Day: June 10, 2024

A super PAC aligned with President Joe Biden is working with young TV writers, directors, and producers to increase the octogenarian president’s underwhelming youth support.

Won’t PAC Down has “hired millennial and Gen Z writers, directors and producers”—including those who have worked on TV shows such as Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, and Big Mouth—to “help craft pro-Biden content that’s specifically engineered to sell an octogenarian candidate to typically disillusioned and hard-to-reach voters under 30,” Politico reported Sunday.

The PAC’s goal is “no cringe” in its content, according to Politico reporter Elena Schneider. While the group, which plans to raise and spend up to $25 million, aims to avoid “splashy celebrity videos meant to go viral online,” the TV writers have pitched “everything from 30- and 90-second influencer-style ads” to “highly produced, scripted ads,” Politico reported. The ads will air next month and appear on social media and streaming services.

While the Biden campaign can’t legally coordinate with the PAC, campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez told Politico that the campaign supports the group.

The report comes as young voters have started abandoning Biden, who is 81 years old, ahead of the 2024 election. While Gen Z and millennial voters overwhelmingly backed Biden in 2020, Biden now barely leads former president Donald Trump among the group, an NPR/PBS/Marist College poll found last month. When Marist pollsters factored in third-party candidates, Biden loses young voters to Trump by 6 points. A New York Times/Siena College poll found similar results in December, with Trump also beating Biden by 6 points among young voters.

Democratic operatives fear that Gen Zers and millennials “will either look to other candidates or not vote at all, potentially costing Biden key support in battleground states,” Politico noted.

That fear may be well grounded. Few of the Gen Z and millennial writers and producers involved in Won’t PAC Down even knew about Biden’s scheme to have taxpayers take on millions of dollars in student debt, Politico reported.

The post ‘No Cringe’? Dems Turn to Gen Z TV Writers To Turn Out Youth Vote for 81-Year-Old Biden appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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One of the most Jewish elections in the country is in Northern Virginia

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date June 10, 2024

WASHINGTON — Eileen Filler-Corn was the first Jewish speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates. State lawmaker Dan Helmer is the son of an Israeli father and the descendant of Holocaust survivors.

Now they’re running against each other in a Democratic congressional primary, and each is making Jewish identity a central piece of their pitch.

The June 18 primary in Northern Virginia’s 10th District, encompassing suburbs and exurbs of the nation’s capital, is a sign of how the local Jewish population has burgeoned. There was a time not too long ago, local Jewish leaders said, when the southern state was something of a Jewish backwater — as well as the headquarters of the American Nazi Party.

“Twenty years ago, when the JCRC would do its Advocacy Day, we would have like, four cars going up to Richmond,” recalled Ronald Halber, the longtime executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. “And today we have buses — buses! The growth in Northern Virginia has been exponential.”

In addition to the invocations of Jewish identity in the race, pro-Israel money has poured into Filler-Corn’s campaign. Her backers cite her leadership in passing into law a popular yet contentious definition of antisemitism, a bill that Helmer opposed. In public appearances, both have been vocal in backing Israel in its war with Hamas.

It’s not the first time more than one Jewish candidate has featured in an election in the district — Helmer and Alison Friedman, a former State Department senior staffer, were part of the crowded 2018 run in which now-Rep. Jennifer Wexton emerged as a winner. She is retiring after this term because of illness.

But this year, Filler-Corn and Helmer are among the leading candidates. And both have leaned into their Jewish bona fides.

“As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, my family knows that democracy is fragile,” said Helmer, a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, in a Jewish Democratic Council of America Zoom forum held last week. “I didn’t know until I was a teenager that the seder liturgy didn’t actually end with ‘God bless America.’” (The anecdote is not just for Jewish audiences; the same story tops his campaign bio.)

Filler-Corn invoked a Jewish idea, tikkun olam, or repairing the world, that has become commonplace among Jewish Democrats. “Tikkun olam is the guiding principle in my life, my family and my politics, and it’s a big part of why I’m running for Congress,” she said. “I believe our world and our nation and its democracy needs repair.”

Asked why they have been upfront with their Jewish identities while campaigning, both Helmer and Filler-Corn identified a factor darker than the pride they express in their heritage: personal experience with antisemitism.

In 2020, the FBI arrested neo-Nazis who considered assassinating Filler-Corn. “There are literally white nationalists in federal prison today for plotting to assassinate me,” she said in an interview. “And then a few weeks ago, images of my campaign literature were defaced. They drew horns and a Hitler-like mustache and blood coming from my mouth.”

