Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Posted on by

When they show you who they are, believe them! Did The New York Times think that no one would notice?

In the first Avengers movie, Robert Downey, Jr, as Tony Stark, spots a SHIELD technician playing a video game at his terminal, and says, loudly, “That man is playing Galaga. He thought we wouldn’t notice, but we did.”

The tech quickly shuts down Galaga and returns to work . . . until the Avengers leave the room, when he brings up the game again.

NYT rehires Hitler-praising Soliman Hijjy to cover Israel-Hamas war

By Shannon Thaler | Friday, October 20, 2023 4:11 PM EDT

A New York Times reporter who came under fire last year for a praising Adolf Hitler in multiple resurfaced Facebook posts was rehired by the Gray Lady to cover the Israel-Palestine war.

Palestinian filmmaker Soliman Hijjy hailed the Nazi leader as recently as 2018 in a post on Facebook, when he shared a photo of himself captioned that he was “in a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust,” per a translation from Arabic by pro-Israel media watchdog site HonestReporting.

That same year, Hijjy was hired by the Times as a freelance journalist and worked on a slew of “visual investigations” published by the organization through 2021, including one on an Israeli airstrike that killed 44 people.

Hijjy’s 2018 post — including a 2012 Facebook post where he wrote, “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic alongside a photoshopped image of Hitler seemingly taking a selfie — were unearthed last year, when pro-Israel outlets called out the Times for hiring antisemitic journalists as freelancers. Continue reading →

Posted on by

Money talks University presidents are learning the hard way: promoting anti-Semitism costs schools deep-pockets donors

As we previously reported, on Friday the 13th, Marc Rowan, University of Pennsylvania alumnus, Wharton school of business graduate and CEO of Apollo Global Management based in New York, called on UPenn alumni and supporters to “close their checkbooks” until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott L. Bok step down, saying that under their leadership, the college had embraced anti-Semitism. The linked article from The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that all four of the protesting trustees were Jewish.

And now there’s this:

Penn president said university ‘should have moved faster’ in opposing Palestine Writes speakers with a history of antisemitism

Liz Magill’s comments came within days of a trustee’s resignation over Penn’s handling of the event and after several heavyweight donors withdrew funding support.

by Susan Snyder | Sunday, October 15, 2023 | 2:53 PM EDT | updated: 6:12 PM EDT

The University of Pennsylvania “should have moved faster” to share its position strongly against some speakers with a history of antisemitism appearing at the Palestine Writes festival held on campus last month, the school’s president said in a statement to the campus community Sunday.

Liz Magill’s email comes one day after major donor Jon Huntsman Jr., former governor of Utah and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, China, and Singapore, said his family’s foundation would halt donations to Penn, which he said has “become deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable,” according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper, which obtained and published his email to Magill. Continue reading →

Posted on by

“There are no friendly civilians!”

From First Blood:

Colonel Trautman: “Look John, we can’t have you running around out there killing friendly civilians.”
John Rambo : “There are no friendly civilians!”

It was inevitable, of course, that our nation’s major newspapers would allow opinions on the Israeli-Hamas War from ‘both’ sides, but I have to ask: is there really more than one ‘side’ in response to a deliberate terrorist attack which has killed more than a thousand Israeli civilians, including children and infants? Apparently Karen Attiah of The Washington Post believes that there is! Continue reading →

Posted on by

I love it when a plan comes together . . . and when someone else’s plans fall apart! When people tell you who they are, believe them!

Perhaps my good friend Christine Flowers didn’t get to cancel these people herself, but it does show that while we all have our freedom of speech, other people have a freedom to listen, and some people might not like what you have to say!

Harvard students scramble to take back support for letter attacking Israel as some CEOs look to blacklist them

By Melissa Koenig | Wednesday, October 11, 2023 | 2:34 PM EDT

A flurry of Harvard University students and groups are desperately trying to backtrack on their support of a letter blaming Israel for the mass slaughter of its own people by Hamas terrorists — as some business titans seek to blacklist them from future jobs. Continue reading →

Posted on by

The Israeli-Hamas War and the frustration of the Usual Suspects

As my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach has noted, the Editorial Board of The New York Times has unambiguously supported Israel following the sneak attacks by Hamas guerrilla fighters.

The brutal terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas is a tragedy, one that may change the course of the nation and the entire region.

The Editorial Board minced no words in calling the attacks “terrorist,” which they certainly were:

To the world’s horror, they attacked civilians — including older people, women and children — and took them hostage. More than 150 people remain captive in Gaza, in a further atrocity.

As we previously reported, the Times covered the attacks extensively. The 24-hour cable news networks? They are doing the same thing. But, as we also reported, the very #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 Philadelphia Inquirer has been strangely quiet on the whole thing. Columnist Trudy Rubin, who does appear to support the Israelis at least somewhat, criticized Israel’s security policies, which is at least realistic given that the nation was caught completely by surprise.

Far-left columnist Will Bunch? He gave the obligatory statement that yes, Hamas attack was “butcherous,” “immoral and unconscionable”, right before blaming Israel and it’s “long-running, brutal occupation regime”:

When I was 11, I naively hoped the song lyric, “War! What is it good for?” would be a transistor-radio memory and not a question I’d be asking myself again and again for the rest of my life. The butcherous attacks by Hamas on civilians in southern Israel are immoral and unconscionable — as are Israel’s policies that turned the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison for 2 million people. There were plenty of chances for the world to fight for peace in this troubled land, instead of waiting until the bombs are bursting in air, when it is always too late. On that same plastic radio, I heard John Lennon sing, “War is over … if you want it.” He would have turned 83 on Monday. .  .  .  .

This week’s question: Most U.S. politicians have rightly condemned the barbarous attacks on civilians by Hamas, but with little mention of Israel’s long-running, brutal occupation regime. Is that fair under these circumstances? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer.

American leftists supporting a people who would throw them in jail — or off a tall building — if they were actually queer in ‘Palestine.’

The newspaper’s Editorial Board? Pretty much the same thing, telling readers how horrible Hamas surprise attack was, but then turning right around to blame congressional Republicans, and, for good measure, Donald Trump:

Over the weekend, rather than uniting around a plan for peace, Republican leaders, including Trump, tried to sow division by blaming Biden for releasing $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets in August as part of a prisoner swap.

Never mind that Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the money was earmarked for humanitarian support and had not been spent yet. Or that Trump may share some blame in provoking the Palestinians — and encouraging Netanyahu’s right-wing supporters — when he moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

It would take someone completely uneducated in economics to fail to understand that even if the freed dollars were entirely spent on “humanitarian support,” the fact that they exist frees up other money which can be then used for other things, including weapons. And President Trump was simply obeying a long ago passed law which mandated the embassy move to Israel’s capital. Continue reading →

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.
Posted on by

Israel is great, militarily, but let’s tell the truth here: they have proven to be poor conquerors. 

New York Times website main page, October 8, 2023. Click to enlarge.

That The New York Times is unabashedly liberal is of no surprise to anyone, but at least the Gray Lady does cover the news. My normal first read of newspapers is The Philadelphia Inquirer, which showed exactly one story concerning the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, on the website main page.

The Times had eight stories, covering the story from several different angles. Two clearly-labeled opinion pieces, by Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens, added to the Times coverage, while none of the Inky’s columnists seemed interested in the story, the most important story of the day.

Hamas’s Control of Gaza Must End Now

by Bret Stephens | Saturday, October 7, 2023

It’s easy to note the parallels between Hamas’s attack on Israel on Saturday morning and the Yom Kippur war, which began 50 years ago Friday. Continue reading →

Posted on by

Bill Kristol and the Neocons sure love them some war Mr Kristol never served, but he's very willing to get other people's kids killed!

See Robert Stacy McCain: A Self-Inflicted Disaster as Republi-cans Vote to Boot Kevin McCarthy as Speaker

With the comedy show playing out in the House of Representatives over Kevin McCarthy being booted out of the Speaker’s chair, the warmongers are calling on the Representatives who support Ukraine to refuse to support anyone for Speaker who does not promise to hold a vote to continue funding Ukraine in the war there.

According to the neocons like Bill Kristol[1]Mr Kristol, born into a well-to-do family, now with an estimated net worth of $10 million, was born on December 23, 1952, which had him turning 18 in late 1970. If he really believed that war was a … Continue reading and Matt Boot, if Russia wins in Ukraine, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will then send his troops into other countries, NATO countries, in further wars of conquest. After all, we didn’t stop Adolf Hitler at Munich, right, and after he took the Sudetenland, and the rest of Czechoslovakia, he sent the Wehrmacht rolling into Poland.

But this isn’t 1939, and the Russian army hasn’t rolled over Ukraine in three weeks, the way the Nazis did in their half of Poland.[2]The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact ‘gave’ the USSR the eastern half of Poland, which the Red Army took. It’s been over a year and a half since the Russians invaded, and the war has been a costly stalemate for Russia, which holds part of Ukraine, but if the Russians are not advancing and conquering the whole country, the Ukrainians have been unable to kick the Russians out. Ukraine is being devastated, industries damaged or destroyed, and people are being killed, but the war is simply not moving much.

This is where the neocons have gotten it all wrong. Even if Russia, in the end, finally wins and conquers Ukraine, its army has been seriously weakened, through the loss of men and machines. For a victorious Russia to then turn against one of the Baltic States, all of which are NATO member, would require many years, probably a decade of rebuilding, rearming, and re-equipping the Russian army. Simply put, Russia can’t turn against Estonia quickly.

There’s more. Adolf Hitler was just 50 years old when Germany invaded Poland; President Putin turns 71 in three days. If it takes Russia ten years to rebuild its army to invade another country, Vladimir Vladimirovich would be 81 years old by that time. Will Mr Putin still be in power at age 81? Will he even live to see that age?

There is some serious World War II thinking infecting the neocons, but it isn’t World War II we are facing or fighting. The potential, if we get as involved as Mr Kristol wants, is not World War II, but World War III.

References

References
↑1 Mr Kristol, born into a well-to-do family, now with an estimated net worth of $10 million, was born on December 23, 1952, which had him turning 18 in late 1970. If he really believed that war was a great idea, he was of age to have enlisted in the United States Army to help fight in Vietnam .  .  . but he didn’t. His draft lotter number was 171, so he was kind of on the cusp of being called up to serve, but in any event, never served a single day in uniform. Being Jewish, Mr Kristol could also have volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defence Force, which could have used his service in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but he didn’t do that, either.
↑2 The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact ‘gave’ the USSR the eastern half of Poland, which the Red Army took.
Posted on by

World War III Watch: The British might send ‘advisors’ and ‘training’ troops to Ukraine Didn't President Kennedy do the same thing in Vietnam?

Just as the House of Representatives sends a continuing resolution to the Senate to keep the federal government from shutting down, a CR which maintains the current, hideous level of spending, but strips out money for Ukraine, we get this news from across the pond:

UK aims to offer military training inside Ukraine, minister says

Saturday, September 30, 2023 | 5:51 PM EDT

LONDON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Britain’s government wants to deploy military instructors to Ukraine, in addition to training Ukrainian armed forces in Britain or other Western countries as at present, British defence minister Grant Shapps said in a newspaper interview.

To date, Britain and its allies have avoided a formal military presence in Ukraine to reduce the risk of a direct conflict with Russia.

Britain has provided five-week military training courses to around 20,000 Ukrainians over the past year, and intends to train a similar number going forward.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Shapps said there was scope to offer military training within Ukraine after a discussion on Friday with British military chiefs.

“I was talking today about eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well,” he was quoted as saying. “Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country’,” he added.

Sending American troops to train the South Vietnamese, but not to fight their battles for them; how did that work out? By November 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated, there were at least 16,000 US military ‘advisors’ in Vietnam.

Wars tend to be unpredictable things, but one thing is certain: British soldiers, who are quite literally NATO soldiers, actually in Ukraine, become targets. I’d like to think that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would be sensible enough to tell his army not to target the Brits, but even if he does precisely that, poor intelligence, rotten guidance, lousy communications, and just the plain misfortunes of war could lead to some British troops being blasted away.

And what happens then? Such would not technically be an attack on NATO nations, since the British troops would be in Ukraine, but this looks a whole lot like the stupidity which led to over 58,000 names on the Vietnam War memorial wall, all for a war we just plain lost.

Losing the war in Vietnam was a tragedy, but it wasn’t an existential one. We didn’t lose our freedom, we were not conquered by the Communists. It was a loss at distance, a loss which cost us a lot of money and a lot of blood, but we survived just fine, thank you very much.

Ukraine is not the same thing. For Ukraine to win, Russia has to lose, and a Russia that is losing, especially if Vladimir Vladimirovich sees himself as possibly losing his hold on power, might react in ways which we would not like at all.