The MAGA Right’s Antisemitism Problem

 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-maga-rights-antisemitism-problem-ddbc39cb?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

By failing to draw a clear line, JD Vance and the Heritage Foundation put conservatism in jeopardy.

The right has a racism problem. This doesn’t mean that the Trump voter coalition is full of racists. Rather, the racism is concentrated in a faction of MAGA’s online leadership. They call themselves “America first.” Their detractors call them the “woke right.” These people mirror the woke left’s self-obsessed identity politics and fantasies of malign Jewish influence.

US footage shows: Hamas operatives loot humanitarian aid truck

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/417133

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) released footage from an MQ-9 drone showing suspected Hamas operatives looting a humanitarian aid truck in northern Khan Yunis, Gaza.

The truck was part of an international humanitarian convoy delivering essential aid to civilians during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

According to CENTCOM's statement, the suspects stopped the truck, assaulted the driver, and moved him to a central traffic island. They then boarded the truck and stole both its contents and the vehicle itself.

A Rude Awakening for Israel

 A Rude Awakening for Israel

Judging from a series of jarring public statements US officials have made, starting with President Trump and then the caravan of top officials he dispatched to Israel last week, America, too, is parroting the same long-standing misconceptions from previous administrations that are more likely to hinder peace instead of promoting it.

When Trump blames “rebel forces” for killing Israeli soldiers and avoids holding Hamas leadership accountable, he is following the Clinton-Rabin-Peres playbook, which blamed the “enemies of peace” for the wave of terror the Palestinian Authority unleashed on Israel’s streets right after the Oslo Accords, as if the PA leadership had no culpability. When the president excuses Hamas gangs conducting revenge killings against rival gangs in Gaza as “rambunctious,” as if they were a bunch of rowdy boys out for a night on the town, it emboldens Hamas to believe that the efforts to disarm them and demilitarize Gaza, which is the next phase of Trump’s 20-point plan, are not serious.

Kushner’s efforts to shift the responsibility onto Israel to “make life easier” for the Palestinians are also rooted in the failed Oslo paradigm. The Palestinian Authority and its predecessor, the Palestine Liberation Organization, have made life difficult for Israel, murdering nearly 5,000 Jews in various terrorist attacks since 1948. The Jerusalem-based NGO Palestinian Media Watch reported last week that 160 of the 250 Palestinian terrorists serving life terms who Israel released in exchange for the 20 hostages are now millionaires, in shekels, thanks to 229 million shekels in PA pay-for-slay payments. This sum does not include additional stipends the PA paid to their spouses and children. Wouldn’t that money have gone a long way toward making life easier for the Palestinians if spent on honorable causes?

J. D. Vance’s Bad Answer to an Anti-Semitic Question

 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/jd-vance-answer-anti-semitism/684780

But Vance should not have been surprised to face a baldly anti-Semitic assertion at a Turning Point gathering. At his own campus events, Kirk regularly fielded hostile questions from far-right acolytes of his archnemesis, the white-supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes. Among other lowlights, Fuentes has denied the Holocaust, called for the execution of non-Christians and “perfidious Jews,” and labeled interracial relationships as “degenerate.” “Oh, I’m anti-Semitic?” he said in 2022 on his web show, rhetorically addressing religious Jews. “I piss on your Talmud.” Once a fringe figure, Fuentes has moved closer and closer to the center of conservative power—dining with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, shaking hands onstage with a grinning Marjorie Taylor Greene that same year, and finally being interviewed by the most influential right-wing commentator in America, Tucker Carlson, just this past week.

Carlson is a longtime ally of Vance and was reportedly influential in helping him secure the vice-presidential nod from Trump. The former Fox host spoke before the president did at the 2024 Republican National Convention, and his son now serves as a press aide in Vance’s office. Carlson has also spent years mainstreaming anti-Semitic voices and ideas. He has hosted a parade of Hitler apologists on his podcast; claimed that Israel had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks but did not share the information with the U.S.; slurred the prominent Jewish conservative Ben Shapiro and those like him as foreign anti-American subversives who “don’t care about the country at all”; and, in his speech at Kirk’s funeral, blamed a cabal of people “eating hummus” (i.e., Jews) for killing Jesus. And all that was before he sat down for a cordial conversation with Fuentes.

Vance tells anti-Israel student Trump secured Gaza deal by using ‘leverage’ on Jerusalem

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/vance-tells-anti-israel-student-trump-secured-truce-by-using-leverage-on-jerusalem/

US Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that President Donald Trump was able to secure the current Gaza deal because he used “leverage” over Israel.

The assertion was a relatively rare boast by a Trump official of the power imbalance between the US and Israel and appeared to undercut efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to push back on criticism that Washington is dictating the manner in which Israel can uphold the ceasefire in Gaza.

It also came in response to a question that accused Israel and the Jews of working to undermine the US and Christianity, highlighting a growing animosity to the Jewish state by young US conservatives.

This Was His Last Social Media Post: Chabad Man Falls to Death at Jerusalem Rally

 https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/teen-suicide-jerusalem-rally

Tragic news from Jerusalem: A 20-year-old Haredi (Chabad) man, Menachem Mendel Litzman, fell to his death from a construction site during the Million Man rally. Authorities say the fall was suicide, following a farewell note he left for friends.

Trump Third Term? And other lies

Road closures, canceled trains: Haredi draft protest expected to cause mass transportation chaos

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-872128

Road closures will begin at noon, and Israel Police and Netvei Israel have called on the public to avoid driving to the entrance area to Jerusalem throughout the day.

Heavy traffic and significant disruptions are expected across Jerusalem and the roads leading to the city from 12:00 p.m. on Thursday due to ultra-Orthodox mass protests against the haredi draft law.

Israel Police and Netivei Israel have announced that Route 1 will be closed in both directions, from the Latrun area to Ginot Sakharov, including the entrance to Jerusalem via Route 16 and the Sha'ar Hagai area, depending on developments during the protests.

Givat Shaul-Ramot Interchange will be closed in all directions, Ben Zvi-Rabbi Shmuel Baruch Street will be closed towards the entrance to the city, Shazar Boulevard will be closed towards the Givat Shaul Interchange, Herzl Boulevard will be closed from the Bari intersection towards Gesher Mitamitarim, the Malki Yisrael-Shari Yisrael intersection will be closed towards Nordo Square and Yirmiyahu Street.

Haredim fume: Jerusalem train station closed for haredi rally

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/417042

Israel Railways announced that the Jerusalem Yitzhak Navon train station will be closed to service starting Thursday at 12:30 p.m. and will remain closed until the conclusion of a rally scheduled to take place in the city later that day.

According to the spokesperson’s statement, the decision was made in coordination with Israel Police due to expected overcrowding at the station, which is located in the heart of the affected area. “The decision is intended to ensure public safety,” the statement read. “All train lines and stations, except for Yitzhak Navon, will operate as usual. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The rally, set to take place at the entrance to Jerusalem, is expected to draw hundreds of thousands from the haredi sector protesting the arrest of draft-evading yeshiva students who oppose IDF service.

‘Let it rain’: Mass prayer for rain held at Sea of Galilee as Israel faces worst drought in a century

 https://www.ynetnews.com/jewish-world/article/s1wu0fekwe#autoplay

With Israel facing its worst drought in a century and the Sea of Galilee 28 centimeters below its lower red line, dozens gathered on its shores to pray for rain, led by Safed’s Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, recalling past prayers said to have brought storms

If the dry conditions persist into the new year, the Water Authority is expected to impose deeper cuts to agricultural and environmental water allocations. Officials are also considering measures such as drying up public gardens in some municipalities to conserve what remains of the country’s water resources.

Senate Republicans defect, reject Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-republicans-defect-reject-trumps-tariffs-canadian-goods

Paul, one of the co-sponsors of Kaine’s resolution, has consistently rejected Trump’s usage of tariffs and argued that it was a tax on consumers in the U.S. rather than on foreign countries.

He noted that the message it would send to the White House, despite pressure from Vance to support Trump’s duties, was "that a rule by emergency is not what the Constitution intended, that taxes are supposed to originate in the House of Representatives."

McConnell staked his position against the tariffs in a statement, where he argued that retaliatory tariffs have negatively affected Kentucky farmers and distillers.

"Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive. The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise," he said. "This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities."

Scandals of the Reagan administration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Reagan_administration#:~:text=The%20most%20well-known%20and,six%20U.S.%20citizens%20being%20held

 The presidency of Ronald Reagan was marked by numerous scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment or conviction of over 138 administration officials, the largest number for any president of the United States.

The most well-known and politically damaging of the scandals since Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair came to light in 1986 when Ronald Reagan conceded that the United States had sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of a largely unsuccessful effort to secure the release of six U.S. citizens being held hostage in Lebanon. It was also disclosed that some of the money from the arms deal with Iran had been covertly and illegally funneled into a fund to aid the right-wing Contras counter-revolutionary groups seeking to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The Iran–Contra affair, as it became known, did serious damage throughout the Reagan presidency. The investigations were effectively halted when Reagan's vice-president and successor, George H. W. Bush pardoned Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger before his trial began.[2]

Savings and loan crisis in which 747 institutions failed and had to be rescued with $160 billion in taxpayer dollars.[24] Reagan's "elimination of loopholes" in the tax code included the elimination of the "passive loss" provisions that subsidized rental housing. Because this was removed retroactively, it bankrupted many real estate developments which used this tax break as a premise, which in turn bankrupted 747 Savings and Loans, many of whom were operating more or less as banks, thus requiring the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to cover their debts and losses with taxpayer money. This with some other "deregulation" policies, ultimately led to the largest political and financial scandal in U.S. history to that date. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $150 billion, about $125 billion of which was directly subsidized by the U.S. government, which further increased the large budget deficits of the early 1990s. 

Giving Hamas hope, Gaza’s future rests on three somewhat contradictory documents

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/giving-hamas-hope-gazas-future-rests-on-three-somewhat-contradictory-documents

Trump boasts that the world backs his 20-point plan, but no one even signed it. Hamas committed to the first phase of the deal, but has not said it will disarm

The first phase of the ceasefire in Gaza is still in effect, but it remains so only because of a concerted diplomatic effort from the United States.

“Do not act in a way that would endanger the ceasefire. We want to do everything to reach the second phase,” top White House Middle East advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff reportedly told Netanyahu.

On Tuesday, Hamas struck again in Rafah, with a sniper killing an IDF reservist. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to carry out “powerful strikes” on targets in Gaza in response to Hamas’s violation of the ceasefire. Gaza’s Hamas-affiliated health authorities reported more than 100 dead.

But by Wednesday morning, the ceasefire was back on. Netanyahu had ordered the strikes before notifying the Trump administration, but only carried them out after giving that notice; US officials had reportedly pushed Israel to limit its response to the sniper attack and to Hamas playing games with the return of bodies of slain hostages.

Much of the ceasefire’s turbulence has come from Hamas violations and Israel’s desire to respond forcefully. Hamas’s behavior has put the entire deal at risk, but the truce and hostage-release phase had tensions baked in.

Its exact terms were not fully clear. The involved parties did not agree which ceasefire documents were binding. And no matter what Hamas believes its obligations are, the fact that the terms remain vague in important respects seems to give the group reason to believe it can find a way to evade the stated Trump vision of a Gaza in which Hamas plays no part whatsoever.

The ambiguity around what Israel and Hamas committed to, and to what exactly the countries overseeing the ceasefire’s implementation are bound, leaves plenty of room for Hamas to wriggle its way out of terms it does not like and to drag the process out.

It also leaves Israel clinging to Trump’s promises about Hamas disarmament, rather than a signed obligation by Hamas.

The Trump plan's moment of truth

 https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/10/30/hamas-qatar-pressure-trump-plan-hostage-bodies

Jerusalem and Washington have defined the coming days as especially important for the continuation of the ceasefire and the transition to the next stage of the Trump plan. An Israeli diplomatic source said attention should be paid to the Qatari Prime Minister's remarks in New York, where he repeated his country's commitment to bringing Hamas to surrender its weapons.