1. Efforts to legislate the Israel debate—pro or con—are illiberal and wrong, as I've said for years: tabletmag.com/scroll/161796/…
2. Anti-Semitism can cloak itself as "anti-Israel" for deniability & serious ppl should combat it
3. Trump is not serious on anti-Semitism, he's complicit
2. Anti-Semitism can cloak itself as "anti-Israel" for deniability & serious ppl should combat it
3. Trump is not serious on anti-Semitism, he's complicit
And I shouldn't have to say this, but no, Trump isn't going to deport us Jews, and that's not the conversation we should be having. There are other groups he actually explicitly targets for deportation and travel bans, and they deserve our attention.
One reason to cool your jets about Jewish deportation: the underlying rule here is an Obama-era distinction that protects Jews as a 'nationality and race' *not* because we Jews all see ourselves that way, but because RACISTS do, and the law needs to fight them when they do that.
So the text of the actual executive order on anti-Semitism does not seem to be nearly as problematic as was reported. They could have changed it, but it does not appear to define Jews as a nationality. Here's the relevant section: jewishinsider.com/2019/12/exclus… 
Another important element of the executive order on anti-Semitism: "Agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment." Encouraging, if true. Good grounds for challenging any Trump overreach, if not.
Unless the administration changed the executive order on anti-Semitism at the last minute, it seems like we had a national Twitter freakout yesterday over bad reporting. Not great.
Head of the Anti-Defamation League seems to confirm that the executive order on anti-Semitism did not redefine Judaism as a nationality, which means it was not changed at the last minute, just was misreported yesterday:
The freakout over this was bad not just because it was based on poor reporting. It was bad because it will have scared real people. Anyone who did a viral tweet about Trump redefining Jews as a nationality has an obligation to correct, so those people won't be.
I do think my thread on the executive order yesterday holds up, and that we should remain focused on the real issues here.
One example of how Twitter's incentives are broken: I could've tweeted yesterday about how Trump's executive order defining Judaism as a nationality was the first step to deporting Jews and got 5k retweets. But tweets now correctly noting the order doesn't do this get hardly any.
Remember that you have real power if you have a lot of followers, and you can scare a lot of people with what you say. If you're going there, and sometimes it's necessary, you have an obligation to make sure what you're saying is true.
One reason I have a newsletter is so I can step back from Twitter and break down complicated topics like the anti-Semitism executive order without histrionics. I've got one coming shortly explaining how this fiasco happened, and how we can do better. Here: yair.substack.com
My latest: Trump's redefinition of Jewish identity that wasn't. How bad reporting and a Twitter meltdown turned an Obama-era doctrine protecting Jews into an attempt to render them un-American, and how we can avoid such mistakes in the future. yair.substack.com/p/trumps-redef…
The executive order on anti-Semitism, explained: yair.substack.com/p/trumps-redef…
Credit to @cnn for revising their erroneous report suggesting the White House's executive order on anti-Semitism redefined Judaism as a nationality, which it did not. Other outlets that made the same error should follow suit. cnn.com/2019/12/10/pol…
