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.”

DOWNLOAD IT WHILE IT’S HOT: My new article, Three Bad Ideas about Race in America.

SALON VS. SALON: True patriotism or ugliness is in the eye of… whatever is politically convenient.

2017:

2024:

THIS NAKBA DAY MESSAGE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY TRUTH: Also worth noting. Before the Palestinian cause became a thing, in the Arab world the “Nakba” or catastrophe wasn’t the displacement of Arabs from Palestine, but the failure of five Arab armies plus Palestinian Arab militias to wipe out the nascent state of Israel and kill or expel its Jewish residents.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?: The Times of Israel has an important piece about how the Biden administration wants to end the war in Gaza with Hamas still in place and intact. The article is filled with delusionary statements, on and off the record, by administration officials, but if you can imagine the dumbest think Biden State Department spokesman Matthew Miller might have said about Gaza, it still won’t be as dumb as what he actually said, apparently reflected administration policy:

Notably, the US has signaled its tepid support for China’s recent efforts to strike a long-elusive deal between Hamas and Fatah. “If China wanted to play a productive role in bringing this conflict to an end, that is something that we would welcome,” Miller said last week.

It was bad enough that the Obama administration let Russia have free reign in Syria. But *inviting* China to gain influence in Gaza? Are they completely insane?

My best guess here is that they are expecting wall-to-wall pro-Hamas craziness from now until November from the leftist base, and are so desperate to get the conflict to end and focus on the messaging the Biden campaign wants, that they are willing to invite America’s greatest geo-political rival to take up residence right on Israel and Egypt’s doorstep. Which, ironically, is exactly the sort of thing they accuse Trump of doing.

THE MOSTLY PEACEFUL PRO-HAMAS CAMPUS DEMONSTRATIONS: The Guardian: “An independent non-profit that tracks political violence and political protests around the world found that 97% of campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza that have taken place in the US since mid-April have been peaceful.

But wait: “[The study] defines peaceful protests as ones without serious physical violence or property damage, Doyle said. Its bar for categorising a demonstration as violent includes “physical violence that rises above pushing or shoving” or property destruction that involves ‘breaking a window or worse,’ he said.”

Get it? You can push, shove, form human chains to keep “Zionists” from moving about, threaten, intimidate, chant “death to the Jews,” vandalize, trespass, even shoot at someone so long as you miss, and more, and the authors of the study would still say your protest has been “peaceful.”

AN EXAMPLE OF WHY PEOPLE WHO GET THEIR NEWS FROM NPR ARE ILL-INFORMED: Check out the contrast in coverage. Does anyone believe that NPR’s omission of the students’ support for terrorism and the violent destruction of Israel was a mere oversight?

(1) NPR:

(2) Student journalist via the Free Press:

UPENDING THE VEEP STAKES: I’m a law professor and admittedly don’t have my finger of the pulse of the American public. Nevertheless, I can’t imagine that “She didn’t hesitate to kill her own pet dog when it was disobedient so think of what she will do to the deep state” is a politically winning slogan.

IMAGINE BEING A VOCIFEROUSLY ANTI-ISRAEL CONGRESSMAN, AND BELIEVING THAT GAZA HAS A CHIEF RABBI: Progressive NY Rep. Jamaal Bowman duped by fake ‘Chief rabbi of Gaza’.

COSPLAYING JUDAISM ON BEHALF OF HAMAS: It’s hard to keep track of all the grossly offensive actions of pro-Hamas campus demonstrators, but here’s one that hasn’t received much attention.

In an effort to ward off accusation that their encampments, run by pro-Hamas groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, are antisemitic, protestors are pretending to be practicing Jews. Here, for example is a printed Passover “Seder plate” at a Passover dinner at USC reportedly attended by fifty students. Not a single one of the attendees seems to have noticed that all the Hebrew words are backwards, something that would be obvious to anyone who had a bar or bat mitzvah or otherwise learned even the most basic Hebrew.

And here’s a link to a tweet with a video of a “Shabbat service” at Columbia. As the video pans out, you can see that almost none of the students know the song, which is an extremely common Sabbath hymn that any Jew who ever attends real Shabbat services would be familiar with.

Given that these students and hangers-on are at the very least willing to join protests organized by Hamasniks, it’s hardly surprising that they have no respect for other people’s religious practices and are happy to cosplay practicing religion to serve political ends. But it’s still disgusting.

“I, TOO, HATE WHITE PEOPLE”: ‘Zionists Don’t Deserve To Live’: Meet The Leader Of Columbia University’s Anti-Israel Encampment.

The I, too, hate white people quote is from before he started at Columbia. I would like to think that Columbia did not know about this when he was admitted, but I don’t think it would have made a difference–sentiments like his would just be seen as “brave” and “transgressive” rather than hateful and a potential sign of mental instability.

HEADS SHOULD, BUT LIKELY WON’T ROLL: Northwestern University Dean of Students Attends Protest Targeting Campus Jewish Community Center. Let’s just pause to take this in for a moment. Northwestern University is already under federal investigation for violating Jewish students’ civil rights. And so the Dean of Students, Mona Dugo… decides to attend a rally protesting, and let’s be honest, trying to intimidate, the campus Hillel (Jewish student group). She later claimed that she wanted to make sure the protestors right to protest was protected, as if roving mobs of Jewish students have been the problem on campus. Who is she kidding? If she isn’t relieved of her administrative responsibilities, and soon, Northwestern will richly deserve the hostile environment lawsuit it loses.

“ANTI-WAR” ACTIVISTS FOR WAR: Jewish Insider: In Chicago on Saturday, 300 anti-war activists were meeting to discuss plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in August when an activist took to the stage to announce that Iran had attacked Israel. The crowd burst into cheers at the news, The Free Press reported. The event was co-hosted by several groups, including the Chicago chapter of SJP.

Not “antiwar,” just on the other side.

THEY ARE NOT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, THEY ARE JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE:

LEADERSHIP MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE, COMPARE AND CONTRAST: