I’ll be off for O’Hare soon, but heres a photo of Irises I took on my way home. I don’t know when you’ll hear from me again, but before that I’ll have had a belly full of french fries with mayo or peanut sauce.
In the meantime, feel free to discuss politics or whatever you want. I’ll throw out some starter questions, but you can ignore them. I would, however, like to know the readers’ opinions. Three of the four questions are about the war, as that’s been much on my mind.
a.) What the deuce is Biden up to with Israel? He does know that the IDF considers Rafah important in getting rid of Hamas, right? So why is he trying to prevent a serious military operation there? Does he want Hamas to win and maintain power?
b.) The UN has revised the death toll of Gazan civilians, reducing it considerably and halving the number of women and children killed). Given that, and given the fact that the new ratio of civilians killed to Hamas fighters killed is a bit more than 1:1; AND given that that ratio is lower than any similar ratio in modern warfare (the U.S. is a grim 3:1 in its Middle East conflicts and other fights go up from them, AND, given that these deaths can be imputed largely to Hamas, who encourages Gazans to die for propaganda purposes and uses them as human shields, AND that Israel takes steps to reduce the civilian death toll, including warning civilians of strikes and providing humanitarian aid, then why is the death toll of Gazans considered way too high for this war? So high, in fact, that mostly the whole world hates Israel, falsely accusing it of genocide because of the number of civilian deaths. Is there supposed to “death equity”, so that for every civilian killed and Israeli should die as well? This truly baffles me.
c.) Why is Israel so prominent among conflicts given that in other places, like Yemen and Syria, far more people have died and there is much more starvation? Why don’t we hear more about Syria, where the forces of Bashar al-Assad have killed an estimated 300,000 people, mostly Muslims? This isn’t mere “whataboutery,” for the conflict there is ongoing, serious, and has killed more than ten times the civilians that have died in the war between Israel and Hamas.
d.) Is Donald Trump ever going to be convicted of anything? Will he win this fall’s election, whether or not he’s found guilty? Why do so many Americans vote for a person whose mental illness is palpable, and on display every day?
I will check from O’Hare, and I’m hoping for a plethora of comments. Say whatever you want.
A couple of comments about Israel, Hamas, and the US:
1. Trashing the possibility of a two state solution is popular here, but my question is simply if not, then what? Two cultures, hostile to each other, make claims to the same territory. How can a stable and peaceful solution be found without autonomous states for each?
2. What Biden is doing is simple – he is trying to protect US interests in the region, which above all involves prevention of a wider conflict and promotion of an overall settlement. To date, Israel has presented no coherent plan for postwar stability, only for continued occupation of Gaza and settlement of the West Bank. Not exactly a route towards long term peace. Biden has been a consistent and vocal supporter of Israel in the past, but doing so in the future will be difficult without significant political changes on BOTH sides.
Finally, I offer a qualified defense of Tom Friedman. Granted his concerns are more geopolitical in nature, and he obviously values his access to Arab leaders. Nevertheless, his global perspective is valuable. After all, I don’t think any reasonable observer would say that the war can be reduced to simply a territorial battle between Israel and the Palestinians. Tom gets that; unfortunately many commentators on both the left and right do not.
Regarding 1.
In my lonely opinion, the only solution to true peace in the region is for all involved to come to atheism.
To dream the impossible dream…
1. I take it as gospel that neither side wants a two state solution. The only way forward with that is for there to be a veritable sea-change in leadership on the Palestinian side, without any form of their current leadership. A Palestinian state with anything like the current leadership will be immediately at war with Israel, only it will be more dangerous.
2. Biden is trying to navigate a middle path. But what I see missing (and I say this a lot), is that the man needs to get out more and make his vision heard early and often. Get in front of news cameras. Make statements. Answer questions with well prepared answers. If he can’t (I suspect there is worry that he will have senior moments), then get his press secretary to do it. The major news media will run that front and center, and the average person can know what the hell are the balance of issues. I don’t recall any recent president as silent as he is. A re-election campaign is supposed to be a 4-year job.
I agree with both of your points.
1. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are going anywhere. If they don’t find a way to live as neighbors they can look forward to more wars. Hamas will survive even if the IDF levels Rafa to the ground. Its dead members will be replaced by a new generation of angry youth who have grown up in the now bombed-out hellscape of Gaza. Israel’s plans for post-war Gaza are…what exactly?
I agree with Mark S. that the Palestinians need a change of leadership. So will the Israelis. Netanyahu formed his present government with the Israeli extreme right and knows that the war is the only thing keeping him in power and avoiding corruption charges. He’s worked against a two-state solution for a long time and was happy when Hamas gained power, because they felt the same way and supposedly proved his point.
There will obviously need to be cooling-off period of some kind immediately following a peace/cease-fire, since neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are in the mood for logical long-term state-planning at the moment. But they don’t have any real alternatives in the long-run. Those who oppose a two-state solution should remember that this puts them in agreement with Netanyahu AND Hamas.
2. It seems to me that Biden is still being a centrist: someone who supports Israel but is disturbed by the carnage and hopes it will be limited, along with the war’s spread. He has only halted a class of weapons from going to Israel. A critic might say he’s straddling the fence, but that’s what politicians have to do. He might earn the venom of those who uncritically support Israel, but I don’t think they represent the American public, which supports Israeli’s right to exist but has reseravtions about the human cost of the war. We’ll see how this plays out in November.
Neither the Union nor the Confederacy are going anywhere. If they don’t find a way to live as neighbors, then they can look forward to more wars. The Rebels will survive even if Sherman levels Atlanta to the ground and marches to the sea. Their dead members will be replaced by a new generation of angry youth who have grown up in the now burned-down hellscape of the South. The Union’s plans for the post-war Confederacy are . . . what exactly?
Two state “solution”? Never. Ever. Not everybody gets a state, ask a Kurd.
On this particular issue, please see an article I wrote, reposted here:
https://themoderatevoice.com/the-suicidal-stupidity-of-a-two-state-solution/
D.A.
NYC
Intifada!
Revolution!
Final two
State solution!
A word for the Kurds! Maligned, mistreated and landless, still.
It may be that there is no solution. Not all problems have solutions. Then they are just facts of life. What happens in Gaza after Rapha falls and the bodies of the last hostages are brought out is not really Israel’s problem. Let the UN worry about it. Will the Palestinians accept the end of their dream of pushing the Jews into the sea, the way the North American aboriginals eventually did? Probably not. Unfortunately the Pals can’t be cleansed to anywhere because no country in the world wants them. So Israel will probably have to mow the lawn periodically in Gaza and maybe in the disputed Samaria and Judaea. There are worse ways to live, which you don’t have to be Jewish to relate to.
The good news is that Israel has a lot more friends, and fewer implacable enemies, in the region than it used to. Doing something about Iran would help all humanity.
1) I think Biden is annoyed that Israel isn’t paying attention to him, so he’s throwing a temper tantrum.
3) Israel is an outpost of the West and Western Culture. The anti-Western Left want to see it destroyed. They don’t actually care about the Palestinians, or if Syrians kill one another.
4) My prediction is that, even if Trump is convicted of anything, it will be overturned on appeal.
I read an article on Substack earlier this evening suggesting that Biden (or his incompetent advisors) completely misread the importance of the college campus protests and believed they painted an accurate picture of American sentiment. From their bubble, with an election to win, they thought they’d better pander to it (eye roll, modern/“professional” politicians have only one goal…to be elected).
However the author/article, of which I’ve forgotten the details (I’ll edit or add when I find it again), believes that this may be a terminal error to his election prospects. The majority in America are actually quite turned off by the campus carry-on and it’s simply the vocal minority, in general, supporting Palestine. When he has “The Squad” loudly proclaiming a victory it’s not going to be a good look and will give the Republicans plenty of ammunition come the ballots.
The author actually deeply laments this as wants Trump under no circumstances, but feels Biden has shot himself in the foot.
All that said, Biden has demonstrated some pretty wild far left/woke ideas during his presidency, so could he actually be of the mind of the idiot children on campus? I’m not ruling it out.
Biden is weak and appeasing which explains his (or whomever is telling him what to do/say) after his hourly pharmaceutical “enhancements”. Add this to the complete lack of a moral compass and being swayed by trying to be the “tough” guy (after getting his lunch money taken every day – K-12) and it may explain his “actions”.
Which are disgusting and cowardly.
The fact is that no one – enemies or allies respect him and our enemies certainly don’t fear him. Which has resulted in the worldwide chaos during his term.
+1
An architect of chaos. I don’t think it’s him – he’s not really “there”; it’s the woke industrial complex.
Agreed but interesting that none of this happened while Trump was president; whether because he was feared, respected or seemed “unstable”, it didn’t matter.
You are correct.
However, there no good (faith) process to verify.
And of course, the Abraham Accords, (“began with the groundbreaking Israel-UAE agreement in August, 2020”.) which the Biden admin initially slow tracked after he became president.
ANUARY 19, 2022.
“Why Has Biden Stopped Pushing for Arab-Israeli Peace?
Not building on the Abraham Accords has been the biggest missed opportunity of his first year.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/biden-israel-arab-peace-abraham-accords/
It’s not about Palestine. Israel is a stand-in for the West, capitalism, the Enlightenment, having your own agency. It’s about revolution, Russia, reverting to communism.
Some people ask what we get in return for helping Israel. We get the gift of knowing that such things are possible but that they do need to be fought for. With righteous violence.
a) I think that Biden is genuinely concerned about civilian deaths and doesn’t want the U.S. blamed. His administration seems equivocal in its messaging about Rafah. A good example is how the administration doesn’t explicitly condemn an incursion into Rafah. What it condemns is an incursion *that does not have a plan to evacuate civilians.* They are cagey about this. Now that Israel is going into Rafah (in stages, apparently) the U.S. can have it both ways. If the incursion spares civilians, the U.S. can claim that Israel heeded its warnings and protected civilians. If the incursion entails a significant loss of civilian life, the U.S. can claim that they tried to warn Israel but that it didn’t listen. Either way, the U.S. escapes any culpability. I still think that Biden wants Israel to get rid of Hamas, but he doesn’t want to end up getting his hands dirty.
b) I read about the restating of the casualty numbers. It must mean that the criticisms of the made-up numbers are too credible to ignore, thereby getting the UN’s attention. To blunt criticism for accepting bogus numbers unreservedly, they are restating them, but are hoping that nobody notices.
Why is Israel held to a higher standard than anyone else? Part of it is timing. Israel is the victim of the recent emergence of the oppressor-oppressed narrative. Consequently, as the purported oppressor in the conflict, even if Hamas is the bad guy and needs to be removed, Israel is not allowed to harm any civilians. This argument might be enough on its own, but the old rules still apply as well, namely, that the world hates Israel and the world hates the Jews. The fact that Israel is a powerful country, both economically and militarily, makes things even worse. Israel is the Little Satan.
c) Despite their small numbers, Jews hold prominent positions of power and prestige in the U.S, and the U.S. has prominently supported Israel for decades. So, Israel has a strong and vocal constituency in the U.S. Consequently, most Americans—even those who have no connection to Israel—have a viewpoint regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship. That is not the case for Syria or for other “whatabout” candidates.
You’ll note that I didn’t mention antisemitism in the above analysis. While antisemitism is probably a factor, I don’t think that it’s absolutely required for the above to be true.
d) Trump may be convicted of one infraction or another, but I don’t think he’ll go to prison.
The election this fall will be close, particularly since little definitive will come from the court cases before the election takes place. My guess is that Biden will win, as he has the machinery of the Presidency on his side: bribing young college graduates with loan forgiveness, claiming to create millions of manufacturing jobs, taking credit for Israel’s victory over Hamas (when that happens later this summer just in time for the election). Trump’s campaign machinery is no match for Biden’s.
American’s vote for Trump for a variety of reasons. Some like his combative style. Others like how he takes it to establishment institutions they don’t trust. Still others simply want the political machinery of old eliminated, and Trump is seen as an outsider. I don’t think Trump’s policy positions are as important as his “tear it down” demeanor.
Trump seems unhinged to me, but others don’t think so and will vote for him. There may even be some who vote for him *because* he’s unhinged.
Finally, the Irises are beautiful. When I was a child, my family lived on Iris Drive.
Yes Norman:”tRump seems unhinged to me, but others don’t think so and will vote for him. There may be some who vote for him because he’s unhinged”. So my question continues to be on the other side of the coin: what on earth has Biden done or is doing or looks like he will do, that leads north of 75 million people to actively vote for someone like tRump. My upbringing was apparently too narrow for me to understand it.
They look at the border, the price of gas and groceries, the forgiveness of student debt, the chaos on campus, inflation, and so on and blame Biden. I know some of these people and they all will vote for Trump
Add to that list the rot/lawlessness of our cities. Parents of kids dead from fentanyl that pours freely into Arizona and other states. People supporting Biden are living where they don’t have to see this stuff. Politics is academic for the class protected from the filth others are up to their ears in.
a) b) c) ….
“Hatred of the good for being good.” — Ayn Rand
d) “Why do so many Americans vote for a person whose mental illness is palpable, and on display every day?” Because anything to the left of Trump is on the Marxist Spectrum, and must be repulsed, repealed, and retired …. no matter who you have to vote for. The USA is not a Marxist nation.
{d) my true answer: “”Why do so many Americans vote for a person whose mental illness is palpable, and on display every day?” Dems are hoping America will continue to ignore Joe Biden’s illnesses long enough to get him the election. Then he will be a lame disabled duck and the march to collectivism can trudge on.
+1
“The USA is not a Marxist nation.”
Marx taught that it is wrong for private companies to exploit workers. Most Americans, including many business owners, agree. In that limited sense the USA is indeed a Marxist nation.
Alas, propaganda in support of exploitation is everywhere. Millions think socialism is the robbing of money from the wealthy to enrich the undeserving poor. No, socialism is the attempt to take back money robbed from the poor by the wealthy.
I’ve been seeing this sort of argument more frequently of late and believe it to be facetious.
“Hey, you know the USA taxes its citizens and uses that money for socialist projects such as education and healthcare? Ergo, the USA is a socialist country.”
The truth is that capitalism, whilst not perfect, generates the wealth for socialist projects. Without the incentives that free markets and capitalism offer there will be no generation of wealth.
It also seems to me that people tend to want only people wealthier than they are to have their wealth redistributed. Which sort of says it all.
Marxism doesn’t work in theory and doesn’t work in reality, as time has shown again and again.
It isn’t true that people want ‘only’ those wealthier than they are to contribute to society fairly. Everyone I have known over the years and had discussions with on such matters all say that they are happy to pay their fair share of tax, especially if everyone else does. And the fact is that that fair share would be much less if a fairer share was paid by the wealthier.
Please don’t confuse my “limited sense” argument with the broad and erroneous example you gave. Education is not a socialist project. Neither is healthcare. If they were, a country opposed to socialism would seek to raise sick and stupid people.
Bertrand Russell called Marx a muddle head. I agree. Ayn Rand is muddleheaded too. One would be hard pressed to find any movement or philosophy without muddleheadedness. But within even the most muddleheaded movement one can find pearls of wisdom. The idea that it is wrong for private companies to exploit workers is one such pearl. You gloss over that issue.
You also seem to confuse free enterprise with capitalism. They are not the same. Free enterprise refers to the right to better oneself by starting a company that offers a product or service. Capitalism is a perversion of free enterprise in which business bigwigs make money without working through manipulation of stock, politicians, and propaganda. People who own a couple of stores or run small businesses are not capitalists. Indeed, capitalists could easily drive those people out of business by lowering prices. Laws restricting the freedom of free markets prevent such activities.
The wealth a company generates comes from the efforts of those who build the products or perform the services. If they were always well paid and well treated there would be no call for any variety of Marxism. The matter at hand is thus not an either capitalism or Marxism issue. It is an issue of decent treatment of one’s fellow human beings.
Bravo!
How do you get wealthy by robbing poor people, who don’t have any money? That part never made sense to me.
True, you can hire their labour to make things of value for you. But if the labourers had the requisite skills and ambition and ability to defer gratification, they could have created wealth with their own labour and wouldn’t have needed a capitalist to organize them into a wealth-producing enterprise. Yet they didn’t, so they do. I don’t see who is being robbed here.
Slumlords have been getting rich off the poor since the invention of the apartment. But “poor” in the context of my post is a relative term. Compared to a billionaire, a middle-class American worker is poor. The American middle class is going the way of the Dodo, which is why in my post I wrote “poor” instead of “poor and middle class.”
That said, the operative word here is “exploit.” An example: Back in the early 1990s I read about a company that went out of business because it was seven million dollars in the red. Had its CEO cut his fifteen million dollar salary in half for the previous three years the company would not only have paid off its bills and been seven million dollars in the black, but also could have paid every one of its employees a fifty-thousand dollar bonus. But no, the CEO wanted it all for himself. The workers brought in far more money than the CEO was willing to pay. He exploited them. (Add ten thousand more such example here.)
I have some small agreement with you about people starting their own companies. Many people with the ability to do so don’t because they fail to realize their own potential. But personalities differ. Not everyone is a potential CEO. Not everyone wants to be. You seem to imply that the school teacher who doesn’t quit her job to start her own school, or the grease monkey who doesn’t quit his job to start his own service station, or the accountant who doesn’t quit his job to start a stock brokerage, are lacking in moral fiber. As “Monty Python” would say, “Pull the other one.”
I didn’t say that just anyone can start their own company. Most can’t, and many who try, fail. So they should be grateful that someone who can do it creates a firm that provides employment for them so they can grind away at doing the one thing they know how to do and thereby feed their families. (State welfare goes only so far.). If a job doesn’t pay very well, it’s probably because it’s not worth very much, and just anyone can do it. Overpay for it and it will be replaced by a machine.
If you seize all those successful business people’s assets and divvy them up among the proletariat, and seize the apartments from the landlords and give them to the tenants, you will be able to do it only the once. Ever. And even if you now have a nation of instant homeowners with net worths of $2 million or whatever, they will still starve and freeze because no one will be working to produce any goods or services. They will all be sitting on their couches enjoying their windfall wealth, just as lottery winners do.
Your anecdotes of bad behaviour among individual capitalists are no more compelling than anecdotes of the urban underclass pushing people onto the subway tracks.
Why do so many Americans vote for Trump? (the question should -by now- be rhetorical). Unhinged? Sure. Cringeworthy? Yes. Mostly in affect. Not so much in the context of Policy.
Biden?
Biden just withheld essential weaponry to the only democracy in the middle east. Our closest ally in the region. In the middle of a just war. More than unhinged. Insane? Sure. A politically motivated move – but bad Trump for calling Ukraine and ‘seemingly’ demanding dirt on a political opponent while withholding aid. You know, there is daylight, I agree, but not so much.
Quote:
“That Joe Biden granted Qatar, a key financier of Hamas, the status of major non-NATO ally and is now refusing to demand that Qatar facilitate the release of U.S. citizens being held hostage by Hamas should be considered one of the greatest political scandals of this century.” – Batya Ungar-Sargon.
Quote from the Free Press:
“On Election Night 2016, many of us thought we knew who would be the next president of the United States.
We were blindsided when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. Legacy media quickly scrambled to account for what had happened. They ultimately arrived at an explanation: Trump’s voters were racist, xenophobic conspiracy theorists, and possibly even proto-fascists.
That wasn’t quite right.
My guest today, Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, has been on a journey for the past eight years to understand how Trump won the White House in 2016, and how the left fundamentally misunderstood the American working class. She eventually came to the conclusion that the most salient feature of American life is not our political divide. It’s “the class divide that separates the college-educated from the working class.”
Democrats have historically been the party of the working class. But for the better part of the past decade, Democrats have seen their support among working-class voters tumble. Policy wonks and demographic experts kept saying just wait: the future of the Democratic party is a multiethnic, multiracial, working-class coalition. But that didn’t pan out.
Instead, in 2016, Trump carried 54 percent of voters with family incomes of $30,000 to $50,000; 44 percent of voters with family incomes under $50,000; and nearly 40 percent of union workers voted for Trump—the highest for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Meanwhile, in 2022, Democrats had a 15-point deficit among working-class voters but a 14-point advantage among college-educated voters.
In order to understand how and why this happened, Batya decided to spend the last year traveling the country talking to working-class Americans. Who are they? Do they still have a fair shot at the American dream? What do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life?
She collected these stories in her new book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. What she found is that for many of them, the American dream felt dead.
On today’s episode of Honestly, Batya discusses who really represents the working class, how America should reinstate its commitment to them, and what will happen in 2024 if we don’t. Click below to listen to my discussion with Batya, or scroll on to read an adapted excerpt from her new book. —BW”
https://www.thefp.com/p/working-class-americans-second-class-citizens
Have a good trip.
Thanks for the book tip. I just bought it. As a Canadian, I’m hoping it will help me understand the US situation.
You are welcome.
The book is:
“Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women”
Available on Amazon.
Thoughts on b.)
While it’s true that the revised death toll and the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties in Gaza may paint a different picture than “genocide”, the perception of the conflict goes beyond numbers.
One aspect is the disproportionate power dynamics between Israel, with its advanced military, and Hamas, a militant group with limited military capabilities. The use of tactics like indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas are not seen as credible threats because they rarely result in deaths (largely due to Israeli efforts), whereas airstrikes by Israel, despite efforts to minimize civilian casualties, often lead to significant civilian harm.
“Death equity” is a good way to describe what people instinctively think is what happens in just wars (a comparable civilian death toll on both sides), but the principle of proportionality under international humanitarian law is how they should try to understand Israel’s military actions. It requires that military actions must not cause excessive harm to civilians compared to the military advantage gained.
The *misperception* of disproportionate harm to civilians is what leads to condemnation and accusations of misconduct, regardless of the intentions or efforts made by the Israeli’s to hew to it and to minimize civilian casualties.
Then there is the religious dimension that no doubt contributes to the intensity of international scrutiny. Muslims vs. Jews is sexier journalism than Muslim despot kills Muslims.
Israel needs to get better at waging propaganda war.
By that measure, the US’s response to Pearl Harbor (2,200 American deaths) was vastly more “disproportionate” than the Gaza situation. Well over 1 million Japanese deaths with 100,000 in one day.
Don’t start wars if you don’t like the consequences.
You’re missing the point. Israel’s problem is how ineffectively it wages its PR war.
Emily, I just think it’s a bit naive to suppose Israel could wage a better PR campaign. How would you suggest they do it?
The majority of legacy media appear to spin the narrative against Israel at every opportunity. They just can’t win in this climate.
I think Marcus’ point stands and I was just looking up similar numbers myself. The United States has also run riot in the region over the last few decades without anything like this pushback. Is it just because they have better PR?
On a different note:
Y’all should go out and look at the northern lights this weekend. I saw them for the first time and they were very interesting!
After dark, clear skies, but not too late at night.
I had a pretty good view of the northern sky from the Seattle area last night, but I didn’t see anything. I’ll look again tonight.
It wasn’t as I had expected. I expected a dazzling light show like you see in pictures. It wasn’t. Those are made with enhanced exposure when taking a picture. It was more like vague stretched out clouds, and after some time I noticed they had definite red and green color, and they were slowly moving. Get away from light pollution if you can.
My daughter-in-law, who lives just north of Victoria, BC, posted great photos on Facebook.
I’ve seen the northern lights before, many years ago when I spent a few months in the Yukon. Very vivid and striking.
Exactly – the astonishment when I finally figured to use the phone, as a last resort.
I think this is because the aurorae you are seeing are faint, meaning at these low light levels you detect them with your rods, which do not have colour (“at night all cats are grey” – or gray to you). If brighter (seen further north) your cones are activated and you pick up the colour better. Your phone has the correct colour sensitivity regardless of the light level.
In the UK, we usually see the Northern Lights only in Scotland or the north of England. Last night they were seen and photographed in the town where I live, in SE England, about 30 miles from the Channel coast. They looked pretty spectacular, too. I would provide the evidence if I could work out how to post a WhatsApp image onto this site!
Several people today are recommending Douglas Murray’s recent acceptance speech at the Alexander Hamilton Award ceremony at the Manhatten Institute. I concur. A good tribute to Israeli people and a come uppance to us in the West regarding the bigger picture around Oct 7. A bit over 20 minutes video or you can read transcript at
I just added this to my watch later list. Thank you for recommending it.
Thanks for posting that. I usually opt for transcripts but I do love listening to Douglas Murray. His idea about dropping the protester into Gaza made me chuckle. They really have no idea what they’re asking for.
These college students with all that righteous fire in their eyes over the humanitarian crisis du jour have missed quite a lot of those & one wonders why they are in such thrall to this one. It’s one thing to be pro-Palestinian, but quite another to be pro-Hamas—that being just a cowardly criminal terrorist gang. But every Palestinian who survives Israel’s quasi-discriminate pounding is a future Hamasi.
I used to admire the Israelis greatly for the way they moved into a dry resource-poor plot of land surrounded by volatile, hostile states, & built a stable, prosperous secular democracy. But they have treated their Palestinian minority wretchedly, especially with regard to their baffling “settlement” policy. Israel has caved to a pernicious parasitic ultra-religious minority which literally still believes that the land was given them by God. Nobody likes them, but they seem to be vital to any “ruling coalition”& nobody can get rid of them.
Israel is in an impossible strategic position & I sympathize, but they have brought a certain amount of that upon themselves. In the eternal struggle between Israel & Palestine I see no clear heroes. Plenty of blood & guilt to go around.
We always tell ourselves that Israel is a vital friend, partner & ally in a hostile unstable region, but the benefits of alliances are supposed to flow in both directions. What have we ever got out of it?. Israel is not a viable state on its own. The U.S. holds the purse that keeps Israel afloat & we have been a little too reluctant to meter the jingle when we bring up the matter of those settlements.
Biden appears weak & doddering, but like Israel he is in an impossible position. I have no advice for him. What are we to? Forget the “2-state solution”. Things are too far gone for that. I guess have no advice for anybody. Good luck to us all..
I
Let’s not forget the context:
Those “settlements” were won in wars Arabs started.
Why SHOULD Israel give them “back”? Start a war, loose, and whine about it forever?
Land in “Israel proper” was bought, mainly by individuals and the Jewish National Fund. SOME land was abandoned by Arabs in 48 believing their leaders they’d get the entire country “when we throw the Jews into the sea.” They left and lost that gamble.
MOST Pals are ultimately descended from outside Pal. (most, again, in the 1930s and 40s immigrating in from Egypt and Jordan to work on English and French (in Syria) big projects). Those Arabs who were there before are full Israeli citizens.
They have more rights and money than everybody else in the Islamosphere outside small petrostates (who have few rights).
The myth of “eternal Palestine” is just that. It was never a state.
The entire idea of a Pal state started in the mid 1960s by the PLO as assisted by the KGB and Statsi.
I agree Israel is doing a less than adequate job conveying the above facts.
D.A.
NYC
(discussed variously at my syndicated column: https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/)
I remember anti Israel tropes in Sputnik magazine (a picture of a man in a keffiyeh holding a Kalashnikov standing on an IDF helmet looking heroic) which magazine we subscribed to as we were CP. I think the methods of the KGB aren’t gone but are being used today as Putins’ enemies haven’t changed. It seems likely the Russians are using their money and influence in areas beside our elections. Many commenters here have wondered who is funding this crap. It would be helpful to expose the sources.
So Jerry? Where and when does your foursome with Norman Finkelstein, Mehdi Hasan and Cenk Uygur tee off?
Thanks for the rude comment. Where the deuce did YOU come from?
a). Biden recognizes – which neither Bibi nor you do – that the goal of “eliminating Hamas” is impossible. Every Hamas soldier death recruits two more. Just think how you would feel if you were a 17 year old boy living in Gaza now.
Israel has no exit strategy. Netanyahu is Israel’s (much smarter) Trump, conducting policy in order to stay out of jail. Years ago I said that Israel’s three greatest enemies were Iran, Hamas, and Netanyahu. He proves it every day.
b). Part of this really is antisemitism, but things like killing the WCK volunteers (who were clearly identified and known to the IDF) and killing a huge number of reporters give the impression that the IDF is not trying very hard to avoid civilian casualties. And it’s not just the number of casualties but the indiscriminate destruction. There is no correct ratio. Again, this goes back to the fact that Israel has no way to end this war, and that’s obvious to anyone who cares to think about it.
c). Probably antisemitism. But also, if you are under about 30 or even 40 years old, no part of your adult life has overlapped with Israel as the underdog in the Middle East. And the IDF, well before October 7, has engaged in both indiscriminate killings in the West Bank and protection of civilian settlers who do the same.
The thing is, as a 76 year old Jew I want to believe that the Israelis are the good guys. But they aren’t. There are no good guys in this conflict. There are the bad guys (Israelis, Palestinians) and the horrible guys (Hamas).
d). Trump will likely (65% probability) be convicted in the NY trial but he won’t do time for it. It’s way, way too soon to predict who will win in November. But Trump’s followers (1) don’t watch the news sources that you and I do, and (2) truly are members of a cult. In a cult, facts weigh much less than anything that the leader says.
You might try being a little more polite in your responses, as in the first one. I think that Hamas can be taken down to the point where it surrenders or someone else takes over.
Please read the posting Roolz and talk to me like you’re in my living room, which you don’t seem to be doing.
My apologies. You are right. This subject generates a lot of emotion.
On Israel. A stunning ignorance of war, in general, with its attendant violence, clouds any attempt to discuss relative casualty rates, the difficulty of planning, the always-present friction and the way it can make even simple tasks difficult. While I believe that this ignorance is widespread among educated Americans, particularly those under the age of 70 or so, I also think it is more acutely a problem among educated Democrats, given the party’s demographics and a lack of propensity to serve in the military. Most will have graduated from college having encountered virtually no serious study of war, let alone having later planned for or participated in one. It is not entirely their fault; they didn’t design the curriculum, and few military historians could be found on campuses in recent decades.
Our technocratic society can lead us astray in matters of war. Take the not-uncommon assumption that there is always a solution to a social problem, perhaps even a “stable and peaceful solution.” In this formulation, the problem is not the varied-and-oftentimes-unpredictable social forces at play in war; it is the decision makers and the expertise they follow. Place the proper people in charge, with the right ideas, and watch them succeed, a proposal that [almost] always boils down to a variation of “the problem would be solved if only leaders would listen to me.” Even failure of the favored solution will seldom cause its adherents to reconsider. The variables being vast in war, the players many, one can always claim that the solution was not implemented correctly, that various people derailed it, that the timing was off, that it would have succeeded . . . if only. More broadly, I reject the idea that a solution can always be found. Sometimes problems can only be managed, and sometimes peace will never arrive. Relative peace punctuated by more vigorous conflict might be the best state attainable.
Do not underestimate the role of people’s political proclivities. Like the polls that show people believing the economy to be dismal in December but by February believe it to be remarkably good—well, if in the interim a president of the party they oppose had been replaced by one of a favored party. Far too many people will never move beyond “Biden good, Netanyahu bad.” Others suffer the malady in reverse. Alas, political passions distort objective reason no less than do religious ones. Which leads to . . .
Trump. The Oxford Union recently entertained the motion that “populism is a threat to democracy.” Unsurprisingly, those who believed that it is won the vote that day. Nancy Pelosi participated on the anti-populist side. I found part of her talk to be tone deaf and patronizing, in a “deplorables” and “cling to guns and religion” sort of way. I leave a link here to a fourteen-minute video by the closing speaker, who argued on behalf of the populists. While many Trump voters with whom I have spoken would add this detail or that, I can think of none who would disagree with the debater’s comments. Where I would disagree with Trump’s voters is in their thinking that Trump is the solution that they seek. Sometimes there is no solution, and the best that one can attain is tension amid a relative peace. But there will always be those who want to prevail at all costs, at least against the populists if not against Hamas.
https://twitter.com/MrWinMarshall/status/1788965604096950381
That was really good, Doug. I’m honouring it because people who post late in the news cycle often worry that their contributions will never be read.
Regarding Israel specifically, I referred elsewhere to the stable equilibrium for managing the problem of the Pals being that Israel will just have to mow the lawn periodically. I wish I could remember whom I was quoting. Keep the blades sharp and the engine in good repair so the mower will start cutting the moment it is needed. (Maybe a scythe is a better metaphor.). Perhaps it is good for Israel that the Pals will always be a threat to Jews everywhere in the world.
Thanks, Leslie. Scythe is perhaps apt. My own is overdue for a visit to the field, but the weather is too beautiful to pass up another day to take axe and saw to unfortunate trees. Cheers.
Sam Harris’s latest podcast (366, Urban Warfare) is not paywalled. Excellent analysis with John Spencer
”What the deuce is Biden up to with Israel? He does know that the IDF considers Rafah important in getting rid of Hamas, right? So why is he trying to prevent a serious military operation there? Does he want Hamas to win and maintain power?”
The same thing that has happened to many people who (see themselves as) the traditional left: they have either become woke themselves or pander to the woke in order to stay in power and/or to avoid being accused of being on the right. This strategy will continue to be implemened as long as enough people say “no matter how crazy the “left” is, I’ll never vote for the right”. Note that in former eastern-bloc countries, essentially anything could be justified in the name of being anti-fascist. Anything.
Hope you enjoyed your fries, Jerry. Fish and chip shops in the UK invented a new condiment since I left, known now as “Chip Shop Curry Sauce.” It is a perfect example of how the British have taken Indian cuisine and made it their own, as you won’t find anything like it in the sub-continent. I came across a recipe for it on YouTube and made it yesterday: it does indeed go well with chips/french fries. And being in Canada, I’m thinking it might make a poutine worth eating too.
The Germans have co-opted curry, too. At ALDI, from time to time, you can get herring fillets with pineapple curry sauce. To my taste, they’re OK, but I prefer the fillets with mango green peppercorn sauce.
4.) #45 President was just a literal bad actor with a sweet gig on TV’s The Apprentice, a glorified version of himself, a brilliant respected businessman, fawned over by everyone. Toyed with running for president and wasn’t above overturning the outcome to his own competitions against those who wouldn’t support him (Penn Jillete). Couldn’t decide if R or D, but Evangelicals were sure Jesus picked him, so why not?
#45 always promoted himself. The Republican party adopted him. Progressives absolutely hate him, but ho doesn’t like a great villain over a boring hero?
On TV every day, all the time, selling side grifts. Talking or rambling or mumbling? Will he serve as Prez from inside or outside of jail? So many questions… Might there be consequences further down the line? Maybe, but he won’t suffer them, we will. (We already are. Are rich celebrities treated differently…?)
None of it makes any difference to #45. Keep saying his name, he’ll be with us forever. And when he dies— at any age, means or circumstances— conspiracies will be endless, like Jesus or Elvis.
Everyone knew he cheated outrageously at golf, but it was always ‘It’s not like he’s going to run for President or anything…”