Wednesday Potpourri

First, unsurprisingly the Saudi government has sided with Hamas in its current war with Israel. And yet, Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis are certainly not supporters of the Brotherhood.

Yet, one must sometimes read between the lines. Whatever the Saudis are saying in public, I contend that their true attitude is being expressed by their close allies in the United Arab Emirates. 

You recall that the Emirates were major players in the Abraham Accords, and, as I stated at the time, they would never have done so without the tacit support of Saudi Arabia.

As for the current situation, the UAE has told the Syrian Assad regime to stay out of the conflict and not to allow any attacks on Israel from Syria. 

More importantly, the UAE Foreign Affairs ministry on Sunday directly condemned Hamas for its attack. 

The government “stressed that attacks by Hamas against Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza strip, including the firing of thousands of rockets at population centers, are a serious and grave escalation.”

Second, as Israel was reeling from the Saturday terror invasion, Joe Biden was doing what he knows how to do. He was holding a barbecue on the White House grounds. From The Daily Mail:

President Joe Biden was holding a barbecue at the White House Sunday, while at least four Americans were confirmed dead in the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel Saturday and Palestinian sympathizers protesting at the White House gates.

Biden, meanwhile, made no public statement on the attack Sunday other than confirmation of a phone call between himself and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

The news was confirmed as many were witnessing the protests at the White House gates, with many holding up Palestinian flags, demanding the United States cut aid to Israel and chanting 'Free Palestine.'

A pool reporter overheard a band playing from inside the White House lawn and asked a spokesperson what was happening.

'The President and First Lady are hosting a BBQ for White House Executive Residence staff and their families,' was the answer. 

Third, meanwhile over at Harvard dozens of student groups denounced Israel for the Hamas attacks. By their lights, Israel was solely responsible.

The Harvard administration failed to respond to the statement but president emeritus Lawrence Summers was appalled:

“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” Summers… wrote on his X social media account.

“The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”

“Instead, Harvard is being defined by the morally unconscionable statement apparently coming from two dozen student groups blaming all the violence on Israel,” he added, adding: “I am sickened.”

Summers reacted on Monday to a statement signed by more than 30 Harvard student organizations who said they were holding Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ mass slaughter.

“The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel,” 

True, other Harvard professors, as in Steven Pinker, have similarly expressed their outrage, but these students do not seem to understand the calculus of reputation. Now, being a Muslim at Harvard will presumably make one appear to be a terrorist sympathizer and a Jew hater.

How is that going to look when they are applying for jobs?

Fourth, thanks to Summers and several other Harvard faculty, the university administration was shamed into responding. You will note the immediate recourse to moral equivalence. And you will also remark the call for a cease fire, thus for Israeli capitulation:

We have no illusion that Harvard alone can readily bridge the widely different views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we are hopeful that, as a community devoted to learning, we can take steps that will draw on our common humanity and shared values in order to modulate rather than amplify the deep-seated divisions and animosities so distressingly evident in the wider world. Especially at such a time, we want to emphasize our commitment to fostering an environment of dialogue and empathy, appealing to one another’s thoughtfulness and goodwill in a time of unimaginable loss and sorrow.

 

As many colleagues, classmates, and friends deal with pain and deep concern about the events in Israel and Gaza, we must all remember that we are one Harvard community, drawn together by a shared passion for learning, discovery, and the pursuit of truth in all its complexity, and held together by a commitment to mutual respect and support. At this moment of challenge, let us embody the care and compassion the world needs now.

 

To which Lawrence Summers replied:

The delayed @Harvard leadership statement fails to meet the needs of the moment. Why can’t we find anything approaching the moral clarity of Harvard statements after George Floyd's death or Russia's invasion of Ukraine when terrorists kill, rape and take hostage hundreds of Israelis attending a music festival?

Fifth, in fairness we do not want to single out Harvard. Students from Columbia and many other universities rallied to Hamas. Add to that the fact that Black Lives Matter in Chicago declared their support for the resistance. Keep in mind, Chicago is the home of Jeremiah Wright, whose protege is President Obama.

If you were surprised to see so much naked anti-Semitism in America, you have not been paying attention. Or better, you were duped into thinking that anti-Semitism was the private property of the right. 

Now you know that the American left, the group that will cancel you for misgendering someone, will happily cheer terrorists who rape women and decapitate. Of course, it is unacceptable in the New York Times to call Hamas terrorists. You must call them gunmen.

Sixth, among the most cowardly aspects of the Hamas invasion were the rapes and murders of women. As you might know, feminists far and wide suddenly went silent about it all. Caring about women is not their bailiwick.

Matt Walsh  directed his ire at the United Nations Women’s Directorate:

Women were just kidnapped, raped, murdered and paraded around on camera as trophies. UN Women has said nothing at all about it. Instead they’re tweeting their support for pervert men with autogynephilic fetishes.

Instead UN Women issued a directive about transgenderism:

Remember, trans lesbians are lesbians too. Let's uplift and honour EVERY expression of love and identity! Happy International #LesbianDay!

Seventh, speaking of violence against women, it is increasing in New York City. A city that is run by progressives like Bill DeBlasio has seen a spike in violence against women. About it, feminists have nothing to say.

The story comes from The New York Post:

Physical attacks on women have surged a shocking 41% over the last four years, according to disturbing NYPD data obtained by The Post.

Through Oct. 1 this year, 2,830 women have been the victims of felony assault, excluding domestic violence, compared to 2,006 just four years ago.

The attacks, ranging from random subway shoves to vicious beatings, have jumped 5% from the same period last year, when 2,699 women were felony assault victims.

“It seemed like a while ago, it was old Asian people, and now it’s young women,” one 27-year-old told The Post, three weeks after a stranger sucker-punched her in the face at the West 4th Street subway station. “It feels like men just hate us.”

She ripped ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio and his comrades for pushing to empty the city’s jails during the pandemic and lashed out at city pols for passing legislation to cut down on the number of people in custody as part of its goal to close Rikers Island.

“They’re not being careful about who they’re letting out,” she said.

Eighth, where but in the New York Post would you be able to read about “a trail of broken vaginas.” The story comes from Russia, and naturally, from the art world:

Hundreds of white plaster casts of vaginas, believed to have been en route to an art gallery, tumbled onto a road in Irkutsk, Russia, last month after a traffic crash.

Bizarre video footage shot by a passerby on Sept. 22 shows a trail of broken vaginas leading up to the back of a truck, CEN reports.

In the short clip, a man believed to be the driver tries to secure his lost load.

“There was apparently no significant material damage, as no one called the traffic police at the time,” the department regional headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs later said in a statement.

Ninth, nary a day passes when we do not see an article about how people are working less and loving it more. Better yet, these slackers are just as productive while they lounge around in their pajamas.

In some quarters their jobs are called “lazy girl” jobs. It’s part of the rage for work/life balance. Apparently, it appeals especially to the slackers who constitute Gen Z.

Unfortunately, in India, of all places, one manager discovered that he could replace all the lazy girls with bots. 

AOL has the story:

Interest in “lazy girl” jobs has surged as Gen Z rejects hustle culture, embraces doing the bare minimum on Mondays, and takes work at a snail’s pace.

But one CEO has dealt a blow to those looking for low-stress, remote roles that are well paid and mainly entail repetitive tasks like responding to emails: Such jobs may no longer exist in the very near future because of AI.

Suumit Shah, the CEO of India-based Duukan, sparked backlash for replacing most of his customer support team with chatbots earlier this year—before boasting about it on Twitter, now X.

However, the commerce chief has no qualms about the move. Instead, he insists that’s where the future of work is heading and that all workers who copy and paste for a living will be out of jobs soon because AI can do them more efficiently, for much less.

"That job is gone. 100%," Shah told the Washington Post.

"It was [a] no-brainer for me to replace the entire team with a bot," he added, "which is like 100 times smarter, who is instant, and who cost me like 100th of what I used to pay to the support team."

Tenth, on the transmania front, trans girls, aka boys, have been assaulting girls in rest rooms across American schools and beyond:

-In Louden County, VA two separate girls were raped and assaulted by a boy calling himself gender fluid.

-In Oklahoma, a boy claiming to be trans assaulted two girls in the bathroom. -In Texas a boy calling himself a transgender girl, put a girl in the hospital due to his assault. 

-In Riverside, CA a boy who identifies as transgender assaulted a girl after spitting on her and exposing himself in the girl’s locker room. 

-In Brazil a boy who identifies as trans assaulted two girls because they were advocating for single-sex bathrooms. 

As for putting an end to the madness, obviously, our nation being what it is, we will use lawsuits. 

A teenage girl who was sexually assaulted in a Virginia high school bathroom has sued Loudoun County Public Schools, alleging that school officials failed to heed warning signs about her attacker and responded to her May 2021 assault by trying to cover it up.

Eleventh, Joe Biden wants the world to know that he has Israel’s back. He had to say so because his administration has, from the onset, not had Israel’s back. 

Failing to address the situation in public for three days suggests a lack of urgency, a disinterest and a disconnection from reality. He must have imagined that expressing outrage was enough. It was not.

Regarding the role Iran played in the massacre, Joe Biden had nothing to say.

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