Why is a civilian in Gazan a “martyr” if he/she/ze/they is killed in the current battles?

We are informed that the typical Gazan has no relationship with the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is an accident that Hamas governs Gaza, which is otherwise populated by entirely peaceful humans. At the same time, anyone in Gaza who is killed in the latest fighting has been referred to, both by Palestinians and westerners in the do-gooder industry, as a “martyr”. One wouldn’t refer to a person killed in a car accident as a “martyr”. How can someone who wasn’t in any way aiding Hamas or PIJ and who didn’t go into Israel on October 7 be characterized as a “martyr” if he/she/ze/they is, unfortunately, killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

(Note that recent opinion polls show 75 percent of Palestinians supporting Hamas and 85 percent supporting PIJ.)

Here’s an example from a Norwegian do-gooder:

There is an entire Twitter account devoted to stories of peace-loving civilians who have become “martyrs”:

Note the martyr wearing a huge “PRESS” sign on his chest despite the fact that we’ve been informed since October 8 that the IDF Is specifically targeting journalists and killing them via snipers and airstrikes (example). Since journalists don’t need special outfits to do their jobs, if what we’re told about the IDF is true why are Palestinian journalists choosing to make themselves targets with huge “PRESS” signs front and back and unique blue outfits? Are they seeking martyrdom by making themselves readily identifiable from a helicopter or drone? Below a group of “PRESS”-/blue-clad figures gathered in the open where any passing helicopter or drone can see them (source). If they believe what they’ve written, i.e., that journalists are targets for the IDF, they’re endangering the huge crowd of non-journalists surrounding them.

Here’s another example and it includes what seems to be a standard phrase for Palestinians: “rest in power” (rather than “rest in peace”):

(in other words, they will keep (powerfully) fighting the hated Israelis from beyond the grave?)

Separately, could it be that Palestinians are SWATting each other? Here’s a story about a peace-loving family in Gaza with “no verified Hamas presence nearby”… “Why Did Israel Kill My Family in Gaza and Destroy My Childhood Home?” (Newsweek, December 28, 2023):

There were no armed clashes, no Israeli ground troops, and no verified Hamas presence nearby. My family, on both my dad’s and mom’s sides, come from a long line of technocratic professionals who are independent and not involved with any political party.

The death toll surpassed 31. All five of my aunts and uncles who were in the building were instantly killed. Additionally, nine children as young as three and four months old, along with their parents and almost all of my cousins were killed in the airstrike

My vocal opposition to Hamas has drawn the ire of some of the pro-Palestine community, which finds my critiques of the Islamist group untimely, undue, unhelpful, or quite frankly inconvenient to their resistance narratives.

Faulty intelligence, inconsistent rules of engagement, the use of massive ordnances in crowded and dense civilian areas, and the application of overwhelming firepower to support advancing troops are regularly causing the needless loss of Gazans’ lives.

The author says that his previous writings regarding Hamas have “drawn ire”. Perhaps his family (100+ members if 31 were killed by one bomb? (Palestinians have been the world’s most demographically successful humans since the establishment of UNRWA)) was SWATted by a fellow Palestinian who called up the IDF to say that three senior Hamas commanders were at the house that was destroyed from the air.

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Did the Western countries now fighting with Yemen provide the funding for Yemen’s military efforts?

A society’s resources are finite. What is spent on military activities cannot be spent on food, health care, education, etc. Arabs declared war on Israel 75 years ago, rejecting the UN Partition Plan and vowing to kill or expel all of the Jews. Palestinians are able to keep this old war going because US and EU taxpayers, through UNRWA, fund all of the basic needs that motivate most people worldwide to work rather than wage war.

I’m wondering if the same dynamic is at work in Yemen. Let’s compare France, for example, one of the donor countries, to Yemen in terms of population growth:

Yemenis are far more successful demographically, it seems, than the French. Nonetheless, absent transfers of funds from French workers to various UN and NGO programs operating in Yemen, the Yemenis would have to devote a lot of time, money, and effort into feeding themselves and all of their kids. If the UN steps in to feed Yemenis, however, Yemenis can look around and find other stuff to do with what are now surplus resources.

