Simon Bernstein

Just another pezzonovante

[John Spencer @SpencerGuard]

https://t.co/nljO7A08XP

[Pablo Manríquez @PabloReports]

Asked by @metzgov if Democratic leadership could have done more to help Jamaal Bowman, AOC responds —

[Scott Dubin @ScottDubin]

A smart reporter will eventually write the story of how this election was won. Not the $ and the noise - but how the actual election was won.

⬇️ these people are officially some of the best in the business.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

It’s incredible how nearly every word of this is a lie. Even the one number, which should be easy to get right.

But the worst part isn’t the lies. It’s the argument that Jews could only have soured on a candidate they once supported because of a malign influence operation.

What should we make of this Jewish group whose basic message to America is that most Jews are nefariously manipulated into an evil ideology?

Dear Jews who systematically defame other Jews, here’s a little fact you might find useful in future strategizing: Millions of AIPAC dollars in the race didn’t come through any super PAC, but as direct individual contributions from thousands upon thousands of Jews to the campaign via the AIPAC website, organized by AIPAC but not actually donated by AIPAC. These donations are filed to the FEC and limited in per-person amounts by election laws.

Or more simply: AIPAC didn’t use the Jews. The Jews, especially those in Rep. Bowman’s district, used AIPAC.

I’m just an idiot foreigner with an unhealthy fascination with the political life of the world’s Jews. So take this advice with a grain of salt. But here it is: Stop telling Jews they’re stupid and manipulated. Stop lying about them to others. Start listening to them on Israel. Understanding their thinking might just be more useful to your efforts to change their minds than ignoring their concerns and slandering them to the rest of America.

Just a thought.

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

Horseshoe theory, in one graphic.

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

Really incredible stuff happening here

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

Literally nothing surprising about any of this. Kudos to @ScottDubin for providing the receipts for everything we all already suspected to be the case.

[Scott Dubin @ScottDubin]

Turns out that the @protectourpwr, @IfNotNowOrg & @sunrisemvmt "activists" who have been harassing voters, lying to the media & acting as plants in debates, are all on @JamaalBowmanNY’s payroll.

[George Latimer @LatimerforNY]

I'm incredibly proud to have earned the endorsement of @amNewYork! We're going to prioritize #RealResultsNotRhetoric because #NY16 deserves representation that is working for them -- & delivering.

Polls are OPEN across Westchester and the Bronx -- do you have a plan to vote yet?

[David Wolpe @RabbiWolpe]

Human rights advocates have a duty to say things to distinguish themselves from terrorist shills. That’s what public statements are for. Alas…

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

I hope the world remembers what utter monsters people like Briahna are and they are never allowed anywhere near mainstream politics. They should be shunned from all polite society and relegated to the fringes of society where they belong.

[Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy]

“Believe all women” was always an absurd overreach: woman should be heard, claims should be investigated, but evidence is required. The same is true of the allegations out of Israel.

But also, this isn’t a “believe women” scenario bc no female victims have offered testimony.

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

.@Columbia going all in on condoning violence and rape against innocent civilians. What an embarrassment of an institution.

[Shai Davidai @ShaiDavidai]

IT'S TIME FOR ALL OF US TO RAISE OUR VOICES!

The School of Social Work at @Colubmia University CANNOT allow a "teach-in" that sees rape as a "counteroffensive" and calls murder and kidnap of children "revolutionary violence"!

PLEASE RETWEET THIS WITH YOUR OWN CALL TO @Columbia

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

Describing a child that was kidnapped and held hostage as “lost” and “found” like she’s an article of clothing sure is a choice.

[Leo Varadkar @LeoVaradkar]

This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief.  Our prayers have been answered.

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

Absolutely no reflection. No thought as to why there were Israeli citizens in Gaza.

[Read Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) @JPHilllllll]

Absolutely no reflection. No thought as to why there wasn’t food for the hostages, or anyone else behind the blockade.

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

Continually disappointed by the bad faith takes from people that are otherwise, generally, levelheaded. Someone even points out the broken clock which the author of the tweet acknowledges, yet doesn’t delete the post.

[David/Dovid Bashevkin @DBashIdeas]

Strange how @lsarsour managed to make a speech telling people *not* to rip down signs sound even more anti-semitic? 🤷‍♂️

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

Is there any anti-Semite for whom INN won’t carry water for?

[Yonah Lieberman 🔥 @YonahLieberman]

@Biaggi4NY She quite literally says “it ain’t even helping the people of Gaza.”

[Simon Bernstein @simonberns]

What value are you standing up for? Why is this individual so triggered by seeing a picture of a kidnapped civilian that he feels the need to tear it down?

[Shoshana🦁🌞🇸🇨🪬🇮🇷 @Shoshana51728]

Brilliant words from the brilliant Rabbi Sacks:

"Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous it is. Not just to Jews but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.

The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe. And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyse a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why antisemites are convinced that they are not antisemitic.

First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticising Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticising Israel antisemitism? I said "No" and I explained the difference. I asked them, "Do you believe you have a right to criticise the British government?" They all put up their hands. Then I asked, "Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist?" No one put up their hands. "Now you know the difference," I said, and they all did.

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. It takes different forms in different ages. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel. It takes different forms but it remains the same thing: the view that Jews have no right to exist as free and equal human beings.
If there is one thing I and my contemporaries did not expect, it was that antisemitism would reappear in Europe within living memory of the Holocaust. The reason we did not expect it was that Europe had undertaken the greatest collective effort in all of history to ensure that the virus of antisemitism would never again infect the body politic. It was a magnificent effort of antiracist legislation, Holocaust education and interfaith dialogue. Yet antisemitism has returned despite everything.
Let me ask you this. Whether you are Jewish or Christian, Muslim: would you stay in a country where you need armed police to guard you while you prayed? Where your children need armed guards to protect them at school? Where, if you wear a sign of your faith in public, you risk being abused or attacked? Where, when your children go to university, they are insulted and intimidated because of what is happening in some other part of the world? Where, when they present their own view of the situation they are howled down and silenced?
This is happening to Jews throughout Europe. In every single country of Europe, without exception, Jews are fearful for their or their children’s future. If this continues, Jews will continue to leave Europe, until, barring the frail and the elderly, Europe will finally have become Judenrein.

How did this happen? It happened the way viruses always defeat the human immune system, namely, by mutating. The new antisemitism is different from the old antisemitism, in three ways. I’ve already mentioned one. Once Jews were hated because of their religion. Then they were hated because of their race. Now they are hated because of their nation state. The second difference is that the epicentre of the old antisemitism was Europe. Today it’s the Middle East and it is communicated globally by the new electronic media.

The third is particularly disturbing. Let me explain. It is easy to hate, but difficult publicly to justify hate. Throughout history, when people have sought to justify antisemitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority available within the culture. In the Middle Ages, it was religion. So we had religious anti-Judaism. In post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. So we had the twin foundations of Nazi ideology, Social Darwinism and the so-called Scientific Study of Race. Today the highest source of authority worldwide is human rights. That is why Israel—the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary—is regularly accused of the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.

The new antisemitism has mutated so that any practitioner of it can deny that he or she is an antisemite. After all, they’ll say, I’m not a racist. I have no problem with Jews or Judaism. I only have a problem with the State of Israel. But in a world of 56 Muslim nations and 103 Christian ones, there is only one Jewish state, Israel, which constitutes one-quarter of one per cent of the land mass of the Middle East. Israel is the only one of the 193 member nations of the United Nations that has its right to exist regularly challenged, with one state, Iran, and many, many other groups, committed to its destruction.

Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. The form this takes today is anti-Zionism. Of course, there is a difference between Zionism and Judaism, and between Jews and Israelis, but this difference does not exist for the new antisemites themselves. It was Jews not Israelis who were murdered in terrorist attacks in Toulouse, Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen. Anti-Zionism is the antisemitism of our time."

https://t.co/C7b5LfSM4k

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous Inhumane Toxic and Historically False. And it rejects totally indeed makes impossible the two states of Israel & Palestine that is the only way

this is important but do read whole article b4 you condemn it. https://t.co/zgoxB63nRR

[Malka Simkovich @Malka_Simkovich]

Academia: doing intellectual somersaults to elide the murder of Israeli citizens, to ignore the theological Jew-hatred that drives it, to place blame for Nazi-like torture of Jews on Jews themselves, and to throw Jewish students and professors who disagree to the curb since 1967

[Jeffrey Goldberg @JeffreyGoldberg]

.@gcaw attended the screening of Hamas atrocities. Here's what he saw:
https://t.co/JdOcdG1Y98