Tag Archives: Politics

October 12, 2024 · 8:37 am

JUST GO ALREADY!

“It is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately … In the name of God go.” Oliver Cromwell to the Long Parliament, 1653

This coming week, Bob Woodward’s latest book “War” will be released. It will feature several critical, profanity-laced remarks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attributed to President Biden.

It will also remind us of why Oliver Cromwell’s famous words to the Long Parliament seem so apt today. Joe Biden has about 3 months left in office. He cannot go too soon. 

According to CNN, which obtained an advance copy, in the Spring of 2014, Biden privately remarked: “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” He also referred to Netanyahu as a “fucking liar.”

“Bibi, what the fuck?” Biden yelled at Netanyahu in a July telephone conversation, according to Woodward’s book.

These examples of Biden’s penchant for – um, colorful – language, are not exactly news. Last February, Jonathan Martin of Politico reported that Biden called Netanyahu “a bad fucking guy.” Nor are they particularly newsworthy. American presidents dating back to George Washington have been known for voicing strong opinions in private.

A Rolling Stone article of a few year back recounts that President Obama referred to Mitt Romney as “a bullshitter” and Kanye West as “a jackass.” Vice President Dick Cheney advised Senator Patrick Leahy to “go fuck himself” after the two engaged in an argument over Cheney’s ties to Halliburton.  President Truman called General Douglas MacArthur a “dumb son of a bitch,” and he called Richard Nixon a “shifty-eyed goddamned liar.”  A recounting of President Nixon’s [expletive deleted] characterizations of his enemies would fill an encyclopedia.

What makes these recent Biden disclosures significant is the fact that, when judged in context, the remarks remind us of the incredibly poor judgment he has demonstrated throughout his career.

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September 18, 2024 · 3:37 pm

A NEW PAGE(R) IN HISTORY

By the brutal nature of war, urban battles always cause disproportionate civilian death tolls. When Rome suppressed the Great Jewish Revolt in 70 CE, they faced an army in Jerusalem of about 21,000 men. The civilian death toll has been estimated as between 600,000  (Tacitus) and over one million (Josephus). When the Red Army conquered Berlin in 1945, it faced a German force of about 45,000 soldiers.  Over 300,000 civilians died in the battle.

Since October 7, it has become almost routine in fashionable circles to accuse Israel of “genocide.” But the events of the past 48  hours show the opposite. In conducting its war against Hezbollah, a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction, Israel has accomplished a feat virtually unimaginable in the annals of military history. It has disabled or killed thousands of enemy combatants, in urban settings, deeply embedded within the local civilian population, with almost no civilian casualties.

On Tuesday, thousands of pagers exploded in Beirut and other locations in Lebanon and Syria, wounding about 2,800 people. Almost exactly 24 hours later, dozens of walkie-talkies exploded, injuring an additional 450 people.

Nearly every single victim was a soldier or member of Hezbollah. Well, not every victim. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was also wounded. He is not employed by Hezbollah. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that Hezbollah is employed by the ambassador. The fact that the Iranian ambassador was using a Hezbollah pager reveals much about Hezbollah’s status as an Iranian puppet.

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May 2, 2024 · 8:53 am

SHOULD JEWS ABANDON THE IVIES?

Long before the Israeli armed forces moved into Gaza to destroy Hamas, in fact even while the Hamas murderers and rapists were still holding out in Israeli homes along the Gaza Envelope, top-tier American universities were the scenes of pro-Hamas protests, speeches, and encampments. Such deep-seated hostility toward Israel has caused many American Jews to ask: “Should Jews Abandon Ivy League Schools?” – as phrased in the headline of a Jerusalem Post interview of William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations.

The fear that our most prestigious universities are hostile environments, not only for Israel, but for Jews in general, was reinforced by the disastrous congressional hearings last December, where the Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn were unable to say whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ conduct policies.

Is it time for American Jews to abandon elite universities and to look elsewhere for educational opportunities?  Several arguments have been advanced for doing just that.

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April 14, 2024 · 1:19 pm

THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE AGAINST ISRAEL

Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas rampage has led to an unprecedented increase in public hostility. This hostility has been directed not only toward Israel’s military strategy of urban warfare, which, like any such strategy, has led inevitably to widespread death and destruction, but also toward the Jewish State itself. Much of this hostility can be attributed to plain old antisemitism.

At Princeton, the Near Eastern studies department offers a course whose reading list includes a book that claims that Israelis systematically maim Palestinians to harvest their organs.

At the University of Michigan, benches in front of the Hillel House have been defaced with the Star of David, followed by the equal sign, followed by the swastika.

At Harvard, visibly Jewish students have been jeered at and physically assaulted walking to class.

There have been countless other incidents of such run-of-the-mill antisemitism. Still, it would be a mistake to conclude that antisemitism alone undergirds the current hostility toward Israel. After all, some of this hostility comes from Jews themselves.

One of the most visible organizations criticizing Israel has been Jewish Voice for Peace. Commentary Magazine’s Eli Lake has even identified what he calls the “AsAJew” phenomenon, to describe the many Jewish anti-Israel activists who cite their religion to legitimize their tactics. Some of these activists may be fairly described as “self-hating” Jews – but they are Jews nonetheless.

To those who would stand up for Israel, it is important to look beyond antisemitism, and to recognize that hostility toward the Jewish State is also based on something different: the settler-colonial paradigm. According to this conceptual framework, the State of Israel is an illegitimate entity designed and populated by Europeans colonizers who invaded a foreign territory to exploit the indigenous people, and to impose their culture and religion on them. This paradigm views Israelis as comparable to the British settlers in Kenya or the French in Senegal or the Belgians in the Congo.

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February 3, 2024 · 3:42 pm

ODIOUS UNRWA

Last week, news broke that 12 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency tasked with providing assistance and protection for Palestinian refugees, were personally involved in the October 7 Hamas rampage.  One UNRWA employee was armed with an anti-tank missile; another filmed a hostage being taken captive; yet another, an elementary school teacher, served as a Hamas commander and participated in the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri. Another UNRWA employee kidnapped an IDF’s soldier’s body.  (Corpses are valuable to Hamas because Israel is known to release large numbers of prisoners to secure the return of its soldiers’ remains.)

UNRWA’s involvement in the atrocities did not end on October 7. One of the hostages recently released from Gaza revealed that he was held captive in an attic in Gaza for nearly 50 days by a teacher employed by UNRWA.

A second even more disturbing report disclosed that 10% of UNRWA employees have ties to Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad; while about 50% are close relatives to people with ties to those terrorist organizations.

These reports, provided by the Israeli government, were deemed “highly, highly credible,” by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Other governments agreed on the reports’ reliability. After their release, 15 nations suspended their financial contributions to UNRWA.

While the revelations may seem shocking, the most shocking thing about them is the fact that they shock. For anyone familiar with the history and performance of the agency should not have been surprised.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini  insists that the agency is dedicated to “upholding the values of the United Nations” and that it conducts its business with “zero-tolerance policy for hatred.”

The first claim is actually true. UNRWA does uphold the values of the United Nations, an international body that regularly targets Israel for condemnation.  A few years ago, its General Assembly passed a resolution dismissing any Jewish connection to the Old City of Jerusalem.  A UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women has blamed the tendency of Palestinian men to beat their wives on Israeli settlements. The Palestinian Authority’s UN delegation has blamed Israel for global warming. As Abba Eban, a former Israeli Foreign Minister, once quipped: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”

But the second part of Lazzarini’s statement – that UNRWA has “zero-tolerance for hatred” – is a lie. UNWRA was founded upon hatred of the State of Israel, and it has lived to up its disreputable origins ever since.

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January 10, 2024 · 5:04 pm

TRUMP SHOULD STAY ON THE BALLOT

Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument on whether or not Donald Trump is qualified to appear on the ballot in Colorado. Disqualification challenges have become a weapon used by Trump’s opponents to stop him from regaining power. Outside Colorado, a disqualification challenge succeeded in Maine. Challenges in Michigan, Minnesota, and California have failed. But depending on the Court’s ruling, there could be more.

The Supreme Court acted sensibly in accepting the Colorado case on an expedited basis. It would be chaotic to have a presidential election decided by different states following different disqualification criteria. It would also be dangerous to our democratic system.

The Colorado case will focus national attention on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which reads:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The Court will confront a number of issues:

  Does this disqualification language apply to the President? Note that it specifically mentions “Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President.” It also refers broadly to “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.” But it does not specifically mention the presidency itself.

  What constitutes an “insurrection”? Is a violent riot, like the one that occurred on January 6, sufficient? Or must there be an armed and organized attempt to overthrow the government, like the Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace or the Confederates bombarding Fort Sumter?

  What does it mean to have “engaged” in insurrection? Is cheering from the sidelines sufficient? Or must there be personal participation in the activity?

All of these issues present interesting, if arcane, legal issues, the kind lawyers and jurists love delving into and debating. But if it chooses, the Supreme Court can reject Colorado’s attempt to keep Trump off the ballot for two simple and straightforward reasons.

First, Colorado (and Maine) failed to provide Trump with anything even approaching the kind of due process to which he was entitled in this important matter. Second, the question of whether Trump should be disqualified for having engaged in insurrection has already been decided in a trial before the U.S. Senate presided over by the Chief Justice. And he was acquitted. Neither Colorado, nor Maine, nor any state, has the right to retry him.

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