Welcome to Thursday, November 20, 2025, and World Philosophy Day. Can you guess the names of these philosophers? This skit would never ever make it on t.v. today for several reasons you’ll discern.
It’s also National Peanut Butter Fudge Day, National Absurdity Day, Beaujolais Nouveau Day (skip it), and World Children’s Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 20 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Several sources, including the WaPo, report some egregious and out-of-control behavior by Israelis on the West Bank.
The attacks, carried out by roving gangs of masked men and boys, have underscored the extent to which the Israeli government has allowed Jewish settlers to operate with impunity in the occupied territory. They have also exposed a deep rift between the most radical Israeli settlers, who believe they have a divine right to the land, and parts of the traditional security establishment, which sees the violence as destabilizing and undermining the state.
In recent days, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Defense Minister Israel Katz, have condemned what they described as violent incidents perpetrated by a small group of extremists. Herzog called the violence “shocking and serious” and said it “crosses a red line.” And Katz, who last year ended administrative detention for Jewish settlers suspected of attacks, pledged more money and resources Monday for a Defense Ministry initiative he said seeks to reduce the attacks through dialogue.
But current and former members of Israel’s political and security elite have also urgently raised the alarm — and instead blamed the government for enacting policies they said either encouraged settler violence or allowed it to flourish.
. . .Netanyahu’s government has lent significant support to the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, taking dramatic steps to ensure that it retains control over most of the territory, which Israel seized from Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967.
While approving housing and other infrastructure projects for Israeli settlements at a record rate, the government has also increased demolition of Palestinian property while deprioritizing investigations into attacks on Palestinians, according to rights groups monitoring the trends. Settlers have also expelled Palestinians from villages, according to the United Nations, in an effort to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state.
In an interview Tuesday with Israel’s Channel 14, Bezalel Smotrich, the country’s far-right finance minister, acknowledged the violence but said the attacks were being used to “defame” Israel and the settler movement.
“There is no place for violence, for taking the law into one’s own hands, certainly not for throwing stones at soldiers,” he said. “This is not how you build the Land of Israel.”
He added, “We are killing the idea of a Palestinian state — day by day, hour by hour — with more than a hundred farms that already span over 700,000 dunams,” or 173,000 acres.
I have news for Mr. Smoatrich. He’s right, but the idea of a Palestinian state was killed not by this, but by the Palestinians themselves when they attacked Israel. Of course going after Palestinians in the West Bank is not only wrong, as is the use of violence, but also further degrades Israel’s already-eroded image in the world. If Israel is to be seen as a state that doesn’t start conflicts, then it shouldn’t start conflicts. The government should do all it can to stop this violence and punish the perpetrators. (That of course is not going to make the world love Israel—it’s too late for that.)
Ukraine used U.S.-supplied long-range missiles to strike Russian territory, the first time it has acknowledged deploying the systems, known as Atacms, since President Trump lifted restrictions on their use.
The move suggests the U.S., which vetoed such attacks when Trump returned to office, is now willing to authorize such strikes and provide the targeting intelligence on which they rely.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Wednesday said its air defenses had downed four Atacms, or Army Tactical Missile Systems, fired at the city of Voronezh near the border with Ukraine the day before.
Ukraine confirmed the strikes on unspecified military targets Tuesday, calling them “a significant development that underscores Ukraine’s unwavering commitment to its sovereignty.” U.S. officials didn’t immediately confirm the weapons’ use.
The long-range strikes also underscored the two-track approach the White House is taking toward halting the conflict in Ukraine. The attacks came as Trump dispatched a high-level Pentagon delegation to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for talks Wednesday toward ending the war, according to senior U.S. officials.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, along with two four-star Army generals, was scheduled to hold discussions with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials, as well as top military and industry representatives, two of the officials said. Driscoll is planning to meet with Russian officials at a later date.
. . . . .The deployment of Atacms, a surface-to-surface missile system with a range of 100 to 190 miles, comes as Ukraine expands its campaign of long-range strikes against energy infrastructure and military targets inside Russia.
Kyiv has used hundreds of domestically produced drones and a small number of long-range missiles it has been developing with Western help. It also has a small stockpile of Atacms, but the Trump administration hasn’t said whether it is willing to send more.
That shift in policy, which Trump denied at the time, coincided with a U.S. effort to pressure the Kremlin into talks on ending the war in Ukraine, now well into its fourth year. Trump signaled he might approve sending Kyiv Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 miles. He later backed off that proposal.
This is intended to pressure Putin to end the war (longer-range Tomahawk missiles have been vetoed), but it may have the opposite effect. I’m rooting for gutsy Ukraine, which was simply invaded, but in the long run I don’t have much hope. The country may persist, but not in the size it is now.
Here’s one of the Atacms missiles, which can fly 190 miles; they’re made by Lockheed-Martin:
*Luana, who often complains about grade inflation, sent an article from The Argument called “When grades stop meaning anything.” It’s about the insanity affecting the University of California system.
The question that captured the world’s attention was 7 + 2 = [_] + 6. There’s no trick; it’s as easy as it looks. The answer is 3.
The question was posed to students in the University of California San Diego’s (UCSD) fast-growing remedial math class, Math 2, and one-quarter of them got it wrong, according to a UCSD Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions report.
UCSD, one of the country’s best public universities, has offered remedial math for nearly a decade — but lately, the share of students requiring it has skyrocketed. In the fall of 2020, 32 students took Math 2. In the fall of 2025, fully 1,000 students had math placement scores so low they would need it.1
In fact, many of the students didn’t just need remedial high school math — their scores indicated they needed remedial middle school or even elementary school math. Only 39% of the students in the remedial class knew how to “round the number 374518 to the nearest hundred.”
Reviewing test results like these, you would expect transcripts full of Cs, Ds, or even failing grades. But alarmingly, these students’ transcripts did not even reflect profound struggles in math. Mostly, they were students whose transcripts said they had taken advanced math courses and performed well.
And, given that state colleges and universities in Californa do not accept standardized tests like the SAT, the increase in remedial math in colleges has to be due in large part to those colleges accepting students whose math ability they cannot judge (high-school grades don’t say anything when they’re this inflated. The other explanation, which may also be true in part, is that math education in schools has degenerated hugely. Yet students still get As, so the teachers are not grading properly—giving As to students who don’t know squat. One way of assessing these explanation is to see whether schools that require SATs still have this inflation in the number of students requiring remedial math.
This is ludicrous:
The students were broadly receiving good grades, too: More than a quarter of the students needing remedial math had a 4.0 grade point average in math. The average was 3.7. In fact, the report found that on average, student grades in 2025 rose compared to those of students admitted in 2020.
Instead, here is the absurd image that the report slowly and painstakingly paints: A number of high schools are awarding A grades to AP Calculus students who do not have any calculus skills and who would get the lowest possible score on the AP Calculus exam if they took it.
And they do indict the new policy eliminating requirements for standardized testing:
Until recently, the “reality check” that these kids have been denied an adequate math education for the past 10 years would come when they turned in very poor scores on the SAT and ACT. They would not have made it into a university like UCSD, which is one of the top-ranked and most selective public universities in the country.
Yet in 2020, the UC system eliminated the requirement for the SAT and ACT for admissions against the advice of the Academic Senate’s Standardized Testing Task Force. In 2021, the system made that policy permanent, citing worries that the tests are biased against disadvantaged students and making the (factually false) claim that they don’t help predict success in college.
Since then, the number of students in UCSD remedial math has surged from 32 to nearly one thousand, the UCSD report found. However, the report made it clear that the university was not — and still is not — well equipped to serve them.
Some people took the rapid decline in math competence at UCSD to be just a particularly well-documented example of a phenomenon occurring everywhere: student performance slumping in the aftermath of COVID disruptions and school closures.
This phenomenon is definitely real — standardized test scores are looking ugly — but what’s going on at UCSD is not typical. Other UC schools have seen a two or threefold increase in underprepared students, not a thirtyfold increase.
This is about UCSD’s admissions process and, in particular, the perfect storm created by massive grade inflation and the ban on standardized test scores. These allow admissions to be dominated by students with good grades in advanced classes who did not actually learn the needed material.
*Also from the WaPo, a report of a wolf using tools—the first such report. But is it really using tools? (h/t Roger) Read on:
The scene, caught on camera on the coast of British Columbia in May 2024, may bethe first documented instance of a wild wolf using a tool, according to the scientists who published the footage in the journal Ecology and Evolution on Monday.
Although the intelligence of wolves is well known, the discovery adds to an expanding list of animals capable of manipulating tools to forage for food, a trait once thought to be unique to humans.
“It’s not a surprise they have the capacity to do this,” said Kyle Artelle, an ecologist with the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry who published the footage. “Yet our jaw dropped when we saw the video.”
The efficiency with which she snagged the bait — in just three minutes — suggested to Artelle that the animal had done this before.
“She’s staring exactly at the trap. Every motion she does is perfectly tailored to getting that trap out as quickly as possible,” said Artelle.
In February, the team recorded a second video of a different wolf pulling a line attached to a partially submerged trap. The camera shut off before it could show whether the animal had learned to finish the job and eat the bait. But afterward, two traps were seen on the shore with their bait cups removed.
The “weight of evidence,” Artelle said, suggests the female wolf or her full pack are responsible for the pilfering.
And the big question:
The wolf video raises a philosophical question: What does it mean to use a tool? Does the animal have to make the tool, as crows do when shortening sticks and peeling off their bark so they fit into crannies? Or can we call an animal a “tool user” if it uses an existing tool, as the wolf did with the rope?
T0 me the answer is simple: YES, it’s tool use. To me, tool use is simply the use of an external object to achieve a “goal”, like a cactus finch using a cactus spine to probe for insects, or a crow dropping stones in water to raise the level so they can get a drink. And no, none of these animals have made a stick or a cactus spine, and yet this is regarded as tool use.
You’ll want to see the wolf in action, so here’s a video:
*A prisoner in Australia is suing the state government for depriving him of his “human right” to have and eat Vegemite, a horrible concoction (but beloved by many Aussies!) basically made from the yeast they scrape off the bottom of the beer tun after fermentation. It’s telling that people who like it suggest using a very thin layer on your toast. Given that, I don’t see the basis for a “human right” to eat the swill:
A prisoner is challenging an Australian state’s ban on inmates eating Vegemite, claiming in a lawsuit that withholding the polarizing yeast-based spread breaches his human right to “enjoy his culture as an Australian.”
Andre McKechnie, 54, serving a life sentence for murder, took his battle for the salty, sticky, brown byproduct of brewing beer to the Supreme Court of Victoria, according to documents released to The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Most Australians revere Vegemite as an unfairly maligned culinary icon, and more than 80% of Australian households are estimated to have a jar in their pantries. But inmates in all 12 prisons in Victoria are going without.
McKechnie is suing Victoria’s Department of Justice and Community Safety and the agency that manages the prisons, Corrections Victoria. The case is scheduled for trial next year.
Vegemite has been banned from Victorian prisons since 2006, with Corrections Victoria saying it “interferes with narcotic detection dogs.”
Inmates used to smear packages of illicit drugs with Vegemite in the hope that the odor would distract the dogs from the contraband.
Vegemite also contains yeast, which is banned from Victorian prisons because of its “potential to be used in the production of alcohol,” the contraband list says.
A decade ago, Vegemite’s then-U.S. owner, Mondelez International, rejected media reports that remote Australian Indigenous communities were using Vegemite to brew alcohol in bathtubs.
Mondelez said in a statement the manufacturing process killed the yeast and that “Vegemite cannot be fermented into alcohol.”
McKechnie is seeking a court declaration that the defendants denied him his right under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act to “enjoy his culture as an Australian.”
The Act guarantees “All persons with a particular cultural, religious, racial or linguistic background” the right to “enjoy their culture, to declare and practice their religion and to use their language.”
He also wants a declaration that the defendants breached the Corrections Act by “failing to provide food adequate to maintain” McKechnie’s “well-being.”
. . . .McKechnie is held at maximum-security Port Phillip Prison. He was 23 years old when he stabbed to death wealthy Gold Coast property developer Otto Kuhne in Queensland in 1994.
He was sentenced to life for murder and transferred a decade later from the Queensland to the Victorian prison system.
McKechnie’s lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Well, I think it’s time to take a poll about this:
Loading ...Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is like Billy Mack, wanting to know exactly what the facts is:
Andrzej: Hili, what are you up to?
Hili: Just checking the facts.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, co ty robisz?
Hili: Sprawdzam fakty.
*******************
From The English Language Police; a collection of dumb headlines:
From Things With Faces; a doughboy:
From CinEmma:
Masih and JKR are quiet, but we have Emma Hilton with words of wisdom:
Your sex is what you are, not who you are. https://t.co/wxXJEiZZ0W
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) November 19, 2025
From Simon: Larry the Cat disses Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince:
From Malcolm. Look at these furballs!
The Norwegian Forest Cat is a breed of domestic cat originating in Northern Europe and it’s one of the oldest, as it’s believed to have been brought to Norway about 1000 CE by the Vikings.
[📹 bhelga9700]pic.twitter.com/6nNDhsGdL4
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 5, 2025
One from my Bluehair feed:
These cats were "separated" for fighting: #AGoodPlaceSource: http://www.reddit.com/r/Amazing/s/…
— Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ (@snarkysillysad.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T16:39:17.618Z
And one from my X feed. What a lovely bird, and almost certainly a male. It’s got a great name, too: the Marvelous Spatuletail (Loddigesia mirabilis).
The most amazing specie of hummingbird that I have ever seen. PERIOD.
It’s the endemism in the maximum expression, only live around a little river called Uctubamba in the north of Peru, department of Amazonas.
📸: @alvarowildlifephoto (Instagram) ©️pic.twitter.com/WpewS9DC6T
— Liberta Cherguia 🇪🇺 (@MbarkCherguia) November 19, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial. Apparently the AI program Grok is slanted against the view that gas chambers were used to exterminate prisoners.
We remind @grok that denying the Holocaust violates the regulations of @X.
SS documents, survivor and witness testimonies, as well as photographs taken by the resistance, provide unequivocal evidence that these were gas chambers where people were murdered en masse with Zyklon B.… pic.twitter.com/frRsyIm67z
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 19, 2025
. . . And two from Dr. Cobb. Of this first one he says, “The world is still working.” Yes—for rays:
The largest group of rays ever filmed. Here's a link to the entire video in 4k high resolution wide screen format on my youtube channel for anyone that's interested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4vW… #nature #amazing #animals #wildlife #ocean #florida #naturephotography
— See Through Canoe (@seethroughcanoe.bsky.social) 2025-11-11T22:02:35.601Z
. . . and a Roman mosaic duck. Looks like a mallard to me:
For #MosaicMonday a charming duck.Found in Trier, dating 4th century AD📷 meOn display at Museum am Dom, Trier🏺 #archaeology
— Nina Willburger (@drnwillburger.bsky.social) 2025-11-10T13:14:08.510Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If you want a symbolic gesture, don’t burn the flag, wash it. -Norman Thomas, minister and social reformer (20 Nov 1884-1968)
(Former) Aussie here- Why you would stop inmates having vegemite is beyond me… I actually own some here!
Love the Bruce sketch: like many stereotypes it is kind of true. Not now I think but growing up Bruce was actually a pretty common name there.(all guys older than me).
sigh – yes this again from me. Permit my loudmouthing:
Re Judea and Samaria (“The West Bank” for the ignorant and commie pukes..) 😉
Seriously – given the accusers – the same NGOs who “reported” on the “resistance” that was Oct. 7… should we listen to their “West Bank Joos are smashing Pawetinian babies and puppies” routine?
By Israeli accounts the situation there is wildly different to how the NGOs portray it. NGOs like to find be-hatted religious guys there and “balance the scales” by portraying –them– as the maniacs. Most of their violence is reactive against Arab predation. On. Israeli. Land… won in an Arab initiated war.
D.A.
NYC
My shekel’s worth: the Times of Israel has been reporting on these attacks for some weeks now. I noticed that finally the Prime Minister cane out and critisized these behaviors this week, saying that Israel must be an example of a land of laws. And, No, Mr. Smotrich, you are there the CREATE the State of Israel, a daunting enough task, not to “kill the idea of a palistinian state”. Please do what is required to secure your pre-1967 borders and end this mishigas of settlers.
I prefer the original 1948 borders myself, which Israel re-established in 1967 after defeating the surrounding Arabs in a war of attempted annihilation.
Ok Leslie, I stand corrected. The bandwidth of commenting is too limited for my inability to write clearly and express myself. I do not have real skin in the game, not planning on making aliyah in the last few hours/days/years of my shelf life, but I do strongly support the existence of a Jewish state and that it be defensible. When I said pre-1967 borders, I was thinking what came out of the partition and 1948 war, but with a bit more buffer around West Bank and a few miles of strategic high ground in Golan heights.
It is the Jewish people who historically need a self-determining homeland. The current land of Israel happens to include much of the land that our ancestors populated 3,000 years ago and that is meaningful to me. Other Arabs were there too…some called Canaanites, so sharing the total area, such as Gaza, Judea, and Sumeria with others seems fair to me. A political solution to allow all the religions who claim the importance of the temple mount area of Jerusalem would be a good project…and I say this all being well aware that the Islamist position is one state: theirs with no Jews anywhere. Just have to over time move away from that and away from an orthodox Jewish position that god gave us Judea and Sumeria so we want it back!
Fair enough, Jim, those guys in J&S are pretty hard core and obnoxious and far be it from religious people do do cruel and stupid things…. that they mess up isn’t my point though.
My issue is how – in some morally bankrupt attempt to “balance” the scales, whatever they do is seen by western media/NGOs as “answer” to wild, constant and civilizational Arab barbarism. And there is NO comparison.
BTW – I’m currently listening to “Confessions of a Pro-Palestine Activist” – on The Free Press’ youtube. Fascinating, smart Stanford lady gets suckered into madness.
best regards Jim,
D.A.
NYC
The video of the two cats fighting is one of my favorites of this year.
Three thoughts:
–The Norwegian Forest Cat reminds me of medieval drawings of cats. Maybe they looked like that because cats then really did look like that? Selective breeding could easily have altered the appearance of the domestic housecat in the interim as it was bred for friendliness (see Belyaev, 1959).
–Vegemite is a pale, weak imitation of Marmite. Sorry, Aussies, but it’s true.
–No pooftahs!” (I merely quote a Bruce and intend no offense.)
I tried vegemite just one time. After my experience I believe having to eat it should be considered cruel and unusual punishment.
You will never make a real New Zealander. It is one of those shibboleths (like enjoying feijoas) that separate us from the rest of the world
We had Australian relatives visit when I was a small child. They brought a jar of Vegemite for all to sample. That was accomplished with oohs and aahs from the Aussies and (perhaps thus) all the kids loved the stuff! Years later, though I rarely have it, I still think it’s pretty darn good!
——I wrote this yesterday afternoon, edited it and then it didn’t seem to wanna come back…
On the scandal de jour.
“I’m unsure of the whole “trafficked” charges, Emily.
Was he charged with this? – to be fair the whole “trafficked jurisprudence” post dates my practice of law so I’m unsure of what, exactly, that word means….
But like everything in this case (why it bothers me in part).. the “take home” part of the exam – the wild mania of the rabble… differs from the legal and factual reality. And THAT is the real danger.
But..taking the plain meaning (and understand I’ve made little effort in this stupid case)..it seems like the young girls were consensually involved with him, and paid – and paid enough to entice their friends: whether getting on planes, accepting money, or having sex that..as far as I know.. was above the age of consent in all 3 jurisdictions (in Ms. Guiffre’s case. Others have been vague to say the least on details AFAIK)
My concern is more with the social mania and moral panic than the dynamics of the actual case.
D.A.
NYC”
Re-reading the comments yesterday, I agree with Leslie’s analysis –
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/11/19/wednesday-hili-dialogue-556/#comment-2166682
So should it be OK to make prostitutes out of underage girls just because you can wave enough money in front of them that they temporarily forget their reservations?
Epstein did not “forget to check if a willing partner was of legal age”. He set up a prostitution ring that targeted girls who are biologically a woman but mentally still malleable. That’s the part Leslie ignored in his analysis.
I always see that wolf in the hardware store, so yeah – not surprised.
😁
I teach quite a few revision maths classes these days (revision, not remedial, but the same in all but name I suspect) and I’ve never gone that far back. I usually start by making sure everyone remembers BODMAS (or PEDMAS for USers, I’m told).
And BEDMAS for Canucks.
Thanks, I do teach Canucks as well so I’ll be sure to mention this as well next time!
Do Aussies use anything different? I’ll be teaching Aussies next year so it would be nice to know.
I can’t remember how I learned it in American schools, but since I’ve taught math in Canada, it’s always been BEDMAS.
I taught “9th grade general math” in high school in U.S. in early 70’s. This was basically arithmetic to give a required math credit for high school graduation to kids who were unprepared to take algebra or pre-algebra or the like. What I found was that it was not math a number of these kids had trouble with, but rather that they could not read! So they could not even get to the math. I watched some kids copying the shapes of numbers from the book to their papers because they could not read those numbers and remember them. Just wanted to add that to the discussion because over all these years I have not seen a reading program aimed at remediating that problem for these children.
🎯
The final 2 paragraphs of the main argument;
Me, I’d bet against it. Anyone offering an even money wager? If so then they need a class in remedial probability.
I thought I was inured to bad news about math(s) education. Nope. IMO this is worse that the now-acknowledged disaster of abandoning
phonicsstructured literacy. At least with “whole language” teaching the student learns how to fake reading; rotsa ruck attempting that with math(s).And re the wolf, it might get less keen on that tool the first time a trap contains a live crab. Live and learn, unlike the above-mentioned students.
Hmm… even money seems a bit greedy, but I could offer 1 to 1.5 for the drop out rate of psychology majors not to be more than twice as high as those not needing remedial classes.
Deal?
No deal. The current rate might already be near 50%. And does changing majors count as dropping out? Do first-years even have a major yet (vs the intent to have one)? Does failing out count? And ….
And really, “at all” would be much too long to wait; even 4 years is.
A “right” to eat Vegemite is just prison culture, what American cops call the “ground game” that bored miscreants do to torment their warders. He wants to have Vegemite, perhaps to protect his dope stash, just because the prison says he can’t. Watch the long version of George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe, man” video to see this in action.
I deplore the attacks on Palestinians in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). This is about the worst message that Israel can send to the world. The government needs to crack down hard on the perpetrators. Israel needs to be a moral nation. Even the right wing politicians, Smotrich included, must speak out unequivocally against the violence. Whatever the eventual disposition of the territorial Swiss cheese that is Judea and Samaria, the people who live there will need to do so in peace. Now is as good a time as any to practice doing so.
Whether one calls it tool use or not, the wolf’s technique of pulling crab traps to shore to get at the bait is very clever indeed. I’m impressed, even if the wolf used existing technology to get the bait, rather than inventing new technology. I use a computer every day. It’s existing technology. Do I really need to build a computer from scratch to claim that I use a tool? I don’t think so. For that matter, if my late cat Tobi (z’ll) sat on the computer to get warm, was she using a tool?
I am inclined to find attacks on Palestinians by West Bank Jewish settlers quite understandable.
At least 1600 WB Jews have been murdered by Palestinians since 1967, and over 2500 have been injured. Many thousands of violent incidents by Palestinians not resulting in death or injury have also taken place.
From what I have read, Jewish settlements in Area C are basically enclaves, beset for decades by roving bands of Palestinians whose only business there is to harass, injure, or kill Jews. There are zero Jews in Area A or B.
The whole “issue” of Jewish settler violence in the West Bank appears to be manufactured. It is the UN which provides the world the data about “settler violence” with the usual suspects amplifying the the topic. But the data are absurd:
98% of cases of harm/death of Palestinians reported by the UN as “Settler Violence” resulted from clashes with security forces and are not attributed to ‘settlers’ in any way
The UN does not reveal how many of the incidents in its database involve terrorists who were injured or killed while attacking Jews.
19% of the cases involve hikers who strayed out of Area C, or road paving crews properly doing their jobs
20% of the cases did not even take place in the West Bank. 16% involve clashes in Jerusalem between Palestinians and IDF forces at the Temple Mount.
You can read the Regavim report about this whole deal here:
https://www.regavim.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/RegavimSilufEng0406digital.pdf
Thank you Roger! Right on the money. (I forgot about regavim)
Pretty much any interaction (even routine law enforcement) against a percentage of restive J&S Arabs is cast by them, then amplified by the NGOs/media to be “settler violence”.
When was the last time you heard of a Jew dying at the hands of Arab mobs in J. and S.? You didn’t b/c outside Israel it is never published, despite hundreds of cases (1,600 evidently). We only see wild crazed bearded hats on TV….
It is a colossal con job. Like the whole Pal “cause.”
D.A.
NYC
Thank you, David. 🙂
Coincidently, Melanie Phillips just posted about this topic today. [https://www.jns.org/the-muddled-morass-of-settler-violence/]
She calls for prosecution for the Jewish delinquents who are responsible, while at the same time puts the issue in perfect perspective. She quotes data from Shin Bet, which I could not access because it is in Hebrew, and the numbers are much worse than I provided above:
“In any event, Arabs attack the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria an estimated 60 times more frequently than attacks upon them by Jews. Between 2019 and 2022, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency recorded 25,257 Palestinian Arab attacks on Jewish residents in these territories.
In 2024, according to figures published by Rescuers Without Borders, Palestinian Arab terrorists targeted Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria at least 6,343 times, murdering 27 Israelis and wounding more than 300 others. These attacks included 3,668 instances of rock-throwing, 843 attacks with Molotov cocktails, 671 attempts to blind drivers with laser pointers, 526 explosive charges, 364 cases of arson and 179 terrorist shootings.”
And, the newly-released Palestinian terrorists are evidently helping out:
“Last month, according to the Meri Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the Palestinian Arab media center Me’ata, which monitors the “struggle against the occupation,” noted an attempt to escalate “resistance” actions against Israelis, galvanized by the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons as part of the ceasefire agreement.
Some 356 “popular resistance actions” were documented that month in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, including planting and detonating explosive devices, shootings, an attempted vehicle-ramming attack, rock-throwing, and attacks with Molotov cocktails and fireworks”
So are the attacks “manufactured” by the UN and therefore not real or are the attacks real but understandable?
I’m getting mixed messages from your post.
The crisis is manufactured.
There have been some attacks by Jewish settlers, yes, but if they are put in proper perspective, what people should be talking about are Palestinian violence against Jews in Samaria and Judea, and the rank dishonesty of the UN statistics and their framing of the issue. Imho.
Re sending a good/bad/worst message to the world, “the world” has amply shown that for Israel almost no good deed goes unpunished. If one is already considered to be an irredeemable psychopathic mass-murderer, then fʌkɪt.
Maintaining internal social cohesion is an entirely different difficulty. The government must act in ways that most of its population accepts, or at least tolerates. But the Israeli state has the great relative advantage that Islamists are nearly certain to attempt further atrocities on Israeli civilians, so even (e.g.) Bibi’s current government will easily be seen as the lesser evil.
Do you like Marmite? It is a taste I acquired. But there are those who dislike it.
I adore it! I have not found anyone else who likes it.
As far as worst foods in the world, Icelandic hakarl (or fermented greenland shark -apparently tasting like ammonia flavored mature cheese) probably beats vegemite, which is basically a salty vitamin B supplement.
Vegemite – “It’s telling that people who like it suggest using a very thin layer on your toast.”
Nope. The thicker the better. But I wouln’t eat it with a spoon.
THIS JUST IN :
BEAR USES CHAINSAW :
https://x.com/bowtiedbroke/status/1986385622630887801?s=46
…. well, he was holding it by the handle, so … she musta been headed out to fell a tree, right?😁
The prisoner doing life without vegimite? He should have thought of that before he committed himself to THAT sentence 🤪
Vegemite and vogals toast is my savoury breakfast and late night food go to snack… I have a few spreads I like and always on vogals toast.
The wolf is an opportunist (well practiced at that) this human tool is just an obstacle to a goal. On wolves, I have seen footage of a pack of artic wolves leave a whole diseased musk ox carcass even though they were starving, smart move, I was awed by that simple act.
I’m not a fan of it myself, but calling it “swill” is an insult — no self-respecting Sus domesticus would touch the stuff. 🙂
Grade inflation is only part of the story behind the rise in remedial instruction. Another factor is in how public colleges are funded. It’s tied to enrollment, which places serious pressure on colleges to maintain/increase enrollments just to stay financially afloat. This, coupled with a shrinking pool of HS graduates from which to recruit, means colleges are lowering (and in some cases ignoring or eliminating) admission standards. It’s self-preservation.
“Missippi’s literacy program shows improvement.”
For those who’ve never been to rural “Mis-SIP-ee”—that’s exactly how you’ll hear a lot of folks say it.
Ha! When asked how to spell it, the teacher said “sound it out”. So they did and this is what they got! Very nice, Doug.
Exactly. And if it was supposed to be “I-oh-wah” there would have been an aitch at the end.
B/c I grew up with it (and quite like it) over the decades I’ve enjoyed testing vegemite on humans in my home. Americans. To a man/woman I’ve only found one non-Australian person (a salt maniac) who didn’t hate it!
I think there are foods you can only appreciate if you grew up with them: Japanese “natto” (fermented bean horror) is an example which Japanese love spooning into gaijin to see us squirm and wretch. I bet that vile sounding shark is the same.
D.A.
NYC
Yes, I was thinking of “chou doufu” (“stinky tofu”), loved by so many old men in China.
Given some of the contributions made by America to the world of food no American can criticize the taste of Vegemite. I cite cheese in a can, spam, mayonnaise on virtually everything, drip filter coffee, candied bacon, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Chow Mein, Cinnamon flavoured gum, red hots, candy corn.
And if our biggest humans rights problem is Vegemite. I would suggest you turn your eyes to the Second amendments and the effect it has on school children. Because in Australia, we have gun control
Sorry, but taste is subjective, and it is ridiculous to say that no American can criticize the taste of Vegemite. And no, htere is no mayonnaise on everything. Yes, we do have good food here but you are just splenetic. The human rights post was tongue in cheek, and you should have realized that. At any rate, I am not keen on newbies coming over here and being grumpy and nasty AND telling us we are not entitled to criticize the taste of Vegemite.. I am sorry but you are not welcome on this site. Did you read the Roolz.
Au revoir!
I think you meant adieu. 🙂
That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell . . .
Or just goodbye, without any spoken intent to meet again. The emotional valence of a goodbye depends strongly on the nature of the relationship, eh. IANA Francophone.
The New York Review of Books has recently published a must-read article, titled
“Where Wokeness Went Wrong.” The reviewer is Susan Neiman (author of “Left Is Not Woke”) and the book under review is “Desire and Fate” by David Rieff.
You can read it here: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/12/04/where-wokeness-went-wrong-desire-and-fate-rieff/
(If that doesn’t work, feed the url into archive.is)
Some excerpts:
“Wokeness is hard to define because it’s an incoherent concept, built on a contradiction between feeling and thought. It’s fueled by emotions traditionally held by the left. When in doubt, stand by those on the margins: the tired, the poor, the hungry, those yearning to breathe free. Those emotions, however, are undermined by beliefs that have traditionally belonged to the right. What are called identity politics—misleadingly, since they reduce our rich and various identities to our ethnic and gender origins—assume that you will have real connections and deep obligations only to those who belong to your own tribe, though others may be useful as allies. Calls for justice are sometimes viewed as liberal attempts to impose (Eurocentric) values on others; anyone who claims to be acting for the sake of a universal humanity is deceptive. Finally, apparent steps toward progress are simply subtler forms of oppression. Add to all of this the suspicion that reason is a form of domination that replaced more honest struggles for power, and you have a worldview that is not far from one held by the worst reactionaries. I am not arguing, as is commonly suggested, that wokeness was on the right track but went too far. Rather, by unwittingly accepting deeply regressive philosophical assumptions, it went in the wrong direction entirely.”
“Woke politics are not merely symbolic politics whose symbols are now tawdry, their metaphors worn. Woke politics, Rieff argues, are antipolitics. Fighting for a seat at a table long gone rotten is a poor substitute for systematic change…He quotes the political scientist Adolph Reed Jr.’s quip that ‘the real project of Woke was to diversify the ruling class.’ Rieff offers no solutions, but he suggests that the real reckoning with our history needs to focus on class rather than race.”
The reviewer also includes an excellent quite by the late Todd Gitlin: “The goal of [identity politics] is to make sure your category is represented in power, and the proper critique of other people’s politics is that they represent a category that is not yours…Even when it takes on a radical temper, identity politics is interest-group politics. It aims to change the distribution of benefits, not the rules under which the distribution takes place.”
“The right is not wrong, Rieff writes, to see Disney as woke. His problem is not Disney’s adoption of what’s called inclusive language but the fact that ‘as long as these underrepresented groups are represented, the identitarian left has little to say about the nature of Disney’s product.’ Whether you object to Disney’s hidden imperialism or simply to its ability to flatten every human emotion into treacly kitsch, you’re unlikely to sharpen the skills needed to criticize its movies at a contemporary university.”
“In the final pages…Rieff homes in on his main target: the cultural impulse that drives woke extremes…he contends that we have reached ‘the triumph of the traumatic.’ Indeed, at one point he calls it the ‘dictatorship of the therapeutic.’ …The new normal, he says, is utter fragility: ‘Ours is an age in which people routinely, even ritualistically, speak of feeling unsafe when in fact what they are is offended….This is why Woke is, at its core, an expression of moral and social hypochondria.’ Rieff hints at but doesn’t explicate the connection between this observation and his claim that ‘we now live in a culture in which not to consider yourself a victim is a pathology…or else, whether you realize it or not, or are willing to admit it or not, it is to be an oppressor.’ …victimhood now receives the sort of social recognition that used to be reserved for heroism. And since it’s easier to become a victim than a hero, there’s good reason, in the present economy of psychic attention, to keep your wounds open.”
Oh bother. One of my words-to-live-by is “I don’t do victim”, now one more way to be unfashionable.
Re the suspicion that reason is a form of domination — they’re correct, but not in the way intended. Ceteris paribus¹, those who think things through have a significant advantage.
. . . . .
¹ A symptom from attending Philosophy Department seminars. “Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.“
“Oh bother.” I love it.
One of the many wonderful things I learned as an adult from from A A Milne.
Revelator, that’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing it.
Re “The goal …is to make sure your category is represented in power.”
In a meeting about the need for full ‘decolonisation and indigenisation’ of a New Zealand university, a colleague suggested that the discussion might do well to move beyond Maori to include as well other groups who suffer discrimination. She mentioned women and various racial minorities. The meeting went silent until a Maori spoke up to say “No. This must be about Maori.” The meeting again went silent. But a flurry of discussion followed the meeting, with a general recognition that “Well, now we know what we’re dealing with.” Until the narrowness of the interest-group politics was so brazenly exposed, no one had understood the terms of engagement.
The hard-earned Enlightenment sensibilities that make us meet each other as equals simply do not extend to identity politics. What counts there is a very ugly tribalism.
‘Ours is an age in which people routinely, even ritualistically, speak of feeling unsafe when in fact what they are is offended….This is why Woke is, at its core, an expression of moral and social hypochondria.’
That’s perfect. Gonna break that out at Thanksgiving with the family.
Tool use?? I don’t believe it.
If the wolf had brought the rope from its den, or found a rope nearby, then attached it to the trap to haul it out of the water, then I’d believe that was use of a tool. But this wolf simply knows that there’s a tasty bit at the end of a rope already attached to a buoy, and so knows to retrieve the buoy, then pull on the rope to get at the tasty bit. That’s not tool use anymore than a chimp knowing how to peel a banana to get at the interior, or a bear figuring out how to open the trashcan to get at food scraps.
If it self-identifies as a tool, it is a tool. 🙂
I went looking for the Marvelous Spatulatail in Peru. One of the best bird names ever! Unfortunately I only found the tail-less female.