The Social World

Category: Politics

  • Zohran Mamdani pledges free everything on Fox News

    Zohran Mamdani pledges free everything on Fox News

    Ahead of tomorrow night’s debate with Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, Democratic socialist and future mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani appeared on Fox News this afternoon for the first time.  

    Anyone expecting a clash of cultures, or 15 minutes of pure ideological arguing, would have been disappointed. Fox anchor Martha MacCallum asked tough, pointed questions, but it was a respectful exchange between two New Yorkers who clearly don’t summer in the same ZIP code.  

    That doesn’t mean the interview lacked news value. The most shocking part came before the commercial break, when Mamdani said it was “too early” to give President Trump credit for the Middle East peace deal. When MacCallum asked him to denounce Hamas, he instead invoked the “crimes” of the Israeli military, who he said had killed five Palestinians this week. Hamas has killed more Palestinians that that, MacCallum said, but Mamdani deflected. 

    “I have no issue in critiquing Hamas and the Israeli government because my focus is on universal human rights,” he said. He also refused to retract his call to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if Netanyahu visited New York. Mamdani said he would respect the judgment of the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest. Again, when MacCallum pressed him, Mamdani wouldn’t say a crossed word about Hamas. “I don’t really have opinions about the future of Hamas and Israel other than questions about universal safety,” Mamdani said, having clearly sewn up whatever percentage of the Jewish vote he needs to win.  

    Part two of the exchange, about Mamdani’s plans for the city, was actually the friendlier of the two segments. Mamdani said New York should be “the capital of where working people can afford to live,” and MacCallum agreed with him that the city was too expensive. “You’ve done a lot to bring people’s attention to affordability,” she said. “I appreciate that,” Mamdani said.  

    She didn’t seem too keen on his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers by 2 percent, or on his proposals to raise corporate taxes, which is out of his power anyway because Albany sets New York tax policy. “What Andrew Cuomo said is that if he had $959 million he’d give it to Elon Musk for tax credits,” Mamdani said. “I’m talking about raising taxes on the wealthiest. When I’ve spoken to Trump voters, they told me it was cost of living that drove them to vote for Donald Trump. What we’re seeing time and time again is a focus on billionaires instead.”  

    That’s Democratic socialism, folks – and Mamdani said he’ll use that increased tax revenue to pay for his controversial program to make city buses free, as well as everything else. “I think everyone would love to have free healthcare and free buses and all these things,” MacCallum said, sounding skeptical.  

    Unappealing to Republicans, and almost everyone else, is Mamdani’s plan to place mentally ill New Yorkers into “peer-led rehabilitation programs,” which is where he said he would have placed the man who murdered a 64-year-old on a subway platform last year. He wants to “end the revolving door” of a “broken system.” When MacCallum asked Mamdani to apologize to police officers, who he’s called racist, “wicked and corrupt,” he looked at the camera and said, “I’ll apologize to police officers right now. I’m looking to work with these officers. They put their lives on the line every single day.” And then he invoked the Central Park Five, Eric Garner and George Floyd, which I’m sure put backers of the blue at ease.  

    Zohran Mamdani didn’t get to his current position by tacking to the center, and his Fox News appearance was pretty consistent with what he’s put out with the rest of the campaign: a mix of left-wing populist economics, which the Democratic party sorely needs, and foreign-policy and criminal-justice positions that wouldn’t be out of place on BlueSky. But he didn’t come across as crazy, weird or unprepared. He’s got his plans – and he’s sticking to them. New York already has its most hilarious mayor of all time in Eric Adams. The Mamdani years might end up being a tragedy, but the comedy is about to end. 

  • Chat, how cooked are the Young Republicans leaders?

    Chat, how cooked are the Young Republicans leaders?

    An unsavory chat thread containing leaders of Young Republican groups nationwide has gone viral. These young (meaning under 40) fellas refer to blacks as “watermelon people,” use the slur “faggot,” say “I love Hitler” and make jokes about rape and sending people to gas chambers. “If we ever had a leak of this chat we could be cooked fr,” someone said in a moment of self-awareness. Well, the chat is leaked, and they are cooked. Fr.  

    Cockburn takes this particular chatgate with a grain of sea salt. It sounds like young men shit-talking after a few beers to him. Yet every boomer lib on Facebook is shocked, shocked at this scandal, taking it as a sure sign that MechaHitler is about to institute The Handmaid’s Reich or some such thing.  

    Meanwhile, the mightiest Young Republican of them all, Vice President J.D. Vance, has entered the chat, so to speak, invoking the texts of Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, caught wishing death on his political opponent and her children. “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.” 

