Category: war

Andrzej on the “Biden-Sinwar-Khameni Pact”

May 10, 2024 • 9:20 am

I discuss the war in the Middle East with Malgorzata a lot and, like  Roseanne Roseannadanna, I ask a lot of questions. Andrzej had written a precis of his view of what’s going on there for Listy, and Malgorzata translated his Polish into English just for my sake. I thought I’d post Andrzej’s take on this site, but if you read Polish, you can see the original on Listy here.  (Yahya Sinwar is of course the leader of Hamas.)

As you can see, Andrzej is incensed at Biden’s decision to withhold arms from Israel and sees this as a sign that Biden is concerned more with his own reelection and with achieving comity with Iran than with defeating the terrorism of Hamas. Remember, these are Andrzej’s views, not mine, but I have to say there’s substantial (though not complete) overlap

Biden-Sinwar-Khamenei Pact

Andrzej Koraszewski

The former U.S. ambassador to Israel said there was no doubt that Biden had sided with Hamas. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the American President announced that he intends to stop supplying weapons to Israel (with the exception of missiles for the Iron Dome). In other words, the American President announced that he would try to avoid too many Jewish casualties, but eliminating the threat to Israeli civilians interferes with his plans to cooperate with Iran.

According to The New York Times, this is a “turning point”. We are actually seeing a qualitative change. Biden said out loud what he had quietly said for days. Restrictions on American arms and ammunition supplies had actually begun earlier, although there were official attempts to deny this. Now, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the American president, citing concern for the Palestinian civilian population, decided that he must save Hamas from final defeat and create the conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state under Hamas.

We hear that it is still just a threat, that supplies will be halted “if,” but the Pentagon confirms that they have already been halted.

Is the American president naïve, or is he just pretending that he does not know what he is demanding? In all the months since Hamas started the war, American condemnations of Hamas have been nothing but empty words. There has been no firm pressure on Qatar or Iran, no demand for the expulsion of Hamas leaders from Qatar, no demand for the immediate release of Israeli hostages, no threats to move the U.S. military base out of Qatar, and no ultimatum to Tehran. On the contrary, all the American grievances were directed at Israel, Hamas’s information about Israel’s alleged crimes was taken seriously, human rights were turned into a laughing stock, a tool for constantly accusing Jews, no one blamed “President” Abbas for supporting Hamas’s barbarism, and the American administration gave permission for public hatred of the Jewish state.

The U.S. President has previously asserted that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinians.” He did not reveal the secret of how he knew this, and he also pretended that he had no knowledge of Palestinian opinion polls, or who supposedly represented these Palestinians and how they did it.

Meanwhile, Tehran said on the same day that it may be “forced to change its nuclear doctrine and build nuclear bombs if its existence is threatened.” The fact that Iran either already has nuclear weapons or is a few weeks away from building them has been known for some time. Now they have apparently decided that they have gotten green light from Washington and it is time to stop pretending that they are not aiming at acquiring nuclear weapons at all. Thus, there is no longer a need for a fatwa (which President Obama happily talked about, but which no one has ever seen), which supposedly stated that Islam forbids the production of nuclear weapons.

The new UN statements on readiness to recognize the “State of Palestine” were probably not related to President Biden’s statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it is easy to guess that the atmosphere was already considered favorable for taking this step, because there is a possibility that the US in the Security Council will not block the proposal, and the General Assembly resolution itself will certainly obtain the required majority, so journalists will consider it a binding decision of the UN anyway, and that’s what it’s all about.

So what does this “turning point” for America mean? Israeli historian Gadi Taub, in an article published on the same day, wrote:

In the eyes of the Biden administration Hamas is the smaller problem. The bigger problem is Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is willing to live with Iran’s proxies everywhere, as part of its “regional integration” policy—i.e., appeasing Iran. But they are unwilling to live with Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. The stubborn Netanyahu clearly does not want to learn from his would-be tutors like U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken how to “share the neighborhood” with genocidaires in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, and Tehran, whom his electorate understands to be bent on murdering them.

Tony Bardan, an American scientist from the Center for Research on Terrorism of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, recently wrote that Israel is facing a choice whether to remain an independent state or to be a client-oriented country in the service of a great power. Bardan reminds us that the latter has already happened once. Herod the Great was practically the governor of Rome, and it ended with the destruction of the temple, and in the following decades the genocide of the Jews and the exile of most of the survivors.

Gadi Taub, describing today’s American frolics in the Middle East—insidious attempts to overthrow the elected leader of the Israeli government and then collusion with a possible “U.S. own” Israeli prime minister—shows that for the Democratic Party, the enemy is Netanyahu rather than Islamic terrorism (not seen as a threat to America and the entire democratic world) and rather than another nuclear-armed enemy of democracy nor a genocidal Hamas.

The American president repeated his usual mantras about Israel’s right to defend itself and about his steadfast support for its ally, while doing everything in his power to save Israel’s genocidal enemy and strengthen its main sponsor.

In a world that has returned to the old rut of murderous Jew-hatred, Israel is dependent on American aid and care. But, Taub writes, the United States keeps Israel on a leash, rationing ammunition, forcing it to uncontrollably deliver humanitarian aid that falls into the hands of Hamas, maintaining its power over the people of Gaza, and in the diplomatic field supporting unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. And while the U.S. helped repel a massive rocket attack by Iran, it forced only a symbolic response from Israel. America’s primary goal today is to ensure the survival of Hamas as ruler of the Gazan fortress.

The United States treats Israel as Jews have always been treated – with superiority and contempt. They invited the prime minister’s political rival (Gantz) to the talks, tried to summon the commander-in-chief of the Israeli army for separate talks, and did not protest when a caricature of an international court threatens to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli leaders. Moreover, there is a great deal of evidence pointing to U.S. government financial and organizational support for Israel’s internal divisions and political destabilization of the country at a time of struggle for existential survival.

Let’s not kid ourselves, the “turning point” is just the climax. Even if not everything is going according to plan and Benny Gantz has not yet decided to cooperate fully, and Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently refuses to give in to pressure, the American alliance with Hamas is delaying the final defeat of this terrorist organization. And the campaign of relentlessly dishonest accusations against Israel is intensifying with each passing day the hostility towards the Jewish state, hostility towards Jews, and sympathy for enemies not only of Israel, but also of America and the rest of the democratic world.

The intentions of the allies are clear: the poster of the BDS movement says it bluntly:

NOTE: A commenter below points out that this is not from the BDS movement, but from an anarchist site. So ignore the figure below.

For Islamists, Hamas’s war with Israel is intended only to open the gate to further fighting. For President Biden, only his election campaign and the expectations of his electorate are important. The option to support the Islamic Republic of Iran was chosen by President Obama, and Biden probably really believes that Israel should learn to live with a Palestinian state armed by Iran and with Lebanon in the hands of Hezbollah. If Israel is not ready for this, so be it—America will continue to pretend to defend human rights. The question of why this human must be a genocidal terrorist might be considered tactless.

“Screams Before Silence”: Sheryl Sandberg’s gripping film on the sexual violence of October 7

April 27, 2024 • 11:30 am

By now there is ample evidence not only that sexual violence was part of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, but also that this violence was part of the overall plen to brutalize and humiliate the Jews.  This much has been admitted even by the United Nations, whose UN Women group took way too long to even denounce that violence.

The UN’s official report, whose summary you can find here, concludes this, though results are still coming in:

Based on the information it gathered, the mission team found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing against those still held in captivity. In line with a survivor/victim-centered approach, findings are conveyed in generic terms and details are not revealed.

In the context of the coordinated attack by Hamas and other armed groups against civilian and military targets throughout the Gaza periphery, the mission team found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the 7 October attacks, including rape and gang-rape in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im. In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses.

The mission team also found a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations. Although circumstantial, such a pattern may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

. . .Overall, the mission team is of the view that the true prevalence of sexual violence during the 7 October attacks and their aftermath, may take months or years to emerge and may never be fully known.

Although the report has a bit of both-sideism by mentioning “allegations of conflict-related sexual violence” committed by “Israeli security forces and settlers,” none of that has been documented. Although those allegations persist, most, at least since October 7, have been retracted—even by Hamas.

Nevertheless, part of the attack on Israel is “rape denialism”: either denying that any sexual violence took place (“no proof,” some people say), or to admit that there may have been a small amount, but it was ancillary and not part of the strategy of Hamas (here’s one example of that denialism). The denialism is, of course, part of the denigration of Israel and Jews that has followed October 7.

If you have any doubts about the existence or extent of sexual violence, read the full UN report, remembering that the UN investigatory visit to Israel took place mostly during February of this year. But first, I’d highly recommend that you watch this hourlong movie, “Screams Before Silence”. Created by Sheryl Sandberg; it received its premiere just two days ago and has already been made public for free.  I’m putting the link here and urge you to watch it, even if you’re squeamish. It is immensely moving, disturbing, and yet heartening as the survivors struggle to tell their tale because they want people to know what happened. Most of all, it’s convincing.

As the Times of Israel reports about the movie,

The hour-long film, created in cooperation with Israel’s Kastina Productions, provides first-hand accounts from survivors, freed hostages, first responders, and legal, medical, and forensic experts. Sandberg is present throughout the film either interviewing individuals in a studio or accompanying them to October 7-related sites.

What emerges is not only an understanding of the mass scale and barbarism of Hamas’s sexual attacks against women but also their deliberate, pre-meditated, and systematic nature.

“When the body of the woman is violated, it symbolizes [the violation] of the body of the whole nation,” Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, former vice-president of the United Nations Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, says in the documentary.

The film’s testimonies detail a horrific truth that was largely brushed aside by a report released earlier this week by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in which he declined to include Hamas among organizations suspected by the UN of committing acts of sexual violence during conflict. That report noted there is evidence that sex crimes were committed during the Palestinian terror group’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel, but did not specifically attribute responsibility to Hamas.

Guterres is, of course, an odious, Israel-hating git, and that’s nowhere better demonstrated than in his refusal even now to admit that Hamas committed sexual violence during its attack. (It also, as you’ll see in the movie, did so to some of the hostages.)  Since many of the victims are dead, and there is still a dearth of witnesses, much less bodies that can give evidence of rape or other sexual violence, there is certainly enough to buttress the UN’s report—and to show Guterres up as the liar he is.

But I digress. In this movie, which you can see by clicking below, Sandberg largely stands aside but listens as survivors, witnesses, and forensic experts tell the story. If this doesn’t move and anger you, well, I don’t know how that could happen to anyone with a heart.

Click below and then on the “watch full film” box. NOTE:  Some of the material is not for those who can’t bear to hear about the often horrible violence done to women. As I said, if you are squeamish about that, you might not want to watch.  I was horrified at some parts, but I also think that one can’t comprehend such a phenomenon without confronting it directly rather than through words like “sexual violence happened.” But your mileage may vary.

Four new articles on Columbia’s encampment

April 26, 2024 • 10:20 am

Today we’re having a short warm-up protest at Chicago in preparation for the Big Encampment that’s supposed to start on May 1.  I’ll try to document today’s event later with photos and videos.  (I’m betting that the students will be masked.)  And the demonstrators still seem to think that this kind of protest will make the University divest.

As for the continuing encampment and “liberated zone” at Columbia, I have two things to say. First, Columbia President Namat “Minouche” Shafik didn’t enforce last night’s midnight deadline for protestors to leave. Instead, she’s continuing to “negotiate” with them, which worries me. What is there to negotiate? Is she negotiating over the pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ demand that Columbia divest from Israel? If she gives in on even part of that, it will hearten demonstrators everywhere and spur on more disruption. I think it’s more likely that she’s negotiating when and how they can dismantle the encampment, as implied in this NYT article.

Not even 12 hours after Columbia’s predawn assertion of progress in its negotiations with the demonstrators, a protest leader all but dismissed some of the university’s claims.

To extend talks, according to the university, the protesters agreed to remove a significant number of the tents erected on the lawn. Columbia also said the protesters had pledged that non-students would leave the encampment, and that they would bar discriminatory or harassing language among the demonstrators.

But on Wednesday morning, an organizer announced to other students at the encampment that they would not be “doing the university’s job of removing people from this camp for them,” insisting that demonstrators would not become “cops to each other.” And the organizer declared that the protesters were “committed to staying here and having people stay here.”

Second, the biggest of Shafik’s problems is that she’s caught between Republican lawmakers, who are watching her closely and will haul her back before Congress if she allows demonstrations—and their attendant anti-Semitism—to continue, and on the other side the Columbia faculty, which is largely against Shafik for calling the cops on a “peaceful protest”.  I think the faculty are mistaken because they misunderstand what “free speech” is. In my view the protestors can speak freely and even call for the death of Jews, but they should not be allowed to violate campus rules by camping on the quad and harassing other students. (The harassment is documented in nearly all the articles below.) The demonstration, at least inside Columbia’s gates, may be “peaceful,” but “peaceful” doesn’t equate to “legal” on most campuses. There are, as the courts have ruled, “time, place, and manner” regulations that can apply on campus.

At any rate, it now looks as though the Columbia Faculty Senate won’t even attempt to censure Shafik, but instead will try to pass a more tepid measure that won’t lead to her removal: a resolution “expressing displeasure with a series of her decisions, including summoning the police last week to arrest protesting students on campus.”  Right now I’m not sure what should happen to her, but am willing to wait to see what she does. If the students continue to insist on camping on the quad and harassing both visitors and those who are “visibly Jewish,” I think Shafik should call the cops again. The demonstrators cannot be talked out of their views, although one article below says that constructive dialogue is needed.  I would argue that in this case such dialogue is not possible, and will give some evidence why.

At any rate, I’ve found four articles worth reading on the Columbia crisis, which has prompted lookalike encampments across America.  I do this because I think these protests are in many ways as portentous as the protests by students of the Sixties against the Vietnam War, which did help end the war.  The difference is that the current protestors are no longer calling for a ceasefire: they’re calling for the extermination of Israel and, in some cases, killing Jews. They’re also implying that the intifada should be “globalized,” in other words, extend Islamism throughout the world.  Further, because I put the tragic deaths of Palestinian citizens at the door of Hamas, not Israel, I don’t agree with the main tenor of the protests.  Why aren’t the protestors, for example, calling for Hamas to rectify one of its many war crimes and release the hostages?

But I digress. Below are four articles and a brief excerpt from each. The first two are from The Atlantic and the second two from the Free Press. Although these are largely paywalled, if you click on the headlines you should be able to access the archived links. You should read them all if you have time: they’re not long.

First, from The Atlantic.  I start with this one because the optimistic author believes that since the Sixties colleges have failed as liberal institutions, no longer encouraging discourse. At the end, Packer suggests that the disruptions of the last eighty years could have been prevented had students been prompted and trained to “talk with one another”.

An excerpt:

But the really important consequence of the 1968 revolt took decades to emerge. We’re seeing it now on Columbia’s quad and the campuses of elite universities around the country. The most lasting victory of the ’68ers was an intellectual one. The idea underlying their protests wasn’t just to stop the war or end injustice in America. Its aim was the university itself—the liberal university of the postwar years, which no longer exists.

. . . Along, intricate, but essentially unbroken line connects that rejection of the liberal university in 1968 to the orthodoxy on elite campuses today. The students of the ’68 revolt became professors—the German activist Rudi Dutschke called this strategy the “long march through the institutions”—bringing their revisionist thinking back to the universities they’d tried to upend. One leader of the Columbia takeover returned to chair the School of the Arts film program. “The ideas of one generation become the instincts of the next,” D. H. Lawrence wrote. Ideas born in the ’60s, subsequently refined and complicated by critical theory, postcolonial studies, and identity politics, are now so pervasive and unquestioned that they’ve become the instincts of students who are occupying their campuses today. Group identity assigns your place in a hierarchy of oppression. Between oppressor and oppressed, no room exists for complexity or ambiguity. Universal values such as free speech and individual equality only privilege the powerful. Words are violence. There’s nothing to debate.

. . . The post-liberal university is defined by a combination of moneymaking and activism. Perhaps the biggest difference between 1968 and 2024 is that the ideas of a radical vanguard are now the instincts of entire universities—administrators, faculty, students. They’re enshrined in reading lists and codes of conduct and ubiquitous clichés. Last week an editorial in the Daily Spectator, the Columbia student newspaper, highlighted the irony of a university frantically trying to extricate itself from the implications of its own dogmas: “Why is the same university that capitalizes on the legacy of Edward Said and enshrines The Wretched of the Earth into its Core Curriculum so scared to speak about decolonization in practice?”

Here’s Packer’s well-intended but misguided call for dialogue. But perhaps he thinks it’s too late for that, and if that’s the case, he’s right:

Elite universities are caught in a trap of their own making, one that has been a long time coming. They’ve trained pro-Palestinian students to believe that, on the oppressor-oppressed axis, Jews are white and therefore dominant, not “marginalized,” while Israel is a settler-colonialist state and therefore illegitimate. They’ve trained pro-Israel students to believe that unwelcome and even offensive speech makes them so unsafe that they should stay away from campus. What the universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another.

A second piece from The Atlantic; click to read:

The dynamics of the “zone” are well known by now: the poking of flagpoles into the eyes of Jews, the prevention of “outsiders” from discussing things with the Tenters, the elimination of “Zionists” from the area, and so on.  I’ll highlight a few indications that dissenting speech is demonized and the speakers expelled from Tent City:

“Attention, everyone! We have Zionists who have entered the camp!” a protest leader calls out. His head is wrapped in a white-and-black keffiyeh. “We are going to create a human chain where I’m standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe on our privacy.”

Dozens stand and echo the leader’s commands in unison, word for word. “So that we can push them out of the camp, one step forward! Another step forward!” The protesters lock arms and step toward the interlopers, who as it happens are three fellow Columbia students, who are Jewish and pro-Israel.

There is a “leader” who must be consulted if you want to enter Camp Hamas, much less talk to its inhabitants.

As the war has raged on and the death toll has grown, protest rallies on American campuses have morphed into a campaign of ever grander and more elaborate ambitions: From “Cease-fire now” to the categorical claim that Israel is guilty of genocide and war crimes to demands that Columbia divest from Israeli companies and any American company selling arms to the Jewish state.

Many protesters argue that, from the river to the sea, the settler-colonialist state must simply disappear. To inquire, as I did at Columbia, what would happen to Israelis living under a theocratic fascist movement such as Hamas is to ask the wrong question. A young female protester, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, responded: “Maybe Israelis need to check their privilege.”

. . . Earlier in the day, I interviewed a Jewish student on a set of steps overlooking the tent city. Rachel, who asked that I not include a surname for fear of harassment, recalled that in the days after October 7 an email went out from a lesbian organization, LionLez, stating that Zionists were not allowed at a group event. A subsequent email from the club’s president noted: “White Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people,” and “when I say the Holocaust wasn’t special, I mean that.” The only outward manifestation of Rachel’s sympathies was a pocket-size Israeli flag in a dorm room. Another student, Sophie Arnstein, told me that after she said in class that “Jewish lives matter,” others complained that her Zionist beliefs were hostile. She ended up dropping the course.

This said, the students I interviewed told me that physical violence has been rare on campus. There have been reports of shoves, but not much more. The atmosphere on the streets around the campus, on Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, is more forbidding. There the protesters are not students but sectarians of various sorts, and the cacophonous chants are calls for revolution and promises to burn Tel Aviv to the ground. Late Sunday night, I saw two cars circling on Amsterdam as the men inside rolled down their windows and shouted “Yahud, Yahud”—Arabic for “Jew, Jew”—“fuck you!”

I for one have never claimed that the protests were violent; they aren’t except for sporadic and rare instances of pushing or physical coercion. Yes, in that sense they are “peaceful”. But should they be permitted because they are instances of “free speech”?  My answer is “no, because they aren’t.” They violate campus rules for time, place, and manner of speech, and I’d have the same objection if pro-Israeli students were doing the same thing.

This one’s from the Free Press, and since its boss, Bari Weiss, is Jewish (and wrote a book on anti-Semitism), you’re not going to expect much sympathy for the demonstrators in that venue. There are actually three short articles here: one by Bari, one by Jonathan Lederer, and one from Sahar Tartak, the woman who was poked in the eye with a flagpole at Yale University. (Links are archived.).

From Lederer:

On Saturday night, the situation on campus hit a new low. Amid multiple protests both inside and outside of Columbia’s gates, my friends and I decided to show our pride yet again, as we have on so many occasions since Hamas began its war.

For an hour, 20 of us stood on the sundial in the middle of Columbia’s campus with Israeli and American flags and sang peaceful songs such as Matisyahu’s “One Day” and “V’hi She’amda”—a much-needed ode to the hope and perseverance of the Jewish people in the face of enemies who seek our destruction.

Even as we sang lyrics such as “We don’t want to fight no more, there will be no more war,” we were met with hostility. Masked keffiyeh-wearers came to us face-to-face, trying to intimidate us. They chanted, “Fuck Israel, Israel’s a bitch!” We were told, “You guys are all inbred.” They threw water in our faces. These groups are not fairly described as “pro-Palestine.” They are active supporters of Hamas and they say so explicitly: “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” one group chanted by the gates of my school. “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.”

One keffiyeh-masked protester came up to my friends and I and held up a sign with an arrow pointing toward us that read: “Al-Qassam’s Next Targets.” Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.

The latter is, of course a veiled threat, and may be a violation of free speech. But clearly there’s antisemitism afoot.

Another Free Press article. I like the title:

I said I’d give evidence that the protestors aren’t willing to discuss things.  It’s anecdotal, of course, but that’s how it must be (there must be at least one protestor in America open to debate).  First, here at Chicago a Jewish group apparently reached out to Students for Justice in Palestine to host a joint event, one that had financial support. The Jewish group never got a response.

Further, the end of the article above shows the complete disdain for debate held by both the inhabitants and the Chairman of Columbia’s Tent City. There’s also evidence of well-funded outside groups contributing to the welfare of Tent City. Of course they don’t care if Hamas and Hezbollah are dancing with delight at their antics.

And it doesn’t seem to occur to these young people—supposedly the best and brightest in the nation—that the leaders of Hamas are using them. As Hamas leader Khaled Mashal said during an interview with an Arab TV station in January: “Palestine [is free] from the river to the sea. That is the slogan of the American students.”

. . . . At NYU’s protest, The Free Press watched one activist carry a generator stamped with the words People’s Forum, a radical NYC-based organization funded by a multimillionaire Marxist with ties to the Chinese government.

. . .A retired law enforcement official who has helped advise the federal government on issues of national security told The Free Press that groups egging on this movement “root themselves by and large on college campuses, because their greatest and most impressionable audience is the students.” And their organizing powers can be seen in the encampments—which have matching tents, identical chants, and shared tactics and guidelines at universities across the U.S.

“You can clearly see it in the uniformity and the sophistication and the appearance of the protest,” he added. “There’s an organizational character to it that we’ve seen many times before.”

Finally, the futile attempt of one student to engage the protestors:

On Tuesday afternoon, Isidore Karten, a 23-year-old recent Columbia graduate, walked into the camp holding an Israeli flag, hoping he might be able to change some of the protesters’ minds through conversation. He says anytime someone tried to talk to him, a “safety-trained” volunteer in a yellow vest quickly intervened.

“Whenever we start to get common ground, the organizers will come over and be like, ‘No, you can’t talk to them,’ ” says Karten, who tells me Hamas murdered his uncle in 1996. “It’s as if they can’t have their own opinion and they have to just blindly follow.”

To paraphrase Johnnie Cochran, “If they won’t debate, just leave the hate.”

A post I retweeted:

. . . and a 3.5-minute video from Columbia, NYU, and Yale by Tom Gross. Yes, they chant, “We love Hamas and their rockets, too!”; and no student interviewed think that Hamas should release the hostages.

Pro-Palestinian protests grow angrier, more violent, and more hateful as they spread across America

April 22, 2024 • 10:00 am

Over the last two weeks, demonstrations by pro-Palestinian protestors have spread across America, most notably on college campuses like Yale and Columbia, but also in many cities, where protestors block bridges and streets. And the protests have grown more intense and more hateful.  The inevitable chanting has become darker, morphing from hatred of Israel into hatred of Jews. In some places (see below), violence against Jews has erupted as well. Sentiment among protestors is shifting from defense of the Palestinian people to approval of Hamas and Iran—and of violence and terrorism.

The four pieces below from Commentary and The Free Press (click each to read) discuss this trend. As Seth Mandel notes in the first piece, the protests, unlike those of the Sixties which were against the Vietnam war, now seem to be calling for war.

At Columbia University, the protestors, who were booted off campus, with many suspended and arrested, have returned, and a rabbi connected with the school has told Jewish students that, for their safety, they should go home and stay there. Nemat Shafik, the President of Columbia, has canceled in-person classes for today, with all classes becoming virtual, while New York’s mayor Eric Adams has condemned the antisemitism being emitted around Columbia. But in general, campus authorities have done little to quash illegal acts by protestors (even Shafik has apparently decided to let the protestors occupy the campus illegally).

As one example, about a month ago we were hearing chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “Globalize the infitada,” words that are fairly threatening but can be twisted by ideologues to imply that they’re not really calling for violence. Now, however, the articles below recount chants and words like these, which allow for no innocuous interpretation.

“Their god is CAPITAL and God is our Witness.” [a sign in a Chicago protest referring to the supposed money-grubbing of Jews]

“Never forget the 7th of October”. “That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, not 10,000. . . The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.” [yelled to Jews at Columbia]

“Iran you make us proud.” [from NYC]

“Yemen, Yemen, make us proud; turn another ship around!”  [widespread]

“Resistance by any means necessary!”  [this has been around for a while but is spreading]

“Go back to Poland” [shouted to Jews at Columbia]

“Uncultured a** b****es, go back to Europe. You have no culture. All you do is colonize.” [from Columbia, reported in The Jerusalem Post]

“Zionism will fall, brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel will fall”. . . . “US imperialists, number one terrorists.” [ibid]

“Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.” [Columbia]

Fuck Israel, Israel a bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit [“blasted at Yale” as recounted by Sahar Tartak]

“We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground” and “Hamas we love you. We support your rockets, too.” [from Jonathan Lederer’s piece below]

“Al-Qassam make us proud, kill another soldier now.” [Al-Qassam is the military arm of Hams, and the soldiers refer to the IDF]

“There is no god but Allah, and the martyr is Allah’s beloved!” [like the above two, overheard by Lederer]. Arabic slogans are becoming increasingly common, and I suspect that many Americans who shout them have no idea what they mean.

You can read all the article below in a short while, as none of them is long, but all are scary. Click each to read, and I’ve given just a few words excerpted from each. At the bottom of the post I proffer a few of my own thoughts.

An excerpt from Mandel’s piece:

Yesterday’s protests at Columbia highlighted a key difference between the left-wing protests of generations past and the current demonstrations: While both cheer America’s enemies, the 2024 version is ostentatiously, undeniably pro-war.

. . .“Never forget the 7th of October,” they shouted at Jews at Columbia last night. “That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, not 10,000… The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”

This kind of enthusiasm for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, complete with sexual torture and the dismemberment of young children, is important to note for several reasons, only one of which is that it highlights these protestors’ uncontrollable urge for the Mideast war to go on forever. It’s also notable because it’s honest: The Hamas-a-thons all around the country have been clear about what their participants want. Screeching bloodlust so explicit it would have made Nazis blush has become the ticket to ride in progressive activist circles.

. . . At yesterday’s Capitol Hill hearing on anti-Semitism at Columbia, Rep. Ilhan Omar said the ongoing protests shouldn’t so much be characterized as anti-Israel vs. pro-Israel but anti-war vs. pro-war. She was right, but not in the way she intended. Israel’s supporters never wanted this war. President Biden never wanted this war. But for the anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrators on college campuses and all around the country, war is all they desire.

 

From Bari Weiss’s piece, a summary of the other two pieces and a call for action:

Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.)

It is not, however, a First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest. And while Americans are constitutionally protected when they say vile things, like wishing upon Jews a thousand October 7s, we are certainly free to criticize those who say them. We are also free to condemn institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth who have abandoned that mission, and who stand by and do nothing meaningful to stop scenes like the ones of the past 48 hours.

The students who support terror have given in to madness. Refusing to condemn them is madness.

There are courageous students who see that madness clearly. Please read these essays by Jonathan Lederer and Sahar Tartak.

Lederer was brave enough to assemble a group of Jewish students in the middle of the fracas at Columbia:

On Saturday night, the situation on campus hit a new low. Amid multiple protests both inside and outside of Columbia’s gates, my friends and I decided to show our pride yet again, as we have on so many occasions since Hamas began its war.

For an hour, 20 of us stood on the sundial in the middle of Columbia’s campus with Israeli and American flags and sang peaceful songs such as Matisyahu’s “One Day” and “V’hi She’amda”—a much-needed ode to the hope and perseverance of the Jewish people in the face of enemies who seek our destruction.

Even as we sang lyrics such as “We don’t want to fight no more, there will be no more war,” we were met with hostility. Masked keffiyeh-wearers came to us face-to-face, trying to intimidate us. They chanted, “Fuck Israel, Israel’s a bitch!” We were told, “You guys are all inbred.” They threw water in our faces. These groups are not fairly described as “pro-Palestine.” They are active supporters of Hamas and they say so explicitly: “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” one group chanted by the gates of my school. “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.”

One keffiyeh-masked protester came up to my friends and I and held up a sign with an arrow pointing toward us that read: “Al-Qassam’s Next Targets.” Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.

. . . At least two solid objects were thrown at me from close range, one of which hit me directly in the face and the other in the chest. Finally, I succeeded in grabbing my flags and ran to rejoin my friends. We ended up being chased out of campus and told to “go back to Poland,” a poignant reminder that even in America, antisemites wish to condemn Jews like me to our ancestors’ tragic fate.

Tartak is “visibly Jewish,” and ran into trouble when she went to a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Yale with a “visibly Jewish” friend. (She’s okay now).  There are videos in this piece and the one above.

I was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University’s campus because I am a Jew.

By April 20, the students’ encampment had grown to roughly forty tents, sleeping bags, umbrellas, and a stereo. On Saturday night, a student in a Class of 2026 group chat encouraged Yalies to come and show their support for Yalies4Palestine. As a student journalist for the Yale Free Press, I went to check it out. Other reporters from the Yale Daily News were already on the scene.

I should say here that I am a visibly observant Jew who wears a large Star of David around my neck and dresses modestly. I went over with my friend Netanel Crispe, who is also identifiably Jewish because of his beard, black hat, and tzitzit.

When we approached the anti-Israel protest accompanying the tent encampment to document the demonstration, we were quickly walled off by demonstration organizers and attendees who stood in a line in front of us. No one else documenting the event was blockaded this way.

In every direction we moved, demonstrators stood in front of us, arms linked, yelling along with the crowd. (Watch this video and ask yourself if this would happen to a student who did not look visibly Jewish.)

. . .Before too long, the protesters encircled me in addition to the human blockade. Their arms linked, and they danced in a circle around me so that I was pinned between them, the human blockade, and a wall. Some other demonstrators noticed this and joined in on the taunting.

They pointed their middle fingers at me and yelled “Free Palestine,” and the taunting continued until a six-foot-something male protester holding a Palestinian flag waved the flag in my face and then stabbed me with it in my left eye.

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

Why have the protests intensified and grown from anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian to open calls for eliminating Israel and killing Jews? Why, as Mandel asks, do the protestors now seem to desire war, and apparently a war not just on Israel, but on the entire West? Truly, it is a call for a globalized intifada, and apparently one meant to destroy all Enlightenment values of the West and restore Islamism.

I have no firm answers except to say it appears to be a concatenation of several factors exacerbated by the war between Israel and Hamas. For one thing, Israel is winning and will win, and that must anger the protestors no end. (Not to mention the help that the U.S. is giving Israel, defending it against Iran’s attack and now giving $17 billion to help defend Israel.) There is a faddishness of the protests, too, with some students simply going along with what seems to be the dominant political ideology on campus.  And the dominance of that ideology can surely be laid largely at the door of DEI on campus, which sees Israel as composed of white oppressor-colonialists, not as another oppressed minority.

Calling the police on illegal protests certainly riles up the participants, for one commonality of all “progressives” is a hatred of cops, and when the cops come it will appear to be a vindication of the protestors’ ideas. (They’ve just started arresting protestors at Yale.)

And behind it all is money, money from people or groups I don’t know of but are surely funding groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Within Our Lifetime, the two main groups, both well funded, behind campus demonstrations. (Didn’t you notice that all the tents on the Columbia campus were the same? Who bought them?) SJP, for example, has over 200 branches on American campuses, and a national headquarters that surely coordinates and plans demonstrations. Who funds them? Could money be coming from Iran or other places in the Middle East, who sense, along with the American groups, that this is their moment to strike? Who knows?

What do the protestors hope to accomplish with these raucous demonstrations? People who are inconvenienced are naturally ticked off, and those people are not likely to buy into the slogans above. There may be a small effect in persuading Biden to pressure Israel about the war when he sees both American Muslims and young people becoming more sympathetic to Palestine and more critical of Israel. But the demands of the demonstrators—mainly for colleges to divest from everything Israeli (especially armaments)—aren’t going to be met.

Palestinian students, of course, have a personal interest in the war, but many of the demonstrators (most of the ones I’ve seen in Chicago) are not Palestinians, but Americans or non-Palestinian foreign students.  It may well be true that what we’re seeing is the biggest example of college virtue signaling yet. But of course what starts on campus spreads to the rest of America, as we saw with DEI.

While it may be true that only a fraction of the protestors really believe in the things they are chanting, it takes only a small group of dedicated believers to leverage change, and in this case it’s change for the worse. For it’s not only the existence of Israel that’s at stake, but the Enlightenment values behind the American project.  Already many academic institutions are threatened by these protestors, and what is next? One can hardly call Columbia these days an “academic institution.”

If “globalizing the intifada” is truly a goal of many protestors, then it’s time, as Bari Weiss said, to stand up against the madness. Too many Americans who despise the goals of these protestors remain silent, for they don’t want to stick their heads above the parapet. But if ever there’s a time to do that, it’s now. If not now, when?

The hatred is not limited to American protestors. This is in Ottawa:

Yesterday’s pro-Palestinian march in Chicago

April 21, 2024 • 8:15 am

I suppose this counts as Readers’ wildlife today, as we’re dealing with the primate H. sapiens.  We have videos and photographs from a demonstration in Chicago.

Yesterday my colleague Peggy Mason (like me, an atheistic Jew) went downtown to get pick up her repaired watch, and ran smack into a huge pro-Palestinian demonstration around Michigan Avenue. These protests occurred widely across America yesterday, perhaps in solidarity with the entitled demonstrators squatting, snacking, and shouting on the campus of Columbia University (see this morning’s Hili Dialogue and the tweets below). I’ll first show two videos taken by Peggy and then add a group of her photos. First, her words:

This is just beyond anything I ever thought I’d see in my lifetime.  I was downtown today and there was a huge pro-Palestinian march on Michigan Avenue.  Also huge police presence walling them in.   Signs included anti-Zionism≠Anti-semitism, which is obviously not true here or in London or anywhere.  Next to that sign was a throwback to the Elders of Zion – “Their god is CAPITAL and God is our Witness.”

The people in the march appeared to be quite pleased with themselves.  There was no opposition to them.  Tourists ignored them.  I had no clue what I could do as a single person.  I did nothing but take pictures for Jerry.  I just don’t see how we return to comity and civility.

And two videos.  First, the cops keep the demonstrators in tight order.

