Murder and Mayhem

This week the Ventura County Sheriff arrested Professor Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji in the death of Paul Kessler, a 69 year-old man who had been standing on the sidewalk peacefully supporting Israel. Alnaji, who bashed Kessler with a megaphone, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and battery causing serious bodily injury and both these charges contain special allegations that Alnaji “personally inflicted great bodily injury.” This comes as no surprise to most of us who get their news online but it must have been news to those who read headers which said he died after falling and hitting his head on the sidewalk. Even after no charges were brought against the sidewalk, CNN’s header read “arrest made in death of Jewish protestor who fell and hit his head.” (CNN has now stealthily edited the header.) The media effort to downplay anti-Semitism, like its coverage of the Israeli response to the butchery by Hamas, doesn’t seem fixable. It’s certainly bias, but stupidity also plays a part, as is demonstrated by their claims that they didn’t know the Gaza stringers were Hamas or the scenes of injured civilians in Gaza were Pallywood. Reporters who post on social media regularly display their total ignorance. This week it was the New York Times opinion columnist Elizabeth Spiers, who learned for the first time that Gaza’s Health Ministry -- like every office in Gaza -- is Hamas. (The ignorance must be endemic to the western press, which has been touting Hamas casualty figures for Gaza -- roughly a bazillion civilians and no Hamas terrorists from the moment Israel entered Gaza.)

Just as the J6 tapes were released (which, inter alia, showed police welcoming in citizens, people marching peacefully through police lines where they were cordially treated, a law enforcement officer admitting he was undercover posing as Antifa, and evidence that several key law enforcement witnesses before the J6 Committee were lying) the Hamas Jugend surrounded the DNC and prevented their meeting. After a significant melee with police, they blocked the doors to the House Office Building, preventing exit and entry. Congressman Dan Goldman’s office was covered in hateful graffiti.

The Capitol Police described the assaults:

We have handled hundreds of peaceful protests, but last night’s group was not peaceful. The crowd failed to obey our lawful orders to move back from the DNC, where Members of Congress were in the building. When the group moved dumpsters in front of the exits, pepper sprayed our officers and attempted to pick up the bike rack, our teams quickly introduced consequences -- pulling people off the building, pushing them back, and clearing them from the area, so we could safely evacuate the Members and staff. Six officers were treated for injuries, from minor cuts to being pepper sprayed to being punched. 

Reportedly only one person was arrested. This contrasts with the way the local police force ignored the outbreaks of violence at the 2016 inauguration, but this time it’s the Left attacking Democrats and the response was more forceful. Still, as this spirals, I wonder how smart it was for the DNC to schedule its 2024 convention for Chicago now that there’s no Mayor Daley in charge.

In New York City they vandalized Grand Central Station and interrupted train travel. In San Francisco they invaded the Bay Bridge, seriously disrupting commuters. In fact, transport of time-sensitive medical transplants was blocked by their action.

Similar riots in support of Hamas took place at the University of Michigan and Harvard. These riots are well-funded and organized and generally receive some support from the academic remoras in “studies” programs and the DEI apparat. (The DEI apparat at Michigan cost $18 million dollars each year -- money better spent on teaching staff or cut out entirely to lower tuition costs. Instead, it’s frittered away on staff whose sole job is to foment divisions, find oppression where there is none and ignore it where it actually exists.)

University of Michigan emeritus Professor Mark Perry explains:.

UM pays a total of $18,120,242 to support more than 142 staff members who work to promote DEI initiatives on campus during the 2022-2023 school year, according to data analyzed by Perry. The total equals the amount it would take to cover the cost of in-state tuition for 1,075 students, he told the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

“In my opinion, most colleges like UM are spending way too much money on DIE efforts, and it’s incredibly wasteful because those efforts are part of advancing the new DIE religion in higher education and directly contradict the core mission of a university -- to educate students, teach critical thinking and expose them to intellectual diversity -- in favor of pursuing misguided goals of social justice, racial justice, and gender justice,” Perry told the DCNF. “Those misguided and expensive DIE resources could be better spent by reducing tuition instead of feeding new layers of costly administrative bloat that end up getting passed along to students in the form of higher tuition and fees.”

Unless the Federal Bureau of Investigation intends these serious disruptions to carry over for months to impact life and the presidential election as did the BLM and Antifa riots earlier, it’s time they got off the stick and start investigating those behind this and prosecuting those engaged in the interstate mayhem. (Having promulgated the fake Russian Collusion and the bald-faced lie that the Hunter laptop was disinformation, just maybe they can examine how much foreign money is being funneled into these demonstrations. You know, something real for a change.)

There’s a New Osama Bin Laden Cult and it’s Not Arabic

The Guardian, a reliably left-wing British paper, reprinted a “Letter from Osama” written after 9/11  (probably authored by  the late Adam Gadahn who was marinated in the same idiocy as young TikTok fans). At the urging of TikTokker Lynette Adkins, the letter got 800,000 views and over 80,000 likes. A similar endorsement by “rayereads” received over 640,000 views and, to the young people thoroughly brainwashed, it struck a welcome note. As you can imagine, it is virulently anti-American and anti-Semitic. All told, the letter was praised more than 10 million times before the Guardian pulled it. TikTok announced that all videos mentioning the letter have been deleted and accounts “which initially shared it have been banned.” Consider this: a mere twenty-two years after al Qaeda murdered thousands in New York, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, millions of viewers praised the instigator of these murders. I agree with Simon Montefiore: “The enthusiasm on TikTok for Osama bin Laden shows where the enthusiasm for Jihadist terrorist killers Hamas leads, much based on a zombie ideology that applies simple but brutal eliminationist gibberish Decolonisation to a complex world without knowledge of history or present.” It seems most of these viewers were young Americans. Pew Research Center poll says 14% of American adults “say they regularly get their news from TikTok.” If you don’t know, TikTok is Chinese owned. Its biggest following is among young adults 18-29. The Wall Street Journal asks “How can Americans trust that TikTok is really trying in good faith to stop its platform from being used to spread ideological poison?” Apparently, we can’t.

College Reform reports that more than one in five college students say they sympathize with Hamas, and that is deeply concerning. David Burge (Iowahawk) has a different take on these dummies, saying he doubts any of them could ever fly a 737. Moreover, he says: “I've had some recent experience in this matter, and from my perspective the Al Qaeda-curious accounts I've been blocking represent a broad intersectional coalition of grad-school tankies, incel anime porn groypers, and ululating Hamas bots.”

Cui Bono if Hamas is Eradicated? The World Does.

The colleges and universities and domestic press may be ignorant and bonkers, but there is strong support for Israel’s conduct against Hamas, from the UAE, the Saudis, Bahrain, and Arab commentators like Hussain Abdul-Hussain who posts on X:

A century of conflict, tens of thousands killed, four failing states -- Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran -- and three economies in free fall. All of this is to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea and create an independent Palestine. The date of the creation of Palestine is unknown, the conflict is open-ended. Palestine is not a goal, it's a death cult.

Even if Palestine is created, nothing in all of the history of Palestinians suggests that they know how to create and manage a scouts club, let alone a state. Palestine will be another mess, like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Gaza.

Enough is enough! The Arabs and Iranians have paid a heavy price for a failing lifestyle called Palestine. As an Arab, I say that we MUST lose and surrender, soonest. Successful nations are the ones who know when to lose and when to win. Japan became closest allies with America that struck it with two atomic bombs. Japan hosts US military bases (occupation?) until today. So did Germany, Italy, and South Korea. People die to live in these countries that lost, surrendered, conceded, and became best friends with their past enemies.

Enough is enough! Hamas should surrender. The Palestinian Authority should be disbanded, all its leaders should retire. Erdogan should be told that 30 years in power has gotten to his head, made him crazy. Qatar's insecurity of "look at me," promoting death and destruction, should come to its end. Iran mullahs should go back to mosques, lead the believers in prayers only, and let Iranians who know how to run governments take over and put an end to a regime that's delusional, messianic, and crazy.

Palestinians should settle for local councils of self-government, at most, and enjoy having Israel offer them a great economy to benefit from and a good infrastructure. Gaza only lost electricity 40 days ago. Wealthy Baghdad spent its sweltering summer without electricity. Impoverished Lebanon produced 13 percent of its electricity need at best, and that's only thanks to Iraqi oil gifts.

Enough is enough! Enough with Palestine! Enough indigenous! Enough with imagined colonialism! Live and let live. Make immediate and unconditional peace with Israel now, and by now, I mean yesterday. 

The Saudis have arrested anyone who shows support for Hamas or the Palestinians in Mecca and Medina. Bahrain’s Minister of Finance and National Economy, Sheikh Salman bin Khalifa al-Khalifa, said the Israel-Hamas war should not hold back regional integration, noting in the Bahraini newspaper Al-Ayyam Bahraini, that the existing accords “will underpin a secure, safe region in which we are delivering prosperity for all, and delivering hope and opportunity.”  The UAE does not seem to be allowing the war to strain relations with Israel.

In sum, the Trump-facilitated Abrahamic Accords are far from dead, though I suspect the international pro-Hamas demonstrations were at least in part designed to kill it. If Israel succeeds, I suspect they know it will help these other countries defeat their worst enemy – Iran -- and in one blow, the Israelis, the Gazans, and the Iranian people will be free, and it will be done without an American-led war. Like Wretchard the Cat, I see this conflagration has exposed as rotten a lot of stupid notions and will lead to the demise of things like “open borders, identity politics, corruption power hungry bureaucrats, Gramscian culture.” War is awful, but sometimes you just have no other way to sweep out the stables.

UPDATE: This article has been updated to correct the location of the vandalized train station in New York.