Who is Mohsen Mahdawi (sometimes spelled Madawi), what’s he been doing here, and why was he detained at his citizenship appointment?

The New Neo Posted on by

Good luck getting the answers to those questions from most of the MSM. The story as written yesterday – and I read many articles on the subject, because I was curious and remain curious – is that he was a graduate student at Columbia and one of the leaders of the anti-Israel protests. Every single article quoted his lawyer thusly (this is taken from yesterday’s NY Post article on Madawi, but it’s basically the same quote I saw over and over):

Mahdawi “was unlawfully detained today for no reason other than his Palestinian identity,” his attorney, Luna Droubi, told the outlet.

“He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech,” she added.

That sets the tone that Mahdawi is just an innocent guy who merely is Palestinian and as such was picked up by the big bad fascist Trump administration. I have little doubt this is the “narrative” that many (perhaps most?) people who read or hear the story in the usual MSM left-leaning outlets would take away and will take away. And even the NY Post, which leans right, didn’t initially tell us much more about his participation in the Columbia demonstrations or the reasons he was detained other than that he was a protest “leader” and then what his lawyer said.

This is reporting? The “protests” – and how they targeted and harassed Jewish students, for example, or damaged property – were not described in any depth. We learn that Madawi is from the West Bank (traditional Judea and Samaria) and is a student in the US, but that’s just his identity. Most articles didn’t say what he is alleged to have done, which is a pretty important detail.

Mahlawi is reported to have been here ten years. Was he a student that whole time? That’s quite a stretch. This article says he’s in his mid-thirties, a trifle old for studenthood; this one says he’s been studying philosophy. Does that take ten years? Does Qatar or some NGO pay his tuition? I assume he originally came here on a student visa once Columbia had admitted him. I suspect the real reason he came here was to become a pro-Palestinian anti-Israel activist, although I have no proof of that.

More from yesterday’s Post article:

“It’s kind of a death sentence,” Mahdawi, who previously led Columbia’s Palestinian student union, said, according to the Intercept.

“Because my people are being killed unjustly in an indiscriminate way.”

His people? Killed unjustly – after 10/7? And if it was in “an indiscriminate way” the death toll would be much much higher, and no one would be warned before a bombing to get out of the way. But we’re used to Mahdawi’s sort of rhetoric.

More:

“This is the outcome,” Mahdawi said, according to [The Intercept]. “I will be either living or imprisoned or killed by the apartheid system.”

“The apartheid system” – that’s his description of Israel, probably the most ethnically and religiously mixed country in the Middle East. Again, typical rhetoric. But do we really need to import it? Don’t we have enough of it already, especially in universities?

My search for more information about Mahdawi last night turned up almost nothing that answered my questions about his actual actions, until I found this at Canary Mission, a group that describes itself this way:

Canary Mission documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.

Canary Mission is motivated by a desire to combat the rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses.

Here’s Mahdawi’s page there. There are several videos and a lot of information, no allegations of direct acts of violence on his part but lots of support for Palestinian terrorism. One of his statements is that he was born in a “Palestinian refugee camp,” which conjures up images of a temporary encampment but actually usually refers to ordinary towns with ordinary homes – in his case he says he’s a third-generation Palestinian refugee. Only Palestinians inherit their refugee status and the UN supports it.

So, what rights does a non-citizen green card holder have? The law states:

Green cards can be revoked, New York-based immigration lawyer Linda Dakin-Grimm told VOA.

“It’s not that common, but it also isn’t rare. People lose their green cards most often when they’re convicted of crimes. … A green card is not citizenship. It’s seen as a privilege that you earn, but you can also lose it if you engage in conduct that is contrary to the conditions that green card holders live under,” she said.

Examples of crimes that can cause a green card holder can lose their status include aggravated felonies, drug offenses, fraud, or national security concerns such as ties to a terrorist group. Green card holders can also lose their status and lawful permanent residency status for being deemed a threat to national security.

How are “ties” defined, and what sort of threat to national security is enough? I suppose it depends on the judge – as do so many things in law. As far as I’m concerned, the bar should be fairly low for deporting a non-citizen. Why should the US tolerate someone who has this sort of profile (from the Canary Mission site)?:

Mohsen Mahdawi is an anti-Israel activist leader who called for Israel’s destruction and justified Hamas terrorism in late 2023. Ten years earlier, he celebrated a terrorist who had murdered dozens of Israeli Jews in 1978. Mahdawi also showed support for the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024. …

Mahdawi was also affiliated with the pro-terror activist group Within Our Lifetime (WOL) in 2023. He was reportedly a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) that same year. …

In an October 22, 2023 interview for a local New England newspaper, Mahdawi said: “Hamas is a product of the Israeli occupation.”

