editorials
Mounting Discomfort With
Netanyahu’s Choices
W e have counseled restraint in reacting to
reports of leadership appointments in the
new coalition government being hammered out
by Israel’s prime minister-designate, Benjamin
Netanyahu. And we continue to believe that
appointees and holders of significant government
portfolios should be given a chance to do their
work before being judged or criticized. Still, we are
concerned. While we deeply respect the will of the Israeli
electorate and accept the fact that Israel’s voters
have chosen by a wide margin to support an array
of hard-right, nationalistic and religiously assertive
members of Knesset — many of whom will become
ministers or senior portfolio holders in an expand-
ing universe of significant government positions
with direct impact on every segment of Israel’s
diverse society — nothing in that respect and def-
erence needs to tolerate racism, religious intoler-
ance, homophobia or other discriminatory agendas.
In the opening round of reports concerning
coalition discussions, we saw a number of famil-
iar names. We heard a lot about Itamar Ben-Gvir,
Bezalel Smotrich and Aryeh Deri before, during
and after the November elections, and watched
the chess-like moves Netanyahu made as he navi-
gated ministry allocations among the leaders of his
emboldened and demanding right-wing and haredi
coalition partners.
And yes, we wonder with the rest of the world
about the wisdom of appointing the avowed
nationalist and proponent of more confrontational
security measures like Ben-Gvir to the newly cre-
ated position of National Security Minister. And we
wonder about the package of ministerial positions
reportedly promised to Smotrich and his Religious
Zionist Party in exchange for Smotrich stepping
back from his impossible demand to serve as the
country’s defense minister. Further, we can’t quite
understand why the Knesset should be asked to
change existing law in order to enable twice-con-
victed Deri to become a minister in the government
and serve as deputy prime minister. Nonetheless,
we are willing to wait and see what these newly
minted ministers do with their new portfolios.
But even our deference can’t abide Netanyahu’s
announced agreement to appoint Knesset member
Avigdor (“Avi”) Maoz to be the next head of “Jewish
Identity” for the Israeli government. Maoz is the
single lawmaker of the fringe Noam Party (which
partnered with the Religious Zionists for election
purposes) and is one of the Knesset’s most extreme
far-right politicians. He espouses non-pluralist
Jewish views and anti-LGBT, sexist and anti-Arab
positions. Maoz wants to change the Law of Return
to exclude non-halachic Jews from immigrating to
Israel; he wants to impose stricter Shabbat obser-
vance on Israelis and strengthen the Orthodox
Rabbinate’s monopoly over Jewish life in Israel; and
he espouses a self-righteous program of “family
values” as part of his multi-pronged, homophobic
campaign against the LGBTQ community.
The appointment of Maoz to any position of lead-
ership and authority in the new Israeli government
is a declaration of war against any effort to create
a cooperative and accepting civil society in the
State of Israel and a startling slap in the face to the
overwhelming majority of Diaspora Jewry. Maoz’s
intolerance and the policies he promotes threaten
to create deep rifts within Israel and extreme dis-
comfort and rejection in the Diaspora. That is not
in Israel’s interests. JE
A Stain on the World Cup
A lmost every country wants to host the World Cup.
The competition for hosting rights, however, is
corrupt. How else does one explain that this year’s
World Cup kicked off last month in Qatar after more
than a decade’s worth of controversy?
The questions about Qatar, a Persian Gulf emir-
ate smaller than the state of Connecticut, have
very little to do with what the world calls “foot-
ball.” Instead, inquiry focuses on a global corrup-
tion scandal in which Qatar is alleged to have
paid bribes for the award of hosting rights, the
sky-high price tag Qatar spent to build facilities
to host the event, serious human-rights concerns
about Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers and
outrage over Qatar’s treatment of women and
LGBTQ people.
Qatar, of course, denies the allegations of brib-
ery. But according to the U.S. Department of
Justice, multiple officials of FIFA — the governing
body of the World Cup — received bribes to vote
for Qatar as the host of the tournament. And a
simple analysis of the Qatar bid shows how weak
the application was.
