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The Biggest Victim in Today’s Election Is Jewish Unity
Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump points towards Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris, during a presidential debate hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
No matter who wins today’s election, the biggest casualty for the Jewish community will be unity. We allowed ourselves to be pulled into a partisan game, where non-Jewish voices — opportunists on both sides — defined which party is “more antisemitic,” leading us to turn on each other. The only people who win from Jewish disunity are antisemites.
We must remember that we are a people apart. We might be Democrats or Republicans — but only as long as these parties allow us to remain. Both parties contain elements that don’t see Jews as “real” members of their ranks. At any moment, the fringes of each side could pull the mainstream in their direction, and we will find ourselves either shown the door or quietly made to feel unwelcome.
To be clear, the Democratic Party is not “The Squad,” and the Republican Party does not believe in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Jewish Space Lasers.” The parties are more than their loudest extremes. But we have to face the fact that these factions hold influence, and they can pull the broader party platform in directions that aren’t always comfortable — or safe — for us. We can argue over the extent to which these views are tolerated in each party, and we can vote accordingly.
By “unity,” I don’t mean that we should all vote the same way or ignore real issues on either side. I mean that we need to recognize that neither party will always represent what is good for the Jews. Both will court us, both will insist that the other side is a threat, and both will try to lock us into alliances where their interests come first. All our alliances are marriages of convenience.
Take our alliance with Evangelical Christians, for instance. Many of us are fully aware that their pro-Israel stance aligns with our interests today, but this alliance is not without strings. Evangelicals often support Israel because they see it as central to their eschatology, not always because of a genuine affinity with the Jewish people. We are allies — until the day our priorities no longer align. Going “all in” on their agenda is a risk we cannot afford.
This election cycle has exposed just how fractured we are and how much our alliances need rethinking. The old alliances — built on broad social causes, unions, and civil rights movements — are in tatters. We are finding ourselves increasingly pushed to the sidelines of causes we once led. We are not Democrats or Republicans, conservative or liberal. In the end, we are Jews, a people apart, and we must do what it takes to survive.
A few years ago, I spoke with an author who argued that the Jewish community needs to abandon “Tikkun Olam” — the notion that we should dedicate ourselves to repairing the world. His stance was that we should be concerned, first and foremost, with helping other Jews. At the time, I dismissed his viewpoint. As American Jews, we have always taken pride in our sense of justice and duty to broader society. Our pursuit of Tikkun Olam has often been the driver behind our roles in social justice, union organizing, and countless other efforts that uplifted not just ourselves, but all Americans.
Yet here we are, finding ourselves ousted from some of the very movements we helped to shape. The calls for justice are still loud, but our voices are increasingly unwelcome. Now, I am beginning to see the wisdom in that author’s argument.
In this climate, we need a different rallying point. We are not Tikkun Olam and we are not MAGA. We should be wary of both sides’ accusations of antisemitism, for neither side truly has our best interests at heart.
This isn’t to say we need to be centrists. Rather, we need to look both ways, as my mother used to tell me, before crossing the street. We need to hold onto the knowledge that we are a people with a long history, one that has outlasted empires and nations. We need each other to continue that history, no matter the political divisions that try to rip us apart.
Somehow, we allowed these divisions to harden. We forgot that we are one people. Instead, we have looked at our fellow Jews as enemies. We’ve resorted to name-calling, hurling words like “kapo” and “fascist” at each other. Friendships have been broken, families split, and fingers pointed in anger.
Yes, we’re Jews. We argue. Debate is in our DNA. But this has gone beyond debate. Our community’s infighting has provided a gift to our enemies, who look at us — splintered and vulnerable — and smile.
So, when exactly have Jews ever been united? I can think of once within my lifetime. When I was around 12 years old in 1976, my family hosted a violinist named Boris Brant. We lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, at the time, and he was a recent immigrant from the Soviet Union. Brant was one of the Soviet refusniks — Jews who had been denied the right to leave the USSR. He’d been a prominent violin professor in Odessa, but applying to emigrate had cost him his career. He left behind everything he knew to come here and start over as a free man.
His arrival in the US was part of a larger movement. By the 1970s, American Jews of all stripes were rallying around the cause of Soviet Jewry, working to free Jews who wanted to leave. This advocacy led to the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied US-Soviet trade deals to the Soviet Union’s willingness to allow Jewish emigration. If they wanted favorable trade, they had to respect basic rights. This was one of the rare times that Jews, across all backgrounds, got behind a single cause.
Jackson-Vanik was groundbreaking. Orthodox, Reform, secular, left, right — everyone joined in. Synagogues held rallies, youth groups raised awareness, and Jewish families like mine opened their homes to tell the stories of Soviet Jews. For once, we felt like one community, and the message was simple: Jewish freedom was non-negotiable.
