Author: A.T.

Conservative columnist Bret Stephens in the indispensable New York Times:

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This column doesn’t always abound with praise for President Biden and his administration. This week’s is an exception.

On Oct. 8, the day after the greatest atrocity in Jewish history since Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, Jews in Israel and the diaspora woke up without a leader. The prime minister of Israel has never been, in a formal sense, the leader of the Jews — even when the office was held by people far worthier than Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the prime minister does have the most important job in the Jewish world, which is to ensure that Israel be a safe haven for Jewish life. The Jewish people have long memories; whatever happens next, Netanyahu will be remembered, irrevocably, as the man who failed — not tragically, much less heroically, but selfishly, arrogantly, despicably. He maintains political authority but is devoid of moral authority. I cannot imagine a future for him or his cabinet of blowhards and toadies except in exile, walled compounds or prison cells.

Biden stepped into the vacuum. I have read, probably a half-dozen times now, his Oct. 10 speech about the massacres. For its moral clarity, emotional force and political directness it deserves a place in any anthology of great American rhetoric. Without equivocation, without the mealy-mouthed clichés and evasions that typified so many institutional statements about the assault, the president said what Jews desperately needed to hear.

That the massacres were “pure, unadulterated evil.” That there is “no excuse” for what Hamas did. That Israel has an affirmative “duty” to defend itself, not simply a passive “right.” That the United States will make good on its commitment to a Jewish state not with feeble statements of solidarity but with the surge of military force. A few days later, in an interview with “60 Minutes,” he called the assault “barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust.”

We need political leaders who maintain the capacity to call out barbarism by name and who commit themselves to its defeat. We need it especially on the political left, certain corners of which waited only a few days before returning to their usual program of denouncing Israel for its alleged or anticipated war crimes. These are the same people who sometimes pretend to believe in Israel’s right to self-defense but offer no plausible strategy for how Israel can exercise it against a terrorist enemy that hides behind civilians.

We also need Biden’s leadership given the moral void on the right. I spent the years of Donald Trump’s presidency being hectored by a certain type of Jewish conservative who insisted that Israel had never had a better friend in the White House. Today, Trump takes a dimmer view of Netanyahu — less because of his failed performance than because he can’t forgive the prime minister for calling Biden in 2020 to congratulate him on his victory. Four days after the Hamas attacks, Trump also called Hezbollah, without reprobation, “very smart.” About Vladimir Putin, he said, “I got along with him very good.”

Very good. Very smart. The Republican front-runner.

Now Biden is going to Israel. It’s a brave trip, even for a president with his vast security apparatus, given that Hamas’s rockets continue to fall indiscriminately on Israel and a second front with Hezbollah could open at any time. He is going, almost surely, to do what he does best: console the bereaved and bereft, give courage to those in fear. This is statesmanship in the teeth of far-left opposition and incessant right-wing criticism. It’s the president’s finest hour.

I have seen some criticism that the hidden purpose of the trip is for Biden to hug Israel close so that he can stay its hand, or at least slow it. I doubt it, since he could hardly have been clearer in his “60 Minutes” interview that Hamas would have to be eliminated entirely, even as there needed to be a path to a Palestinian state. That path is a long one, but Biden gets the big thing right — the former is the basic precondition for the latter. No Israeli leader can ever allow a Palestinian state to exist if a group like Hamas has even the whisper of a chance of gaining power.

I expect Biden to caution Israel’s war cabinet that a military campaign that concludes with a long-term Israeli occupation of Gaza would be a Pyrrhic victory. I expect the Israelis to reply that they cannot be asked to eliminate Hamas as Gaza’s dominant military and political actor without the cooperation of the United States and moderate Arab regimes, particularly Egypt. This is not a confrontation; it’s a potentially fruitful dialogue that will work much better once Netanyahu is out of office and cannot put his personal needs ahead of the national interest.

I also hope that Biden’s leadership can remind the decent left — and what’s left of a decent right — of what American moral leadership looks like. To stand with our allies and hold our friends. To see our enemies for what they are and treat them accordingly. To remind ourselves that as others see us, so should we see ourselves: as the last best hope of earth.

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WHO BOMBED THAT HOSPITAL?

It appears to have been Islamic Jihad, not Israel.  A horrible, horrible tragedy, but an important distinction.

MAHER / MUSS / KIRCHICK ON GAZA

Ten minutes.

Spot on.

(Well, maybe not the part about defunding Harvard, but that was a joke . . . directed not at President Gay’s statement, but at some egregiously-misled students, all of whom must read Noa Tishby’s Israel: A Simple Guide To The Most Misunderstood Country On Earth forthwith.)

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH SQNS?

Suggested here in July at $2.37 it hit $2..80 two weeks later on news it would be acquired for $3.03.  With that expected pay-out imminent, it reached $2.90 last week — but closed at $2.74 last night.

The company announced last week that few of its shares had been tendered, far short of the 90% required.  The offer is being extended, but it sure seems to me as though its largest shareholders think the price is too low (or else why not tender?) . . . which may not be a bad thing for us small fry.  One can imagine their working something out to accept a higher price.  Good!  Or one can imagine the deal falling through altogether — which could mean anything from a disaster someplace down the road (“Why didn’t we tender?” those large and presumably knowledgeable shareholders might ultimately moan) to a triumph in a year or three (“victory!” they might ultimately cry).

I have no clue.  But because the friend who brought this to my attention said he had been hoping for $6 or more, and the largest holders seem to think $3.03 is inadequate, I’m going to wait to see what happens. Famous last words?

Many say yes, reports the Washington Post.

As they should, argues a professor at Williams.

I agree.

Your thoughts?

BUT THE MAIN THING IS:

Read or listen to Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, just out today.

We were here 80 years ago — and won.

Will we win again this time?

AND THE OTHER MAIN THINGS, OBVIOUSLY:

Israel-Hamas; Ukraine-Putin — the ongoing nightmares.  I’ll resume linking to the thoughts of smarter people than me, like Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria, soon.

Jesse Kornbluth: “Of the million words already written, I find the thoughts of Yale professor Timothy Snyder to be the most acute — and most worthy of your reflection.”

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TIMOTHY SNYDER ON THE HAMAS ATTACKS, IN THE CONTEXT OF LARGER EVENTS

I want to share a thought about terror and counter-terror, prompted by the Hamas attacks and the dilemmas Israel faces.  It is not based on regional knowledge but does draw from scholarly work on the politics of terror and insurgency.  It is not so much a take on specific events as a general reminder of the larger shape such events can take.

For the victim, terror is about what it is. For the terrorist, it is about what happens next.

Terror can be a weapon of the weak, designed to get the strong to use their strength against themselves.  Terrorists know what they are going to do, and have an idea what will follow. They mean to create an emotional situation where self-destructive action seems like the urgent and only choice.

When you have been terrorized, the argument that I am making seems absurd; the terrorists can seem to you to be raving beasts who just need punishment. Yet however horrible the crime, it usually does not bespeak a lack of planning. Usually part of the plan is to enrage.

Americans have fallen for this. 9/11 was a successful terrorist attack because we made it so.  Regardless of whether or not its planners and perpetrators lived to see this, it achieved its main goal: to weaken the United States.  Without 9/11, the United States presumably would not have invaded Iraq, a decision which led to the death of tens of thousands of people, helped fund the rise of China, weakened international law, and undid American credibility. 9/11 was a contributing cause to American decisions that caused far more death than 9/11 itself did. But the point here is that 9/11 facilitated American decisions that hurt America far more than 9/11 itself did.

(On 9/13/2001, I dropped my planned lecture on east European history and spoke entirely about terror and counter-terror, along these lines. I was worried, but did not imagine then just how well the provocation would work. The invasion of Iraq was a disaster that arose from many sources; but one of them was the logic of terror — and indeed its exploitation by people who wanted a war in Iraq anyway.)

In evaluating what Hamas has done, it is important to remember that the atrocious crimes are not (or are not only) ends in themselves.  They are utterly horrible and deserving of every condemnation, but they are not mindless. Unlike Israelis, who are shocked and feel they must urgently act, Hamas has been working out this scenario for years. The people carrying out the bestial crimes follow a plan that anticipates an Israeli reaction.

Classically, a terrorist provokes a state in order to generate so much suffering among his own people that they will take the terrorist’s side indefinitely.

I won’t claim to know what Hamas expects from Israel, nor what Israel should do.  That would be a matter for people with the languages and expertise to read and analyze the documents and the data. My point is that it is always worth asking, in such situations, whether you are following the terrorist’s script. If what you want to do is what your enemy wants you to do, someone is mistaken.  It might be your enemy.  But it also might be you.

PS: I am conscious that the cool tone of this thread might seem jarring in the context of human suffering.  I regret this.

PPS. I anticipate the objection that Israeli state policy has been designed to provoke Palestinians. I agree that the strong can also terrorize the weak.

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Tom Friedman elaborates in this must-watch CNBC clip.

And in the New York Times:

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Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than in This Moment

I have covered this conflict for almost 50 years, and I’ve seen Israelis and Palestinians do a lot of awful things to one another: Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up Israeli discos and buses; Israeli fighter jets hitting neighborhoods in Gaza that house Hamas fighters but also causing massive civilian casualties. But I’ve not seen something like what happened last weekend: individual Hamas fighters rounding up Israeli men, women and children, looking them in the eyes, gunning them down and, in one case, parading a naked woman around Gaza to shouts of “Allahu akbar.”

The last time I witnessed that level of face-to-face barbarism was the massacre of Palestinian men, women and children by Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, where the first victim I encountered was an older man with a white beard and a bullet hole in his temple.

While I have no illusions about Hamas’s long-established commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state, I am nonetheless asking myself today: Where did this ISIS-like impulse for mass murder as the primary goal come from? Not the seizing of territory, but plain murder? There is something new here that is important to understand.

Since I can’t interview the Hamas leadership, I’m drawing on my experience in the region, and here’s how I see it.

While this operation was surely planned by Hamas leaders months ago, I think its emotional origins can be explained in part by a photograph that appeared in the Israeli press on Oct. 3. A few Israeli government ministers had gone to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for their first official visit ever, to attend international conferences in late September and early October, and it got a lot of coverage in the Israeli press.

But having lived in both Beirut and Jerusalem, I was struck most by that unusual photo — an image that I knew would trigger completely different emotional reactions in both worlds.

It was taken by the team of Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, who was attending a U.N. postal conference in Riyadh, as they were conducting a prayer service in their hotel room for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. One of them took a picture of a colleague wearing a traditional Jewish prayer shawl and yarmulke while holding up a Torah scroll with the Riyadh skyline in the window beyond.

For Israeli Jews, that picture is a dream come true — the ultimate expression of finally being accepted in the Middle East, more than a century after the start of the Zionist movement to build a modern democratic state in the biblical homeland of the Jewish people. To be able to pray with a Torah in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the home of its two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, is a level of acceptance that touches the soul of every Israeli Jew.

But that same photo ignites a powerful and emotional rage in many Palestinians, particularly those affiliated with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. For them, that picture is the full expression of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s supreme goal: to prove to all naysayers, indeed to rub their noses in the fact, that he can make peace with all the Arab states — even Saudi Arabia — and not have to give the Palestinians a single inch.

As far as diplomacy goes, that has been Netanyahu’s life’s mission: to prove to everyone that Israel can have its cake — acceptance by all the surrounding Arab states — and eat the Palestinians’ territory, too.

I have no idea whether the Hamas leadership saw that particular picture, but they have been fully aware of the ongoing evolution it reflects. I believe one reason Hamas not only launched this assault now — but also seemingly ordered it to be as murderous as possible — was to trigger an Israeli overreaction, like an invasion of the Gaza Strip, that would lead to massive Palestinian civilian casualties and in that way force Saudi Arabia to back away from the U.S.-brokered deal now in discussion to promote normalization between Riyadh and the Jewish state. As well as to force the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which were part of the Abraham Accords produced by the Trump administration, to take a step back from Israel.

The essence of Hamas’s message to Netanyahu and his far-right ruling coalition of Jewish supremacists and ultra-Orthodox is this: You will never be at home here — no matter how much of our land our gulf Arab brothers sell you. We will force you to lose your minds and do crazy things to Gaza that force the Arab states to shun you.

Pay attention: Hamas did not send operatives to the Israeli-occupied West Bank (and it has plenty there) to attack Jewish settlements. It focused its onslaught on Israeli villages and kibbutz farms that were not part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“These were the homes of the people of pre-1967 Israel, democratic Israel, liberal Israel — living in peaceful kibbutzim or going to a life-loving disco party,” the Israeli writer Ari Shavit remarked to me. For Hamas, “Israel’s mere existence is a provocation,” he said. In one kibbutz alone, Be’eri, at least 108 people, including children, were just gunned down.

So how can America best help Israel now, besides standing behind its right to protect itself, as President Biden so forcefully did in his speech today? I think the U.S. needs to do three things.

First, I hope the president is asking Israel to ask itself this question as it considers what to do next in Gaza: What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?

What Israel’s worst enemies — Hamas and Iran — want is for Israel to invade Gaza and get enmeshed in a strategic overreach there that would make America’s entanglement in Falluja look like a children’s birthday party. We are talking house-to-house fighting that would undermine whatever sympathy Israel has garnered on the world stage, deflect world attention from the murderous regime in Tehran and force Israel to stretch its forces to permanently occupy Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas and Iran absolutely do not want Israel to refrain from going into Gaza very deep or long.

Nor does Hamas want the U.S. and Israel to proceed instead as fast as possible with negotiations to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia as part of a deal that would also require Israel to make real concessions to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which has accepted Israel as part of the Oslo peace accords.

But for Israel to do what is most in its interests, not those of Hamas and Iran, will likely require some very tough love between Biden and Netanyahu. One must never forget that Netanyahu always seemed to prefer to deal with a Hamas that was unremittingly hostile to Israel than with its rival, the more moderate Palestinian Authority — which Netanyahu did everything he could to discredit, even though the Palestinian Authority has long worked closely with Israeli security services to keep the West Bank quiet, and Netanyahu knows it.

Netanyahu has never wanted the world to believe that there are “good Palestinians” ready to live side by side with Israel in peace and try to nurture them. For years now he’s always wanted to tell U.S. presidents: What do you want from me? I have no one to talk to on the Palestinian side.

That’s how Israel reached a stage where the increasingly costly — morally and financially — Israeli occupation of the West Bank has not even been an issue in the last five Israeli elections.

Or as Chuck Freilich, a former deputy Israeli national security adviser, wrote in an essay in Haaretz on Sunday: “For a decade and a half Prime Minister Netanyahu has sought to institutionalize the divide between the West Bank and Gaza, undermine the Palestinian Authority, the P.A., and conduct de facto cooperation with Hamas, all designed to demonstrate the absence of a Palestinian partner and to ensure that there could be no peace process that might have required territorial compromise in the West Bank.”

Lastly, I hope Biden is telling Netanyahu that America will do everything it can to help democratic Israel defend itself from the theocratic fascists of Hamas — and their soul brothers of Hezbollah in Lebanon, should they enter the fight.

But Netanyahu’s side of the bargain is that he has to reconnect himself with liberal democratic Israel, so the world and the region sees this not as a religious war but as a war between the frontline of democracy and the frontline of theocracy. That means Netanyahu has to change his cabinet, expel the religious zealots and create a national unity government with Benny Gantz* and Yair Lapid.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu is still prioritizing his coalition of zealots, whom he needs to protect him from his corruption trial and to complete his judicial coup that would neuter the Supreme Court of Israel. That’s really messed up.

And it is a very important reason Israel was caught off guard in the first place. Netanyahu was so wedded to this personal agenda that he was ready to divide Israeli society like never before — and splinter his own army and air force in the process — to get control of the courts.

I promise you that if and when there’s an inquiry into how the Israeli Army could have so missed this Hamas buildup, investigators will discover that the Israeli Army leadership had to spend so much time just keeping its air force pilots and reserve officers from boycotting their service to protest Netanyahu’s judicial coup — not to mention the time, attention and resources they had to devote to preventing extremist settlers and religious zealots from doing crazy things in Jerusalem and the West Bank — that they took their eyes off the ball.

America cannot protect Israel in the long run from the very real threats it faces unless Israel has a government that reflects the best, not the worst, of its society, and unless that government is ready to try to forge compromises with the best, not the worst, of Palestinian society.

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*After this piece ran, Benny Gantz joined the cabinet.

In 1988, Rabbi Meir Kahane wrote this “open letter to the world.”

(A convicted terrorist, he was later assassinated. Religion is a brutal business.)

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Dear World,

I understand that you are upset by us, here in Israel.

Indeed, it appears that you are quite upset, even angry.

Indeed, every few years you seem to become upset by us. Today, it is the “brutal repression of the Palestinians”; yesterday it was Lebanon; before that it was the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Baghdad and the Yom Kippur War and the Sinai campaign. It appears that Jews who triumph and who, therefore, live, upset you most extraordinarily.

Of course, dear world, long before there was an Israel, we – the Jewish people – upset you.

We upset a German people who elected Hitler and upset an Austrian people who cheered his entry into Vienna and we upset a whole slew of Slavic nations – Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians and Romanians. And we go back a long, long way in the history of world upset.

We upset the Cossacks of Chmielnicki who massacred tens of thousands of us in 1648-49; we upset the Crusaders who, on their way to liberate the Holy Land, were so upset at Jews that they slaughtered untold numbers of us.

For centuries, we upset a Roman Catholic Church that did its best to define our relationship through inquisitions, and we upset the arch-enemy of the church, Martin Luther, who, in his call to burn the synagogues and the Jews within them, showed an admirable Christian ecumenical spirit.

And it is because we became so upset over upsetting you, dear world, that we decided to leave you – in a manner of speaking – and establish a Jewish state. The reasoning was that living in close contact with you, as resident-strangers in the various countries that comprise you, we upset you, irritate you and disturb you. What better notion, then, than to leave you (and thus love you)- and have you love us and so, we decided to come home – home to the same land we were driven out 1,900 years earlier by a Roman world that, apparently, we also upset.

Alas, dear world, it appears that you are hard to please.

Having left you and your pogroms and inquisitions and crusades and holocausts, having taken our leave of the general world to live alone in our own little state, we continue to upset you. You are upset that we repress the poor Palestinians. You are deeply angered over the fact that we do not give up the lands of 1967, which are clearly the obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

Moscow is upset and Washington is upset. The “radical” Arabs are upset and the gentle Egyptian moderates are upset.

Well, dear world, consider the reaction of a normal Jew from Israel.

In 1920 and 1921 and 1929, there were no territories of 1967 to impede peace between Jews and Arabs. Indeed, there was no Jewish State to upset anybody. Nevertheless, the same oppressed and repressed Palestinians slaughtered tens of Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Safed and Hebron. Indeed, 67 Jews were slaughtered one day in Hebron in 1929.

Dear world, why did the Arabs – the Palestinians – massacre 67 Jews in one day in 1929? Could it have been their anger over Israeli aggression in 1967? And why were 510 Jewish men, women and children slaughtered in Arab riots between 1936-39? Was it because Arabs were upset over 1967?

And when you, dear world, proposed a UN Partition Plan in 1947 that would have created a “Palestinian State” alongside a tiny Israel and the Arabs cried “no” and went to war and killed 6,000 Jews – was that “upset” caused by the aggression of 1967? And, by the way, dear world, why did we not hear your cry of “upset” then?

The poor Palestinians who today kill Jews with explosives and firebombs and stones are part of the same people who when they had all the territories they now demand be given to them for their state -attempted to drive the Jewish state into the sea. The same twisted faces, the same hate, the same cry of “itbach-al-yahud” (Massacre the Jew!) that we hear and see today, were seen and heard then. The same people, the same dream – destroy Israel. What they failed to do yesterday, they dream of today, but we should not “repress” them.

Dear world, you stood by during the holocaust and you stood by in 1948 as seven states launched a war that the Arab League proudly compared to the Mongol massacres.

You stood by in 1967 as Nasser, wildly cheered by wild mobs in every Arab capital in the world, vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. And you would stand by tomorrow if Israel were facing extinction. And since we know that the Arabs-Palestinians dream daily of that extinction, we will do everything possible to remain alive in our own land. If that bothers you, dear world, well think of how many times in the past you bothered us.

In any event, dear world, if you are bothered by us, here is one Jew in Israel who could not care less.

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Finally, because some of you wrote to applaud the piece by Joseph Cox yesterday, here is another.  The Real Arab Nakba.

You will be relieved to know I’m taking tomorrow off.

Have a great weekend.

First, a recent Harvard B-school grad and former grenadier in the IDF who is as gentle and loving as a lamb.  A dual American/Israeli citizen:

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The place I called home in Israel, a small agricultural commune mostly known up to this point for growing carrots and avocados, was infiltrated by terrorists Saturday morning. It’s a religious community so most of the 150 people there were celebrating a Jewish holiday at the time. Details are still emerging, but as I understood from my friends and family, the terrorists went door to door looking for women and children to take hostage. The men they found they shot at point blank range. People who took shelter in safe rooms had their homes lit on fire to try to force them out or burn alive. Ultimately, after nearly 24 hours, the Israeli army arrived to rescue those who survived. It’s hard to know whether or not to call them lucky, but those taken hostage are now being identified through social media apps, as terrorists continue to torment the living.

This story is not a one off or anomaly. Nor was it a surprise to anyone who took seriously what Hamas has been saying publicly for the past 20 years. These attacks were carefully planned and executed across dozens of towns in Israel, and even a music festival where over 200 partygoers were either gunned down or taken hostage while singing songs of peace.

Without overstating the impact to me as I was safe in Boston, it is a uniquely horrifying experience to watch terrorists bloody the spaces you once called home.

People have asked about ways to help from abroad. Personally, I think the greatest form of support is to stay informed and bear witness. There are also numerous nonprofits that are raising money for emergency medical relief, as well as equipment for soldiers that now need to engage a barbarous enemy. If you need help finding links to these charities, please let me know.

While the beginning of this war has been characterized by Jews in fear and sorrow, it will not end this way. In addition to the brutality of the last 48 hours, there are stories emerging of incredible heroism. As but one example, I encourage you to read about Noam Tibon. There are surely many more stories to come.

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Second, Cyrus Copeland, writing from Philadelphia.  This summer, I plugged his start-up planting olive trees in the West Bank and shared his video.  Yesterday he texted about Abbas, the lead organizer he’s been working with (who’s already planted 55 farms with 250 trees each):

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Such sad news, Andy.  Abbas’s wife’s family in Gaza were all killed last night.

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Finally, this from Joseph Cox to his list.

Scary and upsetting; but, I think, worth sharing:

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First, I am unharmed and my family is unharmed.

But we are not okay.

Before I continue, let me make very very clear that I believe in peace and opportunity for Palestinians. I want a road towards a better reality. You can read my proposed Constitution and see it written right in there. I create provisions that grant full citizenship to Palestinians on a city-by-city basis; with the precondition that they turn over those who incite or carry out violence against Israel. I want an off-ramp in which Palestinians enjoy full rights and lives of freedom.

I will go even further. I am a religious Jew, but I do not believe that Jews are the only people with a relationship with G-d. I believe all of mankind is capable of such a relationship – and I believe both Christians and Muslims are monotheists who have their own distinct relationships to G-d.

I believe that nobody can simply be disposed of or ignored.

All of that said, Israel has been stuck in a halfway point for years.

They have been trying to secure peace by giving concessions to the most powerful (and violent) forces in the Palestinian world. The outcome has been predictable – those violent forces become more violent.

When Israel has engaged in war, it has been unable to eliminate these groups because of international condemnation driven by concern for civilians. And the outcome has been predictable – those violent forces perfect their exploitation of civilians.

Now we have a chance to change that narrative. Israel has an opportunity to bring peace through war. To many Western minds, this seems impossible. But consider that Egypt made peace after being thoroughly defeated in 1973. Germany and Japan made peace, after being thoroughly defeated in 1945.

Once your enemy gives up on war, peace is possible. But, until now, Israel could not conduct a war so thorough that that would be possible.

Until now.

Now the sickness of the society created by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and all the others has been revealed. Now Israel can strike – as the US and UK did against Germany – and deal with the sickness. Now, Israel has an obligation to do so. People who behave like this must be so thoroughly punished that they will never seek to do so again.

I am not recommending the targeting of civilians. But I am also not recommending that fighters be spared because they hide behind civilians. Up to 2 million German civilians died in WWII. I am okay with that. The Germans allowed an evil to spread and metastasize and they were made an example of. I see no moral quandary; I see a lesson being taught to German citizens: Never let this happen again.

So far, that lesson has held.

In this case, Hamas and PIJ and their ilk must be punished. They talk of a victory that will be remembered for generations. I believe those generations should only speak of the terrible, overwhelming, mistake they made.

The EU calls for de-escalation. They are quite simply wrong. A crime like this cannot be carried out and then simply ignored. It must be punished and in so thorough a way that it would not be conceived of for generations to come. If you do not do this, you encourage this sort of illness. Your society – the world’s society – will collapse into murder and mayhem.

So that is the opportunity. We lost well over a thousand innocent woman and children – and men and soldiers who wanted peace. If Israel had ever decided to engage in an act like this, millions would be dead. We do not want this – and the evidence in clear. We have never engaged in this sort of slaughter.

The world imagines that a Palestinian state will bring peace, but this slaughter shows what the Palestinian powers actually want: an orgy of murder. They want 8 million dead Jews strewn in the streets. They are building – from the much more powerful rockets of Hezbollah to the nuclear weapons of Iran – the capability to deliver that dream.

Now, this slaughter has enabled Israel to do what needs to be done. Only this kind of slaughter could enable Israel to suppress the sickness in Palestine – just as had to be done in Germany.

We can never accept what has happened; we can never internalize it.

We can never stop mourning.

But we must step through the door that has been opened.

If your friends or your leaders say: “I hope for an end to the conflict soon” or “I hope the fighting will stop soon” or “We hope there will be de-escalation and a cease fire” DO NOT AGREE WITH THEM.

There must be war now. There is a moral imperative to strike out this evil. And, afterwards, there can be peace. I do not hope for peace now. In a few weeks or a few months, when the followers of Hamas and PIJ are all dead – then I will want peace. Peace with an understanding that the dream of killing all the Jews will never be realized.

This is not a cycle of violence, this is a closure of violence.

There is an overwhelming strand of thought that will rear its head in the weeks to come. I’ve seen it already. “The Jews are occupiers and so they deserve no protections and no safety.”

Do you know who settled Sderot – the largest city overwhelmed?

Jewish refugees from the Arabic world.

In fact, the Muslim and Arab worlds expelled 99.5% of their Jewish populations. This is ethnic cleansing. Even the Nazis only managed 80%. Israel is a land of refugees – many from Europe but mostly from the Arab and Muslim world. Communities that were thousands of years old – in Iraq, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere – were erased. Property was taken and the people expelled. They came to Israel. In Israel those same Arab-Muslim states and people hoped to finish the job. They wanted to drive the Jewish people into the Sea.

They wanted to kill all of us.

They failed. In 1948, 1967 and 1973, they failed. Today 20% of Israel is made up of Arab citizens – full citizens. There are 2 million Arabs in Israel, and 15 Jews in Egypt. Not 15 thousand, 15.

There are 2 million Arabs in Israel and 0 Jews in Iraq. Our greatest text is the Babylonian Talmud – and there are no more Babylonian Jews.

Israel is a country of refugees who organized and said “THAT IS ENOUGH.”

Well, the time has come to say it again. THAT IS ENOUGH.

It does not matter whether the Jews are occupiers or the just inhabitants of this land. We are a people who were harried and slaughtered in the years leading up to the establishment of our State – and ever since.

We are a people who have a right to live – like any other people. It just so happens that we now live under self-rule in the land of our ancestors.

We have demonstrated we will live in peace with Arabs and Muslims who will live in peace with us. We embraced peace with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt and, G-d willing, with Saudi Arabia. We left Gaza so we could have peace. We left South Lebanon so we could have peace. We presented Arafat and Abu Mazen with the opportunity to have their own state.

But many Palestinian Arabs, as shown over the weekend, still want our elimination. They want an orgy of murder that makes this weekend look like a blip on the radar.

We cannot allow that to happen. This is a dream that must be crushed.

I am asking you, all of you, to be our advocates.

When people say “there should be a de-escalation” or “Israel should stop” or “I wish the fighting would stop” – step out of your comfort zone and your platitudes and say “no!”

Just as a murderer cannot be allowed to walk free – because of the rot he will create in society – a murderous society cannot be allowed to slaughter without consequences.

Explain us. Explain why we are doing what we are doing. And do not take the empty moral road that will once again lead to us the Jews being made into the villains in this story. Those same villainous Jews who slaughter children to make Matzah, steal organs from prisoners and poison candies for pleasure. Don’t allow those lies to become ‘truth’.

For years Israel has been criticized for its fight against these forces. “Why shoot people who approach the border fence, they haven’t hurt anybody??” I hope the reasons behind our actions are clear now. We do not allow them pipes so they cannot make rockets. We do not allow them tractors so they cannot drive over barricades. We deprive them of so much because we know – have long known – that the orgy of murder is what they desire.

But we do not need this to be the reality in the future. We can create peace through war. At this point, there is no other way. Hamas will not become partners in anything – they are murderers who will see any weakness as proof of their power. Our lesson must be so complete that peace will be possible. And then Gaza, a beautiful place, can have tractors and skyscrapers and industry and wealth and freedom. Just like Germany and Japan.

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Heart-breaking, all three.

Thirty-one Harvard organizations blame Israel for Hamas attack: ‘Entirely responsible’

Because they are clearly concerned about what’s going on — and smart enough to get into Harvard — here’s my ask: that every one of them read Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.

It is written by a woman who — like them* — is deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians.

Give the book to every incredibly-well-meaning-but-misled college student you know!

They have been misled.**

And they should be angry at those, backed by Iran, who have misled them.***

That said, I’m more than fine with their being angry with Netanyahu and many of his awful right-wing cabinet members . . . whom Tom Friedman calls “crazy and insane” in the last minute of this clip.  The world should be furious with them, too.

_______________________

*And every other decent human being.
**Just as Trump enthusiasts (at least those who favor democracy and the rule of law) have been misled.
***In the case of Trump: Fox News and Republicans in Congress who are afraid to say what they really think of him.

Take a minute to watch.

He’s embarrassed by his former friend.

And how about this — President Obama had a cup of coffee in his hand.

Horrors!

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Tapper Rips ‘Outrageous’ GOP Silence On Report Trump Called Soldiers ‘Suckers’ – Meanwhile, Obama Saluting Marine With Coffee ‘Was Fox News’s Banner Headlines For a Week’

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C’mon my Red Team friends.  Break the spell!  Put your party back into the hands of right-wingers like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, who are honorable patriots.

All agree: we need to do better on immigration.  There is progress to be made if Republicans are willing to compromise, as they were in 2013.  If only the “Hastert Rule*” hadn’t been invoked by the Republican Speaker, preventing the Senate-passed bill from reaching the floor for a vote.

