Israeli drones kill a group of Hamas leaders

The New Neo Posted on by

The report:

Deputy Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri was killed on Tuesday night in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, a stronghold of the allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, signalling the conflict between Hamas and Israel could be expanding to engulf more of the region.

In response to questions from Reuters, the Israeli military said it does not respond to reports in the foreign media.

Lebanon’s national news agency said the drone struck a Hamas office. Two security sources said the strike had targeted a meeting between Hamas officials and Lebanon’s Sunni Islamist Jama’a Islamiya faction and left a total of four Palestinians and three Lebanese dead.

The strike marks the first targeted assassination of a Hamas official outside Palestinian Territories since the Palestinian group’s deadly assault on Israeli territory on Oct. 7. …

Hamas confirmed Arouri’s killing and said Qassam Brigade officials Samir Findi Abu Amer and Azzam Al-Aqraa Abu Ammar were also killed. …

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday said Arouri’s killing is “terrorist act,” a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and an expansion of Israel’s hostility against Palestinians.

Those killed were military leaders of the Gazan government, which on October 7 had perpetrated a vicious and widespread attack on Israel with no provocation. Israel has declared war in response. So this is neither a war crime nor a terrorist act, although the Hamas-lovers will believe it is.

And then there’s this:

Iran said the killing would further galvanize the fight against Israel, while Yemen’s Houthi movement expressed condolences.

In Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, hundreds took to the streets to urge retaliation, shouting “Revenge, revenge, Qassam.”

Like before they were restrained, and now they’re going to step it up? Of course, Hezbollah could step it up and/or Iran could step it up, but whether they do that and when they do that and how they do that will not be determined by Arouri’s death but by tactical and strategic considerations. Those parties on the Arab and Iranian side are committed to Israel’s destruction.

The Israeli press is somewhat more forthcoming about Arouri’s stature in the terrorist hierarchy [emphasis mine]:

Based in Lebanon, Arouri, 57, was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, deputy head of the terror group’s political bureau and considered the de facto leader of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank, though he has long resided elsewhere. He was regarded as the most notorious Hamas figure in orchestrating West Bank terrorism against Israel. …

Israeli intelligence officials believe that among numerous other attacks, Arouri helped plan the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens — Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel.

He served several terms in Israeli jails, and was released in March 2010 as part of efforts to reach a larger prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit, an IDF corporal kidnapped by Hamas in 2006. Arouri went on to be involved in sewing up the deal that provided for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in return for the freeing of Shalit in 2011.

That history of having been in Israeli prisons and released for Shalit was the case for so many of the masterminds of the October 7 attack. It was an incredibly costly trade which again points out how dangerous it is to trade terrorist prisoners for hostages. Of course, that already has been done recently in exchange for some of the October 7 hostages, but at least the prisoners exchanged in that deal were lower-level terrorists than those released in 2010 and 2011.

There had been a five million dollar bounty on Arouri’s head, but Israel didn’t get him till now. I’m curious what led them to him at this point, although I’m pretty sure I’ll never know. Are there more moles now? Have Israeli intelligence tools improved? Did someone in another Arab country that’s very threatened by Hamas’ behavior spill the beans on Arouri?

There’s a chemo shortage

The New Neo Posted on by

This is disturbing – a shortage of chemo drugs, as well as other generic medications. The reason seems at first to be one of those “unintended consequences” things:

In interviews, more than a dozen current and former executives affiliated with the generic drug industry described many risks that discourage a company from increasing production that might ease the shortages.

They said prices were pushed so low that making lifesaving medicines could result in bankruptcy. It’s a system in which more than 200 generic drugmakers compete, at times fiercely, for contracts with three middleman companies that guard the door to a vast number of customers.

In some cases, generic drugmakers offer rock-bottom prices to edge out rivals for coveted deals. In other instances, the intermediaries — called group-purchasing organizations — demand lower prices days after signing a contract with a drugmaker.

The downward pressure on prices — no doubt often a boon to the pocketbooks of patients and taxpayers — is intense. The group purchasers compete against one another to offer hospitals the lowest-priced products, which intermediary companies say also benefits consumers. They earn fees from drugmakers based on the amount of medications the hospitals buy.

