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Opinion | President Biden’s Biggest Blunder
  + stars: | 2024-05-09 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
Less laudably, but no less understandably, he also needs to shore up support among progressive voters who think that Israel’s use of American weapons implicates us in war crimes. And the consequences of Biden’s decision, if not soon reversed, will be the opposite of what he intends. The munitions cutoff helps Hamas. No Israeli government, even one led by someone more moderate than Benjamin Netanyahu, is going to leave Gaza with Hamas still in control of any part of the territory. If the Biden administration has ideas about how to do that without dislodging it from Rafah, we have yet to hear of them.
Persons: Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu Locations: United States, Israel, Rafah, Gaza
Opinion | A Thank-You Note to the Campus Protesters
  + stars: | 2024-05-07 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
Dear anti-Israel campus protesters:Though it may take a few years before you realize it, supporters of Israel like me have reasons to give thanks to militant anti-Zionists like you. Recently, a friend asked what I would have made of your protests if they had been less fervently one-sided. If, for instance, pro-Palestinian student groups at Harvard and Columbia hadn’t castigated Israel immediately following the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. What if you had avoided demonizing anyone who supports Israel’s right to exist — which includes a vast majority of Jews — as modern-day Nazis? And I would have had to fight harder to make my case that Israel must get rid of Hamas.
Persons: Columbia hadn’t, Israel, hadn’t, demonizing, undecideds Organizations: Harvard, Columbia, West Bank Locations: Israel, Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, Stanford, Gaza
Gail Collins: Bret, much serious stuff to talk about today, but I want to get my canine issues out of the way first. Kristi Noem of South Dakota is publishing a new memoir she presumably hoped would help her chances of being named as Donald Trump’s running mate. Gail: In it she brags about having killed her dog, Cricket, for a string of bad behavior. Bret: In the same memoir, Noem claims to have met Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, which never happened. Maybe she was confusing him with the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum?
Persons: Gail Collins, Bret, Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s, Bret Stephens, Trump, Seth Tupper, Gail, Noem, Kim Jong, Doug Burgum Organizations: Gov, Cricket, South Dakota Searchlight, North, Republican Locations: South Dakota, North Korean, North Dakota
Opinion | Sheryl Sandberg Screams Back at the Silence
  + stars: | 2024-04-30 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
There is a scene in “Screams Before Silence,” the harrowing documentary about the rape and mutilation of Israeli women on Oct. 7, that I can’t get out of my head. It’s an interview that the former Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, the documentary’s presenter, conducted with Ayelet Levy Sachar, the mother of 19-year-old Naama Levy, whose kidnapping that morning was filmed by Hamas. But then you just see it there.”To have a child seized, savaged and paraded this way goes beyond a parent’s worst nightmare. “You can believe that Gaza is happening because Israel has no choice; you can believe that Gaza is happening because Israel wants to kill babies. And you should also be able to hold the thought that sexual violence is unacceptable, no matter what.”
Persons: , It’s, Sheryl Sandberg, Ayelet Levy Sachar, Naama Levy, “ They’re, I’m, ” Levy Sachar, savaged, ” Sandberg, Organizations: Facebook, The Times Center Locations: Hamas’s, New York, Gaza, Israel
Gail Collins: Bret, I have a feeling we’re going to be spending a good amount of time talking about the adventures of Donald Trump. Bret: By “adventures,” you mean “affairs.”Gail: But just to start with something we’re in disagreement about …. Joe Biden has, in my opinion, been doing a great job building his re-election campaign. Or a border crisis that’s shifted from Texas to California and New York but hasn’t gone away. Or his repeated refusal to sit down for formal interviews with serious journalists — other, that is, than Howard Stern.
Persons: Gail Collins, Bret, Donald Trump, ” Gail, Joe Biden, He’s, Joe, Ron Burgundy, hasn’t, Howard Stern Organizations: Trump Locations: Washington, Texas, California, New York
Opinion | To Be (Visibly) Jewish in the Ivy League
  + stars: | 2024-04-23 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
Netanel Crispe, from Danby, Vt., is a 21-year-old junior studying American history at Yale. “I was wearing my black hat; I was very identifiably Jewish,” Crispe said. “Thank God, there was a small sphere at the end of the pole,” she told me. Yale and other universities have been sites of almost continual demonstrations since Hamas massacred and kidnapped Israelis on Oct. 7. That’s just fine, insofar as students have a right to express their views about the war in Gaza — whatever one thinks about those views.
