Bruce Ticker

Those “authoritarian school board Nazis.” “Israel literally owned Congress.” Reckless words. Wacky parents raging at school officials? Pro-Arab students whipping a crowd into a frenzy? Comparable words were uttered by them, yet such words were echoed in the past week by the unfiltered voices of Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. [Bruce S. Ticker]

Let’s hope Congress soon adopts the twin bills for infrastructure and social reforms. They will likely jumpstart the economy and aid both lower and middle-income Americans. This legislation could also yield dividends for Israel and American Jews: Eliminating much of the anti-Semitism from the Left. [Bruce S. Ticker]

Both political parties seek to hang onto base voters by tolerating anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry to some degree. Perhaps the right is a more dangerous threat to American Jews, but anti-Semites on the left are holding their own among Democrats. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, for those who brand her an anti-Semite, was even endorsed last year by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Democratic primary for her congressional seat. [Bruce Ticker]

By Bruce S. Ticker PHILADELPHIA — It might otherwise have been delightful to witness a lone irregular Republican senator join with a handful of insufferable House Democrats take a bipartisan stand over process and money in the halls of Congress. Yet $1 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile system – a defensive system, mind

It was Congress’s first certain body blow to American Jews in modern times, though Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib may feel that they were denied a chance to achieve it on Yom Kippur and had to settle for the first day of Sukkot. The so-called “progressives” in Congress led Democrats to commit an act of war against the Jewish people on Tuesday, when the House leadership slashed $1 billion incorporated into the spending legislation for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system in an emergency spending package. [Bruce S. Ticker]

Twas two nights before Yom Kippur, when all through Burlington City Hall, a half-mile from Lake Champlain’s eastern shore, many a creature of sorts was stirring…stirring up unrest for Jewish Vermonters, 5,400 miles from the land that inspired a City Council resolution urging “justice and (a) peaceful end to (the) Palestine and Israel conflict.” [Bruce S. Ticker]

By Bruce S. Ticker PHILADELPHIA — In the Famous-Last-Words department: “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” The “highly unlikely” happened on Sunday as a dozen Taliban fighters garbed in native dress gathered around a desk in the presidential palace in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.