Wednesday Potpourri

First, as scandals go, it was only mini, Columbia University sanctioned three administrators for sharing anti-Semitic text messages during a meeting about anti-Semitism.

The New York Times reports:

Columbia University placed three administrators on leave this week, a university spokesman said on Saturday. The moves came a little more than a week after images emerged showing the school officials sharing disparaging text messages during a panel discussion about antisemitism on campus.

The panel, which focused on Jewish life on campus amid tensions over Israel’s war in Gaza, occurred during a Columbia College reunion on May 31.

The spokesman did not identify which officials were placed on leave, but The Washington Free Beacon, the website that first published the images, reported that they were Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support.

Ms. Chang-Kim also exchanged texts during the event with Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, according to The Free Beacon. In one exchange, Mr. Sorett texted “LMAO,” for “laughing my ass off,” in response to a sarcastic message Ms. Chang-Kim had written about Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, according to The Free Beacon.

Second, on the fun side, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appeared on the Bill Maher Show. An interesting exchange took place.

“The trial in New York, the one he [Trump] got convicted for, was the greatest fundraising bonanza ever. He was lagging behind Biden, and now he's pulled quite a bit ahead," Maher said to Cuomo during the show. 

To which Cuomo, who was elected as New York State Attorney General in 2006, replied: “That case, the attorney general's case in New York, frankly, should have never been brought."

Cuomo continued: "If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn't running for president. I'm the former AG in New York. I'm telling you, that case would have never been brought. And that's what is offensive to people. And it should be!”

"Because if there's anything left...it's belief in the Justice system!"

Third, Israel is increasingly under attack by Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. The Biden administration, preparing to sell out the Jewish state, has told Israel that it is essentially on its own.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized:

The latest misfire is Sunday’s comments by Gen. C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to reporters on his way to Botswana. According to the Associated Press, America’s top military officer “said the U.S. won’t likely be able to help Israel defend itself against a broader Hezbollah war as well as it helped Israel fight off an Iranian barrage of missiles and drones in April.”

He warned Israel “to think about the second order of effect of any type of operation into Lebanon,” including danger to U.S. forces, and said the Iranians could join the fray directly and give greater support to their proxy “particularly if they felt that Hezbollah was being significantly threatened.”

That’s a calculated red light to Israel—don’t count on U.S. help, do count on Iran’s wrath—but what message is the general sending to Hezbollah? In the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah’s bunker, it probably sounds like: “Go ahead. You can get away with more.”

And also, from the Journal:

It emboldens Hezbollah to keep shooting and extend its range. This increases the domestic pressure in Israel to do something about it. Unprovoked, Hezbollah has already fired nearly 5,000 rockets, missiles and mortars at northern Israel since Oct. 7, depopulating the region. Not that Iran cares, but a major war between Hezbollah and Israel could wreck Lebanon. Central Israel could take damage like it never has before.

The stakes are high, which makes the U.S. policy of publicly trying to deter Israel even harder to figure. Israel is less likely to be compelled to fight Hezbollah if 70,000 Israelis can return to their homes safely in northern Israel.

This means quieting Hezbollah’s rocket fire and convincing it to remove its fighters from the buffer zone in Southern Lebanon. But Hezbollah has no reason to do that if it thinks it can keep firing away and President Biden will protect it from the consequences.

With friends like Joe Biden, you do not need enemies.

And, remind me of why American Jews are rushing out to support Joe Biden’s candidacy.

Fourth, we have occasionally pointed out that the Ivy League has been suffering reputational damage of late. In part, this has happened because these schools have countenanced anti-Semitic demonstrations. You will have noted that the woke leaders of these schools have been weak and ineffectual.

It’s one poll, so, take it with a few grains of salt, but still:

Just The News reports that in the survey from Rasmussen Reports, a mere 10% of respondents say that they consider Ivy League graduates to be hard workers. By contrast, 75% do not consider Ivy League alumni to be better workers, while 74% consider Ivy Leagues to be out-of-touch with the values and beliefs of everyday Americans.

In the same poll, 67% said that they think students are better off attending a state school than attending an Ivy League university. Only 15% said they believe Ivy Leagues to be superior to state schools.

The discontent with the Ivy League universities was noted across partisan lines: 81% of Republican respondents said that the Ivy Leagues are out-of-touch with the rest of America, while 76% of Democrats said the same.