12 DECEMBER 1, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
For example, at the time of its bid in 2010,
Qatar didn’t have sufficient stadiums to host the
World Cup or places to house the million-plus
fans who would come to watch the games. Since
then, Qatar has built seven new stadiums and
renovated an eighth; accelerated the building of
an entire new city and a subway system to sup-
port it; expanded its airport; and constructed a
massive number of new residential buildings and
hotels. The cost incurred by Qatar (exclusive of
bribes) is estimated to be in the range of $300
billion — more than all the previous World Cups
and Olympics combined.
Qatar has a population of 3 million, only about
300,000 of whom are Qatari citizens. The rest are
foreign workers, and it is they who do the hard
and dangerous labor in the emirate, including con-
struction for the World Cup. Human-rights groups
accuse the Qataris of using forced labor under
abusive conditions and report that 6,500 migrant
workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh
and Sri Lanka died in Qatar since 2010, mostly in
service of the World Cup construction projects.
Qatar has the world’s third-largest natural-gas
reserves and is one of the top oil producers. Qatar
hopes to use the international visibility of the
World Cup to help grow its non-energy economy,
with ambitions to become a regional business and
tourism hub.
In the euphoria of the soccer competition, we
hope that Qatar’s record of human rights abuse and
mistreatment does not get lost. In addition to its
migrant worker victims, Qatari women are denied
by the country’s male guardianship rules the right
to make key decisions about marriage, choice of
work opportunities, travel abroad and reproductive
health care. The country’s laws also criminalize
all forms of sex outside marriage, including sex
suffered by rape victims. Sex between men is pun-
ishable by up to seven years in prison.
We worry about the “split screen” on which fans
watch this year’s World Cup — as they celebrate
the sport they love and a tournament that has
meaning — being played in a country that has built
the games on corruption, exploitation and human
suffering. JE
editorials & opinion
The Killing Plague
O ur nation is suffering from what can best
be described as a mass shooting epidemic.
According to data from Gun Violence Archive, more
than 600 mass shootings have occurred in the United
States over the past 11 months. That’s a startling
average of almost two mass shootings per day —
defined as an event in which at least four people are
shot, excluding the shooter.
We don’t hear about all of the shootings, but we
hear about many of them. And we recoil in horror
each time another incident leads to the senseless
loss of precious life prompted by yet another dis-
turbed person who got legal access to a gun.
Just last month, there was the Nov. 13 shooting
at the University of Virginia in which three students
died. On Nov. 19, five people died in a shooting in
a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub. And on Nov.
22, a Walmart employee killed six people in one
of the company’s stores in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Thanksgiving was the six-month mark of the killing
of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary
school in Uvalde, Texas, which came 10 days after
a supermarket killing spree in Buffalo, New York,
that left 10 people dead.
We have pleaded before in this space for much-
needed gun-control legislation to be enacted with-
out impinging precious citizen rights under the
Second Amendment. And we have questioned why
anyone not in the military or law enforcement needs
automatic weapons or other repeat fire gun enhance-
ments. We were encouraged by the gun-safety leg-
islation that President Joe Biden signed into law last
June — the first major gun-safety legislation passed
by Congress in nearly 30 years. But if that legislation
is working, it seems to be doing so very slowly.
The new gun-safety law includes incentives for
states to pass red-flag laws that allow courts to
take away weapons from people deemed to be
a threat to themselves or others. The law also
prevents those convicted of domestic abuse from
owning a gun. And it expands background checks
on people between the ages of 18 and 21 who
want to buy a gun.
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia
have red-flag laws. But the mere existence of
the laws does not prevent killings. Killings will
only be prevented when the laws are enforced.
Unfortunately, surveys indicate that few states
actually make use of their red-flag laws — some
because law-enforcement officials are reluctant to,
and some because of a lack of awareness of the
laws or the lack of a clear understanding of how
to implement them. Neither reason is acceptable,
particularly since nearly two-thirds of Americans
support the new gun law.
