Here’s an interesting discussion on current anti-Semitism. About two-thirds of the way through (I would have to listen to the whole thing again to find it), the man being interviewed mentions that, at some point not too long before Elie Wiesel died, Wiesel told him he was very discouraged by an ominous rise in anti-Semitism. Wiesel died in 2016, so that conversation must have occurred before that.
From Wiesel’s Wiki page, here is part of a speech he gave in 2005 at the opening of a new building at Vad Yashem (the Holocaust Remembrance Center) in Israel:
I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were there won’t agree with that statement. The statement is: it was man’s inhumanity to man. NO! It was man’s inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they were not human beings! They were Jews![
It seems to me that this is applicable to the carnage wrought on Israelis on October 7, 2023. Of course, murderous anti-Semitism is indeed also a subset of “man’s inhumanity to man,” because dehumanization is often part of it and perhaps a necessary one to attain that degree of vicious and violent hatred. But Jew-hatred is probably the most special, enduring, and protean example of it. It goes on and on and on, with a changing face: religious hatred, ethnic hatred, racial hatred, envy and hatred of the “other,” national hatred of Israel, and now neo-Marxist hatred of those labeled “colonizers” and by definition “oppressors.”
Also, the following is interesting in light of recent events [emphasis mine]:
Wiesel was active in trying to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, stating that, “The words and actions of the leadership of Iran leave no doubt as to their intentions”. He also condemned Hamas for the “use of children as human shields” during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict by running an ad in several large newspapers. The Times refused to run the advertisement, saying, “The opinion being expressed is too strong, and too forcefully made, and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers.”
The word “amongst” cued me that the Times being mentioned there was the British Times. It showed its true colors.
Another topic discussed in that video above is whether Holocaust education has helped, or even mattered, in stemming the tide of anti-Semitism. I think it sometimes has but also sometimes causes resentment and a backlash. Many times – particularly in the comments of blogs on the right, but I doubt it’s limited to that population – I’ve read the equivalent of: “why do we keep hearing about Jewish suffering? What complainers those whiny bastards are! And they’re all stupid leftists anyway so they deserve whatever they get.” The left, of course, has somewhat different concerns, the aforementioned “Jews are dirty rotten colonialists, settlers, oppressors, viciously committing genocide and apartheid.” As we have learned from history, many different groups have found it convenient to scapegoat Jews for whatever reasons come to mind and matter to them.
The trial was held in DC. Increasingly, that’s all you need to know in order to predict the outcome.
This trial was apparently twelve years in the making, and it’s not over yet because there will be an appeal. Here’s John Hinderaker’s report:
Today the jury returned its verdict in the defamation trial of Michael Mann v. Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. The verdict was disappointing to those of us who followed the case and thought that Michael Mann presented a pathetically inadequate case. The jury actually agreed: it found that the defendants had defamed Mann, but awarded only a token $1 in damages, since Mann had failed to prove any. But it found that both Simberg and Steyn acted with actual malice–they didn’t actually believe what they said about Mann–and awarded punitive damages in the amount of $1,000 against Simberg, and $1 million against Steyn.
As we’ve seen from the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, juries often express themselves quite prejudicially and vindictively when in comes to setting punitive damages.
More from Hinderaker:
In this case, there was no evidence whatever that Steyn and Simberg didn’t sincerely believe that what they said was true. Indeed, as Mark pointed out in closing argument, he has been saying the same things about Mann’s hockey stick for something like 21 years, and even wrote a book about it.
Ah, but the jurors were mind-readers, and they know better. Or perhaps they just meant to punish anyone who went against the current leftist position on global warming, and to reward those who promote it:
… [T]he case is destined for more years in the appellate courts. In John Williams’ closing argument on behalf of Mann, he said that the jury should award punitive damages so that in the future, no one will dare engage in “climate denialism”–whatever that is–just as Donald Trump’s “election denialism” needs to be suppressed. In 41 years of trying cases to juries, I never heard such an outrageously improper appeal. John Williams should be ashamed of himself, but he won’t be, because this jury apparently bought his argument: they want to make Mark Steyn pay $1 million out of his own pocket, to a plaintiff who suffered no damages but only made an ideological argument, so that no one will, ever again, try to challenge the regime’s global warming narrative. However false that narrative may be.
This is the direction in which the US legal system is going.
Not because it tells us anything we didn’t already know about Biden’s mental incapacity. We’ve known for years that Biden has serious cognitive difficulties. We’ve also seen them increase recently.
Nor is it shocking because Biden won’t be prosecuted. We’ve assumed that from the very start.
It’s shocking because we expected an exoneration, and this is not an exoneration. It exposes Biden’s slipshod treatment of the records, various coverups, and above all his serious cognitive challenges. Many people thought that Biden wouldn’t be running in 2024 – although I have long thought he will, for the simple reason that a substitute is hard to find. But I doubt most people thought that Hur’s report would provide a reason to jettison Biden while simultaneously announcing a decision not to prosecute. Kind of a twofer.
So, will Biden be withdrawn? I still don’t know, although I bet somebody does. This morning, before the report, I would have said I still think Biden will be the candidate. Now I’m 50/50 on it, but leaning more in the direction of his removal because I cannot imagine they would have allowed the Hur report to see the light of day without having a Biden replacement all lined up and ready to go.
And I won’t even begin to speculate on whom it might be, except to say we’ve already done a lot of that here in various comment threads.
Nor do I know whether Trump would do better or more poorly against that person. Everything seems to be up in the air.
The man Biden divulged national security secrets do is Zwonitzer [his biographer/ghostwriter]. He was mentioned in the last post.
The Special Counsel said that Biden couldn’t be prosecuted for revealing national security secrets to a complete civilian with no clearance to receive them because of Biden’s “diminished faculties.”
But that’s just the beginning of the story. …
As soon as the Special Counsel was appointed and Biden and Zwonitzer realized that he would be subpoening all the notes and records of their meetings, ZWONITZER DELETED ALL THE TAPES, thereby denying the Special Counsel evidence of what, exactly, Biden was sharing with him.
The implication, of course — impossible to miss — is that Zwonitzer deliberately engaged in spoliation — destruction — of evidence.
And why would he do that?
Another big implication is that Biden, or his lawyers, demanded that Zwonitzer destroy evidence of a crime.
Granted, in the report, senility is offered as an explanation and excuse for why Biden won’t be charged as a result of improperly possessing and storing classified documents. But still, it’s quite an explanation.
I mean, we knew Biden wouldn’t be charged, unlike Trump. But I never imagined that this would be one of the stated reasons for that:
President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” special counsel Robert Hur found in a bombshell report released Thursday — though Hur recommended against criminal charges, in part because a jury might view Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Biden, 81, flouted legal restrictions on keeping sensitive documents throughout his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president — stashing them in cardboard boxes in his garage in Wilmington, Del., and other locations, the 388-page report said, with photos showing Biden’s storage practices.
Investigators even uncovered a recording of Biden confiding in his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer in April 2017, three months after leaving the vice presidency, that he still had official records because “I didn’t want to turn them in” — sounding similar to former President Donald Trump, who faces 40 criminal charges and up to 450 years in prison for resisting handing over documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Extraordinary.
There are also several photos of Biden’s garage, indicating how some of the records were stored. Also extraordinary. And these storage decisions occurred back when Biden was ostensibly in compos mentis. I was unable to download the photos, so just follow the link and feast your eyes.
Some of the documents are classified at Top Secret level and contain information about protected human intelligence sources.
Extraordinary.
“[A]t trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report says.
I wouldn’t see him as “well-meaning,” but half of America seems to hold that opinion.
Biden “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” the report says.
“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving [2009] memo to President Obama.”
Of course, maybe he’s conning them and pretending to be senile, right? Like 60s draft-dodgers pretending to be crazy.
On second thought: no.
The world is falling apart and we have a senile president. Actually, those two things are connected. But the saddest thing of all is that, even if Biden weren’t so fog-brained, I don’t think he’d be making many decisions that would be different. He was never smart and he was never competent, but once he became Obama’s vice-president he became wedded to Obama’s terrible policies.
NOTE: And you really can’t argue with Trump on this:
“THIS HAS NOW PROVEN TO BE A TWO-TIERED SYSTEM OF JUSTICE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL SELECTIVE PROSECUTION!” the 77-year-old wrote on Truth Social.
“The Biden Documents Case is 100 times different and more severe than mine. I did nothing wrong, and I cooperated far more. What Biden did is outrageously criminal – He had 50 years of documents, 50 times more than I had, and ‘WILLFULLY RETAINED’ them,” Trump went on.
“I was covered by the Presidential Records Act, Secret Service was always around, and GSA delivered the documents. Deranged Jack Smith should drop this Case immediately. ELECTION INTERFERENCE.”
Everything I’ve read about it sounds as though SCOTUS will rule that Colorado can’t make the decision to exclude Trump, which is certainly the obviously correct decision. But you never know with courts. However, see this, this, this, this, and this. In that last piece, Ace even speculates that the SCOTUS vote against what Colorado is trying to do might even be unanimous. And he quotes Jonathan Turley as writing this:
The argument is now over. The disqualification advocates may have expected a cold reception, but this was perfectly glacial. Notably, some of the toughest and most skeptical questions came from the left of the Court.
Then again, if the liberal justices do vote against the ballot exclusion, it might be because they realize it’s such an overreach by the left that it might turn off moderate voters from voting for the Democrats.
“Israelis were dehumanized in the most horrific way on October 7, ”said Blinken in prepared remarks at a Tel Aviv press conference. “The hostages have been dehumanized every day since. But that cannot be a license to dehumanize others.”
The White House has not hidden its dissatisfaction with Israel over civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip and the humanitarian situation there throughout the war, but Wednesday’s critique was the harshest to date.
Cycle of violence yada yada. Fighting back against murderous terrorists who hide behind civilians is just like going out of your way to violate a ceasefire and torture and murder civilians. Got it, Blinken.
“Netanyahu should go. He is not a trustworthy leader. It was on his watch that the [October 7] attack happened. He needs to go, and if he’s an obstacle to a ceasefire, if he’s an obstacle to exploring what’s to be done the day after, he absolutely needs to go,” Clinton told MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight” in an interview.
She’s sad that the Obama-esque left can’t push Netanyahu around as well as it would like, and that he’s determined to defend Israel’s survival.
And then there’s this article on the Biden administration’s infuriating demonizing of Israeli “settlers.” You really need to read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:
Instead of focusing on Hamas or Hezbollah, the lawmakers in attendance [early November], sources told Tablet, including senior ranking senators from both parties, wanted to focus on the risks posed by Israel—specifically, by roving bands of allegedly violent settlers in the West Bank. Lawmakers pressed the Israeli officials, going so far as to assert that uniformed IDF soldiers were escorting Israeli settlers to attack Palestinians.
Much of the information that these lawmakers were citing came from a single, ostensibly impartial source whose words carry weight in Washington in part because of his rank: Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel, a three-star general who currently serves as the U.S. Security Coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, colloquially known as the USSC. Fenzel’s USSC is well-known for its regular, sometimes daily briefings and reports about “extremist settlers,” which it provides to members of Congress, policy hands, Israel-related advocacy groups, as well as to foreign countries’ forces in Israel. …
According to sources in and out of the U.S. government familiar with Fenzel’s reports and advocacy, nearly every claim presented by the USSC as fact seems to have been lifted directly, sometimes verbatim, from the websites of highly partisan pro-Palestinian organizations, including the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) and the far-left Israeli NGO B’Tselem, which accuses Israel of apartheid and receives vast support from European governments and from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
In the past 12 months, 13 Israelis were murdered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and 17 in the West Bank—not counting those slaughtered on October 7, 2023—while doing nothing more provocative than driving home or stopping for gas. The number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by Israelis under such conditions over the same time period is zero.
But the story the administration has been telling anyone who will listen is very different. By scrubbing any mention of the daily violence directed by Palestinian terror operatives against Jewish civilians living in the West Bank from his reports, Fenzel has eliminated the clear retaliatory motive for the vast majority of attacks by Israelis against West Bank Palestinians. Thinly laundered reports from expressly anti-Israel organizations, designed to support an illusion of innocent Palestinians being violently attacked by bloodthirsty Israelis, paint a picture of an Israeli equivalent to the Palestinian atrocities of Oct. 7, lending itself an easy “both-sides” posture meant to ease the way to creating a new Palestinian state in both the West Bank and Gaza. With an executive order now in place, the Biden administration has all the tools it needs to crack down on any form of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria, and on anyone, in Israel or stateside, who supports it.
This is the way Palestinian propaganda works. And many administrations, and the press, have swallowed it whole for decades. Why? Fools or knaves or both? One might say it hardly matters. But at least stupidity or ignorance can sometimes be corrected by more information. Bad intentions cannot.
More:
B’Tselem echoed OCHA’s numbers, delivering an account of how each of the eight Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians in the West Bank before Oct.7 had died. The details, buried inside an online database, paint a stark picture: Abd al-Karim Badi’a, a 21-year-old, was shot by an Israeli settler after entering the settlement armed with knives and explosive devices. 42-year-old Tareq Odeh Yusef M’aali was shot by an Israeli settler after trying to stab the same settler in a field. Muhannad Falah Abdallah Shihadah, a Hamas terorrist, was killed after murdering four Israelis, including two minors, by shooting them to death outside the Jewish community of Eli.
According to OCHA and B’Tselem, the above all count as Palestinian victims. The USSC amplifies this claim.
Biden has taken the extraordinary step of censuring four Israeli “settlers” who have been accused of such violence – accused, according to the article, by “Palestinian authorities.” The sanctions involve “imposing financial sanctions and visa bans in an initial round against four individuals.”
The evidence against these individuals is very difficult to find, but it appears to be based on Palestinian accusations. I did a quick search and came up with this sort of thing, in which the West Bank family of a victim who was a “Palestinian-American” visiting the area accuse “a settler” of killing him. The incident, also described here, is being investigated by Israel, but I can’t even find an accused perp’s name much less whether the accused was one of Biden’s four sanctioned people.
However, here’s what one of the four says about the accusations he’s facing:
Yinon Levi spoke alongside his wife, Sapir Levi, on Tuesday in their outpost in the occupied West Bank. They told ABC News they don’t understand why he was sanctioned in Biden’s executive order.
Levi was accused of inciting violence against Palestinians and burning farmland. He said he has never been involved in an attack and they have not seen any evidence.
We don’t need no steenking evidence.
More [emphasis mine]:
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a Feb. 1 statement, said Yinon Levi allegedly led a group of settlers “who engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank” and “repeatedly attacked multiple communities within the West Bank.”
“He regularly led groups of settlers from the Meitarim Farm outpost that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatened them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields, and destroyed their property,” the statement said.
Local residents and activists told ABC News they believe Yinon Levi is shown on video operating a bulldozer to allegedly block roads in Susya in the West Bank on Oct. 16, 2023. Satellite imagery from Oct. 17, 2023, appears to show dirt disturbed over a road in Susya.
Basel Adra, who lives in a village near Susya, said Yinon Levi also destroyed water wells and agricultural fields for crops like olives and grapes.
Although ABC News could not independently verify claims of property destruction, Levi was described in the sanctions order as destroying property.
ABC News also obtained videos, from April 2022 and March 2023, of Yinon Levi with his dog discouraging Arabs from herding sheep in the area and harassing activists.
In response to the videos, Yinon Levi said “Anarchists come to our territory and do provocations. They disturb the soldiers, they attack us, the dog and the sheep on purpose and document it for provocation.”
That’s it, apparently.
The Biden administration is doing this to placate their rather large left flank by repeating the propaganda of the West Bank.
The Democrats must really want to get rid of Biden, because even the MSM is covering this story:
President Joe Biden on Wednesday twice referred to the late German chancellor Helmut Kohl instead of former Chancellor Angela Merkel while detailing a 2021 conversation at campaign events. …
The remarks weren’t Biden’s first mix-up of European leaders this week.
Speaking at an event in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sunday, Biden confused François Mitterrand, the former French president who died in 1996, for French President Emmanuel Macron in retelling an encounter with the French leader at a summit during his first year in office.
The NBC article calls these errors “gaffes.” It also is careful to point out that Trump has also had “gaffes” recently – such as saying Haley when he meant Pelosi. Not in the same league, in my opinion – but it’s obvious why the MSM wants people to think it is.
I am quite certain that they would replace Biden if they could. Maybe they’ll figure out a way to do it and a person willing and able to run instead, who would get more votes. We’ve discussed this many times before here, and so far I just don’t see it happening. It presents quite a conundrum for the left.
In addition to my post from yesterday about Jennifer Crumbley’s manslaughter conviction, and my four previous posts on the case that I linked there, I want to add a few things.
The first is that I believe that if their son Ethan Crumbley had murdered the same people at the school with a knife, the Crumbleys would never have been charged. This case is a roundabout way to get at more gun control or at least to intimidate gun owners.
The second is that this verdict should strike fear into the heart of every parent. There’s a potentially slippery slope here.
For more than two years [the parents] have been kept in a county jail, unable to make bail.
