Biden panders. Beinart illuminates. Tom Friedman explains. Israel experts weigh in. Handmaids for Jews. 50 years of Ms. mag. Good books, art, film & video. Hideous ads.

Israel is front page news, and not in a good way, so you may not have the stomach to read more. But the stories below go deeper. As do other stories on other subjects. .

Newsletter #134 March 1, 2023

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

*While horrific tit-for-tat violence continues daily in Israel and the West Bank, I’m still trying to parse Pres. Biden’s response to the Palestinian who gunned down seven Jews outside a Jerusalem synagogue in January. The President called the shootings “an attack against the civilized world,” though he’d never similarly catastrophized any of the mass murders in the U.S. When our schools or churches become slaughterhouses, which they too often are, the average American tends to pathologize the crime, focusing on the perpetrator’s motives and mental state. And U.S. commentators seldom acknowledge that these tragedies are largely the work of home-grown “terrorists,” not Al Quaida, ISIS, or, for that matter, Palestinian militants. Biden did not speculate on the motivations or mental state of the Jerusalem killer. He politicized the tragedy, using the occasion to gratuitously reiterate “the iron-clad U.S. commitment to Israel’s security,” (to the tune of $3.8 billion a year in military aid). Call me a cynic but I’d have preferred the usual bromide of “thoughts and prayers.”

*Crash course in what’s happening in Israel: For a compellingly coherent, if deeply disturbing, take on the pro-democracy protests, see Peter Beinart’s Times oped, “You Can’t Save Democracy in a Jewish State.” Then see what Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard, Palestinian human rights advocate Wesam Ahmad, and other Middle East experts make of Netanyahu’s deal with right wing ministers to turn over civilian rule of the Occupied West Bank to Bezalel Smotrich, a fervent proponent of annexation of Palestinian territories. End the speed tutorial with Yossi Alpher’s, “Hard Questions, Tough Answers.”

*Register this minute for a webinar with Tom Friedman hosted by Americans for Peace Now TODAY, March 1 @3 PM. The Times’ preeminent foreign policy columnist will talk about the crisis in Israel-US relations, its repercussions, and what we and our government can do to prevent Israel from further hollowing out its democracy.

WOMEN

• Israeli Handmaids. The U.S. continues to call Israel “the only democracy in the Middle East” while Israeli women take to the streets in the red cloaks and blinder bonnets of the dystopian TV series, The Handmaid’s Tale. The country’s ultra right wing government has fast-tracked legislation to expand religious control over secular life and turn back the clock on LGBTQ and women’s rights. Eeta Prince-Gibson’s chilling essay details the impending demise of gender equality in the Jewish State. Prepare for legalized sex-segregation on all public buses and beaches, and businesses gaining the right to refuse entry to women in general, or service to “women who are not ‘modestly dressed’ (which has already happened in some supermarkets).”

* Israeli Rabbi Baruch Gazahay who gives YouTube lessons on morality (in Hebrew), embodies the extreme misogyny espoused by some ultra-Orthodox Jews. Among other grotesqueries, Gazahay has claimed that women who wear immodest clothing (such as the outfit above), get breast cancer and have miscarriages and are reincarnated as cows when they die. I kid you not. Forthermore: Men shouldn’t should never speakto a woman they don’t know. A man should call the cops on a woman who speaks to men she doesn’t know. A woman who wears tight shirts should be penalized half her salary. If a woman has a bad experience with someone at work, her husband shouldn’t sympathize with her; he should go after the offending colleague with a kitchen knife. In 2020, this meshugenah (lunatic) almost got a seat in the Knesset. Today, the new Israeli government is packed with lawmakers whose goal is to constrain women’s roles according to halacha (Jewish law), police our appearance, and control our lives.

ART

* The Tzedakah Box, a ritual object displayed in traditional Jewish homes, now has a companion on the Judaica shelf: the Tzedek Box. (“Tzedek” means righteousness and justice; “tzedakah” means righteousness and charity. ) Deborah Ugoretz’s creation, above, is one of several artists’ permutations of the Tzedek Box currently on display through May 15 @the Heller Museum, Hebrew Union College, 1 W. 4th St. Manhattan. (212) 824-2218 HellerMuseum@huc.edu. Rather than spare coins, you’re meant to deposit into the box handwritten notes cataloguing your justice advocacy & philanthropy over the course of a year, and to open the box on Rosh Hashana and assess your contributions to the repair of our broken world.

FILM

*Let It Be Morning is a poignant-funny-distressing-suspenseful-satirical-stealthily political film about what happens in the lives of several Palestinian-Israelis when their village near Jerusalem is in lockdown, not for Covid but for “security.” Above, festivities at a family wedding stall when the white doves brought in for the celebration refuse to fly (clearly a metaphor for Palestinian political stasis and psychological resignation). The film, adapted from a book by Palestinian novelist Sayed Kashua, and written and directed by Israeli Eran Kolirin (The Band’s Visit; Beyond the Mountains and Hills), the film burrows deep into the reality of ordinary Palestinians forced to endure extraordinary indignities by Israeli authorities while simultaneously navigating tense internal disputes among Palestinian factions.

WOMEN

*Golden anniversary. To revisit the progress and setbacks of the American feminist movement and the landmarks of your own life, scroll (horizontally) through Ms. Magazine’s 50 year timeline, which chronicles the magazine’s newsmaking stories from every issue of the magazine. The book, 50 Years of Ms., can be pre-ordered now.

*When I was an editor at the magazine in the 1970s and ‘80s, our readers loved the back page feature headlined “No Comment.” That’s where we reprinted cringeworthy ads of that era that were so flagrantly, outragiously sexist they required no annotation. Yet the other day, when a subscriber sent me a blast of ads from the past (below), I felt compelled to comment: If the backlash against “woke” feminism gains a foothold in this country, I fear these grotesque images could be a foretaste of our future.

ANTIDOTES TO DESPAIR

*When Zoloft fails, try this little girl’s simple strategy for reducing stress.

*Instagram of the week: If only all parents could be as present and focused as this Dad is during his conversation with his 6-year-old.