Betar Expulsion as Trump Impeachment

The other day, I wrote about the new(-ish) far-right organization operating in Jewish spaces, Betar. Betar has distinguished itself for its open endorsement of hate and violence directed both at Palestinians (its response to reports of Israel killing children in Gaza was to say "Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!") as well as Jews it views as insufficiently fundamentalist in our Zionism, which in their case means virtually all of us.

Since them, they've gotten into a spat with the ADL after the latter added them to its database of extremism. And then a competing slate in the World Zionist Congress elections, Kol Israel, moved to have Betar expelled from the American Zionist Movement, citing both electoral blackmail tactics and Betar's "abhorrent" calls "for genocide and the murder of Palestinian babies." Betar, through its coalition partner ZOA (there's a team-up everyone could see coming), has warned of filing retaliatory complaints against Kol Israel.

On the one hand, it's always good to see groups stand up to racist thugs like Betar. On the other hand, this feels eerily reminiscent of how the political establishment treated the rise of Donald Trump. 

After years of ignoring, excusing, coddling, and enabling him, January 6 happened and for an instant it seemed like folks woke up and sanity might be restored. But the reality was it was already too late -- the supposedly unthinkable extremism that Donald Trump represented had become normalized through those years of excuse and neglect. Even in the most incredible moment -- the immediate wake of an outright insurrection against the United States -- the effort to rein him in fizzled out, and he would soon reestablish himself as at the center of a conservative movement that at one point would have viewed as the most outrageous slander the charge that it would harbor the likes of Donald Trump. They failed to stop him when they could, and found themselves isolated and alone when they (briefly) roused themselves to try.

That pattern seems apt here. Efforts to kick out ZOA from the Conference went nowhere. A similar initiative at the Boston JCRC, one where it was admitted ZOA "elevated White supremacism", only ended up yielding the eventual departure of the left-wing group the Workers Circle (that group also left the Conference). In Isarel, years of enabling and nurturing the neo-Kahanists have made them into the dominant force in Bibi's coalition -- a cadre that is not just ("just") contained to secondary parties like Jewish Power but is running riot through Likud itself. In the diaspora, too, Kahanism is being ever-more normalized as something other than a violent mob of racist thugs. Everyone who thought this was just posturing, or political jockeying, or unsavory alliance-making, but who was sure that if and when the time came they could pump the brakes has been proven to be a fool. There are no brakes. As wrote in my first post on Betar:

[L]eaders of social groups that simultaneously play footsie with the sort of extreme rhetoric while assuaging themselves that of course their actual politics are humanitarian and egalitarian, they're just revving up a crowd or exaggerating for effect, will quickly learn that much of their base isn't in on the bit. They're in it for the hate, and when someone offers that hate better, they won't listen to your attempts to rein things back in.

So as happy as I am to see groups try to stand up to Betar and ZOA, I am dubious about their likelihood of success. The most likely outcome for Betar and ZOA is exactly what they've enjoyed for years by the mainstream Jewish institutions: averting their eyes, kicking the can down the road, hoping the problem solves itself -- and with each passing moment, what once was unthinkable becomes undislodgeable.

Maybe eventually, someone will learn a lesson. But I doubt it will be this day.

How To Expand the NCAA Tournament

It's not breaking news, but apparently the NCAA is considering expanding its college basketball tournament to 72 or 76 teams (from the current 68).

As a certified curmudgeon, I've opposed every tournament expansion since it was at 64 teams. The basic problem is obvious: the expansions are all soulless cash grabs, and the beneficiaries are inevitably the ninth best team in the Big Ten with a barely over-500 record who'll get trounced in one round, two if lucky. Who cares?

The nominal reasons for this expansion (again, skipping past the real one, which remains "cash grab") are (a) that there are more schools in Division I than ever before, and (b) that the small number of "play-in" matches means that most fans don't view the games as "real" parts of the tournament. Expanding the number of play-ins so it more closely approximates a full tournament round means more attention to all of them.

