Saturday, October 28, 2023
Mike Johnson: A Scary Christian Nationalist
In the moments before he was to face a vote on becoming speaker of the House this week, Representative Mike Johnson posted a photograph on social media of the inscription carved into marble atop the chamber’s rostrum: “In God We Trust.”
His colleagues celebrated his candidacy by circulating an image of him on bended knee praying for divine guidance with other lawmakers on the House floor.
Mr. Johnson, a mild-mannered conservative Republican from Louisiana whose elevation to the speakership on Wednesday followed weeks of chaos, is known for placing his evangelical Christianity at the center of his political life and policy positions. Now, as the most powerful Republican in Washington, he is in a position to inject it squarely into the national political discourse, where he has argued for years that it belongs.
For years, Mr. Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a licensed pastoral counselor, belonged to First Bossier, whose pastor, Brad Jurkovich, is the spokesman for the Conservative Baptist Network, an organization working to move the denomination to the right.
Mr. Johnson also played a leading role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has expressed skepticism about some definitions of the separation of church and state, placing himself in a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that aligns more closely with former President Donald J. Trump and that some describe as Christian nationalism.
“Speaker Johnson really does provide a near-perfect example of all the different elements of Christian nationalism,” said Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He said those included insisting on traditionalist family structures, “being comfortable with authoritarian social control and doing away with democratic values.”
Mr. Johnson declined an interview request and did not respond to a request for comment about whether he considers himself a Christian nationalist. But the little-known speaker of the House has made clear that his faith is the most important thing to know about him, and in previous interviews, he has said he believes “the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”
Over the arc of his career, Mr. Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Legislature before his election to Congress, has been driven by a belief that Christianity is under attack and that Christian faith needs to be elevated in the public discourse, according to a review of his appearances on talk shows and podcasts, as well as legislative speeches and writings over the past two decades.
He believes that his generation has been wrongly convinced that a separation of church and state was outlined in the Constitution.
In his first interview as speaker, Mr. Johnson described himself to the Fox News host Sean Hannity as “a Bible-believing Christian” and said that to understand his politics, one only need “pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.”
That includes opposition not just to abortion, which he has called “a holocaust,” and same-sex marriage, but to homosexuality itself, which he has written is “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle.” He is the sponsor of a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds for providing education to children under 10 that included L.G.B.T.Q. topics — a proposal that critics called a national version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
In a 2006 column for Townhall, a conservative website, Mr. Johnson railed against “the earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion.” . . . . He added: “In the space of a few decades, they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalize Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character.”
[H]e is not shy about framing his political career as a divinely driven battle to put religion at the center of American policy and lawmaking. From gun violence to abortion to immigration, Mr. Johnson’s policy views are shaped by his belief that too many Americans are “denying existence of God himself.”
In remarks to a Louisiana congregation in 2016, Mr. Johnson linked school shootings to no-fault divorce laws (he is in a covenant marriage with his wife, which makes divorce more difficult), “radical feminism” and legal abortion. “We’ve taught a whole generation — couple of generations, now — of Americans that there is no right and wrong,” he said then.
On his podcast, which he co-hosts with his wife, Mr. Johnson often bemoans what he considers to be the repression of religious views in America. . . . He said that sometimes “hostile” interviewers would ask him why he represented only Christians in his work as a lawyer doing religious liberty litigation, and not, say, Muslims or Jews. . . . “I would say because the fact is very simple: There is not an open effort to silence and censor the viewpoints of other religions,” he said.
[H]is more mellow style can mask the fact that he proselytizes extremely hard-line views and has been hitting the right-wing talk show circuit doing that for decades. . . . In the 2000s, Mr. Johnson, then a lawyer and spokesman for the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group Alliance Defense Fund, was also a prolific writer, posting columns to Townhall and writing opinion pieces for his local newspaper in Shreveport. In his writings, he harshly criticized opponents on the left and those who did not share his beliefs.
In 2007, Mr. Johnson wrote a column claiming ulterior motives by proponents of the “Day of Silence,” an annual event where supporters pledge silence to bring attention to bullying and harassment of L.G.B.T.Q. students.
“The event is being sold to sympathetic schoolteachers and administrators as a gentle plea for sexual tolerance and understanding,” he wrote. “But the real agenda is to gild and glamorize homosexual behavior while gagging anyone who opposes it.” “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic,” he wrote in an article in 2004.