    Vance may be right, but Cockburn must beg the question: why is the Vice President weighing in on this matter? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? We see him doing things all the time, so the answer must be yes. But it also makes us wonder what, exactly, J.D. Vance is hiding in his groupchat vault. Before he was a devoted husband and father of three and also the heir apparent to the American throne, he, too, was a snarky young Republican wiener. Is his text-based “grab her by the pussy”-moment waiting on some vengeful rival’s old iPhone in an attic somewhere in America? It will be a true Hillbilly Elegy when and if it emerges.  

  • Justin Trudeau kisses Canada goodbye

    Justin Trudeau kisses Canada goodbye

    Justin Trudeau has finally found something he can’t bankrupt – a washed-up pop star. The former prime minister, now liberated from the burden of office, was recently spotted aboard Katy Perry’s yacht in California, sharing a kiss so theatrical it would have been cut by a good director.  

    But Trudeau was always drawn to drama. The kind with lighting, makeup and someone else footing the bill. His life has become a soap opera, though not the kind with decent writing or respectable ratings. There was the recurring racist phase, the peace-and-love phase, the power-and-profit phase and now the Malibu make-out phase. Once hailed as the fresh-faced heir to liberal idealism, Trudeau swiftly dissolved into a puddle of melodrama and moisturizer. 

    His years in power left Canada poorer, angrier and more divided than at any point in living memory. He preached virtue but practiced vanity. He championed empathy while governing with arrogance. He turned Canada – long admired for moderation – into a running gag on the world stage. 

    Spare a thought for his ex-wife, Sophie Grégoire, and their three teenage children, who must now watch their father prance around the Pacific like a man auditioning for a midlife-crisis cologne ad called “Hubris.” These are the years when a father’s guidance matters most, yet Trudeau seems intent on performing adolescence rather than parenting it. The family he once paraded for photo-ops has been abandoned, collateral damage in a career built on self-adoration. 

    It’s a fitting metaphor for his time in office. Trudeau inherited a stable nation and left behind a shattered one. Under his leadership, Canada’s national debt doubled, small businesses suffocated under regulation and housing became an impossible dream for a generation. The middle class – once his favourite talking point – was gutted. Canadians now pay more taxes for fewer services, while the political elite grow fatter and smugger on their own sanctimony. 

    Trudeau sold himself as a feminist reformer. But under his watch, women faced soaring living costs, record food insecurity and a healthcare system closer to Congo than Canada. He vowed to unite the country. Instead, he governed like a leader allergic to accountability, dividing Canadians into obedient followers and ideological foes. Those who questioned his mantras or mandates were branded extremists. When truckers protested, he branded them fascists, then froze their bank accounts. The man who looked like he could play the next Bond ended up acting like a Bond villain, just with better hair and worse judgment. 

    And for what? To preserve his ego. The Emergencies Act he invoked wasn’t about protecting Canadians but punishing them. He turned a protest into a purge, revealing that beneath the charm and charisma lurked a control freak of the highest order. 

    Canada became a cautionary tale. A country built on freedom slid into tyranny, cheered on by citizens too polite to protest. 

    Foreign policy fared no better. He alienated India, annoyed China and amused the world with a conveyor belt of photo ops and platitudes. Diplomacy became his favorite vanity project, each summit another red carpet. When the flashes faded, so did Canada’s influence. Trudeau was never taken seriously abroad because, deep down, he never took the job seriously. 

    And now, shirtless and shameless, he’s chasing pop stardom by association. As for Perry, her own decline mirrors his – from pop princess to self-parody. Once the voice of youthful rebellion, the part-time astronaut is now a Vegas lounge act in search of validation. Together, they are a duet of decline. Two faded brands clinging to each other in the hope of renewed relevance. He’s the patron saint of performative decency. She’s the high priestess of performative empowerment. Together, they are the unholy alliance of fame and fakery. 

    Trudeau’s defenders will say his love life is his business. Perhaps. But this is a man who never met a camera he didn’t flirt with, who turned politics into performance and leadership into lifestyle. Privacy was never his language. Every grin, every tear, every contrived display of humility was a stage cue. Even now, his post-political life plays out like a poorly written sequel – Love Actually meets Keeping Up with the Kardashians. 

    Canada deserved a statesman. It got a showman. He entered office promising “sunny ways” and left behind a long winter of division, delusion and decline. 

    While the Liberal Lothario suns himself on borrowed yachts and chases pop stars past their prime, Canadians are left with the mess – higher taxes, weaker freedoms and a fractured sense of nationhood. He didn’t just betray his voters; he betrayed his family, his vows and the quiet dignity that once defined his country. The tragedy of Justin Trudeau isn’t that he lost power. It’s that he was ever given it in the first place. Katy Perry sang about fireworks, but with Trudeau, everything ends in flames.

  • Is Marjorie Taylor Greene a Democrat? 

    Is Marjorie Taylor Greene a Democrat? 

    Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent the last week gnawing on the hand that feeds her, showing that no one in American politics is worse at reading the tea leaves.  