The first reason doesn't move me. The second actually does carry some weight for me, since my absolute favorite sports weekend of the year is the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament when it's just an endless stream of do-or-die basketball and a more robust play-in round might approximate that. But again, I just don't have any real interest in seeing a few more mediocre Power Five conference teams get trotted in as sacrifices.

So here's my proposal: expand the tournament, but all the new at-large bids have to go to conferences who don't have any non-automatic qualifiers.

After all, isn't that why we watch the tournament? It's for random schools from nowhere-ville coming out of the 14 seed slot to knock off Kansas. Give me more opportunities for that! Right now, there are a bunch of conferences whose only representation is the auto-qualifier, and in some of those cases the auto-qualifier is not the best team in the conference (looking at you, 1997 Fairfield). I don't have a problem with that -- it's awesome when an objectively terrible team has a miracle run in their conference tournament to gain the auto-qualifier. But the point is I'd absolutely prefer the actual best team in that conference to get a chance to dance over some big-name school that's already proven they can't hack it.

So sure -- expand the tournament. But this time use the opportunity to spread the wealth. Down with the mediocre big names; up with the obscure mid-majors!

The Irrelevant Innumeracy of the Swarmed GOP Town Halls

Surely by now you've seen the stories about GOP congressmen, in deep red districts, being absolutely swarmed by angry constituents furious that they're not standing up to Trump, Musk, DOGE, and the buzzsaw attack on hardworking federal employees.

My thesis about this will be twofold. First, there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye. And second, it doesn't matter that there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye, and we should all behave like they're exactly what they appear to be.

Start with the first. The excitement over these protests relates to the sense that anger and outrage over Trump has expanded beyond the blue bubbles and is penetrating even dark red terrain. But the mistake here is something I alluded to in my How To Tokenize with Proportions post. A congressional district where a Republican won by, say, a 66-33 margin is by any measure a dark-red district. But it also is a district where one in three voters voted Democrat. One in three is a lot of people! In a congressional district of 750,000, it's 250,000 people! It is not hard to fill a high school auditorium, particularly if that 250,000 is feeling especially angry and activated.

It's an issue of framing, if you're generous, or innumeracy, if you're not: 33% doesn't feel very common, 1 in 3 feels very common. Politically speaking, the former is closer to accurate, which is why congressional districts where one sees 66/33 margins aren't typically treated as competitive.

But what innumeracy taketh away, innumeracy also giveth. The fact is that most people see a crowd of angry constituents filling an auditorium in a deep-red district and don't start doing math about how easy or hard it is to fill up the space given the baseline number of Democrats around. They just see the crowd. Politics is often a game of perception and of momentum -- people see others in their community and in their spaces expressing anger and fear and frustration, and it validates their own nascent feelings of anger, fear, and frustration. It makes them feel like they're not alone. It encourages them that these sentiments are common in their community, and that they're not weird or outcasts or loners if they feel them too. All of that starts to build a narrative conducive to resistance. And even if it doesn't mean the deepest-red congressional districts will flip blue in 2026, it gets that permission structure going that will make life very difficult for Republicans in more vulnerable seats.

So keep swarming. Keep yelling. Keep sharing those vids. Build up that narrative that people everywhere are mad as hell, and they're ready to fight. In politics, image becomes reality before you know it.

Ailing

An inevitable event every new parent dreads is the first time their baby gets sick. But a less remarked on, but almost as frightening prospect is the first time you, the parent, gets sick while caring for a baby.

This past week, my keratoconus has been acting up. Looking back on my chart notes from the last time this happens, it appears I have corneal hydrops, which starts manifesting as dry eyes and quickly progresses into significant eye irritation, light sensitivity, and extreme tearing (the other day tears literally started jetting from my eyes when I woke up). In my case, these symptoms also come alongside sinus symptoms on my left side -- so my left nostril is running and I have pain in my left orbital socket and along the teeth the upper left part of my jaw.

