"Death to Palestine"

Out there in the real world, change seems to be coming. Naturally, the armies of the aggrieved are complaining about American foreign policy. They excel at complaining, so they exercise the muscle whenever they can, regardless.

State Department employees, relieved to have been freed from Rex Tillerson, are now complaining about Mike Pompeo. They refuse to look at the larger picture of American foreign policy, so they resort to whining about their own condition. And, of course, bemoaning the downgrade in our relations with Western European countries.

So, we have not been reading many stories about the protest demonstrations that are currently taking place in Iran. We have not been reading about the fact that these protesters are on the streets shouting: Death to Palestine. Did you ever imagine that you would ever hear that?

We are not going to credit the Trump administration’s rejection of the Iran nuclear deal entirely, but still, the anticipation of renewed economic sanctions seems to have had a strikingly deleterious effect on the Iranian economy, and especially on the Iranian currency.

Paul Mirengoff reports on the Powerline blog (via Sarah Hoyton Instapundit):

Tehran was rocked by protests today. Protesters confronted police officers in front of parliament and swarmed Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, forcing its closure (according to this account, though, merchants themselves initiated the shutdown to protest skyrocketing prices).

Rising prices and other economic woes are, indeed, at the heart of the protests, which in recent days have also forced the closure of major shopping centers in Tehran. Iran’s economy seems to be cratering, and its currency, the Iranian rial, has plummeted to 90,000 to the U.S. dollar on the black market. At the end of last year, it was 43,000.

Earlier this year, I noted Iran’s runaway inflation, and its possible consequences for the regime. Since then, things have gotten worse, as President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will withdraw from the nuclear deal fuels economic pessimism.

But there’s more to the protests than just economic discontent. Protesters reportedly carried signs and shouted chants expressing disgust with the regime’s foreign adventurism — e.g., “Palestine, Syria are reasons of our misery” and “Let go of Syria, think of us.” They blame Iranian foreign and military policy for the state of the economy.

It’s always nice to begin your day with some good news.

Making Misogyny Respectable Again

They went fishing in the dustbin of history, and guess what they found? That’s right, you guessed it: they discovered the discredited strategy of shaming public officials, holding them up to opprobrium, dispensing with the niceties of debate and even trial… punishing them mercilessly for crimes real and imagined.

It sure beats due process. It also beats democratic elections and deliberative debate. It's called mob rule.

#GetTrump Resistance fighters have reached peak insanity and peak stupidity by publicly humiliating women and children. They banded together to force Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson from a restaurant. They showed up outside her door to violate her personal time. They expelled Sarah Huckabee Sanders from a restaurant, and then, when members of her party went to another restaurant, they ganged up on them too. They even launched attacks on the president’s son and granddaughter. And they assaulted Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at a movie theatre.

They wanted to show how strong and empowered they were. Because attacking women is always a good way to show off your toughness. Violating a woman's personal space shows how tough you are. Did anyone consider the implications of violating a woman's privacy? Of course, not. 

If you didn’t notice, they are attacking women and children… and thus are making misogyny respectable again. Once you find reason to attack women, other people will feel that they have been given a green light to assault women. Good job, folks.

Anyway, we are back in the days of Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, when cadres of Red Guards ravaged the bureaucracy by humiliating everyone who held power in the government or the party. Anyone who knows history can tell you how it turned out. A million and a half people murdered by the Red Guards. The situation got so completely out of hand that Mao had to mobilize the army to put down the teenage demonstrators. As for the nation, it was completely destroyed—the extreme poverty rate after Mao’s death was north of 80%.

Once upon a time in America the nation rose up in outrage over the fact that certain people were not allowed to use public accommodations. In certain parts of the South African-Americans were banned from eating at lunch counters. We went to considerable lengths to rectify this egregious wrong. Now the armies of the progressive left see no problem in throwing people out of restaurants because they work for the American government. If not throwing them out, assaulting them with taunts and jeers, ruining the restaurant atmosphere for everyone else.

Evidently, the government will need to lean in against the protesters, in order to restore a semblance of public civility. Because otherwise, we are in far more trouble than you can imagine.