On Thursday, Mr. Hannity asked him to explain some of his previously stated views about same-sex marriage, which is broadly supported across the country, including among many Republicans.
In 2015, Mr. Johnson provided legal services to Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian group founded by Ken Ham that rejects scientific findings about evolution and the early history of the cosmos. The organization cites “the Word of God” in saying that the universe is 6,000 years old and suggests that “we simply have been indoctrinated to believe it looks old.” The universe is in fact about 13.8 billion years old, astronomers generally agree.
“The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth that, you know, what we read in the Bible are actual historical events, and that there are implications to what you do with all these stories in the Bible there,” Mr. Johnson said.
Be very, very afraid of this man and his scary agenda.
Friday, October 27, 2023
Republican Radicalization Takes Its Toll
The findings in this year’s The findings in this year’s Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) annual American Values Survey are a disturbing reminder that, regardless of the political fortunes of four-time-indicted former president Donald Trump, the MAGA movement he spawned has radicalized millions of Americans.
The survey’s great value comes as a warning about the radicalization and alienation of a segment of the major parties’ followers. “Today, nearly a quarter of Americans (23%) agree that ‘because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,’ up from 15% in 2021,” the survey found.
A full third of Republicans believe this, compared with 13 percent of Democrats. Meanwhile, QAnon believers have jumped from 14 percent of Americans to 23 percent, with Republicans twice as likely as Democrats to buy into the extreme conspiracy theory.
Clearly, authoritarianism has made greater inroads among Republicans than other groups. “About half of Republicans (48%) agree with the need for a leader who is willing to break some rules, compared with four in ten independents (38%) and three in ten Democrats (29%).”
Meanwhile, in a positive sign of public sanity, “Overwhelming majorities of Americans today support teaching the good and the bad of American history, trust public school teachers to select appropriate curriculum, and strongly oppose the banning of books that discuss slavery or the banning of Advanced Placement (AP) African American History.” Moreover, “A solid majority of Americans also oppose banning social and emotional learning programs in public schools.” Though some Republicans have made “anti-wokeism” a key requirement of their political identity, their message is deeply unpopular. “Fewer than one in ten Americans favor the banning of books that include depictions of slavery from being taught in public schools (7%), compared with 88% who oppose such bans.”
Sixty percent say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, compared with 37 percent who say it should be illegal in most or all cases. In a political reversal, “Democrats are now significantly more likely than Republicans to say their support for a candidate hinges on the candidate’s position on abortion,” 50 percent vs. 38 percent.
With their sympathies for authoritarianism, radical ideology and banning abortion, many Republicans, especially the GOP’s main base of White evangelical Christians, are out of step with the rest of the country. For example: “White evangelical Protestants stand out as the major religious group most opposed to the legality of abortion (75%).”
Many in the GOP fold rely on getting information from right-wing propaganda outlets that push the “big lie.” . . . . “More than six in ten Republicans (63%) continue to say that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, compared with 31% of independents and 6% of Democrats. Two-thirds of Americans who most trust Fox News (65%) and nearly all Americans who most trust far-right news outlets (92%) believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.”
Unsurprisingly, the partisan gap when it comes to Trump’s legal conduct is enormous: Six in ten Americans (60%) agree with the statement that it is likely that former president Donald Trump broke the law to try to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, while 38% disagree. About one-quarter of Republicans (27%), compared with 60% of independents and 92% of Democrats, believe Trump broke the law to try to stay in power.
Many Republicans are also outliers when it comes to the continuing effects of racism: A majority (53%) of Americans agree that generations of slavery and discrimination against Black people and Native Americans have given white people unfair economic advantages, compared with 41% who disagree. Majorities of Republicans (65%) and independents (40%) disagree with this statement, compared with only 22% of Democrats.
White Christian subgroups are significantly more likely than other religious groups to disagree with this statement. About two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants (65%) ... disagree that the legacy of slavery and discrimination against minorities has created unfair economic advantages for white people.
Most frightening is how many Republicans buy into white Christian nationalism, a racist ideology that rejects the basic premise of our democracy: “All men are created equal.” One-third of Americans but 52 percent of Republicans agree that “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world.” The number is even higher among White evangelical Protestants (54 percent).
