The Corner

World

U.S. Politics and the Present Moment

By
The White House is lit with the colors of the Israeli flag, October 9, 2023. (Leah Millis / Reuters)

Palestinian fighters would visit General Giap in Vietnam. “How do we expel the Jews from our land?” they would ask. “You expelled the French. You expelled the Americans. Tell us how to do it.” Giap would answer, “The French had France to go back to. The Americans had America to go back to. The Jews have nowhere else to go. You will never expel them.”

As I’ve said in the past: May it prove so.

• Toward the end of his speech yesterday, President Biden told of meeting Golda Meir when he was a new senator. She told him that Israelis had a secret weapon — namely, “We have no place else to go.”

At the very end of his speech, Biden said, “Let there be no doubt. The United States has Israel’s back. We will make sure the Jewish and democratic State of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have. It’s as simple as that.”

He then said, kind of under his breath: “These atrocities. Sickening. We’re with Israel. Let’s make no mistake. Thank you.”

It was an excellent speech. Few Republicans will want to admit it. Such is the tribalist mind, a mind I know very well. But it was.

Today, at least one teacher in Israel played it for the children in her class. (I know this from the mother of one of the children.)

(The classes, by the way, are being held via Zoom, as is understandable.)

• In recent years, it has become a tradition to throw lights of different colors on the White House. I think this is a very, very bad tradition. I believe it started in 2015, with rainbow colors after the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. In my view, the White House should be the White House.

Domestic politics is one thing. How about foreign policy and foreign concerns? If you light up the White House in favor of one cause, what about the causes you ignore?

That said: If we’re to have that tradition, this is awfully good:

• On 9/11 — or it may have been 9/12 — someone I knew said, “Is there any way we can blame this on Clinton?” I understood her very well. And I have thought of that, when looking at commentary in recent days.

Moreover, I have thought of two phrases that were big in the 1980s: “blame America first” and “moral equivalence.” I have seen, have heard, a lot of each.

America is not to blame for the attack by Hamas on Israelis. And between victimizers and victims — murderers and murdered; kidnappers and kidnapped; rapists and raped — there is no equivalence at all.

• This is not Tim Scott’s finest hour, I would say. And the political business can make even good and honorable people . . . dishonorable:

• Marc Thiessen made a very blunt statement:

Some politicians, and media folk, are in an interesting place. For months, they have been saying, “The Biden administration is so concerned about Ukraine’s border. What about our own border, huh? We have to put America first,” etc. They don’t connect events abroad to the U.S. interest.

But what about now? The Republican “base” is pro-Israel. That base is not so pro-Ukraine. In fact, there is considerable sympathy for Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

Putin is against the “gay agenda” and woke ideology, people say. Well, Putin has nothing on Hamas.

In any case, here is Senator Josh Hawley:

Ukraine is facing an existential threat, too. Russia is seeking to conquer and subjugate that nation. The atrocities Israelis are facing, the Ukrainians have faced for a long time: mass murder, mass rape, mass torture, mass kidnapping — all of it.

See how Hawley is trying to pit the Ukrainians against the Israelis? This is both unconscionable and typical.

Infamously, Ron DeSantis called Russia’s assault on Ukraine a “territorial dispute.” He talks about the Ukraine war this way: “I wish the D.C. elites cared as much about our border as they care about the Ukraine-Russia border.”

Are “the D.C. elites” allowed to care about Israel’s borders?

When Biden traveled to Ukraine last February — to express solidarity with that people under siege — DeSantis said, “While he’s over there, I think I and many Americans are thinking to ourselves: ‘Okay, he’s very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He’s not done anything to secure our own border here at home.’”

You don’t hear DeSantis talk that way about Israel. Why? The exigencies of GOP politics, I guess.

Biden went “halfway around the world”! said DeSantis. Well, Kyiv is about 5,000 miles from Washington, D.C.; Tel Aviv, about 6,000.

So what?

The Heritage Foundation is doing what Hawley, DeSantis, and a host of others are doing: Ukraine, no; Israel, yes. “Heritage will stand with the American people and oppose additional funding to Ukraine,” the foundation tweeted.

Notice that when Heritage folk say “the American people,” they mean people who agree with them, only. A cheap political trick.

And from a think tank?

Republican outlets have been keen to broadcast Hamas atrocities against Israelis. Fine. But they have been less keen — much less so — to broadcast Russian atrocities against Ukrainians.

Did you see Donald Trump Jr.?

• Free speech is a blessing and, what’s more, a right. But, obviously, it can be very hard to endure. Free speech is, among other things, a revealer. And what it reveals, about the human mind and heart, can be repulsive.

Here is just one scene on one campus, out of many, many scenes on many campuses:

• Activist groups at Harvard have not covered themselves in glory, to say the least. But one person has: Namrata Narain. What a woman. Full of admiration for her.

return-icon Return to The Corner

Exit mobile version