The Ignatius report on the war in Rafah: will Israel scale back?

The New Neo Posted on by

Today there’s a WaPo article by David Ignatius on the war in Gaza:

I’ve seen other articles reporting on what Ignatius wrote; for example, this, entitled: “Report: Israel opts for limited Rafah action with Biden’s blessing: the IDF won’t engage in a full-scale assault on the last Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza.” Excerpt [emphasis mine]:

In an opinion piece published on Monday citing sources familiar with the matter, the newspaper’s senior commentator wrote that the framework for eventually ending the Gaza war became more clear after a just-wrapped trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, the U.S. National Security Council’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Israeli leaders have reached a consensus about a final assault on Hamas’s four remaining battalions in Rafah. Instead of the heavy attack with two divisions that Israel contemplated several weeks ago, government and military leaders foresee a more limited assault that U.S. officials think will result in fewer civilian casualties and, for that reason, Biden won’t oppose,” said Ignatius.

“At least 800,000 of the roughly 1.5 million Palestinians who had gathered in Rafah have left, U.S. officials believe,” he added.

Ignatius also wrote that Israeli defense officials have agreed on a strategy for “the day after” Hamas is defeated, with Ramallah playing a role. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is against Palestinian Authority involvement in governing Gaza given its support for terrorism, a stance Ignatius acknowledges.

The post-Hamas Gaza “will include a Palestinian security force drawn in part from the Palestinian Authority’s administrative payroll in Gaza. This Palestinian force will be overseen by a governing council of Palestinian notables, backed by moderate Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia,” he said.

So, what does all this mean? Trying to read Ignatius in the WaPo and understand the backstory is like reading Pravda and Kremlin tealeaves in Soviet days, but I’ll give it a go.

First let me say that Ignatius is the usual Democrat hack (I’ve written about him before, here as well as here). But that doesn’t mean he’s not correct. It means we certainly can’t assume that he is, or that this is straightforward reporting.

I also want to call your attention to phrases such as “eventually” ending the war and “more limited” assault. They are both unclear both as to time and scale.

Various possibilities come to mind in explaining the article. Ignatius’ sources – probably either Sullivan, McGurk, or their aides – may be trying to say something like, “See, President Biden is doing great and has gotten peace in our times underway, having convinced the nasty old Israelis not to bomb Rafah into the Stone Age.” There may be no agreement at all, merely talks about it, and this Ignatius story might be a form of pressure on Israel. Or, there might be an agreement of sorts, in which the Israelis go somewhat easier in exchange for Biden and company not stabbing them in the back in the ICC, and in exchange for some sort of vague support for the war’s aftermath in controlling Gaza and educating the Gazans in the notion that Israelis are not devils incarnate after all.

As for that business of the “governing council of Palestinian notables,” it would be fascinating to get the names of these stellar leaders and hear about their wonderful accomplishments. And I’d be curious whether Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are in fact onboard with this, and if so how they see their roles. They do have an interest in keeping the Gazans from attacking Israel again, but they also have an extreme antipathy to dealing with the Palestinians at all, as the latter and their allies have tried to disrupt the stabilty of other Arab countries and on the whole have been bad, bad news.

I haven’t yet seen any announcement from the Israeli government about any of this. And I wonder how the Ignatius report can be reconciled with this:

As the military operation in Hamas-held stronghold of Rafah entered its second week, the IDF is expanding its control over the city. The military was advancing “into Rafah, one area after another and gradually expanding,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported Tuesday.

If the Ignatius report is correct, however, it may be that Israeli leaders think that they cannot eliminate all the terrorists anyway, that world opinion is isolating them further and further, that the Biden administration is willing to cut off their armaments and their own supply can’t last forever, and that the best solution may lie in the more moderate Arab nations gaining some control of the area if they’re willing to do so in exchange for an Israeli pullback of sorts.

Time will tell.

The defense rests in the NY Trump trial

The New Neo Posted on by

The Trump trial in New York was a travesty from the start: the change in the statute of limitations, the elevating of a misdemeanor into a felony by means of the implication that there was some unspecified other crime connected with the misdemeanor, the compromised status of the judge in terms of his daughter’s work, the fact that Bragg had campaigned on getting Trump, the choice of venue, and of course the fact that the bar for indicting a leading presidential candidate should be high rather than so low even a worm couldn’t slither under it.

But slither they did.

Judge Merchan should have either recused himself or thrown the case out of court before it began. And/or later he should have ruled for a directed verdict. But instead, he seems determined to make sure Trump is found guilty and who cares about reversal on appeal; the latter would only be happening after the election, after the damage is done. And inflicting damage on Trump is the aim of the entire enterprise.

It doesn’t matter that the other crime – the one that supposedly makes the case a felony – has neither been stated, defined, nor proven. It doesn’t matter that the evidence rests on the shaky shoulders of one Michael Cohen: perjurer and thief. It doesn’t matter – and if it ends up mattering, if at least one juror says “no” to this railroading of Trump, I will be both pleased and very surprised.

But I’m not at all surprised that Trump didn’t take the stand. Nothing he could say would change anything to help him with this judge and jury, and in general it is advised that defendants can only hurt themselves by testifying. What’s more, there’s no case. What is there to rebut? The jury will do what it will do at this point.

This courtroom proceeding and the background to it have made a number of things crystal clear – not that they were murky before, but they’re even more clear now. The first is that the left will stop at nothing to destroy Trump and the right in general. The second is that the road to lawfare against the right is to try the person in a deep blue venue, and it’s virtually a certainty that – no matter how weak or even corrupt the case may be – you will get your conviction (again, if that turns out to be untrue here, I will be very pleasantly surprised). The third is that the left’s willingness to be so open about its willingness to upend the legal system and any other system in further of gaining more and more power indicates that the left has zero reluctance to use fraud at the ballot box. And the fourth is that the MSM will cover and spin just about anything the left does, the better to engineer the re-election of a confused, destructive, mendacious, stupid, vicious tool named Joe Biden.

Notes from Chairman Biden

The New Neo Posted on by

A mite confused:

In comments first reported by the New York Post, Biden addressed an NAACP campaign event in Michigan Sunday night, where he repeatedly railed against his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Trump, while offering an aside about the contagion – which began in 2019 while the latter was in office.

“When I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic,” Biden said near the beginning of his remarks.

“And, what happened was Barack said to me: ‘Go to Detroit – help fix it.’”

Addled.

The explanation is that he’s not addled about when he was president, he’s addled about the difference between a pandemic and a recession:

The White House’s official transcript following the president’s remarks included a strikethrough of the word “pandemic”—instead replacing it with the word “recession.”

Biden was apparently referring to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who took office while Biden was still VP back in 2014.

I actually think that’s what happened. But even so, it’s still odd for a speaker not to catch the error immediately – that is, if that speaker is thinking straight and paying any attention to his or her words. Joe is doing neither.

What’s more, there’s this:

“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,” Hur said in his report. “He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013—when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”

So let’s just split the difference and say that Biden is addled about a lot of things.

And then there was Biden’s stirring commencement speech at Morehouse College: With malice towards all and charity towards none. No, that’s not a quote; it’s a summary:

“You missed your high school graduation. You started college just as George Floyd was murdered, and there was a reckoning on race. It’s natural to wonder if the ‘democracy’ you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy? That Black men are being killed in the street,” Biden said.

He continued, “What is democracy? The trail of broken promises still leaves Black communities behind. What is democracy? You have to be ten times better than anyone else to get a fair shot. Most of all, what does it mean? As you’ve heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure.”

“They don’t see you in the future of America. But they’re wrong,” he added.

The crowd applauded at his comment.

What a malevolent force Biden is.

Dispatches from the Kangaroo Court of New York

The New Neo Posted on by

Astounding proceedings today.

Astounding.

Cohen embezzled 60K from Trump, but is not being prosecuted for it nor did he plead guilty to it. He got off by testifying against Trump on these ridiculous charges.

And then there was Judge Merchan and Costello. You may recall who Costello is – he was Cohen’s lawyer at one time, and has information directly contradicting almost all of Cohen’s testimony against Trump, particularly as regards Trump’s motivation and knowledge.

Oh, plus the fact that Merchan contributed to Biden’s campaign in 2020 and to a group called “Stop Republicans.” This was illegal for him to do, even though the donations were small.

ADDENDUM:

Here’s a good one from Turley:

Here we go again: donation time!! [BUMPED UP: scroll down for today’s new posts]

The New Neo Posted on by

Ah yes, here we go again.

It’s been awhile since I’ve asked for donations. In the meantime, many readers have donated anyway, and I thank you all profusely. Some of you even have a setup whereby you make a monthly payment, which is also great. I appreciate it so very much, and it helps to keep this blog going.

If anyone wants to contribute to thenewneo, please click on the “Donate” button either to the right or at the bottom of the page, depending on what sort of device you use when reading the blog. If the Donate button is not showing, disable your adblocker and that should make it visible.

I thank everyone in advance. If it weren’t for you readers and commenters, I’d probably be doing something other than this in my dotage.

I’ll probably keep this post at the top of the blog for the next week.

California dreaming: the Racial Justice Act is a law enforcement nightmare

The New Neo Posted on by

I hope this doesn’t spread to other states. It’s bad enough that it’s the new policy in California. It’s truly stunning to contemplate:

California is about to demonstrate what a world constructed from the tenets of critical race studies looks like. The sentencing reversal in California v. Windom is the result of a recent law that will likely bring the state’s criminal-justice system to its knees. The Racial Justice Act, passed in 2020 without meaningful public review, turns long-standing academic tropes about implicit bias and white privilege into potent legal tools. And the floodgates are about to open. Starting this year, the RJA allows anyone serving time in a California prison or jail for a felony to challenge his conviction and sentencing retroactively on the ground of systemic racial bias.

The Act was introduced by stripping an old bill of its content and replacing it with this content and then fast-tracking it in a stealth way without hearings or publicity. Now it’s the law, and it’s an incredible one that will have enormous repercussions:

The Racial Justice Act operationalizes the proposition that every aspect of the criminal-justice system is biased against blacks. But according to the act’s legislative authors, it’s too hard to prove such bias in the case of individual arrests and prosecutions. Therefore, the act does away with the concept of individual fault and individual proof. From now on, statistics about past convictions are sufficient to invalidate a present trial or sentence. …

[Previously, defendants were required to] show that criminal-justice decision-makers were purposefully biased against them, in order to throw out a conviction or a sentence under the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court ruled. Statistics purporting to show a historical pattern of bias are not enough to support the requisite showing of individual discriminatory purpose against a particular defendant.

Thanks to the RJA, McCleskey no longer governs bias challenges in California. From now on in California, statistics purporting to show a pattern of bias in the past are enough to invalidate a current arrest, criminal charge, or judicial sentence.

And it doesn’t need to actually show bias, just a disparity in results. The insane presumption is that all races and groups commit crimes in proportion to their percentage in the population, and any disparity in numbers is evidence of discrimination.

Please read the whole thing.

The ICC wants to arrest Netanyahu for defending Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

Israel is the only nation in the world forbidden to defend itself against murderous predators out to destroy it, and punished for doing so. Merely repeating the words “Israel has a right to defend itself” means nothing, while acting to stop it and condemning it for actually doing so in the most humane way possible for an army fighting against terrorists who hide among civilians.

And it’s not as though the murderous predators are subtle, nor do they limit themselves to mere words. They invaded Israel and committed a series of barbaric and sadistic war crimes against its citizens, during a ceasefire. They documented those crimes, bragged about them, broadcast them, and vowed to commit them over and over till Israel and Israelis are destroyed. And this was not some outlaw terrorist group, it was the elected government of Gaza.

But here’s the latest from the ICC prosecutor. He is requesting a series of arrest warrants. The first group is for Sinwar and other Hamas leaders who masterminded the vicious crimes of 10/7. The second group is this:

I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023:

– Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
– Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
– Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i) …

And so forth.

The leaders of Israel are fighting a terrorist group dedicated to its destruction, right on its borders, who purposely hide among the civilian population in order to effect results of this very sort. It is doing so with more care to protect civilians than in any other urban warfare conflict on earth, against a force that wishes its own civilians to die, the better to spread anti-Israel propaganda. So congratulations, Hamas! The ICC is playing right into your hands. It is ironic that rules of war supposedly designed to prevent or discourage outrages such as the genocide against the Jews in World War II have ended up being tools for further genocide. But there’s a lot of irony in history.

To the Biden administration’s credit, they have condemned this in no uncertain terms – even though, by much of their previous rhetoric, they have encouraged it in a cynical double game:

“The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” Biden said.

The US State Department also condemned the move, saying, “The United States fundamentally rejects the announcement today from the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that he is applying for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, together with warrants for Hamas terrorists.”

“We reject the Prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans,” the State Department added.

The statement continued, “Moreover, the United States has been clear since well before the current conflict that that ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter.

The ICC has no jurisdiction, but it has influence. This gives ammunition to the Israel-haters and Jew-haters who say there is an equivalence between Netanyahu and the Sinwars of the world, or even that Netanyhu is worse. It could subject Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to arrest if traveling internationally.

More:

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik called for Congress to impose sanctions on the ICC following Khan’s statements.

“The ICC is an illegitimate court that equivocates a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical terror groups that commit genocide,” Stefanik (R-NY) told the New York Post.

The “international community” has long imposed standards on Israel it would not and does not impose on any other country. The goal is to isolate Israel from the rest of the world. “Shameful” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

NOTE: The ICC prosecutor, Karim Ahmad Khan, is a British-born lawyer of Pakistani descent, a Muslim who is a member of the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam. The latter is a sect that does not believe in terrorism but wants Islam to take over the entire world by peaceful means. However, this all doesn’t really matter; if not by Khan or another Muslim, the request would have been issued by some other non-Muslim Westerner devoted to “international law” and Israel-hatred. There are plenty of candidates.

Who was Iran’s Raisi, and what happens now?

The New Neo Posted on by

Iran’s President Raisi, who was killed in yesterday’s helicopter crash, was responsible for the death of many political prisoners:

He was sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 known as the “death committee” at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

In 2022, to quell mass street protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested by morality police for allegedly not wearing a hijab, Raisi unleashed a thuggish security crackdown on young people across the country that killed more than 500 people and saw more than 22,000 detained.

The article I linked said his nickname was the “Butcher of Tehran.” A kind of Iranian Robespierre. He was also probably next in line to replace the elderly Supreme Leader Khamenei, who is 85 years old and ascended to the office in 1989 as Khomeini’s successor. Prior to that, he – like Raisi – held the office of president. So you see the way the Iranian succession goes.

Now what will happen? Raisi will be replaced by the First Vice President, but in 50 days an “election” will take place to choose a successor. But the real question is who will succeed Khameini. Before Raisi’s death, it was considered to be a contest between Raisi and Khameini’s son. Now I suppose Khameini’s son is the frontrunner, but I’m going to assume there are plenty of other candidates jockeying for position. This article, written before Raisi’s accident, mentions that Khameini’s son might not succeed his father because there is some opposition to the idea of a hereditary rule. The article also mentions someone named Alireza Arafi as a possibility.

But the person who becomes the new president and the person who ends up succeeding Khameini (not necessarily the same person) will be cut from the same stern cloth as the others in the Iranian theocracy. Of the I am fairly certain.

And then there’s the question of whether the helicopter crash was an act of sabotage by a rival or enemy. My guess is that – because of the weather and the age of the helicopter – it was a bona fide accident. But as is the case in some murder mysteries, there’s no dearth of candidates for the perp if it was a deliberate act. Any of Raisi’s rivals are possibilities. The internet has already started blaming the Mossad, but it doesn’t seem like it matches their usual modus operandi.

Helicopter carrying Iran’s President Raisi crashes

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s official – Raisi’s plane has crashed:

It has been approximately 10 hours since authorities lost contact with President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter in the country’s East Azerbaijan Province, where dense fog hindered search efforts during the day. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency warned that extreme cold would only hinder the search further as night fell.

The overnight low temperature in the nearest city of Tabriz will be in the low 50s on Sunday. It’s difficult to obtain precise weather data from the remote mountains where the crash took place, but temperatures there will dip closer to freezing, according to CNN meteorologists.

Iranian officials say they have located the exact crash site and are sending teams there. Earlier, authorities managed to make contact with two people who had been aboard the aircraft, according to a government spokesperson.

So if this report is correct, there are survivors.

UPDATE: It is now being reported that there are no survivors.

The majestic Gillian Murphy as the Swan Queen Odette

The New Neo Posted on by

Gillian Murphy has been with American Ballet Theater for about 25 years. She’s getting close to retirement age (she’s 45), but this video was made at least fourteen years ago. Murphy is exceptionally strong and she is also tall for a ballet dancer (probably around 5’6″, which is quite tall for a female dancer since they spend so much time on pointe).

That makes Murphy naturally queenly and less fragile, but her arms and upper body give the necessary fragility and vulnerability here. Her long fingers are very expressive and she uses them masterfully; it’s not all that common to notice a ballerina’s fingers but I find hers very arresting. Her extensions are extreme but her upper body and flow saves her performance from being too acrobatic.

The moments in this pas de deux when the Prince folds her “wings” in and cradles her are performed beautifully (and filmed well, too) so that the viewer really understands what the gesture means. He’s saying You needn’t be a swan anymore and try to fly away – be a woman, and I will love and protect you. That is essentially what the Act Two love story is all about.

There is often confusion about the Swan Queen. She’s a woman under a spell and has been transformed into a swan by day, but she becomes a woman again at night. When Prince Siegfried meets her and dances with her she is a woman, but a woman who retains her swanlike characteristics. She can be released from the spell if someone vows to love her forever, and is faithful to that vow. It’s that last part that leads to his involuntary and unaware betrayal in Act Three.

But here’s the pas de deux from Act Two. The part I mentioned about folding in her wings can be seen from around 5:58 to 6:12, and then again from 6:27 to 6:37: