Saturday: Hili dialogue

September 5, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, September 5, 2026. It’s shabbos for Jewish cats and National Hummingbird Day. Here are five facts you didn’t know about hummingbirds, but even if you knew some of them, there is some nicc video here:

It’s also International Bacon Day, International Vulture Awareness Day, National Cheese Pizza Day, and World Samosa Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the September 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Mirabile dictu: the NYT has published an explicitly anti-Hamas op-ed, “To save Gaza, resist Hamas,” written by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, identified as “a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.” (h/t Peggy, article archived here).  And the Atlantic Council is apparently a think tank established to promote amity between America and Europe.

Despite its posturing as an elite club, Hamas, from its inception, behaved like a mob of gangsters, brutalizing Palestinian women who violated its fanatic sense of morality, torturing and killing those who were suspected of opposing them and carrying out grisly suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, which weakened the Palestinian Authority and empowered the extremist right in Israel, which seized the opportunity to destroy hopes of a new Palestinian horizon or future.

Now, in the ruins of my once beautiful homeland, we are witnessing the coda of the group’s two decades of horrific rule. By agreeing in principle to a disarmament plan after their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and slaughter of hundreds of civilians led to over two years of Israeli bombardment that killed tens of thousands of Gazans, including much of my family, Hamas is acknowledging what Palestinian leadership knew 30 years ago: that only peace could lead to freedom and armed struggle was a disastrous strategy.

Yeah, right. Hamas is supposed to acknowledge that peace is essential and armed struggle futile. Does this mean they’re going to stop terror attacks on Israel for good and renounce the parts of their charter calling for elimination of the Jews? I don’t think so. All they did was agree to disarm “in principle”. I’ll believe it when I see it. But wait; there’s more:

Hamas should have no role in Gaza’s future but, appallingly, so many in the West who consider themselves allies of the Palestinian people still see the group as honorable resistance fighters. Their support for, or failure to denounce, the group only helps perpetuate the degradation of Gaza.

. . . ““Hamas turned Gaza into a cautionary tale for Israel of what might happen under Palestinian self-governance. Revulsion at the group’s rockets, tunnels, smuggling and violence empowered Israel’s far right, which used Hamas’s actions to excuse their attack on the two-state solution.

Repeated wars killed thousands of Palestinians and wounded or displaced hundreds of thousands, locking Gaza into a cycle of destruction, reconstruction, resource theft and deeper Hamas entrenchment. Billions of dollars were wasted and the development that I saw emerging as a child was arrested.

This alone should have delegitimized Hamas among Western activists, academics, students, journalists, protesters, politicians and those who claim to be pro-Palestine. Yet after Hamas carried out the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the worst catastrophe in modern Palestinian history, I watched with dismay and anger as activists, students, academics, politicians and writers expressed a chilling appreciation for the massacre.

. . .Gaza needs to be reimagined so it is no longer sustained by an NGO complex or a refugee framework. Gaza will need deep deradicalization across schools, mosques, media and public language to cultivate and produce builders and creators.

Once security issues are credibly addressed and Gaza is placed on a new path, Israel would no longer have the justification it has used for decades to restrict the free movement for people and trade and to treat Gaza as an occupied nation. U.S. and international pressure could push Israel to change its approach to Gaza.

A Palestinian miracle on the Mediterranean is within reach if Gaza rejects Islamism, Jihadism, Hamas and stale nationalist notions, all of which have left it devastated.

Yes, yes, a nice dream, but a pipe dream. This is not happening. Gaza is not on a new path; it is stagnating under Trump’s “Board of Peace,” nor do I think Hamas is anywhere near ready to lay down its arms. If anything is clear by now, it’s that the Palestinians do not want a two-state solution; they want a one-state solution in which Jews are expelled and Palestinians are in charge. What has Alkhatib been smoking?

*I liked John Fetterman as a straight-talking, shorts-wearing Democratic Senator (PA), and one of the few people in Congress who openly supports Israel.  However, it appears he’s not doing much as a Senator, at least to a WSJ article (not an op-ed) called, “Behind closed doors, John Fetterman shows little interest in the work of a Senator” (Subtitle: “Poised to be a possible swing vote in a divided Congress, he churns through staff as he dodges constituents, alienates fellow Democrats, and courts Israel lobby.”)

With his hoodie-and-shorts wardrobe and working-class appeal, Fetterman occupies a unique place in a Democratic Party increasingly populated by leftist insurgents. Fetterman often portrays himself as a “regular Democrat” calling out aspects of his party’s progressive fringe—just the profile that past centrists have leveraged in a divided Senate to cut bipartisan deals and score big wins.

But behind closed doors, the first-term senator shows little interest in doing the job beyond cultivating relationships with conservative media figures and advocating for Israel, according to interviews with more than a dozen former staffers and lawmakers, as well as text messages and other internal records.

