Wednesday Potpourri

First, obviously, people on the political left, who have spent their careers railing against right-wing anti-Semitism, are hard at work making it appear that anti-Semitism is coming from both the left and the right.

Unfortunately, the numbers do not bear it out. Avi Bitterman reports:

Since Oct 7th, 2023 antisemitic incidents, including those rising to the level of violence or threat of violence, overwhelmingly all come from the Far-left, not the Far-right. This held true for all categorizations of incidence types. Violence or threat of violence from far left: 132 Violence or threat of violence from far right: 21 Vandalism from the far left: 514 Vandalism from the far right: 126

Second, in the matter of Harvard University’s anti-Semitism problem, it turns out that the university has just rewarded students who assaulted a Jewish classmate. It’s one thing to offer a slap on the wrist in place of punishment. It’s quite another to reward the perpetrators of ant-Semitic violence:

The Jerusalem Post reported:

Two Harvard students, Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, assaulted Jewish classmate Yoav Segev during an anti-Israel protest. Despite criminal charges, a judge dismissed the case in April, ordering community service and anger management. Bharmal later received a $65,000 Harvard Law Review fellowship at CAIR, and Tettey-Tamaklo was named a class marshal. 

Third, speaking of Harvard, Alan Dershowitz, who taught for five decades in the Harvard Law School, has not been invited back since he retired several years ago. Maybe this remark is one of the reasons:

"Harvard is not only tolerating antisemitism in several of its schools… It's actually teaching, encouraging, and fomenting antisemitism."

Fourth, the Biden scandal proceeds apace. Authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have declared that it was worse than Watergate.

Now James Carville weighs in, while defending Biden:

“I cannot begin to express how tragic this is,” Carville said on Thursday’s episode of his podcast, “Politics War Room.”

“He’s one of the most accomplished Americans” since World War II, Carville said, praising Biden’s legacy in politics. “If you just look at what he did as chairman of the Judiciary, Foreign Relations, Vice President, President, and you look at the tragedies of his life and distress that he’s exhibited, and he’s a well-liked, very admirable person, and he made one colossal mistake, and the Democrats made a colossal mistake by going along with it.”

Of course, Carville is capable of rationalizing anything. And, if the worst that Biden did was not dropping out of the race sooner, this conveniently invites us to ignore his dereliction of duty during his presidency.

Carville called Biden a titan, conveniently forgetting Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran and Gaza. Not to mention the open borders policy.

Fifth, as for the Abraham Accords, we are all awaiting the Saudi decision to join them. But, now, certain Palestinian officials have declared that they want to join also.

It began with a sentence that sounded less like the opening of a diplomatic talk and more like the opening pitch at an accelerator demo-day. Economy Minister Nir Barkat – whose résumé lists two tech exits before it lists “mayor of Jerusalem” – stepped onto the Jerusalem Post Conference stage in New York and said he was tired of hearing that the West Bank was unsolvable.

If a product fails, he told the room, you either ship a better one or the market walks. His “product” was the Palestinian Authority; his better version was a Palestinian chapter of the Abraham Accords. 

“One day – hopefully soon – Arabs in Judea and Samaria will decide they’ve had enough of the PA and ask to join the accords,” he said.

“If they work with Israel, we’ll help them build Dubai. If they fight Israel, they’ll end up looking like Gaza.”

And,

In his model, clusters of West Bank towns would bypass Ramallah, plug directly into Israeli security and Gulf capital, and trade under commercial annexes adapted from the UAE-Israel playbook. No midnight shuttle diplomacy, no flags raised over Rose Garden lawns – just container IDs, escrow instructions and profit-and-loss sheets.

Sixth, how bad is it for the Democratic Party? The New York Times thinks that it’s worse than we think. Matt Margolis reports on the latest from the Gray Lady:

While Democrats continue their tired routine of Trump-bashing and pretending to care about working Americans, the numbers tell a completely different story. The Times' analysis reveals a political earthquake that's reshaping the electoral landscape, and it's not in the Democrats' favor.

“It is a staggering political achievement, especially considering that Mr. Trump was defeated in the second of those three races, in 2020. By contrast, Democrats have steadily expanded their vote share in those three elections in only 57 of the nation’s 3,100-plus counties.”

In the 2024 election, six times as many counties shifted toward the GOP as toward the Democrats. 

While 435 counties trended more Democratic compared to 2012, 2,678 moved more Republican—by an even larger average margin of 13.3 points versus 8.8 for Democrats.

That's not just a loss; that's a political bloodbath.

The Democrats' problem? 

They're increasingly becoming the party of coastal elites and college-educated snobs. 

Meanwhile, Trump has built an unstoppable coalition that includes working-class voters across all racial and ethnic backgrounds. 

The New York Times didn’t sugarcoat the situation for the Democrats.

Counties that have become steadily more Republican exist in some of the country’s bluest strongholds, including New York City, Philadelphia and Honolulu. Mr. Trump’s party is still losing in those places, but by significantly less. At the same time, Mr. Trump has driven Republican margins to dizzying new heights in the nation’s reddest bastions.

Seventh, the president of France is, as the expression goes, whipped. We all saw the pictures of Emmanuel Macron being slapped by his wife Brigitte.

It brought to mind the fact that the couple met when she was his teacher in high school. She was nearly forty and he was fifteen. As it happens, fifteen is the age of consent in France. 

What does it mean? The word in certain Parisian circles is that he is simply gay.

Finally, I have some free consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, write me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.