According to the newspaper, soon after October 7, 2023, Mahdawi and leaders of other anti-Israel student groups at Columbia wrote a statement that said: “We remind Columbia students that the Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.

The statement that Mahdawi reportedly co-authored continued: “If every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence break out.” …

In December 2023, during Israel’s war against Hamas, Mahdawi was interviewed [00:06:07] on the television show “60 Minutes” to discuss his campus activism.

During the interview, Mahdawi said [00:08:17]: “When somebody is hurting you, when you see this person is being punched in the face and this feeling, it is: You now feel my pain.”

The interviewer replied [00:08:30] back to Mahdawi: “But this Hamas attack wasn’t a punch in the face. This was a horrible terror attack.”

Mahdawi then said [00:08:43] that he “can empathize” with what Hamas did and continued: “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me the path moving forward.” …

On February 3, 2013, a Facebook user shared a poem Mahdawi wrote that paid tribute to terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. Mahdawi left comments thanking the poster for sharing the text.

The poem said: “I will breathe home… / And fill my shame / And clean my gun / And collect my packages, my bombs / And embrace my gun…”

Dalal Mughrabi, a member of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel. She and other terrorists hijacked a bus in an attack that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, including 13 children.

Much more at the link, including a description of the activities of SJP. Also please see this.

Just because Mahdawi managed to become a student here and get a green card, does he have a right to become a citizen? I don’t see why. This writer (law professor Mark Goldfeder) agrees:

The current debate concerns § 212(a)(3)(b)(i)(vii), which allows for the deportation of any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” Some have claimed that deporting someone for these reasons violates the First Amendment. That is incorrect.

The premise of the question rests on the assumption that an alien (even a legal alien) has First Amendment rights that are exactly the same in every situation as the rights of a U.S. national or citizen. That is not the case. As the Supreme Court has made clear, sometimes the government may impose distinctions and conditions. …

As it turns out, more than 120 years of Supreme Court precedent explain that this is just such a condition the government might legitimately put on the holder of a visa or a green card without offending the First Amendment. Turner v. Williams was a case about anarchists who wanted to violently overthrow the government, but you can substitute for anarchists Hamas-affiliated anti-West agitators who want to violently overthrow our institutions. In that case, the court held:

“…Congress was of opinion that the tendency of the general exploitation of such views is so dangerous to the public weal that aliens who hold and advocate them would be undesirable additions to our population, whether permanently or temporarily, whether many or few;”

It certainly seems to be the case here.

Also:

In this [Khalil, friend and colleague of Mahdawi] case, it is possible to read the INA narrowly, as referring to the kind of endorsement or support that would not be protected speech even if done by a citizen — i.e., the provision of material support, including advocacy and even speech done in coordination with a foreign terrorist organization (see Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project). Under that reading, there is again no First Amendment concern because the First Amendment does not protect political speech or expressive conduct that materially supports foreign terrorist organizations. Several of the groups Khalil is affiliated with are accused of doing just that.

Today the NY Post has another article on Mahdawi, and this one finally covers the State Department’s stated reasons for calling a halt to his citizenship proceedings:

“Mahdawi played an active role in fall 2024 student protests at Columbia University, instructing protesters to physically push a small group of pro-Israel students, events that university officials later acknowledged as threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” the [State Department] source said.

The source also said Mahdawi was behind “antisemitic rhetoric” during the protests, including referring to Israel Defense Forces soldiers as terrorists and “shouting through a megaphone” at Jewish bystanders and supporters of Israel.

Mahdawi was shown in video footage speaking into a microphone during a campus protest while standing in front of a banner reading “By any means necessary” in a profile on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in December 2023. …

Mahdawi was co-president of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which celebrated the Oct. 7 terror attack, calling it “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians in Gaza.”

The university later suspended the group in November 2023 for repeated violations of campus policy around protests.

Families of hostages still held by Hamas after the terror attack filed a lawsuit last month that alleged SJP had advance knowledge of Hamas’ bloody plans, accusing it of being “Hamas’ American propaganda arm” and pointing to an Instagram post by the group proclaiming “we are back!!” that it said was published minutes before the attack.

