Foreign Desk: Eastern Europe Safer for Jews Than West

Many American Jews think “rightist governments enable anti-Semitism” in Europe, notes Evelyn Gordon at Commentary. And for the same reason they chide Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his diplomatic outreach to the likes of Hungary and Poland. But, it turns out, “Respondents from places like Poland, Hungary, and Romania — countries routinely accused of having anti-Semitic, borderline fascist governments — felt safer than Jews in liberal countries like France and Germany by a 20-point margin.” One reason is “the politically incorrect fact that violence against Jews in Europe comes mainly from Muslim anti-Semites,” and there are more of those in Western Europe than Eastern. Another is hostility to Israel, which is more prevalent “in liberal Western Europe than conservative Eastern Europe.”

Censorship Watch: Twitter Tries to Shut Down Trans Debate

“When it comes to the trans issue,” observes Kimberly Ross at the Washington Examiner, Silicon Valley has set out to silence “honest conversation.” Case in point, Twitter’s new addition to its terms of service prohibits “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” In plain English, that means users are now prohibited from suggesting that someone was born a different sex or from “using their original, now unwanted, name.” The company is wielding its vast power to short-circuit debate on a condition that is still ill-understood and has profound implications for how we order society. Yes, firms should be permitted to set their own rules, but conservatives must be alert to how “their voices are being shut out.”

Religion Writer: DNA Evidence for Adam and Eve?

“All humans alive today are the offspring of a common father and mother — an Adam and Eve — who walked the planet 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.” So writes Michael Guillen at FoxNews.com, citing a study by scholars at Rockefeller University and the University of Basel. “The same is true of nine out of every 10 animal species,” meaning that “nearly all of Earth’s creatures living today sprang into being from some seminal, Big Bang-like event.” The scientists analyzed the DNA ‘bar codes’ of five million animals from 100,000 different species.” The method allowed the scientists “to infer the passage of time” and conclude that something “caused animal life on Earth to be almost completely renewed” a relatively short time ago. And while it’s not dead-on evidence for the Genesis creation account, the study “proves we are at the mercy of forces we do not see nor understand.”

From the Left: A Potential Dem Upset in Mississippi

Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Phil Bryant asked Cindy Hyde-Smith “to replace retired Sen. Thad Cochran earlier this year — in no small part because Bryant thought he could trust her to not put her foot in her mouth,” writes Josh Voorhees at Slate. Well, so much for that. It turns out that Hyde-Smith made a pair of controversial remarks earlier this year that have only recently surfaced. In one, she described “her loyalty to one of her supporters” by suggesting that “if he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” In another, she seemed to cheer voter suppression on college campuses “in a state with more than a half-dozen historically black universities.” The result: The GOP may lose Tuesday’s runoff for the Cochran seat — its first Senate loss in the state in more than 30 years.

Urban Critic: Amazon Needs To Train City Talent

For Amazon’s HQ2 expansion to succeed, argues Plinio Ayala at Crain’s New York, the company “must invest in the development of the city’s talent pool.” That’s because “traditional educational models have not kept up with the rapidly shifting labor demands created by technological innovation” like those at Amazon. Local high-school and college grads have trouble entering the new labor market, and older workers can’t transition their skills. “These challenges present an opportunity to build a more equitable and inclusive economy, beginning with Amazon’s arrival in Long Island City.” The tech industry should create its own training and credential pathways, which could be a boon to its own bottom line by cutting “the costs of fruitless recruiting” and ditching the “diminishing returns of a strained labor market.”

— Compiled by Sohrab Ahmari