    Taylor Greene entered Congress in 2021 wearing a face mask that read “Trump Won.” She was so fervently a supporter of January 6 pardons that Georgians invoked an “insurrectionist disqualification clause” to try to remove her from Congress. But now that MAGA is riding high on a wave of world peace and prosperity, Taylor Greene has changed her tune and, though she says she’s still conservative, is sounding more like an unholy fusion of Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.  

    Over the weekend, MTG appeared on comedian Tim Dillon’s podcast, claiming that she is still “MAGA through and through.” There’s only one drawback: the Epstein Files. A passionate former Pizzagater, MTG said to Dillon: 

    Everyone that voted for Trump-Vance, everyone was like, release the Epstein Files! This is not even an argument. It’s not even debatable. It’s not being a traitor to the president to sign my name on a Thomas Massie discharge petition to release the Epstein Files. No, no, no. I am staying true to what we’ve always said. There needs to be transparency.

    Fair enough. That’s nothing you wouldn’t hear from, say Rand Paul about Trump’s treatment of the Epstein Files, where every day is another wonderful secret. But then there’s Taylor Greene’s invocation of the Gaza “genocide,” the first congressional Republican to say such a thing, sounding like your supposedly tolerant progressive Facebook friend and not helping the rumors that she’s actually an anti-Semite. On Dillon’s show, she ripped into her fellow Republicans for not having a plan to “fix” Obamacare and calling for them to extend ACA subsidies. Then there was this, about illegal immigration:  

    As a conservative, and as a business owner in the construction industry, and as a realist, I can say, we need to do something about labor and that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that. And I’m going to get pushback on that. But I’m just living in reality.

    What reality, though, exactly? MTG sounds exactly like liberals saying “who will pick our vegetables?” These aren’t questions you’d expect to be hearing from someone touted as a MAGA standard-bearer going forward. In general, you get the sense that Taylor Greene has lost interest in the Republican project.  

    “My district knows I ran for Congress trashing Republicans,” Taylor Greene said to the Washington Post yesterday. “They voted for me because they agreed with that. My district’s not surprised.” 

    The Post’s story also featured MTG going off on House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose ascendency she fervently opposed, saying that he’s a sexist who refuses to promote women to positions of authority. “Whereas President Trump has a very strong, dominant style – he’s not weak at all – a lot of the men here in the House are weak,” she said. “There’s a lot of weak Republican men and they’re more afraid of strong Republican women. So they always try to marginalize the strong Republican women that actually want to do something and actually want to achieve…They’re always intimidated by stronger Republican women because we mean it and we will do it and we will make them look bad.” 

    Not all Republican women. The attorney general, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the White House Chief of Staff, and Congresswomen Nancy Mace, Elise Stefanik, and Anna Paulina Luna, among others, would probably like to have a word with MTG, who’s “our next President,” Tim Dillon said on his podcast on Saturday. “Sorry, J.D. Vance.”  

    Unless MTG runs as a Democrat, it seems unlikely that the Vice President is quaking in his Crocs. However, it also seems unlikely that the Democrats will embrace someone who publicly called for the execution of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Who will find a political home for Marjorie Taylor Greene, now the tardiest of libs?  

  • Is conversion therapy free speech?

    Is conversion therapy free speech?

    Kaley Chiles is a Christian therapist who places the Bible at the center of her practice.

    To many of her patients, religious faith is often more important than Freud. They see Bible readings, prayer and a focus on spirituality along with traditional principles of psychotherapy as essential elements of any treatment plan. 

    While outside the mainstream of psychoanalytic practice, Chiles’s technique combining traditional psychotherapy with Biblical precepts for years had been deemed non-controversial, if confined to more conservative regions of the country. But that all began to change in 2019 when the state of Colorado enacted legislation banning so-called conversion therapy for minors, a technique that aims to help gays change their sexual orientation. 

    Fearing the law would interfere with her treatment of teenage clients wrestling with their sexuality, Chiles filed suit in federal court against Colorado alleging the statute violated her First Amendment free speech rights. She lost at the trial level and in the initial round of appeals, with jurists finding that Colorado’s ban fell well within its right to regulate medical practice and protect patient safety.  

    But it now appears the US Supreme Court is leaning toward upholding Chiles’s right to advise young clients that changing their sexual orientation is a viable and realistic option, despite widespread medical and scientific agreement that such techniques rarely, if ever, work. 

    In oral arguments on October 7, the state’s conservative majority peppered both sides with questions suggesting they were leaning in Chiles’s favor. A decision upholding Chiles’s appeal would follow a string of Supreme Court rulings in recent years favoring religious conservatives while creating new hurdles for gays and transgenders. 

    Without First Amendment protections, “states can transform counselors into mouthpieces for the government,” argued James Campbell, a lawyer for Chiles, at the Supreme Court hearing. 

