Category: war

The haters put up a tent and a declaration

October 15, 2024 • 9:30 am

As I reported earlier, last Friday anti-Israel protesters at the University of Chicago went wild, vandalizing our Henry Moore sculpture and the surrounding area with spray paint, putting up illegal banners, trying to lock the main northern gate to the campus, and battling with police (three protesters were arrested). University of Chicago United for Palestine (UCUP) issued a document (below) explaining their actions.

And they also put an “installation” on the Quad, consisting of a tent. It’s clearly designed to evoke the Encampment of last year, and has a sign saying “We are still here and Palestine is still here”.  According to the placard, the tent should be down by today. It’s authorized free speech, but I can’t say that it doesn’t make me queasy. Another year of demonstrations, Jew hatred, and disruptions seems to be in the offing.

The installation, photographed by a member of the University community:

UChicago United for Palestine, a group of students that includes the Students for Justice in Palestine, also put up a Google Document declaring their intentions and motivations. This too is free speech, but to me it’s nauseating. Click headline to read:

It’s the same boilerplate activism, but I noticed the repeated use of the words “Zionist entity” to refer to “Israel”, with the latter word hardly being used at all (and not capitalized when it is). The new term is of course meant to deny the existence of Israel, and also to suggest that it’s an artificial entity, i.e., that Jews aren’t indigenous to the area that is now Israel.

Some excerpts. First, the opening two paragraphs, nearly every word of which is a lie:

It has been more than a year since israel commenced its genocidal assault on Gaza. Armed and enabled by the US government, the Zionist entity has slaughtered more than 42,000 captive Palestinians within this timeframe while also systematically destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and killing tens of thousands more by starvation and preventable disease. Nor has israel’s genocidal rampage been limited to Gaza—Zionist forces have murdered hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank within this timeframe, aggressively expanded israel’s settlement enterprise, and launched repeated attacks on Yemen, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.

In the past week, israel’s aggression both in Gaza and across the region has reached unprecedented heights. As part of its ongoing effort to ethnically cleanse and erase Northern Gaza, it has imposed a total siege on the area, preventing all food and aid from entering it for the past 13 days. Deliberately assassinating journalists in the northern Gaza Strip, few bravely remain to broadcast to the world. Simultaneously, Israel [they forgot to use a small “i”] has launched an all-out invasion into Lebanon, displacing over a million Lebanese citizens and slaughtering nearly 2,000 in recent weeks. 

Below: a vow to disrupt the University of Chicago.  Unfortunately, the demands they list will not be met by the University, so their demonstrations are futile. I think they know this, which is why they act out, yelling, attacking cops, and vandalizing University property.  Will they be taken any more seriously after throwing red paint on a Henry Moore sculpture? I doubt it.

Note that they say Israel is conducting a “war of expansion in Lebanon”, which is simply a lie showing their willful ignorance of history. Do they not know about UN Resolution 1701 or Hezbollah’s repeated rocket attacks on Israel for a year?

UChicago United for Palestine called this action to interrupt business as usual at the University of Chicago, whose financial and institutional ties with the Zionist entity mirror its objective role as a colonial outpost on Chicago’s South Side—gentrifying neighborhoods and surveilling, policing, and displacing the people who live here. Our experiences during last year’s encampment taught us that our demands—disclosure, divestment, and repair—would not be taken seriously without demonstrating our willingness and ability to use every means at our disposal, including suspending the daily operation of the university. We called this action in conjunction with an international movement against a civil society, state, and international order that prop up the Zionist entity, facilitate its genocide in Palestine, and enable its war of expansion in Lebanon.

Their attack on the statue, which is far more than a celebration of the University’s involvement in developing nuclear weapons. Read what the sculptor said about it.  

More from the document, in which UChicago United swears “to pick apart this university”:

On the afternoon of October 11th, following a rally that drew more than 150 students, community members, and faculty, protestors locked the main gate of the University of Chicago shut before hanging a banner reading “FREE PALESTINE – HANDS OFF LEBANON.” This was the first of a series of autonomous actions that marked the end of the Week of Rage for Palestine and Lebanon, as we passed a year of genocide in Gaza. 

