The in-person AALS meat market at the Marriott Wardman DC was a good bonding experience.

It’s like being the Night Watch tasked with one job—looking out for white walkers—and the moment you see them marching on the horizon deciding they’re no big deal and your top priority is fixing that draft coming in from the windows.

One job. One job!

“At best they remained silent, at worse marched demanding a global intifada.”

That description of “at best” is exactly what I had in mind when I said the feeling of wounded grievance that our allies wouldn’t stand w/us has become “exaggerated to the point of pathology”. It’s just not what happened.

I have no quarrel w/investing in positive Jewish identity, but what Stephens et al are calling for is to war against how US Jews historically have treated outward-facing liberalism as a core component of our Jewishness and instead turn inward and away from the world--what Memmi called "encystment".

Patricia Williams ftw:

I love Nexus, I think it’s great; it is not anywhere close to being able to replace the ADL. If the latter falls, there will be an interregnum and it will be messy. Might be worth it, might be unavoidable even if it isn’t worth it, but it won’t be pretty.

The difference in scale between these ops is massive. ADL’s annual budget is literally 100x the size of JC’s (I don’t know Nexus’ budget, but it’s closer to JC’s than ADL).

You understand that’s like saying “the startup that just left my neighbor’s garage needs to hire half of Google’s top engineers. That’ll strike a blow!”

For when “please clap” is far, far too optimistic and they know it.

I also think we're seeing a bit of my "ADL is Leviathan, and when Leviathan falls (even if it was in many ways a tyrant), the resulting anarchy is terrifying" thesis.

The collapse in power/influence of the big legacy Jewish orgs has left a massive power vacuum that isn't being filled. It's chaos.

I understand AIPAC's internal narrative for why they're doing this, but it's completely out of touch with the actual dynamics in the year 2026.

I doubt AIPAC sees Malinowski that way, but again, I'm not disagreeing that this is going to backfire for exactly why you say -- it's giving zero breathing room to Dems to be Israel-critical at all, and the result is going to be that Malinowski sorts get squeezed out in favor of more Squad-y types.

And while I think this will turn out badly for AIPAC, the group they're most likely to take down with them as they sink is the Malinowski sorts -- people entertaining critiques of Israeli policy while not being "anti-Israel" in any normal sense. This result is the tip of that iceberg.