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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan
(JTA) — Israel’s 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing government’s proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israel’s democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving “yes, but” sermons: Yes, Israel’s existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.
One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his “dismay” over the government’s actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, and the founder of a new organization, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.
Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians — thereby enabling the country’s extremists.
In March, however, he warned that the “Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride.” That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, “The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History,” includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel. When does such criticism give “comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel,” as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?
Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the “central Jewish institution.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were “dismayed” by the “political extremism” and “religious fundamentalism” of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we can’t sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and we’re not going to. Israel is in what’s probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. It’s Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but that’s not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each other’s affairs.
For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and that’s a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.
American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?
I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I don’t participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. It’s presumed that they’re Zionists and they’re speaking to their own government. I’m not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, they’re perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.
What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?
My strongest guidance is don’t disengage, don’t turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.
You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.
The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. It’s a difficult process because we’re operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.
There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: “some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment” — that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. You’re skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.
Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as it’s not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And I’ve been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.
But what about the criticism that has come from, let’s say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.
Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. I’m a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.
In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.
When it came to the students, I didn’t respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didn’t hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if I’m not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didn’t respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that they’re anti-Zionist — I do not. I didn’t put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.
Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)
You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students’ petition came during Israel’s war with Hamas that May, writing that “those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.”
My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another — Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.
You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel “is the primary source of our people’s collective energy — the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people.” A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So what’s the role or function of the Diaspora?
Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. It’s only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.
And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. It’s not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. I’m a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.
But doesn’t that negate the importance of American Jewry?
In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also don’t consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then what’s left? Now there’s a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism — concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.
I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in people’s lives — especially among the non-Orthodox — do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?
I’ve believed since the beginning of my career that there’s no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that we’ve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, we’re the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.
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Jewish Democratic support weakened slightly in midterms, survey finds
(JTA) — Democrats lost a small amount of Jewish support overall in the midterm elections, even as an overwhelming majority of Jews voted for the party, according to the results of a new survey published Tuesday.
The poll also found that significant shares of both Jewish Democratic and Jewish Republican voters believe their respective parties have become too accepting of antisemitism.
The survey from the Jewish Electorate Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that often works with Democrats, was the latest data pointing to simmering Jewish discomfort with the majority of the community’s longtime electoral home — even as actual voting patterns have remained largely consistent. Conducted by research firm The Mellman Group, the survey polled 800 national Jewish registered voters online from Oct. 29-Nov. 6, including both early and day-of voters.
The data “reveal warning signs for both political parties” in their relationship to Jews, institute chair Barbara Goldberg told reporters in a briefing.
Researchers found that 69% of Jewish respondents voted for Democrats, a six-point drop from the 2024 election. There was a 3.5% margin of error.
That drop occurred even as several other groups that have consistently voted for Democrats increased their shares in 2026, including voters under 45, voters of color, women and white, college-educated voters.
In the run-up to what would become a historic “blue wave” election, the Jewish vote – a reliably Democratic bloc — received particular attention as several high-profile candidates, including Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, broke with longtime party consensus on Israel or otherwise unnerved the Jewish community throughout the campaign. Studies of Jewish voting attitudes published since Election Night, which have also included polls from the liberal Zionist lobby J Street and the pro-Israel group The Jewish Majority, have found that the Jewish party-line vote was largely unchanged despite those reservations.
While the Jewish Electorate Institute did not isolate any polling on Jews in Michigan specifically, it did poll all Jews about their views on El-Sayed and found that his favorability in the group had climbed since September. He is now viewed favorably by 44% of all Jews and 59% of Jewish Democrats, the survey found, with 40% of the former group and 25% of the latter viewing him unfavorably — giving the senator-elect a net favorability rating in both camps. The same polling also found that 41% of Jewish voters view pro-Israel lobbyists AIPAC favorably, and 35% unfavorably.