*Named after the longest-serving Republican House Speaker (1999-2007), former high school wrestling coach and eventually-convicted-sex-abuser,  Dennis Hastert.

Steve Israel in the Hill — a compelling story.

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. . . I watched part of an operation that unilaterally dismantled Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, and it’s Knesset, demanded no preconditions, negotiations, guarantees or assurances; no treaties, agreements, memoranda of understanding. The withdrawal from Gaza was based on slender hope and heavy prayer that if Israel returned the land, Palestinian leaders would turn it into a fit and stable place.

The unilateral withdrawal was a searing process for Israel. I can’t think of another country in history that has sent in its own armies to forcibly evict its own people from disputed territory. Israel did.

. . . The bet made by Israel failed. A failed state was born.

. . . Immediately following Israel’s withdrawal, Palestinian crowds entered the settlements waving Hamas flags, firing gunshots into the air, ransacking homes, desecrating, looting, destroying a few remaining synagogues.

Palestinian Authority security forces refused to intervene. The remaining settlements’ greenhouses, which would have been vital in agricultural developments, were looted. . . .

On Sept. 23, 2005, Palestinian leaders launched their first barrage of rockets against Israel. It was clear that the land would not produce businesses, seaside hotels, abundant farms for Gazans, but rockets against Israel. The rockets fell then, as now, but they were primitive, like a drizzle before a storm.

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Worth reading in full (it’s not long) — as is my oft-suggested Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.  Give it to every-incredibly-well-meaning-but-misled college student you know!

Here is Paul London on: The Needless Panic Over Government Debt.

Previously, he focused on the needless panic over inflation:

A Better Way to Fight Inflation — February 21, 2022

Inflation Terror at the Fed— July 11, 2022

Invest More Or Obsess About Inflation And Debt: It’s Our Choice — July 20, 2023

Today’s panic over government debt, he argues, is more insidious because there is a very good chance that it will lead to a recession and drastically reduce our ability to counter Russian and Chinese efforts to destroy the post World War II order that has done the US and the World so much good.

Three additional points worth noting:

(1) Republicans never worry about the National Debt when they control the White House.  Reagan famously sent it soaring by slashing taxes on the wealthy, which Bush 43 and Trump just made much worse.

(2) Republicans fight to cut resources the IRS needs to collect taxes from the wealthy.  That would just increase the deficit.

(3) As long as our Debt isn’t growing relative to the economy as a whole in most years — and ideally shrinking a bit — we’re okay.  The Debt (most of it owed to ourselves) is $33 trillion.  With GDP growing at 5% — between real growth and inflation — the Debt can also grow at 5%.  Which is to say: a deficit of $1.65 trillion (5% of $33 trillion).  Less than that would be great; but more than that is called for when we face a special challenge.  Like averting financial collapse.  Or pulling ourselves out of a recession.  Or thwarting the expansionist ambitions of a power-mad murderer like Hitler or, today, Putin.

Have a great week-end!

(Have you seen Dumb Money?)

As you’ve seen, former assistant wrestling coach Jim Jordan — credibly accused of ignoring sexual abuse of his young college wrestlers — has thrown his hat into the race for Speaker of the House . . . a spot previously held longer than any other Republican Speaker by former high school wrestling coach and convicted abuser Dennis Hastert.

(And then there’s fake-wrestling Hall of Famer, rapist and head of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, whom some are seriously considering voting in as Speaker.)

That’s pretty much all I have to say today.

Except that the “Hastert Rule” is what killed bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform in 2013; reform that could have forestalled at least some of today’s immigration problem.

It had passed the Senate 68-32.

It had majority support in the House.

The President was eager to sign it.

Coach Hastert had already left Congress (and not yet entered prison), but the Hastert Rule prevailed, as it does to this day. 

Under that rule, a bill cannot be brought up for a vote unless a majority of the Speaker’s party want it to pass.  So today, if 213 Democrats and 110 Republicans favored something — 323 of the 435 Members, which works out to 74% — that would be insufficient.    

It’s simple:

Let the Republicans flail briefly — because, really, they deserve to — but then elect Brian Fitzpatrick speaker.

He co-chairs the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is made up of 32 moderate Democrats and 32 moderate Republicans.

Here he is, with his Democratic counterpart, Josh Gotheimer, on this past Sunday’s Face the Nation.

If our 212 Democrats and at least a few of those 32 Republican problem solvers voted AYE, we’d have a new, moderate speaker.

Most of the country would be thrilled.

We could get a lot of the country’s work done the old-fashioned way: finding sensible solutions via acceptable compromises.

Maybe even learning to like each other again.

Wouldn’t that be nice?