March 22, 2026 - Iran, Israel, the Epstein File, and a Lot More

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Ending the War in Iran 

David E. Sanger whose New York Times
column linked to below is a 'must' read.

You won’t have time to eat or sleep today if you check out all of the news and opinion internet sites, and newspapers as well, dealing with the war in Iran. You have to be selective and pick and choose among them to be somewhat informed. If any of you can tell me what our objectives in attacking Iran are, please do. They seem to change daily. 

MS NOW’s daily report dated March 21 suggests that Iran is now in a better position than they were before the United States attacked them! Strange but possibly true!  Click here or copy and paste https://www.ms.now/ on your (https://www.ms.now/) on your browser line to get there. 

It is clear why Israel attacked Iran and probably would have done so even without our involvement, and that includes decimating their leadership. 

It is not so clear, however, that Iran was presenting an immediate a threat to the United States to the extent that it was necessary to attack them without even getting Congressional approval. The Constitution specifies that going to war is a Congressional decision, ultimately to be carried out by the President. 

As of now, we can stop our attacks any time we choose, declaring a victory, but that would enable the Iranians to also claim a victory by being able to point out their surviving being attacked without real regime change nor destruction of their uranium stockpile being accomplished. 

It takes two sides to end a conflict and while I suspect Trump is ready to do so, Iran seems to prefer to wait a while to see what damage to America’s alliances and domestic politics ensue. Ultimately, they will come around, recognizing that their economy depends on their being able to sell their oil to whomever they allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz, well knowing that the United States will not attack such non-Iranian-flagged tankers. Trump, unsuccessfully hoping war-induced patriotism would reverse his sagging poll numbers, even among Republicans, has put Iran in the driver’s seat as to when our involvement in this war ends. Whether or not he recognizes this is questionable.                                                        

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While there’s a limit to the number of opinions for which I am willing to purchase a subscription, this ‘teaser’ from the Atlantic magazine in trying to sell me one, is by itself informative concerning where we are in our war in Iran and how we got there. (I am not a subscriber to the Atlantic, despite their tempting ‘teaser’ which follows.) Here’s what they said about our president whose unbelievable stupidity got us to this point.: 

‘Donald Trump does not think strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will change the behavior of other people in other places. He does not consider the wider implications of his decisions. He does not take responsibility when these decisions go wrong. Instead, he acts on whim and impulse and when he changes his mind - when he feels new whims and new impulses - he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.’ 

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Every time I read something like this, I become concerned by the number of Americans who were sufficiently gullible or ignorant enough to have voted for him, pointing out that to be the Achilles heel of our democracy. 

At best, the presidencies of Donald Trump will serve as lessons to voters to be very, very careful of for whom they vote, scrutinizing every aspect of a candidate’s background before casting a ballot. At worst, they will have permanently poisoned our striving to maintain a representative democracy.

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Before leaving this subject, I suggest you check out Sunday’s New York Times ‘News Analysis’ piece by David Sanger concerning the war in Iran. To do so, click here or copy and paste https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/us/politics/trump-iran-offramp.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VFA.LyO3.aoq7KVSnfHxK&smid=url-share  on your device’s browser line. 

 (David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.) 

JL 

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Three Professors in the Spotlight 

Professor Timothy Snyder’s March 21 posting, addressing the need to protest, includes a request that it be shared with others (like you). Click here or copy and paste https://snyder.substack.com/p/no-kings-freedom on your browser line … read it, and pass it on as he requests. Please! 

Then, checking out ‘Letters from an American,’ particularly Boston College Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s March 18 and 19 postings, and UCSD Professor Barbara Walter’s ‘Here Be Dragons,’ particularly its March 20 link to a New York Times Magazine article, ought to keep your political appetites satisfied, if the Iran situation isn’t enough to do that. 

Click here or copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ to get to the free part of ‘Letters from an American,’ where the Administration’s efforts to hide significant new details of the Epstein scandal are coming to light. It is unclear whom they are trying to protect. 

Click here to get to ‘Here be Dragons’ or copy and paste https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/ on your browser line to get to Professor Walter’s March 20 posting. It provides a link to the New York Times Magazine’s lengthy article which suggests that Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 2023 attack was unnecessarily prolonged by Netanyahu’s efforts to maintain the coalition with the far right ‘settler’ minority that keeps him in power. 

JL 

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Here Comes the Judge, Again – So What?

The Trump administration had limited the presence of journalists covering the White House, including their admission to supposed press conferences, only to those supposed journalists (like the ‘pillow guy’ and extremist Laura Loomer) fully acceptable to their Trumpian views. Even reporters from Fox weren’t automatically given clearance! 

A Federal judge, in a suit brought by the New York Times, has just decided that’s illegal for several reasons, including violation of the First Amendment. Let’s see if Trump and his lackeys pay any attention to this ruling or choose to spend the remainder of his term in office appealing it.  He has Attorney General Bondi and Judge Cannon up in Fort Pierce on his side.

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting. 

Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com

More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. 

Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. 

Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. 

Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always! 

JL 

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March 19, 2026 - World Baseball Classic, Rosenberg on Iran, When Antisemites Pretend Not to be Antisemitic, and a Bit More

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Venezuela Defeats the U.S.A. 

The World Baseball Classic, featuring professional players representing the countries of which they are citizens, was won on Tuesday evening by Venezuela. In the final round, they upset the United States, despite a ‘USA’ lineup that included the bats of Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, and Kyle Schwarber. 

Tied at two runs each going into the ninth inning, Venezuelan pinch runner Javier Sanoja (a Miami Marlin reserve), who had stolen second base, scored when Eugenio Suarez doubled. 

Venezuela had defeated Italy and Japan to reach the final game. Those games, played in the Miami Marlins’ home ballpark, hosted full houses, something the Marlins never achieve in their regular seasons there. The World Baseball Classic is becoming more and more important each year because of its international nature. 

I wonder if imprisoned former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, or President Trump who had physically removed him from office, watched the game … which although pointedly non-political, painted the Venezuelan people in that country or expatriates living here, in a favorable light. 

Maduro, in a melancholy way from his jail cell, probably enjoyed seeing the Venezuelans win. Trump, of course, would have loved a victory for the USA, especially just after the Academy Awards on Sunday night honored a Ghanaian (Michael E. Jordan) as the best actor and an Irish woman (Jessie Buckley) as the best actress. (In all fairness, the best picture Oscar went to an American film, ‘One Battle After Another.’) 

JL

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Looking at the Numbers, Hope, and ‘Hopium’ 

I trust the statistics that the Google platform provides showing from where access to Jackspotpourri is taking place. Until now, there has not been any recent clicking on it from Iran. But on Tuesday morning, more than triple the number of hits on this site came from Iran than came from the United States! It appears that this was an anomaly because it was not repeated on succeeding days. 

While Jackspotpourri’s statistical breakdown cannot determine if Tuesday’s outburst of contacts originated with civilians or the government there, it is hoped that some Iranian civilians are still able to take advantage of news and opinion internet sites based outside of that country. 

Meanwhile, Americans can get some idea of what is going on from Simon Rosenberg’s ‘Hopium Chronicles.’ Our government’s releases are next to worthless. His March 17 posting can be found by clicking here or copying and pasting https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/trump-and-trumpism-were-already-failing on your browser line. 

Rosenberg is not a supporter of the President and considers him to be ‘mad,’ and he doesn’t mean it in the sense of being angry. Many in this country agree. 

JL 

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Funny Remark Were It Not the Truth 

According to Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) observed that Trump “has more plans for the ballroom he’s trying to build at the East Wing than anything he’s gonna do next in the Middle East.” (This was excerpted from Professor Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ dated March 17, always a good source of information from other sites as well as her own commentary, available without a subscription at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ .) 

And while you’re there, check out her March 18 posting which seems to open, or re-open, doors that the Republicans had thought were locked regarding the Epstein scandal. 

 JL 

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Wartime Berlin & More on Antisemitism 

Besides its cover appearing in the previous Jackspotpourri posting, the March 16 New Yorker magazine included an article about Berlin during the height of World War Two. Based on ‘Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-1945’ by Ian Buruma, it reported how Berliners, including Jews, did some terrible things in order to stay alive there during the war. 

 American journalist Martha Gellhorn (she was Ernest Hemingway’s third wife) who travelled to the Rhineland shortly before V-E Day, wrote a famous dispatch that read, in jokingly quoting a fictitious German: 

 “No one is a Nazi. No one ever was. There may have been some Nazis in the next village, and as a matter of fact, that town about twenty kilometres away was a veritable hotbed of Nazidom. To tell you the truth, confidentially, there were a lot of Communists here. We were always known as very Red. Oh, the Jews? Well, there weren’t really many Jews in this neighborhood. Two, maybe six. They were taken away. I hid a Jew for six weeks. I hid a Jew for eight weeks. (I hid a Jew, he hid a Jew, *all God’s chillun hid Jews.)”  This was apparently her ‘wordplay’ on the title of a popular 1925 play by Eugene O’Neill – ‘All God’s Chillun Got Wings.’ 

This reminds me of Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude, who on seeing her son’s play mimicking her acts, remarked. ‘The lady (in the play) doth protest too much, methinks.’ The Queen feared that her own guilt, on close examination, would be revealed, so she made a point of criticizing the ‘lady’ in Hamlet’s play.  

So it might be with those who go overboard denying being antisemitic. 

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting. 

Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com 

More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. 

Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations.  

Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. 

Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. 

I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always! 

JL 

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March 16, 2026 - Our Dumb Administration, a Magazine Cover, a Page from the Don's Family Album, and More

 

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 One Dumb Administration 

Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ dated March 13 and 15 document the continuing lies of the President and the incompetence of his administration, particularly military ‘prayer leader’ & Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth and supposed negotiator Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, whose profound ignorance of facts and lack of diplomatic skills resulted in the war with Iran. 

Trump is too dumb to know that business skills do not automatically transfer to diplomatic skills. Neither Hegseth nor Witkoff have any business being in government unless there are openings in its buildings’ janitorial staffs.

                                                        

Unfortunately, American voters were sufficiently misguided in 2024 and elected Trump president who appointed these misfits, along with many others, to important positions. As I have pointed out in the past, such ignorance on the part of voters is the Achilles heel of our democracy. But rather than restrict voting, which happens to be one of Trump’s aims to keep Republicans in power, it is preferable to try to remedy ignorance, something Jackspotpourri attempts to do, in its limited way. 

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The President and his appointees apparently believe their own lies. Going to war without a consistantly stated objective is dumb, even well over par for this dumb administration. Trump doesn't remember its objectives from day to day. The current New Yorker magazine cover well illustrates this, echoing  World War Two Generals MacArthur and Patton. Trump's attempts at military behavior insults their memories.  Here's the President on the way to tee off in a golf cart driven by former Fox weekend anchor Peter Hegseth.

 JL 

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Two Questions Raised by ‘The Bulwark’

I don’t frequently refer to ‘The Bulwark,’ which requires a subscription to get near to the meat of what they ‘headline’ but they raised two interesting questions on March 15, without giving their answers, if there are any. (Tip for them: A posting that says up front that it will take 60 minutes to read invites its being ignored.) 

They asked ‘what happens if Trump doesn’t TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) and pulls the plug on the Iran war excursion after things go from messy to bad.?’ I suspect he can just declare it to be a victory and try to leave things as they were, if that is still possible, but which I suspect they will no longer be after he screwed it all up. 

They further ask ‘what happens if we know how to reform the system (that got us into this war, I assume), but the system is so ossified that it can’t be reformed?’ I think that is what I’ve often referred to as our democracy’s Achilles heel, curable only by eliminating ignorance on the public’s part, an enormous, if not impossible, task. 

I think that these are questions that will still be in search of answers by Americans before they vote in the November mid-term Congressional elections. And that might be why Trump and Republican State legislatures are trying to make it far more difficult for Americans to vote in those elections. 

JL 

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Trump in Uniform 

The closest Donald John Trump ever got to the honor of wearing any military uniform was when he was at New York Military Academy to which his parents had sent him, and which did not object to enrolling students with bone spurs on their feet.

Here is a photo taken on a visitors’ day there with his parents which the President, unbelievably, was not ashamed of releasing on his website, while real Americans, unlike wannabe tyrants like him, risk their lives attacking Iran at his direction. Donald is the one in the military costume, probably left over from a student operetta there. 

Needless to say, Donald did not continue his military masquerade by joining the ROTC programs at either Fordham University or the University of Pennsylvania. This might have ended up with his being caught up in the Vietnam War, were it not for those bone spurs earning him five deferments. 

JL 

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 More about Fueling Antisemitism 

Those interested in reactions to Peter Beinart’s thoughts that appeared in the prior posting of Jackspotpourri explaining how the Iranian war is fueling domestic antisemitism can access varying opinions based upon what he wrote. Here’s how: 

 (1) Click on the link (peterbeinart.substack.com) provided there, and once there, then 

 (2) Click on his March 9 posting.Then,

 (3) Click again, this time on the speech bubble  

displayed there.

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Beinart is Not Without His Own Agenda 

Those reading this should recognize that Beinart’s views (as repeated in the prior posting of Jackspotpourri) are the words of a journalist who has taken the position that Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel was excessive, resulting in many unnecessary civilian deaths in Gaza and turning much of its urban area into rubble. 

He also is a strong advocate of the rights of Palestinians in Israel and the territory it controls. 

So it is difficult to consider his opinionated journalism to be objective or neutral, the words of an ‘honest broker,’ whether or not you agree with them. Keep in mind from where they come, in considering their role in fueling antisemitism. 

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting. 

Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com 

More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. 

Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. 

Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. *Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always! 

JL

                                                             * * * *

March 13, 2026 - Fueling Antisemitism, Whom to Believe, and a Letter

 

                                                          

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Fueling Antisemitism 

If you are at all concerned with antisemitism in the United States, please see the latest that liberal columnist Peter Beinart, former editor of the New Republic and author of numerous articles and books, has to say about it. 

At present, Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.  He is an editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, a contributing opinion columnist at The New York Times, a political commentator for MSNBC (now MSNOW), CNN, and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, according to his biography as found on Wikipedia.

 

Beinart

Beinart points out that, in his opinion, our attacks on Iran were not in the interest of our country but rather primarily in the interest of the State of Israel, effectively delivering the argument that it is not ‘America's war,’ into the hands of antisemites who are not reluctant to use it.  He particularly attacks the role major Jewish organizations have played in letting this happen. 

The other day in his ‘Beinart Notebook,’ he included a video of a Marine Corps veteran being thrown out of a Senate hearing room for loudly demonstrating against our paying for and fighting what he referred to as Israel’s war. (There’s a link to that provided later in this posting.) 

Here is the text which accompanied that video. You may agree or disagree with Beinart in his opposition to our attack on Iran, but it is very, very, important to be aware of its repercussions on antisemitism in this country. 

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The video transcipt's text reads as follows: 

    ‘So, there’s this video that I just can’t get out of my mind. It’s a video of a man named Brian McGinnis. He’s a retired Marine Corps veteran. And he goes to this Senate hearing, and he starts shouting. He’s in full Marine uniform. And, he starts shouting things like, ‘no one wants to fight for Israel.’ He’s pulled out of the room very, very brutally. It’s a disturbing video to watch. He claims that his arm was broken as he was pushed out, and he keeps shouting some version of this: ‘nobody wants to fight for Israel.’

    I would really encourage you, if you know people who support this war, especially if you know influential people in American politics, in the organized American Jewish community who support this war, to ask them to reflect on this video. Because I think it illustrates, in a terrifying way, the moment that we’re in today.

   The American people did not want this war. The initial polling has shown a strong opposition to the war. And remember, polling about war almost always goes down. Wars are usually most popular at the beginning, right? This war wasn’t even popular at the start. And there’s also good reason to believe that Israel was a major part of the reason that America launched this war. Not the only reason: I think Donald Trump’s hubris from his apparent success in Venezuela, and of the 12-Day War, and the Soleimani killing, all of these things have gone to his head and made him think—idiot that he is—that this is gonna be easy, that he can do in Venezuela. He’s basically said as much.

     So, it’s not only because of Israel. But anyone with eyes to see knows that Benjamin Netanyahu has wanted the United States to launch a full-scale assault on Iran for many, many, many years. It’s been an obsession of him for his entire political career. He’s open about it, right? And that he’s particularly been pushing Donald Trump to do so, and he took advantage of the vanity, the stupidity of this president that we have, and the brokenness of the foreign policy-making process to be able to get this done, right?

     So, what people said about Iraq—that Israel pushed the United States into war in Iraq, which is mostly not true. Israel was not focused on the U.S. invading Iraq, even back then, it was focused on Iran. It is much, much more true today. And what this Marine Corps veteran was saying has actually become the mainstream public understanding of why the U.S. did go to war, that it was pushed into it by Israel. And there’s a significant kernel of truth to that. 

    And this is happening in a moment in which real antisemitism is already rising. I’m not talking about the bullshit claims of antisemitism that say that people are antisemitic because they ask whether it might be better off if Israel were a country that treated everyone equally under the law, rather than based on Jewish supremacy. No. I mean, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owen, quoting the Talmud, spinning conspiracy theories about Jewish holocausts of Christians, all of this kind of stuff. This is really rising, right?

    It’s rising partly just because all forms of bigotry are now rising as American liberal democracy fails, and this kind of authoritarian ethno-nationalism rises. But it’s also rising because of this specific claim that America has been pushed into wars by Israel with the support of large Jewish donors like Miriam Adelson and Jewish organizations like AIPAC.

    And if you wanted to supercharge, if you wanted to supercharge that antisemitism, nothing, nothing could have supercharged it more than what we have seen right now. The chances that MAGA 2.0 or MAGA 3.0 will be openly antisemitic—not veiled antisemitism—but openly antisemitic, the language of Fuentes, the language of Candace Owens, are now much, much greater. And we may see more of this open antisemitism also on the left too because it may well be popular on parts of the left, as well as the right.

     Now, I don’t expect Benjamin Netanyahu to have taken the safety and well-being of American Jews into account when he made this decision, right? Netanyahu is the elected leader of Israel. He responds to the electorate of Israel. Most Palestinians who live under Israeli control are not part of that electorate, right? He responds to the electorate of Israel and the sense of its self-perception, right? I think that is actually also going to be disastrous over the long term for Israel, but Netanyahu responds to Israelis.

    Israeli leaders have never actually put the interests of diaspora Jews, made that been a serious focus of their foreign policy if it’s conflicted with their sense of Israeli national interest. That’s why Netanyahu hangs out with Viktor Orban. This is an old story. This is why Menachem Begin was pals with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, they’ve hung out with antisemites for decades and decades if those people supported Israel.

    But we do have the right to hope that the leaders of the organized American Jewish community, whose responsibility is to Jews in the United States, that they would think about the consequences of this war for us. And the consequences are catastrophic, right? If you were a small minority in a country, which American Jews are, a small minority, also we have as baggage a very long history of antisemitic stereotypes about Jews, right?

    You have to have a decent respect for the opinions of the other people in your country, right? A decent respect for the opinions of the American people, right? And what the pushing and now celebration of this war from AIPAC, from the Anti-Defamation League, from the American Jewish Committee, and for a whole series of commentators, right, who are associated with those organizations, what their attitude shows is, basically, a lack of respect for the opinions of the American people, and a lack of understanding of the position of American Jews in this society.

    I want to be clear about what I’m saying. American Jews are and deserve to be understood as absolutely full citizens in this society. But being a full citizen, an owner of this country, right, doesn’t only mean rights, it also entails certain obligations. It entails the obligation to think seriously about the national interest of this country.

    The claim that it was in America’s national interest to spend billions of dollars trying to topple the Iranian regime is just nonsense. Can anybody with a straight face say that if the U.S. government has $10 billion, that the $10 billion are best spent doing this, rather than dealing with the many, many, many terrible challenges we have at home? Of course not. It’s an insult to people’s intelligence to suggest this, right?

    And what the organized American Jewish community is doing by pushing this, it is creating a dynamic in which it’s going to be even easier for antisemitism to spread, and for American Jews to be seen as not people who are part of a country trying to think about what’s best for that country, but to play exactly in to what Fuentes and others say. Which is that American Jews are not interested in the welfare of this country, not interested in the economic and the human costs of America going to war, because American Jews are loyal to Israel, right?

    This is the narrative that by supporting this war, American Jewish organizations are promoting. Obviously, the antisemites are responsible for their own antisemitism, but wise and sane Jewish leadership does not play into the hands of Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, especially in a very, very dangerous moment like this.

    And if you listen, right, to the people in the American Jewish community who are defending this war, right? And when they’re responding to people like Tucker Carlson and others who are saying this was a war for Israel, it’s not a war for the United States, their response is very telling.

    They say: are you questioning Donald Trump? Are you saying Donald Trump is a traitor, right? What, essentially, they’re doing is, they’re saying, don’t you dare criticize Donald Trump. They’re not making a serious policy argument. They’re basically trying to play on the authoritarian tendency and instinct that exists within the Republican Party and the MAGA movement today in order to shield themselves and this war from criticism, right?

    And this, I think, is a terrifying sign of things to come. Which is to say, the American Jewish community, in the middle of the 20th century, had a strategy, a democratic strategy, a strategy of pushing for greater democracy, and of trying to be engaged in that struggle.

    The American Jewish leadership now is doing things that are nakedly opposed to what the American people want. And when people express that public opposition, they are essentially taking refuge in the authoritarianism of the Trump movement, and saying, how dare you criticize Donald Trump, right? He is above criticism, and that’s their defense, right?

    This is part, and I think we’re going to see going more forward, the more you lose the American people, right, the more Americans become hostile, right, the more antisemitism grows, the more you have to ally with authoritarian dictators as for your safety, right? You abandon a democratic strategy—a small-D democratic strategy for Jewish safety and well-being—and you go back to this much older model, right, of the court Jew clinging to the authoritarian leader as the public turns more and more anti-Jewish.

    I don’t think the American Jewish establishment understands that this is the direction that they’re going, but this is actually the direction that they’re going to have to go because of their own policies, because they can’t distinguish between what the Israeli government wants and what’s good for the American people.

    And I think partly, this is a result of how cloistered the American Jewish establishment is. I’m not talking about American Jews in general. American Jews are widely integrated into American society in all kinds of ways. But the oligarchy that runs American Jewish organizations, the large donors, the people who work for those very large donors, that is a very cloistered, self-enclosed world in many ways. And I think it shields people from an actual understanding, in some ways, of what’s happening in American society, about the suffering that Americans endure as a result of these wars, that the American Jewish organizations keep pushing for. And I don’t think that these people in these positions either understand or are willing to understand how dangerous their actions are for us as American Jews.

    Watch again this video with Brian McGinnis, and ask yourself how it makes you feel as a Jew in the United States today to be represented by organizations that have pushed the United States into war, into this war. I will say, for me, it makes me feel as frightened as an American Jew for my safety in the United States as I can ever remember in my lifetime.’

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There’s a lot here with which to agree or with which to disagree, but it certainly is worth checking out. 

Because it originated as a spoken text accompanying a video presentation rather than standing on its own as a written opinion piece, the presence of its grammatical errors is understandable. 

Nevertheless, I object to Beinart’s repeatedly using the questioning word ‘right?’ over a dozen times in his narrative, assuming that by continuing to read further, the viewer or reader must acknowledge to some extent that they are in agreement with him. That’s a cheap trick to which one with his journalistic experience should not resort. He should leave it up to the reader to decide whether his words are ‘right’ or not. 

You can see the video he mentions by clicking here here or copying and pasting peterbeinart.substack.com on your browser line and looking for his March 9 ‘Beinart Notebook’ posting, most of which is quoted above. 

JL 

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Whom to Believe About the War with Iran and Keeping Up with the Blondes 

There continues to be significant disparities among reports regarding the war in Iran between what our president is saying, what the Iranians are saying, and what supposedly objective journalists are reporting. I continue to turn to Professor Heather Cox Richardson to try to untangle what is being reported. Check her site daily at https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/  to try to get a handle on what is happening. 

One thing that is becoming clear already is that the Iranians are not the Venezuelan-type pushovers that Trump believed they were. 

This brings to mind David Halberstam’s 1972 book, ‘The Best and the Brightest,’ described by Artificial Intelligence as being ‘a seminal 1972 book that critically examines the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, focusing on the paradox of highly intelligent, well-educated leaders who escalated the conflict despite its growing failure. The book uses biographical portraits of policymakers from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to explain how America became mired in the war and why it was lost, becoming a definitive history of the "Vietnam tragedy.” 

And President Trump’s advisors are far from being the ‘best and the brightest.’ 

Frankly, the least reliable source of all seems to be the President and his press secretary, another blonde wearing a cross so that everyone knows her faith. What they say is full of contradictions and sometimes includes criticism of those who don’t agree with them. Gee whiz, how can someone so religious as Karoline tell lies? 

Leavitt

And speaking of such blondes, I hear that Attorney General Pam Bondi has moved from her D.C. apartment to quarters on a military base. Apparently ‘open carry’ is insufficient protection for her. 

JL 

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A Letter Gets Published

For those of you who don’t read the South Florida SunSentinel, here’s a copy of the letter from me they published on March 11. 

 ‘It’s all about your vote’ (their heading): ‘Calls to impeach the president or remove him via the 25th Amendment are hollow rhetoric, so long as the line of succession starts with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who support him. Trump’s opponents can best express themselves by voting against Republicans at all levels on Election Day.’ 

... Jack Lippman, Boynton Beach 

JL 

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri 

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More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. 

Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. 

Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. *Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. 

Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence.  Always! 

JL 

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