Some hostages were held in UN camps – plus, the next group of promised hostage releases

The New Neo Posted on by

Not a suprise:

Reports that freed Israeli hostages had been held in U.N. shelters in the Gaza Strip amount to “a very serious allegation,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, told JNS on Wednesday.

“We call on those who have information on this to share it formally with UNRWA or other parts of the United Nations so that we can investigate it further,” Haq told JNS at the global body’s press conference in New York.

Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher, who were released on Sunday, said Hamas had held them in U.N. camps that the global body created during the war to protect Gazan civilians and to provide them with food and water.

I get tired of saying that things like this are not a surprise, but they’re absolutely not a surprise to anyone who’s followed the news. The UN camps for “innocent civilians” cannot assure that the people there are not terrorists, and in fact the majority of Gazans are also Hamas supporters. Therefore it’s highly possible that plenty of people in the camps were aware that hostages were there and didn’t tell.

Oh, and having the UN investigate is like having the fox investigate the fowl murders in the henhouse.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and word is that the following hostages will be released:

The families of hostages Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag have been notified that they are expected to be released by Hamas tomorrow.

The four are IDF surveillance soldiers kidnapped by Hamas from the Nahal Oz post during the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Apparently, the agreement required that civilian females be released prior to female soldiers, and there is still one civilian unaccounted for. That may be considered a violation of the exchange agreement.

Of these four, the most famous (to me, anyway) is Naama Levy. I wrote about her in this post from December of 2023:

Naama Levy was the young woman last seen in a video, being dragged away by terrorists and with the crotch area of her pants bloodied. Here is some slightly encouraging news, courtesy of the freed hostages …

The news was that she was still alive. Apparently, she is still alive; I conclude that only from the fact that it’s been said that live hostages will be released before dead ones.

And what of the Bibas family, with the two tiny red-headed children? I have long thought they are dead, but I fervently hope I’m wrong about that. If they are dead, Hamas will of course claim that they were killed by Israeli bombs.

Here’s a story about the family:

Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday falls on Saturday, is the youngest of the 251 hostages seized by terrorists during Hamas’s brutal and unprecedented attack on southern Israel more than 15 months ago, which killed over 1,200 people and began the war in Gaza.

Hamas said in November 2023 that Kfir, his brother Ariel and their mother Shiri were killed in an Israeli strike, but since the Israeli military did not confirm their deaths, many are clinging to the hope they are still alive.

“To imagine them coming back alive brings me immense joy,” Hila Shlomo, a musician, told AFP at “Hostages Square,” a central plaza in Tel Aviv that has become the focus of protests and campaigns on the captives’ behalf.

“What happened to these children is a symbol, a symbol of man-made evil, but also of the victory of life if we manage to free them, whatever the cost,” said the 23-year-old, visibly moved.

I came across the following video yesterday, and I urge you to watch it even though the subject matter may seem arcane. But I found it fascinating. It’s a rabbi explaining traditional Jewish religious teaching on what price to pay for the freeing of captives:

Ex-reporters at Politico: we really wanted to report on the Hunter laptop but our big bad editors wouldn’t let us

The New Neo Posted on by

And yet those reporters kept silent about it till now, as far as I can tell:

A pair of former reporters at venerable DC-focused outlet Politico slammed “cowardly editors” at their ex-outlet for burying stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop — as well as other major stories — contributing to a false narrative that “misinformation” was being spread about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden before the 2020 election.

Puck News scribe Tara Palmeri hosted Axios senior politics reporter Marc Caputo on her “Somebody’s Gotta Win” podcast for Inauguration Day to discuss their mutual frustration with what they saw as Politico’s mishandling of Biden family coverage.

“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation,” Caputo carped. “Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true.”

“Close to disinformation”? It was a complete lie. Why not say it? And what did Caputo do about it? As far as I can tell, he said nothing, and stayed with Politico till a year after Biden’s inauguration, when he was hired by NBC – another news outlet that had spread the same lies and covered up the same story.

I suppose Caputo probably wanted Biden to be elected rather than Trump. I’m also fairly certain that he wanted to protect his own career, and speaking out at that time would have been a huge no-no.

But Now It Can Be Told.

The other former Politico reporter telling similar stories about Politico editors is named Tara Palmeri. She left Politico in April of 2022 for an outlet known as Puck, described in that link as “a startup newsletter-centric outlet.” As far as I can tell in a quick search, she’s been silent on the topic of the Hunter coverup till now.