I have no problem with stopping this man from becoming a citizen, and even of deporting him.

On Iran and nuclear talks

The New Neo Posted on by

Iran would dearly love to stall:

Trump rightly would rather Tehran verifiably dropped its nuke quest than act militarily to end the nuke threat, but the regime needs to move a lot faster in offering detailed hard commitments to a full squad of US experts, and not get away with empty symbolic concessions.

I think Trump is well aware of the danger. I’m not sure about Witkoff, but I assume he’s not out there on his own.

More here:

Revealed here for the first time, Trump’s position is that Iran’s leaders either destroy their nuclear facilities, or the US, likely with Israel’s help, will do it for them by taking military action.

That’s his offer, and no other options are on the table, the president tells confidants. Certainly there will be no more agreements requiring international inspections that rely on Iranian honesty and compliance.

Nor will there be any tolerance for Iran’s enriching uranium at levels that have no use other than nuclear bombs.

The unicorn fantasy that Iran would use its enriched uranium for domestic energy only is a dead letter to this president.

His approach dramatically heightens the stakes for the talks that began Saturday in Oman.

Time will tell, as usual.

A nation of cobblers

The New Neo Posted on by

ABC’s Jon Karl asked Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick a question:

The president also said there’s going to be a transition cost, transition problems. I mean we are going to see higher prices in America. It’s not like you can open a factory tomorrow to build iPhones or to – to make sneakers, shoes. I mean we – we – we buy a lot of shoes in this country, 99 percent of them are made elsewhere. I mean do you – are we going to become a nation of cobblers again? I mean what – this is going to mean higher prices, isn’t it?

“Cobblers” – love that word. It conjures up visions of Hans Christian Andersen’s father – at least for me. But ask any New Englander over fifty or sixty years old about the shoe industry and what its American demise meant to New England, and you’ll get an answer, and probably no one will use the word “cobblers.” Here’s a 2023 article on attempts to bring shoe manufacturing back to New England, with a little bit of history.

For me the phrase “a nation of cobblers” also conjured up the famous saying “nation of shopkeepers” supposedly uttered by Napoleon and referring to England:

There is reason to doubt that Napoleon ever used the phrase. No contemporaneous French newspaper mentions that he did. The phrase was first used in a derogatory sense by French revolutionary Bertrand Barère on 11 June 1794 in a speech to the National Convention: “Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers”. Barère was referring to the British victory over the French at the Glorious First of June. Later, during the Napoleonic wars, the British press mentioned the phrase, attributing it either to “the French” or to Napoleon himself. …

After the war English newspapers sometimes tried to correct the impression. For example the following article appeared in the Morning Post of 28 May 1832:

“ENGLAND A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS This complimentary term, for so we must consider it, as applied to a Nation which has derived its principal prosperity from its commercial greatness, has been erroneously attributed, from time to time, to all the leading Revolutionists of France. To our astonishment we now find it applied exclusively to BONAPARTE. Than this nothing can be further from the fact. NAPOLEON was scarcely known at the time, he being merely an Officer of inferior rank, totally unconnected with politics. The occasion on which that splenetic, but at the same time, complimentary observation was made was that of the ever-memorable battle of the 1st of June. The oration delivered on that occasion was by M. BARRERE [sic], in which, after describing our beautiful country as one “on which the sun scarce designs to shed its light”, he described England as a nation of shopkeepers.”

A short while ago I posted a video that contains a good description of Trump’s actual plans and hopes for new industry in the US as a result of his policies. You may have already watched it, but if not here it is again (I doubt Jon Karl is especially interested; he’d rather talk about “cobblers”):

The Governor Shapiro arsonist and other political violence

The New Neo Posted on by

Police have the man in custody who is suspected of firebombing the residence of Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania. The bombing – accomplished through Molotov cocktails, and which occurred while the governor and his family were in the home – did quite a bit of damage. As for the man who is reported to have confessed – well, he fits a relatively familiar “crazy” profile combining aspects of right and left in an idiosyncratic manner:

Cory Balmer’s mother Christie Balmer told CBS: “So he was mentally ill, went off his meds, and this is what happened.”

