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This Week:

• As Political Lines Blur, RJC's Matt Brooks Warns of a Deeper Shift Facing American Jews
• RJC in the News
• Help Our Senate Candidates!
• Think We're Losing the War in Iran? Think Again.
• Mamdani Nixes School 'Buffer Zone' Bill; RJC Responds
• Short Takes
• Week's Best Tweets
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As Political Lines Blur, RJC's Matt Brooks Warns of a Deeper Shift Facing American Jews

David Taragin writes at The Algemeiner:

At some point, the question stops being which political party you belong to — and becomes what, exactly, you believe that party stands for.

That was the underlying tension in a recent conversation with Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks, who offered a stark assessment of the changing political landscape for American Jews: the erosion of bipartisan support for Israel, the reemergence of antisemitism across ideological lines, and a growing sense that long-held assumptions about political alignment no longer cleanly apply.

For decades, support for Israel functioned as one of the few durable points of agreement in American public life. It transcended party, survived shifts in leadership, and provided a kind of baseline continuity in an otherwise volatile political system. That consensus, Brooks suggested, has now meaningfully weakened.

"There is only one pro-Israel party today," he said on The Algemeiner's "J100" podcast. "And that's the Republican Party."

It is, in his telling, less a triumph than a warning — a sign that what was once shared ground has become contested terrain.

The shift did not happen overnight. Brooks, who has spent nearly four decades at the intersection of Jewish communal life and Republican politics, described a long internal effort to strengthen pro-Israel sentiment within the GOP — one that has, by his account, succeeded.

This important article is worth your time. Read it here.

RJC in the News

JNS: Veteran Pro-Israel Democrats Fear Losing Seats to Republicans in Florida Redistricting

Several pro-Israel, Democratic House members, including multiple Jews, could face tough races to be reelected to Congress if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signs off on redistricting maps, which he proposed on Monday and which passed the Florida state legislature on Wednesday.

The state House voted 83-28 in favor of the new maps, and the state Senate voted 21-7 for the maps.

… Sam Markstein, national political director and spokesman at Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS that "in Florida, even more pro-Israel Republicans will be elected to Congress."

"Meanwhile, in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom purged five pro-Israel Republican members of the House in favor of far-left radical Democrats, and the Left said nothing," Markstein said. "Spare us the faux outrage."

The Dispatch: As Democratic Support for Israel Erodes, Blame Falls on Netanyahu

The influential Republican Jewish Coalition rejects claims that [Benjamin] Netanyahu has been central to the deteriorating support for Israel on the left, saying Democrats are scapegoating the prime minister to obscure rampant antisemitism in their midst…

"Attempting to lay the blame for Democrats' cratering support of Israel at the feet of Prime Minister Netanyahu is a lazy red herring designed to distract from the main issue of Democrats appeasing and embracing an increasingly radicalized, antisemitic, anti-Israel party base," Sam Markstein, the RJC's chief spokesman, told The Dispatch. "You saw it at the Michigan Democrats convention in Detroit where they nominated a raving antisemite, who called Jews 'demons' and praised Hezbollah, to the University of Michigan Board of Regents. This is the reality on the ground in today's Democratic Party."

NBC News: Trump Aims to Defeat Dissident Republicans in Key May Primaries

Thomas Massie of Kentucky... is in the toughest fight of his political career: a primary against Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL.

Massie suggested the effort to take out lawmakers who oppose the president has a chilling effect on GOP lawmakers in Congress...

Sam Markstein, the national political director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, which is opposing Massie, said Massie’s suggestion that primaries have a chilling effect on the conference was "almost laughable."

"Republicans that are representing the people of their districts who wildly and overwhelmingly support President [Donald] Trump and his agenda, they are in a position to win all of their elections," Markstein said.

Think We're Losing the War in Iran? Think Again.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes at Fox News:

If you told me just a few years ago that this is where Iran would stand today, I would have dismissed it as fantasy.

The mistake that many analysts are making today is confusing the Iranian regime's survival with its strength. A regime can persist and still be strategically hollowed out. The Islamic Republic of Iran is that regime.

Iran's nuclear program has been set back by years: enrichment and reprocessing gutted, weaponization sites destroyed, the Fordow and Natanz enrichment facilities in ruins and a generation of senior nuclear scientists eliminated.

Iran's ballistic missile enterprise is badly crippled. Monthly output has collapsed from roughly 100 missiles to almost nothing. About half of the regime's missile arsenal and launch infrastructure has been destroyed.

… Iran's terrorist proxy network is shattered. Hezbollah and Hamas are heavily degraded. Israel decapitated the Houthi political leadership. The "Axis of Resistance" and "ring of fire" are now more slogans than the severe threats they once were.

Read more here.

Mamdani Nixes School 'Buffer Zone' Bill; RJC Responds

JNS reports:

Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, vetoed a bill that would have created "security perimeters" around educational institutions that prevent "physical obstruction, physical injury, intimidation and interference" while "preserving and protecting the rights to free speech, assembly and protest."

The bill, Int. 175-B, passed the New York City Council 30 to 19 and was thus subject to mayoral veto. Another bill, Int. 1-B, that creates a buffer zone around houses of worship, passed the council with a veto-proof majority of 44 out of 51 members. Mamdani said on Friday that he allowed the latter to go through.

… Sam Markstein, national political director and spokesman at the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS "that Mayor Mamdani's first veto as mayor of the city of New York serves to accommodate vile antisemitic protests comes as no surprise."

"Jewish New Yorkers are under siege and facing real threats. Where are the so-called Democrat leaders? Where is Chuck Schumer? Where is Hakeem Jeffries?" Markstein told JNS. "They're nowhere to be found, because they are petrified of Mamdani's radical Islamo-leftist base. They are cowards, plain and simple."

Political Violence is a Consequence of the Politics of Anathema

Jonathan Tobin, editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, writes:

American politics is now being conducted in a manner in which it is no longer possible to argue that there is no connection between the determination of his political opponents to demonize Trump and the willingness of extremists or disturbed persons to act on such rhetoric.

… The cost of the politics of demonization is political violence. That is always going to be true, no matter which country we're discussing, or which leaders or factions are treated in this manner. And if we want this to change, we're going to have to stop treating our political opponents as not merely mistaken, but monsters that must be punished and destroyed

… We should not be shocked that a political culture that treats antisemitism as tolerable—and even fashionable—would be one where political violence would also become normalized. If reactions to calls for Jewish genocide are said to depend on the "context" to generate outrage, then it is equally possible to imagine violence against political opponents being similarly accepted.

Short Takes

Troy: The White House and Buckingham Palace: A special relationship

Presidential historian Tevi Troy offers some history, and some great stories, about the relationships between US Presidents and British monarchs. One example: "When I served in the George W. Bush White House, I remember Karl Rove telling a very funny story from his stay at Buckingham Palace with Bush and forgetting a pair of socks. At an early morning White House senior staff meeting, Rove did an uproarious imitation of a palace attendant presenting a new pair of socks to the 'Right Honourable Mr. Rove' on a silver tray."

Hummel: “But Zionism!” isn’t an argument anymore

Zionism is not a theory anymore. It is a country called Israel.

It is over seven million Jews who live there. It is a language spoken by children in schoolyards. It is a passport, an army, a grandparents’ generation already buried in the ground. You cannot be antizionist toward a country the way you were toward an idea. The category error is too big.

… Here is the question that’s basically never answered: Take an Israeli seventeen-year-old in Haifa. She did not pick Zionism. She was born in 2009. Her grandfather came from Baghdad in 1951, because Iraq was expelling its Jews 10 years after the Farhud tried to murder them. She speaks Hebrew because her mother spoke Hebrew to her. She has an Israeli passport because that is the country her birth certificate was issued in.

What exactly does the antizionist want her to do?

… A movement that seeks to erase a national and ethnic identity through propaganda, persecution, and sometimes violence is not a legitimate political position. It is a hate group.

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