No matter who wins today, we have a serious antisemitism problem in this country. It is a problem that will take all our talents and efforts to address. So much emotion and time is wasted on blaming our fellow Jews for a problem that is not of our own making. We are a talented, brilliant, driven, creative, clever, stubborn people. Let’s focus all that energy on fighting antisemitism — not one another.
Howard Lovy is a Michigan-based author, book editor, and journalist who specializes in Jewish issues. He is currently working on a book, From Outrage to Action: A Practical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. His novel, Found and Lost: The Jake and Cait Story, will be released in 2025. You can find him on his website or on X.
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Jude Law Hunts Neo-Nazis in ‘The Order’
Jude Law in “The Order.” Photo: screenshot.
Jude Law is usually the romantic lead. In The Order, he is a tough FBI agent hunting neo-Nazis. Based on the book, The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, it chronicles the actions of a white supremacist group that robbed and assassinated Jewish radio host Alan Berg in June 1984.
Law does a fine job as Terry Husk, a man who knows he is up against very bad people. Nicholas Hoult is convincing as the villain, Bob Matthews. He doesn’t look imposing physically, but Hoult is able to use a lack of expression to convey evil.
Jewish comedian Marc Maron plays Berg, and while he does a good job, I would have liked to see him get more screen time. We only hear a bit of what he said on the radio, as he’s arguing with antisemitic callers.
It’s not very glamorous in Idaho, and this is a gritty film that is better than you’d expect it to be, while the source material is also more harrowing than you could imagine. The film makes reference to The Turner Diaries, a science fiction book that was actually a primer and guide for racists and antisemites. Written by William Luther Pierce under the pseudonym of Andrew Macdonald, it depicts a revolution in America where Jews and non-whites are murdered. Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist who carried out the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City, was found with pages of The Turner Diaries.
Jurnee Smollett does a decent job as a woman helping to try to take down part of the Aryan nation. Many viewers would expect more explosives, more blood, more violence, and a big love story between Law and an actress, but the makers of the film resist all of the common expectations to present a film that stands out for being a bit more realistic than you’d expect.
While the film doesn’t go deep into why these men are racist, antisemitic, and bent on killing, it’s true that they follow a leader. In our current climate of rising antisemitism, one can only hope that the Federal authorities are on top of things and the threats from these leaders and these groups are monitored — as well as the possibility of agents from other countries that could have been sent as sleeper cells.
Should the FBI have been more proactive to prevent the assassination of Berg? It’s hard to say, as the white supremacist group showcased in the film was not that well-known at the time. Law sports an unflattering mustache in the film, which contrasts to the clean-shaven Hoult. Directed by Justin Kurzel, the film is well-paced and Maron, speaking as Berg, says on the airwaves that America is a great country, but some of us are trapped in our own minds.
The downsides of the film are that the plot is predictable and there is not particularly any dialogue you will find inspiring, moving or provocative. But it is still an entertaining and engaging film, based on the true story of hate-filled people who believed in things that many Americans still believe in.
The Order makes one think about what law enforcement can do against white supremacy today, and to what extent their numbers are growing or not.
The film doesn’t try to do too much, but executes what it sets out to do very well. The Order is a story that is timely and upsetting, and features Law and Hoult doing fine work.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Monday Marks Day 445 for Hostages in Gaza — Longer Than the Iranian Hostages
People gather in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to mark the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. Photo: Paulina Patimer
On November 4, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s henchmen stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held Americans hostage for 444 days, releasing them on January 20, 1981. On October 7, 2023, Hamas storm troopers and Gazan civilians paraglided and marched into Israel and took hundreds of American and Israeli hostages after killing over 1,200.
Comparing the two situations shows how much has changed in the last four decades — none of it for the better.
Hostages, Then and Now
The Americans taken hostage by Khomeini’s followers were all adults working at the US embassy. The captives in Gaza today, both male and female, range from infants to the aged. One hostage, Kfir Bibas, born on January 18, 2023, was only 262 days old when he was stolen from his bed. He celebrated his first birthday as a hostage and has spent the majority of his life as a Hamas prisoner.
Some of the American diplomats were beaten during and after the November 4 siege of the U.S. embassy. They were undoubtedly held in inhumane conditions and sometimes threatened with execution. But unlike those seized on October 7, not one was executed. Not a single one was raped.
After the first few days of their captivity, unless they were being moved from one location to another or paraded in the street, the American diplomats were not blindfolded. Aside from when they were kept periodically in a damp, windowless warehouse on the embassy grounds, which the hostages named “The Mushroom Inn,” they could see outside.
Hamas’ hostages, on the other hand, have likely been kept underground in the maze of tunnels that constitute subterranean Gaza for most of their 445 days of captivity. Many have likely not seen the sun in all that time. They have been severely beaten.
