My latest: Yair Lapid, the architect of Israel's new government, wants to unite the country’s Jewish and Arab mainstream against anti-democratic extremists. But will he find enough takers? My profile of the man slated to be Israel's next prime minister: newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
Yair Lapid to me on why he has been pushing civil equality for Israel's Arab community: “When you are a citizen in a democratic country, you deserve the same rights as everyone else... It kind of amazes me that there is even a question mark on this.” newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
Other Lapid lines:

- On patriotism: "You can’t talk from morning until evening about how much you love this country if you hate most of the people that live in it."

- On Israel's treatment of its Arabs: "There are no second-class citizens in a country that respects itself."
A real thing that happened in Israel's parliament: Yair Lapid got up and said "there are violent extremists among us." Then a far-right politician stood up and was like "how dare you!" ... outing themselves as one of the extremists he was talking about. newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…

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More from @Yair_Rosenberg

20 Dec
If someone wanted to do some genuine good in the world, they'd cut this into a simple ad and run it on Fox News and targeting Trump voters on Facebook. Boosters are the best defense against Omicron, and everyone deserves that chance.
Not surprised Trump got the booster. Pleasantly surprised that he publicly pushed it. He also reportedly said: “We saved tens of millions worldwide by creating the vaccine… We should take credit for it and you play right into their hands [when you doubt it].” Put it in the ad!
Here's the video of Trump hyping the vaccines to his followers—and getting them to cheer—telling them to take credit for the vaccine drive which "saved tens of millions worldwide." Turn this into an ad and run it on Fox, Newsmax, OANN, and Facebook.
Read 6 tweets
20 Dec
An antisemite just tweeted this meme at me, and it's the best Christmas present I've ever received. I'm going to be using it forever.
Notice how the dials here are set to 11. It's just perfect in every way.
For those unfamiliar, the dials going up to 11 is a reference to the amazing mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap," which was directed by ... a Jew: @robreiner. As much as antisemites hate Jews, they can't escape us even when trying to troll us.
Read 5 tweets
17 Dec
Another day, another Trump rant about Jews, another time I wish this piece of mine about him was no longer relevant: washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/0…
My concern here is whether we're getting to the second part of my thesis, which is that the philosemitic coin can easily be flipped into straight-up antisemitism when convenient.
Jews are not a monolith, we don't exist to play a political role in the imagination of others, and we are really tired of outsiders reducing us to both. Please grant us the same complexity and humanity you would want granted to yourselves and your own community.
Read 5 tweets
14 Dec
My latest: To get beyond the typical talking points of the Latinx debate, I spoke to a Palestinian scholar in Israel about his community's experience and about how minority identities evolve over time. newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61…
1. There's been much debate over "Latinx," which most Latinos do not use, but many media outlets and some politicians do. In Israel, there's a similar debate over the identity of Arab citizens, who are often dubbed simply "Palestinians," but call themselves many other things. ImageImage
2. Growing Arab citizen identification with Israel is actually not new, but you probably haven't heard much about it, because it hasn't gotten much attention in elite discourse:
newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/61… Image
Read 7 tweets
13 Dec
This happened: Jewish mom in California wanted to set up a menorah at her kid's public school's PTA Christmas tree lighting. School refused, saying she could only bring a *menorah ornament for the Christmas tree.* CA district court just backed the school. religionclause.blogspot.com/2021/12/mom-lo…
I'm actually familiar with the case law cited here, and while this ruling may sound bizarre, it's not an unreasonable reading of the precedent! It's just an illustration of how utterly messed up American case law is on the subject of religious displays in public spaces.
Basically, the law says you can't have a religious display on public grounds. So to get around this, you need to recast religious items as somehow secular. This is how we get "secular" Christmas trees and "secular" Santas. It is dumb! Just let all religions put up their stuff.
Read 4 tweets
10 Dec
It's understandable to chuckle at Trump turning on Netanyahu, as he inevitably turns on everyone but himself. But there's now a non-zero chance that Netanyahu becomes a public 2020 election truther in order to try and get back in Trump's good graces, which would be really bad.
Netanyahu absolutely thinks Trump might win again. And Bibi has already repeatedly bet his and Israel's future entirely on the Republican party. He can't afford to lose its current leader, whether he's president right now or not.
Netanyahu is very smart and he has seen in the US how being an election truther has become Trump's litmus test for being part of his team (see Georgia gov race). Now he and everyone else knows that he's on the wrong side of that. Question is where Bibi ultimately goes from there.
Read 4 tweets

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