A Massachusetts Kamala voter solves what she perceives as the “Israel-Palestine Problem”
We walked to a friend from Maskachusetts shortly after the noble Gazans made the news for amputating a young American citizen’s arm, holding him hostage for 11 months, and then executing him shortly before he would have been rescued by the IDF. Hersh Goldberg-Polin was 23 years old, was not serving in the Israeli military, and “was reportedly working with an initiative that was using soccer to bring Israeli and Palestinian children together” (Wikipedia).
As with other Democrats, the murder of Hersh Goldberg-Polin did not dampen her enthusiasm for voting for Kamala Harris, who has pledged to continue funding Hamas (via UNRWA, a funding path that Donald Trump cut off and Joe Biden restored in 2021; unless the October 7 attacks cost more than $1 billion it is fair to say that the Biden-Harris administration funded 100 percent of it with our tax dollars). She did volunteer her belief that there was an urgent need to “solve the Israel-Palestine Problem”. I asked her why the Maskachusetts Righteous sympathies were there rather than with Black Lives Matter or American Women, two victimhood classes that had previously generated large rallies. She said that Democrats were still passionate about these causes, but couldn’t remember any BLM events post-October 7, 2023. I asked why the failure of the Palestinians to achieve their 1948 military goals made them more sympathy-worthy than any of the 1.5 billion residents of Africa, about whom she had never expressed any concern. She said, “I guess I hear more about the Palestinians in the news.”
What was her plan for resolving the conflict? She believed that Palestinian children were being indoctrinated by a message of Jew-/Israel-hatred in their schools (funded by US and EU taxpayers, of course) and that the solution was to bring them to the U.S. so that they could instead be indoctrinated by American schools (also funded by US taxpayers so perhaps this isn’t a huge change from a financial point of view). I didn’t point out that Queers for Palestine and similar rallies all around the U.S. show that there is plenty of “destroy Israel” energy among those who go through American K-12, but I did ask “Why would the typical Palestinian go to the trouble of having 5 kids and then just give them up voluntarily to American do-gooders running a reeducation scheme in which Christianity and Judaism have equal status to Islam?” Our Massachusetts Kamala voter said, “the parents can come too if they want.” I pointed out that, given Gaza’s world-leading population growth rate, almost every adult there has at least one minor child and, therefore, she was proposing that the entire population of Gaza be admitted to the United States to become American citizens. She said that it was indeed her expectation that the majority of Gazans would come to the U.S. I then pointed out that 50,000 babies had been born in Gaza during the recent battles (not to say “war” since that started in 1948 and the Palestinians have never accepted any kind of peace; there has been a continuous officially declared war going for 76 years now). Wouldn’t a new crop of Hamas warriors, therefore, be born soon enough and be able to carry on the fight even if most of their older brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters were peacefully voting for Democrats in Michigan? She didn’t seem to have considered the possibility that Gazans left behind, still getting unlimited food, education, health care, etc. free from UNRWA, would continue the Palestinian tradition of off-the-charts fertility. (See “Reproductive decisions in the lives of West Bank Palestinian women: Dimensions and contradictions” (2017, Global Public Health):
Palestinian women have one of the highest fertility rates in the world, averaging 4.38 births per woman. However, Palestinian fertility patterns are distinct from those of other developing nations, in that high fertility rates coexist alongside high levels of education and low levels of infant mortality – both of which have been established elsewhere as predictors of low total fertility rates.
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I share this conversation because I thought it was an interesting window into the mind of a Kamala Harris voter. The best way to heal the world is a further expansion of low-skill immigration to the U.S.
Separately, given the success that Hamas has enjoyed after taking and killing American hostages what happens to U.S. citizens in other parts of the world going forward? Since taking American hostages Hamas has secured from the Biden-Harris administration (a) promises of continued funding, (b) a $230 million pier (admittedly washed away quickly), (c) support for the Hamas-sought “permanent ceasefire” that leaves Hamas leaders alive and well and permanently in charge of Gaza, (d) pressure on Israel for a long delay in the IDF operation in Rafah, which turns out to be where at least one American hostage was held and killed (see “Harris warns it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to invade Rafah” (CNN, March 25, 2024)) and “Kamala Harris says Israel assault on Rafah ‘would be a huge mistake’” (Guardian)), and (e) diplomatic recognition by a variety of purported U.S. allies and military client states as leaders of their own sovereign nation (“Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognize a Palestinian state as EU rift with Israel widens” (AP)). What’s the downside to taking American hostages in the Biden-Harris era?
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