Saturday Miscellany

 First, Tucker Carlson had a bad day. He chose to wade into the propaganda war between Israel and Hamas, on the side of Palestinian terrorists. He chose to denounce Israel for the way it was treating its Christian citizens.

In his words:

How does the government of Israel treat Christians? In the West, Christian leaders don’t seem interested in knowing the answer. They should be. Here’s the view of a pastor from Bethlehem.

To that Dumisani Washington and Karys Rhea responded on Tablet:

For one, this Lutheran pastor doesn’t even live in Israel. That’s right. Instead of speaking to one of the 180,000 Christian Israelis, Tucker chose to interview someone who lives under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority in Area A of the West Bank, a place where priests live in fear and toe the party line about Israel’s “occupation” in order to protect their churches. By way of example, in 2002, Palestinian militants holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and forced civilians and clergymen to remain in the church with them at gunpoint, setting off a 39-day siege of the church that featured firefights with the IDF. Greek Orthodox priests later relayed how the terrorists seized church stockpiles of food and “ate like greedy monsters” until the food ran out while the civilians survived on a meager diet. Catholic priests meanwhile said that the Palestinian gunmen tore up Bibles for toilet paper and stole valuable sacramental objects. Civilians were threatened that they would be “dealt with later” if they attempted to leave.

Pastor Munther Isaac is a fan of these bestial thugs, and not some good faith interlocutor interested in raising awareness about the plight of Christians. He is a malicious agitator who publicly lauded the Oct. 7 massacre one day after it occurred, waxing poetic about “the strength of the Palestinian man who challenged his besiegement.” He is also a critic of Western democracies that don’t place social justice and racially centered values as their most cherished articles of faith, and a supporter of the politicized theology of the Kairos Palestine document, which asserts that occupation is a “sin against God” and that true lovers of Christ would stand in solidarity with Palestinians. 

With Tucker’s disdain of the pastor’s fellow travelers on the woke American-left, Pastor Isaac seems a strange bedfellow to represent the views of Christians in Israel. Is this unrepresentative choice a personal reflection of Tucker’s affinities? Is he expressing his own antisemitic sympathies by taking cover beneath the morally depraved views of the pastor?

The real story to be told here is the demographics. Christians in Bethlehem, the town where Jesus was born, represented more than 80% of the population when the territory was controlled by Israel. Since the Palestine Liberation Organization took over in late 1995, it is now over 80% Muslim. The Christian population of the West Bank and Gaza has plummeted to roughly 1%. This is in keeping with the larger trend in the region, where Christian communities have largely been driven out and disappeared after two millennia of faithful presence.

I cannot imagine what Tucker Carlson was thinking. I like to think that he was duped or was simply ignorant, but seriously….

Second, on the same topic a Christian named Shadi Kahlloul living in Israel wrote this:

I am Native Christian living in Israel who speaks the language of Jesus Christ. Most of us 180k Christian Israelis prefer to live under Israel freely rather than under a Palestinian Islamic Authority regime controlling Bethlehem. Israel gives us freedom while living under Arabs has been genocidal for Christians all across the Middle East. Tucker, I invite you to visit our Aramaic Christian Galilee center. Don't be deceived by collaborators of the Satan.

Third, in the meantime, on the Gaza front, the Biden administration is obsessed with feeding the people of Gaza. If said people are starving perhaps some of the blame lies with their Hamas overlords.

Consider this, from Miha Schwartzenberg:

The world is sending food to Gaza,as in hundreds of trucks daily.Hamas takes over everything and sells it at extreme prices-did I mention the International Aid is for free ? Wait, there is more -Hamas is throwing away food,instead of giving it to people.Because they have enough for themselves,but they need the story to impress the fools about the drama of the population…

Tell me you find this surprising.

Fourth, yesterday British Dr. Hillary Cass released a report about transmania, that is, gender denying care.

Among her observations:

There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behavior.

This must stop.

Fifth, from the Twitter account of Libs of TikTok, some news that has been scrupulously ignored by the media:

Did you even know that there was a bombing at the Republican Attorney General’s Office in Alabama? They arrested and charged an unhinged trans nonbinary leftist antifa activist for it. This was politically motivated terrorism. This should be the biggest news story right now.

Sixth, the silence was deafening. Michigan Governer Gretchen Whitmer, the Queen of Botox, was faced with a challenge. She failed it.

Robert Spencer reports:

If a group of people in America get together and scream “Death to America,” officials ought to be lining up to condemn them, and there should be investigations and, if non-citizens are involved, deportations. We live, however, in Old Joe Biden’s America, in which the America-hating left is the dominant cultural force, and so some high-profile politicians have been notably wary about condemning calls for the destruction of the nation they have vowed to protect and defend.

