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A DIVIDE OVER ANTISEMITISM — The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants, which ended 11 days of conflict, is holding. But America is now grappling with the painful specter of antisemitism after a flurry of reported new attacks against Jews. The Anti-Defamation League said Thursday that it logged 193 reports of antisemitic episodes since fighting began in the Middle East, compared with 131 during the previous week.
And that rise in bias crime has exposed an underexamined truth in the politics of the issue: The two parties hold their members to different standards when it comes to antisemitism.
On one level, progressive Democrats are trying to live out the principle that President Joe Biden offered during his 2020 campaign, as reported that spring by The New York Times. “Criticism of Israel’s policy is not antisemitism,” Biden reportedly told donors about one year ago. To a remarkable degree, congressional Democrats have balanced their support for Israel’s security this spring with criticism of policies by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, urging that Palestinian rights be respected even amid hostilities with Hamas.
But then-candidate Biden followed his words with an observation about another strain of rhetoric that continues to trip up liberals in his party. He warned that “too often, that criticism from the left morphs into antisemitism.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), for one, apologized in 2019 after multiple comments that were criticized as antisemitic, with one drawing particular fire from senior Democrats. Two years later, during the current conflict, Omar described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “terrorism” but also called one recent reported antisemitic attack “horrific and unacceptable.”
That lone tweet from Omar this month is unlikely to ease the pressure facing her and other members of the House’s liberal “Squad” during the current uptick in antisemitic attacks. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) tweeted today that “it’s time for ‘progressives’ to start condemning anti-Semitism and violent attacks on Jewish people with the same intention and vigor demonstrated in other areas of activism. The silence has been deafening.”
Biden’s and Phillips’ unsparing assessments of the left could hardly be more different from the GOP reception of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after she compared Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mask mandate on the House floor to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
Greene’s comments last week drew rebukes from a few House Republicans, all of whom voted to impeach former President Donald Trump -- who himself sparked charges of encouraging antisemitism when he said Jewish Americans who vote Democratic show “great disloyalty” to Israel. No current member of House GOP leadership has addressed Greene’s remarks.
Conservatives might argue that there’s a reason Democrats are quicker to call for greater vigilance against antisemitism among their own — because, as many in the GOP believe, anti-Jewish bias is less of an issue for their party. A liberal might counter that Jewish voters continue to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats because support for the Israeli government, as Biden described, isn’t synonymous with support for the issues Jews themselves care about.
But if you listen to Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, as our Nicholas Wu and Andrew Desiderio will report in POLITICO on Tuesday morning, what Jewish Americans really care about is bigger than the words of any one politician or party.
Even though “many people in the Beltway are” parsing Greene’s comments, Greenblatt said to them, “and it’s just the latest manifestation of her mania, her lunacy — the reality is on the ground in public places, the Jewish community is worried about their own literal physical safety and security. And that’s what we need to keep focused on.”
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What'd I Miss?
— Geneva probable location for U.S.-Russia summit: Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are likely to hold their first summit next month in Geneva, Switzerland, according to a U.S. official familiar with the issue. The exact date of the summit was not immediately clear, but it is expected to be held around the same time that Biden is visiting Europe in mid-June to meet with NATO and European Union leaders.
— National Guard to depart Capitol nearly 5 months after Jan. 6 riot: The military presence has been a regular fixture for lawmakers and staff since mid-January, with troops scattered throughout the Capitol for high-profile events such as the impeachment of Trump and the inauguration of Biden. Their exit comes as Capitol Police and other Hill security officials have raced to address shortcomings exposed by the riot — including through the installation of new leadership.
— New Jersey lifts mask mandate, social distancing rules in time for Memorial Day: New Jersey is lifting its mask mandate after having been one of the few holdouts in adopting the latest CDC guidance, Gov. Phil Murphy announced today. Murphy’s new directive, which takes effect Friday, the start of the Memorial Day weekend, gives New Jersey residents — even those who aren’t fully vaccinated — the green light to remove their masks and other face coverings in most cases. Matching the CDC’s guidance, the order excludes settings such as health care facilities, jails, schools, child care centers and public transportation networks.
— Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy will not challenge Rubio for Senate: Rep. Stephanie Murphy won’t run for U.S. Senate, a decision that was sealed after fellow Florida Congresswoman Val Demings recently signaled she will likely challenge incumbent Marco Rubio.
From the Health Desk
VISITING HOURS ARE STILL OVER — When a number of people shared stories on Twitter last week about not being able to see their loved ones at hospitals despite being fully vaccinated, Abraar Karan, an internal medicine physician at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, quoted the thread with a few words of his own: “What are we doing? We are harming families.”
Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. Key Covid data points across the country are moving in the right direction. But many health care facilities still have strict visitation rules.
“The over-conservatism that is solely Covid-focused can cause external harm,” Karan told Nightly’s Myah Ward.
Hospitals should not drop protections like mask requirements, Karan said, but it’s time to reconsider limits like allowing only one parent in the room at a children’s hospital, or not letting a fully vaccinated family member say goodbye to a dying loved one.
When it comes to Covid patients, we now know that people are most infectious when they’re out in the community before they get really sick, Karan said. Once patients are in the hospital, they’re often in an inflammatory state, when the viral load is much lower.
“I remember Mother’s Day last year, I had to call the daughter of a mom who was in the hospital. She was at the end of life, and I had to hold an iPad there so her daughter could Facetime with her,” Karan said. “I look back on that now. That mom was probably not infectious anymore at that point.”
That’s the nature of the Covid-19 pandemic. We look back on so many things we thought to be true this time last year, so many precautions that we now realize were next to useless.
At the same time, questions remain about the dangers posed during this next phase of the pandemic, as we add vaccines into risk calculations. These lingering uncertainties are why hospitals across the country are taking a conservative approach to reopening, said Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety policy at the American Hospital Association.
And there’s one crucial problem that no one has figured out, Foster said. How do you really know if someone is vaccinated?
Should hospitals use the honor system? Should visitors be required to show proof of vaccination? Letting strangers, vaccinated or not, take a brief trip to a grocery store or restaurant is less worrisome than lifting Covid restrictions for a hospital full of sick, vulnerable patients.
It’s a difficult tradeoff, balancing the need to keep patients and health care workers safe, while also being well aware that having a family member in the room is best for patient care, Foster said.
“Even if staff did everything they could to connect the patient and his or her family via Zoom … it’s not a substitute for being able to touch your loved one,” Foster said. “It’ll be looked at by people with much greater education than I have in the spread of infectious disease, but in the moment, or many moments of this Covid pandemic, that need to protect others from the spread of this disease that could potentially take their lives or cause them great harm, became an overwhelming concern.”
AROUND THE WORLD
EU SANCTIONS BELARUS OVER JET INTERCEPTION — In response to the interception of a passenger jet by Belarus, EU leaders today demanded the release of opposition activist Roman Protasevich and his traveling companion, Sofia Sapega, and called for a barrage of new sanctions against the government of strongman Alexander Lukashenko, David M. Herszenhorn writes.
In a statement after discussions at a summit in Brussels, heads of state and government called for sanctions against individuals and “entities.” They also said the Council of the European Union would adopt measures to ban Belarusian airlines from flying in EU airspace or accessing EU airports.
The leaders’ statement effectively provides the appearance of a quick, forceful response to the incident on Sunday, which several have denounced as a “hijacking” and “state-sponsored terrorism.” But the true extent of the EU’s response will not be known until officials, diplomats and lawyers work through the details of sanctions, which must be drafted to withstand legal challenges.
Nightly Number
PUNCHLINES
SCRIBBLING THE FILIBUSTER — In the latest Drawn Out, Matt Wuerker talks with Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley about his history with the filibuster, and whether the Senate will amend or discard it.
Parting Words
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