That’s the “crazy” part. As for the political part:

Balmer appears to have expressed far-left beliefs on social media in recent years and attacked both President Trump and former President Joe Biden. …

“Biden supporters shouldn’t exist,” he wrote in a Facebook post in January 2021. “Where were you his first run? Well aware of the trash he is. As for the second, still knew what scum he is. Now why did y’all forget? What, because he did?” …

Balmer also shared a Facebook post supporting mask mandates during the COVID pandemic as well as rants slamming “toxic femininity,” and other posts complaining about gas prices and supporting Kanye West’s presidential run.

Kanye West has become rabidly anti-Semitic in recent years, and of course because Governor Shapiro is Jewish and the crime happened during Passover, Jew-hatred may have entered the mix.

It’s also possible that Balmer thought this crime would endear him to the ladies a la Luigi Mangione. Looking at Balmer’s creepy mugshot, I very much doubt it. But there’s a subset of women who are indeed attracted to homicidal lunatics.

Speaking of the more photographic Mangione, CNN seems to be giving his supporters a platform.

And speaking of other homicidal political lunatics, Ace describes two recent wannabee Trump-killers. The first is a Wisconsin 17-year-old who apparently murdered his parents in order to get funds and the wherewithal to assassinate Trump. This guy seems to have been a white supremacist who – get this – hated Trump.

Not to mention the Butler Pennsylvania resident who planned to assassinate both Trump and Musk as part of a leftist revolution.

There’s political assassination in the air, and a lot of people think they’ll be considered heroes for it.

And a question regarding the Shapiro arsonist is: what’s up with security at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion? How did Balmer get so far?

On stepstools

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day the bulb in the overhead light in my kitchen burned out. I had one of those long-life ones in there, so it had been years since I had needed to change it. Now, however, it was necessary, and because the fixture is fairly high I had to get a stepstool.

That shouldn’t have been a problem. After all, I’ve got three of them, even though my place is rather small. One is a conventional one-rung stepstool that I keep in my kitchen. The second is a two-rung affair that resides in a closet in the bedroom. The third – well, I’ll get to that in a moment.

Standing on the first stepstool, I found I had to really stretch and stretch to reach that bulb. I also found that – now that I’m no longer twenty years old – I felt a bit less stable doing this than in earlier years. But although I managed to finally get that bulb out, I couldn’t quite get the new one in. The fixture kept swinging and eluded my attempts, and I realized I had to get up high enough to hold onto the side of it with one hand while I screwed the bulb in with the other.

Enter stepstool number two, the one with two rungs and a little bar on top to hold onto. I got that one out of the bedroom closet and lugged it to the kitchen. But there I discovered that I wasn’t quite high enough and also that, if I held onto the bar for stability, I still had the swinging fixture problem.

Then there was the third stepstool. That was the one I had trouble finding; I hadn’t used it in years, and it was larger. I knew it probably was in one of the closets, but they are pretty well jammed with stuff and I just couldn’t see it, even with a flashlight.

That stepstool looks like this. Note how tall. Note the high bar. A great stepstool indeed – and it was the first gift Gerard ever gave me.

Yes, an odd gift. But Gerard was no dummy; he knew what he was doing. This gift came to me in January of 2006, when he and I were somewhat acquainted but were not yet romantically involved. I had written this post about a difficult day I’d had full of petty annoyances, and it included the following:

Oh, actually, today wasn’t so bad. It’s just that when I was about to start working on today’s post at my computer, the power went out.

… Oh, right, the toilet will only have one flush in it – I forget why, but something to do with a pump. And in the winter, the cold starts seeping in within minutes, reminding me that lingering around the house would not be a good thing. The computer, the post? Fagettabout it. Time to leave and go about the other business of the day.

Ah yes, time to leave. Leave. And then I remember: that wonderfully convenient electric garage door opener has to be disabled. Now, how do I do that, again? Each time it happens, I have to learn anew–get out the manual and the flashlight (even though the day was young, it was so dark a flashlight was needed to read the diagrams).

Then, out to the garage. Piece of cake. Just pull that red lever dangling from a rope on the ceiling, and then lift the garage door manually, the old-fashioned way. But the red lever is just an inch out of my reach, even when I stand on tiptoe. I can unlock the door to the house, go back to the closet and get out the stepstool. But really, is it necessary? And by now I’m late. So I decide to jump and grab the lever at the top of my jump. I used to be quite the leaper, having been a ballet dancer/teacher not so very long ago …

Well, I guess it’s been longer than I thought between leaps. Or maybe I’m not used to leaping on a concrete floor. Because somewhere between up and down (it didn’t seem to be on the landing; it seemed to happen in the air) I got a sudden sharpish pain in the ankle that went down the foot.

