1. I am sure that this is going to come as a stunner to some people, but the Israeli government is responsible to Israelis. It is not responsible to Jews in America or other parts of the world, however close the relationship may be or ought to be between Israel and Jews in America or …
Yet Another Round of Middle East Notes
1. Israel has tried to extend the current truce. Hamas has apparently rejected Israel's offer. I am sure that anti-Semites anti-Zionists will find a way to blame Hamas's actions on Israel.2. One of the reasons why Israel was motivated to take action against Hamas was because it blamed the organization for kidnapping and killing three Israeli …
Matthew Yglesias: Not the Sharpest Tool in the Vox
Longtime readers are well aware that I do not take Matthew Yglesias seriously as a compelling thinker. Yglesias is one of the sources of inspiration--if not the source--for Yousefzadeh's Law, which states that "[t]here is no meritocracy in the field of punditry." (If one prefers, one may use the Peter Principle to explain Yglesias's rise in the …
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Middle East Notes (A Continuing Series)
1. There is a cease-fire. Let us hope and pray that it holds. Israel has decided to act unilaterally in order to end operations in Gaza, "[w]ith Israeli troops essentially finished destroying Hamas’s tunnels into Israel and having dealt Hamas’s military capacity a significant blow." Israel, of course, has been helped by the fact that it no …
More Depressing Middle East Notes
1. Those who think that Israel's enemies are serious about wanting to bring an end to the fighting have not been paying attention to current events:It was the start of a three-day truce, the best hope yet to end a 25-day-old war that has taken an enormous toll on both Palestinians and Israelis.On Friday morning, …
Once Again, House Republicans Show that They Are Not MENSA Material
Charles Krauthammer is absolute right, comme d'habitude: Charles Krauthammer is slamming the GOP for what he called a “ridiculous” contradiction after tabling legislation to tackle the border crisis within 24 hours after moving forward with a lawsuit against the president. “It is ridiculous to sue the president on a Wednesday because he oversteps the law, …
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“There Are Idiots. Look Around.”
The quote in the title of this blog post is courtesy of Larry Summers. I thought of it when reading this:Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their …
Lots of Israel-Related Links to Go Through
So let's go through them.1. In non-shocking news, a serious amount of anti-Semitism actually does exist in the West:The mob howled for vengeance, the missiles raining down on the synagogue walls as the worshippers huddled inside. It was a scene from Europe in the 1930s – except this was eastern Paris on the evening of July …
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More Stories that Cannot Possibly Be True
From France:Pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police in central Paris on Saturday when hundreds of marchers defied a ban by French authorities to rally against Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip.French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned organizers in a television address that they would be held responsible for any clashes and could be prosecuted for ignoring …
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Shocking Stories of Anti-Semitism
Read this, and this. I must confess to being a little confused; I have, after all, been repeatedly assured that "anti-Semitism scarcely exists in the West." Amazing how depressingly frequent the occurrence of something supposedly "scarce" can be, eh?Relatedly, be sure to read Damon Linker's open letter to Andrew Rosenthal, in which Linker employs magnificent scorn to magnificent effect. A …
Pejman Yousefzadeh 