Ever since the unprecedented terrorist attack on Israel by the Islamist group Hamas on October 7th of last year, anti-Israel protests and riots have taken place across the country and around the world, particularly at college campuses. The most violent and extreme demonstrations were at Columbia University, but spread quickly to other campuses such as UCLA.

These incidents have ranged from mass vandalism to assaults against Jewish students.

In addition to the decline in public opinion, the protests have led to a massive decline in Jewish enrollment at such universities. 

Data from Ivy Coach shows that, while roughly 20% of incoming Yale University students in the 2000’s were Jewish, that number plunged to just 12% in 2023.

Fifth, is there a deeper meaning to the wave of restaurant closings? I am hardly qualified to offer an opinion, so I will limit myself to stating the facts.

It’s not as bad as Red Lobster, which has gone bankrupt, but now Hooters is closing 40 locations. It’s not a good sign for the economy. It seems to have something to do with inflation. It may be the canary in the coal mine. But it is not a good thing.

I know you find it hard to believe, America seems to bes losing its appetite for hooters.

Sixth, yesterday I had my say about the appointment of one Tyler Cherry to a position in the communications office of the Biden administration.

And I noted, dutifully, that Cherry had renounced his prior Tweets, which tended to be anti-Semitic and anti-police.

Now, according to Fox News, an anti-anti-Semitism group finds that insufficient. It wants Cherry fired, right away.

An antisemitism watchdog group is calling for the Biden administration to fire a recently promoted White House official whose anti-Israel social media posts resurfaced this week.

StopAntisemitism said Tyler Cherry, who was promoted earlier this month as an associate communications director at the White House, called for the elimination of Israel and promoted anti-Israel viewpoints on social media going back years, as well as anti-police commentary.

"We're hoping this is the quickest hire and fire scenario in President Biden's administration to date," Stop Antisemitism founder Liora Rez told Fox News Digital. "For the Biden administration to either A, not vet properly, or B, to vet and then approve an inner circle appointee like this… is just horrifying."

In fairness, if he had said as much about any other minority group, he would not have gotten the job, regardless of how much he changed his mind.

Seventh, and now a few words on the great smartphone debate. You will recall that social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote a best-selling book blaming the mental health problems of American youth on smartphones.

About which Derek Thompson wrote this in The Atlantic. 

You can find a summary of it on page 5 of this year’s World Happiness Report, a survey of thousands of people across more than 140 countries. “Between 2006 and 2023, happiness among Americans under 30 in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand declined significantly [and] also declined in Western Europe,” the report says. But here’s the catch: In the rest of the world, under-30 happiness mostly increased in this period. “Happiness at every age has risen sharply in Central and Eastern Europe,” the report says. “In the former Soviet Union and East Asia too there have been large increases in happiness at every age.”

This is pretty weird. Smartphones are a global phenomenon. But apparently the rise in youth anxiety is not. In some of the largest and most trusted surveys, it appears to be largely occurring in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. “If you’re looking for something that’s special about the countries where youth unhappiness is rising, they’re mostly Western developed countries,” says John Helliwell, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia and a co-author of the World Happiness Report. “And for the most part, they are countries that speak English.”

The story is even more striking when you look at the most objective measures of teen distress: suicide and self-harm. Suicides have clearly increased in the U.S. and the U.K. Emergency-room visits for suicide attempts and self-harm have been skyrocketing for Gen Z girls across the Anglosphere in the past decade, including in Australia and New Zealand. But there is no rise in suicide or self-harm attempts in similar high-income countries with other national languages, such as France, Germany, and Italy. As Vox’s Eric Levitz wrote, the suicide rate among people ages 15 to 19 actually fell significantly across continental Europe from 2012 to 2019.

So if you were tempted to embrace the smartphones heuristic, think again.

Eighth, as for the notion that America, thanks to its therapy culture, has been exporting mental illness, you can find it articulated well in a book by one Ethan Watters. It is called Crazy Like Us.

Finally, I now have some free consulting hours in my life coaching practice. Email me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com to set up an appointment.

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Who Is Tyler Cherry?

Yesterday, the Twitterverse was abuzz about a pathetic transvestite named Tyler Cherry. Currently a communications specialist in the Interior Department, he was just promoted to an associate communications director job in the White House. 

That means, he is third in line to represent the administration and the nation in press briefings. 

Let’s be clear here. What Cherry wants to do during his private time and with his private life is his business. Frankly, we do not care. If he likes to crossdress and to go to parties with his fellow transvestites, it is his business, not ours.

The world would be a better place if Cherry managed to keep his kinks to himself. Unfortunately, as a multitude of posts has made clear, he has made quite the spectacle of himself, dressing up foolishly and posing in a semi-erotic fashion. 

It is almost not worth mentioning, but Cherry, a fervent supporter of the Palestinian cause, would do better not to show off his kink  in Gaza or in other Palestinian territories. However fervent his support for the Palestinian cause, he should know that his bizarre behavior is a capital crime in such a culture. Walking down a Gaza street in drag would teach young Cherry a good lesson in the value of American culture. In the time it took for them to hang him from a lamppost or to throw him off a rooftop.

Hot Air reports on some of his dubious opinions:

He celebrated bloodshed in Israel in a 2014 post. He applauded what he called the end of the "occupation of Palestine" amid that year's Gaza War. Palestinian forces, led by Hamas, launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion. 

"Cheersing in bars to ending the occupation of Palestine — no shame and f--- your glares #ISupportGaza #FreePalestine," Cherry said on July 25, 2014, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

And, of course, he hates America. Hot Air brings us up to date on some more of his tweets:

In 2015, he tweeted “the modern day police system is a direct evolution of slave patrols and lynch mobs."

And he prayed "even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases." 

He also helped boost "Russiagate."

And In 2018, he called for ICE to be abolished.

By now it is clear that young Mr. Cherry is a typical leftist crank. 

In fairness, as soon as he was named to his new position, he erased all of his prior tweets and renounced all of his idiotic opinions.

You may or may not want to call that a come-to-Jesus moment, or a simple expediency. The trouble is, people had no trouble finding them, and figuring out that during the time that he was director of communications for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, he exposed his jejune opinions to the public at large.

But then, no one really cared. Because no one much cares about Deb Haaland. She has not been very public as a cabinet secretary and was obviously a diversity hire. She comes from a native American community.

Now, we know that such opinions did not bother Deb Haaland. Assuming that she knew about them. And we believe that it was her job to know about them. 

So, Deb Haaland did not know what she was doing. And yet, it does not speak well of her when she hired Tyler Cherry, an ideological zealot to be her communications director. Apparently, she is a leftist fanatic.

In fairness, we assume that Joe Biden was not involved in the decision to bring Tyler Cherry to the White House. One assumes that Joe Biden is barely involved in his administration anyway. 

As the saying goes, the country is in the worst of hands.

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When in Rome, Do As the Romans Do.

Do you remember the days when everyone was drooling over multiculturalism? Nothing seemed quite so modern as constructing a society around multiple cults to multiple deities. That its adherents did not notice that they were selling a postmodern version of pagan idolatry should not surprise us. These were not the best and the brightest.

But, you know that. 

In America the Biden administration and the academic media-driven left has been trying to ram diversity down everyone’s gullet. 

In Europe, the situation is slightly different. In the first place Europe is not a homogeneous cultural entity. In the second place, the problem in Europe is Muslim migrants. In America the problem has been, at least until recently, South and Central American migrants.

One needs to mention that the current situation in the Middle East has shown American that there is a large politically active coterie of Muslims in America and that they are not shy about showing off their intolerance, especially their anti-Semitism. Since they pay no price for their appalling behavior, they continue to attack Jews. 

Meanwhile, back in Europe, the elections for the European Parliament decisively repudiated decades of immigration policy. In France and Germany, anti-immigrant parties outpolled the more traditional political parties.

Writing in the New York Times, Roger Cohen calls it a return to nationalism and one would be hard put to disagree.

Cohen’s point is well made. It’s not just about migrants, but about migrants who refuse to assimilate, who do not adopt local customs, and who insist that everyone treat them as though they belong-- to a superior culture:

At the heart of the rapid rise of the nationalist right, with its view of immigrants as a direct threat to the essence of France, there appears to lie a growing feeling among many French people that they are no longer at home in their own country.

That feeling, a vague but potent malaise, has many elements. They include a sense of dispossession, of neighborhoods transformed in dress and habits by the arrival of mainly Muslim immigrants from North Africa, and of lost identity in a fast-changing world. 

The modern migrant wave began when German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened her country’s doors to Muslim refugees. We note in passing that she was a right of center politician, not a leftist:

Almost a decade ago, Angela Merkel, then the German chancellor, immortalized the words “Wir schaffen das,” or “we can do  this,” as she admitted more than one million Syrian refugees to Germany. 

Again, Cohen mentions that migrants are not working to belong to the local culture. As is happening in Sweden, migrants are bringing crime and chaos. And then they complain that they are not being welcomed.

Once the core theme of the xenophobic right, the push to control or stop migrants has moved toward the center of the political spectrum. The view of immigrants as diluting national identity, freeloading on social safety nets and importing violence has spread, often fed by thinly veiled bigotry.

Note the last phrase. Why is it necessary to add the notion that French citizens are bigots. When migrants import criminal violence, Cohen seems to be suggesting that they are not responsible for their behavior. As an old saying has it, certain groups are never at fault. We can add that certain groups are always at fault.

Why this shift? Western societies of ever greater inequality have left many people behind, fueling anger. In France, a social model that worked well for a long time has been unable to resolve the problems of lost hope and poor schools in suburban projects where many immigrants live. This feeds further frustration. Tensions flare regularly between Muslims and the police.

Sadly, Cohen cannot quite figure out why the police might be more suspicious of members of a group that commits a disproportionate number of crimes.

What does this have to do with growing inequality? Migrants who come to a foreign country are obliged to adopt the cultural habits of the local citizens. 

Don’t we recall the immortal words of a fourth century bishop of Milan-- that would be St. Ambrose: When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

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The Axis of Ill Will

Everyone agrees that nature abhors a vacuum. At least, I imagine that such is the case.

In the world of politics, we should also agree that weakness invites aggression. Present yourself as weak and ineffectual and someone will almost assuredly try to take advantage.

Speaking of weakness, we currently have the case of our president Joe Biden. As you know the nation is currently embroiled in an absurd debate about video tape editing. Biden’s supporters insist that the tapes showing the president as old, frail and feeble, are cheap or deep fakes. Actually, the correct phrase is “deep fakes.” Apparently, some idiot did not know it and invented the phrase “cheap fakes.”

So, the G7 leaders met in Italy and we all saw the prime minister of Italy, one Georgia Meloni gently lead Biden back into the scrum, into the group. Apparently, feeble Joe had been distracted by the presence of some  paratroopers.

Of course, we could argue that Biden was not distracted; he was just looking at the troopers who had landed to his left.

On the other side, the Italian prime minister seemed to feel that Joe had gotten lost. 

Similarly, when Biden attended a fundraising event with Barack Obama, among others, and when he froze before the audience, Obama took him by the hand and led him off the stage. Again, Obama believed that Biden needed a slight push in the right direction. You may believe that Biden was perfectly compos mentis, but Barack Obama did not think so. Surely, Obama’s views have more validity than yours.

If we are too sophisticated to ponder such presumed facts, we can turn to policy. In conducting foreign policy, has Biden shown himself to be strong and in control? Do world leaders respect him or do they think of new ways to take advantage of his weakness? 

Every time Biden declared that his message to foreign actors was “Don’t”-- they did. No one cares what Joe Biden thinks. When Putin invaded Ukraine he did not worry about Joe Biden. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, it did not fear the wrath of Biden.

Now the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has traveled to North Korea to forge an alliance with Kim Jong Un. Along with China and Iran, these countries are forming what Niall Ferguson calls an axis of ill will.

To me the phrasing feels infelicitous. This axis does not involve ill will. It involves taking certain actions in order to replace America and the West as world leading powers. See also the advent of the BRICS consortium.

Niall Ferguson explains his concept:

But what all four Axis members can agree on — despite their many differences — is that the era of American primacy needs to be terminated.

What’s more, they are doing a good job of persuading many developing countries in the so-called “Global South” to take their side, blaming the war in Ukraine on NATO expansion and now claiming — as Xi told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last year — that Washington is trying to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan.

Given the challenge of China and Co. the two political parties have staked out two different approaches. Ferguson explains:

The new Republican line — which is markedly different from the Russophile isolationism of Tucker Carlson — is that it is time for America to get tough with the Axis.

“The United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it,” Pottinger and Gallagher opined in a recent article for Foreign Affairs.

“A cold war is already being waged against the United States by China’s leaders. . . . Victory requires openly admitting that a totalitarian regime that commits genocide, fuels conflict, and threatens war will never be a reliable partner.”

One can question this caricature, or one can ask whether it is a caricature? Besides, if we continue to talk trash about China, threatening its face, then surely it is not going to be willing to cooperate.

Life, even political life, is not a one-way street.

Ferguson argues that however much we want to improve our military readiness, we do not have the cash to do so.

While it is quite easy for Republican hawks to call for increased spending on weapons and defense research, it is much harder to say where the money will come from.

According to the latest report of the Congressional Budget Office, the US budget deficit will be around $1.9 trillion this year — a whopping 6.9% of GDP, compared with the 5.6% it forecast in February.

That’s an astounding number at a time of near-full employment, reflecting the fact that the Biden administration just keeps overspending on everything from foreign aid to student-loan forgiveness.

At this point, Ferguson tosses in a concept that he developed himself. When a nation spends more on servicing its debt than it does on its armed forces, it is not going to stay great for very long:

According to the only law of history I have ever discovered, any great power that spends more on debt service than on its armed services doesn’t stay great for long.

What is the alternative to the Republican plan to amp up defense spending? Why, it involves sanctioning Chinese business and breaking its economy. 

Now, you can believe — as Jake Sullivan evidently does — that economic measures will suffice to rein in the Axis of Ill Will, and that Americans themselves will be able to avoid fighting wars.

Protectionist tariffs and export controls have their uses, no doubt.

But — as with sanctions, which have conspicuously failed to cripple Russia’s war economy — those should not be exaggerated.

How is the sanctions regime working? Not very well, Ferguson explains:

China suffers setbacks when the US restricts its access to the most sophisticated semiconductors, but it is not clear that the setbacks are more than temporary.

As the former Google chair Eric Schmidt has said: “For now, the United States remains in the lead [in artificial intelligence]. But China is catching up in many areas and has already surged ahead in others.”

According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technology Tracker, “China’s global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial technology fields spanning defense, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, and key quantum technology areas.”

In the past five years, to give just one example, China generated just under half of the world’s high-impact research papers on advanced aircraft engines, including hypersonics.

This should make all sentient Americans pay attention.

For, if China is not merely catching up but has actually overtaken the United States in certain key fields of defense technology, nothing could be more dangerous than a hot war with China any time soon.

It is a harsh reality, exposed in multiple war games, that in such a war the United States would run out of key weapons, such as long-range anti-ship missiles, in about a week.

Not many wars are over in a week.

So, the Biden administration position invites more aggression, at a time and place of Xi Jinping’s wish. There is very little we can do about it, for now.

And we ought to understand that the Middle Kingdom is not taking it all passively. One might even imagine that the Chinese effort to flood our market with poison, as in, fentanyl, has something to do with the fact that we are trying to undermine its prosperity.

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Saturday Miscellany

First, from education activist Nicki Neily, an assessment of the state of American elementary school education. Consider this further evidence of the damage caused to American children when schools were shut down during the pandemic:

America faces a lost generation of students who were negatively impacted by decisions made during the pandemic. NAEP scores have shown that proficiency levels in core subjects fell precipitously due to school closures. …

2023 NAEP scores dropped across the country at all grade levels. In Vermont, 8th grade math proficiency dropped 11 points, down to 27 percent; In Pennsylvania, it dropped 12 points to 27 percent; and In Oklahoma, it dropped 10 points – only 16 percent are proficient in math. 

But that’s not all: students in America CANNOT READ. In Virginia, only 32 percent of 4th graders are proficient in reading; In Minnesota, only 30 percent of 8th graders are; In New Mexico, only 18 percent of 8th graders are. Districts are eliminating advanced classes in the name of “equity” – claiming that gifted and talented programs are racist if enrollment doesn’t mirror community demographics. In schools where AP classes have been eliminated, parents have watched their children regress to the level of their least able classmate. Brilliant students are discouraged from getting too far ahead, because “inequity” perpetuates systemic racism. 

And then there are the aberrant values taught to American children:

Hard work, objectivity, and self-reliance are traits that made the American economy the envy of the world – yet now, those characteristics are derided as “white supremacy.” Kids are in school for approximately seven hours each day – but instead of using that time to address learning loss, it’s spent on identity politics. 

In Lawrence, Kansas: elementary school students marched to celebrate Black Lives Matter at School week – at a school where only 32 percent of students are proficient in math. In Appleton, Wisconsin: teachers were given resources recommending that students do “privilege walks” – in a district where only 38 percent of middle schoolers are proficient in reading and math. 

America’s education system is failing the very students that it was designed to serve. Trust between parents and districts has shattered. For decades, public schools operated in loco parentis – and administrators worked with families in the best interest of students.

Pandemic-era closures fractured this bond; it’s hard to say districts prioritized learning when groups like the Chicago Teachers Union asserted that “the push to reopen schools [was] rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny” and the head of the LA teachers’ union said “There is no such thing as learning loss… 

Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. ... They know the words insurrection and coup.” 

Second, in the world of philanthropy, the former Mrs. Jeff Bezos, that would be one MacKenzie Scott is giving some of her fortune to a pro-Palestinian group:

MacKenzie Scott gave $2M to nonprofit tied to group that helped build pro-Palestinian UPenn encampment: report.

Now you know why he divorced her.

Third, the ladies of the View, along with an assortment of crackpots and cranks, have discovered a new principle. They are terrified that a president Trump will do unto them what they have been trying to do unto him-- that is, to silence him and to put him in jail.

As for self-awareness, they have none. Best not to belabor the point.

Fourth, from Ron Paul, on a topic we have been following, our efforts to stop the Yemeni Houthi rebels from shutting down shipping through the Red Sea:

To great fanfare, last December the Pentagon announced the launch of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a joint US/UK military operation to halt the Yemeni Houthi disruption of Israel-linked commercial shipping through the Red Sea.

 

The result:

Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal published a devastating article revealing that after spending more than one billion dollars on munitions alone, the operation had failed to deter the Houthis and failed to re-open commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

The Journal reported that Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, recently told Congress that “the U.S.-led effort has been insufficient to deter the militant group’s targeting of ships and that the threat will ‘remain active for some time.’”

Joe Biden’s military may be dysfunctional, but at least it’s diverse.

Fifth, women voters swing to the right… in France. From Politico, Europe:

Europe’s far-right voters have long been predominantly men, but French women are now bucking that trend ahead of a high-stakes election that could usher in France’s first far-right government in recent history.

Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally is tipped to win the most votes in a two-round snap election on June 30 and July 7 that could crush the liberal centrists of President Emmanuel Macron, and women are increasingly driving her party’s surging political fortunes as it seeks to position itself in the mainstream.

On EU election day this month, the National Rally came first with a stunning 31 percent of the French vote, up from 23 percent in the 2019 EU election.

Sixth, as though that is not bad enough, French Jews are saying that they are going to vote for the right wing party of Marine Le Pen, a party that has long trafficked in anti-Semitism.

The problem is, the far left parties, led by Jean Luc Melanchon, have outdone the right in the matter of anti-Semitism. French leftists have signed on to the Palestinian cause and are blaming Israel for everything that is going wrong in the Middle East.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Serge Klarsfeld is a world-renowned Nazi hunter, a historian of the Holocaust and a moral authority in France who has pushed the country to reckon with its dark history of antisemitism.

That is why many in France were shocked this week when Klarsfeld defended the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, which counts among its founders a former Nazi paramilitary soldier. Klarsfeld, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, said the main threat to France’s Jews now comes from the far left and that he wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Le Pen’s party, the National Rally, in the coming parliamentary elections if the alternative were a coalition of leftist parties, the New Popular Front.

“The National Rally supports Jews, supports the state of Israel,” Klarsfeld said on national television. “When there is an anti-Jewish party and a pro-Jewish party, I will vote for the pro-Jewish party.”

Here is the story:

The Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and the ensuing Israeli offensive in Gaza have had a profound impact in France, deepening political divisions in the home to Europe’s largest Jewish community and one of its largest Muslim communities. Leaders of the far-left party France Unbowed didn’t immediately condemn the attack and then stridently criticized Israel. Jewish groups and Macron’s government say the party’s rhetoric has fueled a surge in antisemitism in France since Oct. 7.

Seventh, on the sanctions front, the Biden administration has happily imposed sanctions on Israelis, but has failed to enforce sanctions against Iran, to say nothing of failing to sanction Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

President Biden has been uninterested in sanctioning Iranian oil, but he keeps finding time to impose new sanctions on Israelis. Is it too much to ask him to get serious about cutting off Hamas and Hezbollah’s financial lifelines?

The latest target of U.S. sanctions is Tsav 9, an Israeli protest group that tries to stop aid trucks to Gaza because they often end up in the hands of Hamas. The State Department says Tsav 9 has been “blocking roads, sometimes violently, along their route from Jordan to Gaza, including transiting the West Bank. They also have damaged aid trucks and dumped life-saving humanitarian aid onto the road.”

The West has been wrong to keep quiet about Hamas’s theft of aid, but flooding Gaza with supplies has helped Israel dispel claims of famine and buy time for its war effort. It’s also a problem when citizens take the law into their own hands. Israel has delivered aid despite the Tsav 9 protests and has arrested a few lawbreakers, though it could do more.

But the larger point is that the Biden Administration is expanding its sanctions regime against Israel while it lets Hamas and Hezbollah off the hook. Since Mr. Biden assumed office, Iran’s oil exports have surged to $40 billion or so a year. 

This gusher’s cause is no mystery. The Biden Administration stopped most enforcement of oil sanctions to keep Iran quiet. Even after that logic blew up on Oct. 7, Biden policy didn’t change. Iran still gets the cash it needs to fund its many terrorist proxies.

Qatar and Turkey, Hamas’s other major patrons, also haven’t faced real U.S. pressure. Qatar is supposed to be a key U.S. partner and a mediator in hostage talks that never end. This buys the Qataris immunity, even as they sponsor Hamas, explains Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Eighth, Nellie Bowles at the Free Press keeps us up to date on the news from El Salvador. You might not have heard it, but that country, under the leadership of president Nayib Bukele, has drastically reduced the number of local homicides:

No one can believe it, but El Salvador solved their murder crisis by locking up their murderers. This is a nightmare for American reformers, who swear it’s impossible to stop crime without talk therapy.

Ninth, wasn’t it Lawrence Summers who reported an anecdote from the third world? Didn’t the people in that one world country declare, solemnly, that when China comes to visit, it builds a factory. When America comes to visit, it gives a lecture.

Now, on Twitter, David Goldman tallies it up:

The US spent $6 trillion to export democracy. China spent $2 trillion to build infrastructure. Despite many missteps, China's program broadly succeeded, while the US program has been a catastrophic failure. Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia now want to join the BRICS group. The continental plates of world power are drifting away from the US and it's our own silly fault.

Is it time for another lecture on the eventual triumph of liberal democracy? Calling Francis Fukuyama….

Tenth, Joel Kotkin reviews the damage that wokeness is doing in the media, whether in book publishing, movie making, television production or journalism. This is from Spiked!.

Similar patterns of orthodoxy can be seen in book publishing. Here radicalised editors reject books not because they won’t sell, but because they violate the favoured woke narratives or are written by straight, white males. Even books from beloved authors such as Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss are banned or bowdlerised to meet the tastes of progressives.

Now, the market is having the last word. These woke businesses are losing money. They are losing a lot of money.

One thing these shifts has not done is improve the bottom line. Roughly a quarter of newspapers in the US have gone out of business in the past 15 years. Last year, some 22,000 media jobs were lost, the worst in a generation since 2009. Industry boosters (yes, they still exist) cling to the profitability of the two elite papers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which for now still appear viable.

And also,

But it seems fairly clear that imposing race and gender orthodoxy on audiences is not exactly a winning strategy. Already gender, race and other identitarian obsessions appear to have weakened once strong franchises like Star Wars, the Marvel cinematic universe and the Disney classics. One top Disney executive blamed a misogynist public for declining viewership figures. A lack of customer interest in these terrible, agenda-driven movies may be more to blame. ‘The audience’, as one film historian told the Los Angeles Times, ‘has moved on’.

Eleventh, as we suspected and as we predicted, those college students who decided to embrace the Palestinian cause and Hamas have been losing job opportunities.

The College Fix has the story:

A recent survey found that 3 in 10 college students or recent graduates had job offers rescinded as a result of their “pro-Palestine” activism.

Intelligent surveyed 672 students or recent college graduates who have engaged in anti-Israel activism and found that 29% of them had a job offer rescinded in the past six months and 55% believe there was bias against them in the hiring process because of their activism.

7 in 10 pro-Palestine activists said they were asked about their protest history during the interview process, according to the survey results.

As it happens, the Columbia university activists will not be prosecuted by Alvin Bragg. They will get their comeuppance in other places.

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