Expletives undeleted, I hobbled around the garage, and found that I could at least walk, although with pain. So I set off.

There was more to the post, but that was the gist of it. About five days later a large package arrived in the mail. What could it be? It was the stepstool, with some sort of clever message from Gerard. It most definitely was an endearing thing as far as I was concerned.

Fast forward to now. I finally found the thing hiding in a closet, hauled it out, and discovered it to be the absolutely perfect instrument for installing that lightbulb. It got me way up there in a way that felt secure enough that all I had to do was to lean my legs and lower torso against that top bar, hold onto the light fixture with one hand, and screw that bulb in with the other. Voilà, mission accomplished!

The gift that keeps on giving.

On fraudulent unemployment benefits

The New Neo Posted on by

So far, DOGE has uncovered seemingly-fraudulent unemployment benefits, 80% of which have been centered in three states. Bet you can guess what those states might be.

Yes, they are New York and California – and I’ll get to the third in a moment. One would expect California, however, just on the basis of population alone because it’s the most populous state in the US. New York is not number two in population, however; that’s Texas, and number three is Florida. Then comes New York.

What’s the third state in the fraud sweepstakes? Why, Massachusetts of course (those who live in New England probably know why I wrote “of course”). And yet Massachusetts is only number sixteen on the population list.

What do these three states also have in common? This:

Fox News points out that California, New York, and Massachusetts are all governed entirely by Democrats, holding what’s known as a “Democratic trifecta” — control of the state legislature and governor’s office. They also hold a “Democratic triplex,” meaning Democrats occupy the top three statewide executive positions: governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.

Fancy that.

Much more at the link if you want some of the details.

It all makes me wonder how the left criticizes this, because criticize it they do. One method of which you are almost certainly already aware is to say that Musk is an (unelected!) lying liar who lies and whose motive is to steal. Another is to simply ignore the topic. Still another is to say that the amount of fraud is really peanuts in the great scheme of things.

But in terms of this particular story about unemployment benefits fraud, we have this extremely odd explanation from the NY Times. I had some trouble reading the whole thing because of the firewall, and there may have been some that I missed although I think I got it all.

The headline and subtitle of the piece – probably the only part most people will read, anyway – serve to ostensibly debunk DOGE’s findings, or at least partially debunk them: “Musk’s Latest Fraud Finding Isn’t What It Seems: His team found cases of seemingly fake people receiving unemployment benefits. But that fake data exists for a reason.” For the headline readers, that’s probably enough to make them decide it’s just nasty old Elon lying again, nothing to see here. But reading the piece gives you this sort of thing:

“Your tax dollars were going to pay fraudulent unemployment claims for fake people born in the future!” Mr. Musk posted on X, his social media platform. “This is so crazy that I had to read it several times before it sank in.” …

These were, indeed, probably fake people — but in a different way than Mr. Musk seemed to realize. It was also most likely a case of his team discovering fraud that had already been discovered by someone else.

What? So there was fraud but Musk wasn’t the first to discover it? Do the American people really care about that aspect – and why did the early fraud-detectors seemingly do nothing to end it?

More:

The issue dates to early in the pandemic when millions of Americans surged onto state unemployment rolls in an unprecedented expansion of the safety net. The emergency aid program enacted during President Trump’s first term was also susceptible to fraud. As many as 15 percent of unemployment claims were fraudulent, often using stolen identities.

Yes, I think we already knew that. I recall reading at the time that there were not enough safeguards against fraud in this program that was rushed though. My assumption was that there would be plenty of fraud, and I even seem to recall reading that there indeed was fraud.

More:

To preserve records of that fraud and protect victims of the identity theft, the U.S. Labor Department encouraged state agencies that administer unemployment benefits to create “pseudo claim” records — in effect, to tie real cases of fraud in their data to make-believe people. The implausibility of the records was the point. Agencies were seeking a way to keep track of fraud claims while detaching them from the identities of innocent people who might one day apply for unemployment benefits themselves.

If I understand that, then these claims were fraudulent and the fake birth dates were “flags” for the fraudulent claims. So it’s not as though the agencies didn’t notice that a child or a person who was 150 years old was making a claim that was obviously false. It’s that the fake birthdates were assigned to mark the probably fraudulent claims – claims which were paid. Nor was this money ever recovered, as far as I can tell.

