Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Posted on by

Hamas delendum est Concern for the hostages should not stop Israel from doing what is necessary

My New York Times subscription is less expensive than my subscription to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The New York Times, one of the few newspapers which continues to engage in serious journalism these days, had a very long article on Yahya Sinwar, the senior Hamas official in Gaza:

Yahya Sinwar Helped Start the War in Gaza. Now He’s Key to Its Endgame.

Hamas’s leader in Gaza is considered an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks that prompted Israel to retaliate. As mediators seek a cease-fire, a deal depends on Mr. Sinwar as well as his Israeli foes.

By Patrick Kingsley, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem and Washington, the reporters spoke to officials from Hamas, Israel and the United States about Mr. Sinwar. | Mother’s Day, May 12, 2024

After Hamas attacked Israel in October, igniting the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders described the group’s most senior official in the territory, Yahya Sinwar, as a “dead man walking.” Considering him an architect of the raid, Israel has portrayed Mr. Sinwar’s assassination as a major goal of its devastating counterattack. Continue reading →

Posted on by

Holding their breath until they turn blue

The Princeton Princess, her neckbearded ally, and the girl who really needed to go on a hunger strike.

The only real weapon a hunger striker has is the concern of those against whom he is striking that the hunger strikers might actually die, bringing negative repercussions on those the striker opposes. If the hunger strikers are not actually prepared to die for their cause, they have no power at all. And, as I previously noted, a hunger strike is only effective if someone actually cares if you starve yourself to death.

Many people, including me, mocked the Princeton princess and her whining about the rigors of the students’ hunger strike, because it showed the unseriousness of it. Now we have this:

Princeton University students end anti-Israel hunger strike ‘due to health concerns’

The end of the ‘hunger strike’ came after members initially vowed not to eat or drink again

by Lawrence Richard | Monday, May 13, 2024 | 4:14 AM EDT

Students at Princeton University protesting Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza have called an end to their hunger strike after just 10 days.

Princeton Divest Now, the student protest group that is calling for the New Jersey Ivy League university to divest from America’s Middle Eastern ally due to the high civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip, said additional strikers would be continuing their efforts. Continue reading →

Posted on by

What part of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” don’t they understand? Hamas are not peaceful, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that their collegiate supporters have not been either

Gaza Rally, May 1, 2024, photo by Abbey Cutrer, Kentucky Kernel. How many were there supporting the rally, and how many were just spectators?

No one has been more supportive of the right of the pro-Hamas demonstrators to exercise their freedom of speech and right to peaceably assemble to proclaim their positions than The First Street Journal has been. We have pointed out how the keffiyeh-wearing activists — and I regard wearing the black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh as qualitatively indistinguishable from wearing a Nazi swastika armband — had their demonstration at the University of Kentucky, made their points in a rally in front of the school’s main library, waved their Palestinian flags, and, when it was over, picked up their stuff and went home. I have supported the right of the Princeton University hunger strikers to starve themselves to make their point, even as I mocked them, because I unequivocally support Israel in their war against Hamas and I support freedom of speech. I have even said that it’s a bit pointless to use force to break up the protest encampments, because, with the semester ending, these encampments will just wither away.

As it happened, the powers that be at the University of Pennsylvania decided against just leaving the encampments alone, and the Philadelphia Police broke it up and arrested some of the campers. They were definitely the Usual Suspects, as Fox 29 News reported that only 7 of the 33 people arrested for ‘defiant trespassing’ were actually Penn students. Continue reading →

Posted on by

A hunger strike is only effective if someone actually cares if you starve yourself to death

Do you know who Aaron Bushnell was? Perhaps the name is familiar, but most people would be forgiven if they didn’t remember who he was or why they had heard his name. Senior Airman Bushnell, an enlisted man in the United States Air Force, poured an inflammable liquid on himself and committed suicide via self-immolation outside of the gates of the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest American support for Israel in their war against Hamas. SrA Bushnell was famous for a couple of days, but, let’s be honest here, while people do remember the event, the late Mr Bushnell personally wasn’t famous for long.

As we previously reported, Khader Adnan was a long-time Palestinian Arab activist, and at one point a spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Arrested many times, Mr Adnan’s weapon of choice in detention was the hunger strike. His first hunger strike, ten days long, occurred in 2000, when he was locked up not by the Israelis, but the Palestinian National Authority. In 2011, he began another hunger strike, one which lasted 66 days. In 2015, he undertook a 56-day hunger strike, which resulted in Israel releasing him. He kept getting himself arrested, and finally, after another, much longer 87-day hunger strike, died in prison on May 2, 2023.

We also reported, in February, how several Brown University students went on an eight-day-long hunger strike, and then mocked the quaint story that 30 Harvard students went on a 12 hour hunger strike in solidarity with their fellow Ivy Leaguers.

And now? Roughly 15 pro-Hamas students have gone on a hunger strike at Princeton, and hunger strikes are serious things, but they’ve opened themselves up to justifiable mockery. Continue reading →

Posted on by

We all have #FreedomOfSpeech, but that does not come with freedom from consequences The anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas protesters are finding out that some people have listened to them, and don't like what they've said

I spotted this on my feed this morning, and the different reactions are humorous.

Conservative judges say they will boycott Columbia University students

The judges accused Columbia of becoming “ground zero for the explosion of student disruptions, anti-semitism, and hatred for diverse viewpoints on campuses.”

By Tobi Raji | Tuesday, May 7, 2024 | 6:42 PM EDT

More than a dozen conservative federal judges are threatening to not hire law clerks who attend Columbia University or its law school starting this fall — an attempt to show the judges’ displeasure over the institution’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests.

Continue reading →

Posted on by

The pro #Hamas protesters do everything except actually go to Gaza to help

I have said, on Twitter, more times than I could ever have counted, that if the pro-Hamas protesters really wanted to help the poor, poor people in Gaza, they should pick up a rifle and head to Gaza to fight the hated Joooos along with the people they champion. Thus far, I haven’t heard of an American actually doing that, though it’s possible that a few have done so and I missed the media stories about it. National Public Radio reported that “hundreds” of Americans, primarily veterans, have gone to Ukraine to fight the Russians, and a Google search for American volunteers fighting in Gaza turned up several credentialed media sources reporting how Americans have been heading to the Middle East to support and fight for Israel, but if there are any stories about Americans fighting for the Arabs, I’ve missed them.

Then again, just how stupid would you have to be to voluntarily choose to fight the Israel Defence Force? The IDF don’t play.

GWU law professor calls on anti-Israel students to leave ‘mommy and daddy’ paid dorm rooms, go to Gaza

Prof. Roth told students that they should consider volunteering instead of protesting on campus

by Jeffrey Clark | Monday, May 6, 2024 | 1:34 PM EDT Continue reading →

Posted on by

“I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” The pro-Hamas demonstrators have completely ignored the truth.

We have previously noted the idiocy of those holding a “Queers for Palestine” banner, something that even the homosexual activist publication The Advocate said was stupid.

But the image of te guy on the right? You can tell that he’s an American or Brit, because the signs are in English for English readers, and he’s enjoying his Western civilization world of freedom of speech, because if he wore that shirt in Tehran or Cairo or just about anyplace in the Muslim Middle East, he’d be taken straight to jail, doubtlessly beaten, and could well be prosecuted for blasphemy.

Well, maybe not. Try wearing a shirt which proclaims “Allah is Gay” in Riyadh, and you might not even make it to jail, you might well be beaten to death even before the police got there.

Then there’s this: Continue reading →

Posted on by

Why are there so few pro-#Hamas demonstrations in conservative areas?

I have been checking the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Kentucky Kernel, the UK student newspaper for which I used to write back during the days of quill pens and inkwells, every day, and I have yet to see any reports of pro-Hamas, or pro-Israel, protests of demonstrations on campus or in the city. Yes, that shows that Kentucky students are just plain smarter than those elite and effete Ivy Leaguers, but then it occurred to me: there are very few Jewish students at UK, with Jews being a very small minority in the Bluegrass State as a whole, while the reports of demonstrations at Penn and Hahvahd and Columbia are occurring at schools with significant Jewish populations, and it leads me to think that these demonstrations really are just as much anti-Semitic as they are pro-Palestinian.

Posted on by

Green virtue signaling Too bad that they don't know what they are talking about

Every so often I can see the virtue signaling of the environmentalists that just makes me laugh. Former Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) may have been totally inept at actually running the city, but he sure was great at getting a ‘sugary beverage tax’ passed, to fight obesity, don’t you know, that’s none of the city’s business. And even though he was fully in support of ‘my body, my choice’ when it came to women killing their yet-to-be-born children, he was adamant and aggressive in fighting the unions to get city employees who wanted to exercise bodily autonomy when it came to taking an experimental vaccine.

Then, about six years ago, in his effort to fight global warming climate change, he pushed a project to get solar power for electricity for city-owned buildings. Continue reading →