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JNS.org Pro-Israel liberals took particular pleasure last month in mocking the latest evidence that Jews on the far left know no limits in their hatred for Israel.

The object of their derision was Jewish Currents, a far-left publication that issued a formal apology to its readers for accepting an advertisement from the Dorot Fellowship for a 10-month-long fellowship program for American Jews in Israel. But as much as its hard not to laugh at the contortions those on the far-left go through to maintain their standing as good Jews in the eyes of their antisemitic ideological allies, mainstream Jewish groups that are still trying to promote a two-state solution with the Palestinians may be the ones who have lost touch with reality.

The fellowship was explicitly pitched as open to both Zionists and non-Zionists, and requires participants to return to the US upon completion of their stay rather than remaining in Israel. Many of its past graduates have gone on to careers in progressive groups that are bitterly critical of the Jewish state, like J Street and the New Israel Fund, and are vocal Israel-bashers. But the mere fact that this program took place in Israel was enough to generate a backlash against the magazine. Within a day, its editor issued a public apology, claiming that it was not in line with our values and had somehow not been vetted properly. That seemed to imply that the values of Jewish Currents consist of support for boycotts of Israel.

Jewish Currents was founded in 1946 as an organ of Communist Party USA. It tottered along for decades as an organ of red diaper babies still trying to justify the Stalinism of their deluded parents, even as it retreated a bit from their ideological extremism. Eventually even that limited audience died out, and the publication merged for a few years with the socialists of the group formerly known as the Workmens Circle, before collapsing altogether. But it was revived in 2018 by a new generation of radicals and scored something of a coup in 2020 when author Peter Beinart, the former tribune of liberal Zionism-turned dedicated anti-Zionist, left The Forward and joined its ranks.

This publication ought to be one of the preferred outlets of members of anti-Zionist and antisemitic groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. But the audience of Jewish Currents remains small, perhaps because in its target demographic, the appetite may be limited for any title that includes the word Jewish.

Still, some of the mockery of Jewish Currents from liberal Zionists who still believe in Israels right to exist struck me as a bit hollow.

There are still many more American Jews who define themselves as liberal Zionists than those who identify with the anti-Zionist radicals at Jewish Currents. But the shift in the Democratic Party base in favor of anti-Israel figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as well as her openly antisemitic Squad colleagues like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and away from the aging moderates who still claim to be allies of the Jewish state, cant be ignored. People who read Jewish Currents and it is telling that AOC follows it on Twitter are illustrative of a tiny minority of American Jewry. But anti-Zionism is becoming less of an outlier position if not altogether respectable among Jewish elites in fields like journalism, something that is reflected constantly in the pages of publications like The New York Times.

Jews who think, like so many antisemites, that one Jewish state on the planet is one too many are setting themselves up for disappointment. The nearly 7 million Jews who live in Israel arent about to acquiesce to their extinction of their state. But the notion that a two-state solution involving the creation of what would actually be a second independent Palestinian state, along with the one in all but name currently ruled by Hamas in Gaza, is no more realistic than Beinarts fantasies about the end of Zionism.

The reason is that the ambitions of the Palestinians are more in tune with the values of Jewish Currents than they are with those who claim to be both pro-peace and pro-Israel. That was confirmed for the umpteenth time by a recent item published in Haaretz.

The article by anti-Zionist journalist Amira Hass was a reaction to the recent visit of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to the home of Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz. The meeting, at which Gantz made some concessions on financial support and other matters to Abbas without getting anything in return, was denounced by right-wing members of Israels governing coalition.

Gantzs critics were correct that appeasing Abbas while the PA still funds terrorism is wrong. But the move could be defended as being little different from past decisions by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing governments to allow funding to flow to Abbas and even, albeit indirectly via Qatar, to Hamas. The justification is that while Abbas and his Hamas rivals will never make peace with Israel, it is in the interest of the Jewish state to keep the Fatah government of the West Bank afloat and even to ensure the same for Hamas rule in Gaza if it will help motivate these bad actors to maintain relative quiet.

Yet it also stirred the hopes of some Jewish liberals that the meeting was a harbinger of future peace talks that would, with the proper amount of pressure coming from the Biden administration, mean that their two-state hopes are not dead.

But as Hass reported from Ramallah, when Abbas invited Palestinian intellectuals, writers and journalists to his headquarters to discuss this, those who thought he would give some outline of a political horizon for action were disappointed. Abbas did repeat his usual threats that the corrupt PA would collapse without more financial help, and that without even more Israeli concessions he would take drastic measures to revive the Palestinian cause. Abbas has been saying the same things throughout the 17 years of the four-year term to which he was elected as PA president, and his current threats are no more credible now than in the past.

But his main subject was something else. As Hass reported, To everyones surprise he expatiated at length about the origins of Ashkenazi Jews (Khazars who converted to Judaism, he says), and about the differences between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, Jews from Arab and Islamic countries.

Even after being given a gift of concessions at no cost to himself, Abbas main obsession remains promulgating long-since-debunked conspiracy theories such as the one about the Khazars in order to delegitimize Jewish rights to their homeland. Nor should it be surprising to learn that a man whose doctoral dissertation supported Holocaust denial should be thinking along these lines.

With such a person who is, after all, the supposed moderate as opposed to the radicals of Hamas peace is impossible. And since the nature of Palestinian political culture makes it hard to imagine a less hateful thinker replacing him, that vindicates the position of the majority of Israelis who believe that the status quo must be maintained indefinitely since there is no other choice compatible with their countrys survival.

The distance between those Americans who deny the legitimacy of a Jewish state, and a Palestinian leader who promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories, isnt so great. But though their position is much more respectable than one grounded in hate, it is those Jews who cling to a belief in two states as a path to peace who are truly disconnected from Palestinian reality.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNSJewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

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Anti-Zionist Jews Are More in Tune With the Palestinians Than Jewish Liberals - Algemeiner

The Ontario Liberals are calling on the Doug Ford government to bring in the military to help long-term care homes and hospitals struggling amid a surge of COVID-19 cases.

The partys leader made the statement at a virtual news conference on Wednesday morning, saying that Quebec reached out for military assistance to help with its vaccine roll out and received it.

We believe that its so important to pick up the phone and call the prime minister, to reach out to the federal government to seek support and help from Canadas military to come into Ontario to help deal with the challenges that we have in both nursing homes and hospitals, Steven Del Duca said.

I dont want (Premier) Doug Ford to wait another week or two or five. I dont want to be scrambling at the last second. I want that conversation to occur today.

The Canadian Armed Forces were first deployed in Ontario in April 2020 to help seven long-term care homes grappling with severe COVID-19 outbreaks. The military has been utilized sporadically since then, helping at hospitals and nursing homes struggling amid outbreaks or severe staffing shortages.

More recently, in April 2021, three medical teams comprised of nursing officers, medical technicians and other Canadian Forces members were sent to Ontario hospitals to assist in intensive care.

Del Duca also asked that the premier recall the legislature and repeal Bill 124, which limits regular salary increases for nurses to one per cent for each 12-month period.

The bill was introduced by the Ford government in 2019 to ensure that increases in public sector compensation reflect the fiscal situation of the province.

We know how critically important that is because we are facing incredible burnout, incredible number of nurses in particular who are leaving the profession because they know in their heart the premier doesnt respect the work that they do, Del Duca said.

The Liberals are also calling for a speedier credential process for internationally trained nurses, to allow staff to be seconded at alternative hospital sites on an emergency basis, and for the government to invite other registered health professionals to participate in vaccinations in order to free up doctors and nurses.

Today we are urging Doug Ford to do the right thing. Take these five concrete suggestions, move on them urgently and position our health-care system so that it can continue to be resilient.

A spokesperson for the Minister of Health told CTV news Toronto in a statement they took swift action "to blunt transmission and prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed."

"If the Del Duca Liberals werent asleep at the wheel they would know that two weeks ago our government issued a call to arms to allow more individuals to safely administer the COVID-19 vaccine, including but not limited to registered and retired health professionals, paramedics, dentists, and firefighters," Alexandra Hilkene said.

"We will continue to work with our health care and hospital partners to ensure they have the support they need and will not hesitate to take further action as needed."

The government did not say whether the premier was considering asking for military assistance.

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Ontario Liberals call on Doug Ford to bring in military to help assist long-term care and hospitals - CTV News Toronto

Dont Look Up dramatically exposes the cynicism of the ruling class, who prioritise their own profits above saving the planet. But despite exposing the dead end of capitalism, the film ignores the potential for the working class to transform society.

Adam McKays satirical film Dont Look Up (available on Netflix) is one of the most divisive films of the year just gone.

The premise of the film is very simple. We follow astronomer and PhD student Kate (Jennifer Lawrance) and her supervisor, Prof Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), who have discovered an enormous comet heading straight towards Earth. They try to warn the world that there is a 99.7% chance that the planet will be destroyed.

Clearly, the comet is a metaphor for climate change. The 99.7% probability is a reference to the percentage of scientists who agree that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible for it.

ALERT! This review contains significant plot spoilers.

Initially, when the astronomers attempt to alert the President of the existential threat, she reacts by calculating the effect of a possible decision on the upcoming mid-term elections. She ignores the threat when she concludes that telling people of the comet may not be advantageous to her mid-term electoral campaign.

Frustrated, the astronomers speak directly to the media. But they find that their news gets barely a mention, as it is squeezed between segments. They are told by the TV hosts that they need to keep it light, airy and fun. Theyre questioned over whether the comet is actually real, whether this is not all a lie, and whether the planet is actually in danger.

Only when the president drops in the polls does she decide to take action.

Kate tells her: I didn't vote for you. But this is obviously much bigger than my misgivings. So I will be 100% behind this effort. No matter how offensive I may find you.

In other words, she states that this is not a political question; that they should put aside their differences, and all come together.

BASH CEO, Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), is an obvious composite of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos. He proposes mining the mineral resources on the comet, worth trillions of dollars. When his plan is leaked, the establishment launches a cynical campaign, explaining that mining the comet will create more jobs.

When the comet becomes visible in the night sky, the astronomers launch a Look Up campaign to convince the president to destroy it. The campaign is based on how liberals approach activism, i.e. raising awareness, asking the government politely to do something, with no involvement of workers or the masses.

In response, the President organises a Dont Look Up campaign, the supporters of which are clearly a sneering caricature of Trump supporters.

Meanwhile, Insherwells plan to mine rare minerals from the comet and shatter it into several harmless pieces fails. However, he, the president and a few hundred of the super-rich have a back-up plan to escape Earth on a spaceship and settle on another far-distant planet, leaving the ordinary people to die.

Dont Look Up is about how the capitalists despite having the resources and technology to solve the crisis prioritise their profits over saving the lives of the other 7.9bn people on the planet. To this effect, the film is good at exposing the cynical calculations of the establishment.

But where the film fails is its lack of any solution to this crisis facing humanity. This is ultimately since the film has been made from a liberal, not a socialist, point of view.

Of course, this is not the only film about a comet threatening our planet see Deep Impact and Armageddon, for example. However, it is extremely telling how confident these films are regarding saving humanity, in comparison to Dont Look Up.

Today, such illusions have been vaporised by the ruling class woeful response to the climate crisis and pandemic. It is true that if such issues are left to the capitalist class to solve, the result is that millions of ordinary people die.

Although the liberals are correct to not trust the conservative wing of the ruling class in solving these crises, they are incapable of seeing that the solution lies with the working class. In Dont Look Up, the working class is cynically portrayed as sheepish and stupid, simply as people who riot and loot.

For example, the film mocks how some people might be attracted to the idea that mining the comet will create jobs. This is typical of how the liberal establishment fail to understand how Trump gained popularity within a section of the working class with his promises of revitalising the US economy.; especially when you consider that the alternative was the establishment figure head Clinton.

If the entire planet is at stake, with eight billion lives about to be lost, just for a potential opportunity to make the rich even richer, then a very reasonable suggestion would be to take matters into our own hands.

This film has been released in a period where millions worldwide have taken to the streets over the climate, Black Lives Matter, and against austerity. But the potential for the working class to take power into its own hands to solve the crisis is completely ignored throughout.

At the end of the film the protagonists realise that all is lost; they are doomed. Kate says: Im thankful that weve tried. But had they actually tried?

Asking the establishment politely to give up their profits through a toothless campaign was bound to get them nowhere. And as their campaign predictably failed, they resigned themselves to their fate, went back to their families, and sought comfort in religion.

The film is profoundly pessimistic and fatalistic: a reflection of the outlook of liberals who see only doom and gloom as capitalism further deteriorates. Whether on the climate question, the pandemic, or even sexism and racism, they have nothing to say. They are oblivious to the fact that as capitalism declines, a new society is struggling to be born.

We need to shape our own fate and take ownership over our future. Whilst the liberals sit and weep, we fight for a socialist society based on the needs of the working class.

Original post:
Review: Don't Look Up: Don't leave it to the liberals to save us - Socialist Appeal

Ahead of another critical Covid-era general budget and an upcoming series of state elections, noted economy & political commentator Swaminathan Aiyar said the very fate of reforms in India likely hangs on which way the UP verdict goes.

"A lot of liberals like me might be very happy to see BJP lose the UP elections, but from the point of view of the economy, a bad BJP loss would mean a sudden squeeze or sudden slowdown in the entire reform process and that would not be good for the economy," said Aiyar in an interview to ET Now.

As it is, reforms have already been kind of relegated to the backburner following the major fiasco on the farm laws. Aiyar notes that after being badly bitten by the farmers agitation, Modi govt itself wants to go easy and slow on reforms. While the three farm laws were the most visible casualties, other reform measures including monetisation and the four labour laws will suffer too, he says.

Aiyar says that a lot hinges on the UP outcome: if BJP does well, it will be a vindication that the farm protests didn't reflect the general mood and so, the govt will double down on reforms. It will bode well for the fate of the entire pending reform pipeline. And India needs this to happen, because a govt must learn to look beyond protests that any privatisation brings in its wake, he notes.

If, on the other hand, the BJP loses or does badly in UP, it will lead to panic in government circles regarding the unpopularity of reforms, Aiyar says. That will send a lot of negative signals to the government, and at a time when there already is a lot of sloth in the monetisation process, such signals will wreck the reform agenda, he adds.

Bad signals from UP will likely stall the already sputtering monetisation of assets, leaving the govt with no realistic chance of meeting its target, Aiyar notes. "The national monetisation pipeline is supposed to get lakhs of crores of rupees within a few years. Will that really happen with this kind of slowdown of reforms," he asks.

As an example, Aiyar cites the UP electricity reform case. It may be recalled here that attempts to reform the UP power sector a while ago had led to a serious loss of face for the authorities there. As soon as official announcements were made, the electricity staff ganged up and threatened to shut down the entire state, following which the government had to beat an ignominious retreat. This, when New Delhi's stated official power policy is all about privatising discoms.

After the UP lesson, the BJP is moving very cautiously even in places that are under its rule, such as Puducherry and Chandigarh, Aiyar observed. All this means the reform process will without doubt be in danger if BJP suffers a serious defeat in UP, and will get a boost if the party has a good victory, he added.

He said the UP poll outcome will be more important than the budget in deciding the economy's road ahead. With the budget coming after the polls, the budgetary announcements will depend on which way UP goes, he said, adding that budget & UP polls together constitute the big picture at the moment.

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A BJP loss in UP will be bad news for economy even if it makes liberals happy, says Swaminathan Aiyar - Economic Times

Every movement contains a range of viewpoints, from moderate to extreme. Unfortunately, Americans on each side of the political spectrum believeincorrectlythat hard-liners dominate the opposite camp.

After the killing of George Floyd last year, for example, liberal protesters across the nation pushed for criminal-justice reform, and many of the specific changes they sought enjoyed a lot of popular support. Even recent polls have shown that, regardless of political affiliation, most Americans remain in favor of police-accountability measures (such as body cameras and a registry of police misconduct), the banning of choke holds, and tackling racial injustices head on. Some activists went much further, though, demanding the complete elimination of police departments. Conservative pundits noticed. Soon, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson was presenting call after vivid call to abolish or radically defund policing. They would like to eliminate all law enforcement for good, he told viewers.