Persons: Netanel, hasn’t, Sahar Tartak, ” Crispe, , ” Tartak, Organizations: Yale Locations: Danby , Vt, Yale, Gaza
I think the theme for last week was the return of adult supervision. And Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, authorized the police to arrest pro-Palestinian student protesters who had occupied part of the campus in violation of university policies. Gail Collins: Bret, as a former college sit-inner myself, back in days of yore, I have mixed feelings. Not saying President Shafik was wrong, just that I just can’t get into cheering administrators who try to solve nonviolent campus demonstrations by calling in the cops. If it were up to me, I’d sentence them to six months of hard academic time at the University of Chicago.
Persons: Bret Stephens, Gail, Mike Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gail Collins, Bret, Shafik, Israel, That’s, idealists Organizations: House, Columbia University, Palestinian, Columbia, University of Chicago Locations: yore
More than 300 drones and missiles launched from Iranian soil took aim at Israel on Saturday. The weekend attack is notable for two reasons: its directness and its ineffectuality. Iranian military commanders undoubtedly understood that most of their slow-moving drones, about 170 in all, would be shot down before reaching their targets. As a matter of self-defense, Israel has every moral and legal right to respond in kind — and then some. It is not enough for Israel to demonstrate its capacity for defense, as it did over the weekend.
Persons: Ali Khamenei, Israel Organizations: Israel Locations: Damascus, Islamic Republic, Israel, Iran, United States
Opinion | Netanyahu Must Go
  + stars: | 2024-04-09 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +2 min
Israel must destroy Hamas as a military and political force in the territory while minimizing harm to civilians. And for all of that to happen effectively, Benjamin Netanyahu must go. Why — to paraphrase Scarborough and his co-hosts — was Netanyahu asking Qatar to fund Hamas to the tune of hundreds of millions just weeks before the massacre? Why was the bulk of the Israeli military nowhere near Gaza in the first hours of the attack? When an Israeli minister is forced to humiliate himself on American TV because he can muster neither the sophistry nor the servility that a smoother answer would require, it’s a sign he’s in the wrong government.
Persons: Benjamin Netanyahu, Nir Barkat, Joe, , Joe Scarborough, Scarborough, , Netanyahu, Barkat Locations: Gaza, Israel, Lebanon’s, Damascus, Hamas’s, Syria, Qatar, Iran, Jerusalem
The economy added just over 300,000 new jobs last month, which gives Joe Biden something to brag about. 1 concern for voters, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal, and in one February poll 65 percent of Americans disapproved of Biden’s handling of the border. Voters are going to have to pay attention, and that’s going to give Biden the election. But you have more faith in the wisdom of the American people than I do. Mencken on the presidency: “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.
Persons: Bret Stephens, Gail, Joe Biden, Gail Collins, Biden, Bret, H.L . Mencken Organizations: Street Journal, Voters, H.L
Last week, Susanne DeWitt, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who later became a molecular biologist, spoke before the Berkeley, Calif., City Council to request a Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation. After taking note of a “horrendous surge in antisemitism,” she was then heckled and shouted down by protesters at the meeting when she mentioned the massacre and rapes in Israel of Oct. 7. At the same meeting, a woman testified that her 7-year-old Jewish son heard “a group of kids at his school say, ‘Jews are stupid.’” She, too, was heckled: “Zionists are stupider,” a protester said. At the same meeting, others yelled, “cowards, go chase the money, you money suckers” and “you are traitors to this country, you are spies for Israel.”Protest movements have an honorable place in American history. Not the white supremacists who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at their Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Persons: Susanne DeWitt, , Organizations: City Council Locations: Berkeley, Calif, Israel, Chicago, Charlottesville, Va
Gail Collins: Hey, Bret, we just hit April Fools’ Day. Lake isn’t even bothering to defend herself on the substance of the suit and has asked the court to move directly to the damages phase. I hope the court takes the Fake out of Lake with a whopping judgment in Richer’s favor. Current subject is the business dealings of Joe’s son Hunter, a road we’ve been down a trillion times before. Bret: Hey, think of all the fun we’ll have when Democrats return the favor by investigating Javanka, Don Jr. and Eric when Donald Trump is — gulp — back in office.
Persons: Gail Collins, Bret, Bret Stephens, Kari Lake, Kyrsten, Stephen Richer, Richer, isn’t, Richer’s, Gail, James Comer, who’s, Joe Biden, Joe’s, Hunter, Javanka, Don Jr, Eric, Donald Trump Organizations: Trump, U.S, Senate, Republican Locations: Arizona, Maricopa County
Opinion | Who Is Blowing Up Russia?
  + stars: | 2024-03-26 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
There are two plausible hypotheses regarding Friday’s terrorist attack at a concert hall outside Moscow, in which at least 139 people were killed. The first is that it was an inside job — orchestrated by Russian security services, or at least carried out with their foreknowledge. In closed societies, they’re a reasonable (if not always correct) way to understand political phenomena. In 1999, more than 300 Russians were killed and 1,700 injured in a series of apartment bombings for which authorities blamed Chechen terrorists. Initial tests of the powder found it contained the same explosive, hexogen, that had been used in other bombings.
Persons: , Vladimir Putin — Organizations: Federal Security Service Locations: Moscow, Russian, Ryazan
It goes without saying that we wish Catherine, Princess of Wales, health and strength in her battle with cancer. Other than that, I think the best we can do to respect her privacy is to say as little about it as possible. Gail Collins: Absolutely no reason to torment public figures in such dire circumstances — unless, of course, they’re running a country. Bret: Thomas Edsall had a great essay in The Times last week noting that the Democratic Party is losing support among nonwhite voters. Gail: A great essay indeed.
Persons: Bret Stephens, Gail, Catherine, Princess of, Gail Collins, Bret, Thomas Edsall, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, it’s Organizations: Democratic Party Locations: Princess of Wales, Times
Opinion | Israel Has No Choice but to Fight On
  + stars: | 2024-03-12 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: 1 min
On Saturday, President Biden warned that Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.” The Israeli prime minister replied the next day that Biden was “wrong.” The rift between the two leaders means that Israel risks losing its most important pillar of military and diplomatic support. I’ve argued that Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas as an effective fighting force. Thousands of Gazan civilians, many of them children, have now been killed, bombed in their homes or out of them. Now they face a humanitarian catastrophe in the form of medicine and food shortages, even starvation. But I blame Hamas, not Israel, for the devastation.
Persons: Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu’s, , I’ve Organizations: Hamas Locations: Gaza, Israel
I think it’s safe to say that Joe Biden’s confident performance at the State of the Union has put to rest any doubts that he’ll be the Democratic nominee, with Kamala Harris as his running mate. But the great thing about the speech, Bret, wasn’t that he changed people’s minds about who to vote for in November. Bret: He also did a very good job defining the stakes of the election. Will we support the free world against Vladimir Putin or abandon it to him? Also, I marveled at the many ways Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, managed to approximate the expressions of a constipated turtle.
Persons: Bret Stephens, Gail, Joe Biden’s, he’ll, Kamala Harris, Gail Collins, Bret, wasn’t, he’d, Vladimir Putin, Mike Johnson Organizations: State, Union, Democratic, Biden Locations: It’s
We asked 10 Times columnists and contributors to watch the State of the Union address on Thursday and rate President Biden’s performance. (A rating of one meant that the night was a disaster, 10 that it was a triumph.) “Where has this Joe Biden been hiding these past three years?” Bret Stephens asked. While I support most of President Biden’s positions, the delivery came across as an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. I wanted more calm and confidence to reinforce he is still up to the job.
Persons: Joe Biden, ” Bret Stephens, Michelle Goldberg, Joe, , Samuel Alito, Marguerite Dee, Biden’s, — Mike Wade Organizations: Republicans Locations: Tampa, Fla, Berlin, Md
Opinion | The New Rape Denialism
  + stars: | 2024-03-05 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel and filmed itself committing scores of human-rights atrocities. Some of the footage was later captured by the Israeli military and screened to hundreds of journalists, including me. The “pure, predatory sadism,” as Atlantic writer Graeme Wood described it, is bottomless. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first it’s worth looking at the forms this denialism takes. A third is to treat anything an Israeli says as inherently suspect.
Persons: Graeme Wood Organizations: United Locations: Israel, Atlantic, West, United Nations
Opinion | Trump Is the Leading Man
  + stars: | 2024-03-04 | by ( Gail Collins | Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
Gail Collins: So, Bret — are you gonna miss Mitch McConnell? Bret Stephens: I guess it all depends on who succeeds him. If it’s a fairly traditional Republican, like John Cornyn of Texas or John Thune of South Dakota, I don’t think it will make much of a difference. But lately, McConnell has certainly seemed more civilized than a lot of the other Republican leaders. Bret: A first — Bret is harder on Mitch than Gail is.
Persons: Gail Collins, Bret —, Mitch McConnell, Bret Stephens, John Cornyn of, John Thune of, Rick Scott, Nicholas II, Gail, Trump, McConnell —, Barack, Merrick Garland, McConnell, Bret, Trump’s, Gail :, who’s Organizations: Republican Locations: John Cornyn of Texas, John Thune of South Dakota
Opinion | Nikki Haley’s Last Ditch
  + stars: | 2024-02-27 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
to lie in the last Ditch; intimating, that he would dispute every Inch of Ground with the Enemy, and at last would die defending the Liberties of his Country.”And that’s how it seems we got the phrase “the last ditch.”Nikki Haley, too, is in her last ditch. As I write, it looks like Donald Trump will trounce her in the G.O.P.’s Michigan primary by an even wider margin than in his South Carolina victory on Saturday. The Koch network has withdrawn its financial support for her. Super Tuesday is next week, and chances are strong that Trump will sweep all 15 states in play, along with those he’s already won. Too bad only 27 percent of voters bother to participate in party primaries on average, according to a 2022 analysis, ceding the field to the most motivated partisans.
Persons: William of Orange, , , Daniel Defoe, ” Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Koch, he’s, Haley, she’s “, Joe Biden Organizations: Liberties, Trump Locations: Dutch Republic, , Michigan, South Carolina
Opinion | Trump Is in His Element
  + stars: | 2024-02-26 | by ( Gail Collins | Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +1 min
I know we’ll get around to talking about Donald Trump’s big South Carolina primary win, but first I want to pick your brain about Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. It isn’t happening till next week, but I’m guessing the White House speechwriters are working hard on it now. Any advice on what the president should say and how he should say it? Gail: Then at some point he’ll turn to foreign affairs. Biden’s already laced into that one once, but he was so … vigorous that I’m hoping for a repeat.
Persons: Bret Stephens, Gail, Donald Trump’s, Joe, Gail Collins, Bret, Will, Biden’s Organizations: Carolina, NATO Locations: Joe Biden’s State, Russia, United States
Opinion | How Biden Can Avenge Navalny’s Death
  + stars: | 2024-02-20 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com   time to read: +2 min
President Biden said last week that he was “looking at a whole number of options” to make good on his 2021 warning to Vladimir Putin that Russia would face “devastating” consequences if Aleksei Navalny were to die in prison. As several close Russia watchers told me, however, there’s much more to be done about the first. Browder is best known as the moving force behind the Magnitsky Acts, which put sanctions on Russian officials implicated in corruption and other abuses. And it’s been resisted by U.S. government officials who fear that it exceeds what American law allows and would encourage a flight from dollar assets. As for the flight-from-the-dollar argument, it might otherwise be persuasive if the need to save Ukraine and punish Russia weren’t more urgent.
Persons: Biden, Vladimir Putin, Aleksei Navalny, Putin, ” Bill Browder, Browder, it’s, Larry Tribe, Kaplan, Fink Organizations: Finances, Putin, U.S, Harvard, Heckler, Democracy Locations: Russia, Ukraine
Gail Collins: So Bret, Donald Trump gets a roughly $355 million fine for fibbing about his fortune. Bret Stephens: Gail, I would never want to stop you from chortling, but here goes: I think the case was ridiculous and the verdict outrageous. It lends credence to the Trumpian belief that the justice system is rigged, which will help him politically. Gail: I know you’re worried all this will make him look like a martyr to a whole lot of voters. But I can’t help thinking a string of 91 pending felony counts has to also look pretty darned messy.
Persons: Gail Collins, Bret, Donald Trump, Bret Stephens, Gail,
It was a no good, very bad week for the “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who happens to be the 46th president. We’re talking, of course, about the report a Justice Department special counsel filed on President Biden’s handling of classified material — the same kind of material Donald Trump left piled around the toilet. Bret: I used to joke that Trump’s behavior gave new meaning to the term “anal retentive.” Maybe we can start describing Biden as mnemonically challenged. Gail: While Trump’s behavior with classified documents was inexcusable, Biden’s was a lot less serious — inadvertently leaving stuff in the garage. But the counsel who cleared Biden of any serious misbehavior — a Republican — did seem to feel compelled to add that Biden’s excuse was “diminished faculties in advancing age.”
Persons: Bret Stephens, Gail, Gail Collins, gosh, Bret, We’re, Biden’s, Donald Trump, Biden, mnemonically, , Republican —, Organizations: Republican
Gail Collins: So, Bret — more than 350,000 new jobs in January without an inflation surge! I guess that means the Biden plan is really working out, hehehehe. First, prices for groceries are still too damn high — up 25 percent in the last four years, according to The Washington Post. That practically amounts to a campaign ad for Donald Trump every time people are at checkout. Gail: Well, it’s a pretty good sign for Biden that an economic conservative like you so desperately wants him to win.
Persons: Gail Collins, Bret —, Biden, Bret Stephens, Donald Trump, Peter Coy, Joe, Gail Organizations: The Washington
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