Petula Dvorak gets it mostly right in the Washington Post. She doesn’t really get it right when she says that it’s fine to hate Donald Trump. She is wrong because hate is not a constructive passion. Saying that hate is good for me but not for thee tosses the national conversation into a very dark place. Hate is something best kept dormant.

But she is right about this:

When American businesses stop serving people they don’t like — whether it’s because of their politics, their jobs, the color of their skin, whom they love or whom they worship — we’re breaking the social compact of a civilized society.

It’s not just about Trump administration officials. Dvorak continues, showing the consequences that descend on us when we rip up the social compact:

●A transgender woman was asked to leave a lively Cuban restaurant in downtown Washington for trying to use the women’s bathroom.

●A pharmacist in Arizona cited moral objections and refused a woman’s prescription for miscarriage medication.

●A black man was banned from shopping at his neighborhood grocery store in Maine after asking the clerk why both he and his wife were asked to show their IDs to buy a bottle of sake.

Dvorak notes that some of these people were members of a legally protected class. And that Sarah Sanders was not. Thus, the government cannot prosecute the perpetrators.

And yet, prosecution is not the issue. The issue is violating the norms of civil society. Once you do it, what’s good for thee also becomes good for me.

If you were asking yourselves how it got to this point, I cite Victor Davis Hanson’s sage analysis:

Had the defeated Hillary Clinton only accepted the results of the Electoral College, like all other defeated candidates, there would have been no post-election collusion hysteria. Had Clinton acted magnanimously like other sorely disappointed losers—Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984, Michael Dukakis in 1988, George H.W. Bush in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012—there would have been no accusations of scandal.

It’s not just that there would have been no post-election collusion hysteria. There would have been no feeling that the election was illegitimate and that the Trump presidency defied democratic and civil social norms.

Consider the old adage: the fish rots from the head down. Our leaders send us signals. They send us signals by their behavior and their actions. If they fail to show proper respect for the winner of an election, their supporters, those who love them beyond reason, will conclude that they had been robbed. They will then conclude that they can go to any lengths to right the wrong inflicted on Hillary.

Hillary Clinton: the presiding genie for the return of American misogyny. Consider the irony in that….

Judaism Bifurcated

It is shocking, to say the least. President Donald Trump is celebrated in Israel. After the nightmare of the Obama administration, with its open hostility toward Israel and its dogged efforts to elevate the anti-Semitic terrorist regime in Tehran, Trump did not have to do very much to inspire confidence in Israel.

And yet, when we arrive at the American shoreline, the attitude changes. Most American Jews despise Trump. Some even consider him the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. To their mind the glory days for world Judaism occurred when Barack Obama gave Iran a pathway to obtaining a nuclear weapon that they want to drop on Tel Aviv.

To measure the depths of American Jewish insanity, consider Jonathan Neumann’s account of the views of two prominent liberal Jews:

When two of the Jewish community’s most celebrated writers, Michael Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman, write an open letter stating that: “Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the president, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things,” you don’t have to look far to see why.

Boundlessly arrogant stupidity... how else would you describe it. Chabon and Walkman are fanatics. They allow for no doubt or even the occasional shade of gray. They do not see two sides of the issue. They only see one, theirs. Trump, the anti-Semite. Trump, the racist. Trump, the white supremacist. You wonder which world they inhabit, because just as surely as they have taken leave of their senses they have taken leave of reality.

To be a Jew, in the Chabon/Waldman version, an individual must openly oppose Trump. One might ask oneself what gives them the authority to speak for all members of a religion-- one that they do not see as a distinct religion. One would draw a blank.

Neumann continues that they are not fighting for Judaism. They have no loyalty to the community or the state of Israel. They are fighting for social justice, a term that roughly translates the Hebrew “tikkun olam,” a term that was imported into Jewish thinking before World War II.

The phrase “tikkun olam” was quietly lifted out of context from a Jewish prayer before the Second World War to mean social justice. It was popularized in the 1970s and 1980s by radicals like Michael Lerner, who founded the extreme left-wing magazine, Tikkun.

Since then, we have been led to believe that the purpose of the Jews in the world is to campaign for higher taxes, sexual permissiveness, reduced military spending, illegal immigration, opposition to fracking, the banishment of religion from the public square and every other liberal cause under the sun — all in the name of God.

Through the agency of “tikkun olam” Judaism was given over to the pursuit of a liberal social and political agenda.

But above all, this liberalism — this tikkun olam — teaches that the Jewish People is an outdated and chauvinistic relic, with no need for a nation-state of its own in its ancient homeland. Consequently, Jewish social justice activists help to defame Israel and weaken America’s bond with the Jewish State.

Consider the timing. The phrase was imported into Judaism before World War II. Who was president at the time? Presumably, Franklin Roosevelt, a man who many Jews considered their Messiah. Before leftist Jews chose Barack Obama as their Messiah, they had FDR.

Thus, my view varies slightly from Neumann’s:

This dangerous ideology culminated in the election and administration of Barack Obama, who was hailed as the “tikkun olam president” and (synonymously) as the “first Jewish president.” He repeatedly referenced the significance of tikkun olam to his own life, nurtured by his liberal Jewish mentors in Chicago, and it was because of this commitment to tikkun olam, not in spite of it, that he was the most hostile president toward Israel in history.

Speaking of Hitler, because the left wants to speak of nothing but Hitler these days, when Hitler ruled Germany, when Hitler implemented the Final Solution, when Hitler went to war against Western civilization, we only had one president. Franklin Roosevelt. How did that work out?

We have noted in previous posts that FDR was anything but a friend of the Jews. How did FDR respond to Nazi persecution, concentration camps and death camps? He did everything in his power to keep European Jews out of America? Most especially, he sent his representative and his personal friend Breckinridge Long to Europe to refuse entry visas to Jews. By the time FDR was induced to change his mind, millions of people had been murdered. Millions more had their lives destroyed.

You might remember the S. S. St. Louis, a ship filled with nearly a thousand European Jewish refugees that FDR sent back, consigning its human cargo consigned to the gas chambers.

One might mention that Imperial Japan, an ally of the Third Reich, saw what was going on in Europe and did everything in its power to resettle European Jews into Manchuria and occupied China. Whatever the reasons, and they were not always of the most noble stripe, the Japanese government had the moral sense to try to save European Jews. To imagine that the United States could not have done so, is to live in extreme denial. Extreme denial produces fanatical beliefs that reject all questioning.

During the Hitler years, FDR was a Messiah to the Jews. Some protested. To no avail. The rest kept quiet… because they trusted Franklin. And yet, those who bought into the cosmopolitan madness of the social justice movement would not have been able to argue that Jews were any more special than anyone else. Thus, by their ideology Jews were not deserving of special treatment, even when they had been singled out for extermination.

When Hitler was alive and the Nazis roamed the earth the “tikkun olam” group would not have been able to argue effectively against FDR’s collusion with genocide. Now that Hitler is dead and Nazism is no longer a threat, they are up in arms against Nazis… in the person of Donald Trump, half of whose family is… Jewish.

To put it politely, they are fighting the last war. And they are fighting a war that has been over for decades. Why do people fight the last war? Why do Chabon and Waldman make themselves look like blithering idiots in order to Resist Trump? 

They are covering up their cowardice and dereliction? Where were they when Obama was betraying Israel? Where were they when Obama was treating the Israeli prime minister with contempt? Where were they when he was sending cash to the ayatollahs, the better to fund anti-Semitic terrorism? And where were they when Germany opened its arms to a flood of anti-Semitic refugees?

You know where they were. They were cheering for their Messiah, Barack Obama... a man who could do not wrong.

If you were to ask which group of people has brought back anti-Semitism, and has made life for European Jews into a new hell, the answer is not Donald Trump. The answer is radical Islamists, often migrants, whose presence in Western Europe we owe to Angela Merkel, Europe’s leading practitioner of Obama’s cosmopolitan quest for social justice.

Julia Kristeva Responds to Slander

I have refrained from commenting on the slanderous accusations recently thrown at French intellectual luminary Julia Kristeva. She is an old and dear friend, as is her husband. I am strongly biased in her favor and reject any culture that attempts to destroy reputations on the basis of half-truths and lies. Especially, those produced by a state run on propaganda.

Kristeva now stands accused of having spied for the Bulgarian Secret Police during some of her time in Paris. You have to stretch credulity to imagine that such an eventuality, if it did occur, turned the tide in the Cold War.

Dare I say, most of those who have happily embraced the defamation did so without benefit of Kristeva’s own response to the accusations. They did not cover themselves in glory. In order to sustain their slander they even noted that Kristeva and her husband threw their support behind Chairman Mao during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

They fail to note that when Richard Nixon went to China in 1972 the American media elite was all gaga over the wonderful accomplishments of the Red Guards. Kristeva was not alone in being duped by Mao Zedong.

And dare we mention, that France itself was not a major player in world affairs at the time in question. One hates to say this, but a great deal of French intellectual politics was more show than substance, more drama than political action.

If you ask yourself what consequences were suffered by anyone over the political positions taken by Kristeva and Co. you will come up short.

For some reasons, Michel Foucault—also a personal friend—comes out of all this smelling like a rose. After all, Foucault reveled in the acts of Weatherman terrorists, and in the last stages of his life became a gay activist who embraced the regime of the ayatollahs in France. Of course, Jean Paul Sartre—France’s modern philosophical genius—happily supported the Baader Meinhof gang of terrorists who were operating in Germany.

No one much cared, because such support did not exert very much influence. If one wanted to see whichFrench philosopher exercised true political influence, one would look to Bernard Henri Levy, the presiding genie over the American policy of overthrowing the government of Muammar Qaddhafi. Recall that BHL persuaded French president Sarkozy to intervene on the side of the Qaddhafi opposition and that Sarkozy persuaded Obama and Clinton to lead from behind. The catastrophic consequences of this intervention are well known. No one really cares about the philosopher behind the curtain.

The real issue for the French intelligentsia after World War II was living down the ignominy of having chickened out of the fight. And, the real problem was living a great historical lie. France, for having sat out the war, declared itself one of the winners. De Gaulle barely ever acknowledged the American role in liberating France from the French. France turned away from the Anglosphere out of shame. It did not embrace the East as much as it sought an alternative to Anglo-American hegemony.

That, sad to say, was the only real issue in politically driven French intellectual life.

A Bulgarian immigrant to Paris in the 1960s, Kristeva supposedly became a spy for the Bulgarian Secret Police. Apparently, the Bulgarian Secret Police was overwhelmingly concerned about the doings of the Parisian intellectual scene. It takes very little intelligence to know that French intellectuals spoke openly and honestly about everything that passed through their minds. Thus, it was the last place you needed to put a spy.

Richard Wolin—a fine intellectual historian who saw fit to attack Kristeva for being pro-communist-- and Kevin Williamson—a fine writer who denounced Kristeva for being anti-capitalist both failed to note that Kristeva and the Tel Quel group she was associated with renounced Maoism and even Communism. They were among the first of the French intellectual elite to embrace capitalism in the late 1970s.

Now, to set the record straight, Kristeva tells her side of the story in great detail in the French Vanity Fair. The presence of the long detailed article in this magazine tells you that she is the subject of popular interest. I trust that Kristeva is telling the truth about what really happened and about how this calumny took root. I will not go into the details, though I regret that some of you will not be able to read the French.

Among Kristeva’s targets is the media. She points out, astutely, that today’s media, obsessed with the privacy of the personal information people share on Facebook, has no problem projecting your personal communications on the world screen. The media does not ask, Kristeva continues, whether a dossier put together by a Communist Secret Police might have been distorted to promote the careers of those who drew it up. Why did serious thinkers trust the word of a regime that was dedicated to propagating propaganda? Could it be that it was happy to smear the reputation of a woman who had renounced it.

[Addendum: Herewith a link to a commentary, offered in French and English, by a Bulgarian editor.]

Israel's "Tracks for Regional Peace"

No drama, no media attention. No one is noticing yesterday’s announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Standing with his Transportation Minister Netanyahu announced a new rail initiative that will connect Europe with the Jordan and Saudi Arabia, through Israel. Take note of the fact that the government of Jordan-- a Palestinian state, incidentally-- recently needed a bailout from Saudi Arabia. How do you think that this might influence the Jordanian attitude in the next Palestinian peace talks?

The Times of Israel reports (via Instapundit):

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Transportation Minister Israel Katz agreed this week to begin promoting their “Tracks for Regional Peace” initiative that will create a trade route connecting Europe with the Persian Gulf and Israel, Hadashot news reported Saturday evening.

“Tracks for Regional Peace” is based on the planned extension of railway tracks in northern Israel, which would link Haifa’s seaport to Jordan’s rail network, which in turn will be linked with that of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states.

The network is envisioned as creating a regional transportation system to enhance trade relations and promote peaceful coexistence.

We have made a habit of keeping watch on developments in the Middle East. We are heartened by Saudi liberalization and by the prospect of improved trade relations between regional powers. For those who have wanted to make Israel the theatre for a grand Marxist drama this is not very good news.

Introduced in a new PR video from Netanyahu and Katz’s offices, the initiative will see the eastward extension of the Haifa-Beit She’an rail line to the Jordanian border and will also include a stop in Jenin, connecting the Palestinians to the broader plan.

Goods would be shipped from Europe to Haifa, allowing them to bypass civil war-torn Syria.

“There are two central components at the heart of this initiative,” Katz explained when discussing the plan back in April. “Israel as a land bridge between Europe and the Mediterranean and Jordan; and Jordan as a regional transportation hub, which will be connected to a railroad system to Israel and the Mediterranean in the West; to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Iraq in the East and southeast; and to the Red Sea, through Aqaba and Eilat, in the south.”

Some good news for today.

Bullied to Death in Middle School

Just when you thought that it couldn’t get any worse, you read about a twelve year old schoolgirl, by name of Mallory Grossman, who killed herself because she could not stand any more bullying. Mallory was bullied to death.

It is difficult to hold her twelve-year old tormentors to immediate account. How could they know that she would do what they told her to do: to kill herself. The crux of the matter, the most important aspect of the story, is that school officials failed to do anything to protect her.

You see, Mallory’s parents reported the bullying again and again to the school principal and other officials. They did to nothing about. A last meeting between Mallory, her mother and the school principal triggered Mallory’s suicide. The principal humiliated the girl, refused to take her complaints seriously, made a mockery of her for being too weak. Mallory’s parents were so horrified that they decided that they would remove their daughter from school the next year. That afternoon, the girl, killed herself.

Too little, too late.

Now, Mallory’s parents are suing the school district, the superintendent and the principal. Apparently, they do not have a very good case… because the courts do not protect children from bullying any more than the school system does. And yet, the lawsuit brings things to our attention that we would rather not know about.

The extent of adult failure is terrifying. So, let’s examine some of the facts.

The New York Post reports:

On the last day of her daughter’s life, Dianne went with Mallory to talk to [Principal Alfonse] Gonnella in a last-ditch attempt to get help for her child, the suit says.

During the three-hour meeting, the principal handed a poker chip to the preteen cheerleader and gymnast. He then directed the girl to inscribe her initials on the token and asked her: “Are you all in?”

Mallory was “humiliated,’’ the suit says.

Gonnella “lacked any suggestions to punish the offenders, but instead, placed the bulk of the responsibility on Mallory to rectify the situation,’’ the papers say. “His bright solution to nine months of bullying is a poker chip? And to have her write her initials and date it and to ask her if she’s all in? And hours later she goes home and dies?” the mom said.

The principal did not take the suffering of a child seriously. He did not grant credence to her complaints and suggested that she was overreacting. She showed that she was not. He failed a basic responsibility by refusing to address the perpetrators, by refusing to hold them to account, by refusing to talk to them or their parents, by laughing off their antics. Children who bully should be expelled from school. Their parents should be immediately informed and should be held to account if they do not take consequential action.

Why a poker chip? Was he gambling with her life? Was the poker chip like a headstone? Surely, that was the way the girl saw it. Being all in means putting all your chips on the table. Well, Mallory did put all her chips on the table. In a manner of speaking. But, shouldn’t a middle school administrator know how to speak with a twelve year old?

What constituted the bullying?

The mom said that meeting followed a full school year of cruel texts and Snapchat messages from other students.

One girl coldly asked, “When are you going to kill yourself?’’ in front of other classmates — just weeks before the suicide.

Another bully, identified in court papers by the initials A.B., took a surreptitious photo of Mallory by herself, then texted it to her with the caption “You have no friends,” the suit says.

In another instance, an unidentified student sent a similar photo to classmates via Snapchat with the caption “U have no friends” and “Poor Mal,” court papers state

Mallory’s parents had pleaded with other school officials. They too showed no concern for the girl and were unwilling to address the school bullies. Again, adults failures to impose discipline allow bullies to believe that they are doing something good.

Her mom pleaded with school officials to intervene “numerous” times during the 2016-17 school year, but the educators’ tone-deaf responses only made things worse, court papers say.

When the parents once complained about bullying in the lunch room, the school suggested their daughter eat in a guidance counselor’s office — “further isolating Mallory from the student body,” the suit states.

Another time, administrators had Mallory and her tormenters “hug each other” rather than actually discipline anyone.

Shared hugs… now that’s the solution that our empathy laden therapy culture prescribes. To imagine that society can regulate itself on the basis of feelings of a common humanity is an absurdist rationalization for the failure to offer a disciplined and structured social environment.

Lloyd Blankfein on Immigration

You might have been wondering what Wall Street thinks about the nation’s immigration crisis? OK, perhaps the thought was not on the tip of your consciousness. And yet, it’s always of some interest to read what important chief executives think of America’s chief executive. 

While the vampire squid called Goldman Sachs has contributed more than its fair share of Trump administration officials, it has generally been considered a very reliable source of Democratic campaign funds. Its nexus is in New York City and you do not get to be a power player in New York social circles by supporting any but the most anodyne Republicans. After all, former mayor Michael Bloomberg has now dedicated tens of millions of dollars to defeating Republicans in the next election. And media star Donny Deutsch has declared that everyone who voted for Trump is a Nazi. Obviously, nothing is going on between Deutsch’s ears, so he is competing for airtime with brain dead celebrities. Besides, Deutsch is suggesting that the renewed strong relationship between the Trump administration and Israel is a sure sign that Trump is a Nazi. Morons like Deutsch are respected in New York City. It’s all you need to know.

Anyway, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein stunned an audience at a New York Economic Club Tuesday by expressing sympathy for the difficulty of dealing with the immigration issue. He declared, openly and honestly, that there is no easy solution to the problem. His thought ought to be acknowledged.

Several other CEOs expressed their outrage at the Trump administration. Nothing new about that. Blankfein shed the light of reasoned skepticism into the mix. Why not be rational about policy… for a change? Especially when the facts of the case are barely in evidence.

According to the New York Times, Blankfein said:

It’s easy to criticize and it’s easy to say what you would do if you didn’t have to bear the consequences of what you decided.

The Times continues:

The options for how to handle thousands of undocumented immigrants at the border were all difficult, Mr. Blankfein said. He added that while he wouldn’t separate children from parents, it was unfair to castigate the administration for its actions.

In policy matters like this one, he said, “it’s never right against wrong or good against evil.”

“There are adverse consequences on both sides, that’s what’s really tough,” Mr. Blankfein continued, “and I have a lot of sympathy on the one hand, but appreciation for the decision-making, and when something doesn’t quite work out right, I don’t want to kill the person that made the decision.”

Important decisions are never black and white, good versus evil. To think so is to fail to see that executives earn serious money for having to decide the lesser of two evils. As an experienced chief executive looks at the problem and understands that there is no good solutions—just two courses of actions, each of which contains pluses and minuses, potential risks and potential rewards. At a time when the facts are anything but decided, this seems like sound advice.