The Russian dancer Yuri Soloviev had an extraordinary quality of ballon, the ability to jump and hover in the air. This clip is probably from the 1960s:
Voting for Speaker
Jordan has failed to get a majority in the first round of voting, although he reached 200. He needs 217.
I assume there’s a lot negotiating going on.
McCarthy was elected after 15 rounds of voting. I really really really hope this deal is closed much sooner than that. A lot of the holdouts seem to be posturing: six voted for McCarthy, a few others for Scalise, and one for Lee Zeldin. None of those three people are even running.
Israel’s policy of prisoners for hostages
One of Israel’s great strengths is how much it values human life. But it leads to one of its great weaknesses, at least in the tactical sense: hostage/prisoner exchanges. It’s not the only method Israel has used to bring hostages home, but it’s a major one:
In the past, Israel’s response to Hamas hostage-taking incidents has included negotiations, military operations, blockades, targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders and militants, and even larger-scale military campaigns, depending on the specific circumstances and severity of the situation. Negotiations have been used to secure the release of hostages, often involving prisoner exchanges, while military operations have been employed for rescue missions, sometimes resulting in casualties. The most notable case was of Gilad Shalit in 2011, who was released in exchange for over 1000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
The Shalit exchange is not the only one involving lopsided numbers, but it’s probably the most well known. In addition, some of the Palestinians released in that exchange are known to have killed more Israelis in subsequent attacks; that link mentioned six Israelis killed, and it was written in 2015, only four years after the exchange. No doubt there have been many more victims since then at the hands of the released terrorists, probably including victims of the October 7 attack.
Previous Israeli hostage situations have involved small numbers of Israelis. The present one is different; it features at least 200 hostages, according to current report. One of the hostages has been made the subject of a video in which a 21-year-old Israeli/French citizen says all is well, and that her injured arm has been medically treated but that she wants to go home:
The mother of Mia Schem, a 21-year-old French-Israeli woman being held by Hamas, appealed for her release on Tuesday, calling her detention and that of an estimated 200 hostages “a crime against humanity”.
Keren Schem told journalists in Jerusalem: “I didn’t know if she’s dead or alive until yesterday. All I knew is that she might be kidnapped. I’m begging the world to bring my baby back home. She only went to a party, to a festival party to have some fun. Now she’s in Gaza.”
Hamas had released a video of Schem, who wastaken hostage during the devastating attack on Israel. In the footage, Schem, whose injured arm is shown being treated by an unidentified medical worker, asks to be returned to her family as quickly as possible.
On Tuesday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, described the video as “an odious act”. The Elysée said Macron, who is on an official visit to Albania, demanded her unconditional release.
“It is an ignominy to take innocent people hostage and put them on show in this odious way,” the presidential palace quoted Macron as saying.
He can “demand” all he wants, but she and the others are valuable commodities to the Gazan terrorists (as well as victims who make them feel powerful):
A top Hamas leader said on Monday the group “has what it needs” to free all Palestinians in Israel’s jails, indicating the militant group may try to use the Israelis it kidnapped as bargaining chips to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Soon after Hamas official Khaled Meshaal made the remarks on the captives, who include Israelis and non-Israelis kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, the group’s armed wing separately said the non-Israelis were “guests” who would be released “when circumstances allow”.
Schem is a sort of twofer, as are quite a few of the hostages: both an Israeli and a foreign national. She is being trotted out as a showpiece to demonstrate the great magnanimity and humanity of her captors. And probably some morally compromised people will buy it.
The larger message is that one of the main goals of Hamas in its October 7 action was not only to kill and torture, but to gain the release of the six thousand terrorists Israel has struggled so long to track down, try, and hold in its prisons. I have no idea what the Israelis will do, but what they have done in the past has – very unfortunately – encouraged the taking of more hostages.
The Hamas terrorist attack and gun control
Whenever there’s a mass shooting in the US, the gun control advocates spring into action and ask for more and stricter gun control. It’s never been clear to me why anyone would buy their arguments, because murderous psychopaths rarely – almost certainly never – are deterred by such laws. It seems to me that strict gun control creates target opportunities for murderous psychopaths. It’s very hard to escape that logic, although people continue to try.
So I will take a moment to point out the obvious, which is that Israel’s strict gun control laws did nothing to deter the murderous psychopaths who came into Israel from Gaza bent on killing, raping, mutilating, torturing, and kidnapping Israeli civilians and anyone else who happened to be in their path. Those Israelis who had access to firearms were more likely to repel the killers, and in the wake of the attack the government has relaxed its laws and allowed more of its citizens access to self-defense.
