USA

Sidelining partner Israel, USA makes humiliating arrangements with Iran, after a round of war that professionals considered unserious.

In City Journal, Joel Kotkin marks the rise of the unJews: 

Among Democratic undergraduate students, according to one survey, only 5 percent support Israel.
…
Zohran Mamdami … won one-third of Jewish voters and as much as two-thirds of those under 45, according to exit polls.

An important timely piece: “The Return of the Jewish Question” by David Azerrad in Compact Magazine. All of this should be obvious but perhaps that is why it’s important.

That the average Fox News watcher is utterly oblivious to the JQ only enhances its appeal. The JQ is a kind of gnosis, a secret knowledge that allows the enlightened few to pierce through the illusions of ordinary politics and grasp the ultimate reality.

Call it Jewsonia: the week that Norman Podhoretz passes on, I’m sure he’d be pleased that Commentary Magazine published “The New American Jews: A manifesto for change, survival, and national flourishing” by Tal Fortgang and Ella Fortgang.

More [Jews] should also consider affordable, growing cities with small Jewish populations such as Omaha and Reno. This is an economic issue with a significant political dimension: We will continue to be taken for granted as constituents as long as we remain clustered…

It’s a kick-ass ⁠— not to mention world-saving ⁠— manifesto.

Demonstrating the relative seriousness of Israeli versus British media discourse, The Independent vs The Jerusalem Post on Trump’s UN speech. The former characterized it as “an extraordinary tirade” and “a spectacular outburst” and worried that “the speech risked all of the goodwill from last week’s historic state visit.” The latter:

Trump held up a mirror to the world. He did not seek to please, did not seek to appear enlightened, but exposed what other leaders try to hide. For him, leadership is not the art of compromise but the courage to tell the truth.

Through perhaps gritted teeth and scripted statements and a day later, Biden/Harris nonetheless take the win. The line: “a measure of justice” has been served.

What if the USA acted like the USA?

But of course, the US and all decent people worldwide condemned the Hamas murders. The Biden-Harris administration was “pained” by the murders (not outraged) and toothlessly jabbered that “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.” But this was not followed up by any moves against the genocidal terrorist group and its regional backers: anything concrete that would impose “full accountability” on Hamas.

Rather, the Hamas execution of Israeli hostages was followed up by pressure on Israel to make concessions to the perpetrators and essentially concede defeat to them. President Biden took to the microphone to accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “not doing enough” to secure a hostage deal.

Another scathing piece on Biden.

The very special Mike Doran hints at why he votes based on a candidate’s Israel policy (in response to Elon Musk’s enumeration of why he will vote for Trump):

I vote on Israel. The Israel test is the simplest and most elegant. The candidate that is best on Israel will be best on all the other things. I guarantee it. There are profound political and cultural reasons for this fact.

Someone asked him to explicate this. Here’s one quick stab at a vector: ‪Supporting Israel demonstrates both powerful intelligence and strength of character: to be able to power down through overloaded linguistic chimeras, ie, towers of lies big and small, then have the intellectual integrity to choose not to look away but digest the (many) resulting conclusions, and finally have the courage to express support despite local social disapproval, with the faith that it’ll be ok to do so.

I’ve heard people such as Dan Senor not understand the electoral logic behind President Biden’s pandering to Hamas supporters in Michigan. Like others, Senor cannot even imagine the only logical conclusion: it comes not from cynicism and expedience but rather ideology and belief (as much as this ethics-challenged pol can muster at any rate). In a devastating list-like article akin to a mordant Victor Davis Hanson column, Morton Klein reminds that Biden is not an Israel-friendly president. If he is not the architect of our current woes he is at least the midwife.

Biden has been hostile to Israel since day one of his administration before Michigan was a twinkle in his eye. Moreover, Biden stands to lose more Jewish and pro-Israel votes than he gains from anti-Israel communities, as 80% of Americans support Israel over Hamas. I thus believe that the real reason for Biden’s anti-Israel policies is Biden’s longstanding and sinister hostility to Israel.

In the last few days John Podhoretz has been coming to this conclusion, but sees it as the ranting of a senile old man, rather than long-held tendencies.

Gaymen and ladies in San Francisco, your true colors shining through…

Just when you think Bidenite kindergarten diplomacy couldn’t get any worse, can it be true that they are withholding intelligence from Israel on Hamas leaders’ whereabouts? No, if I had to wager I’d say this Washington Post story is not true; it’s just too egregious.

The Wall Street Journal’s Letters Editor Elliot Kaufman lays out Biden’s series of errors regarding Gaza, in particular his lack of pressure on Egypt to step up.

How did the president get here? Mr. Biden isn’t “Genocide Joe” any more than he is “pro-Hamas.” He has been boxed in and brought low by his own mistakes.

To my mind it all stems from cowardice; leaning on reasonable friends is less scary than on iffy partners, let alone adversaries.

I cannot (yet) follow Lee Smith to his conclusion that the Biden Administrations’ goal is American decline and defeat (though there was a strong strain of this in its precursor Obama Administration); rather than conspiratorial and malevolent, it seems more likely due to the more common weaknesses of delusion and cowardice.

Moreover Israel shares some blame for being weak-willed enough in recent months to go along with the Administration’s tacit protection of Hamas.

Kudos to Britain’s Daily Mail for publishing the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ piece “Why Israel’s failure to strike back at Iran could lead to NUCLEAR WAR” by FDD’s chief exec Mark Dubowitz and senior fellow Jacob Nagel.

Israel was acting well within the rules of its dangerous neighborhood by taking out [Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon]. But the Ayatollah responded with a potentially catastrophic barrage on Israeli civilians, military bases and government facilities. If Iran walks away from this moment without paying a severe price, Tehran may be emboldened to deploy its weapons again. And the next time, these drones and missiles may be armed with nuclear or chemical payloads.

Their conclusion is indisputable and anything else is either appeasement or overthinking.

Wonderful piece in Commentary by Seth Cropsey (I jumped to the family name and he is indeed the son of University of Chicago scion Joseph Cropsey) “”American Strategy on the Brink” that really gets to the heart of the matter”: The United States is shirking its responsibilities on the world stage:

All three instances of ongoing violence [Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan] stem fundamentally from a crisis in American power. These theaters are afire because Washington refuses to recognize what it is ⁠— the center of a loosely democratic system that spans Eurasia and the Americas. Culturally and strategically, the Rimland is being punished for the blindness at its core.

Writing brief essays now on X, Victor Davis Hanson lists Ten Ways to Guarantee a Theater-wide War:

Vapid “Don’t!” … Abruptly pull out of Afghanistan … Chinese spy balloon … [okay a] “minor” invasion [of Ukraine] … Seem eager to resume the Iran Deal …

Etc.

This Dearborn crowd musters up a “Death to America” chant (though the speaker to his credit doesn’t say it). Stupid fucks.

Good ep of Mike Doran and Gadi Taub’s allcaps ISRAEL UPDATE podcast “Is the US Stabbing Israel in the Back?”

Schame on Schumer.

Amazing that it took until 2024 for a Hacker News discussion on Deep Springs given the two bodies’ attitudinal overlap of intellectual arrogance.

The New York Post has published a post by Mordechai Nisan advocating that Gazans leave. After October 7th this position ⁠— “transfer” in Israeli parlance ⁠— went from the extremist fringe to being I think the unspoken mainstream preference among Israelis.

The world power with the strongest ideological opposition to transfer ⁠— apart from the Arabs still wanting to keep it as a bludgeon against Israel ⁠— is probably the USA, as it seems to go against the American grain of self-determination for peoples. But if the West Bankers manage to make a go of it ⁠— highly unlikely but still ⁠— then former Gazans could always migrate there again eventually if the call to return remains strong.

It’s so weird reading The Telegraph’s news feed of the day’s events because it reads like Iranian Press TV, full of Israel’s dastardly deeds. I guess it’s like The Wall Street Journal where there’s a real schism between the leanings of the so-called news division vs the editorial section.

Sometimes it seems The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board is the world’s only source of clearly-wrought sanity. Here they summarize the current state of the war with Hamas: Sinwar is sitting pretty thanks to American bear-hug limiting Israel’s war machine, but don’t underestimate Israel’s October 7th-induced determination.

There’s so much strong stuff being published in Tablet but I’ll just link to this long and searing piece by Andrew Fox entitled “A Dark Thanksgiving” about his teenage son’s experience at school in Durham in northern Virginia, where Muslims outnumber Jews by a ratio of at least 50 to 1.

I was particularly moved by his mention of his other two children:

My oldest son, who had started a chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at the same high school, refused to hear a word I had to say about Israel, abruptly leaving the dinner table whenever the subject arose. My middle son was hardly any more receptive, pinging me with the moral equivalencies he’d picked up from Instagram posts and then ignoring the long responses I sent in return. Now my youngest son had accused me of betraying him and using him.

This is rough.

Watching “The Gaza War on US Campuses’, an episode of Glenn Loury and John McWhorter’s The Glenn Show, there are two guests today: Daniel Bessner and Tyler Austin Harper. And all I can say is: hoo boy that Daniel Bessner is a piece of work.

You have to be aware that one side is a nuclear-armed power with one of the most advanced militaries in the world, the other side is not. There’s not an excuse for any of the brutalities that Hamas committed and particularly all of us in this liberal bourgeoisie context within which we operate, you know, we’re anti-violence in every particular situation, this is why you have this “Do you condemn Hamas” argument.

It goes on. His poor mama; if this Jewish American is the future, God help us all. For a start, does he not see that his dismissiveness towards opposition to violence as being a merely liberal bourgeoisie fancy must, if he is being intellectually honest, apply at least as much to the violence visited by Israel upon Gaza, which he condemns, as it does to the violence visited by Hamas upon Israel, which he all but excuses?

Behold the Yiddeshe New York mama hugging the lamppost to protect the posters of kidnapped children from the sick young man.

Another tour de force interview with Walter Russell Mead, this time with Bari Weiss.

I look at the last 300 years of world history as this contest, a series of contests, between English-speaking commercial, reasonably liberal maritime powers and these big land powers… We’re back to the Cold War when Russia was a huge sponsor of Palestinian terrorism. And Russia has decided to go back to that today. See, we don’t want, the Biden Administration doesn’t want, Russia and Iran and China to cohere because that just makes all of our problems worse. But they also know that cohering makes all of our problems worse. And that’s what they want.

Kudos to Tablet for publishing “Biden’s Three Nos” by Gadi Taub:

The closer you examine Biden’s hug, the more it appears like a full nelson. To be sure, there are positive aspects to the visit, but the cons decisively outweighed the pros. Biden came to Israel to preserve his ⁠— and President Barack Obama’s ⁠— disastrous policy of appeasing Iran.

Together with Caroline Glick, Taub is a useful right-wing voice in the mix that is my head, and I’m inclined to agree with much of this piece, except for one glaring and ultimately overriding omission: events, dear Gadi, events. The leopard will not change its spots; momentum has its own momentum; reality itself will pop ⁠— is already popping ⁠— the Democrat delusion of an appeasable Iran.

Aha, more spot-on clarity from Tablet magazine in “America Needs a Decisive Israeli Victory” by Raphael Benlevi.

America is being tested no less than Israel; the outcome will determine whether regional states will ally with America or with China and Russia. In other words, the Gaza war will determine whether the American-led order in the Middle East is still sustainable, or rather a relic of a historical period whose time has passed.

Take heed, o Wall Street Journal Editorial Page and Commentary Magazine: your might is being eclipsed!

Brigadier General Pat Ryder speaks to and takes questions on the missiles that the USS Carney shot down:

There were no casualties to U.S. Forces and none that we know of to any civilians on the ground. Information about these engagements is still being processed and we cannot say for certain what these missiles and drones were targeting but they were launched from Yemen, heading north along the Red Sea, potentially towards targets in Israel.

The US has now had to defend Israel in this war. On Iran’s part, might firing from so far away have been a strategic mistake?

The New York Times’s near mea culpa regarding its false coverage of the Gaza hospital blast is cold.

Beejeezus, is Victor Davis Hanson telling it like it is or what.

Is the U.S., as professed, really able to fund a $120 billion ⁠— and counting ⁠— war in Ukraine, and to replenish Israeli stocks (300,000 artillery shells shipped from U.S. depots in Israel to Ukraine, a reportedly mere one-month supply for Kyiv), and to restore depleted existing U.S. munitions (note the billions of dollars of equipment abandoned in Kabul), and to ramp up our forces to deter China (while allowing 8 million illegal aliens to flow across an open border and $33 trillion in national debt) without going on a massive war footing?

So much, so much to say and catch up on. Here’s a start: Victor Davis Hanson’s “An Annotated Guide to American Middle East Madness”. Events have caught up with VDS’s dark predictions and he has dropped the dark sardonic tone for straightforward exposition.

On this 22nd anniversary of 9/11, the worry that it succeeded.

I might as well start addressing my thoughts as my Michael Linds because they appear to be one and the same:

• Missing but Wanted: Children
• The End of Progressive Intellectual Life

At the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Tony Badran provides bracing clarity on the Biden Administration’s inimical posture in Lebanon, fallout from the ongoing preposterousness that an accommodation can be reached with the horrendous Iranian mullahs.

Each time Hezbollah provokes, the U.S. reliably steps in to “mediate” between the terror group and Israel, with the goal of “stabilizing Lebanon.” Needless to say, the Israeli role is strictly to make concessions in the framework of a U.S.-brokered agreement, at the risk of displeasing its American patron. Hezbollah, meanwhile, knows that the structure of this Kabuki performance prohibits Israel from retaliating, making its provocations more or less risk-free ⁠— especially given the fact that the “Lebanese state” is a fiction.

When the Israel ⁠— Lebanon maritime deal went through, I thought: this will bring Bibi back to power; the average Israeli will correctly perceive the deal as a dangerous sell-out by Lapid and vote for no more of it.

Glenn Loury and John McWhorter conduct a tour de force conversation on the affirmative action ruling.

At The Ringer, Succession via the prism of Tom:

Along with a five-figure Patek Philippe watch, Tom delivers a joke to Logan: “It’s incredibly accurate. Every time you look at it, it tells you exactly how rich you are.” Unimpressed, Logan says, “That’s very funny. Did you rehearse that?” … While watching Macfadyen in that scene, [Adam] McKay recalls, [Jesse] Armstrong leaned over to him and said, “Well, I’m going to have to expand this character.”

In The Telegraph, A multi-faceted layman’s tour of the differences between the US and UK economies.

Walter Russell Mead launches a new column in Tablet focused on American affairs domestic rather than foreign.

Victor Davis Hanson is perhaps merely stating the obvious regarding America’s decline.

The increasingly indispensable Michael Doran points out that:

If the goal of the Biden administration were to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, then [US Ambassador to Israel Thomas] Nides would either avoid any intervention whatsoever in Israeli domestic politics, or he would urge Lapid publicly to put forth practical proposals that could lead to a constructive compromise. Nides has demonstratively done neither.

In 1987 I attended a Telluride Association Summer Program. In 2020 I was shocked to read that in the wake of the George Floyd protests, Telluride had limited its TASP offerings to “Critical Black Studies” and “Anti-Oppressive Studies” seminars. In this article, Vincent Lloyd, a black professor who had taught at a TASP in the past, relates how he was cancelled by the students. The irony would be delicious if the seeming disintegration of American largesse and leadership in education were not sad and scary.

Via Paul Graham, who chose Gerald Ford’s portrait as his favorite, “every american president, but they’re all cool and they all sport a mullet” by Cam Harless.