Conservative: Diminishing the Problem of Anti-Semitism
By trying to turn the Pittsburgh synagogue attack into a referendum on President Trump, essentially suggesting that “if we could just throw out Trump and his enablers, suddenly the problem will go away,” critics “are only diminishing the much broader problem of anti-Semitism and ensuring that it gets swept under the rug,” argues Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner. Where were those, he asks, who now say any criticism of George Soros is anti-Semitic when Sheldon Adelson “was at the receiving end of vile attacks conjuring up centuries-old prejudices about Jews exerting undue influence on government?” Anti-Semitism “comes in many shapes and is not confined to Right or Left.” Frankly, “it’s frustrating to see that people who have ignored the festering problem for so long only care about it when they can weaponize it against Trump.”
Foreign desk: The Middle East’s Next Trouble Spot
Gil Yaron at Die Welt suggests Israel has “rarely been so surprised” as when Jordan’s King Abdullah last week tweeted that he would not renew an attachment to the two nations’ 1994 peace treaty. This decision “raises concerns about the permanence of peace between two of the West’s most important allies in the Middle East.” The real problem: Jordan has been in the midst of “an economic depression” since 2010, with stagnating economic growth, 20 percent unemployment and growing popular unrest. Moreover, 1.2 million Syrian refugees have come to the country, representing “a huge financial burden.” Abdullah’s decision “is less about a power struggle with Israel than his weakness in Jordan.” By “throwing a bone to his opponents” and picking a fight with Israel, he’s hoping “they will give in on other issues.”
From the right: Conservatives Never Get To Mourn
After every horrible mass shooting, notes Karol Markowicz at National Review, “there’s an immediate rush to make sure conservatives know they do not belong to that wider American community feeling the pain.” Even worse, “there’s a constant allusion to the fact that those on the right are responsible for the slaughter.” In the Pittsburgh attack, the fact that the shooter hated President Trump and believed he “was part of the Jewish conspiracy he imagines controls America” is “irrelevant to the accusers harping about Trump’s rhetoric.” The message, she says, “is always: You’re not part of this. We’re upset and we’re angry. You don’t have a right to be.” Little wonder that it’s always so difficult to heal.
Political scribe: The Democrats’ Internal Culture Divide
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t “vaulted into Congress” by the Democratic Party’s diversity, says David Freedlander at Politico. She won “because she galvanized the college-educated gentrifiers who are displacing” the party’s longtime base. This increasing scenario suggests “a rift that the party has yet to grapple with publicly.” Fact is, energized liberals, largely college-educated or beyond, have been voting in a new breed of activist Democrat — and voting out more established candidates with strong support among the party’s largely minority, immigrant, Hispanic, African-American and non-college-educated base.” The left may have the energy, but the Dems’ “voting majority is still more blue-collar and diverse,” people more concerned with preserving the clout of longtime veterans “than in notching symbolic victories for the resistance.” The fear is that “the party’s wings will drift too far apart to unite behind anyone” in 2020.
Law prof: Birthright Order Puts Trump Judges in a Bind
In threatening to issue an executive order denying birthright citizenship to US-born children of undocumented parents, President Trump may be putting the very judges he’s appointed in an embarrassing bind, according to Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman. That’s because most conservative jurists “insist on reading statutes to mean what the ordinary sense of the words requires” — whereas the interpretation of the 14th Amendment that Trump wants “starts with words that seem to have one obvious meaning. Then it flips that meaning on its head.” In any case, an executive order would prompt a long court challenge, especially since it “flies in the face of the ordinary meaning of the words used in the Constitution.” Best for all, suggests Feldman, if Trump is only “bluffing on the executive order.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
