Category Archives: Foreign Policy

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Awww, what a shame this is! Democratic Socialists of America go all in on their support for Hamas, and donations dry up.

One thing to remember: those who are marching in support of the ‘Palestinians’ and Hamas tend to be younger, and poorer, and are usually not the kind of people who contribute to candidates and political organizations. Had I actually thought about this before, I would have guessed it, but now that it’s been brought to my attention, I do have a smile on my face while I type and drink my coffee.

From National Review:

Democratic Socialists of America in ‘Financial Crisis’ following Brash Support for Hamas

by Haley Strack | Monday, January 22, 2024 | 8:53 AM EST

The Democratic Socialists of America are in a “financial crisis” that will require seven-figure budget cuts and staff layoffs to correct.

News of the DSA’s financial condition surfaced as the group leads anti-Israel protests nationwide; including a pro-Hamas rally held in New York just one day after Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

“The current deficit will force us to make 7-figure budget cuts. This will require us to make painful decisions that will impact all levels of the organization. … Given our current financial state, we do not believe we can have a healthy, democratic, and effective organization while spending the amount we currently do on staff,” Alex Pellitteri, Kristin Schall, and Laura Wadlin, members of the DSA 2023-2025 National Political Committee, wrote in a proposal published last week.

For those of you who might be stymied by National Review’s paywall, you can read it for free here.

Awww, I just can’t put into words how saddened I am that the DSA will have less money to spend on trying to destroy the United States. And it pegs the irony meter that the Democratic Socialists are being hit hard by the capitalist economy. 🙂 As the New York Post’s Carl Campanile put it:

The situation appears to be a case of an organization that blindly seeks utopia and professes support of the working class clashing with reality — forcing it to have to balance a budget like the rest of America and even contemplate layoffs hated by labor unions.

Further down:

Many American progressives believe that DSA has abandoned its domestic political commitments to go all in on the pro-Palestinian cause, executive director Zioness Amanda Berman, told the New York Post.

On the matter of Israel, DSA dissented from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.), two of the country’s most prominent progressives, in the days following Hamas’s attack. Instead of condemning the mass rape and murder of Israelis, as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders did in October, the DSA said on October 7 that “today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime—a regime that receives billions in funding from the United States.”

“After Hamas’s brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, DSA doubled down on their strategy of going deep and long on antisemitism, thinking it might get them out of the hole,” Berman said. “Instead, this depraved idea dug them even deeper. True progressives, whether in the grassroots or in political leadership, will continue rejecting this extremist group and its hateful ideas in the name of true justice and equity, including for Jewish Americans.”

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain, “Democratic Socialists of America Now Planning Layoffs Amid Financial ‘Crisis’“

American Jews tend to be politically liberal and are overwhelmingly Democratic voters:

  1. Jewish adults are more likely to identify as Democrats (50%) than Republican (17%) and are more liberal in their political views (43%) than conservative (22%).
  2. Compared to the overall US electorate, Jewish adults are more likely to be Democrats (50% versus 31%) and liberal (43% versus 26%).
  3. When including independents and Others who lean toward the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, the disparity in party affiliation between Jewish adults and all US adults increases. Sixty-three percent of Jewish adults identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, compared to less than half (45%) of US adults.
  4. Among age groups, Gen Z Jewish adults include the lowest percentage of Democratic identification (43%) and the highest percentage of independents (43%). When including Democratic/Republican leaning, a greater percentage of Gen Z adults identify as Democrats or lean Democratic (65%) compared to older Jewish adults (61%).
  5. Jewish women identify as Democrats or lean Democratic at a greater percentage than Jewish men, similar to the pattern among all US adults, though to a larger degree.
  6. For both Jewish adults and all US adults, those with a college degree have higher rates of liberal identification and are more likely to identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.
  7. Just over one third of Hispanic and Black/other non-Hispanic Jewish adults identify as liberal, though 70-80% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic.

Look at that fourth numbered bullet point: the very group on which the DSA depend most philosophically are also the group which identify less with a political party have the lowest percentage affiliation with political groups. And the DSA have just trashed their brand with other liberals. Why it’s almost as though the baristas living ten to a two-bedroom fifth-floor walkup on 96th Street and the unemployed gamers and incels living in their parents’ basements spend their allowances on things other than political contributions.

