Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Record on Israel and Religion

April 8 2022

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as a Supreme Court justice. Nat Lewin, whose firm briefly employed Brown Jackson, notes that there is little in her record that speaks to her approach to issues of particular importance to Jews. But two rulings give reason to be sanguine:

As a counter to the notorious Israel-baiting J Street, a pro-Zionist group called Z Street was formed in Pennsylvania in 2009. Its application for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Tax Code was delayed by the IRS under a policy that prescribed more exacting review for organizations “connected with Israel.” Z Street filed a lawsuit in a Pennsylvania federal court claiming that this “special policy” was unconstitutional. On the IRS’s motion, the case was transferred to the District of Columbia, and it was randomly assigned to Judge Jackson.

The Obama Justice Department strenuously contested Z Street’s legal claim, and it argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed. In May 2014, Judge Jackson ruled in a detailed opinion that Z Street’s lawsuit should continue.

Her sympathy for claims of religious liberty may have been disclosed in a case that came to then-District Judge Jackson in 2017. A lawsuit was initiated by a U.S. Postal Service employee named Howard Tyson, who claimed that his supervisor allowed other employees to play music while they worked but denied a promotion to Tyson because he played Christian gospel music over the supervisor’s objection to “religious music.” Judge Jackson refused to dismiss the case, saying that this was “a plausible claim for religious discrimination.” . . . Jackson’s initial ruling . . . demonstrated judicial receptivity for a somewhat tenuous claim of religious freedom.

These are thin reeds on which to make any prediction of what Justice Jackson will do. But it is all we have.

Read more at JNS

More about: Freedom of Religion, Supreme Court, US-Israel relations

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023