Debate? What debate? The only thing you need to debate this morning is which one of us you’d hide if you were short on space (Chaya Leah is shorter so that’s helpful, but I don’t keep kosher, so easier to feed…)
Today’s guest is the lovely David Christopher Kaufman, a columnist and editor at the NY Post and an adjunct fellow at the Tel Aviv institute. We talk elections, Israel, and the identity of the half black, half Jewish, totally Zionist American journalist.
Also:
The mood in Israel
The difference between being a Jew and being Jewish
Why Hamas is like dating in New York
A Zionist Jew and a non-Zionist Jew walk into a bar...
We all feel the same and it hasn't stopped for a day
The pressure on young black Jewish kids
The black struggle is not the Palestinian struggle
Pro-Trump Jews, identity politics, and Kamala Harris
Doug Emhoff is the "right kind of Jew"
Follow David on X and Instagram
And read his writing in the NY Post
in other news, can you believe Chaya Leah predicted the future? That’s some prophet energy right there:
Unrelated, being the rootless cosmopolitan that I am, I’ve become obsessed with the heat map of our listeners. 115 in Hong Kong? It can’t all be one giant Chabad house, right?? Drop a note in the comments below if you’d like to share where you’re listening from (and if we can stop by for coffee and a snack)
I I thought the lord was interesting as I love all of your episodes. And I am not a huge Trump supporter, but I guess I don’t really understand why an American Jew would vote for Kamala because Biden has been very wishy-washy with support for Israel. Kamala has zero experience with foreign affairs. And she’s already shown wishy-washy support for Israel.
We don’t know any of her policies. We really don’t know any of her plans. I don’t see why she’s less wildcard than Trump? He has a Jewish son-in-law that he shown much support for the four years who was president.
Keep bringing on interesting guests, and sharing your opinions. It gives me a lot of insight from San Francisco.
Listening from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. You are welcome anytime, though I need a heads up to have kosher food for ChayaLeah because I’m super goy.
I thought your guest, Mr. Kaufman, had an interesting observation that the black experience of civil rights and achieving legal and social equality was very unlike the path sought by the Palestinians. The triumph of civil rights was peaceful protest, civil disobedience, but peaceful disobedience, where the violence came from authorities and angry racist mobs (which when televised turned the country in favor of the goals of MLK and his allies); the civil rights movement also built coalitions and multiethnic organizations. It certainly had a critique of middle America and white Americans who said the right things but were otherwise complacent, but the reaction was not to murder those people.
However, the memory of those times has been purposefully obscured and a different narrative, which elevates the Black Power movement, the violent leftist resistance movements, and terror groups, which were aligned with the PLO, as the “true heroes.” The people who espouse anti-racism now lionize the Black Panthers (who Michael Moynihan has identified as thuggish Marxist monsters who spent a lot of time murdering one another and rival group members like the one headed by Ron Karenga, founder of Kwanza and paranoid torturer of women), and other violent groups and activists. This is after the long march of the more radical common wisdom of the left through the institutions, where the histories of the Weather Underground, Panthers, and other Radical Chic groups is swept under the rug and otherwise remembered as people who were trying to do good things. And of course, they were in the same boat with the PLO, European radicals and Japanese Red Army.
This legacy seems to have imprinted over the fact that legal equality and social change was largely accomplished with the tools of non-violence and political coalition building, and the radical lie, which makes Palestinian and Black Power violence the cool sexy thing, and something that alleges that any perceived oppression is the same is what has been preached, by leftist activists, faculty, the NGO-industrial complex, and Islamists.
Persuading people otherwise is going to be difficult because if it’s not somebody else’s fault, people have to look at themselves and their own societies, and there’s a lot they don’t want to see.