Though three-quarters of Americans say democracy is at stake in the next election, only slightly more (57 percent) say Trump’s election threatens democracy than say President Biden’s reelection threatens democracy (53 percent). There is an inescapable racial element at work:
More than two-thirds of Black Americans (70%) and Hispanic Americans (67%) say the reelection of Trump poses a threat to American democracy. White Americans are divided about Trump being a threat to democracy (51% agree vs. 47% disagree). By contrast, nearly six in ten white Americans (59%) and 52% of Hispanic Americans, but only one-third of Black Americans (34%), say the reelection of Biden poses a threat to democracy.
[T]he overall picture here is a country that is inclusive, respectful of religious differences, pro-democracy and supportive of women’s rights — except when it comes to the largely Republican, mostly White evangelical Christians who reject these fundamental ideas.
When a sizable portion of one of the major political parties, aided by a right-wing propaganda machine and infused with religious fervor, rejects the basis for multiracial, multicultural democracy, we face a severe crisis. Even if Trump does not return to the White House, this radicalized segment will not disappear. are a disturbing reminder that, regardless of the political fortunes of four-time-indicted former president Donald Trump, the MAGA movement he spawned has radicalized millions of Americans.
The survey’s great value comes as a warning about the radicalization and alienation of a segment of the major parties’ followers. “Today, nearly a quarter of Americans (23%) agree that ‘because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,’ up from 15% in 2021,” the survey found.
A full third of Republicans believe this, compared with 13 percent of Democrats. Meanwhile, QAnon believers have jumped from 14 percent of Americans to 23 percent, with Republicans twice as likely as Democrats to buy into the extreme conspiracy theory.
Clearly, authoritarianism has made greater inroads among Republicans than other groups. “About half of Republicans (48%) agree with the need for a leader who is willing to break some rules, compared with four in ten independents (38%) and three in ten Democrats (29%).”
When a sizable portion of one of the major political parties, aided by a right-wing propaganda machine and infused with religious fervor, rejects the basis for multiracial, multicultural democracy, we face a severe crisis. Even if Trump does not return to the White House, this radicalized segment will not disappear.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Mike Johnson is As Dangerous as Jim Jordan
I suspect many are relieved that the House of Representatives again has a Speaker and hope that the three weeks of paralysis is over. Yet the selection of Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana should worry anyone not deeply entrenched in MAGA world or who doesn't subscribe to a Christian nationalist agenda. Prior to being elected to Congress, Johnson worked for the hate group Alliance Defending Freedom which is virulently anti-LGBT - he'd criminalize homosexuality - and favors a national ban on abortion. In short, he wants to inflict a Christofascist world view on America with, as always is the case with such extremists, Christian extremists have superior rights to everyone else who must subscribe to a toxic form of Christianity best defined by who its adherents hate, which is basically everyone but themselves. Equally disturbing is Johnson election denialism and unwavering support for Donald Trump, a would be autocrat and an individual who embodies the seven deadly sins. Thus, like other evangelicals Johnson displays extreme hypocrisy of mouthing Christian platitudes and wearing religion on his sleeve while supporting someone who has throughout his life made a mockery of true Christian values and who has no allegiance to anyone or anything other than himself. That Johnson can now control what legislation gets to the House floor is nothing less than frightening. A Column in the Washington Post looks at Johnson's dangerous ideology and slavish deference to Trump. Here are highlights:
If you are feeling any sense of relief that Jim Jordan won’t be the next House speaker, stop and worry again.
The new speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), might be more dangerous than the firebrand Ohio Republican. For Jordan’s shirt sleeves demeanor and wrestler’s pugnacity, substitute a bespectacled, low-key presentation, a law degree and an unswerving commitment to conservative dogma and former president Donald Trump.
This is not an upgrade. It is Jordan in a more palatable package — evidently smoother, seemingly smarter and, therefore, potentially more effective.
Johnson, now serving his fourth term in Congress, was the moving force behind a Supreme Court brief that helped lay the shoddy intellectual groundwork for Jan. 6, 2021. In December 2020, he rallied fellow Republican lawmakers to support Texas’s brazen bid to overturn the election results. In a lawsuit that fizzled almost as soon as it was filed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought to have the Supreme Court intervene in the election by blocking the certification of electoral college votes in four swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — where voting rules had been changed in the course of the election and voters, not coincidentally, had favored Joe Biden. The justices swiftly rejected the case . . . . But not before Johnson rallied the GOP troops to sign on to a friend-of-the-court brief backing the Texas lawsuit — and took pains to emphasize that Trump was keeping score. “He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review,” Johnson wrote on what was then Twitter.
The Johnson brief was a full-throated endorsement of the “independent state legislature” theory, ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court in 2023’s Moore v. Harper. The brief asserted that under the terms of the Constitution, only state legislatures — without any review by state courts or involvement of other state parties — have power to set rules for choosing presidential electors.
Don’t rely on the assessment of Democrat Josh Shapiro, then Pennsylvania’s attorney general, now its governor, that Texas’s effort to interfere in those states’ determinations was a “seditious abuse of the judicial process,” as he told the justices. Rather, listen to Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, no liberal squish, who declined to sign the Johnson brief and denounced the Paxton bid as “a dangerous violation of federalism” that “sets a precedent to have one state asking federal courts to police the voting procedures of other states.”
The Texas episode was of a piece with Johnson’s conservative worldview. Before being elected to Congress, he was a senior lawyer and national spokesman for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative [hate group] group that opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights.
Running for Congress in 2016, he described himself as “a Christian, a husband, a father, a lifelong conservative, constitutional law attorney and a small business owner in that order, and I think that order is important.” Johnson said he had been “called to legal ministry and I’ve been out on the front lines of the ‘culture war’ defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and biblical values, including the defense of traditional marriage, and other ideals like these when they’ve been under assault.”
His congressional career has been more of the same, including backing a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. Johnson twice served on the impeachment teams defending Trump and pushed to expunge the first impeachment from the record.
His fealty to the former president seems to have paid off. “My strong SUGGESTION is to go with the leading candidate, Mike Johnson, & GET IT DONE, FAST!” Trump advised on his social media site Tuesday. So, they did.
Be very worried about what this man may do to erode the rights of the many while giving special rights to Christian extremists and white supremacists.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
The Right's Efforts to Limit Parental Rights
Regular readers will not be surprised to know that my childhood identity was that of Book Girl: The kid whose nose was forever in a book. Who read all the "Little House" books, including the one Almanzo Wilder. Who knew the difference between the Newberry Medal and Newberry Honor. Who read every book in the classroom library, and remembered the call numbers of favorite volumes in the school library. Who, when hospitalized for asthma (a common condition among Book Kids), asked only for concerned relatives to retrieve a stack of books from home. . . . To the tribe of kids who keep paperbacks in their lunchboxes, the Scholastic Book Fair was akin to a religious holiday.
A lot of people feel nostalgia for book fairs, as I learned when a crowd showed up at the "Grown-Ass Book Fair" hosted at my partner's Philadelphia record store in May. It's why I'm not surprised there's a growing rumble of outrage at news reports that Scholastic has been giving into the far-right's anti-reading pressure campaign.
Last week, Judd Legum at Popular Information reported that "Scholastic is facilitating the exclusion of books that feature people of color and/or LGBTQ characters." They've shunted books featuring characters who aren't straight or white into a separate category to give schools "the option to exclude the entire set of books from the book fair." In a dark twist, the category is called "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice," though its purpose is to allow schools to banish books that suggest that characters that aren't straight white men have stories worth reading.
Despite all the right-wing hysteria about "pornography" used to justify book banning, what clearly links these books has nothing to do with sex. No, what's offensive to the right is the possibility that a white kid might learn that some other people exist who are not white.
Scholastic's argument is that red states are passing book bans that are both draconian and incredibly vague. "Critical race theory" is banned in some places, for instance, but what Republicans mean by that phrase is not defined.
Of course, the widespread understanding is these laws are meant only to suppress books with non-white or non-straight characters. To the censors, a gay couple kissing is a "sex act," but a straight couple is merely "normal." The bans also operate under the unspoken assumption that "white" is not a race, but a character merely being Black is "critical race theory."
Scholastic, as Legum reports, is reacting to a sustained pressure campaign from the right, which routinely accuses the company of flooding "our schools and libraries with books that promote dangerous and anti-Biblical ideas." In doing so, Republicans give lie to their ludicrous claims that book banning is about "parents rights." This isn't a classroom or library, where, in theory, a kid could access a book forbidden by her parents.
This point came up repeatedly in my conversations with parents and educators who are resisting the book banning frenzy unleashed by Moms for Liberty and other right wing groups: These people are trying to strip away parents rights, not protect them. The goal is forcing every other parent to adhere to their fundamentalist fantasy of a world where everyone is white, straight, and conformist.
"I do believe parents can decide for their own child, not the entire school district,” explained a teacher and a parent, who wished her name withheld for work reasons.
Elizabeth Mikitarian, a retired kindergarten teacher who founded Stop Moms for Liberty, argued that "the entire community" should not lose access to a book because a single parent or a single group doesn't "approve of something."
"Children come to school and whatever they are, whatever they have going on in their lives that that comes into the school room door with them," Mikitarian said. Because of that, the anonymous teacher argued, it's important "all readers can find something that they can relate to." She also argued that reading books about people not like yourself helps kids develop empathy and understanding.
Kids learning that it's okay to be different? Girls developing intelligence and ambition? Students feeling empathy for people not like themselves? Those are all things that Republicans, as they become increasingly fascistic, oppose. Everyone agrees that books do these things for kids. It's just that the right doesn't want kids to develop open minds and kinder hearts.
[T]he ultimate victims are kids. The world looks a lot different than it did in the 80s, but I suspect Book Kids are still with us. They still need the rush from opening a brand new book and smelling the ink on the page. They still need to get lost in the stories of other people, both real and fictional, that allow them to imagine a world outside the dull parameters of childhood. Quashing those kids and their imaginations is just another reminder that it's not "family values" or "morality" that motivates our modern GOP. It's the base sadism of people like Donald Trump, who treats books like hostile rodents that will bite him if he holds them too closely.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
The GOP’s Speaker Chaos: A Blessing in Disguise?
The chaotic Republican-led House of Representatives has a rather poor sense of timing. The United States is in the midst of two international emergencies and faces the threat of a government shutdown next month. President Biden’s prime-time speech on Thursday pressing for aid to Ukraine and Israel underscored the exorbitant costs of the GOP meltdown.
But the embarrassing exercise could prove to be a blessing because it’s exposing a crisis in our politics that must be confronted. The endless battle for the speakership is already encouraging new thinking and might yet lead to institutional arrangements to allow bipartisan majorities to work their will.
The House impasse was precipitated by both radicalization and division within the Republican Party. Narrow majorities in the House have enabled right-wing radicals to disable the governing system. Normal progressives and normal conservatives, in alliance with politicians closer to the center, are discovering a shared interest in keeping the nihilist right far from the levers of power.
The current crisis, after all, was initiated by a small far-right contingent, empowered by the broad popularity of Donald Trump in the party. They brought down now-former House speaker Kevin McCarthy despite his willingness to make one concession after another to the crazies, the impeachers and the Trumpists.
Republicans blame Democrats for assisting in McCarthy’s defenestration. The GOP doesn’t want to recognize that McCarthy gave Democrats no reason to save him — he flatly refused to negotiate with them in his hour of need — and many reasons to believe he’d continue to kowtow to party extremists.
Republicans have yet to learn the lesson of McCarthy’s fall: Because of the GOP’s splits, only an agreement with Democrats can create a majority in the House capable of governing. On the compromise measure to avert a debt ceiling crisis, House Republicans divided 149-71. On the bill to avoid a shutdown, the vote was even closer, 126-90. In their divided party, Republicans who want to avoid defaults or shutdowns or selling out Ukraine cannot do so on their own. They should formally recognize this.
Democrats are going out of their way to say they are ready to deal. “We are willing to find a bipartisan path forward so we can reopen the House,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference on Friday, after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) went down in his third and decisive defeat in the speakership vote. Republicans, Jeffries said, had a choice: to “embrace bipartisanship and abandon extremism.”
The Democratic rank and file has quietly been working in this direction. . . . the Democrats’ conditions were minimal and hardly left-wing: to agree to avoid a government shutdown; to pass spending bills along the lines of the fiscal accord McCarthy and McHenry themselves made with Biden in May to avert a debt default; and to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel and humanitarian aid for Palestinians.
Some middle-of-the-road Republicans were genuinely interested, Kuster said, but the plan blew up in the Republican conference on Thursday “because word got out that we [Democrats] might support the McHenry solution, and that made it unacceptable to the right.”