There’s a lesson there. I wonder if any strict gun control advocates in this country are noticing it.
Open thread 10/17/23
Perhaps my favorite pieces of music of all time – certainly of piano music:
Middle Eastern Studies
I am calling for a complete and total shutdown of all Middle East studies departments in American universities until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
— Steven F. Hayward (@stevenfhayward) October 16, 2023
Actually, we know what’s going on. Since the early 90s at least, the field has been captured by pro-Arab pro-Palestinian thinking and propaganda. It’s deeply embedded now and has been for a long time, producing generations of “scholars” with the same point of view, and students as well.
I believe this was jump-started by the highly influential Edward Said, about whom I plan to write quite a bit in a future post or posts. I first learned about him around the time I started blogging, which was almost twenty years ago, but although I’ve mentioned him before I don’t think I’ve ever written anything in-depth.
Roundup
(1) Jim Jordan has made progress in his quest to secure the speakership, but it seems he’s still got a way to go. I hope he makes it soon.
(2) The Hamas terrorists wore bodycams on October 7th. They are proud of snuff films and have been for quite some time. I wonder if some of them watch the sort of violent porn that’s taken over online these days.
(3) Trump gag order is issued by the judge in the Jack Smith Trump trial. Of course. But all of this is not election interference – oh no, surely not.
(4) The UN says that Hamas stole from it:
The United Nation organization that works with Palestinian refugees and their descendants said Sunday that Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip had apparently stolen fuel and medical supplies meant for refugees from its premises in Gaza City, during the fighting triggered by the terror group’s deadly shock attack on Israel.
And then they deleted the message, and were met with this comment from the Israeli Foreign Ministry:
The Foreign Ministry mocked UNRWA for deleting the posts.
“Did Hamas also break into your Twitter account? Or are you just scared of disappointing your terrorist friends?” the ministry wrote on an X account it manages, known simply as “Israel.”
In one of the many bleak ironies of the Middle East, the UN is one of the terrorists’ chief enablers. Probably second only to Iran.
(5) This is a big topic, and I may return to it another time – but we’ve been hearing a great deal about “proportionality,” which is the idea that somehow Israel shouldn’t hurt the Palestinians too much. But what does the word really mean and what does the law of war say about Israel’s response, as opposed to how the press tries to tell it? You can learn the answer here as well as here:
(6) DeSantis expedites bringing Floridians back from Israel, and takes a very firm stand against receiving a single Palestinian refugee in this country.
Beware of overdiagnosis of Munchausen by Proxy
Lehigh County, Pa., is on fire right now with the outrage of at least 70 families who are on a mission to have Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, a “child abuse pediatrician,” fired from Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) and hopefully brought up on criminal charges. The families allege that Dr. Jenssen diagnosed all of them with the controversial “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” and accused them of child abuse when they brought their children into LVHN for various reasons.
This doesn’t surprise me, because I dealt with a similar case long ago. It was a single case, not a group, but I felt a parent with a sick child had been falsely accused. Fortunately, a medical diagnosis was finally made. But it was touch and go for a while.
I do think that Munchausen’s by Proxy exists, but it is very rare. If any doctor is seeing 70 such cases (or even as many as five), it should be a red flag – on the doctor.
On the alliance between the Left and the jihadi terrorists
The virulent anti-Israel protests across America and Europe throw a glaring light on the bizarre alliance between left-wing activists and militant Muslims. That odd combination has been the bedrock of political activism at universities and in the streets for years. It began in universities, where it now dominates political discourse, threatens Jewish students, and intimidates anyone brave enough to voice their dissent. We can now see how it has spread far beyond the campus.
What makes the alliance so strange are the deep-seated differences between leftists and Muslim fundamentalists over core beliefs.
Lipson goes on to list many differences, such as – just to take one example – their attitudes towards homosexuality. Then he explains:
They deal with differences very simply: They never mention them when they act jointly, primarily against Israel and its supporters across the world. They have joined together to form a more powerful coalition against shared enemies. They would destroy that partnership by raising issues where they differ.
Far better to focus on their agreement, which goes beyond hating Israel to claim Western capitalism has oppressed, degraded, and ruined the world. Since the U.S. is now the world’s greatest power, it is tagged as the main source of that malignancy, at home and abroad. As they see it, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America are poor because they have been oppressed by capitalist nations and their corporations. …
Both groups are fundamentally opposed to the forbearance of individual differences, including very different views and goals, that are essential to Western constitutional democracies.
