With Passover nearly here, we offer our members a streamlined newsletter that highlights some of the thought-provoking news and commentary of the last few days.
Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary in the George W. Bush White House, examines the role of the press corps in the coronavirus crisis:
Even before coronavirus, I often wondered if today’s press corps had covered the allied landing at D-Day in June 1944, if their stories would have led with the disastrous American landing on Omaha Beach, the paratroopers who dropped miles away from their targets and the submersible tanks that sunk to the bottom of the English Channel before ever touching land. Indeed, if each of these genuine military setbacks had been the lead story, the American people might have lost the will to fight the rest of the war. Which brings me to today’s press corps.
Victor Davis Hanson notes the the bad behavior of President Donald Trump's opponents (specifically Nancy Pelosi, the media, and Joe Biden) and takes them to task:
For now, the media, Pelosi, and Biden, along with the Left in general, wish to perpetuate a sense of viral Armageddon to make it politically impossible for Trump to initiate a graduated plan of returning America to work. Their hope is for a summer and fall of continued lockdown, a near depression rather than a mere recession, and enough public furor to end Trump in November—while hoping that a sudden post-election end to the lockdown will allow the natural recovery of Trump’s booming economy on their watch in 2021.
This is ridiculous: China has been appointed to the UN Human Rights Council's Consultative Group. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Jiang Duan, a minister at China's mission to the UN, was selected to serve on the UN Human Rights Council’s Consultative Group, a five-nation body that plays a key role in selecting human rights investigators who will oversee abuses across the globe. With a spot on the committee, China will be in a prime position to thwart investigations into its own human rights abuses.
Bobby Ghosh writes at Bloomberg that Joe Biden's call to ease our tough sanctions on Iran is part of a pattern:
The most charitable explanation for Joe Biden’s call for the easing of sanctions on Iran is that it is a combination of virtue-signaling and opportunism, the standard political admixture prescribed by spin-doctors for any campaign season... But such charity is misplaced. When it comes to the Middle East, Biden has a long history of endorsing woolly and reckless ideas, and not only when he’s run for office.
Sins of omission: The Washington Post featured a book review entitled, "A Palestinian American activist, fearless in the face of hate." Nowhere in this review of Linda Sarsour's memoir, We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders, was there mention of Sarsour's incitement and endorsement of hatred against Jews.
Jonathan Tobin reminds us that this is not a Passover for despair:
For most of us, this is the saddest Passover we can recall.
The coronavirus pandemic is unlike any previous trauma we’ve lived through. Nothing, not even the 9/11 attacks, brought our world to an extended collective halt the way the efforts to contain the disease has done.
...Rather than the prelude to Passover being a joyous time of preparation, vacations, or simply an opportunity to share a festive meal with family and friends, Jews are home alone, anxious and depressed.
...But for all of the gloom and doom that is overshadowing the holiday this year, it’s not the time for despair.
That’s not an easy thing to accept for people who have only lived in times of security and relative prosperity, as is certainly the case for Americans. We’re accustomed to think of pandemics as only the stuff of dystopian novels and movies. [But] a perusal of the history books ought to also encourage those inclined to despondency.
Throughout thousands of years of history, Jews have celebrated Passover under far worse conditions than our current situation.
