Peace in Gaza: Skeptical and Hopeful

It's easy to be skeptical about this week's peace agreement between Israel and Hamas. The recent history of the Middle East is filled with misery, dashed hopes, and broken promises, with major interests possessing seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Joy in Israel (Correa/AP/WSJ)

Nevertheless, the spontaneous outpourings of joy in both Israel and Gaza at even the possibility of an end to the fighting reveal the powerful yearning for peace. Herewith the key elements of the Gaza deal--you, dear reader, be the judge of whether all parties have enough incentives to make it stick.

All living hostages held by Hamas are to be released.
Roughly 20 hostages are believed to be alive. Trump said they would be released Monday or Tuesday, as “getting them is a complicated process.”

Egyptian officials and others briefed on the deal said mediators are still hashing out the arrangements.

The bodies of around 28 hostages who have died are to be handed over later. Hamas has said it would need at least 10 days to locate the bodies, according to people close to the talks.

The families of hostages are waiting anxiously to see their captive relatives return after a monthslong struggle in the streets and lobbying world leaders.

Israel will release Palestinian prisoners.
Once all the hostages are returned, Israel is expected to release 250 Palestinians who are in Israeli prisons and 1,700 Palestinians who have been detained in Gaza during the conflict. Precisely who is on that list is being finalized.

Hamas has pushed to get as many big-name prisoners released as possible, including Marwan Barghouti, whom Israel jailed over his role in a Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

A cease-fire has gone into effect.
Israeli troops began withdrawing from parts of the Gaza Strip on Friday morning, Israeli and Arab officials said.

U.S. troops began to arrive in Israel on Thursday, the first of about 200 being sent to support the cease-fire in Gaza as part of an international team, according to U.S. officials.

The troops will help monitor the implementation of the cease-fire and eventual transition to a civilian government, according to a U.S. official. They will also help facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Though celebrations have erupted in both Gaza and Tel Aviv, mediators and many civilians on both sides are holding their breath to see if the cease-fire will hold. Truces have given way to renewed fighting in Gaza before.

The precise details of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza are unclear.
A critical task in the coming days will be getting Israel and Hamas to agree on the exact lines for Israel’s initial military withdrawal.

Hamas wants Israel to exit from around 70% of Gaza in return for the release of hostages, Arab mediators said. Israel wants to vacate less territory, and the two sides are still negotiating this detail, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt will open.
The border crossing will reopen to facilitate aid deliveries and allow for entry and exit of Palestinians. Some aid trucks have been entering Gaza in recent months, though in much lower numbers than what is needed, as the enclave endures a hunger crisis.

"Trump said they would be released Monday or Tuesday", which means that the next few days will be crucial. Why Hamas would agree to give up the hostages, Hamas' main source of leverage, remains a mystery. Regardless, if that happens, the celebrations will begin.

The Cure is There if you Look for It

(Photo from crosswalk)

Today's Old Testament lesson includes the verse: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?"--Jeremiah 8:22

Gilead was a mountainous region that was known for its agricultural products, particularly for its healing medicines.

The land of Gilead was known for its balm, a liquid rosin that flowed or dripped from certain trees such as pine, cedar, cypress, or terebinth. Gilead was most noted for the Balsamodendron Gileadense, a rosin-producing tree native to that area. Because of easy access to medicinal ingredients, many physicians made their homes in Gilead.

The Book of Jeremiah laments both the spiritual waywardness of the Israelites and the impending threat of Babylon, which later did destroy the Temple in Jerusalem. (King Nebuchadnezzar expelled the Israelites from the region during the Babylonian Exile that occurred in the 6th century BCE.)

There would be no material balm that would cure Israel's idolatry (the worship of something other than God). Many Christians believe that Christ is the balm that Jeremiah is seeking.

Note: Foster City's Gilead Sciences is its largest public company, currently valued by the stock market at $142 billion. Founder Michael Riordan originally named the business Oligogen in 1987 but changed it to Gilead Sciences when he heard the biblical passage. He could have done worse.

Worrying on Friday the 13th

(Image from rreyesmd))

This Friday the 13th is filled with foreboding. The Middle East is threatening to explode in all out war between two of its largest powers, Israel and Iran. In the United States the Army's 250th birthday parade has become heavily politicized because it coincides with President Trump's birthday, and demonstrations for "no kings" are planned all across the country. Political partisans are itching to provoke violence by the opposition in order to gain advantage for their side with the general public. Though that strategy is itself disgusting, it has a high probability of working.

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia.

David Mamet: "America..will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today."

David Mamet: the America-in-decline narrative is akin to
Israel's 40 years in the wilderness. (image from Medium)

Pulitzer-winning playwright David Mamet says that America's decline, prior to the November election, was due to individuals' fear of challenging the dominant narrative: [bold added]

Yet half of America not only abides but fervently supports a codependent decline to poverty, crime and a nascent police state. Why? The leftist politicians and their media courtiers and designated beneficiaries profited from the perks of power. But why did the everyday American endorse them and their fear mongering? The actual threat wasn’t global warming, Islamophobia, the Supreme Court, the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Mr. Trump. It was exclusion from the herd.

An existential secret is one whose revelation would destroy the group. If dad is a drug addict or a sex criminal, acknowledging it would shatter the family. The protection of the secret becomes the family’s unifying endeavor. If anyone says anything, it might reveal that everyone is in on the secret. The sick family devotes all necessary energies to collusion—to mutual and self-censorship.

During the past four years, American politics has been dominated by a coalition each of whose members, like codependent kin, has its own investment in group integrity and the power it derives therefrom. The superrich, academia, Islamists, Marxists and the media have colluded to suppress the true and impose the false.

We know that their perfidies, lawfare, slander, blacklisting and civil persecution were practiced on conservatives and Republicans, particularly on Mr. Trump. But the suppression was targeted primarily at their own voters.

To remain unthreatened by reason, the liberal populace had to be convinced to endorse various lies and fantasies: Black Lives Matter, Israel’s perfidy, unlimited abortion as a woman’s right, men’s right to compete in women’s sports, the abolition of the police, Mr. Trump’s demonic power and so on.

Why would rational people vote to destroy their borders, their cities, their jobs and their children? For the same reason the sick family must tolerate its dysfunction: The co-opted liberal electorate was terrified that any deviation would result in destruction of its protective unit. As it would.

While a reader may disagree with David Mamet's list of "lies and fantasies," there is no denying that Democratic voters were asked to accept abrupt reversals of positions this year--from President Biden's sudden cognitive decline to the newfound acceptability of fracking, law enforcement, and Christianity.

Even the one theme that they stuck with to the end--Trump is Hitler--was cast overboard the day after the election by Democratic politicians who promised to work with the President-elect and opinion-writers eager for an interview.

The important lesson, IMHO, is not the wrongness of Democratic policies but the fact that their thought leaders didn't even believe their own arguments. They look like people who will say anything to acquire power, and, if I were a follower, I wouldn't believe anything they had to say.

Glad They're Not on the Other Side

Downtown Beirut was filled with the wailing of ambulance sirens. (WSJ)

Booby-trapped pagers exploded throughout Lebanon yesterday, injuring and killing members of Hezbollah. (Hezbollah had switched to old-fashioned pagers because of worries that Israelis would hack into their smartphones.)

Within minutes, hundreds of pagers issued to Hezbollah officials in Beirut and around the country exploded, killing 12 people and injuring more than 2,800, Lebanese authorities said. Emergency rooms were flooded with blast victims. Hezbollah’s leaders blamed Israel and pledged to retaliate.

Today a second wave occurred:

Then, on Wednesday, it happened again. This time walkie-talkies and other electronics used by the Shiite militant group began blowing up, sending a second wave of casualties into crowded hospitals and further undermining the Shiite militants’ ability to communicate.

By the end of the day, 20 more people were dead and 450 more injured. The attacks also exposed the identities of thousands of Hezbollah operatives, many of whom worked covertly—a coup for Israeli intelligence and a likely surprise for some Hezbollah members’ relatives and neighbors.

Although some innocents died, this was the least-bad military option to identify and cripple a terrorist organization that had embedded itself with civilians. Israel's strategy was brilliant, and it's a sign of the rot within Western intelligence agencies that no one believes that they could have pulled off a similar operation. I'm glad Mossad is not on the other side.

23 Years Later

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I posted the following, now updated with minor edits, using strikethroughs and italics:

============================================================

(Reuters photo)

I saw it on TV, like almost everyone else. I shuffled to the kitchen table with my cup of coffee and pushed the remote. The TV was set to Channel 11, NBC. It was 5:45 a.m. The Today Show was on; strange, normally it doesn't start till 7 a.m. on the West Coast.

The camera was fixed on the World Trade Center. Black smoke was pouring out of one of the towers. There were no jump cuts or commercials to distract the unblinking eye. Katie Couric's voice seemed dispassionate as she described how an airplane had crashed into the building. Surely it was a small plane and a horrible accident.

Then the second jet hit, another struck the Pentagon, and the towers fell. Other images are seared into our memories--the Pennsylvania field that became hallowed ground, the throngs who lustily cheered the deaths of thousands, flames and smoke everywhere, the weeping, the exhausted searching and the death of hope.

The fear gripped us for a long time. Not knowing has that effect. Who did it and why, how powerful were they, what's next, what should we do, what can I do?

Everyone--even those who were in charge of our government--can list major mistakes in the past ten twenty years. All the criticisms have at least some plausibility: we waged war against the wrong people, maybe we shouldn't have gone to war at all, we mistreated prisoners, we had intelligence that was grossly wrong, we sacrificed too many of our civil liberties, we didn't pay the cost of the wars, and we are no farther only a little further along in being energy independent or securing the safety of Israel.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we will remember the worst of our fears:

1) we would be hit again and perhaps lose a major city; this event coupled with our response, could forever change the character of America;

2) if the attack were biological, we could lose much more than one city;

3) oil supplies would be disrupted, maybe cut off for a long time, and usher in a new Dark Ages;

4) Israel, surrounded by powerful enemies, could be destroyed.

5) A state of war would exist between the West and the Islamic world, which has over a billion people.

Ten Twenty-threeyears and trillions of dollars later none of these fears has been realized, yet victory, which we can't even define, seems as distant as it was in 2001.

I'll take it. © 2011 Stephen Yuen

The Greater Intolerance

Bob Casey and Josh Shapiro (WSJ photo)

Two successful, popular, Pennsylvania governors have been sidelined by the Democratic Party because of their religion:

Bob Casey Sr. was one of the most prominent Catholic Democrats of his time. He was also a proven vote-getter in a key state. In 1990 he won his second term as Pennsylvania’s governor by a margin of more than 2 to 1 and carried every county in the state but one.

Yet in 1992 his party didn’t permit him to deliver a speech at its national convention. The problem: Casey wanted to express his pro-life views. The snub came to symbolize the left’s turn away from Catholics, who had once been dependable supporters. While today’s party still includes prominent communicants—including Joe Biden and Sen. Bob Casey Jr.—they have found it necessary to abandon their support for unborn life.

Perhaps Gov. Josh Shapiro’s fate is a sign of a similar turning point. When Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, some worried she’d passed over Mr. Shapiro because he’s Jewish and Zionist, much as Casey was slighted for being Catholic and pro-life.

Mr. Shapiro is remarkably popular in Pennsylvania, an even more crucial state now than in 1992. His public acts—from spearheading a grand-jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church as state attorney general to making a conciliatory statement after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump—have revealed sure political instincts.

Yet many on the left were scandalized that he was on Ms. Harris’s shortlist. They viewed his support for Israel as disqualifying. Activists have labeled the governor—who attends Beth Sholom Congregation in Elkins Park, Pa., and has sent his children to Jewish day school—“Genocide Josh” owing to his criticism of anti-Israel protest mobs and the boycott, divest and sanctions movement. Critics have also pointed to a 1993 college newspaper article that described Palestinians as “too battle-minded” to coexist with Israel.

Mr. Shapiro, who has disavowed that column, holds views that were mainstream within the Democratic Party until very recently. He supports the Jewish state’s right to defend itself but has denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “one of the worst leaders of all time” and accused him of making Israel “less safe.” That isn’t exactly hard-edged Zionism, but some nonetheless perceived Mr. Shapiro as too extreme.

Christianity has been a whipping boy--not without justification--through most of American history. From the Salem witch trials to Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, from the Scopes monkey trial to the current pro-Life movement, Christianity has been vilified as a white, patriarchal religion. (The key role of Christians in the abolitionist movement is ignored or played down.)

Now the greater intolerance is coming from the left, which has excluded pro-Life Catholics and supporters of Israel from positions of power. Instead Progressives welcome pro-Palestinians who call for the eradication of Israel and its people "from the river to the sea."

I hope the latter is not what the Democratic Party believes and hope VP Harris denounces this point of view; if she doesn't and becomes the next President, then God help the Catholic and Jewish peoples.

Iran is Working Against Trump

President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015
nuclear deal (JCPOA) in 2018.

Sometimes a politician's enemy is so despicable that it's enough to cause one to vote for that politician despite his flaws: [bold added]

Iran is seeking to harm Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in covert online influence operations, fearing a return to power by the Republican nominee would inflame relations with Washington, U.S. intelligence officials said Monday.

U.S. spy agencies have “observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid” increased tensions with the U.S., an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said during a press briefing.

If Iran wants to "avoid increased tensions" it should quit supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which have rained rockets on Israel whenever peace threatens to break out in the Middle East.

The Academy Oversteps and Begins to Pay the Price

Bill Ackman, 57, is a hedge-fund billionaire who made his fortune by taking unconventional short and long positions.

He always gives interesting business-related interviews on CNBC, and that, frankly, was the extent of my knowledge about him.

Until he took issue with the December 5th performance of Harvard then-President Claudine Gay before Congress on the subject of anti-semitism and free speech at Harvard, his alma mater.

The scales had fallen from his eyes:

Twenty-four hours after Hamas attacked Israel, Mr. Ackman “saw students supporting terrorists—Harvard students, no less.” With astonishment that hardened into outrage, Mr. Ackman witnessed 34 student groups at his alma mater “come out to say that Israel is solely responsible for the most heinous acts we’ve seen in modern history.”

Harvard wasn’t the only American campus where students railed against Israel and at Jewish classmates. But Harvard was the place to which Mr. Ackman, an “absolutely loyal alum in all respects,” had given $50 million over the years. “I lecture at the university multiple times a year,” he says, adding that he’s on the dean’s advisory board. Observing the protests, and the Harvard administration’s refusal to curb them, he mounted a mutiny of donors, calling on them to help drive Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, from her job. He feared that her continued presence at the helm would lead angry donors to stop giving. “I am personally aware of more than a billion dollars of terminated donations from a small group of Harvard’s most generous Jewish and non-Jewish alumni,” he wrote on Dec. 10.

Ms. Gay’s resignation on Jan. 2 was a result of her maladministration as well as of convincing accusations of plagiarism in her academic writings.

After reviewing Claudine Gay's, as well as MIT President Sally Kornbluth's and Penn President Liz Magill's, testimony before Congress, Mr. Ackman came to believe that their tepid response to student groups' calls for genocide against Jews was attributable to the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) practices that have pervaded campuses nationwide. On January 2nd he tweeted: [bold added]

Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed. Under this ideology which is the philosophical underpinning of DEI as advanced by Ibram X. Kendi and others, one is either an anti-racist or a racist. There is no such thing as being “not racist.”

Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist.

As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology.

In order to be deemed anti-racist, one must personally take action to reverse any unequal outcomes in society. The DEI movement, which has permeated many universities, corporations, and state, local and federal governments, is designed to be the anti-racist engine to transform society from its currently structurally racist state to an anti-racist one.

Claudine Gay's resignation on January 2nd was only the first battle in what may well turn out to be a long cultural war between wokeness and traditional values. Claudine Gay not only was criticized for her actions as Harvard President but for alleged instances of plagiarism on her scholarly work.

Neri Oxman (WSJ photo)

The Business Insider then accused Bill Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, for plagiarism on her 2010 doctoral dissertation at MIT. Ms. Oxman apologized.

Bill Ackman, convinced that the source of the Business Insider report was someone(s) at MIT, vowed to develop AI tools to examine a broad swath of MIT dissertations and publications for plagiarism.

Circling back to the three-presidents testimony before Congress on December 5th, MIT President Kornbluth is the only one of the three who still holds office, Penn's Liz Magill having resigned on December 9th. It would be surprising if she lasts out the year.

After the break is the text of Bill Ackman's January 2nd tweet.


 

'Tis the Season of Sharing and Scamming

We will be making a donation to Al-Ahli hospital, which was
heavily damaged by explosions in Gaza (Guardian photo)

Boston University professor of humanities Joshua Pederson advises us not to contribute to organizations claiming to help victims of natural or human-caused disasters: [bold added]

I’ve become convinced that donations to disaster aid — whether in the immediate aftermath or as part of a nonprofit’s annual holiday drive — often provide only limited relief and sometimes none at all. There are a few main reasons why.

First, the field of pop-up disaster relief is rife with fraud as bad actors prey on the desire of well-intentioned people and bilk donors in the process. As the Los Angeles Times recently reported, many such scammers pose convincingly as employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or well-known charities, tricking even savvy givers. Donations to crowdfunding calls can be an even riskier venture. Notre Dame law professor Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer suggests that they are “particularly vulnerable to fraud” and urges caution when supporting them. One of the most egregious examples was Katelyn McClure, a New Jersey woman who used GoFundMe in 2017 to wheedle over $400,000 out of givers with a fake story of a homeless man who needed help.

...many would advise us to turn to locals. But even such on-the-ground efforts sometimes come up short. Take for example the Maui Community Power Recovery Fund, one of whose founders is former Hawaii House Rep. Kaniela Ing. It turns out that the fund is actually a political action committee, and while its website indicates that gifts will support “relief, recovery and rebuilding,” donors likely don’t know that donations could be used to fund political candidates.

...the American Red Cross. Its pleas for donations after major disasters are nearly ubiquitous. But as ProPublica revealed in a series of headline-grabbing investigations a few years back, the organization has significant problems with transparency, oversight and follow-through. And there are legitimate concerns about the way it tracks and spends the money it collects.

Immediately after a disaster, when the emotion to do something is at its highest, is the time to be especially cautious. I have made it a personal policy, as well as for charitable organizations over which I may have some infuence, not to rush to help. As you would with any major purchase or investment, do your research first.

Helping Without Taking a Side

The hospital's Cancer Diagnostic
Center before it was damaged.

Every year the now-retired rector of our church requested that we make a donation, always approved, to the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. It was his way of acknowledging our debt to the fount of Christianity.

The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem runs the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital that was damaged in an explosion last week. Hamas and Israel are each claiming that the other was responsible.

Militant group Hamas immediately blamed Israeli airstrikes for the blast at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital and said 500 people had been killed. Israel, the U.S. and independent security experts on Wednesday cast doubt on Hamas’s claims, saying the preliminary evidence pointed to a Palestinian militant group. The amount of damage also appears inconsistent with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry’s assertion on Wednesday that 471 people were killed, experts said. U.S. officials said that the death toll so far is likely between 100 and 300.

Images of the site suggest that a rocket, or fragment of a rocket, landed in the hospital’s parking lot, according to the Israeli assessment of the damage left by the explosion. Those killed by the explosion were likely many Gazans who had been camped out in the parking lot, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said.

Many people have been wrestling with how to help the suffering people of Israel and Gaza without "taking a side," or worse, having their donations go to combat forces and advocacy groups. 501(c)3 organizations that assure us that 100% of the donations will be directed to humanitarian aid in the region are Episcopal Relief and Development and American Friends of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem.

As individuals and as churches we will be making such donations in November.

The Lines Were Quick

Khaled Meshaal (NY Post/Reuters)

Last month there was a moment's trepidation when I booked a flight on Friday the 13th.

Bah! rational guys like me shouldn't let superstition rule their lives. I clicked the pay-and-submit button.

It was more than superstition that paralyzed some people with fear yesterday. Former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal designated yesterday as the "Day of Jihad":

The former leader of Hamas called on Muslims to stage global demonstrations in support of Palestinians on Friday, and urged Arabs in neighboring countries to take up arms against Israel.

In the Bay Area some schools cancelled classes:

Schools and universities across the Bay Area said they were bolstering security measures — and in some cases canceling classes — amid so-far unsubstantiated threats of pro-Hamas violence.

Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City and South Peninsula Hebrew Day School in Sunnyvale said they would be closed Friday amid concerns that Jewish institutions could be targeted, Jewish Weekly reported.

Stanford Law School announced it would be holding all of its classes Friday on Zoom in the wake of students’ fears around safety on the “Day of Jihad.”

Just in case TSA had installed extra procedures, I showed up 2½ hours before the 8:20 AM flight. The caution was unnecessary as the lines were quick, and I spent an hour nursing a coffee and croissant before boarding.

We disparage law enforcement, the FBI, the CIA, and other alphabet agencies, but a point in their favor is that there has not been a major terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Because of that record, there is still hope that the agencies can be fixed.

And yes, the flight went well.

Conflagration

The headlines across the country this morning were all about the same subject: the attack by Hamas on the civilians of Israel.

Whatever sympathy the Palestinians may have garnered over the past decade was blown away in a matter of hours by the deliberate large-scale slaughter of unarmed innocents.

More than 700 Israelis have been confirmed dead, and 2,408 wounded, according to Israel’s Army Radio. At least 413 Palestinians have been killed and around 2,300 injured in Israeli counterstrikes on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

700 dead in an Israeli population of 9.2 million is equivalent to 25,000 killed in the U.S.A., eight times the deaths on 9/11. The Israelis have promised to take the war to Iran if evidence is found that Iran is behind the attacks.

And just like that the Middle East is on the brink of conflagration.

You Can See It if You Look for It

Plumb bob and line (Beddingfield photo)

Today's reading:

This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said,

"See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."----Amos 7:7-9

I didn't know much, nor cared, about construction through the first 30 years of my bookish life but over time grew to appreciate the skill of those in the trade. Even more astonishing were the feats of the engineers who built the seven wonders of the ancient world without the benefit of modern technology.

One essential tool that dates back thousands of years was the plumb bob, the weight that established a vertical "plumb line." (Today we use spirit levels which reveal the vertical and horizontal through air bubbles in liquid.)

The plumb line is an irresistible metaphor for the steadiness of God's word in a world of confusion. It's a metaphor that is not fully appreciated until one tries to build something without a tool that brings one back to the straight and vertical path.

Fun Fact: the original weights were made of lead (Latin: plumbum), hence the origin of plumb bob, plumb line, and lead's chemical symbol Pb.

Against the Stereotype

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson flanked by
husband Patrick and daughter Leila (Chron)

Do Supreme Court justices mostly make decisions that favor their own personal politics?

Partisans seem to think so (Catholic justices are anti-abortion, Democratic justices-of-color are in favor of quotas, etc.)

Indiana professor Leslie Lenkowski cites one prominent example of when justice-in-waiting Ketanji Brown Jackson went against the stereotype by ruling against the Obama Administration's targeting of a non-profit linked with Israel: [bold added]

The case involved Z Street, which provides information to the public on issues related to Zionism, Israel and the Middle East. At the end of 2009, it applied for tax exemption as a public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Six months later, an IRS representative allegedly told Z Street a decision would be delayed because the agency had a special unit to examine requests from groups dealing with Israel to determine whether their views contradicted the Obama administration’s policies.

Z Street sued, and the case was assigned to Judge Jackson. In a 2014 ruling, Judge Jackson dismissed the IRS’s argument that its judgments about tax exemptions had immunity from judicial review. She accused the IRS of using procedural claims to block litigation of a constitutional issue.

After Z Street finally received its tax exemption, Judge Jackson approved a 2018 agreement in which the IRS expressed its “sincere apology” for the delay and acknowledged that its criteria for approving requests for tax-exemption shouldn’t include political beliefs—though the agency still denied it had applied a political test to Z Street’s application. In her conclusion of the case, Judge Jackson declared it was “wrong” to use the tax laws against any group “based solely on any lawful positions it espouses on any issue” or its “association with a particular political movement, position, or viewpoint.”

President Obama weaponizing the IRS against his opposition was not a fevered dream of Republicans but was confirmed by government audit:

the retrospective audit turned up almost 150 organizations that had been subjected to unusually intense IRS scrutiny, generally during the early years of the Obama administration. These organizations faced what the inspector general called “unnecessary questions” and longer-than-normal delays in processing their applications. This was on top of the nearly 300 groups that a separate 2013 audit found had received special IRS attention because of their association with the tea party.

Justices appointed by a Republican President, e.g., David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, regularly disappointed Republicans. Although few expect them, don't be surprised if Justice Jackson will have a few surprises during her term.

The Opponents Aren't Melting

Ben & Jerry's Israel factory (JTA)

The BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement began 15-20 years ago in order to show support for Palestinians and punish companies that did business with Israel. BDS was embraced by left-wing activists as a non-violent method of harming Israel economically and perhaps inducing it to change its policies.

When Ben & Jerry's, the popular ice cream company now owned by Unilever, announced that it will no longer sell its products in the West Bank, it was not a surprise. BDS was just another chapter in Ben & Jerry's' 30+-year history of left-wing activism. BDS, like climate change, Black Lives Matter, and vaccination mandates, has had an easy ride because companies have judged the cost of resistance to be too high.

However, the opposition to BDS is beginning to employ the same tactics on Unilever that BDS has used on companies like Hewlett-Packard, Puma, and Sodastream: [bold added]

Two months after Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop retailing its products in Jewish settlements located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, several state funds are selling or threatening to sell their investments in Unilever PLC, the ice cream brand’s parent company.

The New Jersey Division of Investment, which manages several state pension funds, said this week it planned to sell $182 million of stocks, bonds and other securities linked to Unilever, accusing the company of breaking state laws that prohibit the boycott of Israel. It didn’t give a time frame for the sale, and Unilever can appeal the decision.

Separately, Arizona said earlier this month that it would sell the last $50 million of its investments in Unilever by Sept. 21 for the same reason. The state said its funds had already sold $93 million worth of investments in Unilever since Ben & Jerry’s announced its decision.

Other states including New York, Florida and Texas have said they are evaluating whether their funds would need to sell their Unilever investments. Unilever declined to comment Friday on the divestments but reiterated its commitment to Israel.

Just as BDS has had little effect on companies with a sizable market cap, the pushback on Unilever will not hurt it directly. However, this episode shows that acquiescing to activism is beginning to carry its own costs.

20 Years Later

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I posted the following, now updated with minor edits, using strikethroughs and italics:

============================================================

(Reuters photo)

I saw it on TV, like almost everyone else. I shuffled to the kitchen table with my cup of coffee and pushed the remote. The TV was set to Channel 11, NBC. It was 5:45 a.m. The Today Show was on; strange, normally it doesn't start till 7 a.m. on the West Coast.

The camera was fixed on the World Trade Center. Black smoke was pouring out of one of the towers. There were no jump cuts or commercials to distract the unblinking eye. Katie Couric's voice seemed dispassionate as she described how an airplane had crashed into the building. Surely it was a small plane and a horrible accident.

Then the second jet hit, another struck the Pentagon, and the towers fell. Other images are seared into our memories--the Pennsylvania field that became hallowed ground, the throngs who lustily cheered the deaths of thousands, flames and smoke everywhere, the weeping, the exhausted searching and the death of hope.

The fear gripped us for a long time. Not knowing has that effect. Who did it and why, how powerful were they, what's next, what should we do, what can I do?

Everyone--even those who were in charge of our government--can list major mistakes in the past ten twenty years. All the criticisms have at least some plausibility: we waged war against the wrong people, maybe we shouldn't have gone to war at all, we mistreated prisoners, we had intelligence that was grossly wrong, we sacrificed too many of our civil liberties, we didn't pay the cost of the wars, and we are no farther only a little further along in being energy independent or securing the safety of Israel.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we will remember the worst of our fears:

1) we would be hit again and perhaps lose a major city; this event coupled with our response, could forever change the character of America;

2) if the attack were biological, we could lose much more than one city;

3) oil supplies would be disrupted, maybe cut off for a long time, and usher in a new Dark Ages;

4) Israel, surrounded by powerful enemies, could be destroyed.

5) A state of war would exist between the West and the Islamic world, which has over a billion people.

Ten Twenty years and trillions of dollars later none of these fears has been realized, yet victory, which we can't even define, seems as distant as it was in 2001.

I'll take it. © 2011 Stephen Yuen

Leaving It All Behind

Moses Striking the Rock (Tintoretto,ca.1555–1570)

Chicago Professor Leon Kass points out the similarities between the stories of Exodus and America: [bold added]

The three parts of the Exodus story—slavery and deliverance; covenant and law; worship and presence—become the three pillars of the Children of Israel’s enduring national existence.

The tale of oppressive slavery in prosperous Egypt and of the astonishing deliverance and miraculous sustenance in the wilderness—the first pillar—is the constitutive national narrative, memorialized and retold annually by parents to children at the Passover Seder. Absent a relation to God, the Jewish people might still be enslaved to man; remembering our own servitude, we should deal kindly with the vulnerable.

The covenant and constituting Law—the second pillar—establish the way of life under which the people are to live and rule themselves. Not content merely to provide instruction for rectifying mutual wrongdoing, the Law is also a moral teacher, touching all aspects of human life. Its guidelines protect human dignity against abuse and self-abasement and encourage reverence for life and property, care for the needy and fair dealing in all transactions. Aiming beyond justice, the Law seeks to promote grace and gratitude, lifting human beings to fulfill the promise implied in man’s being in the image of God.

The human longing for something better than our mortal selves is satisfied in the third pillar, a place for the community to meet and to seek and commune with God. The center of communal life, it is a home for showing gratitude and seeking atonement, for prayer and sacrifice, and for dedicating personal and collective life to serving God and His higher purposes for humankind...

(Image from pinterest)

Thoughtful people have long detected numerous parallels between the United States and biblical Israel. We Americans, too, owe our origins to an escape from despotism and a desire for religious freedom. We, too, are a particular and distinctive people with a universal creed, one of biblical provenance: In announcing our birth, we declared that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” We too have a constituting national law, a Constitution approved by the consent of the people. And when in the mid-19th century our Union was challenged and its founding creed repudiated, we renewed it through the sacrifice of a bloody civil war, so that, as Abraham Lincoln said, “this nation under God shall have a new birth of Freedom.”

Like Israel of old, we, too, have stumbled and fallen, and committed apostasy against our creed. But half a century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. , like an ancient Hebrew prophet, summoned us to return to our ideals of liberty and justice for all, appealing explicitly to our founding creed and the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God. Until only yesterday, it could be said of America that it was, in G.K. Chesterton’s words, “a nation with the soul of a church.”

But times have changed. For today’s reader of Exodus, a crucial question cries out from the three-pillared structure of Israel’s founding. Can a people endure and flourish if it lacks a shared national story, accepted law and morals, and an aspiration to something higher than its own comfort and safety? Can a devotion to technological progress, economic prosperity and private pursuits of happiness sustain us when our story is contested (or despised), our morals weakened and our national dedication abandoned?

At crucial times in history--the 1860's and 1960's--the American nation was riven by extreme differences but came back from the brink--in one case it also took a Civil War--when Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., called it to live up to the "better angels of our nature."

We need such a powerful voice or voices to remind us Democrats are not Communists and Republicans are not Nazis. (Both Communists and Nazis slaughtered millions of people, including their own, during the 20th century.) We need voices to remind us that we have vastly more in common in our values and dreams than in our differences.

President-Elect Biden called for us not to treat each other as enemies on November 8th, and this humble blogger, for one, will resist that temptation no matter how much I may disagree with my fellow citizens:

I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify. Who doesn’t see red and blue states, but a United States...

But now, let’s give each other a chance. It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again. To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.

The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season – a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

Good Goes Around, Then Comes Around

Maj. Gen. Miguel Correa, rescued Zayed bin Hamdan al
Nahyan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan (WSJ)

The peace agreements (Abraham Accords) between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain would not have occurred without an unpublicized good deed in which the United States risked its soldiers' lives in 2017:

Gen. [Miguel] Correa was at his home in Abu Dhabi in 2017 when he got a call that the Emirati helicopter had gone down in Yemen while carrying out a counterterrorism mission...

Three Emirati soldiers were killed. Zayed bin Hamdan al Nahyan, a 27-year-old nephew and son-in-law to the country’s crown prince, was one of seven others seriously injured. U.S. officials soon learned that the young Emirati royal was among those being rescued.

Two American Ospreys carried a special operations forces medical team to the helicopter crash site in Yemen. The American medical team flew the seven injured soldiers to the USS Bataan, a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship in the Gulf of Aden, said Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command. One soldier died on the way to the ship as a surgeon on the Osprey revived a second Emirati whose heart stopped, said Capt. Urban.

Medical teams on the Bataan worked frantically for 48 hours, Capt. Urban said, as American forces onboard lined up to give blood for the Emirati soldiers. The medical team used 54 of 66 units of blood, making it the largest such “walking blood bank” the Navy has used since World War II, said Capt. Urban.

Meanwhile, U.A.E. leaders asked the Americans for special permission to fly the six soldiers, including the Emirati royal, to Landstuhl, Germany, where the U.S. Army has a medical hospital that specializes in treating combat injuries.

Gen. Joseph Votel, then head of Central Command, called then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who quickly approved the plan as Gen. Correa kept the anxious Emiratis apprised.

The U.S. flew the Emirati soldiers from the ship back to an airport in Yemen, where an Air Force C-17 cargo plane equipped with a special medical unit was waiting to fly them to Germany,

Flying the massive plane into Yemen posed a risk. The U.S. landed the plane at night and flew out before the sun rose to ensure everyone’s safety.

General Correa coordinated the mission and became "something of a hero" in the UAE. The trust that had developed between him and the UAE royal family was an invaluable part of the peace negotiations. Emirati ambassador Yousef Otaiba:

“The truth is, for the Abraham Accords to have materialized, there was a very much-needed element of trust, and we had that trust with Miguel Correa and the White House,” he said. “A pretty big leap of faith was required from all sides for this to happen.”

One good thing that will come out of a Biden victory is that the historic foreign policy triumphs of the Trump Administration may finally be given their due. Who knows, Hollywood may even make a movie (or limited series) about Major General Miguel Correa, soldier and diplomat.

Jesus: Worth a Try

The Circumcision (Rubens)

A question rarely posed: Is Jesus Good for the Jews?

(It's not the same as asking if Christians are good for/to the Jews.)

Art Lamm of Yeshiva University notes that anti-Semites periodically try to deny Jesus' Jewishness: [bold added]

In the early 20th century, the anti-Semitic and racist German-British philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain argued that while Judaism provided the religious background for Jesus, he “had not a drop of genuinely Jewish blood in his veins.” The Nazis picked up on this thread. As Hitler consolidated power, German theologians insisted that Jesus was not a Jew but an Aryan, descended from Galilean gentiles.

In the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has sought to sever Jesus’ religion from his nationality or ethnicity. In a 2014 Christmas message, Mr. Abbas called Jesus “a Palestinian messenger of love, justice and peace.” This remains a common refrain from anti-Israel activists.

Not surprisingly, Jews throughout history have defended themselves by referring to Jesus' origin, without endorsing his teachings.

Take the Spanish Rabbi Simon Duran, born in 1361 and known affectionately as “Rashbatz.” Duran’s community suffered intense Christian persecution. In attempting to counter increasingly dangerous Christian threats to Jewish religious observance, Duran and his contemporaries emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus and the apostles. Appealing to passages in Matthew, Luke and the Book of Acts, Duran argued that Jesus and his followers believed the Jewish people should continue to adhere to Jewish practice.

After citing other examples, Art Lamm concludes:

When the need arises, Jewish thinkers have not been bashful in accentuating Jesus’ Jewishness—whether in religious, ethnic or national terms. As Jews increasingly come under attack in Europe and elsewhere, they should once more be prepared, if necessary, to assert Jesus the Jew, even as they have no wish to claim Jesus the Christian.

While this aspect of Christian-Jewish history is interesting, it's easy to overlook its relevance to outsiders whose groups may find themselves in conflict. The modern defense is to call the attacker a racist, a sexist, a class-ist, or some other variation of "-ist". The idea is to condemn the opponent morally; if it works, the weight of social media and even law enforcement can be brought to bear against the attacker. Name-calling may succeed in beating down opponents, but it doesn't bring them closer.

The "Jesus-was-a-Jew" defense holds that potential. It begins by showing how much one group (the Jewish people) is like a person (Jesus) whom the other group (Christians) admires. Common ground is emphasized, not moral superiority. It's worth a try--it can't be worse than what we're doing now.