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Sunday Reads: Trump’s phone calls, The Jews and European nationalism, Americans on Israel-Palestine

[additional-authors]
December 4, 2016

US

David Graham tries to explain the real problem with ” target=”_blank”>his travels with General Mattis, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense:

In a normal Republican Presidency, such an exception and the precedent it would set would be deeply worrying. But there is, of course, very little that is normal about the President-elect or the appointments he has made. If Mattis is confirmed, there is at least the possibility that the General will move the Trump Administration toward reinforcing peaceful alliances and international stability, and will refuse to allow the Administration’s extremism to influence him.

Israel

On Friday, The Brookings Institution published a big survey on ” target=”_blank”>criticizes Israel’s leadership for claiming that Arabs were behind the recent wave of fires:

But while the prime minister, the education minister and other ministers used every opportunity to declare that the fires were the result of “a nationalistic wave of terrorism,” they avoided declaring just that in the latest cabinet meeting. Declaring that the fires were “acts of terrorism” would mean that the damages citizens suffered as a result of the fires would have be paid by the state rather than by insurance companies. So the incitement apparently continues as long as it pays off politically. It stops as soon as a financial price has to be paid for it.

Middle East

Patrick Cockburn ” target=”_blank”>predicts even more turmoil in the Middle East:

“Current estimates indicate that the number of inhabitants living in countries vulnerable to conflict in the Arab region is expected to rise from around 250 million in 2010 to over 350 million in 2020. That number is expected to double by 2050,” write the authors of the 2016 Arab Human Development Report. “The number of Arab countries affected by conflict increased from five in 2002 to 11 in 2016.”

Jewish Journal

Doug Saunders argues that Europe’s Jews ” target=”_blank”>the last elections mean for America's Jews and the fight against anti-Semitism:

As for the Jews, we need to think through the meaning of our own syntheses of the particular and the universal, of kin and place, and heaven, and the kind of civic life that can make those syntheses work in America, Israel and elsewhere—for our own sake and for the global civic society which this age has created. “History,” James Joyce’s Stephen Daedalus said, “is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.” We all better wake up now.

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