That’s quite something.
The fourth is this:
Stephen J Morse, a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, said he disagreed with the verdict, arguing that because Ethan Crumbley had pleaded guilty, he was the only one responsible for the shooting.
“I understand that she was not necessarily the best mother in the world, but this is not a crime,” he said.
Mr Morse said he believed the decision could set a bad precedent, causing courts to look for “scapegoats” in similar situations.
Ya think?
The fifth is this:
Others say this case was so unusual that it is unlikely to have wider ramifications.
“I don’t fear that this is going to open the floodgates to parents being charged in a run of the mill case, if there is such a thing,” said Frank Vandervort, a University of Michigan clinical professor of law.
No, of course it won’t be “run of the mill parents” who are charged. But in these school shooter situations, there are often warning signs that go unheeded, or that are not dealt with properly. Hindsight is 20/20, and as I said before, these particular parents don’t seem to have exercised good judgment. But they are not guilty of any crime. And finding them guilty of a crime opens the door to the state using the precedent and the tool as it sees fit, in particular to punish parents who might espouse positions it doesn’t like.
And then we have the sixth, which is pretty obvious but needs to be stated nevertheless:
Families of the victims have expressed frustration that school officials have not faced the same legal consequences as Mr and Ms Crumbley.
“Why isn’t the system allowing the people to decide when it comes to the failures at the school?” Mr Myre told the BBC on Tuesday after the verdict.
“Is our government under a different set of rules?”
The answer is: YES.
I wrote earlier that the school system had an enormous responsibility – and supposed expertise, unlike the parents – which it shirked. But no, I don’t think they should be held criminally responsible, either. Civilly responsible perhaps; but not criminally.
“Mr. Trump is then likely to promote the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, Michael Whatley, as her replacement, according to several people familiar with the discussions. Under the arcana of the committee’s rules, however, Mr. Trump cannot simply install someone, and a new election must take place.
“Mr. Trump likes Mr. Whatley for one overwhelming reason, according to people who have discussed him with the former president: He is ‘a stop the steal guy,’ as one of the people described him.”
That’s the Times saying that. Hey, it might even be true. If so, I would hope there are additional reasons.
Here’s Whatley’s basic resume. It seems, according to this, that one of Whatley’s achievements was helping Trump to a victory in North Carolina in 2020.
During his time as state party chairman, Whatley saw Republican wins for Trump and Sen. Thom Tillis in 2020 and Budd in 2022, as well as the regaining of a GOP supermajority in the state legislature and the flipping of the state Supreme Court, according to the North State Journal.
And as usual, it’s not something that Israel could afford to entertain for even a moment – although you never know. Between the pressure from the Biden administration and much of the world, as well as the internal pressure to get hostages home before they’re all dead, plus precedent such as the Shalit deal, there’s always that possibility although I believe it’s small.
According to a draft document seen by Reuters, the Hamas counterproposal envisions three phases, each lasting 45 days.
During the first 45-day phase, all Israeli women hostages, males under 19 and the elderly and sick would be released, in exchange for female and underage Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel would withdraw troops from populated areas.
Implementation of the second phase would not begin until the sides conclude “indirect talks over the requirements needed to end the mutual military operations and return to complete calm.”
The second phase would include the release of remaining male hostages and full Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza. Bodies and remains would be exchanged during the third phase. …
The terror group, which governs Gaza, said in an addendum to the proposal that it sought the release of 1,500 prisoners from Israeli jails, a third of whom it wanted to select from a list of Palestinians serving life sentences.
Much more of the demands at the link, including the reinstatement of terror-buddy UNRWA.
So basically it’s “we give you the hostages if you end the war and free all our prisoners, including terrorist murderers. And also, Gaza gets all sorts of aid and rebuilding.”
Not a surprise. That’s what the hostage-taking has been all about. Hamas sees it as a “get-out-of-jail-free” card, a ticket to Hamas victory. Israel has taken the bait before, so it makes sense that Hamas figured from the start that Israel would take the bait now.
Also:
Unnamed Israeli officials told the Ynet news site on Wednesday that “we cannot accept a demand to stop the war,” and highlighted the “demand for the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners, including serious terrorists.”
Nonetheless, Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said Doha was “optimistic” after receiving the terror group’s “positive response.” US President Joe Biden, on the other hand, said Hamas’s reply was “a little over the top,” while noting that negotiations were ongoing.
