War between Hamas and Israel

[N.E. Brigand]

A political science professor polled American college students and found that only 47% of them could identify both the "river" and the "sea" that is the subject of so many pro-Palestinian chants, and once they were shown a map, they often softened their position. And among those students who knew it refers to the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, some have interpreted it as a call for peaceful Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.

It's amusing that some respondents thought that Yasser Arafat was an Israeli prime minister.

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I thought it was a joke, but intifada really does derive from a word meaning "shake it off."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's amusing that some respondents thought that Yasser Arafat was an Israeli prime minister.

I'm not convinced that "amusing" is the correct word here.

[N.E. Brigand]

An Israeli soldier killed in the war today is the son of one of Israel's War Cabinet ministers, Gadi Eizenkot (one of the top members of the opposition party).

[N.E. Brigand]

I think Israel's response to the Oct. 7th massacre, whether or not it legally constitutes war crimes, has been indiscriminate and disproportionate, although in the first weeks, I was include to grant Israel some leeway. (As if my opinion makes any difference.) And given the ever mounting evidence* that Israel had but ignored the intelligence necessary to prevent that attack, I am growing comfortable with the idea that the total elimination of Hamas may not be a necessary step to preventing future attacks of that nature. While the total elimination of Hamas might be a moral good in the abstract, if it can't be achieved without enormous civilian casualties, then Israel probably ought to stand down. At least once the hostages are all freed. (How can that be negotiable? If I'm ever kidnapped by a terrorist organization, I would expect my government to kill every last person who stands in the way in order to free me. Wouldn't you? But of course, it's not clear who is standing in the way and who is unable to get out of the way.) There has to be some balance.

(*Haaretz reports that on Oct. 6th, the IDF discussed intelligence of a possible Hamas attack.)
 
And speaking of balance:



Not to mention that the Trump administration cut aid to Palestinians which the Biden administration later restored.

But for some on the left, even Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who was censured last month by the House of Representatives for some pro-Palestianian statements that arguably crossed the line into calling for the elimination of Israel (it depends on what she really meant by championing the "from the river to the sea" slogan: she should be smarter than those college students I mentioned yesterday), is an "imperialist collaborator."

[N.E. Brigand]

Ugh. After video circulated today showing Nihad Amad, the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a D.C.-based advocacy group, addressing American Muslims for Palestine on Nov. 24, the White House quite reasonably removed from its materials all references to CAIR -- most of whose work has been to fight Islamophobic discrimination -- and I don't think the organization can survive those remarks, certainly not with Amad in charge. In the video, Amad says he was "happy" at the events of Oct. 7th, which he described as "self-defense" by people who were "walk[ing] free into their own land," and he added that Israel "does not have that right to self-defense."

[N.E. Brigand]

The White House has now issued a condemnation of Amad's "shocking Antisemitic" comments on Oct. 7th.

[N.E. Brigand]

Somehow I previously overlooked the fact that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have ties to the University of Pennsylvania, whose president was one of three Ivy League executives who floundered more than a little the other day when trying to respond to Rep. Elise Stefanik's somewhat fallacious question (it was a "When did you stop beating your wife?" type of question) about Antisemitism and campus speech codes in light of students chanting some very hateful (but almost certainly legally protected) things. As a result of their testimony, one major donor has rescinded his previously announced $100 million gift to Penn. He'd previously withdrawn another gift because he thought the university's equity, diversity, and inclusion policies went too far. There's an argument that these universities and also the people now criticizing the universities want it both ways: free speech only when it's the kind of speech they like. But to return to where I started: Donald Trump got his bachelor's degree from Penn's Wharton School (his children Don Jr., Ivanka, and Tiffany* also graduated from Penn; I didn't realize until just now that Tiffany had gone on to get a JD from Georgetown), and Joe Biden for the four years prior to his presidency was a guest professor at Penn.

*Edited weeks later to add something I didn't know: Tiffany Trump's parents, Donald and Marla, weren't married when she was born in 1993. Obviously that fact has no real importance, except that it was only a year earlier that Republicans raised a big stink about the television character Murphy Brown having a child out of wedlock.

[N.E. Brigand]

Somehow I previously overlooked the fact that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have ties to the University of Pennsylvania, whose president was one of three Ivy League executives who floundered more than a little the other day when trying to respond to Rep. Elise Stefanik's somewhat fallacious question (it was a "When did you stop beating your wife?" type of question) about Antisemitism and campus speech codes in light of students chanting some very hateful (but almost certainly legally protected) things. As a result of their testimony, one major donor has rescinded his previously announced $100 million gift to Penn. He'd previously withdrawn another gift because he thought the university's equity, diversity, and inclusion policies went too far. There's an argument that these universities and also the people now criticizing the universities want it both ways: free speech only when it's the kind of speech they like. But to return to where I started: Donald Trump got his bachelor's degree from Penn's Wharton School (his children Don Jr., Ivanka, and Tiffany also graduated from Penn; I didn't realize until just now that Tiffany had gone on to get a JD from Georgetown), and Joe Biden for the four years prior to his presidency was a guest professor at Penn.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, usually called just "FIRE", a civil liberties organization (with something of a conservative - libertarian bent) that supports campus speech rights, notes some irony: the event that eventually led to FIRE being created in 1999 was the "water buffalo" a free speech case at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, when a Jewish student of Israeli birth was accused of harassing African American students in what seems to have been a linguistic misunderstanding. FIRE is concerned about the pressure that conservatives are putting on Penn and other schools to restrict hateful (but legal) speech.

(A bonus for me reading up about this was learning the etymology of "behemoth.")

[Sunsilver]

SERIOUSLY??
WHY??

I really can't wrap my head around Israeli politics prior to the invasion!

[N.E. Brigand]

A new poll echoes others in finding that 19% of Israelis want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in offce, 9% have no opinion, and 72% want Netanyahu to step down. But those 72% are split between 31% who want him gone now and 41% who want him gone after the war. Does that mean the war will never end?

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Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, has resigned following political pressure from (mostly) the right. (She will remain a tenured law professor at Penn.) From the linked column by Jonathan Chait at The New Republic:

The job of a college president involves constantly apologizing and promising to do better. This week, several elite college presidents’ object of their groveling was Congress, which subjected them to a series of largely impossible queries about antisemitism on campus at a hearing everybody agrees went quite poorly for them.

One of the most instantly infamous exchanges took place between Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, and the Republican representative Kevin Kiley from California. “If you were talking to a prospective student’s family, a Jewish student’s family right now,” asked Kiley, “could you look them in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter would be safe and feel safe and welcome on your campus?”

Gay replied, “We are absolutely committed to student safety.” Kiley noted acidly that Gay had dodged the question, that he repeated it but received the same answer.

And it is true that she failed to answer the question — because there’s no good answer. If Gay says Jewish students would feel absolutely safe on campus, she is denying the problem. If she says they wouldn’t, she is telling Jewish students they shouldn’t come to Harvard.

There are several underlying causes for the discomfort of the college presidents, not all of which have clear solutions. College campuses have been inundated with pro-Palestinian activism, which sometimes contains a threatening tone to Jewish students. Campuses have also been struggling for a decade or so with left-wing demands to make campuses “safe,” which has entailed cracking down on criticism of the political left.

Chait argues that universities went astray by policing speech rather than conduct. He notes in this piece, which was written before Liz Magill resigned, that she made exactly that point: "If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes. ... if It is directed and sever, pervasive, it is harassment. ... [but determining what speech violates the schools' code of conduct] is a context-dependent decision".

Chait notes that the university presidents were being asked:

about the phrase 'globalize the intifada,' a slogan used by many pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Like many slogans, this one is deliberately ambiguous. Globalizing the intifada can simply mean mobilizing demonstrators across the world to support the Palestinian cause. It can also mean spreading the tactics of the intifada (which include attacks on civilians) across the world, which almost inherently means attacking Jews — after all, there aren’t many Israeli state targets outside Israel. Many Jews quite rationally find the phrase to be a form of incitement against them. And given that pro-Palestinian activism sometimes extends to actions like vandalizing synagogues and Jewish businesses or confronting Jewish students, it seems clear that at least some activists understand the slogan the same way.

However, the members of Congress doing the questioning were "defining it even more aggressively, though, by using the shorthand 'calling for the genocide of Jews.' As threatening as it may be, globalizing the intifada does not mean genocide."

Damon Linker argues that "it's all very unfortunate. [Magill] was in a very bad bind and handled it clumsily. She had to go because she couldn't have done the job going forward, but she did nothing to deserve this fate in any objective sense." Echoing Chait in noting that "the university professors were completely right," Ken White implores Americans to "Stop Demanding Dumb Answers To Hard Questions," and he's not the only one to point out that the Congressperson who took the lead in last week's show trial was Elise Stefanik, who has promoted (and never apologized for) the Antisemitic "Great Replacement" theory.

Edited to add the news the University of Pennsylvania's board chair, Scott Bok, has also resigned.

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Something that probably has an effect on the number of young people uttering not-quite-genocidal chants is that, per a new poll from The Economist, 20% of younger Americans (age 18-29) believe the Holocaust didn't happen.

[N.E. Brigand]

In a new op-ed in Haaretz, Alon Pinkas argues that "Netanyahu must be politically destroyed, or Israel will go down with him."

[N.E. Brigand]

Sen. Bernie Sanders takes a fairly nuanced position on the conflict. He voted last week against military funding for Israel, but yesterday he also said this:

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I've been fairly critical of Sanders at times, but on this I am completely aligned with him (both about conditioning aid to Israel and on not calling for a permanent ceasefire with Hamas).

[N.E. Brigand]

Yeah, in the short term, Israel doesn't really need U.S. funding to conduct its war against Hamas (which I believe is a just war in purpose but not so much in execution), nor to ensure its continued existence (a cause which I wholeheartedly endorse), so any funding right now is just for show.

(Ukraine, on the other hand, desperately needs U.S. funds, and I fear that Republicans will abandon that nation to Russian hands.)

But some on the farther left are unhappy with Sanders's position. The person at that link respond to Sanders's non-committal comments about Antisemitism on U.S. college campuses by pointing out that Rep. Stefanik was wrong (as the very moderate Jonathan Chait says above) to conflate "intifada" with "genocide." She was, but I think it's entirely understandable that many ordinary Americans would believe the two terms are synonymous, and I think that a significant percentage of Palestinians certainly intend for intifada to lead to at least ethnic cleansing (the removal of all Jews from the Levant).

I appreciate this short reminder about why the two-state solution remains the best option.

Matt Yglesias argues that: "Israelis have deluded themselves about how generous their past offers have been" and "Palestine's false friends are doing the people a disservice with unrealistic demands," but notes that "far flung settlements are an obstacle to peace, but with prudent land swaps, 77 percent of settlers can be annexed with Palestine receiving full compensation. Relocating 150,000 people is much easier than remaking the fundamental nature of Israel." However, "Israelis seem to think that Palestinians have been rejecting these kind of offers out of hand, but the truth is they've only been made by lame ducks on the verge of losing power who lacked majorities for their proposal," while "expressive solidarity with maximal Palestinian demands just makes the entire Palestinian cause look unreasonable and gives Israel a free pass."

[N.E. Brigand]

Three updates from recent days by Khaled Abu Toameh, a freelance journalist who focuses on Palestinian affairs:

Another reminder that two countries border Gaza:


I think it would behoove Israel to provide these services, but I don't know whether or not it is Israel's legal responsibility:


I think that Israel is allowing the Red Cross / Red Crescent to visit Hamas prisoners, but I'd like confirmation of that:

[Frelga]

There has been at least one murder that was not officially tied to pro-Palestinian protests. In a separate incident, a pro-Israel protestor was killed by a pro-palestinian one. Synagogues have been threatened, Jewish owned businesses vandalized, Jewish commuters accosted on public transport, Jewish students threatened and attacked in campus, and even Israeli made hummus was targeted in a grocery store. So while it's not a competition, antisemitism is winning.

Meanwhile in Europe, there were at least two murderous attacks (allegedly) perpetrated by Islamist terrorists - in Paris and Brussels. Several more were arrested for (allegedly) planning more attacks.

The backlash is going to hit migrants arriving en masse into the EU and possibly help right-wing hardliners gain power. As these groups are often pro-Russian, it's not hard to see the pattern.

[Alatar]

I'd just like to re-iterate that one can be critical of Israel without being anti-semitic, but it seems that increasingly those two things are conflated.

[N.E. Brigand]

Haaretz reports: "Graphic Videos and Incitement: How the IDF Is Misleading Israelis on Telegram. The IDF unit responsible for psychological warfare operations operates a Telegram channel called '72 Virgins – Uncensored,' which targets local audiences with 'exclusive content from the Gaza Strip'". Really awful behavior by the IDF.

Images of Palestinian captives and the bodies of terrorists were captioned "Exterminating the roaches ... exterminating the Hamas rats. ... Share this beauty." The following text accompanies a video of an Israeli soldier allegedly dipping machine gun bullets in pork fat: "What a man!!!!! Lubricates bullets with lard. You won't get your virgins." And: "Garbage juice!!!! Another dead terrorist!! You have to watch it with the sound, you'll die laughing.

[N.E. Brigand]

Egypt's Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry, says "the [post-war] Palestinian state that would be created would be demilitarized, would not have an armed forces component."

[N.E. Brigand]

Some intransigence on both sides:

1. New polling of Palestinians (in both the West Bank and Gaza) finds, among much else, that:
--72% believe Hamas was correct to launch the Oct. 7th attack (although only 57% of respondents in Gaza agree); and
--90% don't believe that Hamas committed war crimes on Oct. 7th.

2. Israel's ambassador to the U.K., Tzipi Hotovely, said "absolutely no" when asked about a two-state solution which most observers including President Biden have described as the only acceptable long-term outcome to the Israel-Palestine situation.

If most Palestinians really think the Oct. 7th atrocities were justified, then arguably those Palestinians deserve all the hell that Israel chooses to rain down on them. On the other hand, if Israel is truly committed to the perpetual immiseration of Palestinians as a stateless people, then arguably Israeli citizens deserve all the hell that Palestinian militants choose to inflict upon them.

Or maybe both are speaking in the heat of the moment, and cooler heads can prevail.