Thursday: Hili dialogue

September 26, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to another damn week: it’s Thursday, September 26, and National Pancake Day.  Here are some Polish pancakes (with sour cream and cherries) I had for dessert while on a 2010 seminar trip to Danzig (Gdansk), Poland:

And I’ll add some blue corn pancakes with piñon nuts I had in 2018  at the Plaza Cafe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They were terrific, but the quantity defeated even me!

It’s also National Key Lime Pie Day, National Better Breakfast Day, Johnny Appleseed Day (the birthday of John Chapman in 1774), National Dumpling Day, and Lumberjack Day, which reminds me of a video:

 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The war in Gaza is getting less attention now that things are heating up between Israel and Hezbollah. Contrary to my predictions, there may be a ground war in the offing.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says the military is preparing for a ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, telling a group of soldiers that their “military boots will enter enemy territory.”

“You can hear the planes above, we are attacking all day. Both to prepare the area for the possibility of your entry [into Lebanon], and also to continue causing blows to Hezbollah,” Halevi tells troops of the 7th Armored Brigade during a drill simulating a ground offensive in Lebanon.

“Hezbollah today expanded its [range] of fire. Later today, it will receive a very strong response,” he vows, after the terror group fired a missile at central Israel this morning.

“Today we will continue, we do not stop, we continue to attack and continue to strike them everywhere. The goal is a very clear goal, to return the [displaced] residents of the north safely,” Halevi continues.

“To do this, we are preparing the [ground] maneuver,” he says to the soldiers.

“Your military boots,” Halevi says, “will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launchpads into our territory [from which Hezbollah intends] to carry out attacks on Israeli civilians.

“Your entry into those areas with force, your encounter with Hezbollah operatives, will show them what it means to face a professional, highly skilled, and battle-experienced force,” he goes on. “You are coming in much stronger and far more experienced than they are. You will go in, destroy the enemy there, and decisively destroy their infrastructure. These are the things that will enable us to safely return the residents of the north afterward.”

Well, that’s pretty explicit! It is, after all, the IDF’s chief of staff. And from the NYT:

The Israeli military said on Wednesday it had shot down a Hezbollah missile fired at Tel Aviv, the first time that the Iranian-backed militia had taken direct aim at the city and a reminder that Hezbollah can still reach deep into Israel’s urban core even after a string of attacks had killed some of the group’s commanders.

The foiled missile strike came as the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, told soldiers stationed at the northern border with Lebanon that the airstrikes Israel had launched since Monday were intended “to prepare the terrain” for a possible ground incursion. The Israeli military also called up two brigades of reservists and sent them to the border.

Of course, if this happens the yammering ignoramuses will criticize Israel for defending itself. After all, Israel is never allowed to win a war.  Those ignorant people don’t seem to realize that, without provocation of “settler colonialism”, Hezbollah has been committing war crimes against Israel for nearly a year.

*Bret Stephens always seems to have a reasonable take on the war, but that of course is because I agree with him. His latest column is called “Hezbollah is everyone’s problem” (archived here, too). He starts by mentioning the origin of UN Security Council Resolution 1701:

In 2006 Hezbollah launched a guerrilla raid into Israel. It led to a 34-day war that devastated Lebanon, traumatized Israel, and concluded with a U.N. resolution that was supposed to disarm the terrorist militia and keep its forces far from the border.

The resolution did neither.

Instead, a combination of international wishful thinking and the willfulness of Hezbollah’s patrons in Tehran have brought us to where we are now — the cusp of a conflict that could dwarf the scale of fighting in Gaza. Can a full-blown war be avoided? Hard to say. Can the lessons of 2006 lead to a better outcome this time? That’s the important question.

First lesson: Tactical brilliance is not a substitute for sound strategy. In 2006, the Israeli Air Force, operating on excellent intelligence, was able to knock out many of Hezbollah’s longer-range rockets — often hidden in homes — by the second night of the war. The strike surely helped spare scores, if not hundreds, of Israeli lives.

But Israel had little idea of how to fight the war after that, other than through a bombing campaign whose ferocity generated acute diplomatic pressure for the war to end, along with a belated Israeli ground incursion that got badly mauled by Hezbollah. Does Israel have a better plan today?

Second lesson: Hezbollah is not Israel’s main enemy. Iran is. Or, to borrow a metaphor from the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, Tehran is the head of the octopus and Hezbollah — like Hamas in Gaza or the Houthis in Yemen — is merely one of its tentacles. By going to war with Hezbollah, Israel risks exhausting itself in a secondary fight.

. . . the only way in which Israel restores its deterrence is by imposing costs directly on Hezbollah’s masters. Tehran, not Beirut, is the real center of gravity in this fight.

. . .But [Israel] should not repeat the 2006 mistake of trying to create deterrence through demonstrations of brute force. The kind of targeted strikes demonstrated by last week’s pager attacks are vastly more effective in erasing Hezbollah’s aura of invincibility.

Fourth lesson: Keep the U.N. out of it. In theory, the Security Council’s Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, empowered a U.N. peacekeeping force to prevent Hezbollah from placing its forces close to the Israeli border. In reality, the U.N. peacekeepers did nothing of the sort, at a cost of billions to U.S. taxpayers.

And the most important lesson:

Fifth lesson: The proper role for the United States in the crisis is not to seek a diplomatic solution. It’s to help Israel win.

Finally, remember which side stands for which principles:

It’s tempting to view Israel’s various battles as regional affairs, distant from America’s central concerns. It’s also foolish. We are now in the opening stages of yet another contest between the free and unfree worlds. It’s a conflict that reaches from Norway’s border with Russia to the struggle of the Iranian people against their own government to the shoals of the South China Sea. It will probably last for decades.

In that fight, Israel is on our side and Hezbollah is on the other. Whatever happens in the days and weeks ahead, we can’t pretend to be neutral between them.

Well, Blinken implied that the US would NOT be neutral, and that the US would take Israel’s side against anybody who tried to take advantage of the war in Gaza (aka Hezbollah) to attack the Jewish state. But my prediction is that if the war heats up, Biden will be tepid about Israel, and if Harris is elected, well, we can forget about Israel.  The main problem of this article, which may be an insoluble problem, is that Stephens doesn’t tell us what Israel should do about Iran.

*On September 16, the Boston Globe published a rather unhinged editorial by business columnist Shirley Leong, who, judging by this article alone, needs a trip to the woodshed.  Anyway, read about the “so white” (and “so Jewish”) accusations Leong makes about Harvard (click to get archived version).

But at his Substack site Carolina Curmudgeon, “Robert Goodday” takes apart Leong’s entire column sentence by sentence, showing that her arguments are not only racist but antisemitic. It’s a fantastic dismantling of Leong’s arguments, and well worth reading (have a look at the other articles on the site, too, and subscribe if you like them). I’ll reprise just a few of “Goodday’s” arguments.

A few criticisms, starting with the title (excerpts from the article are in italics):

‘Where DEI went to die’: With Claudine Gay gone, Harvard leadership is so white

Six of the seven major appointments at the university since its first Black president resigned in January have gone to white people. ‘It feels like a step backwards,’ said one professor.

The above is the op-ed’s headline. And yes, I know – someone other than Ms. Leung probably wrote the headline. But whoever wrote the headline works for the Boston Globe, and the headline is so bad that it’s cringeworthy. “So white”. Who uses “so” as a descriptor in this kind of context? Certainly not anyone with any decent writing skills. When “so” is used in that kind of construction, it needs to be followed by a phrase beginning “that …” to be at all informative. To provide another example: “The writer of the headline is SO poor at writing THAT they should never have been hired.”

LOL, I love grammatical corrections. But Goodday gets tougher:

. . . . . ,In three instances, white people replaced Black people. Michelle Williams headed the Chan school for seven years, and Bridget Terry Long ran the school of education for six years. And like Gay, Williams and Long each broke barriers as the first Black women to lead those schools.

Four of these new appointments are Jewish. In recent months, Harvard has taken steps to address concerns about growing campus antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

Aha! So there we have it. Not only is it problematic that the new admins are white, but what makes the appointments particularly unpalatable to Ms. Leung is that they are Jewish – and the reference to the Hamas-on-Israel war makes clear that Ms. Leung thinks these two facts – the hiring of four Jews and the university’s concerns about being called out for its antisemitism – are related. There is only one way to interpret this short paragraph; Leung believes the Jewish admins were appointed to their positions in part BECAUSE they are Jewish, as a means of assuaging the concerns of wealthy Jewish alums. In some circles (all those with 360 degrees), that kind of claim, referencing a classic antisemitic trope, would be considered — antisemitic. Because it is.

. . .Let’s hope Garber and Harvard get back on the right side of history. We’ll all be watching.

A couple of points here because, given all that came before it, this final section of the op-ed borders on the bizarre.

For Leung to characterize her own views about the reasons why Harvard’s top administration is now “so white” as being perhaps “too generous” makes one wonder what she would have written if she were not in such a generous mood and if she were not so willing to give Garber and others the benefit of the doubt – where giving the benefit of doubt here involves claiming that Garber deliberately took race into account when making new administrative appointments and did so by preferring to appoint administrators who are white and Jewish. The mind reels imagining what Leung might have claimed if she were not in such a generous state of mind.

Of course, and I think ironically, it is, in fact, Leung who is arguing that Garber SHOULD take race into account when making future appointments – which would be racist AND illegal.

Finally, who exactly is the “we” that Leung is referring to when making her barely veiled threat in her final “we’ll all be watching” sentence? Is it simply the royal we – referring solely to Leung herself? Or has she anointed herself to speak on behalf of the entire Boston Globe? Does the “we” here refer to all readers of the Boston Globe, or “all” who share Ms. Leung’s progressive political views? Whomever Leung might be referring to here with her use of the word “we”, one thing is clear; she sure has a high opinion of herself and full confidence in the rightness of her views, which she knows reflect the “right side of history”. So I guess Garber better do what Leung wants, or else … Ms.Leung might write another racist, antisemitic, and poorly reasoned op-ed.

Yep, Goodday ripped Leung a new one, and he’s right. I love these dissections (I do them myself, but not as well), and wish there were more of them. But where could you publish them except on Substack?

*In the WaPo (not archived), Jennifer Rubin answers readers’ questions about the upcoming election. A couple of interesting exchanges:

Do you support the National Popular Vote compact? Is this a good idea?
Kirk
The National Popular Vote bill is an interstate compact that seeks to ensure that the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide is elected president. When a state passes legislation to join the National Popular Vote Compact, it pledges that all of that state’s electoral votes will be given to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationwide.

 

Why isn’t the media talking about the tight Senate race in Nebraska?
Em Kate
In the very red state of Nebraska, Dan Osborn (I), a veteran and former union leader, is giving the incumbent Senator, Deb Fischer (R), a real run for her money. Right now, it’s a toss-up.

With control of the Senate hanging so precariously in the balance, why isn’t the media talking about this important race?

Jennifer Rubin
Opinion Columnist
Frankly, there hasn’t been sufficient coverage of the Senate races in general. Yes, as I recently wrote, Nebraska could be a sleeper. I suspect the lack of coverage from major metropolitan-based news outlets has a lot to do with regrettable ignorance of and indifference to rural America.
Does the Senate face trouble ahead?
Sonnerboomer
I’m concerned about an immovable, obstructive Republican majority in the Senate for the near future. I’m afraid demographics won’t catch up to the undemocratic structure of the Senate as dual-party Senate representation vanishes. That would be a disaster for any progressive legislation and probably for even moderate judges being confirmed.

 

Jennifer Rubin
Opinion Columnist
The race for control of the Senate is very tight. If Democrats do get a majority, they will be under extreme pressure to alter or dispense entirely with the filibuster, which as you point out gives disproportionate power to thinly-populated, rural and right-wing states. There is no filibuster for judges, so a simple majority (combined with stronger leadership in the Judiciary Committee to do away with delaying tactics) should suffice to pass Harris-appointed judges. With a GOP Senate majority, however, we would face gridlock, obstruction and a slew of bogus investigations.

*The Chicago White Sox baseball team is on the verge of setting the worst season record in modern baseball history, and yet, this being Chicago, the fans are rooting for the team to set that record. Right now the Sox are tied with the 1962 Mets with the miserable record of 37 wins and 120 losses (a win percentage of 23.5%, but there are still five games to go.

After rallying for a 3-2 home victory against the Los Angeles Angels on Tuesday, the White Sox moved to 1-94 in games in which they have trailed after seven innings.

By doing so, Chicago (37-120) remained tied with the expansion 1962 New York Mets for the most single-season losses in MLB since 1901. The White Sox will try to ward off a foothold on futility when the series with the Angels (63-94) continues Wednesday night.

Stymied by Angels rookie right-hander Jack Kochanowicz for seven innings, the White Sox overcame a 2-0 deficit with three eighth-inning runs Tuesday.

. . . A crowd of 17,606 largely supported the White Sox but also wasn’t shy about directing ill will toward club owner Jerry Reinsdorf, frequently breaking into chants of “SELL THE TEAM!”

“It’s been a long season,” Benintendi said. “I think that, you know, people here tonight were maybe trying to see history, but they’re going to have to wait one more day. Maybe.”

The Angels have lost four of five on a seven-game road trip. One more loss for them will tie a franchise record for the most in team history. They lost 95 games in 1968 and 1980.

SELL THE TEAM!  The white Sox have been mediocre, though 19 years ago they won a World Series—their first such victory in 88 years. The only advantage in having them in town is that the field (yes, “Guaranteed Rate Field”) is nearby, attendance is sparse so you can often move to a box seat in about the third inning, and you can see good teams in the other American League franchises who play the Sox.  The Cubbies aren’t doing so well, either, but at least they’ve won more than half their games (they now have a .513 average).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hurt:

Hili: I feel excluded.
A: Why?
Hili: Somebody hissed at me again.
In Polish:
Hili: Czuję się wykluczona.
Ja: Czemu?
Hili: Znowu ktoś na mnie syczał.

And a picture of Baby Kulka (who probably hissed at Hili), presumably taken by Paulina:

*******************

From Jesus of the Day:

From The 2024 Darwin Awards/Epic Fails:

From Duck Lovers:

From Masih, who attacks the Iranian regime to the Free Press. (She was one of the “warmup acts” for Dawkins’s Final Tour, by the way):

The hate has spread to Canada. Now a Jewish bookstore gets picketed:

From Malcolm: mother cats and baby cats:

From my feed. I much admire the Dutch love of bicycles:

Another two from my feed:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

 

And a tweet from Matthew: a rare triple play clinches a postseason spot for the San Diego Padres. It was close at first!

28 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “Welcome to another damn week: it’s Monday, September 23”

    Bad news prof, your time machine is on the fritz!

  2. The pattern on Hili’s forehead is mesmerizing … so is the triple play, wow.

    Even if it’s really Monday, Monday….

    1. I feel bad for the Los Angeles batter-runner.

      But beautiful fielding. The turn at second of course. And notice how the third baseman who catches the ground ball (before the camera reaches him) gets to third to touch it himself, throws to second while still off balance, and the Padres still get three. No wonder it was sort of close at first (and second, if you ask me.).

      The runner from second is well over halfway to third by the time the 3B touches. This is athleticism of a high order. I don’t know how they can even think that fast, much less execute. You think they practise?

      2. The job of each defensive player is to know exactly what to for any contingency at all times. And, yes, they practice this stuff.

  3. I was a little early then with the pancakes, as yesterday I made stuffed potato pancakes filled with onion, tuna and cheese. Came out surprisingly well for a first try! Pudding was flapjacks (which are sweet chewy oatcakes where I come from, and not pancakes) and homemade cranberry-ginger ice cream.

    1. I was happy to see a pancake reminder at the top of this morning’s dialog. Make mine buckwheat please, a throwback to my father’s cooking in my childhood. I make a double portion for dinner with the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. I am just too discombobulated in the morning to even get the ingredients from the shelves, let alone measure and mix them these days. But in the evening, covered in good maple syrup, and washed down with black coffee. What a treat…and with a ready-made breakfast the next morning. Now on to locate some buckwheat flour…

      1. Being immunosuppressed, I still go out and do the weekly food shopping at 7am on a Sunday when the store is quiet. But when I come home tradition is that I cook pancakes, either with sausages or bacon. Best combination to my mind is bacon rolled into a pancake with sugar and lemon juice on it. And that’s my once-weekly meat ration.

      2. Doesn’t “breakfast” always taste better for dinner? Similarly, pizza tastes better the next morning for breakfast. Maybe it’s just fun to break the rules, I don’t know.

  4. Yesterday you said you would update us on the story about Marcellus Williams who was set to be executed when you were writing the dialog.

    Apologies if I missed the update but I didn’t see it and Williams has been executed.

    This is so sad and I have to wonder at the humanity or lack thereof of the governor who said “We hope this gives finality to a case that’s languished for decades, re-victimizing Ms. Gayle’s family for decades”. This was in spite of the fact that the the family said they didn’t want him executed.

    2. If you’re against the death penalty entirely, then ok, but, as best as I can make out, he does seem to have been guilty of a brutal murder.

      — two people testified that he had admitted guilt to them
      — in doing so he provided details of the crime that had not been made public.
      — items of the victim’s property were found in his car.
      — his girlfriend testified that she saw him in bloody clothing and disposing of bloody clothing.
      — he was in possession of the victim’s laptop, which he sold to a third party (who testified to this).
      — he had a history of prior convictions for previous crimes.

      As for the DNA taken from the knife that didn’t match, well, this comes from a re-test long after the conviction. The DNA has since been identified as matching a member of prosecution team who had touched the knife.

      Here is just some of the evidence against him (from link):

      “After returning to the car, Williams picked up his girlfriend, Laura Asaro. Asaro noticed that, despite the summer heat, Williams was wearing a jacket. When he removed the jacket, Asaro noticed that Williams’ shirt was bloody and that he had scratches on his neck. Williams claimed he had been in a fight. Later in the day, Williams put his bloody clothes in his backpack and threw them into a sewer drain, claiming he no longer wanted them.

      Asaro also saw a laptop computer in the car. A day or two after the murder, Williams sold the laptop to Glenn Roberts.

      The next day, Asaro went to retrieve some clothes from the trunk of the car. Williams did not want her to look in the trunk and tried to push her away. Before he could, Asaro snatched a purse from the trunk. She looked inside and found Gayle’s Missouri state identification card and a black coin purse. Asaro demanded that Williams explain why he had Gayle’s purse. Williams then confessed that the purse belonged to a woman he had killed. He explained in detail how he went into the kitchen, found a butcher knife, and waited for the woman to get out of the shower. He further explained that when the woman came downstairs from the shower, he stabbed her in the arm and then put his hand over her mouth and stabbed her in the neck, twisting the knife as he went. After relaying the details of the murder, Williams grabbed Asaro by the throat and threatened to kill her, her children and her mother if she told anyone.”

      1. I agree. As a daughter of two lawyers and a true crime aficionado I have zero interest in worrying about murderers.

  5. and if Harris is elected, well, we can forget about Israel.

    Her husband Doug Emhoff is Jewish, tho.

  6. “Fifth lesson: The proper role for the United States in the crisis is not to seek a diplomatic solution. It’s to help Israel win.”

    Stephens is correct.

    What should Israel do about the head of the octopus (AKA “snake”)? Therein lies the rub. Soon, to prevent Iran from putting the final components into place in a nuclear weapon and delivery system, it would seem that Israel will have to act preemptively. Israel would rather the western democracies do something to disarm Iran instead but, thus far, the west has been passive. Iran’s recent efforts to strengthen their ties with Russia, China, and North Korea will add to their reticence to act.

    A very real possibility is that the democratic powers will wait until Israel tests the waters, providing an opportunity to take a measure of Iran’s capabilities and resolve in the form of its response. Will the democratic powers confront Iran before Israel is forced to confront Iran? This, to me, is the question at hand.

  7. “By going to war with Hezbollah, Israel risks exhausting itself in a secondary fight.”

    This is true. But if Israel were to take significant action against Iran’s nuclear program, then it risks a massive counterattack from the north while so engaged with Tehran. Israel certainly wants its residents to return to their homes on the northern border, but that might not be its only motivation for degrading the threat that Hezbollah presents.

  8. The lack of media coverage of anti-Jew protests and anti-Semitism by the mainstream media, especially the left-leaning outlets, is interesting. If these same actions were taken by white males wearing identical brown shirts it would be splattered across every outlet in the country with accomanying hand-wringing about racism. But when done by the cool kids, it’s all good or just not reported.
    The other interesting aspect is that you don’t see the same protesting against Christian book stores who are also Israel supporters. This seems to be a unique hatred against Jewish people. It’s also interesting that many Jews join these because they put their leftist / Marxist / identitarian / racist politics above their heritage.
    I say interesting because I click on these articles to try to understand it but I just can’t figure it out. I also can’t get my head around the cognitive dissonance displayed by people who will proclaim that we must love and accept all lifestyles and self-identification, while at the same time advocating to actively eliminate an entire nation of people.

  9. PCC(E) admires the Dutch and their bikes.
    Professor – you really have to go to Japan! Tokyo metro is the largest city on earth, close to 40 mil on the Kanto plain.
    There only 15% of people own cars and you can tell it by even a brief visit. Cities work better that way for sure.

    I live in Manhattan, before that Tokyo and I’ve never had a drivers license but I realize US/Australian etc cities aren’t generally built for bikes and walking, unfortunately.

    D.A.
    NYC

  10. I’m curious how Masih is received by the general public who consume MSM unquestioningly. I also wonder if the Hamas flag wavers are aware of her and what they think of her. I desperately want people to connect the dots between Iran’s evil deeds and Israel lobbing missiles into Beirut (and what they’ve been trying to do in Gaza). Masih seems like the sort of character who could bridge the gap.

  11. Who should buy the White Sox? China? (Re: Congress and Tik-Tok)

    Re: Israel invading Lebanon in 2006. Earlier this week NPR’s “Morning Edition” dutifully and obediently reported that invasion, but somehow couldn’t be bothered to utter one word about how Hezbollah provoked the invasion.

  12. Would Jennifer Rubin support a national popular vote bill if Republicans were winning the popular vote? While she’s partially right about the electoral power distribution, a national popular vote bill would put all of the election power in the hands of the high population areas of the coasts, and ignore the rights of the majority of the country’s area. States who sign on to this are effectively saying that they are not a state any longer in terms of voting influence. Would they also agree to change the number of senators that they have to provide more representation in the senate to CA and NY at their expense?
    Reminds me Trump’s calls to end the filibuster a few years ago when the R’s held the majority. 49 Republicans supported it. If killing the filibuster was truly a strongly held principle held by Democrats, they could have joined with those 49 Republicans and ended it. Instead they opposed it. It’s a political game. The party in power wants to change the rules to allow it to stay in power, and the party in the minority wants to change the rules to try to gain power.

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