We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: This week, paid subscribers got ET Watch Home, a monthly movie essay. For May, I wrote about one of my favorites from the Czech New Wave and also just generally, the excellent Larks on a String.
Paid subscribers also get the premium version of The Election Tricycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on this year’s elections in the United States, United Kingdom, and India.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For the Forward, I argued that focusing on “moral equivalence” between Hamas and Israel misses the point of the International Criminal Court.
This week on the Election Tricycle, I was joined by the Washington Post’s Karishma Mehrotra to talk about demographics and voting in India, America, and Indian American communities.
Shaun Walker has an incredibly moving dispatch from Kharkiv in the Guardian.
The WNBA has officially named Toronto its first international franchise.
I encourage you to read this piece by Christopher Hooks on Elon Musk, Brownsville, billionaires, and belief.
MY VIEWS ON…
…things that are, to me, British politics!
This week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that elections would be held on July 4. He did this while standing in the pouring rain without an umbrella over the dulcet tones of “Things Can Only Get Better,” for some reason. And though in truth it’s not like this is a thing that happens all the time, or even ever, it is nevertheless, to me, an encapsulation of British politics.
Here are some other things that are British politics:
Rishi Sunak, today, being asked if he’s “captaining a sinking ship” heading into the election while visiting the Titanic Quarter.
Rishi Sunak tweeting, “Talking about freedom, sat in Margaret Thatcher’s old Rover.”
The time Kent “turned into a car park” because of Brexit.
The period of time where every other day it turned out that Boris Johnson had had another secret COVID party.
The time Dominic Cummings said he drove to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight???
The time Theresa May was giving a speech in front of letters that spelled out “BUILDING A COUNTRY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE” and letters fell off.
And, of course, every American’s favorite British politics moment: the time someone picked up the ceremonial mace.
Having lived in the United Kingdom for a couple of years and also having worked for Brits, I can imagine that British readers of this newsletter might be feeling a little defensive. “Oh, that’s our politics?” they might think. “Your politics are gun violence and Donald Trump!” Yes. That’s true. US politics now oscillates somewhere between “fake controversy because Obama saluted a troop while holding a coffee cup” and “a series of politicians endorsing Trump after he insults the people they love most in the world.”
But this isn't about us, okay? This is about you and British politics, neatly summed up by Rishi Sunak announcing the election that will almost certainly see his party lose disastrously while standing, sans umbrella, in the rain.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
This is a strong (and strongly worded) piece in +972 by Amos Goldberg and Alon Confino on how some accusations of antisemitism are used to not only shield Israel from criticism, but to project the cause of criticism onto Palestinians.
I thought this, by Noa Landau in Haaretz, on the difference between Israel and the Israeli leader being brought before the ICC, was powerful.
The Forward has a piece from a young woman who allowed herself to change her mind about Jewish anti-Zionists.
Also from the Forward: “By the age of 14, he had survived the Holocaust; by 44, he was an Israeli diplomat; now, at the age of 94, Theodor Meron recommended the ICC seek arrest warrants of Israeli and Hamas leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
DC is getting a Lehrhaus!
This piece by Benjamin Balint on Kafka’s legacy and the fight over the work of this writer who did not want to be owned is pretty incredible.
-ET