James' World 2

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REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

• Joel Carmel was raised in London’s Jewish community. He was passionately committed to defending Israel from its many critics, whom he believed was biased and did not grasp the constant threats to its security from the Arabian world.
• He went to Israel as soon as he could, joined the army, and rose to the rank of second lieutenant. He served in the West Bank territories, which Israel occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967.
• The West Bank is home to 2.8 million Palestinians, as well as more than 500,000 Jews, who are often described as settlers.
• When he witnessed the occupation as a soldier, he said he came to realize that Israel’s policies were as much a force for violence as the terrorism it was supposed to prevent.
• Carmel said he left the army determined to prove that “you can be a patriotic Israeli and criticize the occupation.”
• He now works with Breaking the Silence, an organization of military veterans that says it hopes to show the Israeli public what daily life is like for Palestinians living under the occupation.

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An Israeli soldier kicks a Palestinian flag in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on January 29.

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President Donald Trump’s racially charged warnings to suburban voters about crime and housing face a fundamental headwind: the suburbs themselves are much more racially diverse than even two decades ago.

In contrast to the stereotype of homogenous communities of White families behind white picket fences, in many of the largest suburban counties around America Whites now compose only about half or less of the population.

That’s especially true in the Sun Belt suburbs around cities such as Atlanta, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and Austin, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, which are emerging as critical election battlegrounds in 2020 and beyond.

But the diversification of the suburbs extends even to the classic “bedroom” communities of the Northeast, like the suburbs of New York City and Washington, DC. Of the 488 US counties, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program classifies as suburban in larger metropolitan areas, the White share of the population fell in 468 of them from 2000 to 2019, according to calculations by demographer William Frey.

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© Robert Knopes/Universal Images Group/Getty Images Suburban houses are seen in Fairfax, Virginia.

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The rise of Donald J. Trump, and his subsequent takeover of the Republican Party, has had an indelible impact—some might call catastrophic—on many aspects of public life in America. In ways that are as alarming as they are surprising, virtually no segment of society has been untouched by Trump’s blind hatred for his predecessor, from healthcare and education to the environment and criminal justice. His unprecedented willingness to use the office of the Presidency to settle personal scores and attack his critics is matched only by his zeal for dismantling democracy by deregulating corporate greed and unleashing the forces of unbridled capitalism.

Donald Trump is entirely consumed by jealously, rage, insecurity, and his own naked avarice, but his insidious infection of America began long before he was even a serious contender for public office. It began with the arrival of the Tea Party movement, a direct response to the election of Barack Obama, and a public demonstration of sheer rage against the Democratic Party for having had the audacity to elect a Black man to lead America.

The Republican Party did not invent Donald Trump but they actively aided and abetted the racism, long hiding just below the surface of America’s white power structure, in order to consolidate power and energize an apathetic electorate. The result was the unfortunate and unexpected election of a snake-oil huckster not even the Party was prepared for.

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County Freeholder Will Morey and Wildwood Police Chief Robert Regalbuto observing a Black Lives Matter March in Wildwood, NJ. Photo: David Todd McCarty

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