Gaza

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

Biden’s Gaza gaffe risks relations with the Democratic base

One of the first rules of politics and policy is to keep expectations low, lest you disappoint your constituents and embarrass yourself for being hopelessly naive.  Apparently President Joe Biden didn’t get the memo.  During a stop in New York City this week for a taping of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, Biden was eager, if not downright giddy, about the prospects of a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. Ice cream cone in hand, the president told the White House press corps that Jake Sullivan, his national security advisor, believes a truce is close at hand.  “My hope is that, by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden said.

joe biden gaza gaffe

Saturday

Alexander Horne

It will be difficult for Israel to ignore this ICJ ruling

From our UK edition

Yesterday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered an interim ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Its decision is likely to please neither side of the debate, but seems broadly balanced: it criticised Israel, but failed to demand a suspension of the conflict.  The court, which sits in The Hague, was formed in 1945 and is one of the principal organs established by the Charter of the United Nations. It is the UN’s highest court.  On 29 December, South Africa brought its proceedings in the ICJ under Article 9 of the Genocide Convention of 1948. It claimed that Israel was engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Tuesday

Cockburn

WATCH: Joe Biden heckled by pro-Palestine activists at rally

President Biden was in Manassas, Virginia this evening, at a rally intended to be focused on federal abortion rights, shortly after the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. But some pro-Palestine protesters in the audience had other ideas. “Genocide Joe: how many kids have you killed today?” a man bellowed at Biden. “Israel kills two mothers every hour!” a woman yelled immediately after. More and more hecklers started interrupting the president. “This is gonna go on for a while — they’ve got this planned,” he told the crowd. Shortly after, he appeared to brand the protesters as "MAGA Republicans" — not a notoriously pro-Gaza group... https://twitter.

joe biden gaza

Sunday

Matt McDonald

How will ‘ceasefire’ calls affect the Democratic primary in New Hampshire?

Manchester, New Hampshire The Republican and Democratic primaries in New Hampshire are two sides of the same coin. New polls released this morning show the 45th and 46th president leading their respective fields comfortably. The latest Boston Globe/Suffolk survey has Donald Trump on 55 percent, with Nikki Haley on 36 percent and Ron DeSantis on 6 percent. The new CNN/UNH poll is a similar story: Trump on 50 percent, Haley on 39 percent, DeSantis on 6 percent.

ceasefire

Friday

Charles Moore

Nikki Haley is respectable. Will she find that inhibiting?

In June 2022, I interviewed Nikki Haley on stage for JW3, a Jewish organization in north London. She was personable, clear, well-briefed and pleasingly normal, with the interesting exception of her Sikh background growing up in small-town South Carolina (she later became a Christian by conversion). Her conservatism seemed strongly felt, coherent and not extreme. I also liked her way — now highly unusual in US politics — of addressing foreign policy and setting it in the context of her general political beliefs. At that time, she was mulling the presidential bid she launched the following year. After Iowa, she remains in the race, but only just. Why would such a presentable and decent person not be preferred to Donald Trump?

Haley

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Post Office scandal, Tube strikes off and dog meat banned

From our UK edition

Home Although it had long been known that between 1999 and 2015 more than 700 sub-postmasters were convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud (based on the faulty Horizon computer accounting system software), the government suddenly proposed to do something about it because of a public outcry following an ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office. The Metropolitan Police was investigating the Post Office over fraud possibly arising from money being ‘recovered from sub-postmasters as a result of prosecutions or civil actions’. Paula Vennells, who held high office in the Post Office from 2007 to 2019, said she was handing back her CBE ‘with immediate effect’, although it is the King’s role to annul it; more than a million people had signed a petition calling for its revocation.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Is the New York Times’s Gaza mayor op-ed worth condemning?

If there is one thing the New York Times is good at these days, it's offending the public. Conservatives are often enraged at the Gray Lady from the sidelines, while its subscribers feel betrayed by anything the paper publishes from right of the center-left. This year, the Times wrapped up a particularly offensive Christmas gift — an op-ed by Gaza City mayor Yahya R. Sarraj condemning the Israeli military.   The Times published Sarraj’s essay, “I Am Gaza City’s Mayor. Our Lives and Culture Are in Rubble,” on Christmas Eve. According to the city’s mayor, Israeli’s bombardment of Gaza has resulted in more than 20,000 deaths and the destruction of Palestinian cultural institutions.

gaza city

Tuesday

John R. MacArthur

Our strangled language on Israel and Gaza

As a left-wing sympathizer to the Palestinian cause, I cringed when I heard reports that college students around the country, including at Columbia University, my alma mater, had expressed support for Hamas’s murder of Israeli civilians on October 7. My first thought was that “woke” students had lost their minds — confusing the perfectly legitimate defense of Palestinian rights with the usual laundry list of “resistance” clichés that pay little attention to history, morality or the subtleties of the English language.

Wednesday

Peter Wood

Behind the anger of the young American Hamas apologists

“Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath,” opens Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Iliad. The goddess Homer summoned isn’t named, but it is usually assumed he meant Calliope, the muse of epic poetry —and much later, circus music. But Homer might have meant Lyssa, the Greek goddess of mad rage and frenzy. She was well known to the ancients. The Romans called her Furor or Rabies — which gets the idea across fairly well. The Norse had two versions: Odr, who represented fury and frenzy, and Fenrir, a giant wolf who represents uncontrollable savagery.    By whatever name she may have been called, Lyssa appears to have been active in human affairs for a very long time.

anger pro-palestine hamas

Tuesday

David Christopher Kaufman

The folly of LGBT sympathy for Hamas

Beyond Hamas’s ruthlessness — and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fecklessness — one thing that’s become increasingly clear since the October 7 attack on Israel is that social justice groups and identity crusaders no longer possess even a shred of seriousness. How could they, with feminist organizations still questioning the legitimacy of Hamas’s sexual violence against Israeli women? Or lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans groups insisting that “queer issues are Palestinian issues” — despite Hamas’s paper trail of violent queer death? Or the folks from #BlackLivesMatter unwilling even to consider in the slightest that Jewish lives matter too?

queers for palestine hamas lgbtq

Thursday

Cockburn

Mehdi Hasan gets demoted

MSNBC has finally found a host that's de trop for them. Outspoken critic of Israel Mehdi Hasan had his show canceled by the network. Semafor announced the shake up on Thursday morning as part of broader changes to MSNBC’s weekend programming. Hasan’s show has been canceled but he will remain with the network as an on-camera analyst and fill-in host. Ayman Mohyeldin’s program will expand an hour to replace the vacated slot.  Hasan has been one of MSNBC’s most outspoken supporters of Palestine. During a November 16 interview with Israeli government advisor Mark Regev, Hasan attempted to get his guest to agree that Israel has wittingly killed children.

mehdi hasan

Monday

Charles Lipson

Why hasn’t Hamas freed its American hostages?

Hamas’s most valuable assets are the American hostages it holds. That simple fact means the terrorist organization will demand the highest value in return. What can America give Hamas in exchange? Not prisoners, since the US doesn’t hold any Hamas fighters. That means the US cannot follow the Israeli pattern of giving Hamas three Palestinian prisoners in exchange for every one held by Hamas. Nor can America provide boatloads of cash, as the Biden administration has for Iran. Biden could continuing giving Iran money, but that is much harder in the midst of war. And it is untenable politically to pay Hamas directly while the fighting continues. The Biden team might promise to help rebuild Gaza later, but that’s not valuable to Hamas right now, as it fights for its life.

hamas

Thursday

Cockburn

Violent protest erupts outside the DNC

Once again a mostly peaceful protest has inexplicably ended up in violence — this time outside of the Democratic National Convention headquarters in Washington, DC. Ironically, this latest batch of protesters were calling for a ceasefire in Israel as they initiated their own violence on the streets of the nation’s capital.   A pro-Palestine protest was held Wednesday night outside the DNC headquarters as Democratic lawmakers gathered in the building for a fundraiser. During the melée, Capitol Police evacuated the top House Democrats from the building, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Representative Pete Aguilar.  The night began with a candlelight vigil down the street from the DNC before turning violent.

dnc

Tuesday

Julio Rosas

On the ground in Ashkelon

Southern Israel I woke up on Tuesday morning, October 10, having just got back from New York City covering a big pro-Palestine protest. War reporting has been something I’ve always wanted to do. I figured it might be hard to catch a flight to Israel with everything going on, but because of the large Jewish and Israeli population living around Miami, there was a direct El Al flight that evening to Tel Aviv for $800. It was the last direct flight out of Miami for a couple of days, so I thought, “If I am going to do this, today is the day.” I was planning on leaving my job at Townhall the following week to start my independent Substack, but told them I was departing that day to go cover the war in Israel. They wished me well and off I went.

Israel
Paul Wood

Is killing civilians ever justified?

Israel said its tanks had “encircled” Gaza City as this went to press, the ground offensive being stepped up after a tentative beginning — but there’s been nothing tentative about Israel’s bombings from the air. Here’s a report of one incident: at 4:30 p.m. on October 10, an explosion collapsed a six-story building in Sheikh Radwan, a district of Gaza City, killing, it was said, at least forty civilians. A man named Mahmoud Ashour had to dig through the rubble with his bare hands to find members of his family. Buried there were his daughter and her four children, a girl aged eight and three boys of six, two, and six months, all killed. They had fled there thinking it would be safer than other parts of Gaza. But, he said: “I couldn’t protect them.

Israel killing
Daniel McCarthy

Israel’s imperial problem is ours, too

Israel will win its war against Hamas. But can it win the kind of war the United States lost in Afghanistan? Israel is facing today a dilemma that the West will face tomorrow. For more than sixty years, it has been easy for Western liberals to believe that imperialism is an unnecessary evil. When the US conquers and militarily occupies a foreign country, liberals don’t call it imperialism. It’s merely “regime change,” “nation-building” and “promoting democracy.” Such Newspeak has been powerless to alter the outcome of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars which after successful regime decapitations followed by decades of occupation and trillions of dollars spent on rebuilding failed to establish anything resembling secure liberal democracies in either land.

Israel
Andrew Bacevich

Why the post-Cold War era is far from over

In various speeches this year, secretary of state Antony Blinken has declared that “the post-Cold War era is over.” The announcement passes all but unnoticed, eclipsed as it is by crises, such as war in Ukraine and the Middle East, that make Blinken’s point in a starker way. Not so long ago, it was taken for granted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 had inaugurated a new age. Now, if Blinken is correct, the lifespan of that age hardly exceeds the duration of Tom Brady’s career as a star quarterback. By 1989, the United States had ascended to the status of sole remaining superpower. No challenges to its global primacy — political, military, economic or cultural — were visible anywhere on the horizon.

post-Cold War era

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Met in a muddle, King’s Speech and a wine production slump 

From our UK edition

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said of pro-Palestinian demonstrations: ‘To plan protests on Armistice Day is provocative and disrespectful, and there is a clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated.’ The Metropolitan Police urged organisers of a pro-Palestinian march on 11 November to postpone it, but they refused. The Prime Minister then said he would hold the Metropolitan Police Commissioner ‘accountable’ for his decision to greenlight the ‘disrespectful’ demonstration. Imran Hussain MP left the Labour front bench over Sir Keir Starmer’s opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza, and Afrasiab Anwar, the leader of Burnley council, and ten councillors left the Labour party.

Anshel Pfeffer

Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly seen as Israel’s curse

From our UK edition

Jerusalem On Tuesday, I was driving down to an Israeli army headquarters on the border with Gaza as a massive convoy of police cars and black bullet-proof limousines forced me onto the side of the road by the town of Ofakim. In Israel, only one man travels in a convoy that large.  It was 7 November, a month after the Hamas attack on Israeli communities in which 1,400 were murdered and the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began. Even during peacetime the Prime Minister’s movements are shrouded in secrecy until he is safely back in one of his homes or offices.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Internet poet Rupi Kaur boycotts White House Diwali celebration for Palestine

Cockburn was surprised to learn the war in Israel has a more global impact than he had previously imagined. The carnage in Gaza is affecting the way that Indian women living in the United States celebrate Diwali, at least according to the Canadian-Indian poet Rupi Kaur. South Asian women are now the latest group with a moral imperative to weigh in on the war.  Kaur’s crusade to involve an Indian holiday in a regional conflict all started when the internet poet, famous only to her 4 million Instagram followers and readers of New York women’s websites, rejected an invitation to a Diwali celebration that will be hosted by Kamala Harris on Wednesday. https://twitter.

rupi kaur