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| Today's newsletter is sponsored by ChaiFlicks JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT. Give a tax-deductible donation Bob Dole's complicated relationship with Jews and humor, Twitter's new rule emboldens neo-Nazis, a shmear shortage, and Renaissance Faire staff quits over owner's antisemitic ties. OUR LEAD STORY Each Monday, Jacob Kornbluh, our senior political reporter, shares what’s in his notebook about New York, Washington, Jerusalem and beyond.
New book claims Trump worked on the Abraham Accords while in hospital with COVID: Obsessed with his news coverage, the former president hoped achievements in the Middle East would draw the country’s attention away from his illness, Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, reveals in a new memoir set to be released on Tuesday.
“He saw the press’s initial burst of enthusiasm as a wave that we could ride to a complete deal,” Meadows writes in the book, “The Chief’s Chief.” The negotiations led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, “were moving very slowly,” Meadows recounts. “The boss knew that there had been back-channel negotiations that could normalize the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and he was eager to turn these into a public show of support.”
Meadows, a former Congressman, also takes credit in the book for lobbying Trump to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Among the questions that Trump asked him, Meadows writes, was “which of his constituents believed it was the right thing to do.” Find out here >
In Jerusalem: Tom Nides, the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel, presented his credentials to President Isaac Herzog on Sunday, after lighting the seventh candle at the Western Wall the night before. Since the Trump administration sold the ambassador’s residence in 2018, Nides is having to resort to the rental market, The New York Times reported; he plans to live in Jerusalem, but since at least half of the embassy staff still live in Tel Aviv, the most expensive city in the world, he’ll spend a lot of time shuttling back and forth.
In Washington: Mossad chief David Barnea is in D.C to meet with Biden’s national security team about Iran’s nuclear activities. Defense Minister Benny Gantz is expected to visit D.C. on Wednesday and see with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Haaretz reported on Sunday that the rift is growing between Jerusalem and Washington over Iran.
In Congress: Republican Sens. Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz plan to call in a news conference today for an expansion of 2018 legislation that slashed U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority because of its stipends to families of those killed in attacks on Israeli Jews.
ALSO FROM THE FORWARD How did Bob Dole get along with the Jews? It’s complicated.The former Senate Majority Leader was a stalwart supporter of Israel, who AIPAC once backed against a Jewish challenger. But Dole, who died on Sunday at 98, had a somewhat tortured relationship with Jews and humor, writes our Benjamin Ivry. To understand it “a surprising number of analyses of jokes are required, worthy of the precedent of Sigmund Freud,” he says. Like the time he handed a phone to Joe Lieberman on Shabbat. Read the appreciation >
Opinion | Hanukkah gnomes have deeply antisemitic origins:Gnomes are known by their pointy hats, jewel hoards, and secretive ways — all stereotypes associated with medieval Jews, writes Ed Weinberg, a journalist who covers international oddities and antisemitism. He interviewed Etsy sellers and Hanukkah-product experts. It is easy to see the parallels between gnomes and harmful stereotypes, one told him. “That, and they’re tacky.” Read the essay >
But wait, there’s more... Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, is making headlines this month for his “West Side Story” collaboration with Steven Spielberg. But it’s another Broadway revival, set in the home of a Jewish family, that he wanted to chat with us about. Opinion: A religious minority faces a second genocide in Afghanistan. Jews must act now. Our Irene Katz Connelly walks you through six new Jewish books to read in December.
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WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY 💻 Facebook sold ads promoting conspiracy theories comparing vaccines to the Holocaust. Whistleblower Frances Haugen’s response: The company’s “business model is conditioned on fixing problems after they find them.” In related news: Facebook is removing 141 accounts, 79 pages, 13 groups and 21 Instagram accounts linked to Hamas. (CNN, Jerusalem Post)
📸 Speaking of social media, there was an update to Twitter’s privacy rules last week that allows people to have photos of themselves removed after they’ve been outed by anti-extremism researchers. Neo-Nazis and far-right activists are now coaching their followers on how to take advantage of the new rule: ‘Things now unexpectedly work more in our favor,” one wrote. Liora Rez, the founder of StopAntisemitism, said the new policy “silences advocacy groups like ours, inadvertently helping the antisemite spew their biases.” (Washington Post)
🎠 The entire administrative staff of the Massachusetts Renaissance Faire resigned because two of the company’s owners hosted an event for fans of comedian Owen Benjamin, who is known for making homophobic and antisemitic comments, including that the Jews killed Jesus. In one video posted to Instagram, Benjamin said that Anne Frank did not exist. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)
🕎 Speaking of Massachusetts, the town of Medford apologized for showing a picture of a menorah used by Messianic Jews at a City Hall holiday event. One of its seven branches was labeled “cross,” another “resurrection.” (JTA)
☢️ Israel’s Mossad spy agency reportedly recruited a team of Iranian scientists to blow up one of the regime’s nuclear facilities. “The scientists’ motivations were all different,” a source said. “Mossad found out what they deeply wanted in their lives and offered it to them.” (Jewish Chronicle)
✈️ A couple was booted from an American Airlines flight because they refused to put a tallit bag containing a Jewish prayer shawl on the floor when asked to do so by the crew. They are suing the airline. (New York Post)
🚔 The Anne Frank memorial in Boise, Idaho, was defaced with antisemitic vandalism, nearly a year after a similar incident … Over in Kansas City, vandals snuck into the local Chabad house and damaged it – tossing books, tearing out electrical wires and causing water damage. (Algemeiner, AP)
🏈 Israel is hosting the 10th Flag Football World Championships in Jerusalem this week. Despite COVID concerns, 39 teams from 21 countries – totaling 900 athletes, coaches and other staff – will participate in the three-day event. (Jerusalem Post)
🥯 New York bagel shops are experiencing a cream-cheese shortage due to supply chain issues. The eateries use pallets of raw product that come unprocessed and unwhipped, and cannot simply be replaced by running to the grocery store. Zabar’s estimates that it only has enough cream cheese to last 10 days. Perhaps they need a Hanukkah miracle. (New York Times)
Shiva call > Edward Shames, the last remaining member of World War II’s “Band of Brothers,” died at 99. A Virginia native, Shames was the first from his troop to enter the Dachau concentration camp, days after its liberation. He later went into Hitler’s Eagle Nest, and took some bottles of cognac – which he later served at his oldest son’s bar mitzvah. Shames, whose surname echoes the Hebrew word for the candle used to kindle the other flames on the menorah, died during Hanukkah. (CNN)
ON THE CALENDAR On this day in history: Donald Trump’s administration officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Dec. 6, 2017. The U.S. embassy moved to Jerusalem the following spring, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel.
Israel Gershowitz was born on this day in 1896. He changed his surname to Gershwin, and, with his younger brother George, collaborated on more than a dozen Broadway shows.
Last year on this day, Prince Charles eulogized Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain, by calling him a “light unto the nations.”
VIDEO OF THE DAY For Hanukkah’s final day, enjoy one more music video. This one comes to us from Static and Ben El, an Israeli pop duo that produces reliably danceable tunes that regularly top the charts. “To be clear, their music is not ‘good’ in any elevated sense, musically or lyrically,” writes our culture reporter, Mira Fox. “But they are fun, which is all they’re ever trying to be.”
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