    The case poses novel Constitutional questions that center on ability of medical professionals to communicate with patients about treatments they believe are effective but that have been outlawed by state regulators.  

    On a deeper level, though, Chiles’s lawsuit and the legal battle surrounding it are simply the latest fight in the nation’s long running conflict over cultural values, ranging from gay and transgender rights to abortions and race relations. 

    In June, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority ruled in favor upheld a Tennessee ban on the use of puberty blockers and hormones for the treatment of young patients suffering from so-called gender dysphoria and seeking to change their gender identity. In another ruling this year, the court also upheld, on a temporary basis at least, the Trump administration’s ban on LGBTQ persons serving in the military while the litigation continues 

    And in a 2018 decision that may well have a bearing on Chiles’s appeal, the court found in favor of religious conservatives by striking down a California law requiring anti-abortion groups to provide information on state funded abortion and contraception when counseling their clients. The court found that the law infringed on anti-abortion groups’ free speech rights.   

    Reflecting the heated politics underlying the Chiles case, dozens of interest groups from both sides of the ideological spectrum have filed amicus briefs with the court. Medical societies of various stripes have been particularly scornful of Chiles’s case. One brief filed by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association and other organizations representing health care professionals maintained that conversion therapy rarely if ever works. It argued at the same time that the practice causes great harm to patients by further confusing them about their identity and disrupting family relations while raising the risk of suicide. 

    Conversion therapy embraces a wide range of techniques, some bordering on barbaric, including aversion therapies using electroshock treatment and nausea inducing drugs. Some 30 states have banned it. 

    Chiles and her lawyers say she would employ none of those practices and that she engages only in talk therapy. But in court filings and in interviews, they stop short of describing exactly what Chiles would tell clients seeking to change their sexual orientation, only that she might advise them on how not to act out unwanted sexual impulses.  

    “When she engages in those conversations, she’s encouraging them to achieve their goals,” Campbell said during oral arguments. “She’s discussing concepts of identity and behavior and attractions and how they fit together.”

    This is an ongoing active dialogue where she’s helping them explore their goals, and that absolutely has to be protected by the First Amendment.” 

    The state of Colorado of course sees it differently. 

    “No one has ever suggested that a doctor has the First Amendment right to offer the wrong advice,” countered Shannon Stevenson, Colorado solicitor general. “The law applies only to treatments, that is, only when a licensed professional is delivering clinical care to an individual patient. In that setting, providers have a duty to act in their patients’ best interests.” 

    During the October 7 oral arguments, the court’s conservative justices seemed supportive of Chiles’s free-speech claims. Justice Samuel Alito for one opined that because Colorado law bans discussion of conversion therapy but permits therapists to advise clients on transitioning from one gender to another, the law had clearly crossed a First Amendment red line. 

    “That looks like blatant viewpoint discrimination,” Alito declared. 

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett queried Campbell on whether clients who felt they had been harmed by conversion therapy might be able to file a malpractice claim. It was a loaded question in the sense that proponents of Colorado law argue conversion therapy is harmful and that a First Amendment protection for therapists would leave patients defenseless. 

    Bryant’s question implied that civil litigation against irresponsible therapists might serve as a brake against harmful practices. 

    Chiles’s legal team, Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent Christian legal organization that has participated in over 70 Supreme Court cases, has packaged their client in a way that aims not only to persuade jurists but also the public at large. That is hugely important in the world of civil litigation. Having a sympathetic client is often just as pivotal as a powerful claim or even a particularly effective legal team. All the legal firepower in the world won’t help if juries and judges are put off by the claimant. 

    On its website, Chiles, who is based in Colorado Springs, is depicted in a video hiking in the Rockies near Denver while she talks on an audio track about her clients and how Colorado’s conversion therapy ban had frustrated their efforts to regain emotional health. 

    “They say that emotions are like children. It’s not OK to let them drive the car and it is not OK to stuff them in the trunk,” she says in the video. “I counsel my clients on… how to make their lives more fulfilling, satisfying and more in line with who God created them to be. What I am struggling with right now is that the state of Colorado has decided to impose their own values, not only on me but more importantly on my minor clients.” 

    It’s a well-articulated rationale by a seemingly credible plaintiff. It’s just not altogether clear, from the science at least, that her clients would benefit.

  • Can Trump’s peace hold?

    He came, he saw, he conquered. That just about describes President Trump’s 12,000-mile round trip from Washington, D.C. to Israel and Egypt. He addressed Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, greeted the hostages and their families, hopped on Air Force One for a flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, signed the first phase of a Gaza peace deal, delivered a moving speech, met with the leaders of 27 countries to push the next phases of his 20-point peace plan forward and take a well-earned victory lap, and returned to Washington after what most people would consider a full day.

