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.