The next steps are clear: Elected officials and
law-enforcement personnel need to familiarize
themselves with their state’s red-flag laws and
enforce them. And if they don’t, reluctant elected
officials should be voted out and unwilling law
enforcement personnel need to be replaced. We
cannot tolerate the continued tyranny of senseless
gun violence. JE
‘The Fabelmans’: Steven Spielberg’s
Antidote to Jewish Victimhood
By David Suissa
I hope the Jew haters who bully a young Steven
Spielberg in his new movie “The Fabelmans” get a
chance to see the film.
In fact, I hope Kanye “Ye” West, Kyrie Irving, Jew-
hating white supremacists and any sect who believes
American Jews are not the “real Jews” also see the film.
I want them to see the film for many reasons, but
primarily because of the young Spielberg’s reaction
to being called a “kike” and a “Christ killer” and get-
ting beaten up by ignorant, Jew-hating thugs while
in high school in the mid-1960s.
Instead of wasting his life wallowing in victim-
hood, instead of using the Jew haters as scapegoats
for his failed life, instead of turning outrage into an
occupation, Spielberg went creative.
His revenge on the haters was to become argu-
ably the most successful and influential filmmaker
of his time, a Jew who regaled hundreds of millions
throughout the world with stories that left indelible
marks on all of us.
It’s worth remembering Spielberg’s journey as we
try to figure out how to respond to the recent wave of
anti-Jewish sentiment in this great land of opportunity.
You see, Spielberg is not an outlier. He’s only
one of the more visible examples of American Jews
responding to antisemitism by doubling down on
success and achievement. There have been millions
more like him, in all fields.
Not surprisingly, a scholarly study from 2007
by Paul Burstein of the University of Washington
concluded that “Jews are much more successful
economically and educationally than other ethnic,
racial, and religious groups in the United States.”
What are we to do with such information? Ignore
it? Pretend it doesn’t exist? Be embarrassed by it?
For better or for worse, the reality is that it’s hard
for most people to feel sorry for Jews. We need not
take that personally: People who are perceived to be
successful rarely attract much sympathy. That’s why
any attempt to define Jews as “victims,” however
justified, will always be a tough sell.
We can quote all the studies we want about being
the most attacked minority group in the country, but
our “success narrative” in America is too ingrained in
people’s consciousness. No matter how hard we try,
most people will never see us as credible victims.
If anything, we should consider going in the oppo-
site direction — promote achievement, not victim-
hood. At the very least, this will be credible, since
people already see Jews as high achievers.
The problem is that we’re so traumatized by the
antisemitic trope of the “all-powerful Jew” that we’re
afraid to own up to our success, lest it fuels those
dreaded conspiracy theories.
So we’re trapped. We don’t make credible victims,
but our success is too credible for comfort.
This is why I loved “The Fabelmans”: It’s not activ-
ism. It’s not a documentary about fighting antisemi-
tism. It’s not a survey showing how terrible America
has become for Jews.
It’s none of those things. It is, above all, enter-
tainment! The Judaism in the film is part of a great story.
Non-Jews who see the film, including the haters, will
see Spielberg’s family lighting Chanukah candles
and a young Spielberg receiving gifts that will spark
his dreams of creating films.
They will see a young Spielberg refusing to apolo-
gize for killing Christ because, as he says, he wasn’t
there 2,000 years ago.
They will see a young Spielberg turn into a hero
among the Jew-haters of his high school by creating
a beach film on “ditch day” that blew his school
away on prom night.
Near the end, there’s a close-up shot of the young
Spielberg’s face as he’s operating the projector on
prom night. Slowly, he realizes the positive reaction
to his film from students who until then had shown
him only animosity toward his Jewishness.
You can almost read the lesson on his face: “This
is how I will fight Jew hatred from now on. By not
denying my Jewish identity, by having the time of my
life, and by bringing a little joy to the world. I will
fight it like a winner, not a whiner.” JE
David Suissa is editor-in-chief and publisher of Tribe
Media Corp and the “Jewish Journal.” This op-ed was
originally published by the Jewish Journal.
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 13