    The guns are silent, relief supplies are being poured into Gaza, IDF troops have withdrawn to agreed areas and the 20 surviving hostages have been released, along with four of the 28 bodies of the dead, the others to be returned when they are found by Hamas. That spikes the most powerful weapon Hamas had. In return, Israel released some 2,000 Palestinians, some from Hamas, some serving life sentences for murder. Perhaps more importantly, President Trump’s personal promise that Israel would retreat to agreed areas has allowed Gazans to return to their homes.

    A key ingredient in the deal was the culture of the New York real estate business. Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and a man with deep relations in the Arab world; Steve Witkoff, who says his goal is to deliver what Trump wants; and the President himself all learned in delis, board rooms and bank C-suites: “get to yes.” Kushner described himself in a New York Times interview as a “deal guy,” and says deal-making is “a different sport” from diplomacy. You take what you can get from the key players, with whom you have formed close relationships, as Trump demonstrated when he acknowledged many personally, and worry about the details later. 

    Now come those details, the time to move on to a durable peace as laid out in the President’s plan. The prospect is not bright, and the televised image of 27 nations gathered to applaud Trump deceiving. Hamas did not attend. The attendance of Israel’s Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, was vetoed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, who threatened to absent himself if Netanyahu were present. Crucially, Iran announced support for “ending the genocidal war” in Gaza but will continue to back Hamas “if Israel continues its expansionist and racist plans.” The mullahs promise to re-arm their proxies throughout the region so they are equipped to continue their battle to destroy Israel. Never mind that Trump has warned that he has ordered 28 “beautiful” new B-2 bombers and that “we will be back” if Iran interferes with progress towards peace in Gaza.

    The hope that a ceasefire will eventually reduce the bitter enmity between Gazans and Israel seems similarly unrealistic

    Then there is the problem of the positions taken by Hamas and Netanyahu. Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, announced, “The proposed weapons turnover is out of the question and not negotiable.”

    Netanyahu has promised that if Hamas do not disarm there will be no further compromises. Rumors that Israel might offer amnesty to Hamas fighters if they do surrender their weapons – “decommission their weapons” in the language of Trump’s plan – seem to reflect unbridled optimism. The head of Mossad has made it clear: “Let every Arab mother know that if her son took part in the massacre he signed his own death warrant.” Israel obviously intends to treat these Hamas fighters as it did the terrorists who assassinated Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and hunt down and assassinate them no matter where they are and how long it takes.

    The hope that a ceasefire will eventually reduce the bitter enmity between Gazans and Israel seems similarly unrealistic. The thousands of Gazans trekking across Gaza to their former homes will find only debris, adding to their anger about the death of family members and friends. The Israeli euphoria will give way to anger as the tales of the horrors inflicted on the surviving hostages circulate, and some of the bodies of hostages remain unfound. Meanwhile, Hamas remains in charge of governing Gaza. The Israeli press estimates that 16,000-18,000 Hamas fighters have survived, and reports that they are now setting about killing internal opponents. The peace plan calls for an international peace-keeping force to replace Hamas, but as General Keane points out “most peace enforcement does not do well.”

    Nor is it realistic to believe that the gleaming towers envisioned on the Gaza coast by Trump will ever emerge from the sands and debris of the Strip. The birth in Gaza of “some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East” requires concrete and steel. And Israel is not likely to abandon its barrier to the importation of materials that permitted Hamas to build its tunnels and manufacture arms.

    Then there is the small matter of the $50 billion the UN estimates would be required to rebuild Gaza, which Trump sees as well within the ability of rich Arab nations to provide. Those nations have not yet unzipped their wallets. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates cannot agree on the governing structure that must be in place before the billions in cash flows. The Saudis would rely on the Palestinian Authority, the Emirates won’t until the PA is reformed, and Netanyahu says he will never agree to turning over the governance of Gaza to the PA. Whether the Kushner-Witkoff “get to yes” team can unleash the needed flow of funds cannot be counted a certainty.

    Even if the funds become available, the reconstruction of Gaza will tax the skills of the world’s builders and the patience of the Gazans. The UN estimates that the 50 million tons of debris created by the war will take 20 years to remove. Trump, reverting to his New York builder’s argot, told Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – “I call him General’ – that Gaza needs ‘a lot of cleanup’, and says ‘rebuilding will be the easiest part.’” Easiest compared with negotiating a ceasefire, perhaps, but extremely difficult. The Strip is strewn with buried, live mines and ammunition; its infrastructure has been destroyed; thousands of its most talented professionals and entrepreneurs are reported by Palestinian sources to have fled, “draining the territory of the very minds needed for reconstruction and development …. [That] undermines its ability to build a resilient society capable of forging a path toward stability and prosperity,” writes Omar Shaban of the Brookings Institution.