I don’t disagree, but my emphasis would be quite different. I would say their most fundamental similarity is the principle that Humpty Dumpty espoused: ““The question is who is to be master – that’s all.” Both philosophies share the desire to control human thought, minds, and activities, and the more total the control the better. If it must be done through cruelty and force, so be it. They merely differ on what they want to control and how they want people to think. And ultimately they lock horns.
It’s an old old old story. Anyone who studies history should remember Iran in 1979, when the Left and the Ayatollahs joined forces to overthrow the hated Shah, who turned out to have been a much better ruler than either of them. Their alliance was one of the things that puzzled me deeply at the time, but later I felt I understood. The Left thought it was using the religious fundamentalists as a means to an end, and the end was that they would be master. But Ayatollah Khomeini knew he would get the last laugh and had no hesitation to murder them – or anyone else – if need be. His ascension to power in Iran was almost immediately followed by a bloodbath.
It’s still the same old story, on a larger world stage. The Left in the West doesn’t seem to understand the nature of what it’s up against. Recent horrific events in Israel have acted to peel away a few people on the Left who seem both outraged and surprised at their fellow leftists who continue to support Hamas and the Palestinians. They should not have been surprised.
Open thread 10/16/23
She gives a lesson in holding a note:
Loverly Audrey Hepburn
For a change of pace, here’s Audrey Hepburn singing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “Show Me” for the My Fair Lady film. I understand why she was dubbed instead; there’s a lot of strain in her voice. But I like her version of “Loverly” anyway, because it fits and is of a whole. Her version of “Show Me” is less successful. Then again, why not use Julie Andrews, who could do it all? Hepburn herself is loverly, though. And so is that costume for “Show Me”:
The dubbed movie version of “Loverly” is here. No question that Marni Nixon and the technicians did a good job, but it’s somewhat in the Uncanny Valley for me:
I saw the stage original in 1956 with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews on Broadway when I was a small child. I remember it and I loved it.
The civilians: if Gaza is an “open-air prison” …
… (a popular descriptive phrase on the left, uttered without any indication of what it might mean or why Gazans might be blocked by other Muslim countries such as Egypt), Hamas members are presently the wardens and guards. And Egypt has a role there, too, in keeping its own borders closed.
Since Friday the [Israeli] army has been urging Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate, indicating it is planning to significantly intensify operations there. On Saturday it said Hamas was actively preventing travel south with roadblocks on major roads. …
Al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Authority’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said the Palestinian leadership “rejects by all means the Israeli attempts to displace the citizens of Gaza Strip, considers this a war crime added to the series of Israeli war crimes and calls on the international community to intervene to stop this genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.” …
“If you care about yourself and your loved ones, go south as instructed,” the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Rest assured that Hamas leaders have taken care of themselves and are taking cover from strikes in the region,” he added.
In response to the IDF’s call for civilians to move south, Hamas told residents to stay in their homes: “Do not follow the propaganda evacuation instructions.” The terror group is known to try and force residents to ignore such notices given by the military.
Hamas would like to maximize the Palestinian civilian casualties, and they are hoping that “the international community” will put the brakes on Israel in some magical manner. It’s happened before that Israel has backed off because of pleas from that community and/or pressure from the US. It may happen again, but that’s not what I predict will occur. Israel is fighting for its life, and the opinion of diplomats is not going to stop it from doing what it feels it needs to do. The Israelis themselves don’t want to kill civilians – I think they’ve made that clear for many decades, if people have eyes to see it. But they will not desist from a much more large-scale attack this time.
I think this is what Hamas wanted, thinking that Israeli retaliation and dead Palestinian children to show the press and the UN would be good for propaganda. It always has been that way in the past. I believe Hamas also thought their own terrorist brutality against Israelis would inspire and rally other Arab states and many Arab immigrants in Western countries, and it has. But I don’t think anyone except perhaps Hezbollah is eager to jump into the fray right now with boots on the ground. I could be wrong about this, but I don’t even think the diplomat crowd and their calls for “proportionate response” will matter this time, and even their voices sound somehwat more hollow than usual to me. And I think all of this is somewhat of a surprise to both Hamas and Iran.
In summary, please ponder this:
[Gaza’s] Al-Shifa Hospital is receiving hundreds of wounded every hour and had used up 95% of its medical supplies, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. Water is scarce and the fuel powering its generators is dwindling.
“The situation inside the hospital is miserable in every sense of the word,” he said. “The operating rooms don’t stop.”
Selmia estimated that 40,000 displaced civilians were sitting under the trees in the empty grounds surrounding the hospital, as well as inside the building’s lobby and corridors, hoping they would be protected there from the fighting.
The hospital is widely reported to be sitting atop a major Hamas headquarters, with the terror group using the facility as a shield.