Protestors later marched to a statue commemorating the University’s involvement in the development of the nuclear bomb. A speaker said: “Today, Palestine and Lebanon are being used as the testing grounds of technologies built by universities like this one.” Tags reading FREE GAZA, FUCK THE BOMBS, and KEEP ESCALATING proliferated, and balloons full of paint were thrown at the statue. He continued: “our ultimate message today is that we can pick apart this university, and when we do, we can build something better in its place.” When the crowd regrouped and began to march north to disperse, UCPD cut into the middle of the march, targeting several protestors.

They then recount their battle with cops from the University as well as Chicago city cops, and make clear that their enemies are not just the University of Chicago, but America in general. At least they admit that!  Good luck with dismantling America!  But Americans should realize that the aspirations of the organized nationwide demonstrations go far beyond erasing Israel, extending to the erasure of Western democracies.

. . . . Whether on campus, in the city, or in the street, the Palestine movement must recognize and confront its enemies: the university, the police, American civil society, and the state, all of which collaborate to facilitate dispossession, land theft, and occupation at home and abroad. The people who locked the gate did so to shut down a university that has refused to even acknowledge the destruction of all Gazan universities, much less the ongoing genocide. It symbolized how, while we walk to class every day, the schools in Gaza are bombed, while israel’s genocide against Palestinians continues and the university remains materially and intellectually invested. Protestors painted the nuclear bomb statue red to expose the university’s culpability in the nuclear weapons program, a fact they memorialize through a statue that was explicitly designed to reflect “the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, but also ha[ve] the shape and eye sockets of a skull”—mirrored in the present by its ‘neutral’ research and development programs which directly abet the slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon.

They end by promising to disrupt the campus until Palestine is free.  For them that will be, well, forever, for “Palestine” includes Israel (aka “the Zionist entity”), and Am Yisrael Chai:

. . . We will never stop fighting as long as [Palestinians] face genocide and occupation. We will remain steadfast and committed in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and the cause of all those who face brutal violence and occupation from UCPD and CPD every day. And we will not stop fighting until Palestine is free!

I hope they’re prepared for a long and futile battle. They’ve already lost on campus, and, as Israel slowly wins the war in Gaza and Lebanon, they’ll become increasingly angry that they haven’t removed the Zionist entity “from the river to the sea.”

Bill Maher’s weekly bit: an open letter to Chappell Roan

October 12, 2024 • 12:15 pm

If you don’t know who Chappell Roan is, she’s a singer/songwriter who recently became famous; you can read about here.  She identifies as queer and as a drag queen, even though she’s apparently a biological woman.

In this video, Bill Maher addresses an open letter to her. Roan has touted the virtues of open-mindedness, which Maher admires, but according to him she seems to get all her history from Tik Tok and is apparently sympathetic to Palestine and Hamas and sees Israel as a “colonizer”. Maher proceeds to give her a history lecture couched in Generation Z jargon. As he tells her, “you have it completely ass-backwards as to who is doing the oppressing” (of Palestinians).

This is more serious than most of Maher’s “comedy” videos, but he’s passionate about the subject.

From the Boston Globe: Pinker on Harvard and the Gaza war

October 7, 2024 • 9:15 am

Steve Pinker has an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe (title below). It reflects his own ambivalent feelings—which many of us share—on the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre. As I argue below, the article’s title is a bit misleading (granted, he didn’t choose it), but he does defend Israel’s right to defend itself—though to an unknown extent.  This is the first piece by Steve that I think could have been tweaked a bit to improve it.

If you subscribe to the Globe, you can click on the headline to read it, but you can also find it archived here. And I think I’ve reproduced the whole thing below.

Excerpts are indented, and my own comments are flush left:

My own biography has equipped me with this mindset. I grew up in a Zionist community, had a Jewish education which emphasized that Jews gave morality to the world, and taught Sunday school in the Reform Temple where I had been a student. Yet while I remain proudly Jewish, my adult convictions have pulled me in directions away from this background.

I’m an atheist and feel no need to praise God. I’m a humanist who argues that morality comes not from scripture but from treating people impartially and maximizing their well-being.

And I am not a Zionist in the sense of seeing a Jewish state as the natural aspiration of the Jews. I believe a state should be based on a social contract that secures its citizens the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not the embodiment of religious or ethnic yearnings. And I believe that if Jews are distinctive, it’s because we are a diaspora people, relying on norms and knowledge rather than ties to the soil, and drawing from the many civilizations in which we have lived.

In the past year, the universalism of my adulthood, layered atop the ethnocentrism of my upbringing, has left me in a state of agonized ambivalence. Like most American Jews, I oppose many of the actions taken by the current Israeli government and am heartsick over the death and destruction in Gaza. Yet as I struggle to apply objective yardsticks to Israel and its policies, I have been stunned by the simplistic hatred that has been hurled at it, not least by students at my own institution, Harvard University.

JAC: This is generally good, especially the ambivalence. I would, however, argue that Pinker’s definition of Zionism as “seeing a Jewish state as the natural aspiration of the Jews” is misleading. First, for most Jews living today, “Zionism” means “the idea that Israel is a sovereign nation created as a sanctuary for displaced Jews” (of course there are plenty of Arab Israelis as well).  Israel is in fact IN EXISTENCE, so saying that seeing “a Jewish state as the natural aspiration of the Jews” is like saying that “seeing Saudi Arabia as a Muslim state is the natural aspiration of Muslims.”  It can’t be an aspiration if it’s already accomplished.  At one time, before the Balfour Declaration or even 1948, Zionism was an “aspiration to see a Jewish state.” But now the Jewish state is born, and Zionism is simply the desire to ensure that the baby isn’t killed (h/t Natasha Hausdorff, who has a better take on Zionism).

More from Steve:

. . . . In a statement issued three days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre on Israel, 34 student groups held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible’’ for the slaughter and rape of 1,200 of its citizens. Entirely! Our students exonerated the men who pulled the triggers, raped women, and set houses on fire with families in them. They took no note of the murderously antisemitic ideology of Hamas, nor of their strategy of killing noncombatants, a war crime. They seemed unaware that Egypt blockades Gaza, too, and that Hamas is armed and encouraged by a malevolent theocracy in Iran.

This is the species of facts that Harvard students really need to be taught. Not that it would budge the Hamas-lovers one whit, but it at least weakens their arguments, especially about genocide. (But there are other Big Lies that need to be dispelled, including the “Israel is an apartheid state” trope.)

Then, this spring, the students camping in Harvard Yard went far beyond protesting Israel’s attack of Gaza, an understandable impulse. They declared “From the river to the sea,’’ and displayed signs that wiped Israel off the map.

Calling for the annihilation of a state is extraordinary. None of the other 192 members of the United Nations has had its existence seriously questioned, and in 79 years none has gone out of existence through conquest. Many historians note that the grandfathering of states since 1945 is a major cause of the historical decline of war.

In the paragraph above, Pinker really does get at the heart of anti-Zionism: opposition to the existence of the Jewish state. If he believes that Israel is a legitimate state that has the right to defend it’s existence, then yes, Pinker is a Zionist. But I think he holds back on that under the impression that “Zionism” is the sentiment held by Jews in the early 20th century.

Below he shows that the Nakba was not simply the driving of Arabs out of Israel during the 1948 war—a gross distortion that could be corrected with a little education. The majority of Arabs who left Israel around the time of Independence (when five Arab states invaded Israel) did so either before the announcement of independence, because they wanted to flee the war and reside in countries ruled by Arabs, or because Arab armies, like those in Iraq, told the Arabs to leave Israel to avoid extermination during the coming war. The smaller number of Arabs who stayed to fight were expelled by the Israeli army, while Arabs who stayed in place peacefully became Israeli citizens.

This is not to deny the tragic displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s founding. Yet the turbulent post-World War II period was a time of population transfers all over the world, as new countries coalesced and people fled out of fear or duress. Refugees included massive numbers of ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe and Hindus and Muslims in partitioned India, long since resettled. Crimes against humanity took place in those years, and the victims deserve sympathy and compensation. Yet it would be grotesque to try to reverse this history three generations later, or to abolish countries like Poland or Pakistan that emerged from the chaos.

Again, in the first paragraph below, Pinker really does characterize how most Jews see “Zionism”—as “the claim that Israel’s has a right to exist as a sovereign nation”. And then he goes after the Big Lie that Israel is committing “genocide”, a really dumb criticism that has caught on among the ideologues who don’t even know what “genocide” is. If they did, they’d know that Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas are the genuinely genocidal groups or states. But have you ever heard that claim from pro-Palestinian groups? I didn’t think so, even though this aspiration is in Hamas’s initial charter and remains the goal of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their masters in Iran.

Even those who are skeptical of ethnic or religious states have no grounds for opposing the very existence of Israel. Many liberal democracies have state religions (including the United Kingdom with its antidisestablishmentarianism), and many more have a responsibility to preserve the cultural heritage of their ethnic majority. Israel can be a Jewish state in the same sense that Denmark is a Danish state, each granting full rights to its minority citizens.

Just as egregious as calls for the destruction of Israel is the blood libel that it is committing “genocide,’’ the worst of human evils. War and genocide are not the same. An armed force waging war targets enemy fighters for a military goal, harming noncombatants only as an unwanted side effect. An armed force committing genocide targets noncombatants with the goal of destroying a people.

Israel may deserve criticism for launching the Gaza war or for sacrificing too many civilians in fighting it (despite its stated efforts to spare them). Yet its military objective — eliminating a militia dedicated to Israel’s destruction — is crystal clear, as is the reason so many civilians have been harmed, namely that Hamas entrenched itself in tunnels beneath homes, schools, and hospitals.

“May” deserve criticism? Do they or don’t they? If they do, then I’d like to know how Pinker would suggest Israel go about eliminating Hamas given, as he admits, that the huge death toll is an unfortunate byproduct of Hamas deliberately embedding itself among civilians. One can, and should, mourn the death of civilians while at the same time recognizing the ultimate cause of those deaths.

And the ending:

I would desperately like to see a cease-fire in Gaza and a Palestinian state. Yet I know enough Israelis and American Zionists [JAC: note that Pinker doesn’t say “American Jews”, so here he is conflating “Jews” with “Zionists,” which is my point] to understand the counterarguments. No other country would tolerate a fortress on its border that regularly bombarded it with tens of thousands of rockets and sent out terrorists to kill and kidnap its citizens. A state in the West Bank, always vulnerable to Hamas takeover, would multiply the menace. I like to think that human ingenuity can find a way for Israel to attain the security of other democracies, with no force or repression. Yet its venomous critics have advanced no such plan.

When I was a Sunday school teacher, the curriculum was ethics, and I led pupils in deliberating moral dilemmas with no obvious right or wrong answer. During the past year I have found myself grappling with new ones and wishing that my august institution taught its students this skill.

The last paragraph shows why the title is misleading. When I read “I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel” (note, he doesn’t mention “Palestine,” so perhaps “the Gaza war” would have been more appropriate), I took it to mean that Harvard students need to be educated on Middle Eastern history so they could argue about the war knowing the facts. But, it seems, he means that Harvard students need to learn to discuss “moral dilemmas with no obvious right or wrong answer”.  That means only that students need to learn how to debate. But to do that, they surely need to  know the facts of history, not simply philosophical styles of argument.

Still, it takes some courage for a famous Harvard professor to risk his reputation by coming out in support of Israel, and defending its existence and right to defend itself.

Let the hate begin!

October 6, 2024 • 9:00 am

Starting tomorrow is the “Week of Rage”, marking five days of pro-Hamas faculty, students, and staff acting out their hatred of Israel and Jews on our campus—and campuses across America. Odd, isn’t it, that the week begins on October 7, the first anniversary of the day the evil butchers of Hamas (and their allies) slaughtered 1200 people and kidnapped 250? One might even say that celebrating on that day violates common decency.

To many activists and their supporters shown below at the University of Chicago, that was a glorious day, marking the revival of the “resistance.” No matter that the dead and kidnapped were almost all civilians, and that about 70 are still languishing in horrible conditions in the dank tunnels beneath Gaza. No matter that Hamas and its ally Hezbollah (and their masters in Iran) continue to fire rockets at civilian targets in Israel. After all, it was ‘justified resistance” from the very beginning in 1917.

Here is a video, taken last Friday and put on the Instagram page of “fsjpuchicago,” which stands for Faculty and Staff for Palestine at the University of Chicago. The video calls for a continuation of protests along with a promise that they will continue protesting until Chicago “discloses and divests”.

This is all free speech, of course, but it doesn’t mean that these people are not odious apologists for terrorism and, as the term goes, “anti-Zionists” (we all know what that means).

Turn up the sound. The first speaker is Eman Abdelhadi, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development, and the second is Callie Maidhof, Associate Director and Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in our Global Studies group.

The speeches are the usual tedious repetition of propaganda, cant, and lies, blaming the war entirely on Israel–in fact, going all the way back to blaming the current conflict on the 1917 Balfour Declaration from the British government that called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Now, that state is, to these people, a “settler colonialist” state, a gross distortion of history.

The implication is that Israel shouldn’t be there at all. Pity that it’s here to stay!

Abdelhadi then decries America’s and Chicago’s emphasis on free expression, saying that the University’s dismantling of the encampment last summer (which violated University rules) was really a violation of free speech, thus “laying bare the contradictions of the Western World” and of the University of Chicago. The U of C is said to be “complicit in the murder of Palestinians”, “covered with Palestinian blood,” and dedicated to the erasure of Palestinian history.  As Abdelhadi promises at the end (after some chanting), the FSJP group is not going anywhere until it accomplishes its goals.  That will be. . . . well, never, and so we’re in for a long and rough yer as these protestors disrupt campus in their futile cause.

“Uchicagounited” is composed mainly of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)( and some non-student allies. (SJP, a registered student group here, was sanctioned last year by the University for disruption). This appeared on the uchicagounited Instagram page.

Here’s a larger-type version of their mission:

Next week marks one year of “israel’s” genocide in Gaza — and one year of resistance.

“israel” has spent the past twelve months brutally bombing and displacing the people of Palestine and now Lebanon; cutting off their food, water, and education; and perpetrating every kind of atrocity against them, causing over 186,000 deaths. Despite this genocidal onslaught, the Palestinian and Lebanese people have remained steadfast in their resistance. ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

SHOW UP ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, AT 2:30 PM ON THE CENTER QUAD (by 1100 E 58th St) to express our grief and rage as the University continues to put their money behind this massacre. While our administration ramps up its repression, surveillance, and censorship against students and community members, WE WON’T TAKE IT FOR A SECOND. 🇵🇸🇱🇧

This is a masked event; keep yourselves and others safe! Masks will also be provided for those without them. 😷

The masks, of course, are not intended to prevent the spread of respiratory diseases, but to hide the identity of the protestors from the authorities. When Jewish students congregate in solidarity, you see no masks.

Well, the administration has made its position clear; it is in favor of free speech but against disruption. And it will not entertain the idea of divesting according to the protestors’ demands. In a statement issued recently, President Paul Alivisatos, while calling for truth-seeking and the expression of diverse voices, added this:

While constructive dialogue is the gold standard to strive toward, speech should never be chilled. Actions that chill the speech or learning of others are out of bounds, and the University’s academic and administrative leadership is obliged to act to protect the community from such actions. Such chilling actions can include disrupting the speech or expression of others, disrupting the ability of classes and events to proceed, and other efforts intended to impose rather than propose a viewpoint for others. Acts of discrimination and harassment are inimical to our values and purposes, and we will defend our community against such actions.

It is clear, at least to me, what prompted this statement.

The student manual has also been updated in light of what happened last year. As the Chicago Maroon reports:

The changes include an explicit ban on “staying overnight in outdoor structures on campus or in non-residential campus buildings,” a clarification that “the erection or construction of any structure on campus” requires advance approval from the Director of Student Centers, and that amplified sounds are only permitted on campus at certain times and “not inside campus buildings.”

No encampments!  But, as the pro-Palestinian protestors promise, they’re not holding back: “WE WON’T TAKE IT FOR A SECOND”.  I’m afraid they’ll have to, unless they want to face sanctions from the University.

I absolutely defend the right of the miscreants above to say what they want so long as it adheres to our “time, place, and manner” guidelines for speech. But that doesn’t mean that counterspeech is not the proper response. Count this post as that kind of speech. But the lies mouthed by the protestors above are sufficient to discredit them and their “cause”. Israeli genocide, indeed! They willfully omit that it is Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s other proxies who are really dedicated to genocide: the extermination of Israel and its Jews. Israel has no intention to wipe out all the Palestinians, which is why their attacks are targeted.

The Jewish students and faculty here will celebrate October 7 with a show not of resistance, but of sorrow, hope, and solidarity. I won’t disclose the details because the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are prone to disrupting such events.

What’s going on with Biden and Israel? (and a coda about Trump’s possible mental problems)

October 5, 2024 • 10:15 am

Although Biden (and now Harris) have proclaimed an ironclad commitment to Israel’s well-being, they’re acting very wonky about Israel’s behavior.  First they withheld 2000-pound bombs from Israel (you know, the kind that were used on the targeted strike that killed the leader of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah), though the U.S. rations some of these bombs to Israel.

But now the U.S. is trying to tell Israel how to run a war that is an existential thread to Israel’s existence, for the tiny Jewish nation is fighting on seven fronts at once (Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the West Bank).  But the U.S. has been trying to control how Israel responded to Hamas’s October 7 attack from the very beginning. First Biden told Israel not to invade Gaza. When they did, Biden told Israel not to go into Gaza City. When they did, Biden told Israel not to go into Khan Younis. When they did, Biden told Israel in no uncertain terms not to go into Rafah, for that was “crossing a red line.” Kamala Harris backed up Bided then, asserting that she had “studied the maps.”  Israel did go into Rafah and got some hostages, along the way destroying much of Hamas’s military capabilities. All the while Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was waffling, especially about negotiations, for he is the lever Biden uses to try to push Israel in his direction. Had the U.S. followed Biden’s wishes, then, Hamas would still be in control of Gaza, and the dangers of another October 7 would remain.

Now that Israel has made pretty short work of Gaza—granted, I don’t know what will happen “the day after”—and Israel is engaged with both Hezbollah and Iran, Biden is still trying to control Israel, telling the country not to do this and not to do that in response to the Iranian ballistic missile attack. “This” is “not going after Iran’s nukes”, and “that” is not going after Iran’s oil and gas fields. The former could possibly scuttle Iran’s nuclear program, while the latter would eliminate Iran’s major domestic source of income. (If I had my way, I’d say “get the nukes,” hard as that may be, for if Israel doesn’t do that, the country is doomed.)

The article from the Times of Israel below just reprises what I said, and what we know, about Biden’s response to Iran’s attack, and the headline tells the tale (click on it to read):

An excerpt:

US President Joe Biden says Israel has not yet decided how it’s going to respond to Iran’s ballistic missile strike.

“If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” Biden says during a rare appearance at the White House daily press briefing where one reporter after another asks leading questions goading him to criticize Israel.

Earlier this week, Biden said he opposed Israel targeting Iranian nuclear sites as well.

Asked whether he thinks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rejecting diplomatic agreements in Gaza and Lebanon to influence the upcoming presidential election, Biden responds, “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none, and I think Bibi should remember that.

“As for whether he’s trying to influence the election or I don’t know, but I’m not counting on that,” Biden adds.

Biden says he assumes he will speak to Netanyahu when Israel decides on how it wants to respond to Iran.

Another reporter suggests Biden does not influence Israel. The president rejects the premise, saying he receives regular briefings and that his team is in constant contact with their Israeli counterparts.

“It’s the High Holidays… They’re not going to make a decision immediately. And so, we’re going to wait to see when they want to talk,” he adds.

Pressed again on how Israel should respond to Iran, Biden declines to offer further details. “That’s between me and them.”

Asked if he’s considering imposing sanctions against Iran, the president says the matter is under discussion.

Another reporter asks if there is anything the US can do to prevent an all-out war in the Middle East.

“There’s a lot we are doing. The main thing we can do is try to rally the rest of the world, our allies into participating — like the French are in Lebanon and other places — to tamp this down, but when you have proxies as irrational as Hezbollah and the Houthis and it’s a hard thing to determine,” Biden says.

No attacks on oil facilities, no attacks on bomb-building or uranium-enrichment sites. So what does Biden want Israel to do? All the progress Israel has made in defeating its enemies has involved ignoring Biden’s advice and “orders.” And if Biden really wants to tamp down the war, he should just let Israel respond the way it wants. (Remember none of these seven wars were started by Israel.) Why is he waffling so much, and trying to order Israel how to behave?

Well, there’s the election of course, for an Israeli attack on Iranian oil may drive up the price of gas at the American pump, and the U.S. would blame that on Biden. As for the attack on nukes, Biden may be considering the Muslim vote, for while there are more Jews than Muslims in America, the Muslims tend to live in swing states.

But Malgorzata has another credible theory, which is hers. In her view, Biden is determined to carry on the legacy of Obama, who was strongly invested in “balancing” the Middle East, believing that peace would obtain if the power of Shiite states (e.g., Iran) remained appreciable compared to the power of Sunni states. To maintain this balance of power, then, Obama favored a strong Iran, and that meant largely ignoring Iran’s progressing nuclear program while refusing to put sanctions on Iran. (Trump did put sanctions on Iran, but Biden removed them upon taking office).  Biden has continued Obama’s Middle East strategy since taking office.

So there we have a couple of speculations about why Biden is telling Israel not to retaliate against Iran by going after either oil or nukes.  Of course we don’t know what Biden is really thinking, but what is clear is that Biden is constantly trying to stop Israel from retaliating against attacks from Iran and Gaza, and also asking for a very limited response in Lebanon.  Biden’s “orders” are, in effect, orders to Israel to stop retaliating and, in the end, lose these wars, remaining perpetually subject to Islamist terrorism. Biden sure wouldn’t behave that way if, say, Canada started attacking the U.S. with ballistic missiles.

There is no doubt in my mind that Harris will continue to pressure Israel if she’s elected, except she’ll put the screws on tighter than did Biden.  Apparently the election is a big factor in BIden’s foreign policy towards Israel, and he may have forgotten that most Israelis regard themselves as being in a war for the existence of their country. It’s 1948 all over again.

***********

Oh, I almost forgot. Since I get flak from both sides, here’s a comment that came in yesterday from a peeved reader who doesn’t like me dissing Trump. The reader’s handle on his attempted comment was “Robert Peters,” and his attempted comment (posted here but not at the site) was meant to address this post: “An anonymous post at the Elder of Ziyon site: The Harris/Walz’s (and Biden/Harris’s) abysmal record on Israel, Jews, and the war.” The comment:

Your contention that Trump is mentally ill is utter nonsense and diminishes everything else you have to say.

This made me laugh, because first of all, it seems likely to me that Trump really is mentally ill, at least with a diagnosable pattern of symptoms that fit into narcissistic personality disorder:

Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding. This way of thinking and behaving surfaces in every area of the narcissist’s life: from work and friendships to family and love relationships.

People with narcissistic personality disorder are extremely resistant to changing their behavior, even when it’s causing them problems. Their tendency is to turn the blame on to others. What’s more, they are extremely sensitive and react badly to even the slightest criticisms, disagreements, or perceived slights, which they view as personal attacks. For the people in the narcissist’s life, it’s often easier just to go along with their demands to avoid the coldness and rages.

That seems to describe Trump pretty well. Of course I’m not a shrink, and everybody is some sort of mental outlier, but I think my view is reasonable. But beyond that, Mr. Peters is showing his own misguided petulance, saying that because I made one statement about Trump that he dislikes (he seems to be a Trump lover), it therefore “diminishes everything else I have to say.”  Peters, in other words, is being irrational, showing the tendency of many to dismiss everything coming from a person—or a source—that has made one offensive statement.  Too bad for him.

h/t: Norm

Iran attacks Israel with ballistic missiles

October 1, 2024 • 12:24 pm

The Big Conflict has begun, though I hope it’s a limited attack.  Iran has launched at least 150 ballistic missiles at Israel, and many appear to be landing,  but the U.S. has vowed to provide assistance. This will doubtlessly be assistance in defense (like the last attack from Iran), for I can’t imagine the U.S. launching its own weapons at Iran.  Unfortunately, there are reports that some of the missiles have evaded Israel’s “Arrow” defense system against ballistic missiles and may be landing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There may be dozens of hits. and apparently every city in Israel is under attack.

Israel will respond; there is no doubt of that.

And people just can’t stop attacking the Jewish state.

Here’s a real-time video, with commentary (h/t Debra):

The BBC once again won’t use the word “terrorists” for Hamas

September 27, 2024 • 11:45 am

This article just appeared in Spiked (click headline below to read), but you can see a similar piece in the Times of Israel. The upshot is that the BBC, which has long bridled at using the word “terrorists” for Hamas, is now bridling again when the Beeb itself shows a documentary about the Nova Music Festival. I haven’t seen the film yet (it’s has the great title “We Will Dance Again”), but the trailer is below.  And, of course, the Nova festival is where the butchery of October 7 began. Yes, the butchery was largely by Hamas, and Hamas are, for anyone with two neurons to rub together, TERRORISTS. But not to the Beeb, so the word “terrorist” has been expunged from the film.

It’s not clear whether that bowdlerization was at the request of the BBC, or whether the filmmakers were just cowed by the BBC’s long-standing refusal to apply the “t-word” to Hamas, but either way it’s a blot on the BBC, though the network at least partly redeems itself by showing the film. But really, a film on terrorism that won’t use the “t-word”???