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No one wants to live next door to a landfill

I have long said that the conquering Israelis should have expelled every last Arab from the territories they conquered in the Six-Day War of 1967. It would have been a horrible humanitarian disaster, but such would have left the Jewish State with shortened, more defensible borders, and the displaced Arabs would not have been living under Israeli occupation. If Israel was not willing to expel the Arabs, then they should have just annexed what they wanted — primarily all of Jerusalem, the eastern part of which was under Jordanian control prior to the war — and left the Arabs to live in their own state in 1967.

The Israelis somehow thought that the Arabs would slowly emigrate, rather than live under occupation, but in that, they forgot Jewish history, how very few Jews fled Europe even faced with pogroms, discrimination, murders, and even the Third Reich. We’ve all heard about the Jewish refugee ship, the MS St Louis, turned away from ports in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, but out of millions of Jews in Nazi Germany, the ship carried only 937 passengers. Most European Jews thought that they could ride out the storm of Naziism, with some casualties, but mostly their communities and their people would survive intact. It was simply outside their paradigm that the Nazis really did intend to kill them all.

Knowing that part of their history, the Israelis of the late 1960s should have realized that the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs could, and probably would, do the same thing, try to ride out the storm at anchor.

From The Atlantic:

Some Palestinians Want to Leave Gaza. Let Them.

No one should be trapped in a war zone.

by Joshua Krug | Monday, January 22, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

Recently, I reached out to a prominent Palestinian activist to learn about his experiences in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. He told me that his apartment had been destroyed, and that he lives in a tent with his family. They are under the near-constant threat of bombings, are often hungry, and are worried about starvation and sickness. He wants to leave the enclave—but right now, he can’t.

Several other Palestinians I’ve talked with also want to leave Gaza, and have also encountered closed borders. They of course want the violence to stop, and do not want to be permanently shut out. But above all, they want to be safe. (And I have withheld their names to protect their safety.)

An article in The Guardian this month featured a U.K.-based Palestinian who said his family members were killed in Israeli air strikes and echoed the above sentiments: “I’m not sure why no schemes have been introduced, nothing to evacuate people. I don’t even hear humanitarians talk about this any more.”

Alas! The Atlantic now requires readers to either subscribe or “start a free trial”. Fortunately, the article is also in my msn.com, and can be read for free here.

I am an American Jewish academic based in Germany, and I oppose the forced relocation of Palestinians from their land. Gaza is central to Palestinian history, and I would like people there to survive and thrive right where they are. Still, life—rather than land—should be the ultimate value, a simple fact often lost in the heated debates around the current conflict. I hear calls for a cease-fire and for the surrender of Hamas, but almost never for a safe path out of an active war zone. Palestinians deserve a state of their own, and the opportunity to take refuge outside a war zone rather than serve as martyrs for “the cause.”

There are never calls for “a safe path out of an active war zone” because none of the neighboring nations want the ‘Palestinians.’ Letting the ‘Palestinians’ leave concomitantly means having a place for them to go, and none of their neighbors want people they consider to be murderous trash living in their countries.

The Six-Day War is within living memory in the Arab states, but so is Black September. ‘Palestinian’ guerrilla fighters under Yassir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization escaped east of the river into Jordan used the Hashemite Kingdom as a base to attack Israel, but their presence and politics were leading them into calling for the overthrow of Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy and King Hussein. Finally, open warfare broke out between the PLO and Jordanian forces.

Jordan and the other Arab nations get it: admitting large numbers of ‘Palestinians’ means a very probable eventual attempt to overthrow their governments.

Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt’s military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.

Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.

With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” (Riccardo Fabiani, Crisis Group International’s North Africa Project Director) said.

(Egyptian President Abdel Fattah) el-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai “would become a base for attacks on Israel. Israel would have the right to defend itself … and would strike Egyptian territory.”

“The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands,” he said, “all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.”

President el-Sissi regards Hamas as just another part of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical group Egypt has long attempted to suppress.

The ‘Palestinians’ have created trouble wherever they’ve gone, and the other Arab nations really want no part of them; to put it bluntly, they see the ‘Palestinians’ as trash. And nobody wants to live next to a landfill.

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Once again, Hamas show who they are, but Western leftists will be too blind to see it

We had previously reported on Hamas’ claim that “the fate of many of the remaining 136 Israeli hostages still in captivity has become unknown,” naturally blaming Israel for it.