More shouts. I can’t make out the words beyond “Genocide Joe”, but readers can help with that and other chants.

 

And some photos. Note in the first one the claim that anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism, which of course is an excuse to be anti-Semitic. I disagree with the slogan anyway, as to oppose an established country now, formed as a homeland for Jews expelled or demonized elsewhere, and long after the Holocaust made its existence necessary, is to say that you don’t think the country should exist—that it should be eliminated (and perhaps merged with Palestine, with dire results), or the Jews should be deported from Israel. Either way it’s anti-Semitic, so these protestors are flatly making a false statement.

Notice the blood libel here: the sign that says “Their God is Capital, and God is our witness.”  That’s simply the old claim that Jews worship money, and it’s a poster I hadn’t seen. This is the kind of stuff, in conjunction with things like the London police driving away people who look “openly Jewish” (see this morning’s Hili Dialogue), that makes me believe that the protests are moving from being anti-Israel to being anti-semitic.  Note also the “From the River to the Sea” poster.

Sundry other photos by Peggy:

This kid is doomed to being propagandized:

Of course I don’t deny these people the right to demonstrate and say whatever they want. (I’m pretty sure they had a permit.) What I am saying is that their speech is both hateful and scary, and not a good portent for Jews.

Truly, these people want to see Israel gone, wiped off the map—by “any means necessary.”  And the nature of chants and slogans is changing. As I said this morning, at Columbia you can hear stuff like, ““Remember the 7th of October” (and they’re happy about that), followed by “Ten thousand times”.  They are happy about the 7th of October attack, and they want it to happen again and again! It’s no coincidence that this is precisely what Hamas says. I can’t help feeling, and it chills me to the marrow, that many of these protestors think that Hamas did a good thing on October 7th.  After all, they say, they are no real “civilians’ in Israel, and that apparently includes babies, who are just infant colonizers.

You will not convince me that all these people want is a peaceful and terror-free coexistence between Israelis and Arabs.  They are in favor of getting rid of Israel, and you know what that means.  Meanwhile, things at Columbia are heating up last night and this morning, and the slogans appear to be in Arabic. Some tweets:

I am not sure, as the tweet below avers, that all the people in the video are “terrorists or “openly supporting terror,” which seems very hyperbolic.  I am putting up the first tweet just to show you how academia has become ideology.

Look at the epithets hurled at the rabbi and the Jewish students as they’re followed off campus. Click the button but read the epithets at the bottom of the screen. They’re clearly anti-Semitic, e.g. “Go back to Poland.” And the second tweet points out Jews as “targets”.  What else could that mean?

You can read about Nerdeen Kiswani at the Anti-Defamation League.

Biden once again tells Israel how to defend itself—by not striking back

April 15, 2024 • 10:00 am

What do you suppose the U.S. would do if, say, Russia launched an attack on the West Coast with several hundred non-nuclear missiles, justifying that attack by saying that the U.S. had given weapons and money to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia?  Imagine further that U.S. planes and anti-missile defenses managed to fend off all the Russian missiles, and then the Russian attack stopped.

Would the U.S. then refrain from all further action, avoiding all retaliation by proclaiming that we had won a “great victory” over Russia? Would we listen to, say, Canada if they told us to avoid retaliating because Russia had stopped attacking and we’d only promote a “wider war”?  I doubt it.  We might not attack Russia with nukes, but you can bet that we would do something, even though we’ve put about as many sanctions on Russia as we can.

But, after Iran’s attack on Israel Saturday night, an attack to which Israel didn’t retaliate (but has contemplated doing so), and an attack in which Israel’s planes did not leave Israeli airspace, Biden has butted in,once again, preventing Israel from retaliating against an attack. It’s reported in this NYT piece (click to read, or find it archived here):

 

An excerpt:

President Biden and his team, hoping to avoid further escalation leading to a wider war in the Middle East, are advising Israel that its successful defense against Iranian airstrikes constituted a major strategic victory that might not require another round of retaliation, U.S. officials said on Sunday.

The interception of nearly all of the more than 300 drones and missiles fired against Israel on Saturday night demonstrated that Israel had come out ahead in its confrontation with Iran and proved to enemies its ability to protect itself along with its American allies, meaning it did not necessarily need to fire back, the officials said.

Whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his government will agree to leave it at that was not yet clear as the country’s war cabinet met for several hours on Sunday to make decisions about its next steps.

The leaders of the Group of 7 major industrial democracies echoed Mr. Biden’s message on Sunday morning, condemning Iran for the attack and warning that it could provoke what they called an “uncontrollable regional escalation” in the Middle East.

“This must be avoided,” the joint statement said. “We will continue to work to stabilize the situation and avoid further escalation.”

Although damage from the attack was relatively light, the scope of the strikes went well beyond the small-bore tit-for-tat shadow war between Iran and Israel in recent years, crossing a red line with the firing of weapons from Iranian territory into Israeli territory. Had defenses not held, scores or hundreds could have been killed.

American officials said it was clear to them that wide-scale death was Iran’s intent, despite the fact that its leadership telegraphed the attack well in advance, publicly and privately. Officials said that even as the attack was underway, Iran’s government sent word through Swiss intermediaries that it considered the matter closed.

As the Elder of Ziyon remarks acidly,

Saying that Israel should regard this as a victory is shortsighted. As others have pointed out, surviving someone shooting at you many times because of your bulletproof vest is not a victory. The shooter can reload and only needs one bullet to make it through. Israel cannot afford to remain in a purely defensive posture forever, especially as Iran has proven that it is now willing to directly attack Israel.

If Iran fired a lot more missiles and drones at once, and Hezbollah launched a gazillion Iranian missiles, which it has, it might overwhelm the Iron dome completely and destroy considerable parts of Israel.

