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A Bad Taste in the Mouth
The New York Times newspaper. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – For several years now, my media consumption habits have been guided in part by what I call my “escape routes.”
As someone who spends his days immersed in reports and analysis of news events that are extraordinarily depressing—war and conflict in Europe and the Middle East, the inexorable rise of antisemitism and other forms of prejudice, the historical precedents for the difficult political questions we confront today and much else on similar lines—I need these escape routes for the good of my mental health. They also remind me that while I’m paid for the privilege of writing and thinking about politics and international affairs, millions of people pursue careers and projects that have nothing to do with my concerns, which is precisely why I use the term “escape routes” when I read about their endeavors. They are a window onto the calmer and more leisurely world that exists out there, and my visits fortify me when I go back to the issues that matter to me both professionally and personally.
It’s why I read the sports pages, to monitor the teams I follow and read what the coaches and players are saying. It’s why I read music reviews, to check up on whether my favorite bands are in the studio or if they are touring, and hopefully, discover some new gems. It’s why I adore restaurant reviews, not just of establishments in the cities where I live or work but of eateries further afield. This—all of this—is a harmless escape, a chance to read some decent writing that isn’t about politics, allowing me to return to my own writing feeling refreshed.
But I have to tell you, this method isn’t really working anymore.
In the last six months, since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel unleashed a war that has dominated the media, I’ve seen my escape routes pulled into my professional concerns. The sports pages have been littered with reports of discrimination against Jewish athletes, such as the firing of South Africa’s U-19 cricket team captain because he is Jewish, or the refusal of the Irish women’s basketball team to stand respectfully for the “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, immediately prior to a contest in which, happily, they were trounced by their Israeli opponents. Music has become a cesspool of artists, including some whose songs I love, with them signing up to various boycott initiatives targeting Israel alone, leaving cutting-edge Israeli acts—like the electronic duo Red Axes, whom I interviewed recently—feeling isolated and rejected. And now, I’ve discovered that even restaurant reviews, of all things, are no longer immune from any mention, let alone criticism of, Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The disapproval and the resentment are pervasive, seeping into the corners of websites and news outlets that would normally have no business discussing Israel and the Palestinians, or any other conflict (and, of course, they don’t tend to discuss those other conflicts.)
Over the last week, I’ve encountered two items on the food pages like this. The first was the eagerly awaited New York Times list of the top 100 restaurants in the city. I clicked on that in order to see whether I’d visited any that made this year’s selection, as well as choose some of the establishments where I’d like to go. I didn’t think (because there was no reason to think) that the Gaza war would show up here, but it did.
The food critic at the Times, Pete Wells, classified one restaurant—Falafel Tanami, in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, at number 65—as “Israeli.” In the accompanying paragraph describing the food, Wells didn’t mention the word “Israel” or talk about the conflict once. Instead, he waxed lyrically about the quality of the falafel balls served there. But that wasn’t the case with the restaurant that came in at number 74—Ayat, an eatery that is also in Brooklyn that Wells classified as “Palestinian.” In this case, Wells used half of his allotted paragraph to tell us that its main location features a mural of “Palestinian children behind bars under the Aqsa Mosque, between the phrases ‘down with the occupation’ and ‘live in peace,’” adding that as “Ayat has multiplied locations, it has kept up its paired messages of peace and support for the people of Palestine.” I came away from reading that wondering whether the recommendation was for the food or for the politics. Needless to say, none of the other cuisines emanating from countries that are also global trouble spots—Nigeria, Mexico and Korea, among them—warranted similar treatment.
After the Times, it was The Guardian. That paper, which is known for its harsh coverage of Israel, published a review last weekend of a non-kosher, Ashkenazi-style deli in North London by its food critic, Jay Rayner. I knew that Rayner was Jewish, in part because I’d seen some good-natured joshing from some of his Jewish readers about his fondness for pork and seafood dishes. But that didn’t prepare me for what I read.
Rayner did spend most of the review talking about the food, which he said he enjoyed, while noting that the chicken-soup broth needed more salt. But then came the clincher: “Could I really write about a Jewish restaurant given the current political turmoil? Would I get abuse for doing so?” Rayner wrote. “Surely better to keep shtum. At which point I knew I had no choice: I had to write about it. The horrendous campaign of the government and armed forces of Israel in Gaza cannot be allowed to make being Jewish a source of shame.” He proceeded to berate Israel for allegedly making “life for Jews who live outside Israel and have no responsibility for the decisions its government takes, so very much harder,” before concluding: “And so I sit here with my terrific salt beef sandwich and my chocolate mousse, indulging that bit of my Jewish identity which makes sense to me. It’s not much, but it’s all I have.”
It’s nearly impossible to imagine Rayner, or any other food critic, mentioning the persecution of the Uyghur minority by the Beijing regime in a review of a Chinese restaurant or asserting that a reviewer of Chinese origin is obliged to invoke this crisis of conscience in a discussion of Peking duck. Not so with Jewish cuisine, especially when some Jewish writers are all too willing to join in the chorus of opprobrium. One has to ask, if a Jewish restaurant was serving Sephardic staples like kubbeh or chicken with couscous, instead of Ashkenazi ones like chopped liver or latkes, would a review of that establishment contain a barb about how these dishes have been appropriated by the Jewish colonizers from the Arabs, without mentioning the long, largely unhappy sojourn of Jewish communities in Arab countries? If so, it’s safe to say that none of the editors would bat an eyelid upon receiving such copy.
I am not, of course, asking for sympathy now that my media escape routes have been closed down; there are far more pressing matters of life and death to worry about. My point is that if we have really reached a juncture where a discussion of eating out necessitates critical mention of Israel but no other country—a trend likely to worsen following the tragic deaths of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza last week—it’s further proof that the Palestinian issue dominates the Western conscience more than any other. And because of its naked one-sidedness, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
The post A Bad Taste in the Mouth first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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