Is any of this news? We already knew that just about every news outlet and social media platform actively promoted the lie that the laptop was Russian “disinformation.” We already knew that the lie and coverup almost certainly affected the 2020 election’s outcome and enabled Biden’s becoming president. The only new part is that a few reporters are coming out of the woodwork to say they wrote stories at the time that sort-of told the truth, and editors killed those stories. I’m going to assume that’s true, but those same reporters certainly seem to have kept a low profile about it till now.

The criminal illegal alien deportations begin

The New Neo Posted on by

And the American people seem to be in favor of it, for the most part.

I think Trump should add that he’s just following the lead of Sweden and other countries in northern Europe:

Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Iceland have agreed to cooperate in the deportation of migrants who have entered their countries illegally. Using Frontex assistance, these individuals will be returned to their countries of origin, as reported by Spiegel.

After a two-day meeting of justice and migration ministers in Copenhagen, Danish Immigration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek stated that representatives of the five countries will regularly convene in the future to improve collaboration with other nations on the repatriation and deportation of illegal migrants.

Consequently, the states plan to carry out joint deportation flights in the future, organized in cooperation with the EU border agency, Frontex, to return migrants without residency permits to their countries of origin.

Leftists love Sweden and the rest, don’t they?

Trump’s executive orders

The New Neo Posted on by

The sheer numbers and scope of the executive orders Trump has issued are overwhelming. The Trump team has apparently been preparing this for a long time, a sort of executive order wishlist that they now get to fulfill. I’ve only scratched the surface of what appear so far to be the most important of the orders.

Birthright citizenship I dealt with in some depth in this recent post. It was always understood that there would be legal challenges and that it’s possible those challenges will succeed. I actually think they will succeed, not because the law can’t be changed, but because the proper mechanism for the change of an amendment is another amendment. I happen to think Trump’s position on birthright citizenship makes sense and I would support it; it’s just that an EO can’t do that, IMHO.

So to me it’s no surprise whatsoever that this has happened – the first round in the battle:

A federal judge in Seattle blocked, temporarily, President Donald Trump’s attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the idea spelled out in the Constitution that every person born in the United States is an American citizen.

Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour on Thursday was blistering in his criticism of Trump’s action as he granted a temporary restraining order that blocks Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide. …

The executive order will remain blocked for at least 14 days while lawsuits in Washington and elsewhere proceed. Washington will next seek a preliminary injunction from Coughenour, which would continue to block the executive order as cases move along.

I assume the issue will probably go to SCOTUS.

Here are some of Trump’s other EOs, this time having to do with the Middle East:

This is good news:

US President Donald Trump revoked a host of what he called “harmful” executive orders and actions under former President Joe Biden that included the sanctioning of Jews living in the West Bank accused of undermining peace and security.

He also halted funding to Unrwa, the agency which distributes aid in Gaza but which Israel has repeatedly accused of employing staff with close links to terror group Hamas. The UN has admitted that nine of the agency’s staff may been involved in the October 7 attack on Israel.

Caroline Glick has done major work on how awful the sanctions on these “settlers” have been; see this, for example.

And Trump states the glaringly obvious and designates the Houthis as a terrorist group again:

In an executive order signed on Wednesday, Trump said that the terrorist group “threaten[s] the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade.”

“Supported by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF), which arms and trains terrorist organizations worldwide, the Houthis have fired at U.S. Navy warships dozens of times since 2023, endangering American men and women in uniform,” the order noted.

The varieties of Trump-hatred

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “physicsguy” writes:

I have a good friend from grad school who is a typical democratic liberal, bordering on left, with a mild case of TDS. Generally he is a good guy except his politics blinds him to some obvious facts. I follow his FB page just to see what’s up, and also it’s a great way to monitor the thoughts of the more looney left as many of his friends fall into that category.

Things were quiet after the election, but have burst forth since Monday. On Tuesday there was much anguish about how we’re all going to die and the country will descend into Nazism, and how RFK is going make everyone drink bleach, etc etc. No rational thought at all, just complete mental breakdowns. Today, lot’s of reposts from left social workers and psychologists about how the flurry of executive orders is intentionally designed to keep all these poor people in a state of disequilibrium. …

Just wondering if Neo has seen similar reactions from here lib friends. It really is fascinating to watch.

My answer is yes and no. There’s been a lot of variety in responses, and I’ve come to think of it as the three varieties of Trump-hatred.

The first type probably shouldn’t even be called “hatred”; more like intense dislike and disapproval. These people never vote for Republicans or even consider it, but they’re not especially political animals. They follow politics somewhat but not obsessively, and it doesn’t dominate their lives or even come close. That doesn’t mean they don’t have firm political opinions, but their emotional investment in those opinions isn’t extremely high, and in particular their tolerance of their political wishes being thwarted is also relatively high.

