We are rarely on Capitol Hill at sundown, but last night we were, and I took this photo as we walked from the Library of Congress to our car. We had been to a concert of Sephardic music by Lily Henley.

Hopefully, today will be quiet. It started with a presentation for my Thursday morning breakfast group on the Nuremberg Trials, always an engaging topic and one I will never fully understand. The day will end with a Haberman  presentation by Rabbi Donald Berlin titled “Judaism and Sports: Conflict, Change and Cultural Integration”. Sounds interesting (www.habermaninstitute.org). Register and watch for free at 7:30 EDT.

In the meantime, the air outside is very fresh today in Washington. It always is when Donald T. is out of town, and when he is almost 7000 miles away in Beijing, it seems especially fresh. I think the clarity of my photo of Capital last night is because he is so far away.

I haven’t heard much about the trip so far, except that Donald made it clear that Xi is an extraordinary leader and an extraordinary friend, and that Xi made it clear to Trump that he should keep his cotton picking hands out of Taiwan. I also heard that Trump said that Xi agreed not to send any more munitions to Iran, so one thing you can be sure of is that China is going to be sending more munitions to Iran. And what does Donald care about that, anyway, since we “have already won the war”?

Xi really didn’t tell Trump anything about his cotton picking hands, but some radio news commentator did tell Hakeem Jeffries to keep his cotton picking hands out of Virginia, and a Republican Congresswoman agreed with him, generating a lot of comment. She said that she did not think the language was appropriate and I guess I give her the benefit of the doubt. And I, for one, no longer equate “cotton picking” (the adjective) with “cotton picking” the noun. But of course there are those who don’t equate “jew” the verb (as in “jew down”) with “Jew” the ethnic/religious noun, and am not sure I give them the same benefit of the doubt. Is that inconsistent of me? Perhaps.

I guess what interested me, and worried me, most yesterday was the report that Senator Rand Paul’s son William, accosted New York Congressman Michael Lawler, at a bar and, apparently inebriated, accused Lawler’s “people”, which he meant as “the Jews” of potentially causing the defeat of Congressman Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Of course, Lawler is not Jewish, and Paul apologized immediately for calling him a Jew. That, of course, is not – in my mind – an appropriate apology, but there you go……

Paul didn’t stop with that and went on accusing the Jews of being more for Israel than for the U.S. From the article I saw on VINnews: “Lawler said Paul also expressed hatred for Jewish and LGBTQ people and did not care if they died.”

Yes, William Paul was drunk, and yes, he has now more fully apologized, and yes, he says he is now going to seek treatment for his use of alcohol, and that is all to the good, I guess, but the worry is that there are a lot of people who, with the help of a little alcohol, would agree with Paul’s statements about Jews, LGBTQ people and other groups. And with antisemitism being permitted to go a bit mainstream these days, with encouragement, perhaps subliminal, from Trump and Netanyahu, anything seems possible.

While Trump seems to countenance antisemitism from the right, Netanyahu is contributing to the increase of antisemitism on the left.

Of course, Netanyahu would either deny this, or say he doesn’t care, that “this too will pass”. He would say that those who are antisemitic because of Israel would be antisemitic no matter what Israel does, because they don’t think Israel should exist, and therefore they should be ignored, while Israel is doing what it has to in order to guarantee its future security. And he certainly would not try to separate anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli feelings because he wants them to be conflated, even though this conflation endangers Jews everywhere.

It creates a conundrum for American Jews for sure. As many Democratic politicians, and Democratic voters, have soured on Israel, does this threaten Democratic victories in some close elections? And, in fact, is this one of the goals of Netanyahu? He has made no secret of his admiration for Donald Trump. Is Netanyahu purposely endangering the position of American Jews by encouraging American antisemitism in order to convince Jewish American Democrats to stay home or vote Republican? I would not put it past him.

It is also true that it is more and more difficult for American Jews to support Israel “right or wrong”. With daily reports of outrages on the West Bank, and continued controversy about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the number and depth of Jewish critics of Israel will grow. I received the following photo of Gaza City, before and after, on Facebook this morning. Assuming its accuracy, it does raise more questions, right?

Talking to a friend this morning, I remarked at how remarkable it is that day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, decade by decade, and even century by century, so much seems to revolve around the Jews. He agreed, but he added something that I hadn’t thought about. The Trump regime, as we know, blames everything on Biden.

Putting aside the choice of Biden, what this tells you, my friend says, is that it is possible to cast the blame for everything in just one direction. Blaming everything on the Jews, in this thinking, is just another version of blaming everything on Biden. At first it seems stupid (which, of course, it is), but then before you know it, it becomes both mainstream and respectable.