“The business model is broken,” said George Zorich, a pharmacist and retired generic drug industry executive. “It’s great for G.P.O.s. Not great for drug manufacturers, not great for patients in some cases.”

But then we have the following, which seems to be something else entirely:

Prices fell in recent years for two of the three drugs that Ms. Scanlan was initially offered to treat her cancer. During those years, Intas Pharmaceuticals, a generics giant in India, steadily gained market share as other companies left, according to data from the U.S. Pharmacopeia, a nonprofit that tracks drug shortages.

But the company had to halt U.S. production to deal with quality issues that the F.D.A. cited after a surprise inspection of one of its sprawling plants in India. Inspectors had discovered quality-control staff workers shredding and throwing acid on key records. The manufacturing shutdown set off a supply shock in February that would be felt nationwide.

Outsourcing production to places such as India is another way to save money, but it’s at the risk of quality control, as well as dependence on other countries. We learned a lot about that during the COVID years as well.

[NOTE: The article – from The NY Times – is sprawling and rather poorly written. But it does seem to be describing a troubling situation, although the causes seem to be multiple and somewhat murky.]

Anti-Semitism is just a symptom of a much greater and more pervasive rot

The New Neo Posted on by

And of course it’s not just Harvard. Would that it were. But the problem is pervasive in academia and beyond.

This Legal Insurrection piece spotlights an excellent editorial by Rabbi David Wolpe in the Harvard Crimson. Wolpe, who is a visiting scholar in the Divinity School, had been on a Harvard anti-Semitism committee but resigned in December.

Here’s his Crimson article, which I especially recommend because it points out some things about anti-Semitism that I think are important to understand. I’ve made similar points here, but he expresses the ideas succinctly:

In the calculus of an antisemite, Jews are both subhuman and superhuman – vermin who control the world. Common antisemitic rhetoric places Jews at the center of conspiracies, secretly controlling anything and everything: America, the banks, the Middle East, a vast colonialist enterprise, immigration, the Federal Reserve, NATO, and even Taylor Swift’s concert tour schedule.

People hate Jews because they are communists, capitalists, foreigners, residents, immigrants, elitists, have strange ways, are unassimilated, too assimilated, bankroll the left (like George Soros) or bankroll the right (like Sheldon Adelson). People hate Jews because they are weak and stateless, or because they are Zionists and defend Israel.

That’s the thing about anti-Semitism: it’s protean and flexible, a versatile shape-shifter. That’s why there’s anti-Semitism of the right and of the left (and probably of the middle, too), although they emphasize different things. The ultimate question of “why?” has several answers (which I may take up in another post sometime), but I don’t think any of them are completely satisfactory although they all depend on the concept of hating the other and making it a repository for all the frustration of one’s own life or culture or country, or the demon blocking future aspirations (religious or otherwise). For example, there was Germany’s failure in WWI as well as its subsequent inflation, and the current abysmal state of much of the Arab world plus its religious fanaticism.

Wolpe goes on to discuss the anti-Semitism of Western academia, rooted in the post-modern Leftist view of the world:

One ideology common at Harvard is the colonialist settler ideology. Colonialists are people who come from one place, take a land, and now have two.

But, Jews are far from being colonialists. Jews come from Israel. In this ideology, the colonialists are almost always white, but the Jews in Israel are quite diverse. Colonialists do not share the land, but Israel gave the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt and has made many separate offers to share their land with Palestinians — which the Palestinians rejected. Further, Jews were kicked out of Israel by one colonial power — Rome — and returned by overthrowing the rule of another — Britain.

Much of Harvard is captured by an ideology that centers oppression, but dividing all of the world into oppressor and oppressed is dangerous. Once you divide humanity by race or creed or nation into two camps — the good and the evil — you have adopted the mentality of the despot. This is bad for society, as well as for Jews.

Indeed, as we’ve often said here.

Wolpe tackles the question of the underlying “why” of anti-Semitism:

Why all this hatred against one small people? We remained different, distinct. We would not become Christian or Muslim. We were outsiders, others, champions of diversity.

