Ilana Redstone

Dec 14, 2023 | thecertaintytrap.substack.com | Ilana Redstone

There’s a lot of handwringing going on over the possibility of a Trump victory in 2024. So much so that one might be forgiven for assuming that everything possible is being done to minimize the likelihood that it actually comes to pass. But this assumption would be a mistake. Trump, occasionally referred to as “Teflon Don,” has a superpower. He is, as far as we can tell, impervious to shame. As Ezra Klein wrote for Vox in 2017, “You cannot embarrass Donald Trump.

Nov 13, 2023 | news-gazette.com | Ilana Redstone

The sad state of our national political conversation is apparent in the contempt with which members of one party refer to members of the other. We’re either bigots or snowflakes, depending on whom you ask. This contempt ladders up to a palpable threat to democracy itself. Often, threats to democracy are framed along partisan lines. The left sees it embodied in election denial, while the right sees it in the illiberalism of wokeness.

Oct 31, 2023 | thecertaintytrap.substack.com | Ilana Redstone

There’s a photo from the October 7 attacks in Israel that shows a female hostage with blood covering the seat of her pants, suggesting she endured profound sexual trauma. I didn’t have the courage or the stomach to look at the image myself, but I was on the phone with a friend on Saturday and she described it to me. My friend spoke of how the photo made her think of her own daughters and how she hasn’t been able to shake the image from her mind. She said this as I cried.

Oct 22, 2023 | thecertaintytrap.substack.com | Ilana Redstone

The past two weeks have seen one university after another stumble on its words, desperately trying not to alienate supporters on either the Israeli or Palestinian side. To be sure, universities’ longstanding unwritten policy of taking positions on heated issues failed here in part because this one is unusually complicated. For starters, it’s got history, religion, and politics all rolled into one.

Oct 12, 2023 | thecertaintytrap.substack.com | Ilana Redstone

As most people know, last Saturday brought an unprecedented series of attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants. The violence has made above-the-fold headlines in major newspapers around the world every day since. Depending on where you sit politically, the attacks are either the inevitable outcome of Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians or they’re yet more evidence that the only solution acceptable to Hamas—the party that controls the Gaza strip—is one where all Jews are exterminated.