Jonathan Russo

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Jul 11, 2024, 9:30 PM

Will American Muslims bring on their own Nakba?

“I would say no presidential candidate has earned my vote.” Abdullah Hammoud Dearborn’s Muslim mayor was quoted by AFP news the other day. The possibility is real. The Nakba, or Arabic for “catastrophe,” refers to the loss of land in...

Feb 16, 2024, 6:51 PM

The Collective Trauma of Oct 7th

The killing field of Re’im in Israel’s Negev, where the Nova music rave massacre happened, is now open for public viewing. Tour buses of foreign visitors, Israeli soldiers, and police, friends and relatives of the dead as well as...

Nov 8, 2023, 1:35 AM

What if Native Americans came for the academic colonial settlers

I have a thought experiment for the Ivy Leaguers. One that may be unsettling so I am giving notice of trigger warnings to those sensitive to murder, rape, mutilation, and kidnapping. The Lenape were the original inhabitants of much of...

Oct 31, 2023, 11:53 PM

Jesus is about to save Israel, Ukraine, & Taiwan

How? He is going to use Mike Johnson, the newly elected Speaker of the House, as his servant. Speaker Johnson makes no apologies for his Christian views. They frame both his inner life and his political one. He is...

Oct 16, 2023, 7:17 PM

We’re about to learn the meaning of ‘Never Again’

Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and the site of a series of massacres carried out by German forces and local Nazi collaborators during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on 29Ð30 September 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a single operation. The decision to kill all the Jews in Kiev was made by the military governor, Major-General Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. It was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a soldiers, along with the aid of the SD and SS Police Battalions backed by the local police. The massacre was the largest single mass killing for which the Nazi regime and its collaborators were responsible during its campaign against the Soviet Union and is considered to be the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust to that particular date, surpassed only by the Aktion Erntefest of November 1943 in occupied Poland with 42,000Ð43,000 victims, and the 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941, committed by Romanian troops. Victims of other massacres at the site included thousands of Ukrainian nationalists and civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, communists and Roma. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 lives were taken at Babi Yar during the German occupation. (Photo by: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Now 72 years old, the Holocaust was before my time. But not so much that it was not present in my life. People talked about it, photos were widely available, German cars were boycotted, and I vividly remember seeing...

Apr 18, 2023, 9:11 PM

European Historical Uses of Decapitation

I write this from the heart of the Bloodlands. The Polish/Ukrainian border where lovely fertile fields of dark earth are the burial grounds of so many -- Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, and Jews. The 20th century’s two most prominent madmen...

Nov 30, 2022, 8:50 PM

Bring back the Mandate?

Dear Reader, please read the below with the knowledge that today, 11/30, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has a story that the Israeli army (IDF) is warning the new government that it may not be able to control the growing...

May 5, 2022, 9:52 PM

Mass Graves in Ukraine

I am not part of the “triggered” generation. To me, trigger was a gun part or the name of Roy Rogers’ horse. However, I experienced a trigger episode a few weeks ago upon seeing photos of the mass graves in...

Nov 10, 2021, 3:58 PM

Republican Jewish Coalition conference dispels antisemitic myths

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting at The Venetian hotel-casino November 6, 2021, in Las Vegas. (Ellen Schmidt/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)

If only the Republican Jewish Coalition would study history, it would never align itself with the Trump wing of the formerly normal GOP

Jun 2, 2021, 8:17 PM

How Israeli Hasbara Shifted to the Palestinians

I am old enough to remember pre 1967 Israel. I spent two months there in 1964 after my Bar Mitzva. Then it was the land of Egged buses not private cars, donkey carts in cities and young people dancing...

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About Me

Jonathan Russo has been observing Israel and its policies since he first visited in 1966. He is a businessman in New York City.