Wednesday Potpourri

First, from the Twitter account of Lahav Harkov:

Second-graders in Nablus coloring hang-gliders to celebrate the murder of Israeli children. Children in schools run by the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority are being indoctrinated with hate.

Second, no one will dispute the fact that Israeli intelligence had failed to see the October 7 invasion and massacre. How did it happen?

The Financial Times offers a timeline of that failure:

A senior Israeli mil­it­ary intel­li­gence officer dis­missed a detailed warn­ing pre­dict­ing Hamas’s raid of Octo­ber 7, call­ing it an “ima­gin­ary scen­ario”, accord­ing to two people famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions.

Sentries on Israel’s bor­der with Gaza, many of them female sol­diers who watch and ana­lyse a con­stant feed of video and other data gathered near the elec­tronic fence sur­round­ing the enclave, sent a detailed report weeks before the attack to the highest-rank­ing intel­li­gence officer in the south­ern com­mand, both people said.

The report was sent using a secure com­mu­nic­a­tions sys­tem and con­tained spe­cific warn­ings, includ­ing that Hamas was train­ing to blow up bor­der posts at sev­eral loc­a­tions, enter Israeli ter­rit­ory and take over kib­butzim, the per­son with dir­ect know­ledge of the con­tents of the warn­ing said.

Israel’s fail­ure to pre­vent the attack, which the gov­ern­ment says killed more than 1,200 people, is now seen as its largest intel­li­gence fail­ure since Egypt and Syria launched a sur­prise assault in 1973 on the holy day of Yom Kip­pur.

The lower-rank­ing sol­diers also warned their ana­lysis of sev­eral videos showed Hamas was rehears­ing tak­ing host­ages, and that they felt an attack was immin­ent, the per­son said. The memo was triggered by the sight­ing of a high-rank­ing Hamas mil­it­ary com­mander over­see­ing the train­ing, who was iden­ti­fied by the sentries against a data­base of faces and iden­tit­ies main­tained by Unit 8200, a part of the Israeli intel­li­gence corps.

Both said the warn­ings were dis­missed not just because they came from lower-rank­ing sol­diers, but because they ran up against the Israeli gov­ern­ment’s con­fid­ence that it had con­tained Hamas through a pun­ish­ing block­ade and using aid and money as a means to pla­cate the mil­it­ant group.

Third, the satirical Babylon Bee has a Christmas message:

San Francisco Mayor Reminds Everyone To Get Their Christmas Shoplifting Done Early

Fourth, in New York City shoplifting is rampant and apparently unstoppable. The New York Post reports:

Almost all of the Big Apple’s supermarkets have been hit by shoplifters in the past year, with a majority crying they’re being targeted daily, a new survey found.

Sticky-fingered customers have swiped detergent, coffee, and other sundries from 93% of supermarkets in the five boroughs this year, members of the National Supermarkets Association reported in a September survey, whose results were shared with The Post. In all, 60% said their stores are burglarized seven days a week.

“It’s like they feel they’re licensed to shoplift now,” Carlos Collado, who owns two Fine Fare stores in the Bronx and Harlem, told The Post. He bemoaned the state’s 2019 criminal justice reforms that made thefts less than $1,000 ineligible for bail.

“They feel there’s no consequences, and they’re making it a profession,” the 56-year-old added, explaining many crooks are stealing big-ticket items like Haagen Dazs ice cream to flip for cash.

According to the NSA survey, 72% of supermarket owners said they’ve beefed up security measures, but Frank Pimentel, who owns a SuperFresh supermarket in Mott Haven and a Food Universe in Melrose, said his stores are still being targeted multiple times a day, even with security guards stationed inside.

America’s great blue cities, managed by Democratic mayors and prosecutors, are falling apart. 

Fifth, the news from Germany is grim. Mass migration has brought a crime wave. 

Thomas Brooke in Remix News reports the German government report:

Mass immigration into Germany is a significant contributing factor in the surge in violent crime being reported across the country, Germany’s federal police office, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), has revealed.

The number of crimes involving German citizens — which includes dual citizens who may have been born elsewhere — rose by 8 percent compared to non-German suspects which increased by as much as 23 percent. Furthermore, cases involving foreign minors rose considerably by 37 percent.

Sixth, as a sidelight, from France via Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, regarding the psychiatric perils of unrestricted immigration.

In France, Algerians are disproportionately represented among those involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals, to the point that French natives cannot access psychiatric treatment.

Consanguinity is very high in Algeria, which disproportionately leads to schizophrenia and psychosis. This is a topic of recurrent debate in Algerian media.

Seventh,  meanwhile, in Dublin Ireland, an Algerian migrant become Irish citizen stabbed three people, and this provoked a wave of riots.

The chief suspect in the multiple stabbing that left a five-year-old girl fighting for her life was arrested earlier this year for possession of a knife, the Irish Daily Mail has learned.

The man, originally from Algeria, has been living in Ireland for the past two decades. He took Irish citizenship more than a decade ago.

The man, who is in his late 40s, has come to Garda attention several times in the past year.

Naturally, the local media and the leftist government of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar declared that the problem was right wing agitators.

Eighth, an Irish-Israeli girl was released from Hamas captivity. The leeftist Varadkar government tweeted that “an innocent girl who had been lost has now been found.”

He was widely denounced for being a pathetic weakling. 

Ninth, speaking of rampaging mobs, the students at Hillcrest High School in Queens discovered that one of their teachers had attended a pro-Israeli rally. So they went crazy and tried to attack her. She hid in a classroom, awaiting help. They have also doxed her and demanded that she be fired.

New York’s mayor said that this was unacceptable behavior and that he was not going to do much of anything about it.

 

School chancellor David Bowen declared that it was a teachable moment. He said:

These organizations will play a crucial role in contributing to the broader mission of de-escalation and creating teachable moments from this challenging situation.

Tenth, Abigail Shrier offered this comment:

The fifteen years - and billions in public funds - we spent on “anti-bullying” and empathy education were clearly a smashing success.

And Michael Powell wrote this in The Atlantic:

"A teachable moment" is such a lovely phrase. Students jumped and beat up a black uniformed security guard and rampaged through the halls as a Jewish teacher hid behind locked doors. De-escalation training perhaps falls a tad short?

“Chancellor Bank’s weak response to the antisemitic riot at Hillcrest High School failed to condemn the behavior of over 400 students that threatened the life of a teacher, solely because she is Jewish,” educator Tova Plaut, a member of the New York City Public School Alliance, said on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

“He failed to recognize the deep-seated Jewish hate present in our school and then doubled down on this failure by minimizing and erasing the legitimate concerns of our community,” Plaut said as she stood with 20 supporters.

“Chancellor Banks, this is your teachable moment,” she said. “Stop the hate now.”

Eleventh, at Hofstra University, President Susan Poser came under political fire for a statement she made on the current war in the Middle East. Being a strong, empowered woman Poser showed off her soft side, by promoting a specious moral equivalence:

A top Long Island pol is calling for the resignation of the president of local Hofstra University, claiming she failed in a statement to be “clear and strong in her condemnation of Hamas without equivocation.”

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who used to teach business law at the school, recently fired off a letter to the Long Island university’s Board of Trustees, saying President Susan Poser issued a “callous and unconscionable statement’’ on the Israel-Hamas war to the college’s community last month, according to Fox News Digital.

Poser had written that she wanted to “acknowledge the emails and comments that I and other administrators have received since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th.

“That event, Israel’s response, and the ongoing conflict are taking the lives of thousands of people, with no end in sight. We mourn the loss of life in Israel and Gaza, which is deeply affecting many members of our community,” she said.

“There is a complex history and conflicting views about the causal underpinnings of the current crisis. This is one of the reasons that lasting peace in that part of the world has been so elusive and contested. But what is not contested is the tragic loss of life of innocent Israelis, Palestinians, and many others,’’ Poser wrote.

Add “complex” to your list of weasel words, next to “curate’ and “granular.”

Twelfth, on the therapy front, Northwestern University cares about the mental health of its students. Consider the serious trauma visited on said students when they anticipated the arrival of a conservative speaker on campus:

Northwestern University’s student government offered “mental health support” for students traumatized by news that a conservative speaker was coming to campus. After the Supreme Court declared race-based college admissions policies unconstitutional, the Boston University School of Law student government assured students that BU’s “wellness resources,” a.k.a. therapy, could help them “navigate these times.” 

Therapy notwithstanding are you shocked to discover how many young Americans still sleep with stuffed animals:

Perhaps related: A YouGov survey in June found that more than one-third of American adults under age 45 sleep with stuffed animals.

Thirteenth, some good news from the trans front. When young men decided to compete as women in a wrestling match, the young women boycotted the event:

Riley Gaines has the story:

In a martial arts tournament last week, several females boycotted because of the surplus of males competing against the women. In most of the women's divisions, there were more males than females competing. In one of the women's division, there were ONLY males left competing as seen in the podium picture below.

Fourteenth, in Florida several high school officials allowed a trans girl to compete in a girls volleyball tournament. This is against the law in Florida, so they were all reassigned:

The Daily Mail:

A Florida high school principal and three other officials have been reassigned after letting a trans girl play on a girls' volleyball team - despite it being against state law. Principal James Cecil, assistant principal Kenneth May, athletic director Dione Hester and volleyball coach Jessica Norton were all shuffled away from teaching roles. Bosses at Monarch High School in Pompano Beach had raised 'allegations of improper student participation in sports.' It comes after Ron DeSantis signed a bill barring transgender females from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes born as girls in 2021. 'Although we cannot comment further, we will continue to follow state law and will take appropriate action based on the outcome of the investigation,' Broward County School District spokesman John Sullivan said. 'We are committed to providing all our students with a safe and inclusive learning environment.' 

Fifteenth, Jewish families are rethinking their interest in the Ivy league. They are directing their children to safer schools, where there is less indoctrination and less anti-Semitism.

The trend is a response to viral displays of campus anti-semitism — from Jewish students mobbed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Harvard to a Cornell student making anti-semitic death threats.

“Jewish families’ biggest concern is really about how the administrations didn’t react to protect all of their students,” Rim told The Post. “Private schools in more conservative parts of the country, like Wash U [in St. Louis], Emory [in Atlanta], SMU [near Dallas] and Vanderbilt [in Nashville] are popular choices as a Plan B.”

One of his clients just dropped their dream school of Columbia from the application list after three and a half years of consultations.

Sixteenth, the truth about Prince Harry’s troubles and travails. His brother thinks he overdosed on therapy. From the New York Post:

Prince William believes that his estranged brother, Prince Harry, has been influenced too much by therapy.

Omid Scobie’s newest tell-all, “Endgame,” reveals that the Prince of Wales, 41, thinks that the Duke of Sussex, 39, has been “brainwashed by an army of therapists.”

Seventeenth, they used to call it dieting.

Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon begins HUNGER STRIKE in bid to trigger Israel-Hamas peace: Is mom to two Jewish kids with her ex-husband

• Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixon plans to go on a hunger strike in bid to trigger Israel-Hamas ceasefire

• The 57-year-old actress is joining five other U.S. politicians this week to demand that President Joe Biden call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Naturally, this empty gesture will move public opinion. 

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