Moreover, Jewish culture — portable, book-focused, and one that venerates scholarship and learning — primes us for economies where information and mental agility lead to success. When you don’t like someone, seeing them succeed magnifies the antipathy.

Finally, Jews introduced the idea of ethical monotheism — the moral demands that one God makes on human beings — to the western tradition. As Jewish essayist Maurice Samuel said, “no one likes an alarm clock”; Jews represent conscience and conscience is a disruptive and painful partner in our lives.

Wolpe doesn’t offer a roadmap for changing this situation, and I can hardly fault him. Both post-modern anti-colonial theory and anti-Semitism are deeply entrenched at Harvard and elsewhere, and are particularly influential in young adults who have been macerated in these poisonous ideologies for much of their schooling and certainly their college years. The universities are loaded with tenured professors who are dedicated to this indoctrination of our youth, as well as administrators with the same beliefs. The overhaul needed is immense, and the voting public has already been tainted by these philosophies.

Colleges and universities therefore have no will to change this. The push has to come from outside: state legislatures (although that will only happen in red states), Congress if and only if Republicans take over with a fairly large margin rather than a small one, individual donors ending gifts, parents sending their children to schools that don’t teach this sort of thing, and the like. It’s certainly not just about anti-Semitism, although that’s an important factor. It’s about the future of Western civilization and the world.

I’ll close with this, which has appeared on this blog before:

Claudine Gay resigns the Harvard presidency

The New Neo Posted on by

I assume she’ll now achieve a sort of martyr status on the left: the racist right plus the Jews drove her out, or something like that.

At any rate, Gay has resigned. I believe it was more the plagiarism evidence than her Congressional testimony that caused her to finally quit, plus the defection of some donors. Perhaps no one of the three elements alone would have done it, but the combination was just too much, and even Jew-haters might be upset by the plagiarism and the loss of money (despite Harvard’s humongous endowment).

More:

Harvard President Claudine Gay will resign Tuesday afternoon, bringing an end to the shortest presidency in the University’s history, according to a person with knowledge of the decision.

University Provost Alan M. Garber ’76 will serve as Harvard’s interim president during a search for Gay’s permanent successor, the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — announced in an email on Tuesday.

If it hadn’t been for Elise Stefanik’s questions of the three university presidents, none of this would have happened. The plagiarism accusations probably wouldn’t have otherwise gotten much traction but for the sound bites of the testimony. Now the only president still in place of the three testifiers is MIT head Sally Kornbluth.

ADDENDUM: Gay cries “racism.”

I have little doubt that Gay received messages that were racist. But that wasn’t what motivated the vast vast majority of her opponents. She doesn’t address the actual issues – her championship of DEI, her testimony in Congress, and her plagiarism – except to write this:

Amidst all of this, it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.

It is distressing to have doubt cast on your commitment to scholarly rigor? How about the manifold objective evidence for your lack of commitment and rigor? How about your actual testimony to Congress? Why is your distress more important than answering the charges?

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) There’s been large earthquake in Japan, and a tsunami warning. It’s hard to get a sense of whether there’s much loss of life, but it doesn’t seem as though there is. Plenty of property damage, though.

(2) Let’s hear it for the fight against DEI:

… 2023 saw more than a dozen states start to take action against the DEI hydra, with six achieving concrete steps that other states should follow. …

There is a limit to what states can accomplish. Democratic governors and legislators will not manage what is possible in states fully controlled by Republicans, such as Florida and Texas.

But as private companies also turn away from DEI bureaucracies, there is clear bipartisan momentum toward a solid response to DEI excesses. Ending mandated diversity statements for higher education hires is an easy first step all states should take.

Dan Crenshaw has proposed a bill to cut federal funding of schools with mandatory DEI statements.

(3) The Israeli High Court has done the following:

In a monumental, highly controversial decision, the High Court of Justice strikes down legislation passed earlier this year that curtailed judicial oversight of the government, annulling for the first time in Israel’s history an element of one of its quasi-constitutional Basic Laws.

The court split almost down the middle over the highly contentious legislation, which eliminated judicial use of the “reasonableness” standard — the only significant law from the government’s judicial overhaul agenda to have been passed so far. Eight justices vote in favor of striking down the law, while seven vote to uphold it.