The terrorists had just released photos of three of the hostages, saying that their fate would soon be revealed, so this is no surprise to anyone:

Hamas says two Israeli hostages are dead, as IDF calls videos ‘psychological torture’ of captives’ families

By Andrew Carey, Lianne Kolirin and Tara John, CNN | Tuesday, January 16, 2024 | 6:03 AM EST

(CNN) Israel said Monday that Hamas is carrying out “psychological torment” as the militant group released a third video in the space of 24 hours featuring the same three hostages being held in Gaza, the last of which appears to show two of the hostages dead.

“Hamas are hit badly by the IDF and all that is left for them is to bring psychological torment to the families [of the hostages], leaving the IDF to clarify things for the families later,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Monday. Continue reading →

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Why do Western liberals refuse to see Hamas for what they are, when the terrorists tell us all about themselves, every day

While the Islamists may lie to people for tactical reasons when it comes to their situation on the ground, they have been very honest about their policies and goals. What I cannot understand is how or why Western liberals just can’t believe them. Hamas has told the world that their goal is to expel all of the Jews from the Levant, to make it an Islamic waqf.

Gaza hostages’ fate unknown, Hamas spokesman says

In his first televised appearance for several weeks, Abu Obeida said many of the hostages “may have been killed,” blaming their fate on Israel.

By Alex Winston | Sunday, January 14, 2024 | 8:35 PM Jerusalem time | Updated 9:32 PM Jerusalem time

The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, said on Sunday that the fate of many of the remaining 136 Israeli hostages still in captivity has become unknown.

In his first televised appearance for several weeks, Abu Obeida said many of the hostages “may have been killed,” blaming their fate on Israel. Continue reading →

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Penn State professor thinks that wars should be ‘fair fights’

A liberal friend of mine in the 90s complained during one of our seemingly endless conflicts that “We did the flyin’ while the bad guys did the dyin’,” combitching that we just weren’t fighting fair! For some cockamamie reason, she seemed to think that military conflicts should be fair. Could someone show me a drill sergeant who would train his soldiers that a fair fight was a good idea? Continue reading →

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Another two bite the dust! Two haters of Jews are out of their jobs

It looked like, unlike former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, Claudine Gay, the President of Harvard University, was going to survive in her job. But she’s gone, gone, gone! From The Harvard Crimson:

Harvard President Claudine Gay resigns, shortest tenure in university history

By Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles, Crimson Staff Writers | Tuesday, January 2, 2024 |  12;57 PM EST

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.

I’ve got to put the rest of this below the fold, because I simply had to embed Queen’s “Another one bites the dust!” Read on, because it isn’t only Dr Gay who has bitten the dust today! Continue reading →

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In New York City, the savages protest in support of savagery

When my good friend William Teach wrote, at 8:25 PM EST on Christmas Day, “What’s the over/under that the @nytimes doesn’t bother to cover this, despite being a NY paper? Maybe a tiny blurb on A25. If these were rioting Jews it would already be on the web front page,” I thought that surely, surely!, even The New York Times couldn’t ignore riots. But, Mr Teach was right: at least as of 8:40 AM EST, there were no stories at all on the front page of the Times website concerning the riots, though there was a story, in the “In Case You Missed It” section about halfway down on the right hand side, “New York City, for Some Jews, Feels Newly Tense : With antisemitism and protests spilling onto the streets of New York, the city’s Jewish population is trying to navigate the new contours of its hometown,” a story dated on December 20th, six days ago.

There was an old joke in the city, from the days when people actually read the dead-trees editions of newspapers, that people on the subways used the Times as a cover to hide from people that they were actually reading the New York Post:

Pro-Palestinian protesters chant ‘Christmas is canceled’ while carrying blood-red mock Nativity scene through NYC — scuffles break out, arrests made

By Larry Celona, Reuven Fenton, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, and Patrick Reilly | Christmas Day, December 25, 2023 | 8:25 PM EST

They’re out to “cancel” Christmas.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters converged on Midtown Monday, lugging a blood-red mock Nativity scene and chanting, “Christmas is canceled here.” Continue reading →

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There’s only one way to win: Israel must stop worrying about the hostages #Hamas hold Hamas, the 'Palestinians,' and the Arabs in general are not part of Western civilization, and we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that they think or act or respond as those of us in the civilized world do.

There’s a line somewhere in Herman Wouk’s “The Winds of War,” in which one of the Henry family, Victor or Byron, responds to demands on Germany as, ‘Isn’t that pretty arrogant, demanding that Germany accept a defeat no one has actually inflicted on them?’ I may have been slightly imprecise with the quote, but I did get the sentiment correct.

And so we come to Hamas and the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs. From London’s The Telegraph:

Hamas leader says hostage deal is ‘all or nothing’

Yahya Sinwar has reportedly insisted on a lasting ceasefire and the release of all Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile figures

by Nataliya Vasilyeva • 21 December 2023 • 7:33 PM

Jerusalem — Hamas’s de-facto leader has said he will only agree to a new truce if it guarantees the release of all Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails, according to reports.

Al Arabi Al Jadidi, a Qatari newspaper, on Thursday quoted an unnamed Egyptian official saying the “leadership of Hamas” had rejected Israel’s offer of a temporary truce in exchange for the release of several dozen Israeli hostages.

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, insisted on a lasting ceasefire and all Palestinian prisoners being released, including several high-profile figures, the newspaper reported.

Simply put, the distinguished Mr Sinwar is demanding that Israel accept a defeat that no one has inflicted on them. Good luck with that!

Sinwar also reportedly demanded that Israel halt its combat operations in Gaza before the deal goes into effect.

Hamas later on Thursday said it would reject any deals to free more hostages until Israel stops bombing Gaza.

“If Israel wants its prisoners alive, then it has no other options but to stop the aggression and the war,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing.

Let’s tell the truth here: Hamas are directly threatening to kill the remaining hostages if the Israel Defence Force does not halt operations and let Hamas survive. As the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left keep whining that the IDF are committing “genocide,” one wonders if it has penetrated their thick skulls that Hamas are threatening the war crime of killing prisoners?

Oh, that’s different, somehow.

There comes a point at which Israel, at which any nation which has some of its citizens held hostage, to force that nation to do something against its own national interests, has to decide that the hostages are simply the unfortunate casualties of war.

The United States learned a hard lesson on this in the 1980s. President Reagan, nice guy that he was, thought that he could win the freedom of American hostages held by the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, through a convoluted arms deal with the terrorists’ sponsor, Iran. And it worked: we got our hostages back.

But we also established a value for taking hostages, and while President Reagan got those captured people back, Hezbollah simply turned around and seized new hostages.

So it is for Israel. Perhaps there could be some sort of cease-fire agreement, and Hamas release all of the hostages they’ve seized, but at the cost of allowing Hamas to survive, and get its top terrorists back. And the next time Hamas tries something — and there will always be a next time with these savages — Hamas will know: there’s real value in seizing civilian hostages.

According to The New York Times, Israel counts 129 people as still being held hostage, though they believe that 21 of them are already dead.

It would have to be a cold-blooded, and horrible, decision to have to take, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ‘war cabinet’ have to decide that these people should all be counted as dead, and not only continue but intensify their attack on Hamas. Israel needs to just plain kill every Hamas leader they can find, regardless of where they are — Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar — and take the actions necessary. Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and all of the top Hamas people need to assume room temperature, to let those younger men who believe they can rise to the top of Hamas that, if they do, they’ll go to meet their 72 virgins.

Israel is a Western democracy, and as conservative as the government are, they are still constrained by the cultural morés of their culture. But Hamas, the ‘Palestinians,’ and the Arabs in general are not part of Western civilization, and we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that they think or act or respond as those of us in the civilized world do.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Our oh-so-noble left simply cannot comprehend what’s happening in the Levant The Palestinians have a culture with values and motives that are simply outside of the ability of the 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' supporting left to comprehend.

The reports concerning the condition of the Israeli hostages taken on October 7th come from Jewish doctors, so naturally, the Usual Suspects and other pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas people — “people” being a term I am using loosely here — won’t believe them and will dismiss them.

Doctor who treated freed Hamas hostages describes physical, sexual and psychological abuse

By Leslie Stahl and David Morgan | Third Sunday of Advent, December 17, 2023 | 9:30 AM EST

Dr Itai Pessach. Photo via CBS News.

About 100 Israeli hostages, kidnapped during the deadly Hamas raid on Israel, have been released after more than 50 days in captivity. Dr. Itai Pessach (director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv), whose team interviewed and examined many of them, told “CBS News Sunday Morning” the freed hostages were brought to the medical center whether they wanted to come or not.“We thought they would need a buffer from that time in captivity, underground, in the dark, with very little food, with a lot of psychological stress,” he said. “We have to remember that these people have not been around since October 7.” Continue reading →