace detectives, the ancient rabbis of the Talmud, weren’t fooled: They deduced that Hatach is secretly Daniel, who eventually ended up with a Biblical book of his own.
A character whose fame is often relegated to the Bible’s B side, Daniel was one of a young group of Jewish nobles ripped from their homes and brought to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar a few years before Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and sent the Jewish people into exile. Like Esther, Daniel spent years in the lap of luxury, hanging out in the king’s palace and eventually becoming a minister. Like Mordecai, he was identified as a Judean.
What is most relevant for us today is Daniel’s perspective on how to navigate being a minority in an existentially threatening environment, an approach in stark contrast to that of his Shushan-dwelling coreligionists. While the Book of Esther says nothing about Esther’s diet in King Ahasuerus’ palace, the Book of Daniel recounts its hero’s refusal to accept a bounty of royal delicacies offered by Nebuchadnezzar. Rather than eat nonkosher food, Daniel asked for only vegetables and water. When Babylonian officials convinced a different king, Darius, to forbid prayer to anyone other than the monarch, Daniel defied the edict, proceeding straight to his home and davening, just like he did every other day, facing Jerusalem. In the Book of Esther, there is no mention of either prayer or yearning for Zion from the besieged Jews of Shushan who are fretting over Haman’s decree to destroy them. But Daniel refuses to accept that relief and deliverance will come only if Jews make themselves inconspicuous and relegate their faith to the shadows to please Babylon’s social elite. Contrary to what various pundits and pontificators have asserted over the millennia, Daniel knew well that Jews will never, and should never, blend in.
By revealing Hatach to be Daniel, the rabbis were making a profound counter suggestion to the mentality of assimilationist Shushan Judaism.
Daniel Judaism is best practiced not only in the breach, but daily: in the backyards, boardrooms, and the public square. If, as political theorist Benjamin Hertzberg has suggested, Esther’s politics is that of compromise, Daniel possessed the politics of conviction.
And maybe, the Talmud was hinting, it was Daniel’s inspiration that inspired Esther to meet her moment. That is a lesson not lost on the present moment, nor relevant only to Jews. The United States will be better off with more proud Jews, yes, just as it will be with more proud members of all faiths.
“Spiritual freedom is the root of political liberty,” wrote Thomas Paine, like Daniel, a dreamer of redemptive national possibilities. “As the union between spiritual freedom and political liberty seems nearly inseparable, it is our duty to defend both.”
By dressing up as Daniel, we won’t figure out a better iteration of the JCPOA nor prevent hate-filled antisemites from spewing their bile or threatening violence. But Daniel does remind us that with pride in identity comes a deep sense of purpose. He reminds us that being a minority need not mean relinquishing uniqueness or compromising ancestral customs. He reminds us that destinies need not be determined in exceptional moments but in daily acts of courageous conviction.
For such a moment as this, you can’t pick a better Purim costume.
Rabbi Stuart Halpern is Senior Advisor to the Provost and Deputy Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, and the editor of “Esther in America.”