Hamas

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

The US should stop raising false hope of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire

The months-long ceasefire and hostage release negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been the diplomatic equivalent of Groundhog Day. And the US officials tasked with bringing those talks across the finish-line have contributed mightily to the very bad, never-ending movie we (not to mention the hostages’ families and the more than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza) have watched since President Biden rolled out his ceasefire plan in late May. In the months since, Washington has committed verbal blunder after verbal blunder by getting over its skis and proclaiming progress where no progress exists.

ceasefire

Friday

Peter Wood

Minouche Shafik and the great tragicomedy of Diversity in our time

Minouche Shafik has reigned as president of Columbia University. Culture wars, like the kind involving actual armies, have casualties. Shafik is the fourth Ivy League president to step down in the last nine months. She was proceeded by Liz Magill at the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay at Harvard. Magill and Gay were casualties of their hapless testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on December 5 and, in Gay’s case, the subsequent revelations about her serial plagiarism. She was also proceeded by Martha Pollack, president of Cornell University, who hung up her mortar board in June, without an assist from the House committee but citing the “enormous, unexpected challenges” of having to deal with antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

Why America was in the dark over Israel’s assassinations

For the last three months, the Biden administration has had one top priority in the Middle East: end the war in Gaza. President Biden’s May 31 address, during which he outlined a three-stage process whereby a temporary six-week ceasefire and hostage exchange would eventually led to a permanent end to the fighting and Gaza’s reconstruction, remains official US policy. CIA director Bill Burns, a former senior negotiator himself courtesy of his decades-long experience in the State Department, has spent the last ten months flying to Cairo, Doha, Jerusalem and Rome to close the remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas. It’s hard and thankless work.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Inside Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress

Today Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first world leader to address a joint session of Congress four times, surpassing the previous record jointly held by him and Winston Churchill. And the anti-Israel protesters, not unlike the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, drastically inflated their numbers ahead of Wednesday’s proceedings. Despite concern that more than 10,000 anti-Israel protesters would descend on the nation’s capital, only a small group that carried Hamas flags and shut down multiple streets showed up. That’s not to say there was no drama, however. There was “absolute chaos” in the streets of the capital by the protesters who did show, with some activists pepper-sprayed and arrested by the Capitol Police.

Friday

The Spectator

Biden sweetens the deal for progressive critics

President Joe Biden offered his detractors, many of whom reside within the progressive activist wing of the Democratic Party (the former Bernie Bros are having a field day with the eighty-one-year-old’s mental decline), an attractive looking carrot this week.Biden made several notable gaffes during the 2024 NATO summit in Washington, DC, referring to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as his enemy of war “President Putin” and mixing up Vice President Kamala Harris with former president Donald Trump during his “big-boy” press conference. But as more Democratic elected officials and commentators admit that Biden ought not to finish out his re-election campaign, the nation’s long-in-the-tooth leader proved he’s still got some political fight left in him.

Friday

The Spectator

Will the GOP change its abortion platform?

Donald Trump’s 2024 strategy has been one of measured policy moderation: deprioritizing divisive issues and elevating those where he clearly has the lead. Now, in bringing that strategy to the GOP’s official platform, which is set to be unveiled later this month, the former president’s team is seeking to produce a succinct, less-heavy-handed document. This, in turn, has angered many in the conservative activist class, especially already-disgruntled pro-lifers.In a memo that circulated this Thursday, signed by Trump’s leading advisors Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the case is made for why to shorten the platform — “our policy commitments to the American people [should be] clear, concise and easily digestible.

Monday

Ben Domenech

Antony Blinken embodies decades of failure

There is no sign marking the entrance to Barman Dictat. The bar under 44 Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv boasts the largest mezcal collection in Eastern Europe. On a typical night you can find it by noting the crowd of people wafting cigarette smoke into the evening air. Inside, you’ll find shelves of more than 400 glowing bottles perched above a steel bar stretching more than thirty feet. You’ll find bespoke cocktails — Kraken, Smoky Voice and Tickle Balls. And, on one particular May evening, you’ll find the seventy-first secretary of state of the United States of America at center stage. Clad in black and wielding a scarlet electric guitar, Antony Blinken seemed less enthused about the moment than his staff had perhaps anticipated.

Blinken

Wednesday

The Spectator

The cultural chasm between Biden and Trump supporters

A new Pew Research poll with some stunning findings challenges common critiques from centrist and moderate politicos that the so-called “culture war” is a distraction or even imaginary. On the contrary, the results show a massive cultural chasm between Biden and Trump supporters that helps explain why America seems so politically divided — and why compromise often feels impossible.

Monday

The Spectator

Biden White House rocked by protests

The Biden White House had a difficult weekend as pro-Palestinian protesters continue to be a thorn in the side of the administration and the Democratic Party. Thousands arrived outside of the White House on Saturday to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and for Biden to stop sending weapons to Israel. Police erected additional fencing around the White House in anticipation of the protests and deployed pepper spray against at least one demonstrator, but no arrests were made. Instead, the pro-Palestinian activists left graffiti on statues in Lafayette Square and trash strewn around the perimeter of the White House complex.

protests

Wednesday

Cockburn

Joe Biden’s TIME interview: the good the bad and the ugly

President Joe Biden sat down for an interview with TIME magazine in the White House last week. The questions centered around foreign affairs, with interviewers Massimo Calabresi and Sam Jacobs asking about D-Day, Ukraine, Israel and Hamas, nuclear power, China, inflation, tariffs and immigration. Back in March Americans generally agreed that the economy and foreign affairs were weak points in Biden’s administration. The TIME interview is unlikely to change anyone’s mind. Cockburn identified a few overarching themes: Biden accused TIME of misreporting and leaving his accomplishments unreported. The first accusation: “The Russian military has been decimated. You don’t write about that. It’s been freaking decimated.” Another theme: senility.

joe biden time magazine

Friday

David Christopher Kaufman

Why students at historically black colleges aren’t protesting

Earlier this week, the New York Times asked an intriguing and surprisingly overlooked question: why aren’t black students on historically black college campuses protesting against Israel and marching for Palestine? It’s an important query — made all the more urgent by President Biden’s commencement address this coming weekend at Morehouse College in Atlanta, one of the nation’s preeminent historically black colleges and universities.   Considering the seemingly endless ways African Americans have pledged their allegiances to the suffering in Gaza — and Palestinians in general — America’s 107 HBCUs should be exploding with anti-Israel rancor.

campus protests hbcus protesting

Wednesday

Spectator Editorial

Why the Gaza protests are worrying

As the weather has warmed, it’s time for that time-honored tradition — protest season. Because everyone knows the plight of the disenfranchised is best solved at 70°F. Setting up winter camp in a college quad seems unpleasant — the revolution will take place at a time, place and temperature that’s convenient for America’s poetry graduate assistants. Campus protests are nothing new in America. They’ve been a feature of university life since at least the Vietnam War and beyond. And sure, it’s fun to get wrapped up in a romantic cause you only just learned about and of which you have only a surface-level knowledge. It might give your life meaning at a time when you’re trying to figure out what the point of all of this is.

protests
gaza ai war
Paul Wood

AI and the new way of war

What is happening in Gaza now provides a glimpse of how all wars may be fought in the future — with artificial intelligence. In The Spectator last November, I wrote about an Israeli airstrike that brought down a six-story building in Gaza City, reportedly killing more than forty civilians. One of the residents, a man named Mahmoud Ashour, dug through the rubble with his bare hands, trying to find his daughter and her four children, a girl aged eight and three boys of six, two and six months — all killed. The Israeli military would not tell me why the building was hit, beyond saying that Gaza’s armed groups put their military infrastructure amid civilians, but Amnesty International said there had been a single member of Hamas living there.

Hezbollah
Fin de Pencier

The fight among the olive trees

Rmeich, Lebanon On October 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas massacre further south, Hezbollah started firing rockets into northern Israel, reviving the world’s most dangerous game of chicken. What exactly has been accomplished? Hezbollah’s Shia supporters may be comfortable with their leader Hassan Nasrallah and his Iranian sponsor, head of state Ali Khameini, risking open war. But no one consulted the local Christians, who would never agree to spill Lebanese blood as a supportive gesture to Hamas. “The south [of the country] belongs to Lebanon, and Hezbollah cannot go to war on behalf of the Lebanese,” says Marc Saad, a spokesman for the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party and Hezbollah opponent.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Biden’s Israel betrayal

President Joe Biden has been straddling an incredibly thin line when it comes to his stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict. The president historically has been supportive of the US’s alliance with Israel but his posture has been tested by a vocal pro-Palestinian contingent in the Democratic Party; in the Democratic primaries, they voted “uncommitted” to send a message to their party’s leader and in recent weeks have showed up on college campuses to demand university administrations divest from Israel. Biden has responded by remaining vocally pro-Israel but inching further away from Israel from a policy standpoint.

Monday

Charles Lipson

Biden’s pause of weapons shipments to Israel is another misstep

President Biden just made a strong move against Israel, ordering the US government to stop shipping weapons supplies to the Israeli Defense Forces. It was his fine strategic mind at work, once again.  Usually the public defers to the president and his advisors on foreign policy, unless the issues become very prominent or the president forfeits their trust. Those are the two problems now facing the Biden administration. The war in Gaza is a major issue — and the public has zero confidence in Joe’s strategic wisdom. He lost the public’s confidence on that score after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the failed attempts to appease Iran. Now, they are unlikely to defer to his judgment in distancing himself from Israel, America’s greatest ally in the region.

biden weapons

Tuesday

Sean Rayment

Will Israel still attack Rafah?

The decision by Israel to withdraw its forces from the devastated city of Khan Younis could portend a battle for the control of Gaza. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Forces, the prize in the war against Hamas is the capture of the southern city of Rafah, a sprawling, tented enclave bulging with up to 1.4 million displaced and desperate Palestinians. Given that much of Gaza is now in ruins, there is almost nowhere left for the Palestinians trapped inside the city to flee. It is almost universally accepted that any assault would end in a bloodbath.

benjamin netanyahu rafah

Tuesday

Cockburn

Is ‘Dear White Staffers’ losing favor with the left?

“Dear White Staffers”, an Instagram account that blew up just a couple of years ago for reporting alleged mistreatment of staff on Capitol Hill, is now under fire from some members of the progressive left for allegedly engaging in performative activism. The account joined Instagram in 2020 and quickly built a reputation for being a place where congressional staffers could anonymously share horror stories about their offices and dissuade others from joining toxic work environments. The account has more than 100,000 followers and is closely watched by members of Congress — and now the Biden administration, as White House employees have started making their own submissions to the “Dear White Staffers” DMs.

dear white staffers
joe biden gaza gaffe
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.

qatar
Neetu Arnold

Time to end branch campuses in Qatar

The post-October 7 backlash against campus antisemitism has taken its next casualty: Texas A&M’s Qatar branch campus. The Texas A&M System’s Board of Regents voted 7-1 on February 8 to close its overseas campus in Qatar by 2028. This makes Texas A&M the first American university to end its deal with the Gulf State after two decades in operation and more than $600 million in Qatari funds. And while it’s a victory on several fronts, including combating global support for terrorism and improving national security, this is only the beginning: there are five other American universities that should follow Texas A&M’s lead by closing their branch campuses in Qatar.