More:

The cases they cite probably do refer to real instances of people fraudulently receiving benefits, said current and former unemployment officials with the Labor Department and state work force agencies. But it is not the case, those officials said, that a hapless government was duped into doling out benefits to people it didn’t realize weren’t even born yet.

It seems that what the piece in the Times is saying is that the fraud was very real but that the government wasn’t as stupid as it seems from the evidence of the fake birthdates – that those were intentional. But what most people care about is that there was and is fraud, and that the government paid fraudulent claims and that these “people” are still on the rolls. The fact that previous administrations may have known this (but did nothing about it) isn’t really the point. And the fact that most of this occurred in those three states remains informative.

Of course, this isn’t just about fraudulent unemployment benefits. We also have this sort of thing:

DOGE also reported this week that since 2023, the U.S. Border Patrol (under the Biden administration) has paroled over 6,300 individuals flagged on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist or with criminal records into the country with “minimal screening.” Though their paroles have now been revoked, all received Social Security numbers and could access federal benefits. Among them:

– 905 received Medicaid, including 4 on the terrorist watchlist ($276K paid out)
– 41 collected Unemployment Insurance ($42K total)
– 22 received federal student loans ($280K)
– 409 got tax refunds in 2024 ($751K)
– An undisclosed number received SNAP (food stamps)

Under the Biden administration, it was routine for Border Patrol to admit aliens into the United States with no legal status and minimal screening

Perhaps all of this is part of the reason for the fact that the GOP’s reputation has risen among working class voters:

According to a post-tariff Quinnipiac poll, Democrats and Republicans are now tied at 33% on the question of which party “cares more for the needs of people like you”—a dramatic shift after more than three decades of Democratic dominance on the issue. Enten added context to just how historic these numbers are, “Back in 2017, before the midterms, Democrats led by 13 points. In 2005, it was a 23-point lead. Even in 1994—a big year for Republicans—Democrats led by 19,” Enten noted. “Now? A tie. The Democrats, long seen as the party of the people? No more.”

On Passover and liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

[The following is an edited version of a previous post.]

Tonight is the beginning of the Jewish holiday Passover. This is the second Passover to take place with hostages still in Gaza, and therefore Passover – one of the deepest and most significant of all Jewish holidays – takes on even more depth and significance.

I’ve long been impressed by the fact that Passover is a religious holiday dedicated to an idea that’s not solely religious: freedom. Yes, it’s about a particular historical (or perhaps legendary) event: the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But the Seder ceremony makes it clear that, important though that specific event may be, freedom itself is also being celebrated.

A Seder is an interesting experience, a sort of dramatic acting-out complete with symbols and lots of audience participation. Part of its power is that events aren’t placed totally in the past tense and regarded as ancient and distant occurrences; rather, the participants are specifically instructed to act as though it is they themselves who were slaves in Egypt, and they themselves who were given the gift of freedom, saying:

“This year we are slaves; next year we will be free people…”

With hostages still in Gaza, the connection is obvious and powerful.

Passover acknowledges that freedom (and liberty, not exactly the same thing but related) is an exceedingly important human desire and need. That same idea is present in the Declaration of Independence (which, interestingly enough, also cites the Creator):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

It is ironic, of course, that when that Declaration was written, slavery was allowed in the United States. That was rectified, but only after great struggle, which goes to show how wide the gap often is between rhetoric and reality, and how difficult freedom is to achieve. And it comes as no surprise, either, that the Passover story appealed to slaves in America when they heard about it; witness the lyrics of “Let My People Go.”

Yes, the path to freedom is far from easy, and there are always those who would like to take it away. Sometimes an election merely means “one person, one vote, one time,” if human and civil rights are not protected by a constitution that guarantees them, and by a populace dedicated to defending them at almost all costs. Wars of liberation only give an opportunity for liberty, they do not guarantee it, and what we’ve observed in recent decades has been the difficult and usually failed task of attempting to foster it in places with no such tradition and with neighbors dedicated to its obliteration.

We’ve also seen many threats to liberty in our own country – more potent in the last couple of decades. This is happening despite our long tradition of liberty and the importance Americans used to place on it.

Sometimes those who are against liberty are religious, like the mullahs. Sometimes they are secular, like the Communists or their present-day Russian successors. Some of them are cynical and power-mad; some are idealists who don’t realize that human beings were not made to conform to their rigid notions of the perfect world, and that attempts to force them to do so seem to inevitably end in horrific tyranny, and that this is no coincidence.

