ROGER SIMON: Hamas Given Another Chance to Destroy Israel (and the Jews).

Another round in the endless Hamas-Israel War is (temporarily) over and President Biden is pleased.

After hailing the ceasefire, he spoke as follows of the next steps:

“We remain committed to work with the United Nations and other international stakeholders to provide rapid humanitarian assistance and to marshal international support for the people of Gaza and the Gaza reconstruction efforts. We will do this in full partnership with the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. Authority [sic], in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal. I believe the Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely and to enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity and democracy.”

Aside from the predictable blather about involving the pathologically anti-Israel UN, a deeper question arises: How is Joe Biden (or anyone) going to prevent Hamas from “restock[ing] its military arsenal” during these “reconstruction efforts”?

No one, thus far, has been able to figure out how to prevent Hamas from diverting the inevitable deluge of relief funds into obtaining more and better missiles and rebuilding their humungous underground terror tunnel system—other than the obvious, which is to level the terror organization or at least wound them beyond recognition.

But Biden, fresh off a friendly tarmac encounter with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), would not allow that to happen and told Netanyahu to wind it down, assuring him at the same time the United States would replenish Israel’s supply of Iron Domes.

Meanwhile, shoring up the Palestinian Authority seems more hopeless than ever as their doddering leader Mahmoud Abbas has been made to look even more hapless as compared with a resurgent Hamas.

Who will stop them now, especially since their own losses do not seem to concern them, only killing Jews, as they tell us quite openly in their charter?

Using language cribbed from the Nazis: Why They Fight: Hamas’ Too-Little-Known Fascist Charter.

Though Islamism owes a considerable debt to Nazism, the Hamas Covenant claims that it is Israel that is the equal of Nazi Germany. In Article 20, the authors write that they confront “a vicious enemy which acts in a way similar to Nazism, making no differentiation between man and women, between children and old people….”⁵ The “Israelis as Nazis” canard has been a staple of both secular and religious anti-Zionist propaganda since the 1960s. When the secular anti-Zionists such as Nasser, Arafat, and Assad, Sr., spoke about global conspiracies against the Arabs, they attributed a mythical conspiracy against the Arabs to “U.S. imperialism” and its Israeli “spearhead”—echoing the propaganda of their patrons, the Soviets.⁶ Indeed, the Hamas Covenant of 1988 notably replaced the Marxist-Leninist conspiracy theory of world politics with the classic anti-Semitic tropes of Nazism and European fascism, which the Islamists had absorbed when they collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. That influence is apparent in Article 22, which asserts that “supportive forces behind the enemy” have amassed great wealth:

With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money, they formed secret societies, such as Freemason, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

The above paragraph of Article 22 could have been taken, almost word for word, from Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish propaganda texts and broadcasts.

Which is one of the reasons why Melanie Phillips writes that the latest surge of anti-Semitism is: The last, overlooked but still active front of World War II. There’s a profound need in the West for the Jews to be proved bad people. Among the Israel-haters is a breathless eagerness for the moment when they can shout “gotcha” and then put the Jews into the public pillory.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke Speaks Out Against Woke Capitalism.

Business Insider reports that the CEO of the e-commerce platform Shopify, Tobi Lütke, recently sent a letter to the entire staff reasserting the company’s commitment to competitive enterprise and rejecting calls for it to embrace social activism. In an age when woke politics are increasingly infecting corporate America, he wanted to “remind everyone that we are a business,” and, “more importantly, a hugely ambitious one.”

“We are trying to create a world class product that gives superpowers to the merchants that we are obsessed over,” Lütke wrote. “Everything Shopify does is to accomplish this, and everyone at Shopify should be able to describe how their job, through a series of direct or indirect steps, furthers this mission.”

“Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family,” he continued. “The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can’t un-family you. The dangers of ‘family thinking’ are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team, not a family.”

“We cannot solve every societal problem here,” Lütke warns. “Shopify’s worldview is well documented—we believe in liberal values and equality of opportunity. Sometimes we see opportunities to help nudge these causes forward. We do this because this directly helps our business and our merchants and not because of some moralistic overreach.”

Related: Woke Capitalism: Hit Back Twice as Hard.

THE SHAMELESS CUOMO BROTHERS:

CNN’s Chris Cuomo, the gov’s baby bro who is often unfairly and racistly dubbed ‘Fredo’, is now under fire too. The anchor admitted to offering his older brother advice, while on phone calls with the governor’s team, on how to handle his sexual harassment scandals. If Chris’s own history of dealing with criticism is any indication of the advice he gave to his brother, it is amazing Andrew didn’t threaten to toss any of his accusers down a flight of stairs.

Andrew Cuomo, with his emergency powers, leather bomber jacket and late-night comedy sketches on CNN, thought he was untouchable. When the pandemic first started, the governor was hailed for his lockdown measures. He was presidential, strong and straightforward. Now as he lifts his draconian measures, the very opposite is strikingly clear. Andrew Cuomo is self-serving, delusional and dishonest.

Meanwhile, a Daily Beast writer asks: If ‘Cancel Culture’ Is Real, Why Aren’t the Cuomos Canceled?

Who wants to explain it to him?

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: This Colorado bus driver slapped a kid hard for not wearing her mask correctly and it was caught on video.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Professor Nikole Hannah-Jones will see you now.

Cancel culture has come back to campus! Cockburn was dismayed to learn that 1619 Project curator Nikole Hannah-Jones had been denied tenure at the University of North Carolina.

Hannah-Jones had been announced as a Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism last month. Her New York Times magazine supplement the 1619 Project had earned Hannah-Jones a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, despite garnering criticism for playing fast and loose with the facts of America’s founding from Bret Stephens in the New York Times Opinion section and several history professors in the New York Times Letters page. Who doesn’t love a heterodox publication?

You’d have thought that with her scant attention to detail, short temper and proneness to error, NHJ would be perfectly well-suited to a career in academia. Fortunately UNC agrees — they’ve offered her a non-tenured teaching position instead.

What could go wrong? Read on to find out.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Epstein guards admit to falsifying records, will skirt jail time in deal with prosecutors.

PEOPLE HAVE GOTTEN ‘INSTITUTIONALIZED’ BY COVID: Why ‘getting back to normal’ may actually feel terrifying.

Some 15 months of lockdowns, loneliness, Zoom calls, grief, illness, monotony, job loss, and economic hardship has caused “an extraordinary rise in anxiety and depression,” says Boston College developmental psychologist Rebekah Levine Coley. “The level of these disorders … are unprecedented.”

During the pandemic’s first nine months, six times as many American adults reported mental health issues as in early 2019. This is according to U.S. Census Bureau data collected as part of the ongoing Household Pulse Survey, which is quantifying the social and economic effects of the coronavirus on U.S. households. As of February, of the nearly 1.5 million U.S. adults who participated in these surveys, 41.5 percent reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, similar to other countries that have tracked mental health.

Anxiety or depression manifest in many ways. Some can’t focus, are unproductive, or are utterly exhausted. Many are grieving the loss of loved ones. Others are lonely or unsure of what to do now that they’re vaccinated, or fearful about a variant evading vaccine protection and making them or their loved ones ill.

Researchers and clinicians report that people are sleeping poorly or forming unhealthy habits. One study found that acute social isolation sparks cravings similar to hunger, leading some people to eat more and gain weight; for some of them, the “quarantine 15” has become the “quarantine 30.” In one study 60 percent of people reported heavier drinking.

The inability to cope has sparked other, darker consequences. Soaring suicide rates in Japan prompted the appointment of a “minister of loneliness” in February. Suicide hasn’t spiked in the U.S. or Europe, but with many still in survival mode, trauma symptoms could manifest later.

The U.S. saw a sharp rise in other “deaths of despair” in 2020. Drug overdoses, mostly from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, may have exceeded 90,000, up from 70,630 in 2019. While numbers had been climbing, that was the largest rise in two decades.

The Shawshank Redemption wasn’t meant to be a how-to guide for coping with a long stretch in prison.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The rich and powerful thrived as the rest of us suffered in the year of lockdowns.

LYING TO LIBERALS.

THAT’S WHAT XI SAID: Jill Biden Calls Fauci ‘An American Hero,’ Asks ‘Who Doesn’t Love Dr. Fauci?’

Earlier: Why the Right Hates Fauci.

Related: Fauci Must Be Held to Account for His Role in Funding Wuhan Lab Research.

More: Report: Chinese paper discussed weaponization of SARS coronaviruses in 2015.

ARIZONA: “Despite all the chaos and name calling resulting from the 2020 ballot recount in Arizona’s Maricopa County, one thing is certain: Had Attorney General Mark Brnovich not fought multiple efforts to change voting rules like other states allowed, the discord could have been a lot worse.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: The Child Soldiers of Portland. “There are only a few places on earth where radicals and their children ritualistically burn the American flag and chant ‘Death to America’: Tehran, Baghdad, Beirut, Kabul, Ramallah—and Portland, Oregon.”

JOEL KOTKIN: The Rise of Corporate Tyranny.

In explaining his shift away from Maoist economics, Deng Xiao Ping, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, described his market-oriented changes as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Today, American businesses, as well as the media and academic establishments that serve them, increasingly embrace what can best be described as “Chinese capitalism with American characteristics.”

A convergence between the world’s two superpowers is taking place. In the United States, as property and power further consolidate, the “diffusion of power,” so critical to democracy, erodes and autocracy develops naturally. Only players at the highest level possess the heft and the motivation to influence policy. This powerful front consists of a new alliance between large corporate powers, Wall Street, and the progressive clerisy in government and media.

It’s a species of fascism.

THE “NOBLE LIE” ON MASKS PROBABLY WASN’T A LIE:

Based on the expert view that regular people just wouldn’t make good use of them, the UK standing stockpile was reduced to keeping masks for healthcare workers only. The CDC had similar longstanding guidelines in place prior to the pandemic, so it’s not plausible to believe that the anti-mask stance came about because of shortages- rather the shortages were (in part) caused by the belief.

 * * * * * * * *

In March 2020 you could read explainer articles pathologising the superstitions of mask wearers, and in April 2021 you can read studies investigating the psychological drivers behind the worrying trend of mask refusal, but in all cases the assumption is that anyone disagreeing with the official line must have something slightly wrong with them, even if the official line changes (who will speak up for the “premature pro-maskers”?).

Will Time magazine ever call a psychologist to comment on whether the US Surgeon General was suffering from “psychological reactance” when recommending against masks, or “superstition” when in favour? The battle of ideas isn’t symmetrical, and for next time we should remember how difficult and yet how necessary challenging a consensus like this can be.

Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.

WHO PANEL WANTS MORE POWER, FUNDING: Somebody at the World Health Organization (WHO) has decided Covid is the occasion for a worldwide application of former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s maxim to “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

A WHO group known as the “Independent Panel” issued a report earlier this month, according to LifeSiteNews, that observes:

“Our message is loud and clear: no more pandemics.  If we fail to take this goal seriously, we will condemn the world to successive catastrophes … On the basis of its diagnosis of what went wrong at each stage of the COVID-19 response, the panel makes […] seven recommendations directed to ensuring that a future outbreak does not become a pandemic. Each recommendation is linked directly back to evidence of what has gone wrong. To be successful they must be implemented in their entirety.”

Note that last sentence well. Under the seven recommendations, WHO would essentially become the world-wide version of the CDC but with vastly more power and funding. And if you question the wisdom of their recommendations, then, as Glenn puts it, because shut up.

AT THIS POINT, IT’S PROBABLY TOO LATE TO DO ANYTHING UNTIL THERE’S A CRISIS: Rand Paul Warns America: Time to ‘Wake Up’ to ‘Profound Repercussions’ of Biden’s Spending Binge.

It will matter a lot who’s in charge when the crisis comes, which I think is why Democrats are so eager to do anything to remain in power.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: Risk of COVID is now very low — it’s time to stop living in fear.

RENAME POLITIFACT ‘POLITIFALSE:’ That might well be the conclusion of reasonable people after reading this analyis by the Media Research Center’s (MRC) Tim Graham of how Politifact approaches reporting on His Fraudulency.

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Women are turned on by charm & cash while men go on looks, scientists confirm in discovery which surprises no one.

OPEN THREAD: Because the night belongs to commenters. Because the night belongs to us.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Europe unveils plans to bring ‘GPS’ and Skype to the moon with satellites.

YOU HEAR MORE ABOUT KIMMEL OR FALLON, BUT NOT ABOUT THEIR RATINGS: Fox News late-night show ‘Gutfeld!’ nears top of ratings race. “Fox News host Greg Gutfeld’s new late-night show recently topped traditional late-night broadcast shows ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ and ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ in ratings, according to Nielsen Media Research.”

Now to knock off the smarmy Stephen Colbert.

WELL, THAT’S NOT GOOD: NASA moon mission delays may put astronauts in path of solar storms.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Private College Tuition Discount Rate Hits All-Time High Of 53.9%. “Private colleges and universities significantly discounted listed tuition and fee prices for most students in 2020-21—continuing a long upward march in discount rates that only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Increasing discount rates mean two things. First, you’re a sucker if you pay full tuition or anything close to it. Second, whatever colleges to to the sticker price, they’re not actually able to get people to pay it. (It’s going to be worse in the future, as post-Covid/post-Wokeness they will probably never get back the numbers of full-tuition-paying foreign students that they had before). Back in The New School I cited increasing discount rates as a key indicator of a near-bursting bubble; we’re there now.

DIET AS IDENTITY: Oh, Shut Up: It’s Just Food.