    And yet, and yet. The value of the existing “yes” should not be ignored. Any party that breaks the current ceasefire or walks away from future negotiations will face the combined displeasure of the powerful group of world leaders who attended the signing ceremony in Sharm el-Sheikh including, crucially, the Presidents of America, Egypt, Turkey; the Emir of Qatar; the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia; the King of Jordan; the rulers of the Emirates, and the president of Indonesia, an important Muslim country that does not recognize Israel.

    The leaders of the wealthy Arab nations looked at the seas and created spectacular, prosperous cities. They just might find it in their interests to look at the debris of Gaza and imagine a skyline to match theirs and Tel Aviv’s. For now, we have a ceasefire. The one negotiated in Korea has held for over 70 years. As Jews chant during Passover services, at the mention of each blessing from God, “Dayenu”: that would be enough.

  • Donald Trump’s finest hour

    Donald Trump’s finest hour

    This is Donald Trump’s finest hour. Speaking in the Knesset on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him Israel’s “greatest friend” and nominated him for the Israel Prize,” the nation’s “highest award.” Trump himself was greeted rapturously by the parliamentarians for securing a breakthrough peace deal in Gaza. Trump basked in the applause for his months-long diplomatic effort, declaring that “this is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.” But can one truly emerge? Or is this simply a temporary truce between the warring parties?

    Trump’s immediate accomplishment was to arrange for the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its attack on October 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered. The plight of the hostages upended Israeli society, leading to weekly demonstrations against Netanyahu whom his detractors accused of needlessly prolonging the conflict to maintain his own hold on power. When Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff appeared in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, they were cheered by the crowd but a mere mention of Netanyahu’s name drew loud boos.

    Netanyahu is also in bad odor among Trump’s America First followers. They are construing the peace deal as a defeat for Netanyahu. On his show Real America’s Voice, Steve Bannon remarked, “This is a catastrophic defeat for the Israel America First crowd… because they overreached, pushed this greater Israel project, and it came crashing down around them.” Still, Trump called upon Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to “give him a pardon” for the criminal allegations that he faces.

    Trump’s ambitions clearly exceed simply overseeing a deal between Israel and Hamas. He has fortified American relations with the Gulf States who played a pivotal role in nudging Hamas to accede to the agreement. Pilots from Qatar will soon be training in Idaho, a move that has triggered hysteria among some of Trump’s MAGA followers who see it as an opening wedge to introduce Sharia law into America. In his Knesset address, Trump vowed that the ceasefire deal would result in “a very exciting time for Israel and for the entire Middle East, because all across the Middle East, the forces of chaos, terror and ruin that have plagued the region for decades now stand weakened, isolated and totally defeated.”

    Well. The forces of disruption and hatred and violence will not be uprooted as easily as Trump’s exuberant language might suggest. His exuberance is understandable. It may even be understood as a form of exhortation. But Iran and its terrorist allies are unlikely to surrender their ambitions overnight. The isolation and defeat that Trump alluded to has not yet occurred. Rather, these malignant forces are working overtime to regroup. Already Hamas is seeking to reestablish control in the Gaza strip, which could easily lurch back into warfare. Nor do Iran’s nuclear ambitions do appear to be in a state of inanition.

    For now, Trump can revel in his accomplishment. But the first test of his vision of a new Middle East will come on Monday afternoon at the “Summit for Peace” in Egypt, where 20 world leaders are gathering, including Trump. Netanyahu, however, will not be in attendance.

  • Donald Trump is the real anti-fascist hero

    Donald Trump is the real anti-fascist hero

    Tell me: who has done more for the cause of anti-fascism? Real anti-fascism? Those masked momma’s boys of the antifa movement for whom “fighting fascism” means little more than hurling abuse at blue-collar workers who voted for Donald Trump? Or Donald Trump himself, the man they love to loathe, who today accomplished the miraculous feat of liberating 20 Israelis from the anti-Semitic hell of Hamas captivity? It’s Trump, isn’t it?

    As of today, following the soul-stirring emancipation of the last living Israeli hostages, whenever I hear the phrase “anti-fascist” I will think of Trump. Forget those sun-starved digital radicals who bark “Fascist!” at every politician on the right, or the snotty lefties whose “anti-fascism” entails yelling at working-class mothers protesting against illegal immigration. Those people have sullied the noble cause of anti-fascism by appropriating it as a mask for their bourgeois sneering.

    No, it was Trump who took the fight to fascism. He has cornered – we hope – a brutal organization that was founded with the express intention of killing Jews and destroying the Jewish state. He has freed 20 men whose only “crime” is that they were Jews in the Holy Land. He has landed a spectacular blow against the forces of Islamo-fascism and helped to fortify the beleaguered Jewish nation. Give me that over the am-dram activism of antifa’s balaclava bores any day of the week.

    Today should be the day that Trump Derangement Syndrome is laid to rest. No one has to agree with everything the US President says or does – that would be weird. But we should acknowledge that he has achieved something extraordinary. He expertly deployed both threats and talks to drag Hamas to the table. And, in the process, he made good on the 20th-century cry of “Never Again” by securing the release of Jews from the limbo of Islamist cruelty.

    We have just lived through one of the most extraordinary moral inversions of modern times. Truth and reason have been entirely turned on their heads these past two years. Israel was unjustly assaulted by a genocidal terror group, and yet it was Israel that was branded “genocidal”. More than a thousand Jews were slaughtered by an army of anti-Semites, and yet it was the Jews who were called “racist”. Israel was ravaged by the war-making of a hostile neighbor, and yet it was Israel that was damned as warmonger.

    Nowhere was this moral inversion more starkly, and more grossly, expressed than in relation to the hostages. These 251 men, women and children were the innocent victims of a fascistic rampage. And yet they were reimagined as “colonisers” by activists in the West. Their posters were rabidly torn down. Their images were desecrated with slurs and insults. There was a time in late 2023 when parts of many cities were papered with the flapping remnants of these posters following the frenzied clawing of anti-Israel activists.

    The most shameful moment came in late October 2023, mere weeks after Hamas’s pogrom, when a poster in London featuring three-year-old twin girls, Emma and Yuli Cunio, was defiled in the most horrific way. Someone drew Hitler mustaches on these two children who’d been taken from their homes by Hamas. It was 2023 and Jewish kids were once more being treated as legitimate targets for bigoted invective. So much for “Never Again”.

    Emma and Yuli were held in captivity with their mother, Sharon, for 52 days before being released in November 2023. Their father, David, was also kidnapped. The girls have asked after him every day for two years. Today they will be reunited with him: David is one of the 20 who has staggered back into the sunlight courtesy of Trump’s deal-making. Who has contributed more to the cause of humanity – the “Be Kind” mob who desecrated posters of Emma and Yuli? Or the president who gave them their dad back?

    Today is a day of celebration, tinged with sadness of course, given Israel is also due to receive the remains of 28 hostages who did not survive the Hamas hell. But tomorrow must be a day of reflection. We need to ask why so many in our own societies took the side not of the oppressed Jewish hostages but of their oppressors. Why so many chose to make excuses for Hamas while demonizing the nation it invaded. Today we can share in Israel’s joy. Tomorrow we must interrogate the blackened western soul that this infernal war has exposed.

  • The return of the Israeli hostages goes beyond politics

    The return of the Israeli hostages goes beyond politics

    This morning in Israel began like no other: layered, dissonant, momentous. A collision of spectacle and salvation, of grief and hope, of noise and meaning. It was a morning composed of many parts: part show, part hope, part illusion, part bluster, part redemption, part commercial deal, part peace plan, part threat, part diplomacy, part war. For a few hours, all those contradictions briefly aligned to form a kind of harmony. They may yet fall apart again, but for now, they have converged in one extraordinary sequence of events.

    On one side of the news screen, Donald J. Trump descended the stairs of Air Force One at Ben Gurion Airport, fist raised in his characteristic gesture of triumph. On the other, Israeli hostages were being shepherded to safety under the watch of the IDF and Shin Bet, emerging after 738 days of brutal captivity. This was a day choreographed like theatre. The world was invited to watch. And the world watched.

    Trump, ever the master of spectacle, timed his arrival to perfection. The plane banked low along Tel Aviv’s coast, passing over the beaches spread with an enormous welcome sign. President Isaac Herzog announced he would award him the country’s Medal of Distinction. Netanyahu walked beside him. Trump grinned, basked, orchestrated. “Everybody wants to be a part of it,” he said of his peace plan as he spoke with journalists inside the plane. “It’s a unique period in time.”

    If Hamas once used hostage handovers for grotesque theater, with drones capturing staged presentations of hastily printed certificates, terrorists preening and Palestinian children cheering as the captives were forced to perform and even kiss their captors, today the tables were turned. Hamas had been warned: no stunts, no provocations, no theatrics. This time, the show belonged to Trump, and to Israel. And nobody engineers a show like Trump.

    But for all the cameras, this was not just a spectacle. It was a day of raw human emotion. As the hostages emerged – first Eitan Mor, Alon Ohel, Ziv and Gali Berman, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Omri Miran, and Matan Angrest – Israel held its breath.

    Families received confirmation in real time. Some spoke with their loved ones by video call, others waited in silence, eyes fixed on the screens. The father of Omri Miran said only, “We are waiting, waiting and waiting” to embrace his son. A cousin of Alon Ohel described the morning as the best of his life, saying, “I just want to hug him.”

    On Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, thousands gathered waving flags, watching the Red Cross convoys inch across the screen. Across the country, the atmosphere was charged – anxious, breathless, and exultant in turns.