Read: Americas real wokeness divide

But supporters of police abolition are the exception, not the rule, on the American left, according to research that my colleagues Matthew Feinberg, Alexa Tullett, Anne E. Wilson, and I conducted. In late October 2020, we asked more than 1,000 people in the United States whether they agreed that police departments are irreversibly broken and racist, so the government needs to get rid of them completely. Only 28 percent of the self-described liberals even somewhat agreed, indicating that this was not a solid consensus on the left.

Although far out of step with what most liberals actually thought, Carlsons sampling of liberal views was emblematic of what conservatives believed about liberals. Conservatives in our sample estimated that 61 percent of liberalsmore than twice the actual numberendorsed the abolition of law enforcement. This is a striking example of what plagues our politics: a false polarization in which one side excoriates the other for views that it largely does not hold.

Left-leaning readers might not be surprised that conservatives would accept as widespread a caricature of the radical liberal, given that they are so clearly blinded by racism or pro-police sentiment that they would excuse even the most unjust excesses of force. But waitis this portrayal of conservatives accurate?

No. It isnt.

Just as liberals came to rally around #BlackLivesMatter, conservatives gravitated to #BlueLivesMatter. From the vocal conservatives who made excuses for misconduct or blamed victims, some liberal commentators concluded that the right is dominated by police apologists. In fact, many on the right recognize both the humanity and hardship of police officers and those harmed by them. When we asked conservatives if police were almost always justified in their shootings of Black people, only 31 percent of respondents even somewhat agreed with the sentiment. Liberals, on the other hand, estimated nearly double that number of conservatives57 percentgave police a free pass.

Some caveats: Our research, which is available as a preprint, is under review and subject to change. We drew our large samples of respondents from online survey platforms, not from nationally representative polling. We recognize that this sampleand therefore our estimates of the prevalence of liberal and conservative opinionsis not an exact microcosm of the country. Still, other researchers have concluded that these platforms are reasonably comparable to nationally representative polling.

The gap that we identified between what partisans really think and what their opponents think they think shows up again and againbut only on a particular kind of issue. People have a more accurate view of the other sides position on many standard policy issues, such as taxes or health care. But specifically on culture-war issues, partisans are likely to believe a caricatured version of the opposing sides attitudes. These misconceptions have hardened into enduring stereotypes: liberal snowflakes and free-speech police, conservative racists and deplorables.

In reality, just a third of liberal participants agreed even a little with banning controversial public speakers from college campuses, but conservatives estimated that 63 percent of liberals held that view. Only 22 percent of conservatives expressed hostile and unwelcoming attitudes toward immigrants, but liberals thought that 57 percent of them did. Our data suggest that many people are walking around with an exaggerated mental representation of what other Americans stand for.

Where do these ideas come from? Partisan media outlets have an incentive to stoke their audiences outrage by making extreme views seem commonplace. In our work, we saw that the more people reported consuming partisan news (a category in which, drawing on the work of other researchers, we included Fox News and MSNBC), the more they believed in a caricatured version of the other side.

Conor Friedersdorf: Americas blue and red tribes arent so far apart

Peoples perceptions of others are powerful, even when theyre wrong. We found that people disliked their opponents primarily for the fringe views most opponents didnt actually hold. Worse still, partisans who disliked their opponents most were least willing to engage with them, which likely forecloses the chance to have their misperceptions corrected through real-life personal contact. Instead, an oversimplified, exaggerated version of the other sides views is allowed to live on inside of everyones head.

Whats more, partisans told us they were hesitant to voice their opinions about the most extreme positions expressed by people on the same side of the spectrum. For example, liberals were less keen to talk publicly about the downsides of censoring free speech than they were to talk about the benefits of universal health care. So although a majority of liberals opposed censorship, their reluctance to criticize it openly might have led conservatives to think that most on the left favored it.

So what should politically minded Americans conclude from our researchthat, gosh, their opponents are just like them, and everyone should join hands in the center? Nope. Some policiesand some partisansdeserve forceful opposition, even contempt, from the other side. Vigorous disagreement, both within and between parties, is essential in a functioning democracy. But democracy also requires at least some level of mutual comprehension. No matter where people are on the political spectrum, they ought to know whom theyre fighting with and what theyre even fighting about.

Read more:
Conservatives and Liberals Are Wrong About Each Other - The Atlantic