The ruling establishes in legal precedent the High Court’s contention that it has, in limited circumstances, the right to annul Basic Laws, despite these being the basis of authority for all state institutions, including the court.

It’s a mistake to think of the Israeli High Court as the equivalent of our Supreme Court. The Israeli Court is far more powerful; I’ve written about the Israeli situation in this post and I strongly suggest you read it. The summary version is that the Israeli court is an unelected self-perpetuating body that appoints most of the new justices itself, and the “reasonableness” standard allows the court enormous powers unchecked by other branches of government.

(4) Can ayone explain this? I certainly can’t:

… [Trump] came out in support of building the FBI a “new and spectacular” building. He also said that the bureau should not be decentralized but should be given an increased role in Washington, D.C.

(5) Here are the predictions of Legal Insurrection’s authors for the year 2024. I’m in there too, although this past year I’ve been less active at the site due to extreme busyness.

First day of the year musings

The New Neo Posted on by

January first always feels like a clean slate day. And yet it’s really just a continuum.

But that “clean slate” feeling is why people make resolutions. I don’t make formal ones anymore – I know better. But I’m always resolving to improve, especially on two dimensions of my life: make more of a dent in my nightowl proclivities, and figure out a way to lose ten pounds. Whenever I mention that last bit on this blog, I get a ton of suggestions involving low-carb and/or Taubes and/or keto and/or intermittent fasting. I’ll say right here and now – once again – that I’m very happy those eating programs worked for you, but they don’t work for me for various reasons too tedious to go into here for the umpteenth time.

Do I sound grumpy? Well, maybe I am. I find I’ve been more short-tempered than usual this past year. The bad news of the world grates on me and of course Gerard’s death, which occurred close to a year ago now. I’ve taken time off since Thanksgiving from working on his book, and now I’m taking the task up again. I predict – loosely – that I’ll get it out about two months from now. For various reasons, the process has been far more complicated than I imagined.

I’m grateful for the friends and family I still have, especially my precious – although far away – grandchildren. And of course for all of you, my readers.

Auld Lang Syne

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of an older post.]

The lyrics were written in Scots dialect by the poet Robert Burns in 1788. That’s a lot of auld lang syne ago.

But the song—set to a traditional folk tune—has endured, particularly at New Year’s to be sung right after midnight. Nostalgia is a common theme at the turn of the year.

What I hadn’t known till I read that Wiki entry is that the song has spread all over the world, either in translation or just the tune:

“Auld Lang Syne” has been translated into many languages, and the song is widely sung all over the world. The song’s pentatonic scale matches scales used in Korea, Japan, India, China and other East Asian countries, which has facilitated its “nationalisation” in the East…

—In West Bengal and Bangladesh, the melody was the direct inspiration for the popular Bengali folk song[23][24] “Purano shei diner kotha” (“Memories of the Good Old Days”), composed by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and forms one of the more recognisable tunes in Rabindra Sangeet (“Rabindra’s Songs”), a body of work of 2,230 songs and lyrical poems that form the backbone of Bengali music.

—In Denmark, the song was translated in 1927 by the famous Danish poet Jeppe Aakjær. Much like Robert Burns’ use of dialect, Aakjær translated the song into Sallingbomål, a form of the Jutlandic dialect often hard for other Danes to understand…

—In Thailand, the song “Samakkhi Chumnum” (“Together in Unity”), which is set to the familiar melody, is sung after sporting fixtures, and at the end of Boy Scout jamborees, as well as for the New Year. The Thai lyrics are about the King and national unity, and many Thais are not aware of the song’s “Western” origin…

Auld Lang Syne has been used in other works such as movies and poems. My favorite reference is in a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, one you may have encountered in poetry anthologies, “Mr. Flood’s Party.” It’s a poem about time and age and isolation. Old Eben Flood climbs a hill and drinks from a jug, talking to himself—that’s the gist of the poem. But of course it’s much more than that.

Here’s the reference (the last 3 stanzas of the poem). It begins with Flood talking to himself as though conversing with an old friend:

…“Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!”
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
“Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

“Only a very little, Mr. Flood—
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.”
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang—

“For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below—
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

Don’t mean to be gloomy, although the poem is. Here’s to a better 2024 for all of us, and for the whole world!

