This week, a lot of people and institutions got “punked,” that is, humiliated, by their own actions. Of course, the eternal punkees, as Hussein Aboubakar so brilliantly notes, are those who bought the Nakba myth by which Arab rulers instrumentalized the Palestinians for their own ends, a myth which ended with the Abraham Accords.

There are so many hoist by their own petard this week, I’m faced with an embarrassment of riches. Let’s start with the attack on Justice Samuel Alito. The Left simply cannot abide the fact that it doesn’t control all branches of the government, and threatens to pack the court and, barring that, disparages and tries to force the recusal of justices Clarence Thomas and Alito from the presidential immunity case, if not their removal from the court altogether.

They promote one pretext after another. Someone -- maybe a dummy or a prankster determined to expose them as idiots -- reported that once the American flag at Alito’s home in Virginia briefly was flown upside down. In the fevered world of the Left, this represented Justice Alito’s support of the January 6 “Insurrection.”

For people with any military or historical background, an upside-down flag is a distress symbol, and Alito responded that it was his wife’s response to some incivility by neighbors. Not satisfied with this first, not terribly successful, smear of the justice, a second flag, a pine tree with the words “An appeal to God” flown at the family’s vacation home, became the get-Alito rallying point.

The usual media mob, and even the once sane Bill Kristol (who years before had endorsed Alito for the court) argued this was further evidence of disqualifying bias by Alito because one person on January 6 waved such a flag. In fact, the flag is an historic one. It was created during the Revolutionary War and was used by George Washington’s troops. It has been seen flying over the office of the San Francisco government and remains the official naval and maritime flag of Massachusetts. Anyone and any media outlet which reported that these flags were controversial or provocative chiseled away any remaining credibility he or it still had. (On any day anything may be “proof” of wrongthink. Remember when it was the AOK sign?)

President Donald Trump is the greatest punker of all. Just as Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were patting themselves on their brilliant strategy of tying him down in New York’s courtroom defending against a preposterous lawsuit and under gag orders from a demonstrably prejudiced judge, he announced a rally in the very blue Bronx at a venue which normally accommodates 3500 participants. At least 25,000 enthusiastic Trump fans showed up, fans of all races, mostly working-class Bronx residents. This cannot be of comfort to the Democrats.

The Internationalists and the Death of Raisi

Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash this week along with several other officials of the Iranian government, including Iran’s foreign minister. Raisi was a monster, a man who murdered by slow strangulation thousands of Iranians, and who tortured and murdered a pregnant woman. He was known as “the butcher of Tehran.” If, like me, you think the international organizations created after World War II have outlived their purpose, have admitted members of failed states who hold views antithetical to the organizations’ stated missions, and need to be abolished and recast, this week, they punked themselves and made our case. Among those offering condolences and tributes were NATO, the European Union, the Secretary-General of the UN, the UN Security Council, and the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) which Iran has made a monkey of for years. Even our own State Department joined in this absurd sympathy charade. 

The supportive message repulsed many who follow US-Iran relations, including commentator Katie Pavlich, who said the statement “made no sense.”

“There should be no word of sympathy from any member of the Biden administration for Raisi,” former National Security Council official Richard Goldberg, now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Post before the State Department statement came out.

“If a mass murderer in the United States died, no one would issue sympathy statements; they would issue statements of support for the victims. That’s exactly what we should be doing now.”

Around the same time the State Department’s message went out, US Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood stood to observe a moment of silence for Raisi during a meeting of the UN Security Council. 

Just as the bodies of four people who were murdered on October 7 were discovered secreted beneath an UNRWA facility in Gaza, the prosecutor of an outfit called the International Criminal Court, a creation of the UN General Assembly, sought arrest warrants for Yahya Sinwar, Benjamin Netanyahu, and others in connection with the attack on Israel and the response in Gaza. Apparently, this was after consultation with luminaries like jet-setting fashion plate and “international lawyer” (whatever that means) Amal Clooney. Neither the U.S. nor Israel are signatories to the treaty which created the ICC. This overstep by the ICC, was roundly condemned in the U.S.

The decision has earned near-total condemnation in Washington, with President Joe Biden slamming the prospect of warrants against Israeli leaders as “outrageous” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the administration is ready to work with Congress on a bipartisan effort to appropriately respond.[snip] Because the court lacks a police force, it relies on the 124 member states that have signed on to the statute to execute any warrants it issues. Four major countries -- the United States, Israel, Russia and China – have not signed the treaty and do not accept the court’s jurisdiction.

The satire site Babylon Bee nails the significance of this self-punking by the ICC: 

HARTFORD, CT -- Sources within Jimmy Carter Hillary Clinton Harvey Milk Elementary School are claiming Mrs. O'Leary's third-graders have just voted 18-2 to pass a powerful, landmark resolution ordering Israel to withdraw all troops from Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.

In addition to calling for all Israeli troops to stand down immediately, the official, strongly-worded resolution from the third-grade social studies class helpfully suggests that Israel "just be nice to the poor Palestinians" and calls for Benjamin Netanyahu to "maybe try sharing the land." Additionally, the statement points out that "perhaps Hamas just needs its voice to be heard" and calls for Israel to "stop denying the Palestinians their truth."

"This class has really made a significant contribution to the cause of freedom and world peace," said Mrs. O'Leary as she adjusted the Palestinian flag kerchief covering her light-blue hair. "We hope that the Israeli government will give this ground-breaking intervention the recognition and compliance it deserves."

Jack Smith, who previously served as a prosecutor in the Hague, pursued cases against more than one Republican political figure. In one such case in which the Supreme Court reversed the conviction, he was rebuked for overstepping his “boundless interpretation of the law”. Such fanciful notions of law may work at the ICC but not here.

But even as his documents case against President Trump is on rocky shoals, he’s not giving up. This week, Judge Aileen Cannon released some previously redacted materials which showed that the FBI agents who conducted the raid on Mar-a-Lago had authorization to use deadly force against anyone who might obstruct the raid, including Trump’s Secret Service detail. The raid was for materials which may or may not have been declassified, which admittedly had been manipulated by the prosecution.

There was understandable outrage at the news. While the Attorney General said this is standard form in such raids and was also a provision in the raid on Biden’s classified document cache, no evidence was provided in support of that, and certainly it appears the retrieval of documents held by Biden was conducted far differently. Smith is seeking an order gagging Trump from discussing the deadly force directive. In my view he’s just keeping the issue alive. (In any event, as Julie Kelly reports, in his motion for a gag order, Smith does not repeat Garland’s claim that the same directive went to FBI agents retrieving classified documents from Biden, another indication that the agency was accomodating to Biden.) Mike Davis has as good an explanation as any of why the Administration is flogging this weak case and why it is seeking a gag order:

Naturally, Jack Smith and Jay Bratt's motion to gag Trump is wholly devoid of required facts and law. They point to no instance of any threat -- let alone how Trump incited any threat. Their motion is frivolous. The bottom line is this: The Biden Justice Department wants to unconstitutionally gag Trump to control their political narrative. They pretend criticism of government officials equates to threats. That's a very dangerous mindset. In America, a defendant -- more than anyone -- must have the constitutional right to publicly speak out against the judge, prosecutors, investigators, staff, witnesses, biases, and the process. If a defendant obstructs justice by threatening witnesses, charge him with obstruction of justice. Jack Smith and Jay Bratt know they cannot do that, as they have zero evidence. Instead, they are conspiring to impose an unconstitutional -- and un-American -- gag order on Trump. The Biden White House and Justice Department pretend their supporters have a First Amendment right to obstruct justice by doxxing and intimidating Supreme Court justices and their families in their homes. Even after justices and their families went to safe houses. And even after Justice Kavanaugh and his family faced a 1 am assassination attempt. But the Biden Justice Department now wants to gag Trump for criticizing the FBI's unprecedented raid on him. Which Biden and Garland knew included the potential of deadly force when they authorized it. To get damning Crossfire Hurricane presidential records Trump was allowed to have under the Presidential Records Act. Add all this to the overwhelming evidence of Biden Democrats' criminal conspiracy against Trump.

Last, I want to bring your attention to the incredible article in Mosaic about the Nakba, “The Perennial Power of the Nakba.” How after facing humiliation after humiliation on the battlefield against Israel, Arab leaders deflected attention away from their own failures and the weaknesses of their societies by using the myth of a return to the land held by Israel and how this mythologizing has been (at least until the Abraham Accords upended the fantasy) an unmitigated catastrophe for the Arabs.