Saturday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 25, 2026.  I just returned to the office, as our plane to Chicago from Savannah was late because of rain in Baltimore, and I didn’t get to sleep until nearly midnight.  I stopped by the duck pond on the way in and found Armon and the undocumented drake, but of course no ducklings, which is too much to hope for. I tried to feed Armon to reward him for his paternal services, but he was too busy chasing the other duck.  I didn’t expect to see baby ducks, as I don’t believe in miracles, but the pond looks very empty.

If readers have any wildlife photos, please send them in.

There will be a truncated Hili dialogue today, and perhaps posting will be light for a while as I get up to speed. Bear with me; I do my best.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 25 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ reports how fissures in Iran’s leadership are frustrating efforts to make peace:

Tensions between Iranian leaders over talks with the U.S. spilled into the open this week, highlighting how difficult it will be for President Trump to secure the diplomatic win he wants to end the war.

The disagreements were apparent in the first round of talks earlier in April. Mediators said Iran became vague when pressed by the U.S. for specifics on issues it had said it was willing to discuss, people familiar with the matter said.

It’s now becoming clearer that there are deep divisions within the country’s leadership over how far to go to strike a deal with the Americans—a concern as mediators scramble to arrange a second round of talks after the U.S. and Iran abandoned a planned meeting midweek amid rising tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will go to Islamabad for talks with Iranian officials, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday on Fox News. Vice President JD Vance will be on standby to travel in case there is progress in the negotiations, she said. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Islamabad Friday, but Iranian state media said no meeting was planned.

Tasnim, a news service affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, accused the U.S. of telling stories.

“There is basically no negotiation with the Americans at the moment, and Mr. Araghchi’s trip to Islamabad is not to negotiate with the Americans,” Tasnim said.

During the fighting, Iran’s leadership showed unity in its political messaging and maintained tight command and control over its armed forces. But that cohesion appears to be fraying as it turns to the task of securing sanctions relief by cutting a deal with the U.S., which likely will require making difficult concessions.

Clearly, regime change that gives power to the people is not on the table. All we can say is that any agreement between the U.S. and Iran will be difficult.  And I don’t think the U.S. should have folded a Lebanon cease-fire into the agreement, for that has nothing to do with Iran save for Iranian support of terrorists in other countries.

*I return to find more news of Jew-hating in American colleges. The UCLA Hillel hosted Shem Tov, an Israeli hostage who, after being kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, had been held captive for five months before being freed in a prisoner swap.  What happened at the school? The UCLA student government condemned the appearance as “selectively platforming” Tov’s narrative in the face of Israeli genocide .

A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Shem Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.

Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.

“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.

“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”

“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”

A UCLA spokesperson defended the groups who hosted the event Wednesday and said the school would “review the process by which the letter was issued.”

“The event’s message was one of resilience and respect for human rights and dignity – a message we support,” the statement in part read.

“We firmly stand against violence of any kind. Omer Shem Tov spoke with students and other members of the community with the Chancellor and Dr. Felicia Knaul in attendance, and the event occurred without any disruption,” the school added. “We will review the process by which this letter was issued. The condemnation of such a peaceful event to share a story of resilience in the face of extreme suffering is antithetical to the values of our Bruin community.”

UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.

“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”

You can read the UCLA student government’s letter at the link above.

*Meanwhile, it’s encampment season again, and the first participant is Occidental College. It’s not in any news I can find, but Grok has culled this information on the “Rafah to Jenin liberated zone” just set up, complete with tents. Rafah, of course is the southernmost part of Gaza, and Jenin is in the West Bank, so they are encompassing all of the Palestinian territories.

A new pro-Palestinian student encampment was established at Occidental College (Oxy) in Los Angeles on April 24, 2026 (yesterday).

It is organized by groups including Occidental Students for Justice in Palestine (Oxy SJP) and described by participants as the “Rafah to Jenin Liberated Zone” (sometimes called “Rafa to Janine” or “Rafah-Jenin Liberated Zone”), occupying the campus’s Academic Quad—echoing the 2024 encampment site there.

Key Details from Organizer Statements and Videos

• Setup and appearance: Tents (green, white, yellow, blue) and a canopy have been erected on the quad amid trees and benches. Protesters (many in keffiyehs, some face-covering, sunglasses, or safety vests) are visible setting up, with Palestinian flags present. Banners include messages like “THERE ARE NO SCHOOLS LEFT IN GAZA” (with imagery of fire, an American flag, and a burning school building) and references to solidarity with Palestine.
  instagram.com
• Demands: The encampment calls for Occidental’s Board of Trustees to divest from companies tied to Israel/weapons manufacturing (described as “war profiteering” and “genocide”), as well as private prisons and ICE detention centers. Organizers frame it as renewing pressure ahead of a Board meeting, two years after the 2024 encampment. They describe it as building a “transnational community” in solidarity with Palestinians amid actions in Gaza, the West Bank (Jenin), Lebanon, and Iran.
  instagram.com
• Activities and invitations: On day one, students invited supporters to “sleep in a tent with us,” share meals, or drop off food/supplies. Planned programming includes community self-defense/ICE patrol training, a Torah study, workshops on “academia and genocide,” and discussions of the “student intifada.” One speaker noted campus police threats to involve LAPD but affirmed they are staying.

If you click on the tweet below (h/t Luana), you’ll hear a cowardly woman, face hidden by a keffiyeh, boasting about the encampment at “Oxy”:

🚨 BREAKING: An encampment has sprung up at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Activists are calling it the “Rafah to Jenin Liberated Zone” and say the encampment is animated by the same “social justice” values Occidental claims to uphold.

They are demanding divestment from… pic.twitter.com/RR92Hai4DO

— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) April 24, 2026

 

*For reasons that aren’t completely clear, the mainstream media has within the last year or so embarked on a campaign to highlight the value of religion.  The NYT started a weekly newsletter about religion called “Believing“. It’s written by Lauren Jackson, who claims she’s a nonbeliever, but one who longs for there to be a god.  And although she’s supposedly an atheist, her lips are fixed firmly on the posterior of faith, osculating it vigorously.  (I read it so you don’t have to.) Now the Washington Post has followed suit with one called “Awakenings, whose motto is “Religion and spirituality are remaking America — and transforming lives. Encounter the new face of faith.”

One episode of “Awakenings” was posted yesterday, by Christopher Beha, a Catholic, former editor of Harpers, and author of Why I Am Not an Atheist (see my critique of his anti-atheism New Yorker article here). His new osculation is called, “I used to be a skeptic. This changed my mind.” (The subtitle is “Skepticism is tearing society apart. Belief is the answer”.) Beha begins by asserting that philosophy has failed to provide us with a shared basis of “certain knowledge,” but of course he’s wrong—he should be looking to science, not philosophy. Then he proposes faith as the nostrum for a fulminating skepticism:

This in turn makes it easier to appreciate the early modern fear of skepticism. The term increasingly calls to mind not just religious skepticism but vaccine skepticism, election skepticism and the army of “truthers” who coalesce around every major news event. These people often proceed not by proposing an alternative view but by “asking questions” that undermine the official narrative and make it difficult to believe in anything at all, which is precisely the skeptical method.

By now the dangers of this approach should be clear. Today’s great epistemic institutions — government, universities, media — face much the same crisis of authority that befell the religious institutions they replaced. While philosophical skepticism promised detachment and tranquility, modern skepticism has curdled into cynicism and despair.

What can be done to address this fact, particularly if the philosophers are right and there is no shared foundation of objective knowledge from which to proceed? Hume once suggested that even the most confident conclusions should be tempered by a “degree of doubt.” Looking around today, I’m more inclined to say that skepticism should be tempered with a bit of belief.

What I’m proposing is not a return to simple credulity or a slavish submission to authority, but rather a recognition that it is not really possible to survive on certain knowledge alone. Every person must take some things on faith, if only to open the door and go out into the world.

True, we take things on faith (like our doctor’s advice), but most often when we are relying on authorities who know their stuff.  But here’s Beha’s solution:

My own turn to belief eventually led me all the way back to the church of my childhood. I’m not suggesting that it will take others that far. But perhaps they could do with a bit more belief than modern society encourages. By the skeptics’ own lights, it takes belief to recognize the reality of the world outside one’s head, the reality of other people and the obligations that these realities entail. It takes belief to transcend despair and work for a better future. It takes belief to escape the cynicism and nihilism that seem the default mindsets of the day. It takes belief to put skepticism in its proper place.

Beha doesn’t seem to realize that there’s a difference in “believing” that a virus causes AIDS and a belief that a god sent himself/his son down to earth to redeem human sins by getting crucified. In other words, Beha doesn’t see the difference between belief based on evidence and belief based on wish-thinking).  But I’m still puzzled at the MSM’s love of religion? Whence the “God-shaped hole” that needs to be filled?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has given the garden (and the house) to the upstairs lodgers.

Hili: Our orchard is blooming again.
Andrzej: Not ours anymore, but it’s still blooming.

In Polish:

Hili: Nasz sad znowu kwitnie.
Ja: Już nie nasz, ale nadal kwitnie.

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

From CinEmma:

From Terrible Maps: a mnemoic for memorizing the Great Lakes:

From Masih, a “human story” that shows how horrible the Iranian regime is:

A nurse in Iran helped wounded protesters. The security forces killed her. Then abused her body. Then used her finger to unlock her phone and sent the images of sexual abuse to her husband.
Listen to her story and please on’t stop talking about Iran.
💔pic.twitter.com/cRhk95uaa7

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 24, 2026

If you subscribe to the Free Press, read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (here). She was named by them, along with Maajid Nawaz, as an “anti-Muslim extremist.”

“…the SPLC chose to publish the names, faces, and affiliations of 15 people it accused of ‘anti-Muslim extremism.’ The list endangered everyone it named. I know the threat of Islamist violence all too well. In 2004, a jihadist named Mohammed Bouyeri murdered my friend and… pic.twitter.com/FRtsBvDhDQ

— Eli Steele (@Hebro_Steele) April 24, 2026

From Malcolm: the difference between cats and d*gs:

Difference between dogs and cats..🐈🐾🐶😅

📹destynieIyn pic.twitter.com/HdoKQ4KunI

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) March 18, 2026

One from my feed: Hem and a beloved cat:

American author Ernest Hemingway was undoubtedly one of the most famous cat lovers in the literary world, alongside Mark Twain, who adored cats so much that he avoided people who didn’t share his affection and even rented cats when he couldn’t bring his own on trips.

Many are… pic.twitter.com/Inrw3VHmVW

— Archaeo – Histories (@archeohistories) April 25, 2026

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

This German Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was about nine years old. https://t.co/Iu4P39I21r

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 25, 2026

And one from Matthew, at a science festival in Chile: morning on the Space Shuttle:

"Day 068, Orbit 1054 — Opening the shutters in the morning: what a beautiful way to start the day! 🌍"– @esa.int astronaut Sophie Adenot #εpsilon 🎥 NASA/ESA

— ESA Exploration (@exploration.esa.int) 2026-04-22T12:38:22.088Z