RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/terrorist-attack-on-jews-in-washington/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Unspeakable news out of D.C.—a man named Elias Rodriguez of Chicago yelling “Free, Free Palestine” opened fire at an event at the entrance to the Capital Jewish Museum. Two Israeli Embassy officials—a young couple about to be engaged next week in Jerusalem, according to a powerful and teary-voiced statement by Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter—were murdered. The invaluable Josh Kraushaar of Jewish Insider notes the discovery of the pseudonymous Xer AG that Rodriguez is part of a group called “The Party of Socialism and Liberation.”

This is a different kind of event from the attacks on synagogues in Pennsylvania and California in 2018, which were the work of white supremacists. It happened at a secular Jewish site, and targeted an event sponsored by the American Jewish Committee for young diplomats. And it was self-evidently an act of anti-Semitic terror in the nation’s capital—which raises similarities to the 2015 attack on the Hyper Casher supermarket in France’s capital, Paris. The only analogue here I can think of was the invasion of the headquarters of the B’nai Brith in D.C. in 1977 by Hanafi Muslims, during which 104 staffers at the Jewish organization—including my wife’s cousin, William Korey, an expert on Soviet Jewry—were held hostage for three days and repeatedly threatened with execution and torture. Two other buildings in D.C. were invaded as well, and a security guard at one of them was shot in the head and killed.

The terrorist leader was a convert to Islam critical of the Nation of Islam whose family was murdered in 1973—and who chose to blame the “Jewish judge” in charge of the conviction of the Farrakhanites who actually committed the killngs. He also demanded the suppression and burning of a movie called Mohammed, Messenger of God on the grounds that any depiction of the founder of Islam was a sacrilege—an eerie foreshadowing of the killing of the staffers at Charlie Hebdo magazine for publishing cartoons making fun of Muhammad, which took place in Paris two days before the attack on the supermarket in 2015. The leader gave up after three days; Bill Korey told me 30 years later that he still had nightmares about his captivity, a classic case of PTSD.

https://www.jns.org/domestic-terror-is-the-inevitable-next-step-for-hamas-sympathizers/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm_medium=email&_

The murders at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., are a warning that “pro-Palestine” activism is leading to antisemitic violence.

For the past 19 months, angry mobs have taken over college campuses and the streets of major American cities. These demonstrations, tent encampments and building takeovers have not just been expressions of opposition to Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorists who led the Palestinian Arab assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They have also often been indicative of the protesters’ support for Hamas and the embrace of terrorist goals, as well as their antisemitism—something that was made obvious by the way they have targeted Jews during the course of their “activism.”

Yet rather than being isolated and widely condemned, these pro-Hamas activists and demonstrators have been cheered by many in the media and even rationalized by former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as their party’s left-wing leaders, who spoke of them as idealists who “deserved to be heard” and validated, even if they disagreed with some of what they were saying.

In doing so, they were ignoring the warning signs that the pro-Hamas movement was more than just mainstreaming Jew-hatred in discourse. As has been the case throughout history, those who speak of their support for terrorism elsewhere often wind up committing it at home.

After the tragic murder on Wednesday night of two young Israeli embassy staffers outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., it’s obvious that this is also the case with those who embraced the war against Israel’s existence.

https://www.jns.org/mark-levin-gives-tucker-carlson-a-well-deserved-dressing-down/

Tucker Carlson is a master of disingenuousness, to put it generously. That’s why the only viewers still charmed by his trademark deer-in-the-headlights act are those on the right who champion the conspiracy theorists and antisemites to whom he regularly provides a platform.

Some of his interviewees are overt Jew-haters; others covert ones who pretend that their only beef is with “Israeli policy.”  You know, just like a huge swath of the Democratic Party that they loathe.

Tucker’s neat trick, no longer so tidy, is to react to critics—fellow supporters of President Donald Trump with a whole different take on foreign policy—by engaging in not-so-plausible deniability where his true feelings about Jews and the Jewish state are concerned. One method is to refer to the Tribe as “neocons.”

Never mind that the isolationists in the MAGA camp purposely abuse the term or are willfully ignorant about its origin. Neoconservatism was the name given to a movement of liberal intellectuals who opposed the tenets of the New Left—the “woke” of the 1960s and ’70s—and shifted allegiance to the Republican Party.

Ironically, they were the “Make America Great Again” crowd of that period, and instrumental in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 victory over Jimmy Carter. Many, but by no means all, were Jews.

A key element of their patriotism had to do with American greatness, exceptionalism and power on the world stage (does “peace through strength” sound familiar?). Rejecting détente and taking a tough stand against the Soviet Union, in order to win the Cold War, were central.

That defeating one’s enemies has become a dirty concept for the likes of Tucker and his echo chamber—who use the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan to accuse backers of U.S. intervention in the Middle East of “war-mongering”—is suspicious, to say the least.

It’s one thing to conclude that spreading democracy among Islamist regimes is problematic, if not impossible. It’s something else entirely to attribute the mistake to “neocon” trigger-happiness. Unless, of course, the aim is to blame Israel for “dragging” the United States into battles on behalf of the Jews.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/15/will-the-trump-administration-follow-the-antisemitism-trail-wherever-it-leads/

The Trump administration has taken a series of decisive, direct steps and executive actions that make clear its intention to end the chaos of antisemitism on American campuses and streets. But will it follow the trail of foreign funding and influence wherever it leads?

Amid the flurry of executive orders—including one on January 30 to “combat antisemitism”—and memoranda issuing from the new Trump administration over its first few weeks, one memorandum from Attorney General Pam Bondi at the Department of Justice stands out. On February 5,  2025, a memorandum from her established the Joint Task Force October 7 (JTF 10-7). As explained in the memo, the purpose of the initiative is to seek “justice for the victims of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel” and to address “the ongoing threat posed by Hamas and its affiliates” in the homeland.

Among the specified priorities of the JTF 10-7 is “investigating and prosecuting those responsible for funding Hamas.” A partner organization is the DOJ’s newly established Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, led by civil rights attorney Leo Terrell. On February 26, 2025, in remarks to Israel’s Channel 12 News, Terrell promised those “supporting Hamas and trying to intimidate Jews” that “[W]e are going to put these people in jail—not for 24 hours, but for years.”

If indeed the Justice Department is serious about pursuing this investigation and these initiatives to combat antisemitism wherever they may lead and then holding those responsible legally accountable, inevitably that will lead where the Trump administration may not have expected or intended.