Helmer’s Republican opponent in 2019 distributed a poster of Helmer rubbing his hand over a pile of gold coins. “This is sadly, part of being in politics,” he said in the interview. “And it is awful that an extreme MAGA movement normalized a set of antisemitic and, at times, racist tropes.”

But the Jewish references on the campaign trail also reflect a changing voter base. A 2018 population survey surprised local Jewish officials when it reported that Washington’s northern Virginia suburbs had a greater number of Jews than Maryland’s, where much of the Jewish community had long been centered.

Government work, an explosion of the tech sector, new housing developments and well-regarded schools appear to have drawn Jews from around the country to Virginia. Helmer and Filler-Corn both moved to the area from New Jersey.

Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan elections newsletter out of the University of Virginia, said the district had shifted from Republican to Democrat.

The district “is a poster child for the kinds of shifts that we’ve seen in favor of Democrats” in Virginia, he said. “You know, again, given that it’s a highly educated, affluent, kind of a white collar sort of district.”

Filler-Corn has raised more than $750,000, a chunk of it channeled through Democratic Majority for Israel, a political action committee that hews to traditional pro-Israel positions. Helmer, who won’t take PAC money, has raised more than twice that amount from small donors.

Filler-Corn “has been engaged on issues around Israel and antisemitism for a very long time and very effectively,” said Mark Mellman, who directs DMFI and its PAC.

Filler-Corn, Helmer and State Sen. Suhas Subramanyan are seen as the frontrunners in part because of their endorsements: Wexton, the incumbent, is boosting Subramanyan, Helmer has the Washington Post’s endorsement, and Filler-Corn has top Democrats in the state and the U.S. House backing her.

It isn’t clear who has the polling advantage — a couple of campaign polls have been released, with tiny samples. Helmer tops one, and Jennifer Boysko, a state senator, leads another.

Boyko is another reason there’s pro-Israel interest in the race. She has been critical of Israel’s prosecution of its war with Hamas, a posture she did not conceal in the JDCA forum.

“I was, I think, the first elected official in Virginia to call for a ceasefire,” she said. “I believe that that violence is not the answer to this, that I think it plays into the hands of Hamas.”

Dan Helmer speaks with voters during the Loudoun County Democratic Committee Speed Dating Candi-Date Forum in Leesburg, Virginia, April 28, 2024. (Valerie Plesch for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

In the interview, Filler-Corn, 59, who retired this year from the state legislature, said she has never felt the need to hide her Jewishness since arriving in Northern Virginia in the late 1980s. She joined her synagogue’s pre-school board, and has had leadership positions on the Jewish Community Relations Council, the local American Jewish Committee chapter and the Jewish Foundation for Group Homes.

“It’s just very, very important to me and in the legislature, whether it was educating people on our holidays on our beliefs,” she said, explaining that she has on multiple occasions had to explain that Hanukkah is a minor holiday. “Or being the conduit between the legislature, elected officials and the Jewish community, I’ve always played that role.”

Last year she cajoled Democrats into backing a Republican-led bill that endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s popular and controversial definition of antisemitism. Opposition to the bill has increased among progressives who fear that it defines legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitic

“There was support on the Republican side, and there was some consternation on the Democratic side,” she said. “I was able to work across party lines and lead the House Democratic Caucus to support this bill, over some vocal opposition from members of my caucus.”

Although she didn’t name him, one of those opponents was Helmer, who said he could not support a bill framed by a party that, in his view, does little to combat antisemitism in its own ranks.

“This bill is deceptive, I am not going to provide cover for this kind of behavior,” he said, referring to right-wing extremists and the Republicans he said “dog whistle” to them. “If we want to have a conversation about antisemitism, I hope from the beginning the [bill’s sponsor] and others will come and speak to this Jew, this descendant of Holocaust survivors.”

That argument does not fly with the pro-Israel supporters who have been pouring money into Filler-Corn’s campaign.

“Where has he been all of these years on Jewish issues?” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, a Maryland-based, longtime donor to pro-Israel causes and to Democrats. “The only time I saw him was when he was fighting against a good definition of antisemitism. So you know, he might be a really nice guy, but on the issues that are important to the Jewish community, he’s a nothingburger.”

Helmer, in the interview, listed his Jewish credentials, dating back to his days at the military academy.

“I was the founder of the Hillel at West Point. I was the cadet in charge of the Jewish chapel there and also the founder of something called Jewish Warrior Weekend which was an effort to showcase to other Jews in higher education the role that Jews play in the U.S. military. It’s still going on to this day,” he said.

His father immigrated from Israel and his grandfather fought in the Palmach, the pre-state elite infantry force, Helmer said.

He has a reputation for pugnaciousness: He infuriated Republicans in 2018 when, running for a congressional seat, he likened then-President Donald Trump to Osama Bin Laden.

“After 9/11, the greatest threat to our democracy lived in a cave. Today, he lives in the White House,” he said in an ad.

The possibility of a Trump victory in November looms large in Helmer’s current campaign, and he hasn’t let go of the Bin Laden comparisons. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks inspired his military career, Helmer said in the interview, “and when Donald Trump got elected, I recognized that the democracy that had welcomed my family was under threat in a different way and so got involved in politics.”

When he looks at the intra-Jewish debates in the primary, Marcus Simon, a state delegate, says he never imagined they would play out in the state when he was elected in 2014.

“When I came to the General Assembly in 2014, I doubled the Jewish caucus,” Simon, who has not endorsed anyone in the district, said in an interview. “It was me and Eileen Filler-Corn at that point.” Now there are at least five, four in the House of Delegates and one in the Senate.

Filler-Corn becoming the House’s first Jewish speaker in 2020 was a “groundbreaking event,” said Simon. “I didn’t know that that would happen in our lifetimes.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post One of the most Jewish elections in the country is in Northern Virginia appeared first on The Forward.

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Israeli battlefield commanders explain why they are breaking IDF rules to solicit donated gear

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date June 10, 2024

Micha Shtiebel wasn’t expecting to be called back to duty so soon. Nor did he expect the army to deploy his brigade — normally stationed along the border with Lebanon — to Gaza, where they would experience a type of dense urban combat they weren’t used to. But in late May, the time had come to relieve another brigade fighting in Gaza and the army had reportedly neglected to line up a replacement.

That blunder meant that Shtiebel’s Alexandroni Brigade, made up of thousands of reserve troops, didn’t have the months it normally gets to prepare for a new assignment. It had days.

“It’s insane that eight months in, we are going to Gaza with no time to train or get the right gear, all literally done at the last minute because the army forgot to pick a replacement team,” Shteibel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

As he scrambled to obtain gear, he knew better than to expect much help from the army’s supply chain, because he had tried in the past and came up empty. Plus, an order came down instructing Shtiebel and other officers charged with logistics to gather equipment for the new mission without depleting existing stockpiles, in a nod to the looming conflict on Israel’s northern border.

So Shteibel turned to the people who had proven nimble and helpful at providing for the 450 soldiers in his battalion since war broke out on Oct. 7: an informal network of civilian volunteers purchasing equipment with donations from Jews in the Diaspora.

It’s against military orders for individual soldiers to accept donations or even to talk to donors, largely to preserve equity in the military, but Shteibel, and virtually every other officer in his position, engages in fundraising regularly.

Many of his soldiers were stuck with standard-issue army helmets, some from as early as the 1970s, which are not only horribly uncomfortable but possibly unsafe. Combat helmets, especially when they have taken a beating, can offer less ballistic protection over time. The volunteers quickly provided Shtiebel with 150 new tactical helmets, which cost $400 each.

Then, he asked the volunteers for drones.

Israeli infantry units didn’t typically use drones before the current war, but as civilian volunteers began providing them, ordinary soldiers found that the ability to survey the battlefield from the sky or search the inside of homes that might be booby-trapped with explosives could save their lives. Soldiers have come to regard these small drones, which are readily available in American electronics stores, as nearly as essential as helmets.

The volunteers agreed to lend seven donated drones to the unit but they were delivered to the brigade’s deputy commander, someone a few rungs up the chain from Shtiebel. The commander has so far refused to distribute the drones, offering no explanation, according to Shtiebel. “He gave us the rigamarole,” Shtiebel said.

Neither the military nor Israel’s Ministry of Defense responded to requests for comment for this story.

Whatever the commander’s intentions, by holding up drones, he is contributing to the ambiguity and confusion surrounding the issue of donated equipment in the Israeli army. Since the war began, the army has claimed that soldiers are not lacking any essential gear even as civilians have delivered individual units an estimated billion dollars or more in helmets and drones as well as clothing, night vision goggles, body armor, rifle scopes, and other items.

For many American Jews, donating to grassroots military equipment drives became a concrete and personal way to show support for Israeli soldiers after Oct. 7. On social media, requests for donations have become ubiquitous, and some of those efforts, such as Boots for Israel, have become symbols of American Jewish solidarity with Israel as it fights on multiple fronts.

But the military’s official denial of shortages is false, according to Shteibel as well as a dozen other battlefield commanders and logistics officers of combat units, some of whom are currently deployed, who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on condition of anonymity.

One senior commander, speaking while on active duty in Gaza, described how essential donations have been.

“The army claims nothing is missing,” he said. “But look at me, from head to toe, I am covered in donated gear: helmets, protective eyewear, body armor, the scope on my rifle, and even the fatigues I am wearing. Everything except for the weapon.”

Micha Shtiebel, an IDF reservist of the Alexandroni Brigade, at his home in Ra’anana, Israel, May 26, 2024. (Yakov Binyamin)

While the military has gradually managed to bolster its stockpiles and distribute gear to certain combat forces, many units, especially those made up of reserve soldiers, are still soliciting help in direct violation of army orders, according to interviews.

“Don’t get me wrong, even if they leave me with nothing but a sword, I’ll go on fighting,” said one senior commander, expressing a common reticence to publicly acknowledge the military’s shortcomings. But all of the officers said they felt compelled to speak to the press in violation of military rules either because they hoped to bring public attention to the problem or because they hoped to reach prospective donors who may not realize that demand for gear remains high.

One commander said he had just gotten off the phone with a donor in Miami to ask them to pay for a drone.

“It’s sad that this is what we are facing. It doesn’t make sense we have to buy the gear ourselves or fundraise for it,” he said. “But I do so because there’s no saying just how many lives these drones have saved. I have soldiers in my unit who got hit and without their donated ceramic body armor would have been dead.”

Daniel Polisar, the American-raised founder of Shalem College in Jerusalem, has three sons serving in the Israeli military. First, he helped equip them. Then, he realized how widespread the problem was and assembled a team of volunteers. They have raised $15 million, which they have spent on gear for tens of thousands of soldiers, Polisar said.

He said most Israelis don’t accept claims by the IDF that there are no shortages.

“These claims are as credible to them as hearing a meteorologist declare emphatically that it’s sunny and dry in the town where they live at the very moment they’re standing outside in the midst of a downpour,” Polisar said.

He added, however, that the claims are not without impact. They undermine the military’s credibility and make it impossible for the army to enact changes. The claims also make his job much more challenging.

“I have faced this question repeatedly, and for the last few weeks it has literally been on a daily basis,” Polisar said. “I am asked by potential donors why they should give to buy gear when IDF spokesmen and high-ranking officers assert that every soldier and every unit have all the gear they need. This is the single biggest obstacle to the fundraising of my team and of other groups active in trying to help supply our soldiers.”

The phenomenon of donations flowing from the Jewish Diaspora to the Israeli military is not new. It has existed since the founding of Israel. But donations are supposed to be routed through a central, dedicated office within the military. Individual soldiers and units are not supposed to fundraise and handle donations themselves.

The military has been aware of an illicit flow of donated equipment at least since 2016 when the State Comptroller’sOffice, Israel’s official watchdog agency, devoted a section of its annual report to the issue. The report noted that IDF regulations prohibiting soldiers from being in direct contact with donors are regularly ignored. Released two years after Israel’s previous war in Gaza, the report says the problem was particularly acute during that conflict.

The report also explains why the military should not allow the donations. Morale can suffer if some units have more or better equipment than others. There can be unfair pressure on the families of soldiers to donate. The situation “may harm the reputation of the IDF, making it look like a military that does not enforce the orders it gives soldiers and that cannot provide for the basic needs of its soldiers,” according to the report.

A senior commander said in an interview that those concerns were well founded — but not only a matter of perception. “I don’t want to make the army look bad because it hurts us and serves the enemy, but that’s really how things look,” he said.

The report also noted concerns about the quality and safety of equipment donated outside of formal protocols. At the start of the current war, such concerns would have seemed at least somewhat merited. In the flurry of donations in the early days, a lot of equipment that arrived was subpar, unneeded, or even counterfeit, including cases of helmets made of plastic designed to look like the real thing, according to multiple interviews with soldiers and civilian volunteers.

By now, however, many of the civilian volunteers still active have become experts on the needs of soldiers and on sourcing proper military-grade equipment while maintaining close ties with military logistics officers. They have even paid to professionally test donated armor and helmets, according to interviews and ballistics reports from the tests.

The spike in unsanctioned donations should perhaps not come as a surprise to the military, since it had warnings of a lack of preparedness around basic supplies.

Amir Avivi, a retired IDF brigadier general, told JTA he has spent years sounding the alarm about the issue while he was in service as the director of the office of the IDF chief of staff and as the deputy comptroller of the security forces. He remained vocal after his 2017 retirement from service when he founded the Israel Defense And Security Forum, a right-leaning advocacy group focused on military issues.

He said the army doesn’t always spend its money wisely.

“The military doesn’t have an endless budget, and it’s not exciting for the leadership to buy boots and or helmets,” he said.“It’s much more exciting to invest in new technologies like cyber weapons. At the end of the day, however, war is a physical event. In war, everything revolves around the number of troops, the amount of equipment, ammunition and fuel, water, and food. That’s what wins the war. We are seeing the same thing in Ukraine.”

Avivi recalled an argument he had while in service with his superior, the IDF’s then-chief of the staff, Benny Gantz, who in 2013 was forced to make budget cuts and proposed investing in technology to make up for cuts to conventional forces. Gantz went on to become a minister of defense and later joined the three-member war cabinet convened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Oct. 7 before ultimately resigning on Sunday.

“I told Gantz that the military is prioritizing all kinds of gadgets and technologies and things that seem sexy, but in the end it undermines preparedness,” Avivi said. “The army has really neglected these things, sometimes to a criminal extent, and that’s why we have had shortages. When you suddenly activate the entire army, you discover the extent of the problem.”

He added, however, that the IDF appears to have started correcting course and has spent many billions on new equipment during the current war. The IDF isn’t announcing exactly what it’s purchasing but Israeli defense spending has doubled since an all-time low before the war.

Several commanders and logistics officers, particularly those in regular army units, as opposed to the reserves, told JTA they are seeing the fruits of the military’s buying sprees, at least for some categories of equipment.

“It was a wild west with all the shortages early on, but I must admit, the situation is much better now,” said one senior commander of a combat unit.

But even the best-supplied units continue to ask for donations, according to several of the commanders.

Soldiers tend to want the best and newest gear they can get. They also turn to the donations network when they need something fast. For the military to process requests for gear can take months. “Through the civilian volunteers, I can get it the next day,” said a logistics officer.

Well-supplied units also rely on donations for gear they have realized they need, but that the military has not yet created a standard for, such as drones with thermal cameras, and solar panels to be able to charge electronics during extended periods in the field.

The gap between what the soldiers say they need and what the military regards as necessary is one of the reasons the military can claim there are no shortages, according to Avivi.

“The IDF may not have issued official standards for the type of stuff soldiers need and want,” he said. “There are things the IDF doesn’t purchase to begin with so it’s not a shortage.”

Technicalities aside, many inside and outside the army see such claims by the military as a form of lying that erodes trust and leads to disillusionment.

Shtiebel said it wasn’t easy for him to reach a point at which he was comfortable speaking out publicly. He agreed to be named in this article because he thought it would be harder for people to dismiss the problems he wanted to call attention to. He has also been thinking about his two young sons.

“What will I do the day they go to the army when I just don’t trust the army?” he said. “At this point, I’ve decided to put myself out there in case it helps turn the tide a little bit.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Israeli battlefield commanders explain why they are breaking IDF rules to solicit donated gear appeared first on The Forward.

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The Guardian view on Macron’s gamble: playing with political fire | Editorial

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date June 10, 2024

The French president’s decision to call a snap parliamentary election, after Marine Le Pen’s triumph in European polls, is a fateful moment

Ahead of Sunday’s European election results, attention was understandably focused on the impact of a potential far-right surge on the balance of power in Brussels institutions. In the event, the pan-European centre held, just about, with more moderate conservative parties generally enjoying a good night. But that was not even close to being the main headline of the evening.

Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to call snap legislative elections, after a humiliating defeat at the hands of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party (RN), is a gamble of the highest order, taken from a position of weakness. Even by the standards of a president who created his own movement to demolish the traditional centre-left and centre-right, it is a surprisingly risky move. In a Sunday evening address, Mr Macron told the nation that it was a necessary one in order to “clarify” a result that saw the extreme right win a combined 40% of the vote. That clarification, when it comes on 7 July, may or may not be welcome.