The second group does hate Trump. They talk about him more, and when they do it’s with a bitter biting tone of extreme contempt. He’s stupid, he’s coarse, he’s a misogynist, he’s racist, he’s corrupt, he’s a sexual predator. They think the next four years are going to be awful but they aren’t living in significant fear.

Members of the third group are the ones physicsguy is describing. In their regular lives, they’re intelligent, thoughtful, and kind. But they believe some or even all of the following: Trump’s tenure means that there will never be another fair election and that the GOP will rig things somehow (method unspecified) to make it the case, Trump will try to run again in 2028, Trump will ban abortion on a national level, Trump will give Ukraine to Russia rather than just make some concessions to Russia, Trump will try to imprison his enemies and opponents with unfair charges, Trump will harm black people and gay people and trans people (perhaps by putting them in concentration camps), Trump will censor speech including the speech of the TDS sufferer, Trump will cause the death of millions including the TDS sufferer. How he will kill those people is left unspecified: will it be a war? A failure to deal properly with an epidemic? Global warming? Starvation? Gulags? Concentration camps and gas chambers? I don’t know, but it’s apparently some or all of the above.

In my circle of friends and acquaintances, groups one and two are rather large and group three is fortunately quite small. But it exists, and I know two people who fall into that category, one more rational than the other. I probably actually know more than two, but I’m not necessarily in close enough touch to know the details of each person’s thoughts on the matter.

It’s very sobering.

RIP Jules Feiffer

The New Neo Posted on by

I hadn’t thought of Feiffer in many years, but as a teenager I was a huge fan. I had several of his books of cartoons, and they were wonderful. He turned his satirical eye and his whimsical pen on the liberals of his day, gently and incisively mocking them, although I assume he was a liberal too.

I especially loved the leotard-clad Dancer, who namelessly and hopefully danced her interpretive dances to Spring, to Love, to whatever. I found this one – not necessarily his best, but at least it’s of the character:

Feiffer had reached the formidable age of 95 when he died. I know next to nothing about his later works, but it sounds like he kept pretty busy:

Meanwhile, back at the Voice, Feiffer still wasn’t drawing a paycheck — and wouldn’t for his first two decades there, even as collections like 1958’s Sick, Sick, Sick and 1965’s The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler made his style immediately recognizable across the country. Those collections introduced Feiffer to adult readers, but for the younger set he was the magical artist behind 1961’s The Phantom Tollbooth. More than 30 years after illustrating Norton Juster’s cult kids’ book, Feiffer returned to the genre as an author, with books like 1993’s The Man in the Ceiling (eventually adapted into a musical with Tony Award-winning producer Jeffrey Seller) and his 2010 re-teaming with Juster, The Odious Ogre. Recent years saw him return to razor-edged grownup satire in 2014’s Kill My Mother and 2016’s Cousin Joseph. His most recent book was a graphic novel for kids published in Sept. 2024, called Amazing Grapes.

Here’s one that’s still timely; I don’t know when it was published:

RIP.

Just between us girls

The New Neo Posted on by

Megyn Kelley on the subject of Jeff Bezos’ main squeeze, Lauren Sanchez, at Trump’s inauguration:

I couldn’t help but notice, too.

When I was a kid, I used to go to ballet classes in some very seedy Manhattan neighborhoods, and I learned what a real prostitute looked like – that is, streetwalkers.

They were easy to spot, even for a child, because of the way they dressed. Very short tight skirts – before miniskirts were a thing. Lots of makeup and big big big hair. Thigh-high boots. Fishnet stockings. Much cleavage. Standing around on the street.

And then, some years later – I don’t recall exactly when – it occurred to me that I could no longer invariably tell the prostitutes from the non-prostitutes.

Tom Homan means business

The New Neo Posted on by

He does indeed:

What he’s saying there, among other things, is that the policies of “sanctuary cities” will almost inevitably cause more non-violent, low-profile illegal immigrants to be arrested and deported rather than fewer. It’s a reminder to the authorities in those cities that cooperating by allowing ICE to arrest criminal illegal aliens in prisons will be to everyone’s benefit. Will the mayors comply, or not?

Homan doesn’t mince words. He’s no diplomat; that’s for sure. And his plain talk is a reminder of how seldom we hear it these days, and how much the Overton Window has moved in the last decade or two on the subject of illegal aliens, a term I purposely use because it’s the old-fashioned legal phrase. “Undocumented”? He’s not having it. For much of the US, probably the majority of its citizens, his unvarnished speech is a relief. To others, it’s a horror – describing exactly the sort of thing they feared about the possibility of a Trump victory.