Being "sick" (I'll address the quotation marks in a moment) is never fun, but it is far less fun when you have an infant in your care. When it's just you and/or your fellow adult companion, you can kind of slough off your responsibilities temporarily until you're feeling better. No reasonable person will hold it against you if you push back a deadline or skip out on making dinner. In most cases, your loved ones will be able to shuffle some of their responsibilities around to help you. You get taken care of.

But an infant is, of course, quite needy, and it can't press pause on its needs to accommodate yours. If I need to tap out of my evening care shift, my wife has to take it, and then she isn't getting the sleep she needs. If we need to go to the doctor's and I'm not up to driving, then she has to drive, which means he has to come and she has to be up to driving, which, again, is harder when she's getting even less sleep than normal because I'm out of commission. The normal feeling of bodily vulnerability is accentuated because one also feels a little more trapped than usual. There's an extra layer of emotional unpleasantness that is a poor complement to the physical unpleasantness.

The saving grace right now is that I don't have an infection or anything else that could be transmitted to my baby. So at least I don't have to worry about that.

But in classic me-form, that got me thinking about linguistics. How do I generically (but not too generically) describe my condition? Stipulate that "not feeling well" is the umbrella generic term covering all health related reasons why one might, well, not feel well. Under that umbrella, there are some more specific terms.

For example, saying I'm "sick" feels wrong because sickness, to me, refers to an infection. If I told people I was "sick", they'd immediately assume I had some sort of bug. Perhaps more broadly it can include being made unwell by any foreign substance (hence why food poisoning or, for that matter, regular poisoning still to me qualifies one as being "sick"), but it still wouldn't fit what's happening here.

Likewise, Jill suggested "injured". But that for me suggests some discrete moment of trauma that I endured. If I got hit in the eye with a baseball and it felt like this, then I'd be injured. A flare-up of a chronic condition, not triggered by anything particular I'm aware of, doesn't seem to fit.

So -- if your chronic condition does develop a novel complication that makes one feel especially unwell, what are you. Not sick, not injured. "Ailing" also works, but feels too Victorian. Is that the best we can do?

How Can I Be Antisemitic? I Know a Guy Named "Schwartz"!

A candidate for the Michigan Democratic Party Chairmanship, Al "BJ" Williams, is in hot water after saying that the Democratic Party is "not the Jewish party."

“This is not the Jewish party, this is the Democratic Party,” Williams told the group, according to the Detroit News. “There are more voices than just Zionists in this party. There are more voices than just Jewish Americans within this party. There are more voices than just those anti-Arab American voices within this party.”

Unsurprisingly, this has led to a chorus of condemnations from Michigan Democrats (Jewish and not). Reportedly, both of the organizations which hosted the event Williams made his remark at, the People's Coalition and Arab American Democratic Caucus, have endorsed Williams' main rival, former state senator Curtis Hertel. As one leader of the People's Coalition, Rima Mohammad, put it, "“If that’s what Al thinks we want to hear as Palestinians, he is completely wrong."

Williams is, unsurprisingly, in damage control mode, insisting that his remarks were (say it with me now) "taken out of context." The right context is Williams' belief that "no single group should dominate the party’s identity," which, um, isn't really better.

But speaking of better, here's Williams' other big play to prove he isn't an antisemite: he knows a guy named Schwartz! Who's (probably) Jewish!

[E]arlier this week on Instagram, his campaign attempted to counter what they called “false claims of being an anti-Semite” by trumpeting an endorsement from a man named Michael Schwartz, who the Williams campaign identified only as an “attorney.” In a video accompanying the post, Schwartz — who never explicitly identifies himself as Jewish — called the antisemitism allegations "baloney."

Remember when Roy Moore tried to refute antisemitism allegation by telling us his attorney was a Jew, and people spent weeks trying to figure out who was Moore's Jewish buddy, and then it turned out the guy was Messianic? Definitely giving off some of those vibes (though I'll harbor a guess that this Schwartz is at least actually Jewish).

Hertel, in addition to the aforementioned endorsements from the Arab American Democratic Caucus and People's Coalition, also boasts the support of (among others) Michigan's incumbent Governor, Lieutenant Governor, both Senators, and the party's Black, Jewish, Bangladeshi American, Yemeni, and Veterans caucuses.

People Hate Mourning Jews

It is hard for me to see a picture of Kfir Bibas and not see my baby.

The news that Kfir Bibas and his family were murdered by Hamas is, of course, wrenching. And for me, at least, it intersected with two of my greatest fears. Of course, there is the fear of harm befalling my son or another a loved one. But there is also the more specific worry, which I've discussed before, of having a loved one die "politically" -- that is, in a context where their death inevitably becomes part of a broader political dispute. It is both unavoidable and unspeakably cruel that Kfir Bibas' death are part of politics now -- the politics of Hamas' depravity, the politics of the horrors of the Israel/Gaza War, the politics of the future of Israel and Palestine where, God willing, nobody will have to experience what the Bibas family has endured.

And it is not just the Bibas family, but the entire Jewish world, who is mourning Kfir's death. And, because we are Jews, that means that some people -- sometimes other Jews -- will tell us we are mourning Kfir wrong.

One way we might be "wrong" is if we have the temerity to focus, for even a short spell, just on the Bibas family. Don't we know others have suffered too? Are you saying that Jewish lives matter more? How tribal, how cloistered, how gauche, to not use this moment to make a statement about the universal value of all human life.

But another way we might be "wrong" is if we do mourn Kfir Bibas by reference to the universal value of all human life -- and in particular, of both Israeli and Palestinian life.

The New Jewish Narrative's statement mourning the deaths of Oded Lifschitz and Ariel, Kfir, and Shiri Bibas spoke in this register. It described the Bibas family as "distinct symbols of the human cost of this conflict," and averred that their "tragic deaths are a painful reminder of the unspeakable loss that this war has wrought." They juxtaposed Ariel and Kfir alongside Hind Rajab and infants in Al-Nasr Hospital. They concluded by renewing their commitment to "a future where children on both sides of the fence grow up safe, free from the horrors of war."

I am not the Bibas family, and I do not purport to speak for them. I can only speak for my own grief, and for me this was a message that spoke to my grief. But I've seen other Jews who were aghast by this statement, who were furious that NJN would use such universalist tones rather than concentrate solely and exclusively on the Bibas children.

Their complaint styles itself as one objecting to "All Lives Mattering", but notice that this isn't quite right. The NJN did not, anywhere in its statement, reproach those who decided this week to speak specifically and distinctively about the Bibases. They did not say that there was something improper or tribal or provincial about having that focus, or that Jews have some unique obligation to transcend their Jewishness and speak solely in universalist tones. They just chose, as an expression of its own Jewish voice, that they would make this universal connection. For them, the way to mourn Jewishly is to draw out this more expansive desire that Jewish children and Palestinian children be free from the horrors of war. If that is "All Lives Mattering", then any project of political solidarity and fellowship is, and I can hardly imagine a more short-sighted and self-destructive commitment than that.

When choosing that framing is presented not as a choice at all but as an implacable obligation, there is a problem. But when choosing that framing is presented as an impermissible option that betrays Jewish peoplehood, there is a problem as well. That Jews (or anyone else) are not obligated to always frame their suffering in universal tones does not mean that Jews should be forbidden from electing, of our own volition, to draw out those connections. The latter move is just as stifling as the former.

When I see a picture of Kfir Bibas, I see my baby, whom I love and cherish and would be shattered if he came into any danger or peril. And I know that every baby has parents who feel the exact same way, who would be shattered in the same way -- and how could I wish such a horrible fate upon any parent? When I imagine how horrible it would be for me, I imagine how horrible it would be for them, and my instinct is to think on ways to avert the horrors for us. If, God forbid, something did happen to my family, I hope nobody would begrudge me for concentrating specifically on my family. But I also hope that if I chose to rededicate myself to trying to prevent similar tragedies from befalling other families and other communities not mine, that that choice would not be begrudged either.

Falling on the Reputational Grenade, Part II

The other day, I had the thought that, sometime in the next four years, we will likely see the first legal filing by a government lawyer that will include some AI-hallucinated citations. Leaving aside that this is already happening with private firms (including sizeable ones) and so it only seems a matter of time, we also are entering the realm of overconfident and underqualified tech bros ransacking their way through Washington. AI-generated legal briefs are exactly the sort of "optimization" I can imagine Musk and his DOGE youth pushing out onto the bureaucracy, with predictably farcical results.

Generally, courts have responded rather mercilessly to lawyers who've submitted AI-generated hallucinated cases. Their reputations are ruined, and the underlying case is permanently discredited. And that thought got me thinking -- what would happen if an enterprising government lawyer decided to sabotage their own case by deliberately inserting AI-hallucinations into it?

Imagine the birthright citizenship case -- already viewed as a legal non-starter, with the usual conservative guns-for-hire flailing about trying and failing to whip up an even halfway plausible mechanism for circumventing the constitution's clear text and history. In court, the DOJ files a brief citing some late 19th century caselaw that seems to endorse a narrower view of the citizenship clause than currently prevails ... but it turns out that the citations are all made up.

Such a move would detonate the Department's credibility. As a form of internal sabotage, it would be devastatingly effective -- but (in here's the rub) only if the public didn't know it was sabotage. If the ruse was revealed, the plan doesn't work (having one's own attorney deliberately sabotage your case is not the sort of thing held against the client). But if the public remains unaware, the attorney who made the "mistake" would have committed career suicide twice over -- first, in putting his name on a defense of whatever neo-fascist Trump policy is before the court, and then second being a public laughingstock by "defending" it via inept use of generative AI.

During the first Trump administration, I wrote about actors who were knowingly wrecking their reputation by working in the Oval Office on the (probably correct) theory that if they didn't do it, someone worse would. They knew that history would view them as a villain, and accepted that judgment in order to avert greater evil. The above example is a perhaps even more extreme case -- a sort of reputational suicide bomber. The attorney would sabotage some great evil, but at the cost of everyone for all time thinking of him as Trump's most incompetent lickspittle.

We saw recently a longtime DOJ attorney, Ed Sullivan, agree to file a motion to dismiss the Eric Adams indictment, reportedly to avert a complete and total purge of the Public Integrity Unit by one of Trump's cronies. The order to dismiss the Adams case had already led to widespread resignations over what was transparent quid-pro-quo corruption -- trading non-prosecution in exchange for Adams' cooperation in enforcing Trumpist immigration policies. Sullivan reportedly agreed to fall on the grenade so as to spare his colleagues; this has in turn generated a roaring debate over whether Sullivan was right to do so or should have forced Trump's lackey to fully reenact the Saturday Night Massacre. I don't here make any judgment on which side of that debate got things right. But we're going to see more difficult questions as those on the inside consider how to resist abuse and forestall catastrophe. And while we like to imagine that the "right" choice at least comes with the perk of being viewed heroically, the more interesting choices may be ones where it is precisely one's reputation that must be sacrificed in order to truly avert the greatest evil.

Cry, the Beloved Infant

My baby is one month old today.

At one month, he doesn't do much. One month is too young to crawl or sit up or babble. He doesn't even make many facial expressions yet. Crying is really his main move.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've been reflecting on baby cries of late. And I don't think we give them enough credit. In particular, a baby's cry is a profound expression of trust. A baby cries based on an innate, unshakeable trust that if they communicate they are in distress, someone will try to help them.

That's hardly something to take for granted. We could imagine instead the logic of "if I communicate I am  in distress, a predator will know I'm vulnerable." Or "why bother communicating I am in distress, nobody cares." But babies operate on the firm belief that when they are truly in need, others will care for them.

We could take a bit of inspiration from that. All around us and all over the world, there are people in need of help. And too often, their sincere, agonized, plaintive cries for help are ignored -- a truly awful sensation. Of course, none of us (well, maybe not none of us) can help everyone. But most of us can do more. We can try to be a little better than we were yesterday. We can respond to the cries of others, and vindicate the first, most basic trust we are born with.