Tag Archives: politics

Israel and Genocide

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In a WSJ article regarding the present explosion of Hamas terrorist pro-Palestinian protests and the demands of disruptors perpetrating these “protests” that the colleges and universities divest from Israel-related investments, there is the disruptors’ claims that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (and, presumably in the West Bank). This claim is risible on its face.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. Even if we take the terrorists’ own claims of casualties in Gaza as accurate—30,000 casualties—this hardly constitutes genocide: those casualties are only a bit over 1% of the Gaza Strip population. If Israel is committing genocide, the nation is atrociously bad at it. At most, that casualty figure would constitute nothing more than Israeli carelessness in protecting civilians as Israel moves to defend itself against the terrorists who inflicted the rapes and child butcheries of October 7 (more on this below).

Regarding actual genocide, Nazi Germany attempted extermination of Jews.

The Hutus attempted, and nearly succeeded at, genocide against the Tutsis in the Rwandan “civil” war.

The People’s Republic of China is attempting genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Regarding Israeli responsibility vis-à-vis those Gazan casualties: what the disruptors carefully ignore is that Hamas uses Gaza Strip civilian residents as shields behind which the terrorists hide during firefights, and they use those civilian residents’ residential buildings, schools, hospitals, and mosques(!) as weapon storage sites, housing for their command centers, and as places from which to launch their weapons against Israel and against IDF forces in Gaza.

Further, the IDF is so careless in its handling of civilians in target zones that it’s at pains to warn those civilians of impending attacks so that the civilians can leave before the attack goes in—which gives the terrorists the same warnings and opportunities to leave, when the terrorists aren’t staying and forcing the warned civilians to stay also as shields for their terrorist captors, and to run up the civilian casualty count purely for terrorist propaganda.

No, the state of Israel is the victim of an ongoing genocide attempt, including the series of wars of extermination inflicted on the nation in the latter half of the 20th century, and as most recently and plainly announced by major Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad, who promised serial October 7s until Israel is destroyed.

Of course these disruptors—who insist they are so much better informed and so much smarter than us average Americans—know these things. Their genocide claim is nothing but an illustration of their dishonesty and of their support for the terrorists bent on exterminating Israel.

Just as despicable, though, is the cowardice of the schools’ managers who refuse even to address the lie of Israeli genocide. They’d rather bow down to the disruptors.

Australian Regulators’ Mistake

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Australian regulators are pressuring X to take down—to delete—a video posted to X showing the real-time terrorist attack in a western Sydney suburb on a Bishop of the Christ the Good Shepherd Church. X has blocked access to the video from locations within Australia per the regulators’ request, but is balking from going further. The regulators, though, are demanding the video be deleted altogether. Musk has responded that that would set the dangerous precedent of allowing one nation’s regulators to control the content of the Internet everywhere in the world, not just within the regulators’ own nation.

That’s a valid beef, but it misses entirely the much larger problem.

Deleting a posting altogether is nothing more than rewriting history and pretending the event posted about, and the post itself, never happened.

History is how we know where we were—geographically, economically, politically, socially, genetically, and on and on—how we know where we are (itself at immediate risk due to demands for real-time excision of current events), how we know how we got from then to now, and how we can learn how to get from now to a desired future. Rewriting history as every bit as dangerous to us as is any war and far more dangerous to our civilization.

X needs to stand tall against the Australians’ demand for revisionist history, and its fellow social platforms, vis., Meta, who so meekly complied with the regulators’ demand to rewrite history, need to find some courage, and some understanding of what they’re doing, and stop deleting postings, however repugnant, or merely government-disapproved, they may be.

Our Minds Are Made Up

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The House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs held a hearing in Plano, Texas, Tuesday on energy from the perspective of a number of oil and gas industry leaders.

The 15 Progressive-Democrat members of the subcommittee were invited to the hearing—as all members of a (sub)committee must be when that body meets in its official capacity—and all 15 chose not to attend. That refusal is within House rules, but it’s no less unethical or downright chickens** for that.

Congressional hearings often are puppet theater presentations, with the Congressmen often occupying their time allocations for questioning witnesses with speeches rather than with efficiently asked questions that leave the bulk of the time for witness answers. Too, witnesses often are chosen for their ability to support a political narrative.

All of that, though, is easily enough refuted by Congressmen proceeding from their own lines of questioning. Actual questions, mind you, not self-aggrandizing speech-ifying.

Instead regarding the Plano field hearing, the Progressive-Democratic Party subcommittee members said, “Don’t confuse us with facts,” with their decision to absent themselves.

 

The hearing itself can be viewed via C-SPAN here.

Are Some Jews More Important than Other Jews?

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The home of Progressive-Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) was visited by anti-Israel, pro-HamasPalestinian protestors the other night. They were arrested.

This is while those same anti-Israel, pro-HamasPalestinian protestors (not the same bodies, of course, but the same kind of terrorist-supporting “protestors”) are busily shutting down college and university campuses in Schumer’s New York as well as Ivy League campuses around the northeast and colleges and universities across our nation. Those same “protestors,” while doing their disruptive (not protest-y) things, are zealously threatening Jewish students, chanting their threats of destruction, actively blocking Jewish—and all other—students from attending the classes for which they and their parents paid several pretty pennies to have access to.

This is the same Jewish Majority Leader who has called for regime change in Israel because he doesn’t like the way the Israelis are fighting for their existence against Hamas terrorists.

Schumer didn’t want to talk about the protests at his house or the differential treatment of those “protesting” the schools vs those operating at his house.

Schumer did not respond directly to the arrests or protests, but referred to an earlier comment on the protests happening at college campuses nationwide….
“College campuses must be places of learning and discussion,” Schumer said in his statement. “Every American has a right to protest, but when protests shift to antisemitism, verbal abuse, intimidation, or glorification of October 7 violence against Jewish people, that crosses the line. Campuses must remain safe for all students.”

Empty words, since he’s attempting nothing to back them up.

However, when you’re a Progressive-Democrat Senator from New York and the sitting Senate Majority Leader, it seems that yes, some Jews are more important than others.

Responsibilities

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The subheadline illustrates the misunderstanding of where responsibility lies.

School officials reap what their politically monoculture faculties have sown.

The WSJ‘s editors then went on about how those thinking antisemitic bigotry are exaggerating are mistaken, pointing out in their examples the rampant antisemitic bigotry on college campuses.

Antisemitism has too often been tolerated within Near Eastern Studies departments. On October 8, 2023, Columbia professor Joseph Massad praised the “awesome” scenes of the October 7 massacre “witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs.” In 2018 Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi posted on Twitter (now X) that “Every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world” could soon be traced to “the ugly name of Israel.”

Then they wrote,

The liberal elites who run these institutions seem to lack the moral self-confidence to stand up to these student bullies. College presidents have to take charge, restore order and protect Jewish students, or the trustees should fire them and find someone who will.

But that’s closing the chicken coop after the weasels have moved in and taken over. Monocultural faculties have not created the schools’ problems, including the schools’ systemic (to coin a word) antisemitic bigotry. Schools’ management teams have created their environment of bigotry by allowing—perhaps even encouraging—from the start the creation of their faculties as monocultural, and bigoted.

It’s long past time those management teams were fired for cause, and the bigots on those faculties also fired for cause. Bigotry should not be allowed to survive contracts or tenure.