On November 17, 1979, Khomeini ordered the female and African-American hostages released because “Islam has a special respect toward women” and because blacks had been forced to suffer “under American pressure and tyranny.” Some of the women released by Hamas in the November 2023 ceasefire were sexually assaulted and constantly intimidated.
Those Americans held by Iran who were injured or ill received medical care, albeit inferior to what they deserved. One hostage, Richard Queen, the State Department’s Vice Consul, suffering the early stages of undiagnosed multiple sclerosis, was released after 250 days. His symptoms baffled the Iranian physicians who treated him, and his captors feared the consequences of his dying in captivity. Hamas has no such fears.
UN Responses, Then and Now
In 1979, the United Nations was not quite as corrupted as it is today. The Security Council responded if not quickly (on December 4) at least decisively with Resolution 457 calling for the immediate release of the hostages. On December 31, it issued Resolution 461, condemning Iran and citing an International Court of Justice order for the release of all hostages.
In 2023, after weeks of failing to reach a consensus, the Security Council finally issued Resolution 2712 on November 15, calling for the release of all hostages, but it did not condemn or even mention the October 7 attack.
Today’s UN is focused on condemning Israel. It has whitewashed the complicity of the Palestinian people in October 7 and exaggerated their suffering. The Secretary-General’s statement was one half condemnation of Hamas and one-half warning that Israel exercise “maximum restraint” and pursue a “two-state solution.” The International Court of Justice took South Africa’s charges of genocide seriously and opened an investigation into Israeli conduct, and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Media Coverage
In 1979, the media at first repeated the false narrative that the hostage takers were merely religious students, not Khomeini’s agents carrying out his will. But as one hostage, Barry Rosen, put it, “Khomeini was supporting our captivity; it was not just these students acting in his name.” Rosen adds that, “the students couldn’t have continued to hold us without the Imam’s approval.”
Throughout the 444-day ordeal, the media focused on the hostages, their families, and efforts being made to free them. On ABC, Ted Koppel’s career was made by a show called The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, which eventually became Nightline.
By contrast, today’s media have not made the hostages the focal point of the story. Rather than seeing the hostages as victims of Islamist aggression, much of today’s media are more sympathetic with Palestinians and Hamas than with their hostages. They focus on “Israel’s War in Gaza,” celebrate anti-Israel protests, and mindlessly repeat Hamas’s inflated casualty and death statistics.
When Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, the media harped on how much more difficult a “hostage deal” would be and accused Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu of belligerence.
When Israel decimated (or more) the leadership of Hezbollah — another terrorist organization responsible for holding Americans hostage — in a brilliant pager/walkie-talkie sabotage like something out of a James Bond movie, much of the media vilified it as terrorism.
Like the UN, the media have whitewashed the complicity of the Palestinian people on October 7. One of the greatest differences between the coverage of the hostages held in Iran 45 years ago and of the hostages in Gaza today is that no one was on Iran’s side then, while many are on Hamas’s side today.
Academia Reacts
For Americans, and indeed for much of the Western world, the seizure of our diplomats in 1979 was an affront too outrageous to endure. People were angry at the Iranians, Khomeini, and Jimmy Carter. In the days before memes, Americans adopted a line from a popular song by Tony Orlando and Dawn (“Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”). Yellow ribbons appeared around trees throughout the nation as symbols of their suffering and the American people longing for their return.
Most American academics were as outraged as everyone else in 1979, and all but the most virulently anti-American among them who weren’t outraged likely kept it to themselves.
By contrast, today’s academics are more likely to celebrate October 7, especially Middle East studies “experts.”
College students were firmly on the side of the US in 1979. If there were any protests, they were anti-Iran protests. As a freshman at the University of Miami in November of 1979, I saw many cars sporting the famous bumper sticker, and people wearing the t-shirt, featuring Mickey Mouse holding an American flag in his right hand while giving the middle-finger salute with his left hand with the caption “Hey Iran.”
By contrast, today’s college students are more likely to wear keffiyehs and chant “From the River to the Sea” or “Globalize the Intifada” and other slogans they don’t understand.
End of the Crises
The 52 Americans held in Iran were released only after one-term president Jimmy Carter left the White House and Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Reagan called Khomeini and his henchmen “criminals and thugs” and promised a very different approach than the weak coddling that the Carter administration had pursued.
When the hostages were finally released, there was a ticker-tape parade in their honor as they were celebrated in New York City’s “Canyon of Heroes.”
Will the hostages in Gaza have to wait until one-term president Joe Biden leaves the White House and Donald Trump is inaugurated? That will make it 472 days in captivity. Will there be a ticker-tape parade?
