Monthly Archives: May 2024

A Plan to Protect Rafah Civilians

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, and especially his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have made plain their opposition to Israel’s military entering Rafah without a realistic plan to move civilians out of harm’s way. And this, from Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies Executive Director Tamir Hayman:

The benefits are very few, especially if you compare it to the negative effects[.]

Apparently, he thinks destroying Hamas and preventing the permanently serial occurrences of October 7s promised by Hamas leadership doesn’t outweigh the potential loss of opportunity to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and build a regional partnership that could act as a counterweight to Iran on the line. Or he doesn’t believe Hamas’ promise to continue its campaign of destruction of Israel. On either of those alternatives, I think he’s wrong.

Thus, I propose a plan that would, if not permanently, at least for a very long time, protect those Rafah civilians, and all of the civilians of the Gaza Strip.

The IDF should go into Rafah without further delay, go in in force, and utterly destroy the remaining Hamas terrorists. That would release those civilians from being used as shields by the terrorists, and it would stop those civilians’ residences, schools, mosques, and hospitals being used by the terrorists as weapons storage sites, weapons launching facilities, and command centers.

The destruction of Hamas, removing the cause of civilian harm, is the best and most long-term effective way to move civilians out of harm’s way.

Adult-Run Universities

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Ben Sasse, President of the University of Florida, had an opinion piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal that is, in the main, spot on. The thrust of his article was that, with adults in charge of our colleges and universities, and with those adults holding misbehaving students responsible for their behavior, actual idea-centric debate and education can occur.

The thrust of Sasse’s complete remarks are spot on, but I do have a couple of disagreements.

Pro-Hamas agitators have fought police, barricaded themselves in university buildings, shut down classes, forced commencement cancellations, and physically impeded Jewish students from attending lectures.

Pro-Hamas terrorist-supporting agitators have…. The seeming redundancy is necessary to clarify who and what these…persons…are.

Second, these terrorist supporters and the student populations who have consciously decided to go along with the agitation have not shut down any classes or forced any commencement cancelations. The cowardice of college and university management teams and of far too many “professors” has done that with their craven decisions.

It’s also the cowardice of those teams and “professors” that has facilitated those terrorist-supporting agitators’ and their student accomplices’ clashes with police, building occupations, and obstruction of Jewish and all other students’ attempts to attend the classes and lectures for which they’re paying more than a few pretty pennies.

Suckers

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As the WSJ editors note, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is so desperate in his kowtowing to his terrorist-supporting Left and to the just as enthusiastically terrorist-supporting staff in his administration, that he’s gone so far as to hold up a weapons shipment for Israel. He’s anxiously trying to force Israel to agree a cease fire right damn now.

Meanwhile, he’s ignoring the simple fact that Hamas is demanding a permanent end to the war it began last October 7 and continues to prosecute. Biden also is ignoring that Hamas has walked away from the latest round of cease fire “negotiations” because Israel can’t agree to an end to a war that Hamas can only be trusted to resume.

We’re told that Hamas hasn’t budged on its negotiating demands, which include a permanent end to the war, not merely a cease-fire.

Israel is right on that. Hamas will never honor an agreement for a permanent end to the war: Hamas has promised October 7 attacks until Israel is destroyed. This is just Hamas playing Biden—and far too many others in his administration and in administrations in Europe—for the suckers they are.

Now, as I write this, in the moment Israel has warned Rafah residents to evacuate to a set-up-for-the-purpose humanitarian aid area in al-Masawi (roughly 3-4 miles north of Rafah and within a quarter mile of the sea coast) in advance of an imminent assault on the city, comes word that Hamas claims to have agreed a framework for a cease fire. But framework only, and with no mention of any hostage releases or trades.

That’s another Hamas sucker play.

Presidential Debates in 2024

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Karl Rove wants a return to simplicity:

A return to simplicity would mean fewer diversions….

His idea for achieving this:

The first presidential debates between the parties’ nominees, Kennedy and Nixon in 1960, were done in small TV studios. Only the moderator, a panel of journalists, and a handful of network executives were present.

Except in 1960, the press wasn’t nearly so biased as it is today—and nakedly, proudly so today.

And a pressman moderator? Recall even in the 2015-16 Republican primary debates, how blatantly Moderator Wolf Blitzer, during that debate’s Audience Question Time, took the question that an audience member asked on national television and completely distorted it into something that Blitzer wanted asked instead.

Rove’s idea isn’t particularly balanced in its simplicity.

On the other hand, it’s hard to see how much simpler it could get than a two-hour debate in a town hall setting with Trump and Biden, and RFK, Jr, if he’d be willing to show up; Each debater would take turns taking questions from the audience that each debater then would answer. There would be no moderator from the press to screen the questions; the debaters would simply take their chances on selecting an audience member to ask his/her question.

The two hours would give the viewers and the town hall audience ample opportunity to evaluate policies on offer (if any); the ability of each debater to concretely answer the question asked, even to stick to each question’s subject over the two-hour course; and the ability of each debater to remain focused and clear for the duration.

Then do at least two more such town hall debates. Trump wants more debates than just the three the Commission on Presidential Debates, in its irrelevance, wants; it’d be interesting to learn how many of the other parties’ candidates would be amenable—and who those candidates would be.

Give Us Money

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Trust us to figure out something useful to do with it. In a MarketWatch article centered on auditing the rich, this bit, early in the article, jumped out at me.

The Internal Revenue Service is getting specific about how many more audits it wants to spring on rich taxpayers and businesses, as the tax collector absorbs billions of dollars in funding in order to toughen tax compliance at the top.

This is backwards, for all that it’s too typical of the way Congress works. What should have happened, and what We the People can make happen if we finally get our own backs up and elect people who’ll represent us and not lobbyists, is that Congress should have responded to the IRS’ budget item request—here, expanded audit rates—with a requirement to show Congress IRS’ plan for carrying out those audits. That plan should have been required to lay out all the gory details and not filled with glittering generalities and vague goals.

There should have been no funds appropriated, much less allocated, until that detailed plan was provided and was satisfactory to Congress. Of course, the flip side of that, is Congress should appropriate and allocate the relevant funds, if the plan was sufficient: Congress should not micromanage the thing.

But Congress didn’t, and it won’t any time soon.