(3) Yes, the stabber of several children and adults in Ireland was ineed someone of Algerian ethnicity who came to Ireland twenty years ago, was almost deported initially in 2003, and has been on welfare the entire time. But shhhh! You’re not supposed to say it in Ireland, because people might end up “connecting crime with migration” – even if it’s the truth. Maybe especially if it’s the truth.
(4) Hamas commits a terrorist shooting that kills three at a bus top near Jerusalem. This was during the supposed “pause” in violence between Israel and Hamas. Not only that, but Hamas also fired some rockets into Israel and failed to provide a hostage list for the day as promised. So it’s war on again, according to Israel.
(5) Blinken tried to tell the Israelis that they don’t “have the credit” to continue the war until Hamas is dismantled. Netanyahu replied, “We have sworn, I have sworn, to eliminate Hamas. Nothing will stop us.”
(6) DeSantis and Newsom had a debate. I didn’t watch. Did you?
(7) “Decolonization” studies have taken hold at Georgetown’s influential Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS), with predictable results for foreign policy.
Why then would millions ally themselves with this odious reincarnation of the SS?
Are they ignorant of the history of the Middle East?
Are they arrogant since few challenge their hate and threats?
Are they opportunists who feel mouthing anti-Western shibboleths gains them career traction in leftist-run media, academia and popular culture?
Are they bullies who count on the Western silent majority remaining quiet as they disrupt lives, trash Western tolerant culture and commit violence?
Like Hamas that they support, do they despise Jews? Why else do they express an existential hatred toward Israelis that they never display to any other group?
My answers:
Yes, to all. And as far as history goes, they are especially ignorant of the history of the Middle East, but it doesn’t stop there. They are not merely ignorant of the history; what information they do have is untrue, the gaps having been filled in by Hamas and leftist propaganda, as well as their “progressive” teachers. Many also get their history from Israel-haters at TikTok.
And why limit their ignorance of history to the history of the Middle East? They are ignorant of much of history; probably most of history.
But they are very sure about a few things that they have been taught, often for years and in many ways: that first-world nations such as the US and Israel are exploitative colonializers who deserve anything they get at the hands of the third-world people they’ve wronged. For this purpose, history hardly even matters. It’s a question of haves (Israel) and have-nots (Palestinians). Forget why some countries might be doing better than others – and anyway, meritocracies are bad white-privilege sorts of things that must be eradicated as well.
Once you accept the definitions, the rest follows. Just as black people cannot be guilty of racism because “powerless” people cannot be racists, and just as crimes committed by black people are explained as a reaction to being exploited, Palestinians by definition cannot be guilty. Everything they do is a result of exploitation by others more “privileged.” And even if the privileged end up looking like victims – murdered, raped, tortured – they are not, because they cannot be. They can only be oppressors.
This is the new morality. These things have been taught young people (and even middle-aged people) for years, and then spread around through word of mouth and social media. Thinking otherwise makes one a pariah. If you’re a caring individual, you side with Hamas and “understand the desperation that drove them to it,” as someone I know recently said to me. The extremity of the barbaric violence is a mark of the intensity of their desperation, not the sign of a bankrupt and amoral culture steeped in hatred. And the depth of the young peoples’ understanding of this third-world desperation is the mark of their own virtue.
A personal note: yes, all of this depresses me and is destructive, nonsensical madness.
We already know that one reason for Israel’s intelligence failure on October 7th was its over-reliance on technological intelligence and its abandonment of old-fashioned human intelligence. Another reason was that for at least two years, Hamas successfully pretended to be less interested in terrorism and more interested in economic advancement. This was something the Israelis wished to believe, and Hamas capitalized on it while secretly using intelligence gathered by the Gazan workers to whom Israel gave permits.
According to assessments based on the intelligence gathered prior to October 7 and indications of Hamas exercises near the border, the most severe scenario likely to occur was the infiltration of Hamas operatives for a lone attack on the border – yet this was defined as having a low probability. Military Intelligence estimated that most likely these were routine exercises by the terrorist organization’s military wing, similar to the months preceding the attack.
Security officials privy to the details of the intelligence emphasized that in no way was there mention of a strategic alert for war, a widespread offensive on multiple fronts, or an intention to penetrate multiple settlements simultaneously.
In the weeks following October 7, several reports have attested that senior IDF officials, including those from 8200, ignored warnings from subordinates regarding suspicious activity along the Gaza border.
A report published by Channel 12 last Thursday alleged that soldiers in the unit warned that Hamas was preparing a highly organized and meticulously planned mass invasion of Israel. In response, the soldiers were told that their concerns were a “fantasy.”
A non-commissioned officer in Unit 8200 put together a report from an array of raw intelligence data detailing a scenario that essentially predicted the October 7 invasion, Channel 12 said.
She, together with a junior officer, also pointed to a Hamas drill a month before the Hamas attack, noting that it included preparations for a mass invasion with multiple entry points into Israel.
The two presented their concerns to a senior IDF officer — although not one from 8200 — who dismissed their warnings as “fantasies” and failed to act on the information, Channel 12 said.
Backing up the claims published by Channel 12, Kan added that the non-commissioned officer warned that the Hamas drill included the use of vehicles to carry out the attack and that the terrorists practiced taking over Israeli towns.
The NCO also warned that the assault Hamas was planning was on such a large scale that it could spark an all-out war in the region …
Sounds pretty massive to me, and pretty accurate. But when people have a certain mindset and want to believe something – in this case, that Hamas had softened its hatred of Israel and its desire to obliterate Israel – it’s hard to let in contrary information, especially of such an alarmist nature. This turned out to be a very fatal error.
Multiple reports in recent days reveal that Israel was aware that Hamas had built mock Israeli communities to train for a major assault, even ending one massive drill with the words “We have completed the killing of everyone on the kibbutz,” but intelligence warnings were largely dismissed as “fantasy.”
A BBC investigation published Tuesday found that Hamas had been training for the mission for nearly three years and had published multiple explicit images and videos on social media.
More at the link, but the most telling quote is this, which I think illustrates the mindset of the higher-ups:
“This scenario of the exercise described by the NCO is a complete fantasy. We need to differentiate between what [Hamas] is doing for bravado and show, and what is real,” he wrote.
The woman responded that it was not a fantasy, and that Hamas had the capability:
“They are preparing, with great forces, for a large event. This isn’t just a demonstration of abilities, this is a preparation for the real thing,” she concluded.
If she hadn’t been a woman, would her warning have been taken more seriously? I don’t know, but I think it’s at least a possibility.
I cannot even imagine the anger she – and the others who gave the warnings – must feel today.
NOTE: Here’s an in-depth discussion of the intelligence challenges and failures:
Special Counsel Jack Smith hunted information on X users who liked or retweeted posts published by former President Donald Trump, according to redacted search warrants and other documents released Monday. …
it wasn’t just Trump’s Twitter account that Smith and his cronies were targeting. The special counsel’s warrant also sought data on Twitter users who interacted with the former president’s account. Among the information Smith sought was a list of every user Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” during the aforementioned timeframe. Smith similarly demanded that Twitter, which has since rebranded as X, fork over a list of users who took any of the same actions with Trump’s account.
Smith and his team went even further, seeking to acquire data on Twitter users who engaged with Trump’s tweets in the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. This included “all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by [Trump], as well as all tweets that include the username associated with [Trump’s account] (i.e. ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).”
Out of control. And half the country probably approves.
I won’t attempt to do that. Most readers here probably know quite a bit about the policies he advocated and implemented: detente, Realpolitik, rapprochement with China. He was a titanic figure in the middle part of the 20th Century, and his influence has been enormous. He was also more well-known than most people who have occupied his position, hated by many and admired by some.
Here are some interesting facts I hadn’t known before about Kissinger:
(1) His undergraduate thesis at Harvard was so long – over 400 pages – that it caused the school to set a length limit in the future.
(2) He originally thought very little of Nixon, but later they became quite close.
(3) After the fall of Saigon, he tried to return the Nobel Peace Prize he’d been given.
(4) At the age of 58 he had bypass surgery. And yet he lived to 100. The latter fact probably was related to his parents’ longevity: his mother lived to around 97 and his father to 95.
(5) Many people think Kissinger was the model for Dr. Strangelove, but he was not:
The [Dr. Strangelove] character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (a central figure in Nazi Germany’s rocket development program recruited to the US after the war), and Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb”. It is frequently claimed the character was based on Henry Kissinger, but Kubrick and Sellers denied this; Sellers said: “Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger — that’s a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun.” Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out in his memoirs that at the time of the writing of Dr. Strangelove, he was a little-known academic.
(6) Kissinger seems to have been alert and in possession of his mental faculties to the end. For example:
In response to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and outbreak of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Kissinger said that the goals of Hamas “can only be to mobilize the Arab world against Israel and to get off the track of peaceful negotiations,” and issued a statement denouncing Muslim immigration into Germany in response to celebrations of the attack by some Arabs in Germany. “It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that,” Kissinger declared.
As for my own opinion on Kissinger, I think I take a middle position that pretty much agrees with this:
Ferguson states that accusing Kissinger alone of war crimes “requires a double standard” because “nearly all the secretaries of state … and nearly all the presidents” have taken similar actions. … He made life-and-death decisions that affected millions, entailing many messy moral compromises. Had it not been for the tough decisions Nixon, Ford, and Kissinger made, the United States might not have withstood the damage caused by [Jimmy] Carter’s bouts of moralistic ineptitude; nor would Ronald Reagan have had the luxury of his successfully executed Wilsonianism. Henry Kissinger’s classical realism — as expressed in both his books and his statecraft — is emotionally unsatisfying but analytically timeless.”
The mother of a young football fan who wore a headdress and painted his face red and black to a Kansas City Chiefs game has blasted Deadspin for accusing him of “doubling up” on racism against black and Native communities — noting that her son is himself Native American.
Oopsies!
The accusations against this young fan were already prepostrous, and reminded me ever-so-slightly of the anti-Sandmann brouhaha, in that a boy was accused of supposedly being prejudiced against native Americans, even though he never was. Well, this Chiefs kid has a “get out of jail free” card of the best kind; his grandfather “sits on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California, according to the Post Millennial.”
I guess the child cannot be accused of cultural appropriation.
Phillips, a former New York Daily News reporter, also slammed Holden’s Native American headdress and his “Tomahawk Chop” gesture, claiming the boy “found a way to hate Black people and Native Americans at the same time.”
“It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once,” Phillips wrote in the article, which has since been tagged with a community note on X branding it “purposely deceiving.”
Phillips, who is black, must have thought he had a regular white kid a la Sandmann whom he could demonize. A miscalculation.
Police are treating ‘Irish lives matter’ graffiti which has appeared in west Belfast as a ‘hate incident’
The graffiti appeared after signage saying the community “will no longer accept the re-housing of illegal immigrants” was erected in the Suffolk area on Tuesday.
The West Belfast MLA Gerry Carroll said there was no place for this “racist poison”. While Sinn Féin MP Paul Maskey described it as an “attempt to create fear and intimidate people”.
So it’s racist to be against illegal immigration, and it’s racist to say that the lives of the original inhabitants of a country matter.
Duly noted.
What’s especially interesting is how the police in many Western countries have been totally co-opted by the left. I believe that the police crack down on those on the right because the police are far less afraid of them than they are of the left and especially of activist Muslims. According to my calculations, about 6% to 7% of the current population of Dublin is Muslim, which represents a significant number.
There are a ton of articles about how Biden is trying to kneecap Netanyahu into a ceasefire. This reflects the influence of Obama and the State Department on Biden, as well as the fact that the Democrat left hates Israel and Biden realizes that more robust support of Israel’s desire to obliterate Hamas could cost him in the 2024 election.
How much this will affect Netanyahu’s own resolve really depends on how much leverage the US has on Israel. At this point, I think Israel realizes that trying to placate world opinion is literally impossible for Israel and incompatible with Israel’s continued existence. But the US has been – until Obama, anyway – Israel’s most staunch ally, and Netanyahu probably would like to keep it that way if possible.
Then there’s the matter of armaments from the US to Israel, and especially ammunition. Israel is at least somewhat dependent on that; will Biden threaten to pull the plug? I have no idea, but I do know that Netanyahu keeps saying nothing will deter Israel from the task of eradicating Hamas:
“Over the last few days, I’ve heard a question: When this phase of returning our hostages is exhausted, will Israel return to fighting? My answer is an unequivocal yes,” he added.
Meanwhile, according to that link, Hamas has made an offer Israel has strongly refused: If Israel will stop their campaign for good, all the hostages come home – at least, the living ones. We don’t know how many are alive, because Hamas declared one hostage dead who later emerged alive in an exchange.
And speaking of hostages, remember the youngest hostage, a 10-month-old baby? This is what Hamas is saying now:
The Israel Defense Forces is investigating claims that three members of the Bibas family in Gaza, including 10-month-old Kfir, died in Hamas captivity, the military said on Wednesday. …
Without presenting evidence, the Al-Qassam Brigades attributed their deaths to “a previous Israeli shelling on the Gaza Strip.”
It goes without saying that Hamas will attribute every hostage death to Israeli airstrikes. No doubt the entire left will believe that, as they believe everything those stalwart truthtellers of Hamas say.
I don’t know whether this article is true, but I certainly hope so:
Senior officials eliminated, scarce resources, and IDF dominance in Gaza war have harmed Hamas’s morale. In a symbolic move: IDF installs mezuzahs in temporarily seized Gaza houses. …
Field officers report that after the IDF successfully targeted Hamas brigade, battalion, and company commanders, the terrorist group’s armed wing struggled to execute attacks against Israeli forces infiltrating terrorist strongholds. The IDF’s control in northern Gaza and Gaza City, with established defensive fortifications, outposts, and supply sites, aims to hinder rocket refueling and road construction in Palestinian territory.
The temporary halt in the Israeli campaign helps Hamas regroup, but there may be a limit to how much regrouping it can do, depending on personnel.
Whether or not you think the hostage deals are a good thing for Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas, I don’t think anyone here doesn’t take joy in the family reunions and in particular the release of the children. I’ve watched many YouTube videos and read many articles and find the stories highly moving.
Of course, Hamas would like people to think the hostages they forced to wave goodbye to their captors for the cameras were well-treated, but of course they were not. They were only well-treated in that they are still alive, and were kept that way because they were worth a lot to Hamas. Three terrorists for every hostage; not a bad deal for Hamas, and more to come.
I was especially struck with 13- and 16-year-old siblings Noam and Alma Or. The left holding hands, and they were held hostage together; a photo of them holding hands can be found here, although copying it is blocked. It’s pretty clear to me that whatever their relationship might have been before they were kidnapped, their bond is now extraordinarily deep and strong.
They will need that bond, because on their return there were no parents to greet them. Their mother was murdered and their father is assumed to have been kidnapped, and the children were unaware of those things while in captivity. It’s just as well they didn’t know till now; they had enough to contend with: being in a “safe” room when their house was set on fire, jumping out the window, being found by terrorists and taken to Gaza, being imprisoned – just the two of them, plus a woman unnamed by the press but who helped mother them and has now been left as a hostage. They will need every ounce of strength they can muster, and every relative who is still alive to comfort them. But the hostages may find it hard – for a time, anyway – to relate to anyone who has not shared their experience. That’s why siblings are so very important.
I wonder whether psychologists have any plans to get some of the child hostages together in groups to talk to each other, even if they have never met before. It might be a good idea. But whatever happens, recovering from trauma can take a long time. These children have multiple traumas, and they are just finding out some of it after being returned home (“home” being Israel; for most of them, their original homes are no more).
The other day I mocked the Irish prime minister for his statement about a hostage child having been “lost” and now “found.” I wrote: “‘Lost’ – like Hansel and Gretel, lost in the forest and captured by the Witch who wants to eat them?” But having seen the photo of the siblings Noam and Alma Or holding hands, I thought of Hansel and Gretel again, only this time in a non-mocking way.
I’ve written previously about Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel which differs slightly from the original fairy tale and which Humperdinck wrote with his sister, who composed the libretto. It’s considered a fairly light work, very suitable for children. But I have always found much of it deeply, deeply moving. Among other things, it shows the change in the relationship of siblings – an older boy and younger girl – over time, moving from light-hearted bickering, teasing, and high spirits; to confusion and attempts to compfort (lost in the forest); to teamwork under pressure in defeating an evil force who holds them prisoner and who would dearly love to kill and eat them. I think you can see the connection to the hostage story.
I love the opera, but the most relevant part here is the ending. Hansel and Gretel – played always by two women – find other children who have been put under a spell by the same witch that Hansel and Gretel have just vanquished by pushing her into her own oven, they same oven in which she was planning to cook Hansel and then Gretel. These other children had been turned into gingerbread cookies and now they are being transformed back into children, but their eyes are still closed at first (reminding me of the fact that some of the Hamas hostages had been kept in the dark and had to be re-accustomed to the light). After the gingerbread children are transformed back into themselves, Hansel and Gretel’s parents appear. The parents have been searching for them all this time, and the family is happily united again. Would that were true of all the children held hostage by Hamas, but many will not see that particular reunion in this lifetime.
Here’s a version of the finale that I’ve just described, with English subtitles. Note the religious aspects. (This is not a great version, but the voices are nice and it has the requisite translation):