People in Yemen, freed from the need to work for food, can demonstrate all day every day:

The Yemenis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, which has prompted the U.S. to park a naval force in the area. They’re mobilizing ground troops as well:

If we assume that money is fungible, the countries now in a fight with Yemen are paying for both sides of the fight. Every person in Yemen who skips work to demonstrate was bankrolled by the US/EU. Every weapon in every image was purchased with US/EU money.

Could the foreign aid truly be large enough to fund a country’s entire military? See, for example, “Additional Humanitarian Assistance for the People of Yemen” (US Department of State, February 2023):

Today, I am announcing our contribution of more than $444 million, exemplifying the continued generosity of the people of the United States for the people of Yemen. As one of the largest donors, this brings our total to the humanitarian response in Yemen to over $5.4 billion since the conflict began.

Yemen supposedly was spending about $1.7 billion per year on its military in pre-Biden money back before the war over the best way to practice the Religion of Peace. Thus, $5.4 billion over time should fund quite a significant military effort. Every dollar that the U.S. sent to Yemen for food was a dollar freed up for the Yemenis to buy guns, ammo, missiles, drones, etc. and those weapons shouldn’t have cost more than $5.4 billion.

Separately, with today’s population being more than 6X what it was in 1950, with no additional agricultural land or resources added, the Giant Brains (TM) of the United Nations say that the struggle to make ends meet is due to climate:

It’s not that 33 million humans are now trying to live in a land that can produce enough food for 5 million (see “Imported food constitutes 83% of the daily calories’ intake of Yemenis.” (reliefweb.int)). it is not that those tens of millions of people have been fighting each other over the issue of what form of Islam is best (the civil war). It is atmospheric CO2 that is making life tough for Yemenis.

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Why doesn’t Israel return fire when Gazans launch rockets at Tel Aviv?

If an enemy fires a rocket at you it should be reasonably easy with radar analysis to figure out the approximate launch location. ,The Gazans have been trying to kill civilians in Israel for 22 years (partial list) so the Israelis have had plenty of time to tune the software and hardware necessary. The question for today is why the Israelis don’t shoot back at the launch locations. Israel has moved a lot of 155mm artillery pieces into and around Gaza. The range of one of these guns is 13 miles and the shells aren’t expensive by military standards. If a launch is detected, why not at least shoot back with a 155mm shell or two?

Palestinians seem to be confident that no return fire will be directed at them. Gazans fired a salvo at Tel Aviv on New Year’s Eve, for example:

If 155mm shells were a standard response to such launches, you’d expect Gazans to run away from the launch site immediately after seeing a launch. Instead, the audio track of this video records a crowd of Gazans cheering as spectators:

I’m sure that Israel would be criticized for returning fire, but I’m not sure what international law would be broken by doing so. If someone shoots are you, you can shoot back, right? That’s true even in California! If a 155mm shell happened to land on one of the handful of Gazans who opposes war with Israel, that’s a shame, but there is no requirement that return fire hit its target within a specified number of meters (indeed, the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Party of Allah (“Hezbollah”) all sometimes launch projectiles that fall short of Israeli territory and, presumably, hit people who weren’t the intended targets). If the practice of returning fire were standard, presumably the civilian death toll would quickly fall as people learned to run away after seeing a rocket launch.

What am I missing? Why has Israel trained the Gazans to believe that rockets can be launched without any possibility of return fire?

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Israel’s ponderous conventional military on October 7

This one goes into the Department of Important, but Depressing… I had been wondering why most of Israel’s attack helicopters, at least, weren’t on the scene on October 7 within an hour or two. (Though Wikipedia reminds us that an attack helicopter isn’t the best tool for an ambiguous situation:

In September 2015, an Egyptian Apache attacked a group of foreign tourists in the Western Desert, killing 12 people and injuring 10. The AH-64s fired at the civilians with rockets and 30mm machine guns for several hours, even though survivors said they waved the white flag. The Egyptian Interior Ministry stated that the group, whom were mistaken for militants, were in a restricted area. The tourists were reportedly accompanied by Egyptian police, and their vehicles were marked with logos of the tourist company.

The situation on Oct 7 was confusing because the invaders included armed men in an array of uniforms (including “no uniform”) and some “Gaza civilians” in civilian clothes).

Today’s New York Times also tries to figure out why the powerful IDF was so ponderous and ill-prepared for what in retrospect seems like an obvious hazard (the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad both having publicly proclaimed their intent to kill Israelis, take over Israel, etc.). “On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists made attacking Israel look easy.” (non-paywalled version, but the extensive videos from Hamas bodycams don’t work):

The full reasons behind the military’s slow response may take months to understand. The government has promised an inquiry. But a New York Times investigation found that Israel’s military was undermanned, out of position and so poorly organized that soldiers communicated in impromptu WhatsApp groups and relied on social media posts for targeting information. Commandos rushed into battle armed only for brief combat. Helicopter pilots were ordered to look to news reports and Telegram channels to choose targets.

And perhaps most damning: The Israel Defense Forces did not even have a plan to respond to a large-scale Hamas attack on Israeli soil, according to current and former soldiers and officers. If such a plan existed on a shelf somewhere, the soldiers said, no one had trained on it and nobody followed it. The soldiers that day made it up as they went along.

Previously undisclosed documents reviewed by The Times show just how drastically the military misread the situation. Records from early in the day show that, even during the attack, the military still assessed that Hamas, at best, would be able to breach Israel’s border fence in just a few places. A separate intelligence document, prepared weeks later, shows that Hamas teams actually breached the fence in more than 30 locations and quickly moved deep into southern Israel.

Hamas fighters poured into Israel with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, land mines and more. [corroborated by the fact that they managed to kill at least one tank crew] They were prepared to fight for days. Israeli commandos apparently believed they would be fighting for just hours; one said he set out that morning without his night-vision goggles.

The small size of the teams suggested that commanders fundamentally misunderstood the threat. Troops rolled out with pistols and assault rifles, enough to face a band of hostage-taking terrorists, but not to go into full-scale battle. … “The terrorists had a distinct tactical advantage in firepower,” said Yair Ansbacher, 40, a reservist in a counterterrorism unit who fought on Oct. 7. He and his colleagues mainly used pistols, assault rifles and sometimes sniper rifles, he said.

Davidi Ben Zion, 38, a major in the reserves, said reservists never trained to respond at a moment’s notice to an invasion. The training assumed that Israeli intelligence would learn of a looming invasion in advance, giving reservists time to prepare to deploy. “The procedure states that we have the battalion ready for combat in 24 hours,” he said. “There’s a checklist to authorize the distribution of everything. We practiced this for many years.”

Even at noon, according to another Southern Command official, officers there did not understand what was happening. They assessed that Hamas had sent about 200 gunmen into Israel. They were off by a factor of 10.

Are there any heroes?

With communication out of Re’im disrupted and military leaders in Tel Aviv struggling to understand the scope of the attack, Maglan turned to an unlikely source for information: Refael Hayun, a 40-year-old who lived with his parents in Netivot, about five miles from Gaza.

Mr. Hayun watched Hamas videos of the attack in real time on social media and relayed information to Maglan’s officers. He began fielding WhatsApp messages from people trying to save their children, friends and themselves.

“Hi Refael, we’re stuck in a trash container near the party location,” one message read. “Please come rescue us. We’re 16 people.”

Mr. Hayun relayed those locations to the commandos, but they did not grasp the enormity of the fight. One Maglan team killed several terrorists near a base in Zikim, just north of Gaza, but they didn’t realize until 11 a.m. that Hamas fighters had stormed Kfar Aza, where some of the worst fighting took place.

Maybe this is just in the nature of conventional militaries. They have the power to level cities, but, with the exception of responding to incoming aircraft (or rockets), are slow to get started. Sad, nonetheless.

Second Amendment fans here may be cheered to learn that the sluggish response of the IDF has motivated a lot of Israelis to apply for gun permits, though even trained IDF soldiers with military rifles were no match for the thousands of Hamas fighters with RPGs and true machine guns. From an Israeli friend:

on last Friday I went to renew my gun license. a normal procedure.

I was the oldest in the 24 people group – many of them were at the age of 25-35 and they went for their first time to the shooting range in order to appeal for a license.

I got 99 bullets into the center (one hit the target but was a bit aside 🙂 ) and then got 20 out of 20 in the final exam (you need to have 14 in the center in order to pass and all the rest in the target itself and not outside)

According to my Israeli friends, Arab citizens of Israel have been solid supporters of the IDF’s efforts in Gaza (i.e., a white progressive in California is far more supportive of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) than an Islamic Arab citizen of Israel). If they want to join a well-organized militia against the next attack by Gazans they can apply for and receive a gun permit. However, military service is optional for Arab Israelis and most Arab citizens lack the necessary military experience to qualify for the permit.

The videos selected by the NYT show Gazans killing Israelis in cars, mostly with ordinary rifles (what Americans call “assault rifles”). If every driver had a Tavor in the trunk, perhaps at least some would have been able to pull over, use the car as cover, and make life difficult for the Gazans.

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Why didn’t the CIA know about the October 7 attack by Gazans in advance?

Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an intelligence failure so spectacular that it has spawned what the righteous fondly refer to as “conspiracy theories,” e.g., that Roosevelt actually knew about the attack in advance. Certainly the U.S. did have enough warning to have launched fighter planes and manned antiaircraft guns (see “The Three Missed Tactical Warnings That Could Have Made a Difference at Pearl Harbor”), but radar alerts were ignored.

One parallel between Pearl Harbor and recent events is that the Japanese did not expect the U.S. to wage total war in response to the attack. There was supposed to be a negotiation, after which the Japanese government would remain in power and in a stronger position than before. One theory is that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) set up October 7 as a way to take Israeli soldiers hostage and then exchange them for Palestinians who had been convicted of stabbings, car bombings, shootings, etc. and sentenced to prison. However, ordinary civilian Gazans followed Hamas into Israel and, lacking the discipline of Hamas soldiers, proceeded to rape, maim, and kill as well as take civilians as hostages. As a result of the unplanned orgy of violence, Israel chose the unexpected (by Hamas) path of partial war (nothing like the brutality of what the U.S. did to the Japanese) with the goal of removing Hamas from its position as the legitimately elected government of Gaza.

Let’s go back to the intelligence failure aspect, however. The Central Intelligence Agency has over 21,000 employees (that Wikipedia knows about). The fighting after the October 7 attack motivated the U.S. to move an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean. Thus, even if the October 7 attack couldn’t have been stopped, it would have been valuable for the U.S. to know about it in advance. We pay about $100 billion per year for intelligence, central and otherwise. Why didn’t we have some agents and/or informants in Gaza who could have told CIA Langley (“George Bush Center for Intelligence”!) about the attack in advance?

From The Puzzler (2022, A.J. Jacobs):

In 1988, the CIA commissioned a Maryland-based artist named Jim Sanborn to create a sculpture for its expanding headquarters. The agency wanted to install some art that would be relevant to its mission of cracking secrets. Sanborn’s sculpture, Kryptos (Greek for “hidden”), was unveiled in 1990, located in a courtyard abutting the CIA cafeteria. Kryptos is a wavy wall of copper about twenty feet long and twelve feet high. Into the copper, Sanborn has carved about eighteen hundred seemingly random letters and four question marks. It’s a code, a secret message. No one knows the solution except Sanborn and possibly the former director of the CIA (Sanborn has hinted he didn’t tell the director everything). Thirty years later, the code has not been fully cracked—even by the CIA itself.

I ask Sanborn what it was like to create Kryptos. It wasn’t easy, he says. He had to get lessons in cryptology from a retiring CIA agent. And as for the sculpting itself, “I went through fifteen different assistants, nine hundred jigsaw blades, and twelve Bosch jigsaws over two and a half years,” Sanborn says.

From the CIA’s page:

Loosely related… “U.S. Navy Rescues Ship From Pirate Attack in Gulf of Aden” (New York Times):

The U.S. Navy intervened to stop the hijacking of a commercial cargo ship by pirates in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia on Sunday, after which two ballistic missiles were fired from Yemen toward the Navy destroyer that responded to the incident, the U.S. military said.

The ballistic missiles were fired from the part of Yemen controlled by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, according to a statement released by U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the region. If the missiles were meant to hit the U.S.S. Mason, a Navy destroyer, they fell well short of the mark: They landed in the Gulf of Aden 10 nautical miles from the American ship.

From CNN… “Missiles fired from Yemen toward US warship that responded to attack on commercial tanker”:

Two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi rebel-controlled Yemen toward a US warship in the Gulf of Aden, after the US Navy responded to a distress call from a commercial tanker that had been seized by armed individuals, the US military said Sunday. … The incident comes after Iran-backed Houthi forces launched numerous attacks against US interests in the region… Last week, the USS Thomas Hudner shot down multiple one-way attack drones launched from Yemen while it was patrolling in the Red Sea. On November 15, the Hudner also shot down a drone believed to have been heading toward the ship.

The “Houthi rebels” are the de facto government of Yemen right now, ruling over 80 percent of the population and controlling the capital city. We pay about $250 billion per year to keep the Navy and Marines going. Why aren’t the Houthis afraid that there will be some consequence to firing missiles at U.S. Navy ships? (For that matter, I guess, why didn’t the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) immediately release all American hostages that it grabbed on October 7, 2023 for fear of being attacked by the U.S. Navy?)

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The War in Gaza and the O.J. Simpson Bronco Chase

It has been two months since the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and various Gazan civilians invaded Israel. Ever since that October 7 attack, the Israeli military (“IDF”) has been pursuing the freedom fighters around Gaza without any dramatic successes. I wonder if this can be compared to the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase.

Unlike most countries, including the U.S., when Israel finds something or someone that it wants to destroy inside a building, it warns the people inside to get out. The result is that Israel blows up a lot of empty buildings. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and non-combatants who don’t want to be martrys are all gone by the time the bomb falls or the missile strikes. Maybe the next day, Israel finds out where Hamas’s soldiers are and the process is repeated without a single Hamas soldier being killed or taken prisoner. This leads to the question “What is the military value of destroying an empty building?”

Here are some possible answers:

  • the building contained important military equipment that would have taken more than a few hours to move
  • the building was on top of a tunnel entrance and collapsing it keeps the tunnel from being used
  • the building is next to a planned infantry/tank approach to another target and destroying it prevents freedom fighters from using the building as cover

I would love it if someone could explain which of the above is correct or if there is some other explanation.

This is not to say that I agree with Palestinians polled who believe that their victory over Israel is assured. I think it is possible that two months of small successes could eventually lead to an ultimate big success.

Separately, can someone explain this IDF video of a fight against Hamas/Islamic Jihad soldiers who were inside a couple of schools?

(As noted previously here, I disagree with the video’s reference to “terrorists” to refer to men who carry guns on behalf of the freely elected government of Gaza, even those men kill civilians whenever possible.)

All of the civilians moved out of this area weeks earlier, according to the video, so that’s what the soldiers believed. If you were on the ground and taking fire from a nearby building, wouldn’t you call in an airstrike or artillery strike against the building rather than risk your opponent having some successful shots? Why risk your life to save US/EU taxpayers from having to buy the Palestinians a new school? I don’t think that there is an argument that children would be disadvantaged by the destruction of an empty school building. There is no limit to the UNRWA aid guarantee and, therefore, a new building would be built in short order. Maybe the argument is that Israel doesn’t want to destroy UNRWA assets so as to maintain good relations with UNRWA, but to judge by Twitter the UNRWA folks already hate Israel and already say that Israel blows up their schools and other stuff “indiscriminately”. If there ever was a time for indiscriminately blowing up a building, when better than as the enemy is shooting at you from that building?

In yesterday’s New York Times:

The explanation for the fighting, as opposed to just bombing, doesn’t seem to apply to the school situation:

Hamas fighters are embedded in the strip’s densely packed buildings and hidden in an expansive network of underground tunnels, making close-quarters fighting unavoidable, Israeli officials said.

I still can’t figure out why the tunnels weren’t all located with ground-penetrating radar and then destroyed weeks ago (see Will the Gaza tunnel network prove to be Hamas’s Maginot Line?).

The Wall Street Journal implies that the O.J. chase will come to an end shortly.

Israeli forces closed in on southern Gaza’s largest city in what is becoming a decisive battle of the two-month-old war with Hamas.

Israeli forces moving into the militants’ stronghold of Khan Younis are entering a battleground of narrow streets packed with displaced Palestinians. In close-quarters combat, Hamas fighters there are defending their last major bastion in Gaza, home to its leader, Yahya Sinwar, and the location where Israel believes the group’s other leaders are hiding and holding hostages.

An Israeli victory in Khan Younis would likely corner remaining Hamas fighters in small areas in central Gaza and close to the Egyptian border, surrounded by Israeli troops. And it could heighten intense international pressure on Israel to end the war and seek a settlement that frees more than 100 hostages and ends Hamas’s rule in Gaza.

I don’t see why the fighters couldn’t go back to the north, but maybe the IDF has already spoiled the tunnels up there.

In favor of the WSJ’s theory that doom is at hand for Hamas is the intensified tweetstorm from Hamas allies calling for ceasefires. Doctors without Borders (MSF) is posting almost hourly (they have multiple accounts, one from each affiliate country) demands for Israel to surrender (i.e., a “ceasefire” in which Hamas remains in control of Gaza). My favorite MSF tweet is one in which they complain that the cars they left parked on the street were trashed when an Israeli tank column came through. They separately claimed that innocent children are being killed everywhere in Gaza, but their primary concern is for their own cars.

My response:

UNRWA tweets have gone from maximum hysteria to double secret maximum hysteria, each one yielding responses from Twitter users reminding them that one hostage says he was imprisoned by a UNRWA teacher. Example:

My assumption is that Hamas will just melt into the civilian population that overwhelmingly supports it and the war will fizzle out, but I’m usually wrong so maybe the WSJ is correct that there will be a dramatic event soon.

Update, December 7:

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Californians: assorted humans with nothing in common

Readers will be familiar with repeated questions of how our asylum-based immigration system is supposed to work. People are invited to become U.S. residents and then citizens based on a fear of violence in their country of birth. Thus, immigrants to the U.S. may have no affinity for the U.S. and nothing in common with other immigrants or natives other than a desire to avoid being killed.

Let’s see how this is playing out in California, the U.S. leader in diversity via immigration (stats below). A native-born Jew disagreed with a Muslim immigrant and the Jew ended up dead (Wikipedia).

Paul Kessler was an instrument-rated Private pilot. I couldn’t find much else that was authoritative about him.

Loay Alnaji (from a memory-holed web page at Ventura County Community College; pulled from the Google cache):

Note that “surahmeaning.com”, listed as part of his personal contact info, may relate to chapters in the Koran (“Surah“).

Are these the only two Californians who’ve been fighting recently? Let’s check this ironic headline from ABC:

Some detail on the event from the Paper of the Deplorables… “Gal Gadot’s screening [in Los Angeles] of Hamas terror attack film ends in mass brawls between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters” (New York Post, November 9, 2023):

Police officers were already out in force around the ironically named Museum of Tolerance for the “Wonder Woman” actress’s screening of “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” which uses Israel Defense Forces footage.

Even so, wild videos posted online showed people waving Israeli flags and brawling in the streets with pro-Palestinian protesters — kicking and punching one another.

Police formed a skirmish line in an effort to control the unruly crowd — and ultimately used pepper spray, according to ABC 7.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried the violence in the aftermath.

“We’re not antisemitic, we’re anti-Zionist,” the unidentified protester told Rolling Stone.

UCLA:

At a decolonization rally in Los Angeles: the crowd chants “we are all Palestinians” and promises to “globalize the intifada”. Nobody wants to go to Gaza (via Egypt/tunnels) or the West Bank (easy) and fight on the side of virtue (see Why won’t the people who say that Israel is committing genocide go to Gaza and fight?). So “globalize the intifada” has to mean something that can be done in the U.S. and, likely, in California. Is it fighting with Jews in the streets? Fighting against Jewish-owned businesses? Fighting against fellow residents of California who support continued ties with Israel? Preventing fellow Californians from using the Bay Bridge (cost $6.5 billion in pre-Biden money to repair earthquake damage, up from an original budget of $250 million)?

A well-coordinated group of hundreds of Pro-Palestine protesters shut down the Bay Bridge on Thursday morning, tying up traffic during rush hour and calling out to world leaders to end the war in Gaza during the APEC summit.

The four-hour chaotic event, which started around 7:45 a.m., ended with at least 70 arrests and 29 towed cars. All lanes finally reopened just before noon, but not after at least 200 protesters had chained themselves together and purposefully tossed their car keys into the bay, stalling efforts to reopen the span to frustrated drivers.

Is it fair to say that the conflict in and around Gaza has exposed the fact that Californias have little or nothing in common?

And on the other coast… “Two women arrested in NYC attack on Jewish victim who confronted them for tearing down hostage posters: cops” (New York Post):

Mehwish Omer, 26, surrendered to police Monday morning and was charged with assault and criminal mischief — both as hate crimes — in connection to the attack on the 41-year-old woman at the corner of Riverside Drive and West 82nd Street just before 10 p.m. Nov. 9, authorities said.

Her alleged accomplice, Stephanie Gonzalez, 25, was cuffed a week earlier and also faces a hate crime assault rap, as well as an attempted robbery charge, cops said.

The duo allegedly assaulted the victim — ripping off her Star of David necklace and knocking a cellphone out of her hand — after she challenged them for ripping the “Missing Persons” posters from a light pole at the intersection, according to police.

“Mehwish” is an Islamic first name, according to The Google. “Gonzalez” suggests a Latinx individual. The victim was, presumably, Jewish. Diversity was supposed to be New York’s strength, but these three did not have enough shared values to avoid a physical fight.

What about the next stop south on I-95? “Philadelphia Jewish Restaurant Targeted With ‘Genocide’ Chants” (Newsweek):

Philadelphia lawmakers and Jewish commentators have hit out at demonstrators who targeted a falafel restaurant in Philadelphia owned by an Israeli Jewish chef, chanting slogans accusing it of “genocide.”

On Sunday, footage emerged of a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathering outside Goldie on midtown Sansom Street who were chanting “Goldie, Goldie you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the march was organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition, which in October called for a boycott of “Zionist”-owned businesses in the city, including Goldie outlets and others owned by Michael Solomonov.

At the same time, other video footage of a demonstration near the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia showed protestors chanting “intifada revolution” and “long live the intifada,” though it is unclear if it is the same group that congregated outside Goldie.

Same question: How is diversity Philadelphia’s strength if the motley assemblage has nothing in common other than mutual animosity?

Circling back to California, it is the state with the highest percentage of immigrants, around 27 percent of the total population. How does that compare to the nation as a whole? “In October 2023, the Foreign-Born Share Was the Highest in History” (from the haters):

The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) shows that the total foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal) was 49.5 million in October 2023 — a 4.5 million increase since President Biden took office and a new record high. At 15 percent, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population is also the highest ever recorded in American history. … The scale of immigration is so high that it appears to have made the new Census Bureau population projections, published on November 9 of this year, obsolete. The bureau projected that the foreign-born share was not supposed to hit 15 percent until 2033. … While a large share of the recent foreign-born growth is due to illegal immigration, legal immigrants still account for three-fourths of the total foreign-born population.

So… California shows us what the U.S. will be like if present trends continue. It wasn’t a great place for either Paul Kessler (now dead) or Loay Alnaji (the immigrant now embroiled in the criminal justice system; he couldn’t have killed a Jew if he’d hadn’t emigrated because Islamic countries have been almost entirely free of Jews since the late 1940s (900,000 Jews were forced out by Muslim neighbors or emigrated to Israel voluntarily)).

Previous posts regarding immigrants who did not enjoy diversity in the U.S.:

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Pussy Riot in Montreal

The Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art was ordered shut by Covidcrats in 2020 and allowed to reopen in February 2021. Just a couple of months later, the museum closed for a renovation that was supposed to be complete in 2024 but, according to the lady who sold me a ticket to the temporary exhibit space in a nearby underground mall, is now on track to be finished in 2028.

What’s in the temporary space? “Velvet Terrorism,” an exhibit on the decade-long protest by Pussy Riot against Vladimir Putin and Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.

From the brochure:

The first couple of rooms:

What was one of the punishments that a Pussy Riot member suffered? She was unbanked, exactly as the Canadian truckers who protested forced Covid-19 vaccination were unbanked by Justin Trudeau using “emergency powers” (NYT). (Separately, I met a Canadian who had gingerly approached some of the truckers at the time. “They were the nicest and most peaceful people you ever met,” he said. “I was afraid to stay too long, though, because I didn’t want to become a target myself.”)

Pussy Riot’s war under the sacred Rainbow Flag was covered:

(It is unclear to me how Putin can be considered responsible for “killings and kidnappings of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer people in Chechnya“. Russia has had tremendous difficulty in its attempts to control what happens in Chechnya, resulting in at least two full-scale wars.)

The public were invited to write down and post their thoughts in response to the exhibition. Most seemed to have been written by Anglophones. Almost nobody seemed to be thinking about Vladimir Putin, Ukraine, the lives of 2SLGBTQQIA+ Russians, or any of the other issues raised by Pussy Riot. Here are some of the notes that were off the main topic:

What were a plurality of the signs about? Here’s a sampling:

Although the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), which is the elected and overwhelmingly popular government of the Palestinians, is not famous for celebrating Rainbow Flagism, there was the inevitable…

If Al-Shifa Hospital gets fixed up, the Montreal museum visitors are imagining gender affirming surgeries happening there:

Those who identify as feminists also want to see a corner of the world ruled by the guys who raped, maimed, and murdered women on October 7 (nearly all women who were born long after the events of 1948 that is the root of Arab grievance, so it is unclear how they can be blamed for the Nakba):

Ironically, after viewing an art show about criticism of Vladimir Putin, patrons were motivated to trumpet their alignment with Vladimir Putin’s position regarding Hamas (it is unclear that Putin supports “river to the sea liberation” (i.e., the elimination of Israel) but he is more supportive of Hamas than the typical national leader in Europe or North America).

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Ireland creates a mural for the Oakland, California schools

A tweet from a Northern Irish politician (my mole on the island says that she is “Sinn Fein IRA”):

We can zoom in on the scene of two Jews attacking a helpless Palestinian child with teddy bear via AH-64 Apache helicopter and Hellfire missile. (This fits with the media tendency to depict Palestinians as helpless victims, which is the opposite of how Palestinians see themselves.)

(I do find it interesting that a 31-year-old woman would say that she wants to “stand with Palestine” right after the Gazans (combination of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and “civilian” males) went through the fence and did what they wanted to do with 31-year-old women (and other ages). Maybe she means “stand with Palestine, but not in or around Gaza”?)

How soon before we see poster versions of this mural in UNRWA and Oakland, California schools?

Separately, the Irish in Ireland (proper) seem to have managed to host plenty of violence recently without any helicopters or missiles. “34 arrested in Ireland riots after child is stabbed in Dublin” (Fox):

Police in Ireland arrested 34 people in relation to riots that swept through Dublin on Thursday, when cars and a bus were burned following a stabbing earlier in the day.

Around 500 people wreaked havoc on the streets, with about a dozen stores looted while rocks and bottles were thrown at crowd control officers equipped with helmets and shields. An empty tram train that had been left at a stop had its windows smashed and was also set on fire.

The violence began after rumors circulated that a foreign national was responsible for a stabbing outside a school on Thursday afternoon.

The suspect, who is understood to be of Algerian descent and is a naturalized Irish citizen, attacked three children with a knife outside an elementary school in the city center just after 1:30 p.m. A 5-year-old girl was seriously injured, while the two other children, a boy and a girl, suffered minor injuries.

Last month, Yousef Palani, who is of Iraqi descent, was convicted of murdering two men in an apparent anti-gay attack. One murder victim was decapitated with 43 stab wounds, and the second man was stabbed 25 times mainly to his head, neck and chest, according to court reports.

The Daily Mail has some more details:

The chief suspect in the multiple stabbing that left a five-year-old girl fighting for her life was arrested earlier this year for possession of a knife, the Irish Daily Mail has learned.

The man, originally from Algeria, has been living in Ireland for the past two decades. He took Irish citizenship more than a decade ago.

The man, who is in his late 40s, has come to Garda attention several times in the past year.

Sources have told this newspaper that the man was living in Dublin City Council hostel accommodation before he went on the rampage off Parnell Square on Thursday afternoon.

I think the “diversity is our strength” story here is that the guy arrived in his 20s, a prime age for working, but after 20 years was still living at taxpayer expense.

An elite Irish friend finds little to admire among the rioters. He sent me this:

Speaking of the elites, the unrest in Dublin yielded one of my more popular Twitter replies (to some sort of BBC TV personality):

Related:

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