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to get the hostages back and threatened that “there will be hell to pay” if they are not returned by his January 20 inauguration. It will be well-deserved if Hamas doesn’t release the hostages.
Chief Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow. A version of this article was published by IPT.
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Syria in the Post-Assad Era: Towards Ethnic Division or a Unified State?
Rebel fighters holds weapons at the Citadel of Aleppo, after Syrian rebels announced that they have ousted Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo, Syria, Dec. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Karam al-Masri
The past decade has seen Syria engulfed in a brutal civil war, marked by foreign intervention, relentless repression, and the unraveling of its fragile social fabric. This turmoil has fueled a mass exodus of refugees, reshaping Europe’s demographics and political landscape.
Now, as the Assad regime has collapsed, Syria faces a pivotal question: Can it emerge as a unified sovereign state, or will ethnic divisions dictate its future?
Historical Roots of the Crisis: Artificial Borders and Failed Ethnic Harmony
Syria’s current plight is not solely the result of recent events. It stems from deep-seated issues rooted in the colonial legacy of the Middle East.
The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement carved up the region with scant regard for its ethnic, religious, and sectarian complexities. The resulting state was a volatile mosaic of Sunni Arabs, Alawites, Druze, Christians, Turkmen, and others.
During the French Mandate, attempts were made to partition Syria into autonomous regions based on ethnic and sectarian lines. These included a Druze state in Jebel Druze, an Alawite state in Latakia, a Turkmen-dominated region of Alexandretta, and separate Arab Sunni states for Damascus and Aleppo. However, this experiment failed, and in 1946, Syria gained independence as a unified state.
A Unified Kingdom or Ethnic Partition?
After Assad’s abdication, the question of Syria’s future looms large. Could it return to being a unified state, or is ethnic partition a more viable path to stability?
Among the potential scenarios:
- Druze Autonomy in Jebel Druze: A concept supported in the past by figures like Israeli leader Yigal Alon, this option could appeal to local Druze communities. However, their willingness to align with a pro-Israel arrangement remains doubtful given their precarious geopolitical position.
- An Alawite State in Latakia: Syria’s coastal region, an Alawite stronghold, could serve as a natural refuge for the community. It’s even conceivable, in the region’s unpredictable dynamics, that Bashar al-Assad himself could return there.
- A Federal Syrian Model: Similar to Iraq, this approach would grant significant autonomy to various groups while maintaining the semblance of a unified state.
Key Challenges
- Foreign Interference: Major players like Russia, Turkey, and Iran have heavily invested in Syria, each pursuing its strategic interests. Any ethnic partition would likely face their strong opposition, especially if it diminishes their influence.
- Leadership and Israeli Policy: Should a figure like Abu Mohammad al-Julani, with roots in al-Qaeda, retain power, the prospects for stability dim further. Julani’s ties to the Golan Heights –his family fled the region after the 1967 war — underscore his likely antagonism toward Israel and territorial concessions.
- The Golan Heights Question: Once a contentious issue in peace negotiations, the strategic importance of the Golan was underscored during the Syrian civil war. The chaos reaffirmed Israel’s security imperative to retain the area, a sentiment bolstered by US recognition of Israeli sovereignty there.
Syria’s Future: A Litmus Test for Israeli Policy
Post-Assad Syria is a test of Israel’s strategic approach to regional instability. Israel must maintain its deterrence posture, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized during his significant visit to the Golan Heights. Strengthening Israel’s hold on this strategic region is crucial to countering hostile actors.
While some in the international community hope for a unified Syria, the reality suggests otherwise. Ethnic partition appears to be one of the few pragmatic solutions to stabilize the country. Yet, aggressive opposition from global powers and internal factions renders this outcome unlikely in the near term.
Turkey, for instance, vehemently opposes a Kurdish autonomy that might embolden its own Kurdish minority. Iran seeks to consolidate its influence through Shiite alliances, including with the Alawites. Meanwhile, figures like Julani will resist any division that curtails their power or excludes major factions from influence.
Toward a Federal Solution?
The enduring conflict makes meaningful reconstruction a distant prospect. Ethnic partition offers a glimmer of hope for stability, but remains a long shot. Interim solutions, such as a federal system granting limited autonomy within a unified framework, may provide the only viable path forward.
Ultimately, the success of such models depends on creative and painstaking negotiations, both locally and internationally. Syria’s post-Assad reality is a complex battlefield of clashing interests, and achieving the elusive goal of stability will require unprecedented diplomatic ingenuity.
Itamar Tzur is an Israeli scholar and Middle East expert who holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Jewish History and a Master’s degree with honors in Middle Eastern Studies. As a senior member of the “Forum Kedem for Middle Eastern Studies and Public Diplomacy,” Tzur leverages his academic expertise to enhance understanding of regional dynamics and historical contexts within the Middle East.
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