As one of my favorite authors Kundera wrote, in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting:

…human beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of har­mony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.

Note the seamless progression from lyricism to violence: no matter if it begins in idealistic dreams of an idyll, the relinquishment of freedom to further that dream will end with humans being crushed like insects.

Dostoevsky did a great deal of thinking about freedom as well. In his cryptic and mysterious Grand Inquisitor, a lengthy chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, he imagined a Second Coming. But this is a Second Coming in which the Grand Inquisitor rejects what Dostoevsky sees as Jesus’s message of freedom (those of you who’ve been around this blog for a long time will recognize this passage I often quote):

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?

Freedom vs. bread is a false dichotomy. Dostoevsky was writing before the Soviets came to power, but now we have learned that lack of freedom, and a “planned” economy, is certainly no guarantee even of bread.

I think there’s another very basic need, one that perhaps can only really be appreciated when it is lost: liberty.

Happy Passover!

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Colorado enacts an extreme anti-gun law.

(2) We’ve got our high-flow showerheads back – for now:

Trump changed the definition back to what it used to be. The Times brands this some kind of activist invasion into people’s right to have low water pressure in their showers.

California has stringent low-flow rules for showerheads, and I remember – now it can be told? – that Gerard circumvented that by installing some sort of black-market showerhead in his rented house in Paradise. I wonder whether the showerhead survived the fire; I don’t recall seeing it in the ashes, although I saw the twisted satellite dish and the metal legs of the ironing board.

(3) Kamala Harris is talking about establishing a policy institute.

(4) Another day, another illegal alien sex offender busted:

… Immigrations & Customs Enforcement has just picked up an illegal alien and convicted child sex offender in Fairfax County, Virginia – after a county judge suspended his sentence and set him back out on the street. ICE detainers for this goblin have been ignored by county authorities.

I can’t imagine that Virginia’s position is highly popular.

(5) German freedom of speech – an oxymoron? See this:

In Germany, a newspaper editor has been fined and sentenced to seven months in prison for posting a meme:

“The Bamberg district court in Bavaria sentenced Deutschland-Kurier editor David Bendels this week to seven months in prison on probation and a fine of nearly sixty per cent of his annual income, or 210 ‘daily rates’, for posting an image on social media of Interior Minister Nancy Faeser holding an altered sign.”

And what did the altered sign say? Why, “I hate freedom of speech”.

I guess truth is not a defense in Germany.

So at the moment, the trade war seems to be with China

The New Neo Posted on by

Accent on the phrase “at the moment.” But I do think it’s highly possible that was the intent all along.

A description:

China announced on Friday that it will raise tariffs on U.S. imports from 84% to 125%, further escalating the trade war between Washington and Beijing.

The move is largely symbolic. As former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox News host Larry Kudlow on Thursday night, once tariffs hit 50%, further increases have limited practical impact. At that point, Ross explained, leaders effectively signal that they no longer seek a trade relationship. …

China expert Gordon Chang joined Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday morning to discuss the mounting conflict between China and the U.S. Chinese President Xi Jinping, he claims, is in an increasingly difficult political position because he can’t do what “absolutely” must be done which is to open up the lines of communication.

“Picking up the phone and calling President Trump would be the economically rational thing to do,” Chang said, “but Xi Jinping has configured the Chinese political system so that only the most hostile answers are considered to be acceptable, which means he’s boxed himself in.” …

“The Chinese don’t have any cards in this,” he explained. “They’re only holding a pair of twos and Trump has a royal straight flush. The Chinese think they can intimidate Trump, they can coerce him into surrendering preemptively.” But Trump is not backing down. …

According to the report, the U.S. and Panama have formally entered into a new defense and security agreement designed to strengthen oversight of the Panama Canal—an initiative Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as essential for countering China’s expanding influence in the region.

Is Chang correct? I don’t know. This is not my field of expertise, as I’ve often stated. But it makes sense to me that the goal – or at least one big goal – is to put the squeeze on China. Much of what we get from them is shoddy consumer goods, but there’s also rare earths (do I hear Greenland? Australia? or even the US itself see this) and pharmaceuticals (do I hear India?).

NOTE: See also this.

And our resident condescending British friend has been talking about the bond market. For those who might be curious about that, please see this for some background in terms of the Trump/Vance administration.