The View from Right Field

When Does Anti-Israel Become Antisemitism?

I have been thinking a lot about antisemitism lately.  I understand people can be opposed to some, or even many, of the policies Israel has pursued and is pursuing vis-à-vis Palestinians (both before and since October 7).  The issues between Israelis and Palestinians are difficult, and I don’t know the answers.  In this regard, I remember when I was a kid and I would go to my grandparents’ place in central Minnesota for two weeks each summer.  My grandparents had a little souvenir plaque on the wall that read: “Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins”.  Which is probably a useful thing to keep in mind with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian question – for everybody.

But my concern is different than that.  I’m not talking about what Israelis and Palestinians think about each other.  I’m talking about people in America, and I’m wondering whether, at some point, if we’re not careful, anti-Israel views in America might turn into real antisemitism.

Herbert Hoover: Born 150 Years Ago Today

A truly great American was born 150 years ago today in West Branch, Iowa: Herbert Clark Hoover.  Even a partial list of his accomplishments is astounding:

• He was an extraordinarily successful mining engineer.
• He organized the return of Americans from Europe after the outbreak of World War I.
• He organized the feeding of Belgium during World War I (despite the opposition of Winston Churchill, among others).
• He organized relief in central and eastern Europe after World War I.

Ascension Day – In a Very Different Country at a Very Different Time

Today is Ascension Day, which commemorates Jesus Christ's ascension into heaven.  The date varies from year to year, because it is 40 days after Easter (counting Easter as day one).  It is, therefore, always on a Thursday.  And this year it is on May 9.

In some countries Ascension Day is a public holiday.  Germany is one of those.  Which brings back a memory from an Ascension Day 42 years ago.  We had been driving around East Germany for four days.  It was interesting.  As I said at the time, it was not really a vacation; it was an education.

“Leaders are not mere politicians and this is why”

The following letter appeared in the Letters section of the Financial Times today (April 5)¹:

“Janan Ganesh concludes his column on the difficulties of getting Europe to spend more on defence (Opinion, March 27) with a quote attributed to what he calls ‘another European leader, in another era, in another context’. I believe he was referring to Jean-Claude Juncker, the then prime minister of Luxembourg, who quipped: ‘We all know what to do. But we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.’

“If you want to be good at this kind of job, you have to be willing to lose it”

Paul Ryan said this in 2011 when he was trying to reform entitlement spending.  Ultimately, he couldn’t get it done, though he tried and he didn’t let the possibility of losing his job stop him from trying.  He did get significant tax reforms passed in 2017, maybe not as many as he would have liked, but a lot more than anybody else had accomplished in a long time or has accomplished since.  In 2018, then-House Speaker Ryan decided to retire.  Perhaps he felt he couldn’t “be good at this kind of job” anymore. I don’t know.  In any case, he was good at it while he was there.

Unfortunately, we don’t have enough people in the Republican Party like this anymore.  Instead, they are voting against aid to Ukraine, which would help our national security, too, and voting for silly motions to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security because they don’t like President Biden’s border policies.  It doesn’t matter whether they are doing this because they are scared of Donald Trump or because they think they would lose a primary to the people who tend to vote in primaries.  If they are more worried about losing their job than they are about being good at it, then maybe they should find a new job, which they could be good at.

Who Lost Ukraine? While Biden Isn’t Good, Republicans Seem to Be Worse.

Back in the 1950s, one of the big political issues was “Who Lost China?”  The Chinese Communists had won the civil war against the Nationalists in 1949 (Chiang Kai-shek retreating to Taiwan), and then North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950.  The Republicans spent a good part of the 1950s accusing Harry Truman (and Dean Acheson, George Marshall, et al) of “losing China”. 

I am not going to go into that debate.  What I am going to do is suggest we think about what the answer to “Who lost Ukraine” might be if we don’t start getting weapons and ammunition to Ukraine and, ultimately, they can’t hold on.  President Biden started out pretty good, but he hasn’t been nearly as good as he could have been.  We have wrung our hands about fears of escalation way too much,\; we have not delivered the weapons we needed to as quickly as we should have; and we have put too many limits on the use of the weapons we have delivered.

If We Really Care About Ukraine, Why Not Do What Teddy Roosevelt Did

According to last Monday’s Wall Street Journal:

“The Washington stalemate over U.S. policy at the southern border is beginning to reverberate on the Ukraine battlefield, where Kyiv’s troops are running out of ammunition and the Pentagon says it can’t provide more without emptying its own arsenal. …

Short of congressional approval of more funding, the White House can either dip into the Pentagon’s arsenal with no guarantee the gear will be replaced, or leave Ukraine to rely on its own growing but still small arms industry and European allies.”

Swifties: 2023 – and 2004

One of the eight finalists for the Oxford Languages’s Word of the Year was “Swiftie”.¹  The reference is obvious: "An enthusiastic fan of the singer Taylor Swift.  But seeing the reference to “Swiftie” made me think of another year when Swiftie could have been the word of the year – at least in American politics.

It was 2004.  George W. Bush was running for re-election and John Kerry was his Democratic opponent.  Then-Senator Kerry made his service in Vietnam an important part of his campaign.  When he accepted the Democratic nomination, he came to the podium, saluted and said, “John Kerry, reporting for duty.”  But at least some people had problems with what John Kerry did when he came home from Vietnam and joined the anti-war left. 

Are We Going to Help Ukraine Win? Or Will We Quit Because It’s Too Hard or We Don’t Care Anymore?

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “[t]he U.S. fears Iran is preparing to provide Russia with short-range ballistic missiles for its military campaign in Ukraine”.  At this point, we don’t know if Iran is going to do this, but every expectation is that Russia is planning on another winter of attacks on Ukraine’s cities and power plants; i.e., on its people, its women and children.  This past weekend, they hit Kyiv with the biggest drone attack since the war began.  The addition of Iranian ballistic missiles would only add to the danger.

The problem is that, while the United States, and other countries, have provided Ukraine with a lot, we haven’t provided them with enough weapons and with the right weapons to beat Russia and get this thing over with.  I understand the concern.  Russia has nuclear weapons, and Vladimir Putin has, at times, threatened to use them.  As Constance Stelzenmüller noted in last Wednesday’s Financial Times: “[H]ow can one not empathise with [Jake] Sullivan’s [, Biden’s National Security Adviser,] conviction that he has ‘an obligation to the American people’ to prevent escalatory scenarios?”¹

Free Speech and “Censorship Envy”

With all of the protests about Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s response thereto, the question of free speech is coming up again.  Of course, all the woke and anti-woke campaigners in the US are raising lots of free speech issues, too.  My main response to these is “Thank God for James Madison and his friends.”  The United States is so lucky to have the First Amendment – and a Supreme Court willing to enforce it.

I could go on, but really I don’t need to – because Eugene Volokh, professor of law at UCLA, has done it so well in “Censorship Envy” at The Volokh Conspiracy (and Reason.com).  There is no reason for me to try to write something when he does such a great job.  Read his article/post, "Censorship Envy," here.