Saturday Miscellany

First, on the treachery watch, an October 7 Israeli survivor said this:

I used to believe in peace, but I don’t anymore. I used to trust Arabs, but I don’t anymore. A guy named Khaleel lived in our village for 30 years. We called him our brother. He slept in our homes. He ended up drawing a map of our homes in the village and gave it to Hamas to slaughter us. How can I trust after this?

Second, from David Goldman:

Most practice of Islam is emphatically not violent, but most religious violence is perpetrated by Muslims in the name of religion. Violence is not a necessary characteristic of Islam as a religion, but it is evidently a susceptibility. Is there something about Islam as a religion that predisposes its believers toward terrorism?’

Third, the outburst of Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe is having predictable consequences. In the Netherlands, for example, the Wall Street Journal reports on a recent election:

Dutch anti-Islamic populist Geert Wilders is on course for a major election victory, marking a stark lurch to the right for a country known for its tolerance and progressive politics

Fourth, Victor Davis Hanson comments on how uncontrolled immigration has contributed to the decline and fall of Europe:

In many European countries, foreign-born emigrants comprise 20 percent of the population. Most of them have arrived poor, without education, in mass, illegally, with little desire to fully integrate, from inimical countries, and holding political and religious views hostile to Europe.

He adds that Europe and America have been projecting weakness on the world stage. The consequences should have been predictable:

Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, presumably on the assumption that current generations of Westerners in Israel, the U.S., and Europe would not react too strongly to its precivilizational barbarity if it entailed a subsequent messy war.

Fifth, the New York Post reports on the German government’s crackdown on Hamas followers. 

Hundreds of police officers searched the properties of Hamas members and followers in Germany on Thursday morning following a formal ban on any activity by or in support of the terrorist group.

The German government implemented the ban on Nov. 2 and dissolved Samidoun, a group that was behind a celebration in Berlin of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service estimates that Hamas has around 450 members in the country.

Their activities range from expressions of sympathy and propaganda activities to financing and fundraising activities to strengthen the organization abroad.

“We are continuing our consistent action against radical Islamists,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said. “By banning Hamas and Samidoun in Germany, we have sent a clear signal that we will not tolerate any glorification or support of Hamas’ barbaric terror against Israel.”

Sixth, from famed German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, in the Algemeiner, a few words about anti-Semitism:

 “Israel’s actions in no way justify antisemitic reactions, especially not in Germany. It is intolerable that Jews in Germany are once again exposed to threats to life and limb and have to fear physical violence on the streets.” Postwar Germany’s commitment to preserving both Jewish life and a secure existence for the State of Israel “is fundamental to our political life,” the statement asserted.

Seventh, in the ultimate indignity, the board of directors of a company called OpenAI voted out its leader, one Sam Altman, only to welcome him back within days-- under the aegis of a new reconstituted board of directors.

As it happened, the original board had two female members. The new board had zero female members. Naturally, the feminist intelligentsia is complaining bitterly, but I will refrain from reading anything into the change.

Eighth, Sam Bankman-Fried convicted felon, formerly leading light in the crypto currency world at FTX, is adapting to prison life.

Aside from giving crypto trading tips to prison guards, he is involved in commerce:

Disgraced FTX founder is trading $1 packs of dried fish in exchange for services at  Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center.

The services are haircuts.

Ninth, regarding the sanctions we have imposed on China in the matter of semiconductor sales, Stephen Roach offers a sobering qualification, via Twitter:

US sanctions on Chinese tech have backfired — leading to accelerated progress by China’s domestic chipmakers (SMIC) and a revival of Huawei. China bashing’s strategic miscalculations have resulted in precisely the opposite of what Washington sought!

Tenth, Israelis are special. They are certainly being held to different standards. As mobs of anti-Semites march in Western streets, accusing the Israelis of genocide, we can remark that none of these groups cared very much about mass slaughter that took place in other countries. The Secretary General of the UN has been denouncing the Israelis, ignoring all of the other loss of life in other wars:

Syria: 500,000 killed (Syrian Observatory for Human Right, 2021) 

Yemen: 377,000 killed 

Afganistan: 176,000 killed 

Darfur: 300,000 killed 

Iraq: 400,000 killed 

Ukraine: 500,000 killed 

Congo: 860,000+ killed 

The numbers come to us from the United Nations.

Eleventh, this is a little late, but it is surely better that you did not hear the dumbass Thanksgiving dinner advice that organizational psychologist Sunita Sah gave people in the New York Times before the holiday. 

Dr. Sah offered that people do better, when sitting down to their feasts, to speak their minds, not to hold anything back, though also to try not to offend anyone.

As I said, this is dumbass advice. What you should or should not say at the dinner table begins with an appreciation of your role, your place in the group, your relations with the other conviviants, and your ability to raise issues without offending other people. 

Your role at the dinner table is to contribute to social harmony, not to raise issues you do not understand, to insult people or even to make a fool of yourself.

It is, to say the least, a complex calculation. You gain nothing by reducing it to a general principle-- to speak your mind. And it is certainly not helpful, as Dr. Sah offers, to tell people that if they do not blurt out their most heartfelt beliefs on the most controversial topics, that they will suffer serious emotional disturbances and might even get cancer.

And, let’s not forget table manners. If you have good table manners and if everyone at the table is practicing the same manners, you have greater latitude regarding what is or is not permissible. If you all have bad manners, this reduces your latitude, because arguments and fights will more obviously threaten group cohesion.

Twelfth, and now a few words from Kevin. You might know it, but Kevin is New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s conservative brother. Once every year Dowd gives over her precious space to her brother.

He offers a Republican view of the current political environment. It’s better than scouring through a bunch of polls.

Keven said this:

Biden’s three years have been a disaster. An exorbitant round of unnecessary Covid spending sent inflation through the roof, leading to a destructive rise in interest rates and further squeezing consumers.

We should fear that John Kerry and Antony Blinken are projecting weakness, leading to an unimaginable alliance of China, Russia and Iran that threatens our future. Our botched and tragic withdrawal from Afghanistan set Putin’s invasion of Ukraine into motion.

The disgraceful show of support by college students for Hamas exposed the underlying antisemitism being taught and tolerated in our “best” universities. There should be no moral confusion here. This is a battle between good and evil, and encouraging the side that just massacred 1,200 people and is holding scores more hostages is a pretty clear example of what happens when you get your news from TikTok. It is incomprehensible to see Osama bin Laden lauded online as if he were a great writer, much less a visionary, a mere two decades after his orchestration of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Biden’s posture toward Iran, the leading sponsor of terror in the world, is inexplicable. He tried to restart the Iran nuclear deal, thankfully to no avail. He even handed over $6 billion to release five hostages, money to which Iran was denied access only after Hamas’s attack.

Biden’s border policies unwittingly created a national security crisis, with asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants pouring over our Southern border; since Biden took office, border patrol estimates approximately 6.5 million encounters. Many of them remain in the United States, unvetted. The tidal wave of migrants has flooded many major cities.

Kevin is not an enthusiastic Trump supporter:

Trump’s behavior since the 2020 election has been reprehensible, and I fear it will grow worse. I am not sure he could beat Biden and I would find it difficult, if not impossible, to vote for anyone convicted of a felony.

I would prefer neither man be on the ballot in 2024. The temperature in Washington needs to be lowered. Surely, the greatest country in the world can do better than these two men. I could vote for Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or, better yet, both of them to begin the repair work.

Thirteenth, yesterday the first group of Israeli hostages were freed by Hamas. Joe Biden decided that it was a good moment to take a victory lap.

Among other things he proposed a two-state solution. To which Senator Mike Lee responded:

Tone deaf. Gaza has had a “two state solution” on the table since 2005, and defiantly refused to take it. You can’t have a two-state solution where one party is unwilling to recognize the other’s right to exist.

Fourteenth, Biden also tried to recast the horrors of October 7 as a vote of confidence in his diplomatic prowess.

He claimed that Hamas attacked Israel because he was close to bringing peace to the region. This from a president who has been working long and hard to undermine Trump’s Abraham Accords, which were effectively the most consequential step toward peace in decades.

In truth, the reason Hamas attacked is the same reason why Iran keeps firing on American bases in the region. They think they can get away with it. They know that they are dealing with a band of cowards, sprinkled with Hamas sympathizers, in the Biden administration. And they know that Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken are fundamentally weak -- more likely to try to rein in the Israelis than Donald Trump would.

Fifteenth, in the realm of the pathetic, given the open border policy of the Biden administration and the damage that said policy has caused here and elsewhere, it sounds like it came from the Babylon Bee. Alas, it comes from the Department of Homeland Security. The manifestly incompetent Secretary Alejandro Majorkas has told his border agents to address illegal immigrants by their preferred pronouns. Without specifying which language.

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