RRNotSalsa

I’m doing okay, thanks for asking. Thankfully, former Chicago Public School parent. Love a good challah.

[Mark Goldfeder @MarkGoldfeder]

Dear @JeremyBenAmi,
This letter is extraordinarily dishonest. It describes a case with no record, statute, or litigation history. I practice civil rights law. I have read the record. The letter’s authors either did not, or hope others will not. That is shameful.
Let me explain:

[Simone Rodan-Benzaquen @srodan]

There is a claim that keeps circulating, presented as sophisticated analysis: antisemitic violence is caused by Israel’s actions. If Israel behaved differently, Jewish communities around the world would somehow be safer. This argument is not analysis. It is a moral inversion. And it collapses the moment you apply it consistently.
When China imprisons Uyghurs, does anyone warn Muslim communities in Paris to expect attacks? When Russia invaded Ukraine, did anyone tell Russian restaurants to brace for violence? No. Never. The causal chain between a government’s actions and violence against a diaspora is only ever constructed for Jews. Every other minority is extended the basic moral courtesy of being treated as individuals rather than proxies.
Now look at what the data actually shows. The SPCJ, which tracks antisemitic incidents in France in coordination with the Interior Ministry, has documented a consistent and damning pattern: it is antisemitic violence that inspires more antisemitic violence, not Israeli policy. After Mohamed Merah murdered Jewish children at point-blank range at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012, antisemitic acts surged by 200%. There was no Gaza operation. No Israeli military action. The massacre of Jews in France produced more attacks on Jews in France.
The same logic held after the Hypercacher attack in January 2015: antisemitic acts increased by nearly 300%. Massacres of Jews do not shock antisemites into restraint. They embolden them. They signal impunity. They normalize hatred. And everyone in a position of responsibility knows it.
Which brings us to October 7. From the day of the Hamas attack, antisemitic acts in France increased by over 1,000%. A daily average of approximately 25 antisemitic acts was recorded in the 30 days that followed, reaching nearly 40 on some days. In the three months after the attack, the number of antisemitic acts equaled those recorded over the previous three years combined.
And here is another detail that makes the “Israel causes antisemitism” argument impossible to sustain: the spike began on October 7 itself, the very day of the attack. Israel had not yet responded. Not a single soldier had entered Gaza. Interior Minister Darmanin sent an urgent message to prefects that same day asking them to immediately reinforce protection of Jewish community sites. Synagogues. Schools. Community centers. By October 10, 10,000 police officers had been deployed to protect 500 Jewish sites across the country.
Before any Israeli response existed, the French government already knew that Jewish communities needed protecting. Not because of what Israel was about to do. Because of what had just been done to Jews.
Antisemitic violence has one cause. Antisemitism.

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@anjewla90 @CivokNilam This primary was also about state races and the state rep in dist 40 lost to DSA candidate who’s in relationship with 33 ward alder Rossana Rodriguez’s chief of staff. All local, state control & IL3 Ramirez are now squarely leftist DSA. Nothing moderate here.

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@JennyGooz The state rep in district 40 who beat Andrade is in a relationship with the 33rd Ward alderman’s chief of staff. All in the family.

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@Joelmpetlin @nytimes WGN tries to compete:

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@StuLoren @GovPritzker You can have more than one anti-Semite at a time. We know what we saw. Our governor is right to call it out. The ADL is so wrong on this.

[Tamer Masudin @TMasudin]

Again, and again and again: It was never about 🇵🇸.

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@StuLoren @MaryAnnAhernNBC @CTULocal1 They sent a group to visit VZA and reported how wonderful it was/all schls open!! but failed to mention no teachers left to teach. Now ignoring all the VZA refugees living in shelters here. Oh, and ignoring hostages.

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

So, the same Republicans who spent years & tens of millions of our tax dollars demanding to see the contents of a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s private citizen son, don’t want to see the ethics report on the former Congressman Trump wants to make our nation’s Attorney General?

[Barbara Comstock @BarbaraComstock]

The White Nationalist Working for the Trump Campaign in Penn:Luke Meyer, the 24 yr old reg.field dir.for West PA goes by online name Alberto Barbarossa &co-hosts podcast w/Richard Spencer,of 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in CharlottesvilleVa https://t.co/KtfrqyvT7L

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Last week, I had the privilege of meeting Congressman @RitchieTorres. I learned a lot of small things and one very big thing.

I expected to meet, well, a politician, a run-of-the-mill progressive who, for whatever reason, broke from the pack on Israel, who grasped the basic point that until Hamas is removed from Gaza, no peace is possible, no rebuilding, no end to the war, because Hamas won’t let there be.

I was wrong about him. And it was the most optimistic experience I’ve had in America in recent memory.

It began with Ritchie‘s insistence that we meet in the Bronx, in his district. I figured it was a convenience, and since he’s the congressman, I trekked up to the Bronx.

Half an half into our dinner I realized that the Bronx wasn’t the location, it was the point. His support for Jews, I discovered, isn’t about Israel but about the Bronx.

We met over dinner at a little Italian place nestled among a profusion of immigrant eateries on Arthur Street - Mexican, Albanian, Italian. He talked about the astonishing diversity of the district.

The Bronx has the highest concentration of small businesses owned by multiple generations of a single family in the country. He took me to one Jewish-owned store that had etched the Star of David into the concrete at the entrance. When in the 1930s, friends warned the owners not to broadcast their Jewishness out of fear of antisemitism, they responded by carving their Jewishness indelibly into the entryway. Their current congressman - the same family still owns the place - beams with pride at a brazenness he believes defines the borough.

I think of Jews as my people. He thinks of the entire dizzying array of cultures and religions and social classes that make up the district, including a Jewish community he knows intimately and the first Catholic Church I’d ever seen in New York that was actually bustling with worshippers, as his people.

As we talked, I came to understand why he thinks so much about the Jewish experience, why he fights the anti-Israel campaign so fiercely, far beyond what might be explained by his constituents or donors. He could do a quarter of what he does and still find the same grateful Jewish donors at every turn.

But for Ritchie, it’s bigger than the Jews. It’s about the future of progressivism, and thus of America. In his mind, his Jewish community embodies progressive values, and the illiberal turn in large parts of the progressive political world are a war on those values.

He has questions and criticisms of Israel, smart ones, ones I share, and he asked about them. But he sees in the wild hatred and rage against Israel a larger war on Western liberalism. The same activist who rails at Israel’s existence, he says, also thinks America is a standing crime and calls its great promise and ethic of liberty a lie. It’s the same activist who denies that America has made massive progress in race relations over the past century.

Progressives, he told me, have to get back to believing that progress is possible.

He learned to connect these dots from Dr. Martin Luther King, who steadfastly refused to go down the left’s anti-Zionist rabbithole, saw the Jews as great allies and viewed the hatred of them as a bellwether of decline. Ritchie is close to Dr. King’s 93-year-old speechwriter Clarence Jones. I’d met a man who knew his history and defended it with gusto.

He also knew the Bronx down to the minutiae of individual family histories. Our dinner was interrupted by a patron thanking him for something (I didn’t catch what). It was slow going leaving the restaurant because every waiter knew him and wanted to shake his hand (and then got stuck also shaking mine).

And he reads. He knew more Israeli-Palestinian history than most Jews or Palestinians. His one ask of me as we parted: book recommendations.

There is another kind of progressivism, alive and kicking in working-class and immigrant spaces, and starting to fight back. Ritchie is its vanguard.

[Tee 'Openly Black' Gray @niknup21]

Imma just leave this here because y'all REALLY DON'T care about girls and women 😭

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

My take on the genocide question, at this moment in time.
* The 7/10 attack on Israel by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and thousands of Gazan civilians was genocidal in intent and practice.
* Hamas, Hezbollah and some leaders of the Palestinian Authority are genocidal toward Israelis in intent and often in practice.
* Official PA policy is not genocidal, with two notable exceptions: jihadist school curricula, and idolizing killers of Jewish civilians, also financially supporting their families.
* The statements of leading Israeli politicians (the vast majority of whom are from the coalition) and some celebrities are genocidical in intent.
* As far as I can judge from Israeli journalists, reliable analysts and people I know who fought in Gaza, the current war is ugly, dirty, includes war crimes, but it is not a genocide.
* Based on Israel’s future conduct and the availability of well-established facts, I will review my position if needed.
* The future ruling of the ICJ will probably impact my judgment, but this will also depend on the informed input of internationally recognized jurists.
* At this time, I therefore can’t and won’t agree or engage with people who take an Israeli genocide in Gaza to be a proven fact.
* Israel’s war in Gaza began as a just war (with a legal casus belli), but should and could have stopped, at least temporarily, to allow a hostage deal and far better humanitarian aid.
Deliberate starvation of civilians and plans for land grabbing are criminal and morally wrong.
* Wars are by definition horrific. This one is worse than many, and worse than it might have been. I blame Hamas first, the Israeli government second.
That’s it. I am trying to be honest with you and with my own conscience, and even this task is devilishly difficult.
Debate is welcome, trolling is not.

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

@ichaki5748 Fair question. In my view, letting Hamas regain control in return for most or all hostages would have been painful but preferable, especially for the sake of Israel’s civic unity, an asset we have lost.
Also: Agreements with blackmailing terrorists are by definition temporary.

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@50thWardChicago Thank you @Andrefor40th

[Alderman Debra Silverstein @50thWardChicago]

Over the last year, newly-appointed Chicago Public School Board President Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson has made deeply offensive and antisemitic comments, calling into doubt his ability to fairly represent Jewish students and families in Chicago Public Schools.

In response, I and many of my colleagues on the Chicago City Council, are calling for him to apologize and immediately step down from his position.

[Bob Morgan @RepBobMorgan]

In case the new Board President of @ChiPubSchools was wondering, YES, this is antisemitic: "My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment. It will not be nice and I care not how and what you call me."

These are not empty words.
(1/3)

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@D_Stieber Maybe read some of his other posts.

https://t.co/6l71JpPoUc

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

This is just a bonkers levels of antisemitism from a public official. What the hell is going on in Chicago?

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@JewishWonk https://t.co/hYdE0YgWXR
Second speaker in white is 25th Ward alderman Byron SigchoLopez

[RRNotSalsa @RobertaSalas]

@JewishWonk The level of antisemitism in CPS after 10/7 was palpable. Had our youngest not been a senior, we would have transferred him out. See also comments by our 33rd Ward alderman. And 25th