    And now, the next chapter begins. The other thirteen hostages are in Red Cross custody, preparing to cross from Khan Younis into Israeli hands, their families waiting. The IDF has confirmed preparations are complete. The nation holds its breath again.

    This may have seemed like a pageant of diplomacy and spectacle. But beneath the politics and choreography lies something deeply embedded in Jewish thought – an ancient, relentless imperative to redeem the captive. The drive to bring the hostages home is not merely emotional or nationalistic; it is sacred.

    The source lies in Leviticus: “After he is sold, there shall be redemption for him”. On this verse, the medieval commentator Rashi writes, “It is a positive commandment to redeem him.” The obligation is not optional. It begins with family but extends to the entire community, and ultimately, to the whole nation. The Talmud adds that “there is no greater mitzvah than redeeming captives” (Bava Batra 8b). Because the captive is vulnerable, exposed and often in mortal danger, redeeming them becomes the highest form of piety – an act that binds law, love, and life itself. In halachic terms, this duty surpasses almost every other form of charity.

    For Jews – and especially for Israelis – the commitment to hostage redemption is more than a cultural reflex. It is a covenantal instinct, encoded in scripture, enforced by sages and lived with aching urgency in moments like these. Today’s deal may have the hallmarks of a political agreement, but for many, it is something older, deeper and profoundly moral.

    Trump, for his part, believes this is the beginning of something larger. He has declared that Arab nations are behind his plan, and that peace and prosperity may yet emerge from the ashes of Gaza. Once stabilized and normalized, he claims, Gaza can succeed.

    That is the promise. But reality is more unforgiving. Since the ceasefire, Hamas has turned inward with ruthless efficiency, executing suspected collaborators and rivals in brutal purges across Khan Younis and Gaza City. Palestinians not aligned with the regime’s grip are hunted, tortured, and silenced. The prospect of a peaceful Palestinian polity still stumbles against a foundational obstacle: a political culture steeped in violence, a history of rejection, and a leadership that elevates martyrdom over statecraft.

    As the Israeli scholar and Arabist Dr Mordechai Kedar put it in a recent interview: “Victory in war, by our definitions, is not victory by their definitions. For us, victory means dismantling an army, destroying its command, forcing surrender. But for them – even one survivor, amputated, seated on the rubble of his home, raising a V sign with his only two remaining fingers – that is victory. He has not lost. He will have children, and they will continue the struggle.”

    History casts a long shadow. But today, for a moment, there is light. Relief, reunion, joy, and yes – grief. For those not returning alive. For those lost. For those still waiting. In all this complexity, one thing endures: the determination of a nation which never stops fighting to bring its people home. Today, the traditional Jewish “shehecheyanu” blessing will be uttered by thousands around the world: Blessed art thou oh Lord our God, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this moment. Amen.

  • Trump is not to blame for the crypto crash

    Hundreds of billions have been wiped off the value of the crypto currencies. A prominent Ukrainian blogger and influencer on digital coins has been found dead. This will likely be a rocky day for traders. We will have to see whether it develops into a full-blown crash or not. And yet, all the major equity indices were already wildly overvalued, and a correction was always inevitable – it was just a question of when it would start. 

    Investors will also see a few days of turbulence. An estimated $400 billion was wiped off the value of the main crypto currencies on Friday evening, while the Nasdaq dropped by more than 800 points, or 3.5 percent, before the New York stock exchange closed, with the S&P 500, the benchmark for US stocks, not far behind. When markets open in Asia and then Europe they are expected to fall heavily as well. 

    The trigger for the fall in prices was the resumption of the tariff wars. President Trump slapped 100 percent tariffs on China in a row over exports of “rare earths,” critical to much high tech manufacturing. In reality, however, the markets were already wildly overvalued. Over the summer, the price of every major asset has been soaring. The Nasdaq is up by over 30 percent over the last six months. The chip market Nvidia is up by 65 percent. OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, reached a value of $500 billion, a record for a private company. Gold went over $4,000 an ounce, and Bitcoin went over $120,000 a unit. Even Britain’s index, the FTSE 100, managed to rise by 15 percent despite a stagnant economy. After the collapse that followed the first round of tariffs in the spring, every major index has been on an epic bull run, and had been hitting all-time highs. 

    October is often a difficult month for the market. The Great Crash of 1929 started on 28 October. The Black Monday crash of 1987 was on 19 October. The financial crisis of 2008 was more drawn out, but is generally dated as starting on 6 October that year. No one quite knows why, but the historical evidence is clear enough: October is a bad month. We will have to see whether the latest round of nervous trading develops into a full-scale collapse. With little sign of a global recession, and with the Federal Reserve in the United States, still cutting interest rates, it still seems relatively unlikely. But a correction of 10 to 20 percent in asset prices is long overdue after the exuberance of the last six months – and it looks as if that has now arrived.