Yes, wide-scale death was Iran’s intent, and if you think it’s going to stop with that one attack, I’d argue that you’re wrong. Iran continues to supply its proxies, including Hezbollah and Yemen, not to mention Hamas, with money, material, and rockets. And of course Iran is developing nuclear weapons, one of which can easily destroy nearly all of Israel. (For some reason the U.S. doesn’t worry about that, though Israel tried to stop the program earlier by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities or assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.) And yet Biden tells Israel to keep its hands off Iran, which, if there’s such a thing as an “axis of evil” in the Middle East, surely qualifies for the title. Even many Iranians dislike their oppressive theocracy, and there was some celebrating in Iran when its attack on Israel failed.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to the U.S.—and to Britain, France, and Jordan—for defending Israel against the Iranian attack. And indeed, an Israeli retaliation could destabilize the Middle East and create a wider war—for now. But if I’m not wrong, that wider war is coming anyway. Iran will keep supplying countries who attack Israel, and if you think that its failure has deterred it from further attacks on Israel, all I can say is “I doubt it.” Someday, and it won’t be long now, Iran will have nuclear weapons and a delivery system. Further if war comes from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which might as well be an extension of Iran’s military, that can also be put on Iran. I guess I should add that I am not a big fan of Netanyahu and believe he needs to go as soon he can without his departure hurting Israel’s war effort.

What bothers me is not so much as America being a buttinski in this case, but its tendency to be a buttinski about everything that Israel does. And that includes the U.S.’s constant pressure on Israel not to go into Rafah. At best, Israel is told to evacuate its civilians (which it surely will) but then engage in targeted strikes rather than a big attack. (Is the U.S. an expert in that?) The U.S. doesn’t like any civilians being killed, despite the fact that the way Hamas operates is to ensure that Gazan civilians will be killed, for that gains them the world’s sympathy. Those who doubt that are dead wrong.  “Collateral” deaths of Gazan civilians are not on Israel but Hamas. Further, the ratio of Gazan civilians killed to Hamas terrorists killed is on the order of 1.5:1 or even 1:1, and no country has achieved that in modern warfare.  Does that placate the U.S.? Of course not, even though our own ratios are far worse than Israel’s. (Again, I am not by any means celebrating the tragedy of dead Gazan civilians, just noting who bears the responsibility.)

In the end, I can’t help but believe that a huge factor in Biden’s buttinski behavior about Israel involves boosting his own chances of re-election. The Muslim vote may be key in some states like Michigan, and younger Americans are more pro-Palestinian than older ones as well as far less approving about how Biden is dealing with the Israel/Hamas war. Biden needs those young voters.  It seems to me unethical—indeed, reprehensible— to interfere in other countries’ affairs of state so you can buttress your own chances of re-election.  If you imagine that America were in Israel’s shoes, as I tried to in my clumsy scenario above, I seriously doubt that we’d pay attention to other countries who tried to prevent us from defending ourselves.

To quote the learned Elder of Ziyon again:

After all, Iran has to defend its honor. And the US understands that – unlike Israelis, they are irrational Muslims who cannot live with themselves unless they project power and force millions of Israelis into shelters. Risking Israeli lives is a worthwhile bargain to let Iran feel victorious. Then, the bargain goes, the US will stop Israel from responding, because no one died (rumors that the Bedouin girl in the Negev hit with shrapnel died were not true) and Iran is happy.

Iran can announce that its operation is over, vengeance is theirs, they can return to their proxy war through Hezbollah and Syria and Iraq and  Yemen, and warn the US to do its part of the bargain and not allow Israel to do anything against them.

Iran is not deterred in the least.

Any self respecting nation would respond harshly to such an open attack on its territory. Israel should be striking at every drone factory and every missile site in Iran, at the very least, and those attacks should have started as soon as Iranian aircraft crossed Iran;s own borders towards Israel.

At the moment, with the US constraining Israel’s ability to respond, Iran pays no price at all for its blatant aggression. Which means it has a green light to do it again.

The entire Middle East sees that this is what the US means when it says its support for an ally is “ironclad.” Which strengthens Iran a lot more than its drones do.

I still plan to vote for Biden this fall, and of course there’s no way I’d ever vote for the narcissistic disordered personality embodied by Trump. But my enthusiasm for voting at all has waned quite a bit, not only because Biden seems old and out of it, but because of his self-aggrandizing behavior towards Israel. If I didn’t vote at all, Biden would still win this Democratic state and all its electoral votes, so I wouldn’t be helping Trump in the least. We shall see.

A UK lawyer rebuts many misconceptions about Israel

April 14, 2024 • 1:00 pm

Natasha Hausdorff is a British barrister (lawyer) specializing in international law, and also the legal director of the UK Lawyers for Israel. She’s also smart as hell, eloquent, and never loses her cool. I see her as the female equivalent of Douglas Murray: what a team they’d make in a debate over the war in Gaza!  Treat yourself to an hour or so of perusing her videos on YouTube, especially when she’s engaged in a debate and gets heckled because she’s pro-Israel and Jewish.

Here is a ten-minute video on Sky News in which Hausdorff discusses why she refused to sign a letter from UK lawyers, academics, and judges (there are now  1101 signers) asking, among other things, for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The moderator, as she should, asks tough questions, but Hausdorff answers them cooly and accurately. The material about aid trucks, as far as I know, is spot on.

Iran begins attack on Israel—with slow-moving drones

April 13, 2024 • 3:00 pm

The Times of Israel reports that Iran has begun its direct attack on the country, using slow-moving drones. But missiles are sure to follow. There’s a short report from the Times of Israel (click to access; it’s a live blog so you can refresh the site):

The entire content:

Iran has launched an attack against Israel with dozens of drones, according to the Axios news site.

Drones are assessed to take several hours to cover such a distance.

There is no immediate statement from the IDF on the attack.

Iran has threatened to attack Israel over the killing of seven IRGC members, including two generals, in Syria’s Damascus last week

If drones come, missiles will surely be fired soon. And they can come from Lebanon, where Hezbollah has thousands, as well as from Iran. I doubt that the Iron Dome and the new system (I forgot its name) could handle such an onslaught.

This is perhaps the most precarious moment for Israel in its history. If missiles come, let us hope that the U.S. fulfills its promise to help Israel defend itself.

I wonder why slow-moving drones would precede fast missiles, though, for it surely alerts Israel that an attack is about to begin, but hours before it begins.