Tag Archives: politics

“Why Did Harvard Students Cheer on Hamas?”

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That’s the title of one section of The Wall Street Journal‘s Wednesday Letters section. One Harvard student wrote regarding the plethora of Harvard student groups’ open support of the terrorist Hamas gang,

The morally bankrupt claims made by these groups are not representative of many of their members. They used theirs, Harvard’s, and their members’ names to lend credence to their outrageous claims. These statements were published by organization leaders, often without serious debate or voting by members.

Say that’s true. How many of those members, allegedly omitted from open debate or voting, have resigned from those student groups?

…

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Another Letter writer wrote,

I received the mass email sent to Harvard alumni by President Gay, addressing the war in Israel. One line was especially notable: “It’s in the exercise of our freedom to speak that we reveal our characters.” Well said. Harvard’s character has been revealed.

Indeed. As well as are, via their decision not to speak or act, the characters of some student group members.

Too many illiberal Liberal and mainstream Left “students” at Harvard are terrorist sympathizers. None of them should be employable in the United States, not just a few lawyer wannabes singled out by a couple of law firms.

That’ll Show ‘Em

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is shaking his finger very firmly at Hamas and sanctioning the terrorist gang and its supporters.

The sanctions include 10 senior members and “financial facilitators” of the Hamas terrorist group, as well as roughly 1,000 individuals and entities connected to Iranian terror financing. The sanctions struck Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terror organizations in the Middle East that a senior Treasury official said were part of “a massive financial network.”

Ooh, ooh. Be still, my heart.

Having already moved to release $6 billion dollars to Iran for its relay to the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah (and, allegedly, moved with Qatar to delay that delivery), these sanctions are an insultingly puny response to the butchery Hamas is inflicting on Israeli women, children, and babies and that Hezbollah and Iran are threatening to do.

Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen:

The United States is taking swift and decisive action to target Hamas’ financiers and facilitators….

How much money and other value is affected by these sanctions? Neither Biden nor Yellen is saying.

No. What’s needed is free-flowing weapons and ammunition to Israel as the IDF needs them, and two carrier groups’ kinetic response in Lebanon and Syria to destroy Hezbollah should that terrorist gang attack Israel.

Full stop.

Bad Mistake

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Federal DC District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over former President and current Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s (R) trial on “election charges,” has issued a gag order limiting what Trump is allowed to say on matters associated with that trial. Her gag order should be found, on appeal, to be strongly unconstitutional—based on Chutkan’s own characterization of her order.

His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify public servants who are simply doing their jobs[.]

Trump’s status as a Presidential candidate is wholly irrelevant to this. Trump’s status as an American citizen is.

Here is what the Right to Petition Clause of the First Amendment of our Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law…abridging…the right of the people…to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Chutkan’s public servants are, most assuredly, Government officials, and Citizen (and Presidential candidate) Trump, most assuredly, is allowed to petition them, including through criticism, without regard to how prettily or rudely he couches his phrases.

That same Amendment also has this Free Speech Clause:

Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech

Citizen (and Presidential candidate) Trump, most assuredly, is allowed to speak about, as well as to, those same public servants, (and any other person, Government official or not) whether he does so with pretty words that suit Chutkan’s personal preference or with plainer words.

Chutkan’s characterization is her motive for issuing her gag order, and that motive disqualifies her order on its face: it was issued in bad faith, solely to satisfy her personal definition of propriety. It has nothing to do with any material or potentially prejudicial impact on the ongoing case, which is the sole reason for issuing any gag order.

Some Things Must Go Both Ways

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The opening of the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt remains a sometime thing.

A deal to open the border crossing has been held up…by Egyptian concerns that Israel hadn’t given assurances it would pause airstrikes and by Israeli insistence that trucks entering via Egypt be thoroughly searched, Egyptian officials said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, in particular:

Unfortunately, Israel has not yet allowed humanitarian aid to enter Gaza[.]

Israel has a big enough problem from its practice of telling Gazans where and when (if on short notice) Israel will strike. The idea is to let Gaza’s civilians in the target zone leave before the strike goes in. Those warnings, though, also let the terrorists alternatively trap the civilians there in order to run up the body count of innocents or, with longer term risk to Israel, let the terrorists escape among the evacuating civilians.

The other problem, though, is Egypt’s reluctance to let the trucks, allegedly carrying humanitarian-related supplies, to be searched before being allowed into Gaza. It’s very likely that the vast majority of those trucks would be carrying only humanitarian-related supplies, but some likely would be smuggling supplies for the terrorists in Gaza, also. It wouldn’t take very much of those latter to sustain the terrorists and to support their continued attacks on Israel.

Israeli reluctance is entirely justified. Israel is acting to not allow terrorist supplies to enter Gaza; the humanitarian aid is collateral to Egypt’s refusal to allow the trucks to be searched.

Common Ground and Mutual Understanding

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Michael Schill, Northwestern University President, in a message to “members of the Northwestern community” regarding the terrorist Hamas attack on Israeli women, children, and babies:

This is a moment for us to pull together, to support each other, and seek common ground. That does not mean we need to agree with each other about divisive issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But we must have empathy for each other and strive to build understanding.

Common ground is precisely that shared territory of overlap that disparate positions and whole belief systems have. How can there be any shared territory, any overlap, between those who butcher innocents as their goal and method in pushing their position and those who support…civilization?

How can there be any empathy for those who inflict such evil with deliberation and careful planning?

It’s easy enough to understand such evil and those who seek to inflict it—the evil is plain before us. But such understanding neither requires, nor supports, empathy, nor is there common ground with such. If evil cannot be eradicated, those who do evil certainly can be destroyed, and they must.

Schill’s moral equivocation (his words are so far afield that I almost did not use “moral”) is illustrative of the utter failure of the management teams of our higher “education” edifices.