+ Jacqueline Rose in the LRB on Netanyahu: “Netanyahu is trying to absolve himself of a guilt whose reality he denies. He wants to be declared innocent without being convicted of anything. He seems blithely unaware that the more one tries to repudiate guilt, the more it entrenches itself, bringing the wrath of the gods, so to speak, down on your head: guilt is tenacious, or it is nothing.”

+ In a meeting at the White House, Trump’s ultra-Zionist mega-donor Miriam Adelson said she had consulted Alan Dershowitz in Israel about how to sidestep the Constitution and get Trump a third term as president: “We can do it… think about it. I will give you another $250 million.”

+ Trump: “If you go back 10, 12, 15 years ago at the most, the strongest lobby in Washington was the Jewish lobby. It was Israel. That’s no longer true. You have to be very careful. You have a Congress in particular that is becoming antisemitic. You have AOC plus three, you have those people.”

+ Lindsey Graham blamed the ISIS-inspired shooting in Australia on…Biden’s withdrawal from: “Obama and Biden have a lot to do with this…. Dumbass Biden—the biggest dumbass on the planet—withdrew from Afghanistan.”

+ NYC council member Vickie Paladino called for the “expulsion of Muslims from Western nations.” Zohran Mamdani’s response was swift: Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, said in a statement: “A million Muslims live in New York City. We belong here, as does every other New Yorker. This is vile Islamophobia from the Councilwoman and it has no place in our city.”

+ Mamdani’s message to the Jewish community during Hanukkah

My hope is that in leading this city that it will be a city where Jewish New Yorkers are not only safe to leave their homes and go to work and to spend their lives as they would like to, but also in celebrating their own faith.

Such a ferocious man! You can see why everyone trembles when he pedals his Citi Bike through the neighborhood…

+ Masha Gessen on The Voice of Hind Rajab:

The Voice of Hind Rajab” had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and took the Grand Jury Prize, the second-highest honor. A few days later, it was screened to great acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival. High-profile U.S. distribution companies came calling. But then, the producers Odessa Rae and Elizabeth Woodward told me, one by one, the companies peeled off. In the end, Woodward, who has a small distribution company, put together something akin to self-distribution. The movie opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday. Elsewhere in the world, this film, shortlisted for the Oscar for best foreign movie, has major distributors — but not in the United States or Israel. That’s a kind of coordination, too.