What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

The New Neo Posted on by

And me? Glad you asked.

Nada, zip, zilch.

Oh, I might visit a nearby friend for a short while and have a sip of champagne, a tiny toast to the end of 2023, a year I’m pretty sure most people are not going to look back on with inordinate fondness. And I’ll toast with a fervent hope that 2024 will be a lot, lot better.

Staying up till midnight is no problem for me, since I’m a night owl and always have been. Actually, even when young, I had somewhat of an aversion to New Year’s Eve. To the idea of a night when you were supposed to have fun or else. A reminder of the speedy passage of time. With alcohol drinking. And the obligatory midnight kiss, which wasn’t a fun moment if you didn’t like your date.

Once or twice I went to Times Square to see the ball go down in person and not just on TV. Curiously, those were some of my better New Year’s Eves. Maybe it was the people I was with those nights. We ate at Tad’s Steaks, just for laughs, but Tad’s wasn’t bad at all.

And four years ago the very last Tad’s in New York City closed down. I had no idea any of them had lasted that long.

So let’s drink to Tad’s:

The cafeteria-style chophouse is known for hawking inexpensive meat-and-potato dinners on red trays — meals that cost little more than $1 each when the first one opened in 1957. A steak lunch today can be had for as little as $9.

At its height, Tad’s had eight New York locations out of 28 nationwide. But come Jan. 5, 2020, the red neon sign in the window advertising “broiled” steaks at 761 Seventh Ave. will go dark — as will the vast grill that played host to smoky “steak shows,” where dozens of cuts could be grilled at once during the thick of lunch hour.

Happy New Year, everyone! I’m very grateful for all of you. Here’s to a wonderful 2024, full of love, joy, and good health!

[NOTE: Some of this appeared in a previous post.]

Fouettes and The Nutcracker

The New Neo Posted on by

For me, it was easy to see what was unusual about this dancer’s fouettes – because of my long ballet background which includes some teaching. The narrator explains somewhat, but I’ll add that holding the arms above the head increases the difficulty immensely because it creates drag, and the style of fouette with the whipping leg to the side when the supporting leg is in plie is more difficult because you don’t get as much oomph from the whip. I was initially taught fouettes that way, but later on was relieved to learn the other type, which is easier.

Fouettes are far from easy, though, especially on pointe. I could do them in soft shoes but was very bad at doing them on pointe:

Last night I went to the Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker, something I hadn’t done in ages and ages and ages. The Boston Opera House is as lovely and opulent as ever. This is a photo I took of the main lobby, designed in the days when the arts were elegant. The colors were actually much more intense, but the sparkly chandeliers washed them out somewhat in the photo:

The rest of the building is just as beautiful, although I didn’t take photos. The production was – well, let’s just say I thought that the dancing was of the modern mechanical variety for the most part, technically proficient but no more – except for the guy who played Drosselmeyer, who had a magnetic and riveting presence and paid attention to the details of every single gesture.

Ah, but the costumes and scenery – gorgeous! Again, no photos, but I’ll mention three things. The first is the design of the lovely Waltz of the Flowers costumes. The second is that the snow scene was practically a blizzard, very impressive and effective and the audience was enthralled. The third is that in the Kingdom of Sweets scene (Act II), I suddenly realized after about twenty minutes that the set designer had done something exceptionally clever – he had made the proscenium stage ballroom in which the dancing takes place an extension of the room in which the actual audience was sitting, with similar pillars decorated with gold, matching chandeliers, and murals in the same style. Bravo!

And Tchaikovsky’s music is always a treat.

The audience loved the whole thing, but they especially loved the fouettes. To me, fouettes are some of the least interesting steps in dance, although I understand how much strength and balance it takes to do them well.

And fortunately I’ve managed to find a video of the Boston Ballet’s snow scene that shows the profuse amount of snow the production manages to generate. I’ve never seen a snow scene with a snowfall this thick, which can be a hazard to the dancers but last night nobody slipped. In this video the snow really gets going starting around 0:20: