Arno Rosenfeld
@arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
2.7K followers 680 following 750 posts
I cover antisemitism and Jewish institutions for @forward.bsky.social. Chair of the Forward Guild. [email protected]. Signal: 202-677-5462
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Reposted by Arno Rosenfeld
forward.com
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arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
What are we doing here folks
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
Burr basically says he had a completely racist view of Saudi ("You think everybody’s going to be screaming ‘death to America’ and they’re going to have like fucking machetes") but actually performing for the Crown Prince turned out to be really nice!

www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general...
Bill Burr Defends Performing at Controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival: “They’re Just Like Us”
The actor-comedian details his experience at the event: "Definitely one of the top three experiences I've ever had ... I think it's going to lead to a lot of positive things."
www.hollywoodreporter.com
Reposted by Arno Rosenfeld
davidgilbert.bsky.social
White nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes has never been more popular, and he has a plan in place to leverage that popularity to infiltrate all aspects of US society to spread his racist, antisemitic worldview.

And it's already happening...

www.wired.com/story/nick-f...
Nick Fuentes’ Plan to Conquer America
For years, influencer Nick Fuentes was too extreme even for MAGA. Now he's working his way into the mainstream—and has a plan for his secret followers to seize the levers of power.
www.wired.com
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
One problem with *that* strategy is that the antisemitic far-right, which is gaining influence on the sort of vanguard of the MAGA movement, is now also turning against Israel so you risk ending up with the pro-Israel movement being contained to a shrinking faction within the Republican Party
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
This is part of why I think many single-issue pro-Israel Jewish donors/voters are switching parties (or seeking to crush progressive Democrats). They understand at least intuitively that only one side of the political spectrum is amenable to supporting Israel regardless of what its government does
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
And I think it's not terribly strategic for pro-Israel groups to force Americans to choose between "the Palestinian movement is illegitimate because it's built on terrorism" and "the Zionist movement is inseparable from genocide"

Much evidence suggests they won't be picking the pro-Israel side
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
Other people see a much more nuanced picture where recognizing Palestinian statehood might be foolish or ineffective or whatever but it's not, you know, an endorsement of raping Israeli civilians.

But that's not the line AJC seems to be taking.
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
But obviously many people say the exact same thing — also with evidence — about Israel and Zionism: that the Israeli state is irredeemably violent and seeks the destruction or complete marginalization of Palestinians, and so there's no legitimate expression of Zionism and it must be destroyed.
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
Now some people do openly argue (with evidence) that the Palestinians have never been sincere about a two-state solution and fundamentally seek the violent destruction of Israel, so giving them an inch — outside of some technical strategic move by the Israeli government — simply encourages terrorism
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
And that was in an era when the Israeli government was actively in favor of peace negotiations and asking the diaspora for support.

When Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, the AJC seemed quite piqued.
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
The Oslo process was greeted with a tepid attitude by organizations like the AJC.

They published a "two views" pamphlet where one view was that of the Israeli government and like 70%+ of U.S. Jews and the other was opposing the Israeli government from the right
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
Although... if you look at how pro-Israel Jewish groups in the U.S. responded to the Oslo Accords they have at least a checkered record when it comes to supporting even Israel's conditional support for Palestinian sovereignty
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
The subtext is often that the Palestinian national movement is inherently violent and intertwined with terrorism so any support for it is illegitimate *unless* Israel has specifically encouraged some kind of conditional support to meet its own strategic interests
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
We saw this same argument around boycotts of Israel. That, basically, nonviolent pressure campaigns on Israel either are themselves forms of violence (or at least antisemitism) or legitimize violence that occurs separate from the nonviolent campaigns
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
It also implies that any unilateral gesture of support for Palestinians as a sovereign entity — in other words, one that Israel doesn't have veto power over — is an endorsement of terrorism, which happens to be the domestic argument against Israeli recognition of Palestinian sovereignty
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
But the State of Palestine, such as it is, is basically a Palestinian Authority/Fatah entity and they're sort of arch-rivals to Hamas. The statement reads as if Canada is voting to give Hamas a seat at the United Nations
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
So far as I can tell, the logic here is that ... Hamas did Oct. 7, the international community is furious at Israel's response to Oct. 7 and so is recognizing Palestinian statehood as a symbolic rebuke of Israel, which in turn legitimizes Oct. 7 as a political tactic
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
@ajcglobal.bsky.social says recognizing a Palestinian state "sends a dangerous signal that terrorism, mass murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping" are acceptable
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
"I’m certainly hopeful of a settlement" with Harvard regarding antisemitism claims, McMahon says. "Harvard has already started to take certain measures to change what they were doing. I certainly hope there will be an agreement."
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
"There’s a lot more to be discovered and a lot more to be found out," McMahon said. "We don’t know that transgender individuals who may be taking different drugs during that process, does that have nay effect on them?"
arnorosenfeld.bsky.social
At Federalist Society event this morning, Education Sec. Linda McMahon says it would be "premature" to say there's any "definite correlation" between what the moderator referred to as the "transgender movement" and campus shootings