Welcome to Friday, April 17, 2026, and Ellis Island Family History Day. Here’s a record that I believe is marks the arrival of my grandmother, Sali Mermelstein, at Ellis Island from Hungary on May 4, 1904. I am not 100% sure this is her, but if it is she was ten years old on arrival. My mother was born in 1919, which would make my grandmother 25 when she gave birth to my mother. Also, Sali went by “Sadie” in the U.S. I put the red box in; click to enlarge.
It’s also International Haiku Poetry Day, Malbec World Day, National Cheeseball Day, and National Crawfish Day. Here’s are two Jewish haiku (not mine):
Yom Kippur-forgive
Me, God, for the Mercedes
And all the lobsters.No fins, no flippers,
The gefilte fish swims with
Some difficulty
I leave for a week tomorrow (Savannah) so there may not be a Hili dialogue tomorrow. However, I will do my best to post as I have time.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 17 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Trump has announced a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon. What’s that?, you say. For the government of Lebanon is not Hezbollah, and Hezbollah has to agree. Presumably it did
President Trump announced on Thursday that the leaders of Israel and Lebanon had agreed to begin a 10-day cease-fire at 5 p.m. Eastern time. If it indeed takes effect, the cease-fire could remove a major hurdle to the broader peace talks with Iran.
A truce would pause the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group. Neither immediately confirmed Mr. Trump’s announcement. The negotiations are complicated by the fact that Israel is discussing a cease-fire only with the Lebanese government, which does not have control over Hezbollah, a group considered more powerful than Lebanon’s own military. Hezbollah has long rejected any direct talks with Israel.
However, such a dynamic is not without precedent.
The cease-fire that ended the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, in November 2024, was negotiated indirectly between Israel and Lebanon’s government through U.S. mediators. Even though Hezbollah was not a formal signatory to the deal, the agreement would not have worked without its consent.
The fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has threatened to upend the cease-fire between the United States and Iran, which is set to expire next week. Hezbollah is Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East and Iran has repeatedly insisted that the truce should extend to Lebanon. The United States and Israel have rejected that demand.
It was not clear whether more than a million residents who have been displaced in southern Lebanon would be able to return home; Israel has signaled recently that it was planning to occupy large parts of the area even after the current conflict with Hezbollah.
More than 2,100 people have been killed in Lebanon during the current conflict, Lebanese authorities have said. At least 13 Israeli soldiers have also been killed, along with two civilians, according to the Israeli authorities.
This is a cease-fire that will not last, especially if Hezbollah is not ordered to disarm, as a 2006 UN Security Council resolution stipulated. And Iran’s insistence that an Israel/Hezbollah truce be part of their own agreement with the U.S. and Israel shows more than anything that Iran still wants to support terrorism in the Middle East. That Trump agreed to this finally shows that he just wants the war to be over and doesn’t care much about the security interests of Israel.
UPDATE: The cease-fire began at midnight in Lebanon, and thousands of Lebanese are heading to their homes in the south. Hezbollah, though it stopped firing rockets, has not said it will abide by the truce. Nor has it said it will disarm, and since the truce is with the Lebanese government, that government would have to force Hezbollah to disarm. There is no obvious way to do so. Netanyahu has made disarming a sine qua non for any agreement, so once again we reach an impasse, one that will last ten days.
*On Wednesday, and by a narrow margin, the Senate blocked a resolution to prevent Trump from attacking Iran.
Wednesday’s procedural vote was defeated 52-47, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) joining Democrats to support the resolution and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) voting against it. Sen. Jim Justice (R-West Virginia) did not vote.
Some Republicans who opposed the resolution said they nevertheless want Trump to consult Congress as the war approaches the two-month mark — an important legal deadline.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 — the law Democrats are using to force the votes — requires presidents to remove U.S. forces from any conflict that Congress has not authorized within 60 days. Trump can obtain a 30-day extension if he certifies that it is an “unavoidable military necessity.”Trump predicted shortly after the war started that it would be over within four or five weeks, but the 60-day deadline, which arrives May 1, is rapidly approaching. He has sent mixed signals about how long the conflict will go on, telling Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business on Tuesday that he the war was “very close to over” even as he imposed a naval blockade on Iran and sent thousands more troops to the Middle East.
“The president recognized ahead of time when he first went into Iran that this was going to be a short-term thing, right?” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. “We’re probably not going to be dealing with 60 days. Well, here we are.”
If three votes had been changed in favor of the resolution, it would have passed, though I don’t know what force the resolution would have had. Would Trump have stopped attacking Iran for good? I doubt it. And even if both houses of Congress turn Democratic in the midterm, Trump can still attack other countries, since the stipulation that only Congress can declare war no longer seems to be in force. Fetterman’s and Paul’s votes were predictable, and canceled each other out. Fetterman, much as I like him, is not going to be reelected should he choose to run.
*From It’s Noon in Israel, we now learn that the Democratic Party officially hates Israel:
It’s Thursday, April 16, and last night, the U.S. Senate voted on a pair of resolutions aimed at blocking $447 million in arms and bulldozer sales to Israel. While the measures ultimately failed, the final tally demonstrated a seismic political shift. The Democratic Party voted overwhelmingly in favor, with 40 of 47 Senate Democrats backing the embargoes. In the end, the sales were only saved by unified Republican opposition.
The resolutions were proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders. While similar measures brought by Sanders were rejected out of hand in 2024 and 2025, the political landscape has clearly shifted. The number of Democrats voting alongside the Vermont independent has more than doubled in less than two years.
Contrary to the media’s lamentations, Israel and the United States did not lose the war to Iran. Who decided that the temporary survival of a regime constitutes a victory?
The Middle East is full of despotic Muslim dictatorships that have never interested the United States, and rightfully so. America is the world’s policeman, not its educator. If a leader wishes to destroy the lives of their citizens, the U.S. military will not be sent to protect them. The strongest army in the world and the strongest air force in the region destroyed $200 billion worth of Iranian military assets because the country posed an existential threat.
Yet, on a different front, Israel suffered a worrying loss: the war for American public opinion. The scope of this shift is historic. For the first time since polling on the issue began, the number of Americans holding an unfavorable view of Israel has eclipsed those with a favorable one, tipping the scales at 48 percent to 46 percent.
The percentage of Israel’s supporters dropped to a low not seen since 1989, and the percentage of detractors hit an all-time high.
If there is a mitigating circumstance, it is that Israel’s global standing historically deteriorates during prolonged military conflicts. We saw this during the First Intifada with its knives and stones, the Second Intifada with its exploding buses, and the Second Lebanon War. The current decline is deeper primarily because the war is longer. However, there is reason to expect a recovery once the regional fighting concludes—hopefully soon, and with a decisive victory. Furthermore, Israel’s national standing is still faring slightly better than that of its leader: Netanyahu currently sits at minus 23 percent, compared to a positive 9 percent just two years ago.
But that’s not all. According to a CNN poll, the majority of Republicans under the age of 50 now view Israel negatively: minus 16 percent, compared to plus 28 percent just four years ago.
The primary negative development is the rise in support for the Palestinians. Thirty-seven percent of Americans view them favorably, a record high since measurements began in 2000. This indicates a profound shift—not necessarily localized anger toward Israel, but authentic support for its enemies. Netanyahu believes that those in America who have a problem with Israel have a problem with America itself. Meaning, it is not an issue of public diplomacy (hasbara) but a matter of the progressive worldview.
The last paragraph is distressing; if there is one earmark of a “progressive” Democrat, it is a loathing of Israel (and for some, of the West in general). Note that this is not a gift, but a sale to Israel. I’m a lifelong Democrat, and am deeply depressed at where my party is going. I won’t be driven into the arms of Republicans, but how do I vote for a candidate with the ideology of Bernie Sanders.
*Hasan Piker is a far-left “influencer”, and by far left I mean he harbors a love of Communism and a deep, deep hatred of Israel. He’s posing a problem for Democrats who are loath to align with his stands, but some want to have some of his “influence” rub off on them, and that includes Ezra Klein. Over at The Free Press, Peter Savodnik dissents, arguing that “Actually, Hasan Piker is the Democrats’ enemy.”
Democrats have a Hasan Piker problem. They seem not to know what to do with the über-lefty streamer-influencer with millions of followers—to engage or not to engage; to campaign with him, or to pretend he doesn’t exist. That is the question!
In recent days, Piker has doubled down on his claim that Israel is worse than Hamas and declared that the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century. Last month, he took part in a propaganda mission to Cuba. In November, he was in China promoting all the Chinese Communist Party’s good works.
One would think Democrats would have no trouble dispensing with this radical chic retread.
And yet Piker is being defended by some of the most prominent voices on the American left—including, most recently, Ezra Klein, who has penned a column originally headlined “Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy.”
Actually, if you believe that Donald Trump and his cult of personality pose a dire threat to the Constitution, if you believe that America needs a serious, substantive liberalism that narrows the gap between the 1 percenters and everyone else, then Hasan Piker is the enemy.
He’s the would-be savior of the Cuban people who showed up in Havana with his $1,300 Cartier sunglasses.
He’s the wannabe revolutionary who on October 8, 2023, while the Israelis were still counting corpses, issued a breathless defense of the freedom fighters of Gaza overthrowing the shackles of their oppressors. “You cannot push people into a fucking corner their whole lives and not expect them to fight back at a certain point,” he ranted. This was followed by a manly “Suck my dick,” after which Piker accused Israel of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”
And yes, he’s the perfect distillation of the new left antisemitism (his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding). You do not get to obsess over the Jewish state—amplifying its every misstep, deleting or distorting the long history of Jews across the Middle East—while claiming you are not obsessing over the Jewish state. (In his column, Klein defends Piker against the antisemitism charge by arguing that he’s just an “anti-Zionist” whose anti-Zionism, he later notes, “is rising as a response to what Israel is doing”—although, oddly, Klein fails to note that Piker had taken to calling Israel “genocidal” before it responded to the October 7, 2023, attack.)
The new Democratic Party has forgotten what the party is meant to be—why there is an American left. It has become weak, stupid, enamored of whatever the barely pubescent influencer class tells it it should be enamored of. It is far more vulnerable to the manipulations of the brand-builders: Believe all women. Take a knee. Or, more recently, declare that you’ll never take a dime from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group. These are all gestures, forms of appeasement, ways of signaling to the radicals (intentionally or not) that the mainstream of the Democratic Party is not safely cordoned off from its radical flank.
Piker poses an even greater threat to Democrats than the Black Panthers and Weathermen and Students for a Democratic Society ever did.
Ezra Klein, apparently, is unaware of all of the above. Or unfazed by it. His column reads like a whitewash, a carefully worded statement meant to legitimize Piker, make him more palatable.
Make no mistake about it: Piker’s support is not going to make or break the Democratic Party. But I’m surprised that Ezra Klein would endorse such a hateful person—and on the grounds that he’s “just a Zionist, not an antisemite.” I have no respect for somebody who thinks it’s fine to be Jewish but it’s not fine to agree that the established Jewish state is legitimate. If that were the case, then Piker should be saying that all the explicitly Muslim Middle East states (like the Islamic Republic of Iran) are also invalid. And of course Israel is not a theocracy like many of those states.
*Over at the NYT, Carl Zimmer reports on a new paper in Nature by David Reich and many colleagues. The upshot is that humans are still evolving as measured by genetic change (that is evolution). It’s no surprise to an evolutionist, for we’re facing many new environmental challenges, though we have medicine to deal with many former sources of mortality. Click below to see the paper, but I will quote Zimmer.
Many scientists have contended that humans have evolved very little over the past 10,000 years.
A few hundred generations was just a blink of the evolutionary eye, it seemed. Besides, our cultural evolution — our technology, agriculture and the rest — must have overwhelmed our biological evolution by now.
A vast study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, suggests the opposite. Examining DNA from 15,836 ancient human remains, scientists found 479 genetic variants that appeared to have been favored by natural selection in just the past 10,000 years.
The researchers also concluded that thousands of additional genetic variants have probably experienced natural selection. Before the new study, scientists had identified only a few dozen variants.
“There are so many of them that it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around them,” said David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School and an author of the new study.
He and his colleagues found that a mutation that is a major risk factor for celiac disease, for example, appeared just 4,000 years ago, meaning the condition may be younger than the Egyptian pyramids.
The mutation became ever more common. Today, an estimated 80 million people worldwide have celiac disease, in which the immune system attacks gluten and damages the intestines.
Here’s a genome-wide scan from the paper showing the loci on all 23 chromosomes likely to have been subject to directional selection (the authors used statistical tests as well as simulations to determine this). All bars that rise above the dotted line are considered genomic regions showing evidence for that selection to a significant degree. There are, by the report, 479 of them.
The question I get most often when lecturing on evolution is “Are humans still evolving?” The answer is “yes,” of course; we would stop only if there was no genetic variation adapting us to new environments (or anything else). ;This is the reference to give if you get asked that question.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a revelation:
Hili: Leaves are solar panels.
Andrzej: That is indeed true, unlike so many other reports.
In Polish:
Hili: Liście to panele słoneczne.
Ja: To akurat jest prawda, w odróżnieniu od tak wielu innych doniesień.
*******************
From Now That’s Wild:
From Animals in Random Places:
From Jesus of the Day (do you think she’ll call back? And what was a duck doing with his pants?):
This Iranian woman and her husband are scheduled for execution—for protesting. It’s a capital crime in Iran, you know.
Breaking: Iran’s Regime Moves to Execute a Female Protester
Bita Hemmati, a young Iranian woman, is reportedly at imminent risk of execution by hanging alongside her husband.
She was arrested after taking part in the nationwide anti-regime protests in January, part of a wave of… pic.twitter.com/fePfqHOgYp
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 16, 2026
From Luana: Democratic districts get richer:
The vivid partisan sorting of US house districts by income and party — 2005 -2024 pic.twitter.com/fWkvbsHkm6
— Tom Wood (@thomasjwood) April 15, 2026
From Cate: This is patience, but the animals are rewarded:
This guy spent 14 hours waiting for a squirrel to set off this Rube Goldberg Machine pic.twitter.com/9HYCvRVmEQ
— Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) April 15, 2026
From Larry the #10 Cat, who might have a case of defamation here:
I have some concerns with your choice of picture for this story @BBCNews pic.twitter.com/Xfll0cZtcb
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) April 16, 2026
From Malcolm; cats imitating hoomans:
A funny compilation of cats hilariously copying human actions and behaviors
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) March 7, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death when she arrived at Auschwitz. She was about ten years old, and would be 82 years old today had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-17T10:35:09.505Z
And two from Dr. Cobb. Here’s a guy who really loves his cats. But do the cats love the ride?
Morning Kittens
— Democrat Cats (@democratcats.bsky.social) 2026-04-15T15:28:58.955Z
Guys: would you shove a stick of radium up your willy? This is a real ad, says Matthew:
I – also a lifelong Dem am also very disappointed by the party: enough to change my vote (which makes no difference here of course). Could PCC(E) do the same? When a party, org or media outlet (BBC, NYTimes, etc) are not fit for purpose – leave them.
It seems like every day I bore my friends here at WEIT with with how much I hate Ezra Klein b/c he is a huge phony, a woke warrior of the worst order… until it wasn’t cool anymore. His stance on Israel is well known, and now he’s defending dog-electrocuting (look it up) communist terrorist Cuban tourist damn Piker.
Klein is everything that’s wrong with elite Manhattan. Piker is everything that’s wrong with America.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
So far, David, here in my little corner of Southeastern Virginia, every time I am disappointed in the Dem choice for an office, I have been even more disappointed by the Rep choice. While apparently turning out to be a lifelong Dem in having voted for the person, not the party, and that person always turned out to be a Dem in over fifty years of voting, except for one local statehouse contest years ago, I could vote Rep and the wokeness of Dems recently on offer certainly drives me seeking something better. (Please pardon the run-on, stream of consciousness sentence, but hopefully you get my simple point…ten to fifteen years ago the Bernie bros were made fun of and bashed as outliers at our district and state Dem conventions…..
It’s frustrating.
Hasan Piker is absolute scum. Unfortunately tolerated by some Democrats. But by no means the whole party.
I read a left leaning newsletter and they had an article on him. I would estimate 95% of the comments were negative.
He’s a left wing Nick Fuentes, who also has limited support among Republicans.
One caveat: this may be changing. What support Piker and Fuentes have is largely amongst the young. (My newsletter is mostly older people.)
But that’s the worst possible trend. Who knows what the future will bring?
Another Jewish haiku
Never ever buy lox.
It doesn’t protect your house.
Found out the hard way.
One more Jewish haiku
Not my favorite
Thing to eat on Passover —
Kugel tastes better.
Lighting menora
Lovely flames of Chanukah
Don’t set house on fire
A more current Jewish Haiku:
Dems against Israel
Exploding onto the Left
Who can Jews elect?
If that sign is real and the girl is seeing it on WEIT, the number might help. But it is blacked out. If the sign is still there and she happens to be a local girl, there’s still a chance. Besides, the guy should have given up his trousers for the girl. Wimp.
I don’t drink wine often. But when I do, I prefer Malbec. It does not matter what I’m eating.
Regarding the question ‘Are humans still evolving?’ Maybe there is a tendency for us to think that we are it — the final edition — and not see our current state as part of a process.
This was meant as a response to David’s comment, comment # 1.
Well, I read Ezra Klein’s New York Times column today:
It deals with two question: 1. Is Piker a Jew hater? 2. Should he be shunned by the Democracts?
Klein’s answers to these questions: Piker “isn’t a “Jew hater.” He’s an anti-Zionist.” (I take it that Klein is Jewish himself.) And, Democrats should not stop taking to those with whom they disagree.
Calling yourself an anti-Zionist means one of two things: Either you support a one-state solution (the Jews should not have their own state), meaning you are not well-informed about the recent history of the Middle East (a one-state solution would lead to civil war between Israelis and Arabs because antisemitism is dominant among the Palestinians, and that’s why Israelis will never agree to it) or you are an antisemite.
On the second question: Yes (and here I agree with Klein), the Dems should talk to people with whom they disagree. And the Dems should explain to Piker why the collapse of the Soviet Union was an event to be celebrated. Yes, it ushered in a unipolar world (a world where the US was the undisputed hegemon). But to take this as the reason for regretting the collapse of the Soviet Union means to tell all the people who were liberated from the Russians (Poles, Estonians, Hungarians, etc.) that their well-being, which undisputably is much higher today than under communism, does not matter.
David, you call Klein “a woke warrior of the worst order.” I don’t think this is true. He may have certain sympathies with woke positions (e.g., transwomen are women; we should not allow research about group-differences in intelligence) but he is also a policy wonk (he co-wrote a book recently about how governance by the Democrats tends to suck these days). The concern among woke people about whether woke policies actually achieve their stated goals is almost non-existent. Woke people are either stupid or mostly concerned about virtue signaling (see Musa Al-Gharbi’s book We were never woke. Klein is certainly not stupid and he is a policy wonk (which you cannot be if you are mostly concerned about virtue signaling).
I read with interest a secondary report (not in the NYT) on the Akbari et al. paper in Nature. (I don’t have access to the original article.) Of course humans continue to evolve! It’s incredible how many different variants show evidence of selection.
With the explosion of antisemitism, anti-Jew violence, anti-Zionism (which approximately equals antisemitism), and Netanyahu-hate (a substitute for anti-Zionism and, by extension antisemitism), with the rising popularity of antisemitic and anti-Zionist “influencers,” with the discrediting of Jews among arts organizations, universities, civil rights groups, professional societies, and with the latest polling on Congressional support for Israel, I’m getting a sinking feeling in my gut. The consistent direction of these developments spells hard times ahead (yet again) for world Jewry.
Thankfully Israel remains strong. But of course this is part of the problem. As Dara Horn has written so eloquently, people love dead Jews. But when Jews demonstrate vitality and strength—and stand up to defend themselves—hatred inevitably follows.