In Dearborn, however, as a pro-Hamas activist named Tarek Bazzi denounced the United States as “one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this earth,” some of the people in the crowd screamed “al-mawt li Amrika,” that is, “Death to America.” As they did so, Bazzi stood with head bowed, waiting for them to go silent so that he could resume speaking. He gave no hint of disapproval of the chants.

Aside from Gretchen Whitmer, other Michigan politicians, when asked for comment about the anti-Americanism, refused to respond:

Reps. Debbie Dingell, Haley Stevens, Debbie Stabenow, Gary Peters and (what did you expect?) Rashida Tlaib “refused to share their stance on the matter.” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer likewise “did not respond to a request for comment.”

Seventh, now that women are no longer tools of the patriarchy and that feminism has liberated female sexuality, the latest trend among young people is-- sexual strangulation. Or choking during sex-- and do not confuse this with deep throat.

Say what? 

Peggy Orenstein has written a long, detailed study for the New York Times. Not a minute too soon. She connects the trend toward sexual strangulation with women’s liberation.

… at a time when women’s social, economic, educational and political power are in ascent (even if some of those rights may be in jeopardy), when #MeToo has made progress against harassment and assault, there has been the popularization of a sex act that can damage our brains, impair intellectual functioning, undermine mental health, even kill us.

I will not speculate on the relationship between these two, but shouldn’t young women find a different way to express their feminine sexuality. And would it not be better if they were not wedded to the psycho notion that if they want to do it they should do it. The alternative is-- whether they should do it.

How prevalent is this sexual strangulation?

For the past four years, Dr. Herbenick has been tracking the rapid rise of “rough sex” among college students, particularly sexual strangulation, or what is colloquially referred to as “choking.” Nearly two-thirds of women in her most recent campus-representative survey of 5,000 students at an anonymized “major Midwestern university” said a partner had choked them during sex (one-third in their most recent encounter). The rate of those women who said they were between the ages 12 and 17 the first time that happened had shot up to 40 percent from one in four.

This apparently is not an incidental occurrence. It almost always seems to be on the menu. 

And it is dangerous, no matter how practiced you are:

There is no safe way to strangle someone.

According to the American Academy of Neurology, restricting blood flow to the brain, even briefly, can cause permanent injury, including stroke and cognitive impairment.

And then there is the mental health aspect. I have occasionally opined that young women’s declining mental health might have something to do with the fact that they are engaging in sexual behaviors that they ought not to be engaging in.

Orenstein makes the connection:

Women who had experienced more than five instances of choking were two and a half times more likely than those who had never been choked to say they had been so depressed within the previous 30 days they couldn’t function. Whether girls and women with mental health challenges are more likely to seek out (or be subjected to) choking, choking causes mood disorders, or some combination of the two is still unclear, but hypoxia — judging by what research has shown about other types of traumatic brain injury — could be a contributing factor. Given the soaring rates of depression and anxiety among young women, that warrants concern.

In some cases men, having learned sex education by watching porn, wanted to try it out. Yet, sexual strangulation is designed to enhance female sexual pleasure. 

Among girls and women I’ve spoken with, many did not want or like to be sexually strangled, though in an otherwise desired encounter they didn’t name it as assault. Still, a sizable number were enthusiastic; they requested it. It is exciting to feel so vulnerable, a college junior explained. The power dynamic turns her on; oxygen deprivation to the brain can trigger euphoria.

Should there not be other ways for young women to recover their lost feminine mystique?

Eighth, as though to show that we are following an important social trend-- the dying out of feminism-- Monica Hesse has written an extended complaint about some of the other ways that young women are trying to recover their feminine mystique, without choking on it.

These often involve a new set of roles-- the tradwife, the stay-at-home-girlfriend, the woman who wants to marry someone who is older and more established and who will not oblige her to have a career. It amounts to feminine leisure. 

Now, Hesse presents the reasoning behind the search for feminine leisure.

 That women raised on the virtues of female independence have been sold a bill of goods. Yes, we are allowed to have successful careers. But nobody had decreased the amount of laundry or errands that still needed to be run. Nobody had added any more hours onto the clock.

Naturally, she and other feminists look upon tradwives and SAHG with boundless contempt. One understands that this is a phase of the culture war. One understands that Hesse and the editors at the New Yorker cheer when a tradwife goes out and gets a job. 

But, has said tradwife discovered the truth about feminism and patriarchy or has she been browbeaten by her friends and neighbors into becoming a good little feminist.

So much for free to choose.

Ninth, on the migrant crime front. Some people have trotted out statistics showing that illegal migrants do not commit any more crimes than anyone else. About which Bill Maher commented:

"Sweden opened it's borders to 1.5 million immigrants since 2010. Now 20% of their citizens are foreign born, and their education system is tanking. And it has Europe's highest rate of gang-land killings. To which liberals say: Blaming immigrants for the rising crime rate is racist. Yeah, but is it true? Of course it's true."

On that note, I hope you have enjoyed reading this miscellany. If so, please subscribe to my Substack.