The survey also found that 36% of Jewish Democratic voters expressed concern about the direction of the party, agreeing with the statement that it has become “too accepting of antisemitic rhetoric within the Party.” One in four Jewish Republicans believed their party was becoming too friendly to white nationalists and the far right.
“The one place both parties are having problems is on rising antisemitism,” Michael Bloomfield, managing director of the Mellman Group who oversaw the survey, told reporters. The questions about antisemitism within the party had not been asked in previous election surveys conducted by the Mellman Group.
In addition, 28% of Jewish Democratic voters said they voted for candidates whose views on Israel caused them concern, saying that other issues outweighed those reservations. One in six Jewish Republicans said they did the same.
In results that echoed an earlier survey put out by the liberal Zionist lobby J Street, 14% of Jewish Democrats said supporting Israel was one of the most important factors in their vote. A higher share of the Jewish Electorate Institute respondents, 27%, said fighting antisemitism was one of their most important issues, while preserving democracy was the top concern.
The Jewish Republican voters surveyed ranked fighting antisemitism as their top concern, and support for Israel as among their top concerns.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democratic support weakened slightly in midterms, survey finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Museum cancels Dutch synagogue’s tricentennial celebration over Israel tensions
(JTA) — An exhibition honoring the nearly 300-year-old Amersfoort Synagogue was supposed to be a celebration of Jewish life in Amersfoot, a small city in the central Netherlands.
Instead, Dutch Jews say, it could become the latest casualty of anti-Israel cancel culture that has targeted Jews in the Diaspora.
The city’s mayor in the last week has scrambled to save a planned exhibit on the synagogue after it was canceled, but so far has not been able to guarantee that it will open as planned early next year.
On Nov. 4, Paul Baltus, the director of Amersfoort in C, an organization that oversees the Museum Amersfoort and several of the city’s other cultural institutions, said he was canceling the upcoming synagogue exhibition due to “pressure,” an apparent reference to possible confrontations by pro-Palestinian activists.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have held dozens of demonstrations in the Netherlands since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. On Nov. 8, tens of thousands of people gathered in Amsterdam to demand that the Dutch government impose stricter sanctions on Israel.
Although the museum started planning the exhibition five years ago, Baltus said in a statement, “Since then, the social climate has changed significantly. The situation in the Middle East is also having an impact on Dutch society. The public debate on this subject can be heated and, at times, lacking in nuance.”
Baltus said he is finding the “tension” surrounding the exhibition, which was slated to begin in early 2027, difficult to manage. “As a small and vulnerable organization, I do not want to expose my staff to that kind of pressure,” he said. While he acknowledged that he could hire security guards and install cameras, “the reality is that our volunteers would still have to deal with a range of reactions.”
Jewish community leaders in the Netherlands said they were shocked by the museum’s actions and called on city officials to ensure the exhibition would go on as planned.
The exhibition is one of several cultural events scheduled to mark the 300th anniversary of the Amersfoort synagogue, which opened in 1727. It is the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in Western Europe still in use today.
On Nov. 4, Mayor Lucas Bolsius told the City Council that the municipality would begin discussions with the museum and other stakeholders “to ensure that the exhibition can proceed.” The museum’s decision to cancel “has caused considerable pain within the Jewish community, particularly by reinforcing the feeling that its members are not welcome or even allowed to exist,” he told council members.
Following a meeting the next day, Bolsius and Baltsus jointly announced on Nov. 6 that they would work together to try to find a solution.
Over the past week, the mayor said, “helping hands have been offered from the city, central government and across the country to address organizational matters. People and organizations want to help make this exhibition possible.”
Baltus said the help being offered has alleviated some of his concerns. “With this support, we will explore the possibilities with an open mind and a positive intention, in consultation with the Jewish community.”
While Jewish leaders told Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they welcomed these efforts, they said the museum controversy is just the latest example of hostility toward Jewish historical and cultural events in the Netherlands, where anything Jewish – even a 300-year-old diaspora synagogue – is often seen as inseparable from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We are very glad the mayor intervened. Let this be an example for other authorities,” said Hans Weijel, vice chairman of the Centraal Joods Overleg (CJO), the umbrella advocacy organization that represents the interests of the Netherlands’ 40,000 Jews.
Emile Schrijver, director-general of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, which encompasses the Jewish Museum, the National Holocaust Museum, the Portuguese Synagogue and other Jewish cultural institutions, said the Museum Amersfoort had made its decision without first consulting the Jewish community or the organizations involved in the planned exhibition.
“Largely since Oct. 7, Jewish artists have had a difficult time finding a stage, and Jewish events, including cultural, can’t find a venue. Jewish events are being cancelled for no reason,” he said.
Schrijver rejected Baltus’s contention that security concerns made the museum exhibition unmanageable, given that the Jewish institutions Schrijver runs in Amsterdam frequently host events, despite pro-Palestinian demonstrations and related security concerns.
“We train our staff all the time. We deal with this every day. Yes, it’s difficult, but no, it’s not impossible,” he said.
Schrijver warned that treating Jewish cultural events as potential security problems risks pushing Jewish communities out of public life.
“The effect of this is that the normality of Jewish presence in a town is being pushed away,” he said. “Suddenly anything Jewish is considered a security hazard or prone to cause problems.”
Cultural institutions have a responsibility to distinguish between their views on Israeli government policy and the history of Jewish communities in the Netherlands, Schrijver said.
“You have to separate your private opinion from the long history of a small town in the Netherlands. What they’re effectively doing is pushing the Jewish community to the fringes of society.”
CJO’s Weijel said the Jewish community has played an important role in Amersfoort’s civic life since the mid-1600s.
“We think it is ridiculous that a museum in a city doesn’t want to have an exhibition about a 300-year-old synagogue and its history in that city. The conflict is in the Middle East, not here,” he emphasized. “If you want proof that this is antisemitism, this is the proof.”
Weijel accused Baltus of being “a coward.”
“He’s afraid something bad will happen, but if you’re that afraid, you should stay in bed.”
In his Nov. 4 statement, Baltus acknowledged the Jewish community’s disappointment and offered to contribute his museum’s “expertise and collection” of Jewish historical artifacts to an exhibition in the synagogue instead. He also offered to incorporate the synagogue’s history into the museum’s permanent exhibition on the history of Amersfoort.
For Schrijver, the Amersfoort controversy is yet another attempt to marginalize Jews in a country they have lived in for generations.
“The moment you make Jewish history dependent on what is happening in the Middle East, you are making Jewish existence conditional,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Museum cancels Dutch synagogue’s tricentennial celebration over Israel tensions appeared first on The Forward.
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Donald Trump actually faced a few tough questions on ’60 Minutes.’ So, why does Marine Le Pen get a pass?
Last Sunday, the news show “60 Minutes” hosted an outgoing president of one country and, quite possibly, the incoming president of another. While falsehoods and fatuities flowed from President Donald Trump, his interviewer, Ross Douthat frequently, if futilely, tried to push back. Yet when Marine Le Pen, running for the presidency of France, also fibbed or fudged the truth, her interviewer, Trevor Phillips, did little more than arch an eyebrow.
This split-screen experience was unsettling for a few reasons. First, it reminded us that our president’s famous “weave” reflects a mind that is declining as surely as his poll numbers. A glance at the interview transcript reflects the deepening incoherence of the man who occupies the world’s most powerful office. This made all the most startling the cogency of his reply to a question Douthat posed at the end of the interview: whether he could stop hating his enemies if that was the price to enter heaven. To a flabbergasted Douthat, Trump replied, “I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.”
While no one can say whether Trump is destined for heaven or hell, Le Pen’s remarks in her interview suggest that she will make life hell for those men and women who fail to qualify, in her eyes, as French.
Yet, in his interview, Trevor Phillips, formerly of The (London) Times and a recent Bari Weiss recruit, failed to make this as clear as a Mike Wallace, a Dan Rather, or a Scott Pelley would have. Nattily dressed and well-spoken, Phillips presented a segment on the violence that has “erupted in Paris’ romantic boulevards” where “the scent of warm croissants and fresh baguettes has been overwhelmed by the whiff of tear gas.”
Overwhelmed by the weight of silly clichés, Phillips could not help but add “They used to call Paris la ville de l’amour — the City of Love. But there hasn’t been much amour on show lately.” While Phillips does not state who “they” are — given the hoariness of the clichés, perhaps they asked to remain anonymous — he should think twice about his assertion that there is not much love. Of course, the protestors are expressing their anger towards the government of President Emmanuel Macron, but they are also expressing their deep attachment, even love, to the republican tradition that has made Paris la ville de la révolution.
More important than his potted account of the social upheavals in Paris, however, was Phillips’ problematic interview with Le Pen. “In 2011,” he explained, “Le Pen took over leadership of what was then a fringe movement from her father, a tough army veteran convicted and fined for Holocaust denial and hate speech.” Yet nine years earlier, in 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the candidate of this “fringe party” then called the National Front, made it into the second round of the presidential election. Though Le Pen failed to make it into the second round in 2007, that more than 4 million French voted for him suggests that his party and person were hardly fringe. It is also odd that while Phillips noted Le Pen’s Holocaust denialism, he omitted Le Pen’s confession that he had tortured Algerian captives while serving in French Algeria.
No less stunning was Phillips’ description of Marine Le Pen’s decision to banish her father from the party in order “to rid it of its stain of bigotry.” If only it were mere bigotry. The National Front was founded, in part, by former members of the French division of the Waffen SS and sympathizers of the wartime collaborationist regime of Vichy. While the daughter has largely succeeded in removing these elements from the party, which she rebranded as the National Rally, she has not removed the “stain” of antisemitism. Little more than a month ago, the French newspaper Mediapart revealed that Le Pen’s second-in-command, Jordan Bardella, was trafficking in antisemitic bilge even after he joined the party as a teenager.
Time and again, Phillips posed questions but had not adequately prepared for Le Pen’s predictable replies. When he asked, in his opening question, “What is happening in Europe? Has politics here just become more radical?” Le Pen answered that “the extreme left creates chaos. They generate violence against people.” If Phillips had done his due diligence, he would have confronted Le Pen with the recent study by the historian Nicolas Lebourg revealing that while six murders in France since 1986 were “generated” by the extreme left, nearly sixty were “generated” by the extreme right. Phillips might also have mentioned last month’s mass killing and wounding of French Muslims in the town of Trappes by an individual who marinated in the literature of the extreme right.
Finally, when Le Pen made the jaw-dropping claim that “discrimination does not exist in France” and, moreover, is “the least racist country in the world,” Phillips did, in fact, raise an eyebrow while repeating her words. But it would have been more effective, perhaps, to raise the findings of various organizations, like the Defenseur des droits, which concluded in 2024 that the “perceived origin” of a job applicant weighs more than any other factor in hiring decisions in France.
As for his lack of follow-up questions to Le Pen’s assertion that France is the world’s least racist country, Phillips’ professional malfeasance was made fully manifest. In every presidential campaign, Le Pen has committed to establishing the law of national priority, which in effect would constitutionalize a racist agenda. Based on the extreme rightwing hobbyhorse of the “great replacement” — namely, that France’s white population is deliberately being replaced by third world immigrants — the law will limit employment opportunities, social and housing benefits to French citizens. Such a law not only runs counter to the laws of the European Union, but also to the humanist and universalist grounding of France’s constitution.
Phillips failed to contest this claim. Ironically, he closed the interview with Le Pen’s assurance that “French people have got to know me.” If only Phillips had done so, as well.
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