The recent flare-up in Israel, explained by Massachusetts public school principal

46 thoughts on “The recent flare-up in Israel, explained by Massachusetts public school principal”

1. This guy looks like a [member of the LGBTQ community]!

   • I’ve found myself in the Fox News comments section again.

   • Actually our kind host got it wrong this time. His short bulbous features reminds me of the Mig 15 or as nato calls it faggot! Comment has nothing to do with the rainbow people.

2. As far as lions are concerned, the Israel war started during the Clinton years & has never ended since but it might be an extension of the many decades of arab wars in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya. Wonder if it has anything to do with middle easterners generally being very short tempered & edgy. There are no goog results on this trait because it’s not politically correct.

   • What do you mean “the Clinton years” ? The whole, if not sole, raison d’etre of Palestinians has been to erase Israel from the face of the earth since 1948 hwen they tried to realize their dream with the help from Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Transjordan.

     One could argue the whole Palestinian identity formed around that idea.

   • Ivan, I guess that lion mentions “peace” process that resulted in new thousands deaths of Israeli civilians and disarmament of Israelis living across the road from those who dream to murder them and extensive arms build up for the latter group.
     Now everyone in the world treat Israeli deaths as stepping stones for “peace”, in reality new final solution.

   • Although it’s debatable who is “indigenous” to the area going back centuries, it’s a bit of a stretch to conclude that post WWII occupation and apartheid regime had/has nothing to do with eventual Palestinian response. That recent atrocities have no precedent from the other participant of the conflict. Even the current response is anything but measured, surgical, targeted etc. i.e. business sadly as hypocritically usual.

   • ifuc: I would say that the US/EU-funded UNRWA is the main reason that the Palestinians did not accept a peace arrangement at some point since 1948. With the American taxpayer funding essential government services in Gaza, the Palestinians have been able to put the world’s highest percentage of time, money, and effort into military activities. Every other society on this planet has to work productively in order to fund education, health care, food, etc., all of which are given to Palestinians for free by UNRWA. It was the need to plant and harvest crops that limited war in Ancient Greece and it is still true today that non-Palestinian societies cannot devote most of what they produce to war. Thus, it is the 75 years of foreign aid that is most directly responsible for the recent events, including the recent boost in American taxpayer cash ordered by Joe Biden (see “Reversing Trump, Biden Restores Aid to Palestinians”; https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/world/middleeast/biden-aid-palestinians.html ).

     (In other words, Hamas and the Palestinians who voted for and continue to support Hamas are behaving rationally and doing exactly what we should expect with the money that we send them. The battles in the next few weeks will cause some damage in Gaza, of course, but the Palestinians can expect foreign donors, such as the US, to rebuild all of their infrastructure better than before. There will be a sacrifice in lives lost, but the Palestinians long ago decided that this is the kind of sacrifice they are willing to make in order to achieve their larger goal of eliminating the Zionist entity.)

     Separately, you say “the current response is anything but measured, surgical, targeted”. Given that Hamas is the elected and popular government of Gaza (far more popular than Joe Biden is with Americans), what “measured, surgical, targeted” action by the Zionist entity would eliminate Hamas’s ability to launch a similar attack next year? For example, suppose that every person who currently carries a gun on behalf of Hamas were located by the Zionist entity and relocated to France, Germany, the U.S., and other countries that say diversity is their strength. Let’s further suppose that none of these freedom fighters ever came back to attempt to fight against the Zionist entity. Given that Gaza has one of the world’s highest birth rates and that UNRWA schools teach the nobility of sacrifice for the cause of liberating Palestine, wouldn’t Hamas be able to rebuild and retrain an army within 6 months?

   • Not going to pretend I have a solution beyond: “can’t everyone just back off and calm down” because I know humans are far too messed up to see reason when issues get personal and/or religious.

     But my point is that I understand why Palestinians went apeshit after over 70 years of living in what effectively is a prison where constant violence comes from both within and outside the walls. Where, as you say, you have nothing to worry about other than how to train, escape and get your own revenge over the less than noble prison guards.

     And obviously, there wouldn’t be a need for zionists to defend themselves if they hadn’t occupied lands they left thousand whatever years ago. They just happened to run into “natives” that are somewhat more protective of their land than indigenous populations in most other parts of the world, north American continent included. Did they expect it would be as “peaceful” as in Australia? If they all gave each other more space… maybe. But that’s not really the case is it? Supposedly most densely populated piece of land on earth under constant surveillance, military attacks and nowhere to go.

   • The current Israeli response is not proportional. Proportional would be to fire thousands of rocket into Gaza without warning and chop off heads of prisoners and civilians as Hamas does. Instead Israel warns about its strikes in advance and treats Hamas prisoners, same that massacred families and decapitated babies, in the same hospitals where Israeli survivors are being treated, Instead of parading the prisoners on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel not going to fit into Arab world or become multicultural country like this.

   • ifuc: While the Arab rejection of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine and subsequent declaration of war against Israel has resulted in a lot of battles since 1948, I don’t think it is fair to characterize the entire period in Gaza as 70 years of “prison” or subject to “constant violence” (how do they have almost the world’s highest population growth rate if violence as experienced by the average resident is “constant”?). Interaction with Israel has been limited since the 2006 election of Hamas (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gaza ), of course, but that doesn’t prevent the Gazans from enjoying positive interactions with nearly 200 other countries around the globe.

     “An estimated 500 to 600 U.S. citizens live in the Gaza Strip”, says https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip/card/u-s-estimates-up-to-600-americans-in-gaza-XzlzyGWQCFHThTD8sqge

     Most people don’t stay in a “prison” voluntarily. If life in Gaza was so bad prior to last weekend, why didn’t these U.S. passport-holders move back to our mostly-peaceful stolen-from-the-Native-Americans land?

   • ifuc: Palestinians had two solid chances to have a two-state solution, one in 1993 and the the other in 2000 (Oslo Accords/Camp David). Both of those solutions were rejected by Palestinians who instead of trying to implement them continued their usual violence against Israel through intifadas, suicide bombings, shelling Israel with Soviet made Katyushas, or whatever they are called now.

     The reason Palestinans never seriously considered those solutions is that none of them achieved their real goal: erasing Israel from the face of the earth, the goal fixed in the Palestinian constitution.

     One may argue that Palestinian identity itself formed between 1948 and now, around the idea of destroying Israel, as I mentioned before, since no such identity existed before 1948 : “Most of the current territory of Israel was covered by 3 different Sanjaks – the Sanjaks of Acre, Nablus and Jerusalem, all of which were administratively part of the Province of Damascus and ultimately ruled from Istanbul”.

     In any case, today there’s no point in fretting about the history of the Israel creation, the history of which you know precious little judging by your statement that Zionists “occupied” that territory just for the heck of it, from boredom presumably, having nothing better to do in the not friendly to the Jews Europe of the time.

   • Ivan: why do you say that there were just two chances? Why wasn’t 1947 a chance to accept the UN partition, for example? Or almost any year between 1947 and the present? It is true that there were some decades where Arab nation-states wanted to keep the war going under the banner of the Palestinian cause, but Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979 (ending the state of war that it had declared in 1948) and Jordan did the same in 1994. And we don’t know that Egypt and Jordan would have fought for so many years if the Palestinians had all said “We don’t want to fight anymore.”

   • Phil: We all live on stolen land. Some of it was stolen 2000, some 1000, some 500, some 200 years ago. The land we are talking about was stolen 70 years ago, by people who it was stolen from 2000 years ago, and who themselves stole it from other people 1200 years earlier (in the meantime it was stolen from them several times, and regained). I am sure that you, at least deep inside, know that it was not “land without people for people without land”. What is needed is pragmatic solution which minimizes suffering for everybody involved. I do not know the answer, and probably nobody else does. The fact that this land is used as tool to induce chaos in geopolitically very interesting part of the world, and as means to exert control over it, is not helping at all.
     Living conditions in West Bank and in Gaza are very very bad, I would not like to enter the discussion if it can technically be called a prison. The comments of ifuc were made with patience and benevolence I am unfortunately not capable of. Your comment reads like: “how can you say we treat those animals badly when they repopulate so fast”. I hope it just happened in the heat of the battle.
     I’ve enjoyed this blog far to long to come with sarcastic comment, so I took a deep breath and came with patronizing comment. Well, nobody’s perfect.

   • mata: Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I did not mean to suggest that life in Gaza was better/easier than life in Kansas. I like to think that humans behave rationally. Having nowhere else to go, the Jews rationally accepted the UN partition plan of 1947. With demographics and military power on their side, the Arabs rationally rejected it in favor of a stated long-term plan of getting rid of all of the Jews from all of the land that Arabs conquered during the Rashidun Caliphate (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashidun_Caliphate ) and after. The short-term failure of Arabs efforts doesn’t make their long-term plan irrational.

     Westerners are tremendously arrogant regarding the inherent superiority of Western areligious culture. This is one reason why Europeans and Americans are surprised that Muslim immigrants and/or children or grandchildren of Muslim immigrants want to wage jihad or at least turn out in the street and demonstrate in favor of jihad. The rationale behind opening borders to people who have a completely different culture is that the migrants will recognize the superiority of Western culture and assimilate to what have been the dominant cultural values. If a migrant does reject Western culture then surely his/her/zir/their children will adopt Western culture. If Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, the child of of immigrants from Afghanistan, failed to prefer Rainbow Flagism to Islam, then surely his child (three years old at the time that Mr. Mateen killed customers at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando) will grow up to celebrate the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle. According to this dogma, inside every human on the planet is an American progressive waiting to come out.

     So the Westerner sits in a comfortable house and adjusts his/her/zir/their air conditioning and assumes that residents of Gaza and the West Bank would make all of the same choices that he/she/ze/they did. (Since it is more comfortable to live in peace rather than maintain a wartime footing for decades, the Westerner would have accepted peace with Israel back in March 1949 when victory hadn’t been attained in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War ; the non-Westerner may not put the same value on comfort.)

   • Phil, what event in history has led you to believe humans behave rationally? If they did, everyone would be getting a 6-7 figure job in silicon valley, instead they prefer to stay home (wherever that may be) until conditions become directly life threatening.

     Also, why would the palestinians accept any partitioning deal in 47? Because the UN said so? They didn’t ask for displaced jews to settle down the street and begin forcing them out of their back yard.

     Strategy on both sides since then was to eradicate the other. One side mostly by indescriminate lobbing of missiles, the other by forceful eviction and shooting those who resist. Eventually one side will likely succeed, neither will be able to claim they did it politely.

     Also, is it really your argument that a growing population is a sign of all is well? That 600 US citizens (most probably aid workers, diplomats etc.) is a sign it’s a nice place to live?

   • phil: you are right, of course. I meant that there were two realistic chances in the recent history.

     To be honest, I personally am not sure if a two state solution would have worked anyway for obvious reasons.

   • ifuc: Why would some Westerners have imagined that Arabs would have wanted to accept partition? For the same reasons that people throughout human history have accepted similar arrangements, first and foremost a need or a desire to return to productive life-sustaining activities such as agriculture (a need that was eliminated by the formation of the UNRWA). Plenty of people were disadvantaged by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India , for example, but the violent conflict and resettlement of refugees lasted for only a few years. Eventually, people in Pakistan/India had to go back to farming or risk starvation. The descendants of 12-14 million ethnic Germans who were expelled from Central Europe from 1944-50 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%931950) ) could be fighting right now to regain their former property, but they aren’t. The descendants of people who moved during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey could still be fighting (many were disadvantaged by the exchange), but they aren’t.

     Obviously, the cultural values of the Arab world were not comprehended by the Westerners who were drunk on their own imagined cultural superiority (and still are; as noted above, that’s the basis of US and European open border policies because everyone who comes to the West will realize how much better our culture is).

   • mata:

     You write: “Living conditions in West Bank and in Gaza are very very bad,”

     Did it ever occur to you that if, instead of concentrating their efforts single-mindedly for 75 years on trying to eliminate Israel, Palestinians tried to redirect those efforts to more productive endeavors, like, you know, building desalination plants or power stations or converting pieces of deserts to arable land, just like Jews did when the fled Europe ? Instead of digging tunnels, making and buying weapons and training for paragliding humanitarian missions to Israel.

     Before you start talking about the blockade, I’d like to remind that that the walls and blockades are not the cause of the lifestyle Palestinians are enjoying, but the consequence thereof.

   • Ivan: Isn’t a big part of the “prison” aspect of Gaza also that the Gazans have failed to establish good relations with their Arab brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Egypt? The Egyptians reject the U.S./EU dogma that diversity is strength and low-skill immigrants boost an economy and they are refusing to allow Palestinians to migrate to Egyptian territory, even temporarily.

     https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/bombardments-hit-area-gaza-sinai-border-crossing-gaza-officials-2023-10-10/ describes a denial of Science by the Egyptians. “Egypt would not allow the issue to be settled at the expense of others, Sisi said in comments reported by state news agency MENA, an apparent reference to the risk that Palestinians could be pushed into Sinai.”

     The president of Egypt falsely claims that low-skill immigrants are an “expense”, implying that the 110 million current residents of Egypt would become poorer, not richer, if Palestinians came in from Gaza.

   • Philip, GDP per capita in prison Gaza is actually higher then in free and prosperous Arab country of Egypt. So you can book Egypt not accepting Gazans in “go and do your job of fighting JOOS” category. Strange that Egypt does not want all those western money that the Gazans come attached with.

   • perplexed: I know that the US government wouldn’t lie to us and that the CIA never misunderstands what happens in foreign countries. So let’s check

     https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/real-gdp-per-capita/country-comparison/

     the 2021 estimate of real GDP per capita for Egypt is $11,600 (higher than American Samoa, Vietnam, or Ukraine; higher than oil-rich Iraq). This statistic is cooked with purchasing power parity (PPP). For the West Bank it is $5,600 and it is the exact same number for Gaza ($5,600), which is suspicious.

     What’s your source for Gaza being more prosperous than Egypt?

   • Philip:
     1.https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=EG
     2.https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EGY/egypt/gdp-per-capita
     WorldBank and MicroTrands both give Egypt GDP per capita below $4500.
     I read same number as you for Gaza

   • The discrepancy might be accounted for by the purchasing power adjustment. A lot of stuff is very reasonably priced in Egypt whereas Israel has higher prices than the U.S. for most things. Maybe Gaza and the West Bank are somewhere in the middle for prices.

   • In addition, I have read that Sinai Bedouins hate Gazans because of all foreign aid that Gazans receive. Sinai, distressed region on the border of Gaza, has per person GDP a fraction of what central Egypt has.

   • perplexed:

     You write: “Strange that Egypt does not want all those western money that the Gazans come attached with.”

     Perhaps, other Arab countries belong to those rarae aves who learn on others’ mistakes:

     “Drawing in both new recruits and financial aid, the PLO’s strength in Jordan grew rapidly, and by the beginning of 1970, groups within the PLO had begun calling for the overthrow of Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy.

     Acting as a state within a state, the fedayeen openly disregarded Jordanian laws and regulations. On two occasions, they attempted to assassinate Hussein, leading to violent confrontations with the Jordanian Armed Forces by June 1970. ”

     Eventually, Jordan managed to integrate Palestinians into the Jordanian society in the following way:

     “On 17 September 1970, the Jordanian Army surrounded all cities with a significant PLO presence, including Amman and Irbid, and began shelling Palestinian refugee camps, where the fedayeen were operating out of. The next day, 10,000 Syrian troops bearing PLA markings began an invasion by advancing towards Irbid, which the fedayeen had occupied and declared to be a “liberated” city. On 22 September, the Syrians withdrew from Irbid after suffering heavy losses to a coordinated aerial–ground offensive by the Jordanians. Mounting pressure from other Arab countries, such as Iraq, led Hussein to halt his offensive. On 13 October, he signed an agreement with Arafat to regulate the fedayeen’s presence in Jordan. However, the Jordanian military attacked again in January 1971, and the Palestinians were driven out of the cities, one by one, until 2,000 fedayeen surrendered after they were encircled during the Ajlun offensive on 17 July, formally marking the end of the conflict.
     Jordan allowed the fedayeen to relocate to Lebanon via Syria.
     “

   • Ivan,
     Back than west did not finance fedayeen. Transfer to Lebanon was a friendly inter-Arab event, maybe with thousands of civilians slaughtered, in best Middle Eastern tradition. With Switzerland of Mid East Lebanon agreeing to hosting PLO for sole purpose of attacking Israel. The agreement was financed by Saudis. Of course, soon PLO turned on Lebanon itself.

   • Philip, reply to “The discrepancy might be accounted for by the purchasing power adjustment. A lot of stuff is very reasonably priced in Egypt whereas Israel has higher prices than the U.S. for most things. Maybe Gaza and the West Bank are somewhere in the middle for prices.”
     It is due to supply/demand and taxes. Ideally, taxes should be related to quality of infrastructure.
     There are many tings with not elastic supply that are not accessible at lower prices (Teslas, Ferraris, fuel, etc…). And Gazans seem to have over 25% pf per capita GDP over Egyptians.

   • Anonymous : Well, Lebanon is certainly another success story of integrating Palestinians. I forgot about that one, thanks.

     “The Switzerland of the Middle East” indeed.

   • Phil, are you talking about expulsion of german 16-17th century colonizers who settled on previously mostly unpopulated/unmanaged remote mountain/forest lands where fresh workforce was needed, who were then encouraged to move by the vermacht: “hey Hans, we have this sweet farm down in the valley just waiting for a new tennant. For free, don’t mind the old family photos, some blood and a few bullet holes. And by the way, have you seen any bandits running around here? We’d love to drop in for a visit. We hear they’ve built a nice new hospital in some remote gorge around here somewhere and we have some guys who need their regular check up. Oh, and pack fast, we’re burning your farm soon so nobody moves in while you’re gone.”?

     I wonder why they felt it was a good idea to leave in 44?

     Ivan and Phil: of all the places displaced european jews could have moved (and also did in large numbers without anywhere near as much trouble), they chose to stick around and fight it out someplace where none of their new neighbours wanted them, leading ultimately to events of today. How was that rational behavior you speak of so often?

   • Regarding the expulsion of ethnic Germans, the Wikipedia article that I cited above links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Agreement (1945)

     The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.

     (the “major expulsions” were completed by 1950)

     Regarding your second question, most of the European Jews were killed by their neighbors. For the minority who survived, I’m not sure that there were a lot of nations with open borders anxious to welcome European Jews, but in any case going to a Jewish-run state doesn’t seem irrational after these folks’ experiences in states that were not run by Jews.

     The majority of Jews in Israel, however, do not have European ancestry. Their great-grandparents lived in Muslim countries. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world for a tutorial on this subject. “Prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living in lands that now make up the Arab world.”

     You think that it was irrational for a Jew to leave Iraq or Tunisia in 1950 and come to Israel? What country other than Israel would have accepted such a person as an immigrant?

     Israel handled one side of the transfer, giving citizenship to all of the Jews who showed up from Arab countries. The Arabs, on the other hand, did not give citizenship to the Palestinians who wished to live in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, or the Gulf states.

     A vaguely similar situation is developing right now near Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis who had been living near Gaza have been evacuated to other parts of Israel. Maybe they’re sleeping on friends’s couches or on cots in public buildings. (It’s a mandatory evacuation, enforced by the IDF.) Their Palestinian counterparts in north Gaza were advised by the IDF to evacuate south of the river, away from what will soon be an active war zone. Both Hamas and the UN say it is impossible for Palestinians to move a few miles and that they just need to stay where they are.

   • Maybe you’re just saying that Jews were stupid/irrational to believe that the safe haven set up for them by the United Nations was workable. Jews should have known in 1947 when https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine was adopted by the UN General Assembly that Arab monarchies would be replaced by Islamic governments, that the EU and US would fund Palestinian essentials, such as education, health care, and food for 75 years (thus enabling Palestinians to continue their armed struggle), that the Gulf Arab states would become fabulously wealthy via oil and gas, etc.

     By the same logic, you could say that anyone who purchased commercial property in Massachusetts or California in 1970 was stupid because it was straightforward to foresee that in 2020 the governors of those states would make it illegal for people to go to work, thus reducing the value of the property.

   • And about the same number of palestinians were forcefully relocated back then to make space for the fresh arrivals. Forced relocations that are ongoing to this day and have been condemned by the security council several times yet nobody gave a hypocritical shit about obvious war crimes.

     PS asking Israelis near Gaza border to move temporarily is somewhat easier compared to the situation other side of the border. Where could they go? Like asking a train full of people to just squeeze towards the back a bit more. They can’t even go out to sea and it’s not like you have regular commercial flights out. Israel makes damn sure they can’t go anywhere.

     To say people are rational and there’s a rational, peaceful way out of this gigantic mess is just wishful thinking.

   • ifuc: You say that it is impossible for people in Gaza to move away from what is soon to be a hot war zone. “‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of Gazans Displaced Over 12 Hours, U.N. Says” (i.e., the people who cannot move have already moved). That’s from the newspaper of record: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/14/world/israel-news-hamas-war-gaza

     Separately, I don’t think anyone on this blog has said that there is a “peaceful” way to resolve the current situation in Gazas/Israel. Vladimir Putin has offered to mediate and seeks a ceasefire, but is not optimistic that his ideas will be accepted (see https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/10/13/putin-says-russia-ready-to-mediate-israel-hamas-war-a82758 ). AOC has called for a ceasefire (see https://x.com/AOC/status/1712467346907099421?s=20 ) and, implicitly, for the U.S. military to go in to fight on the Palestinian side to “halt [the Israeli counterattack]” (see https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1712691970676580602 ). Perhaps the Israeli counterattack can be rebranded as a BLM protest and then it will be “mostly peaceful”.

     [Speaking of Russia, it seems that all of the atrocities of which the Russian military was accused by Western media in the past 1.5 years were committed by Hamas against civilians in Israel in just a few hours. I wonder if our media and governments will apologize to the Russians for over-egging the pudding.]

   • “Vladimir Putin has offered to mediate and seeks a ceasefire,”

     It’s like Mussolini offering to mediate for Hitler. Or vice versa.

     “We in the Hamas movement appreciate the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding the ongoing Zionist aggression against our people and the fact that he does not accept the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the cutting off of humanitarian aid supplies and the attack on unarmed civilians. We also reaffirm that we welcome Russia’s tireless efforts to end the systematic and barbaric Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”
     https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/19012201

3. Lincoln Squirrel is concerned with nuts in public educayshun https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1712490100213395465

4. I can’t see any advantage to commenting on the topic in public. The email was rigorously pedestrian but even Phil here seems really miffed by it, as seen from all the boldings and what not.

   I mean, the IDF will blow up some buildings, declare that the #2 guy was killed several times, and the beat goes on. What else can you say?

   • The email is not “rigorously pedestrian”. The email clumsily tries to equate the vicious aggressor, Hamas, and the victim, Israel. The “conflict” is not “occurring” spontaneously, as one might gather from the letter, it was created by the Palestinians’ medieval style attack, who exceeded Nazis in their atrocities.

     Is it so hard to understand ?

   • 123: the passages in bold are the ones referred to in my commentary. They’re a shortcut for readers, not an emotional outburst (and why would a Florida taxpayer be upset (“really miffed”) by what school bureaucrats in Massachusetts do? if it is something that the Floridian doesn’t agree with, that just makes life in Florida a little more valuable to the Floridian. in this particular case, I am glad that I am not paying funding this school principal’s salary via property tax!)

     I do think the email is an interesting window into the mind of the government bureaucrat. He wants to send “thoughts and prayers” from a comfortable Boston suburb, for example. What could be more absurd? Well, maybe a guy who gets paid $400,000 per year in total comp for doing, apparently, almost nothing saying “These are difficult times in the world”. If times are so difficult, how does he have time to write this pabulum?

     Also in MA: https://babylonbee.com/news/harvard-student-leaves-lecture-on-microaggressions-to-attend-kill-the-jews-rally

5. Could a superintendent just say ‘keep this stuff out of the school’. That is what I would have said. I understand people in the US of A might have found said stance too unbearable though.

6. John Stewart trying to have the final word on this nine years ago:

   https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1712437147981000781?s=46&t=gk_-vaVFb_Ij78Z_iIGZwQ

7. Stanford’s best and brightest! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12627971/Stanford-lecturer-suspended-Jewish-students-shaming-oppression-Palestinians.html

   • Yes! And, a great student of Colin Kaepernick. What could be better…a twofer!
     https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7/status/1130649058488381440

   • A perfect candidate for a maskachusetts school superintendent…and serendipitously he now needs a job.

8. They’re both right

   https://youtu.be/s7RmcdHrYuk?si=fRvosRIxlAPMRXZe

9. So special that docter stephens is offering safe spaces for all. Alluhu akbar! Does he have any children?

Comments are closed.