With a pivotal election looming in November that could yield a split Senate and give Fetterman outsize influence, his office is staffed with a revolving door of aides who are constantly scrambling to keep up the face of a functional operation, the interviews and text messages show.

Fetterman keeps a light daily schedule, often refusing to meet with constituents and fellow lawmakers, or canceling at the last minute, records and interviews show.

. . .It marks a contrast to his 2022 campaign, when Fetterman spent long hours traveling to small rural communities, embracing people who felt left behind. “He won because he worked his heart out,” said Judy Hines, chair of the Democratic Party in Mercer County, in rural northwest Pennsylvania. Hines said she was worried about what she sees as a transformation in Fetterman in the years since the campaign.

In the background are concerns about Fetterman’s longstanding struggle with depression, which flared up after a near-fatal 2022 stroke that left him with lingering speech issues. Last year, Fetterman’s former chief of staff publicly aired concerns that Fetterman had stopped following his recovery plan, was damaging personal relationships, exhibiting paranoia, and addicted to his smartphone.

. . . Fetterman didn’t reply to multiple requests for an interview for this story. The senator walked away from a Wall Street Journal reporter at a public event in Erie, Pa., late last month, declining to answer questions. His office also didn’t reply to multiple emails summarizing the reporting for this story.

. . . In May, Fetterman publicly denied he’s considering a party switch, but recent news events have done nothing to stifle the speculation. In July, campaign filings showed he received money from a prominent conservative donor. In recent interviews, Fetterman has left open the possibility he could feel the need to leave the Democratic Party, if it adopts language in its platform on the one issue that has come to dominate his time in the Senate.

That month, he said: “If our party ever becomes…the anti-Israel party, you know, that’s when I would leave.”

I got news for Senator Fetterman: the Democratic Party already is the anti-Israel party. Is he going to become a Republican, an Independent, or not run for re-election at all? This is all very demoralizing, but if he doesn’t even do his job as Senator, I can’t really support his remaining in the Senate, regardless of his stand on Israel. As for me, I’m not voting for any Illinois Congressperson or governor who doesn’t support Israel. Fortunately, our state will go Democratic no matter who runs, so I can always write in a candidate and keep my conscience while knowing I’m not promoting the election of a Republican.

*As usual, I’ll pick a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “Once postpartum, always postpartum.”

→ Lindsay Clancy jury deadlocked: I know the Lindsay Clancy trial is not technically the most consequential story of the week, but in my circles (moms) it is The Only Conversation, so bear with me. The jurors are deadlocked. Twice they have gone to the judge to say the jury cannot come to a decision. If they cannot reach a verdict, the judge could declare a mistrial. There are some clues as to what may be happening. For example, at least three of the female jurors were spotted curiously wearing pink, the color worn by Clancy supporters who think she is the victim of pharmacology and maternal stress and believe that—after a stint in a healthcare facility where she will be declared no longer a danger, which, by the way she has already been declared—she should go free. The deeper idea being proposed here seems to be that moms should kind of be able to kill their kids. Like, if they’re really, really stressed. In Canada, that’s the law already. If a parent kills a kid under the age of 1, it’s a maximum five-year sentence. We’re now going to see a movement to bring that to the U.S., and also to expand it to older kids. Death cults will death cult.

Here’s the CBC this week. They called up criminal law expert Isabel Grant, a professor at the University of British Columbia, to say how this is a perfect example of how the infanticide law should expand to older kids.

Technically, in Canada, Clancy could have raised infanticide as a defense for the murder of Callan, who was eight months old, said Grant, the criminal law professor at UBC. But the killing of Clancy’s older children could not be defended as infanticide even if she hadn’t recovered from the birth of the youngest child when she killed them, she added. “That is a shortcoming in the Canadian law.”

A shortcoming in the law, says the law professor, is that a mom might be in jail longer than five years if she kills a bunch of kindergartners since the postpartum might not carry over to each killing. Maybe postpartum should last until the kid’s 18, right? Maybe moms—if they’re under a lot of pressure and like, super, super stressed and changing Zoloft dosages and can’t figure out the Snoo—should be able to kill her offspring at any age?

Nellie predicts that Clancy will walk free. As of yesterday, the judge has declared a mistrial and the prosecution must decide what to do next.

→ Good lawsuit moving forward: An Asian American student just won a key little procedural victory in his lawsuit alleging universities engaged in “racially discriminatory admissions practices that disadvantage highly qualified Asian American applicants.” Stanley Zhong was rejected by 16 of the 18 colleges he applied to, despite having a 4.42 weighted GPA, a successful tech start-up, and an SAT score of 1590. Yes, 1590! And you know his parents probably asked him what happened to those other 10 points. Stanleys are made, and I salute Mr. and Mrs. Zhong.

Stanley should’ve been heading a lab right now but, batted away from college, Google hired him as a software engineer out of high school. Spokespeople for the UC system have denied using race to inform their admissions decision. But again, Zhong didn’t get into any of the UC schools. He and his dad filed a bunch of lawsuits, and his suit against the University of Washington, at least, is moving forward.

“With that ruling, we can now proceed into discovery, request internal documents, internal communication and, most importantly, admissions data,” Zhong’s father said. I’m not saying that college should just admit based on SATs and grades. But there is so much anti-Asian racism built into the admissions systems at every level, and it’s just totally accepted by both sides of the political aisle, because Asian success is not helpful for the affirmative action supporters, nor is it helpful for the white supremacy supporters, since in general whites don’t win the IQ test (sorry!).

→ Burning Man is old people now: Burning Man, that incredible desert festival in Nevada, has gone from its early years of wild artists building a city (amazing) to. . . being the hot spot of the tech rich who paid those artists to build them a city (fun!) to. . . middle-aged people hauling their RVs to the desert to help with their wrist arthritis (might as well go visit your parents). The always great contrarian data scientist David Shor brings us the grim reality. He writes: “Burning Man peaked in size in 2019 and has been in decline since then—at this point the median age is 40 and the share of people in their 20s is a third of what it was a decade ago.” Which means it’s so 38-years-old for me to say that I still think Burning Man is cool! Look at their Instagram! Why not go to the desert and frolic naked and then dance around a fire? And my joints do hurt a little, so that nice, dry heat sounds good. Don’t 40-year-olds deserve nice-ish things too? Don’t we deserve to wobble around on a bike covered in dust, searching desperately in our cargo shorts for our electrolyte packets? We don’t care if Burning Man is lame now. We prefer that. It’s why we feel safe there. Maybe next year this can be our family vacation. Can you imagine Bar’s beefy bodyguard following her around the playa and fishing her out of the mosh pit? Me too.

Bari Weiss has a six-person detail of bodyguards!

*Maarten Boudry has caught another person with their pants down using AI, this time a famous Belgian physician, Marc Van Ranst, whom Boudry calls the “Belgian Anthony Fauci”.  It’s extra bad because it was a newspaper column;  look at the sentences (in Dutch) that he used!

English translation:

“Hey  @vanranstmarc

, I hope you’ve rewarded your ChatGPT for this nonsense too, with a digital sugar cube or something? I think your AI is secretly laughing at you, by putting sentences like these in your mouth: “Stupid people are the result of choices: speed over care” “Complexity costs energy”. “Thoughtfulness (just like this column) often sits behind a paywall” Did you let a Claude spin out of control?”

*And one I analyzed with Pangram.  As you see from my tweet below, I analyzed some of Rawan Osman‘s Facebook posts for AI content, and there is substantial content of that type in some posts. The latest FB post, below, was deemed 100% written by AI.  I also found 100% AI or substantial AI in her blog posts published by the Times of Israel.

As Wikipedia notes,  Osman is “a Syrian-born German political activist and influencer. She is a self-described Arab Zionist and advocates for the normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel.”  In the last year or so, I read her writings and became an admirer. Now, however, the wind is out of my sails. I still admire her politics, ideology, and zeal (she goes around the world speaking about Israel and the Arabs). But somehow finding out this kind of AI analysis makes me less willing to read her, for reading “her” is reading whatever the bot trawls up from the literature. 

The same goes for anyone who uses AI but won’t say so (if you do, you must admit it, for they are not your words). I will not read them.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has the blues:

Hili: I’m depressed.
Andrzej: Why?
Hili: Just because.

In Polish:

Hili: Mam depresję.
Ja: Z jakiego powodu?
Hili Tak sobie.

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

From Pyers; Canada strikes back, and be sure to get the pun:

From CinEmma:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih; the travails of two Iranian women facing long prison terms or execution for protesting. The torture is unbelievable. Cases like this are what convince me that the U.S. should be aiming at Iranian freedom, difficult as that may be.

The Number Ten Cat speaks truth to fashion:

From Jeff Maurer. Now most people dislike “brat” but I always hated it. Do you think I fell out of a coconut tree or something?

From Malcolm. Is this a passel of jokes that someone put on the air?

One from my feed. Inflation is rampant in Iran, but these people are risking arrest:

And one I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. This first video is stunning:

Dolphins swimming in bioluminescence, Merritt Island, Florida.IG: @patricke_lao Taken with a Sony Alpha a7S II

— Luca (@lucagalletti.bsky.social) 2026-09-03T21:06:57.085Z

And a lovely murmuration. Matthew and I both love these formations.

A murmuration of starlings above Sardinia, Italy. One of my favorite natural phenomena.

— Jen , the MT liberal bird lady (@liberal-jen.bsky.social) 2026-09-03T18:57:48.183Z

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *