YOU REALLY CAN’T HATE THE MSM ENOUGH: Let’s see, Hamas is sworn to overthrow Israel, establish an Islamic dictatorship to replace it with the goal of expanding it to the entire Middle East and beyond, expel, murder, or enslave every Jew in Israel, but here is the New York Times’ take:

ALWAYS CHECK THE REVIEWS: @Osint613, which collects and reports on intelligence issues in the Mideast, adds on X: “One of my key sources in Iran just informed me that Ismail Haniyeh’s family just disputed the hotel stay charge.”

RANDOM THOUGHT: Some of the same atheist leftists who go nuts when they hear that Oklahoma wants to put the ten commandments on the wall of public schools, claiming it’s the first step in creeping theocracy, go out and wave the flags of Islamic *actual* theocracies Hezbollah and Hamas, without an ounce of self-awareness.

MORE FEEL—GOOD NEWS: Breaking: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah assassinated… in Tehran!

A JUDGE FROM AN ERA LONG GONE: Federal judge Richard Stearns, a Clinton appointee, has dismissed a discrimination lawsuit filed by Jewish students against MIT. Boston judges have a history of protecting the local elite institutions (MIT and Harvard) from lawsuits, so this isn’t a great surprise, though shows extremely dubious legal judgment to dismiss a case like this on a motion to dismiss before there has been any discovery. This is especially true given that Stearns acknowledges that MIT Jewish students have faced serious discrimination.

That aside, though, what really struck me about the opinion was why Judge Stearns determined that MIT could not be held responsible for the harassment and so forth that MIT students meted out on their Jewish classmates. I literally laughed out loud when I read this, and wondered whether Stearns was gaslighting, or whether he simply had a weirdly naive and outdated view of what elite universities have been like since the era of political correctness began in the late 1980s. So I looked up his bio, and discovered that he graduated college in 1968(!) So I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume he really believes that “tolerance and respect for others” are the value “that modern liberal university education seeks to instill,” and that MIT administrators therefore could not have been expected to anticipate that many of its students had not internalized those values.

YOUR FEEL-GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: The Israeli Air Force eliminated this guy in Beirut today.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS: I was looking through some online archives available through my university’s library, and noticed that there was a time in her political career that Kamala Harris talked a lot more about her Indian heritage.

For example, from 2009 (this was reprinted online in 2020): “One of the most influential people in my life, in addition to my mother, was my grandfather (TV Gopalan), who actually held a post in India that was like the secretary of state position in this country. My grandfather was one of the original independence fighters in India and some of my fondest memories from childhood were walking along the beach with him after he retired and lived in Besant Nagar in Madras.” I take it that she was exaggerating both his contribution to Indian independence and the post he held …

From a 2003 profile (similar to one available here):

A product of two cultures, Harris delights in her multiculturalism. Her grandfather was an Indian diplomat who served in posts in Delhi and Zambia, and an aunt, an obstetrician in Chandigarh, is so beloved by her patients that they often leave baskets of fruit on her doorstep after she delivers their babies. In the 1940’s, Harris told the San Francisco Examiner recently, her grandmother drove around India in a VW bug, urging village women through a bullhorn to use birth control. “Even though my grandma had an arranged marriage when she was 12, she and my grandfather were very open-minded people,” she said. [Though they were initially “not too happy” when her mother declined an arranged marriage and married a black man she had fallen in love with instead.]

By 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported: “She seldom delves into her Indian heritage, reflecting a broader reticence to share personal stories beyond a handful of well-worn anecdotes.”

I don’t think any of this is damning in any way, but it’s interesting to see how ambitious public figures curate their image over time. At some point in Harris’ political career, for example, she thought talking about her grandmother’s arranged marriage at age 12 and how that didn’t stop the grandmother from being an outspoken feminist was helpful, and at some point she decided it wasn’t.

[Cross-posted at the Volokh Conspiracy]

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: How did we get to the point where the campaign for maybe the most liberal presidential candidate ever is embracing and encouraging a group called “White Dudes for Harris?” In a forthcoming article I write about how the academic left increasingly “supports or adopts the notion that overcoming societal racism requires white American to adopt a white racial consciousness.54 Increased white racial consciousness will give white Americans an opportunity to acknowledge their ‘white privilege.’ In turn, this will allow white Americans to develop a collective critical consciousness, making them into antiracist allies.” But as I explain, the notion “that the primary effect of encouraging white racial consciousness will be to get white Americans to evolve into activists dedicated to combatting systemic racism is optimistic to the point of ingenuousness.” And “society will always be divided by race if our educational institutions and popular culture encourage, even demand, people divide themselves by race.” You can read the whole thing, at this link.

UPDATE: From perhaps the most viscerally annoying woman I have encountered, “influencer” Arielle Fodor, on a Zoom “White Women for Harris” call: “Learn from and amplify the voices of those who have been historically marginalized and use the privilege you have in order to push for systemic change,” she said. “As white people, we have a lot to learn and unlearn. So do check your blind spots.”

THERE’S A REASON I CALL IT AL JAZEERA ON THE POTOMAC: You really can’t hate the Washington Post’s coverage of the Middle East enough. The Post did not have a headline yesterday about the murder of 12 kids on a soccer field by Hezbollah. Today it has this headline, focusing on Israel’s “response,” with a picture that implies if you don’t look carefully that Israel killed the kid in the photo. Meanwhile, even though every Western government acknowledges that Hezbollah was responsible for the rocket that killed the kids playing soccer, the Post caption suggests that we might want to believe the Iranian-backed terrorist group’s denial.

RATHER CONVENIENT TIMING:

UPDATE (From Ed): Here’s the Politico article that the above Tweet references: Feds discover transcripts of Biden chats with biographer.

MORE: DOJ Magically Finds 117 Pages Of Biden Transcripts.

OUR TWO-TIER JUSTICE SYSTEM: Prosecutors drop charges filed by Northwestern police against educators involved in campus encampment. The Northwestern employees were charged with obstructing police, months after the encampment came down. Now the cases have been dismissed. This sort of thing is going on in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions all over the country. You are free to violate the law so long as you are doing for a cause the far left supports…

THERE ALSO SEEMS TO BE A CORRELATION WITH SIGNS OF GENERAL EMOTIONAL DISTRESS: Kate Hymowitz: The New Girl Disorder: Why are young women so prominent in anti-Israel protests? I found this essay especially insightful, read the whole thing, as they say.

PIC OF THE DAY: Hamas: We are going to liberate Jerusalem. Netanyahu: How about I destroy you and hang out with the IDF in Rafah instead.

ISRAEL TRIP REPORT [LINK FIXED]: Revisiting Hamas’s Barbaric Attack on Southern Israel. I just spoke to a friend of mine who volunteered that he’s read dozens accounts of what happened on October 7, but this is by far the most informative.

AND YET, IT’S CLEARLY ILLEGAL UNDER VIRGINIA LAW: Soros Prosecutor Won’t Shut Down Pro-Palestinian Encampment Outside Antony Blinken’s Home.

NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS, EXCEPT FOR ANYONE WHO HAS PAID THE SLIGHTEST ATTENTION TO HOW THE PALESTINIAN POLITICAL CLASS CONSISTENTLY BEHAVES: In fact, rampant corruption and lack of concern for ordinary Palestinians is why Israel wrongly thought it could buy off Hamas’s leadership with Qatari money, allowing them to keep living the high life in their beachside villas. They just wildly underestimated Sinwar’s fanaticism.

WHAT DOES VANCE DO FOR TRUMP’S RE-ELECTION PROSPECTS? NOTHING OR WORSE: Sean Trende: Trump’s VP Pick Won’t Help Him Win Election. Trende is one of America’s most astute political observers. Perhaps his most pertinent point is that Vance was hardly an electoral juggernaut in Ohio:

His performance in the state has been underwhelming, to say the least. Consider his run in 2022 compared to the rest of the statewide Republican ticket. Mike DeWine won the governorship by 25 percentage points. Dave Yost won the attorney general race by 20 points. Keith Faber (auditor) won by 18. Frank LaRose (secretary of state) won by 21. Robert Sprague (treasurer) won by 18. The GOP Supreme Court justices won by between 12 and 18 points.

J.D. Vance won his Senate seat by six points. It’s unclear, then, how he might help Trump carry Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan.

By contrast: “Kim Reynolds of Iowa might have helped to flip Minnesota or Wisconsin. Rubio probably would have put away Arizona and Nevada and potentially put New Mexico fully in play. Youngkin could have made Virginia fully into a swing state.”

UPDATE: When I was growing up in Queens, I was a Mets fan, while my friends were Yankees fan. I remember trying to persuade them that the Mets were better than the Yankees–Kingman better than Chambliss at first base, for example. My arguments weren’t irrational, but they were very wrong. But that’s what fans do. Similarly, you may like Vance as Trump’s VP on ideological grounds (and you may discount what seems to be a very opportunistic change of heart on MAGA on his part). And it’s very likely the VP choice won’t make a difference, unless the election is really close it won’t. But if you are arguing Vance is a better choice than, say, Youngkin, or Tim Scott, or several others, purely from perspective of who is more likely to help Trump on the margin win the election, you are doing the Kingman/Chambliss thing.

IT ONLY TOOK NINE MONTHS SINCE OCT. 7: Yesterday’s New York Times reports on how Hamas “blurs the lines” between civilians and combatants, as if this is somehow breaking news rather than the way the terrorist death cult has been operating in Gaza for decades. The good news is that this means that the Times’ sources think Hamas is on the verge of defeat and collapse, so there is no point in running interference for it anymore.

IF TRUE, THIS IS DAMNING: Putting aside the blame game about violent rhetoric and so on, we know (a) that a Republican Congressman was shot and nearly killed a few years ago; (b) police arrested a man near Justice Kavanaugh’s house who came to kill him; (c) partisan bitterness is the highest its been in living memory; (d) many people really hate Donald Trump; (e) we have had a series of mass shooters who mostly sought fame and attention; and (f) there are 400 million or so guns in the US. Put them all together, and based on any reasonable risk assessment Trump should have been given the highest level of secret service protection.

CAN WE HOLD THE DEMAGOGUERY AT LEAST UNTIL WE KNOW THE SHOOTER’S MOTIVES?: I guess this is now Vance’s brand, which would make him an unfortunate choice for vice-president.

UPDATE: Before we assume motive, let’s recall Ronald Reagan was hated by the left, and was seen as a real threat by the USSR. And John Hinckley, his attempted assassin, tried to kill Reagan because… he thought it would make Jodie Foster like him.

SECOND UPDATE: If I had to put odds on it, I’d say some combination of Trump-hatred and mental illness. But I’d rather it turn out to be just mental illness. If you *want* it to turn out to be solely or primarily ideologically motivated, let me point out it would be better for the country if it were not. And I’ll go with “better for the country” over “feeds my partisan rage.”

OUCH!:

REPORT FROM ISRAEL, PART I: I went on a fact-finding mission to Israel via the World Jewish Congress with a dozen other law professors, some Jewish, some not. On Wednesday, we visited kibbutz Nir Oz, site of one of the worst massacres on 10/7, with 47 kibbutz members murdered, 71 taken captive, including children and elderly. During the visit, we saw the kibbutz dining hall, which still had a lingering smell of the dead bodies that were stored in the kibbutz refrigerator until they could be given a proper burial. Outside the dining hall, a sign (see Hebrew sign below) remained advertising a peace demonstration to be held on the evening of October 7 in Be’er Sheba, sponsored by Israeli/Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace. The sign says that “it will never end until we talk” and “we should leave the settlements and return to ourselves.”

Nir Oz is a left-wing kibbutz populated by peace activists. One elderly victim, still held hostage by Hamas, was a long time peace activist with many friends in Gaza. Two days a week he drove Gazans in need of medical care to Israeli hospitals. Palestinians living on the border near the kibbutz were undoubtedly aware of the kibbutz’s peacenik and humanitarian endeavors, but nevertheless after the first and second wave of attacks by Hamas, “civilian” mobs invaded and looted, tortured, and murdered. Indeed, we heard that Hamas had to protect its hostages from the “civilians,” who wanted to murder them on the spot. If anyone in Gaza tried to stop or even dissuade the marauders, I haven’t heard about it.

Going back to the elderly hostage, you can see the remains of his house in the pictures below. We met his daughter, who questioned why Hamas has been unwilling to release elderly, sick, hostages (some of whom undoubtedly are now dead), and small children on humanitarian grounds. After all, it would be good propaganda, and they would still have plenty of hostages for negotiating leverage. The obvious answer is that they know that Israelis are especially haunted by the elderly and child hostages, and Hamas prefers psychological torture of Israelis above other goals.

WOKE ANTISEMITISM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY EDITION: From the invaluable Aaron Sibarium: ‘Amazing what $$$$ can do’: New Text Messages Show Columbia Deans Sneering at ‘Privilege’ of Jewish Students. Note that these text messages were exchanged long after Columbia had become notorious for pro-Hamas agitation, including the violent takeover of a university building, yet the deans dismissed concerns about antisemitism on campus as a fundraising ploy

THIS IS MAKING PHRENOLOGY LOOK RELATIVELY SCIENTIFIC [Updated and moved to top]: Government dictates that biomedical studies include not genetic diversity (which may or may not be appropriate), but “diversity” as dictated by arbitrary government classifications, has entrenched pseudo-science in the research community, to wit: “In a first vote, 11 committee members unanimously said available data on the drug shows that it is effective at treating Alzheimer’s patients at the early stages of the mind-wasting disease. But several advisors noted that more data is needed in Black and Hispanic patients, among other groups.” Exactly how do they think “Hispanic Alzheimer’s” would be different from “non-Hispanic white people” Alzheimer’s?

UPDATE: I’m *for* research on genetic factors in disease and treatment. I’m *against* using the American bureaucracies invented classifications as incredibly crude proxies for genetics. These were never intended to be used as such proxies. In fact, when the current panoply of classifications was created by the federal government in 1978, it specifically came with the disclaimer that these were not genetic or anthropological categories. How could they be when “Hispanics” can be from any mix of continents, Asians include everyone from Indians (Caucasians) to Chinese (East Asian) to Filipinos (mostly Austronesians), the white category goes from Iceland to Yemen, and African America can be anywhere from 2 to 100% African, and Africa is itself a very genetically diverse continent, with many Somali and Ethiopian groups more closely related to Arabs than to sub-Saharan Africans? For more on the topic, see the final chapter of my book Classified.

IN SHORT, CAMPUS HAMASNIKS THINK THE RULES DON’T APPLY TO THEM: The Real Story Behind Columbia’s Controversial Law Review Article—And Why It Matters. “According to various media outlets, the law review’s board of directors, composed of faculty and alumni, tried to censor an article critical of Israel. Except that’s not what happened at all. The true story involves a faction of the law review secretly breaking all procedural rules and customs to publish a piece of ideologically driven claptrap.”