I’ll give excerpts from the Spiked piece below.


An excerpt:

The BBC has reached a new low. It has tumbled further down the well of moral relativism. This week, it will broadcast a new documentary about Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October last year. But according to the doc’s director, the version the Beeb is showing ‘won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. If this is true, if the BBC can’t even park its weird aversion to calling Hamas terrorists when it is airing a film about Hamas’s butchery of the young at a festival in the desert, then that shames Britain.

We Will Dance Again tells the story of what the pogromists of Hamas did when they happened upon the Nova festival in the Negev desert during their invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023. Combining harrowing testimony from survivors with graphic footage of Hamas’s barbarism, it paints a grim picture of arguably the worst event of the pogrom: 364 people were slaughtered at Nova. Yet according to the director, Yariv Mozer, one thing will be missing from the version us Brits will see: the T-word.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter on ‘what they kept’ and ‘what they cut’ from their disturbing film, Mozer says ‘the version [the BBC will] air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. Hinting at his irritation at this alleged omission, Mozer says ‘it was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities’. Then Brits can decide for themselves, he says, ‘if this is a terrorist organisation or not’. Some of us have already decided, of course. The BBC might be reluctant to call the mass murderers of Jews ‘terrorists’, but others are more than happy to do so.

It is not clear from the interview with Mozer if the BBC explicitly instructed him to take out the word terrorist, or if Mozer and his team pre-empted the Beeb’s odd concern about that word and decided to take it out themselves for an easier life. The Jerusalem Post assumes it’s the former: the BBC ‘told director’ to ‘not describe Hamas as “terrorists”’, it says. Yet even if it’s the latter, even if there are tellers of Israelis’ stories out there who get the vibe that you shouldn’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ if you want to appear on the BBC, then that’s still epically embarrassing for Britain.

If this was self-censorship, it’s understandable. After all, for the past year, ever since Hamas visited its racist terror on Israel, the BBC has been pathologically resistant to calling Hamas ‘terrorists’. Even though that’s what they are. There was a storm in the aftermath of the pogrom over the BBC’s linguistic cowardice. Just four days after the pogrom, Beeb big gun John Simpson offered a thin explanation for the corporation’s dodging of the T-word. ‘We don’t take sides’, he said. ‘We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”.’

And yet O’Neill points out how the BBC has no hesitancy about applying the term “terrorist” to “far-right terrorists”! It’s only when the terrorists kill Jews that the Beeb pulls back. (“Terrorism” is commonly used to refer to illegal and deliberate killing or intimidation of civilians in pursuit of political aims, so of course Hamas is a terrorist organization and the Nova festival is an example of terrorism.)

The Time of Israel is a little bit more forthcoming, as its article is called “BBC airs Nova massacre film after insisting references to Hamas as terrorists removed”, and also says this:

“We Will Dance Again,” a full-length documentary film about the Hamas massacre of over 360 people at the Supernova music festival during the terror group’s October 7, 2023 assault on southern Israel last year, aired on Britain’s BBC2 on Thursday evening, though only after filmmakers agreed not to refer to Hamas as terrorists.

The word “insisting”, as well as the notion that there was an “agreement”, both imply that the BBC demanded that the word not be used. Well, it doesn’t matter: what matters is the BBC’s craven historical reluctance to use the word “terrorist” to refer to Hamas. Of that O’Neill says this:

One year after 364 young Jews were murdered by anti-Semitic terrorists – yes, terrorists – Britain’s public broadcaster won’t call their killers by their proper name. You couldn’t ask for better proof of how Israelophobia rots the brain and warps the soul.

Does anyone doubt that the BBC has an anti-Semitic slant?

Well, the ToI says a bit about the movie:

Mozer, Zirinsky and others have stressed that the film is apolitical. An opening title of the film notes, “The human cost of the Hamas massacre in Israel and the war that followed in Gaza has been catastrophic for both Israelis and Palestinians,” adding: “This film cannot tell everyone’s story.”

Nevertheless, similar efforts to tell the story of the attack on the Nova festival have been protested against, including a New York exhibit of personal artifacts from the festival that drew expressions of open support for Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as chants endorsing the attack.

Here is the trailer (there’s also a 32-minute video that includes interviews with the director and producers).