Democrats have reacted with understandable horror at the willingness of 200 Republicans to make the election-denying, insurrection-sympathizing, Trump-backed Jordan second in the line of succession for the presidency. But it’s important to recognize an additional blessing: For some two dozen Republicans — whose ranks grew through the three ballots — a Jordan speakership was too much to accept.
One more lesson emerged from scare tactics and threats to anti-Jordan Republicans. They matched those “unleashed against anybody who stands in the way of Donald Trump,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) told MSNBC’s Joy Reid, adding: “If you fail to renounce and denounce political violence in very clear and specific terms, it’s going to come back to haunt you.”
Bipartisanship is no magic elixir, but bipartisanship in pursuit of majority rule is a worthy cause. Pushing Republicans to confront extremism in their ranks is both good politics and essential for governing. The Democrats’ offer to help Republicans through their intraparty struggle will either hasten the day of reckoning or expose the GOP’s refusal to stand up to its nihilists.
Monday, October 23, 2023
Sunday, October 22, 2023
The Moral Dilemma of the Israel-Hamas War
The crisis in the Middle East is a knotty test of our humanity, asking how to respond to a grotesque provocation for which there is no good remedy. And in this test, we in the West are not doing well.
The acceptance of large-scale bombing of Gaza and of a ground invasion likely to begin soon suggests that Palestinian children are lesser victims, devalued by their association with Hamas and its history of terrorism. Consider that more than 1,500 children in Gaza have been killed, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, and around one-third of Gaza homes have been destroyed or damaged in just two weeks — and this is merely the softening-up before what is expected to be a much bloodier ground invasion.
I’ve flown into beautiful, sun-washed Tel Aviv, where the graffiti reads “Destroy Hamas.” Israelis have been shattered by the Hamas terrorism and kidnappings, an attack that felt existential and explains the determination to dismantle Hamas, whatever the cost. The anxiety in Tel Aviv is palpable, peaceful though it seems, while Gaza is an inner ring of hell and probably on a path to something much worse.
The United States speaks a good deal about principles, but I fear that President Biden has embedded a hierarchy of human life in official American policy. He expressed outrage at the massacres of Jews by Hamas, as he should have, but he has struggled to be equally clear about valuing Gazan lives.
What are we to make of the Biden administration’s call for an additional $14 billion in assistance for Israel and simultaneous call for humanitarian aid for Gazans?
In his speech on Thursday, Biden called for America to stand firmly behind Ukraine and Israel, two nations attacked by forces aiming to destroy them. Fair enough. But suppose Ukraine responded to Russian war crimes by laying siege to a Russian city, bombing it into dust and cutting off water and electricity while killing thousands and obliging doctors to operate on patients without anesthetic.
I doubt we Americans would shrug and say: Well, Putin started it. Too bad about those Russian children, but they should have chosen somewhere else to be born.
Here in Israel, because the Hamas attacks were so brutal and fit into a history of pogroms and Holocaust, they led to a resolve to wipe out Hamas even if this means a large human toll.
While I would love to see the end of Hamas, it’s not feasible to eliminate radicalism in Gaza, and a ground invasion is more likely to feed extremism than to squelch it — at an unbearable cost in civilian lives.
I particularly want to challenge the suggestion, more implicit than explicit, that Gazan lives matter less because many Palestinians sympathize with Hamas. People do not lose their right to life because they have odious views, and in any case, almost half of Gazans are children. Those kids in Gaza, infants included, are among the more than two million people enduring a siege and collective punishment.
Israel has suffered a horrifying terrorist attack and deserves the world’s sympathy and support, but it should not get a blank check to slaughter civilians or to deprive them of food, water and medicine. Bravo to Biden for trying to negotiate some humanitarian access to Gaza, but the challenge will be not just getting aid into Gaza but also distributing it to where it’s needed.
Leveling cities is what the Syrian government did in Aleppo or Russia did in Grozny; it should not be an American-backed undertaking by Israel in Gaza.
The best answer to this test is to try even in the face of provocation to cling to our values. That means that despite our biases, we try to uphold all lives as having equal value. If your ethics see some children as invaluable and others as disposable, that’s not moral clarity but moral myopia. We must not kill Gazan children to try to protect Israeli children.
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