Nicholas Kristof’s latest New York Times column takes as its point of departure three “myths”:

• The first myth is that in the conflict in the Middle East there is right on one side and wrong on the other (even if people disagree about which is which).
• The second myth is that Palestinians can be put off indefinitely, strung along by Israel, the United States and other countries.
• The third myth is found on both sides of the conflict and is approximately: It’s too bad we have to engage in this bloodshed, but the people on the other side understand only violence.

I’m afraid I disagree with his underlying premise:

Israelis deserve their country, forged by refugees in the shadow of the Holocaust, and they have built a high-tech economy that largely empowers women and respects gay people, while giving its Palestinian citizens more rights than most Arab nations give their citizens.

I don’t believe that such a right exists for the Israelis, the Palestinians, or anybody else. What has actually happened in the real world is that people have banded together and seized countries for themselves by force of arms and they keep them in the same way. Example: the United States. We’re not alone. It pertains to Germany, France, Italy, China, and every other country of which I’m aware. It’s harsh but it’s real.

I’m not claiming that might makes right. No. My point is that right has nothing to do with it. It’s a cold, cruel world.

Indeed, that’s what’s going on right now. Hamas is trying to seize control of a country, proclaiming it theirs by right. The Israelis disagree. The ire is an outcome of the cowardly way in which Hamas is prosecuting its claim.

Mr. Kristof does point out some interesting things:

A great majority of those killed have been women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, and one gauge of the ferocity and indiscriminate nature of some airstrikes is that more than 100 United Nations staffers have been killed, which the U.N. says is more than in any conflict since its founding.

Why does he conclude from the large number of UN staffers killed that Israel is bombing indiscriminately? I can think of at least two other explanations:

• there is substantial overlap between Hamas and UN staffers
• Hamas is exploiting UN staffers as “human shields”

of which I prefer the second to either Mr. Kristof’s or my first explanation. Why does he believe what he does? He does not explore that in the column. Indeed, I think pretty much the opposite. I think the preponderance of the evidence suggests the Israelis are showing substantial discrimination under very difficult circumstances.

Here’s another interesting observation he makes:

Israel has a right to feel anxious in any case, but I suspect that the best way to ensure its security may be not to defer Palestinian aspirations but to honor them with a two-state solution. This is not just a concession to Arabs but a pragmatic acknowledgment of Israel’s own interests — and the world’s.

I agree with that but I probably think the outcome would be different from that which Mr. Kristof apparently does. I think that Israel should grant the West Bank and Gaza statehood and, when Israel inevitably is attacked from the newly-formed country, they should seize a buffer and annex it. Lather, rinse, repeat. As long as enough Palestinians are willing to take Hamas’s route, a two state solution would doom the Palestinian cause rather than being their salvation.

Which brings us to Mr. Kristof’s third myth. Is he really arguing that because 100% of Germans did not support Hitler during World War II, we should not have waged war against Germany? Or that because 100% of Japanese were not militarists we should not have made war against Japan?

The sad reality is that Hamas has something between 40% and 60% support among Palestinians. The exact number does not matter. It’s a large percentage—more than were Nazis in Germany or Communists in the Soviet Union.

Under the circumstances, sad as it is to say, if Israel wants to preserve the country Mr. Kristof says it has a right to, they’re going to kill a lot of Palestinians. Mr. Kristof concludes with an appeal to emotion:

These are people like Mohammed Alshannat, a doctoral student in Gaza, who has been sending desperate messages to friends who shared them with me; he agreed to allow me to publish them as a glimpse into Gazan life.

“There was heavy bombing in our area,” he wrote in English in one message. “We run for our lives and I lost two of my children in the dark. Me and my wife stayed all night searching for them amidst hundreds of airstrikes. We miraculously survived an airstrike and found them fainted in the morning. Please pray for us. The situation is beyond description.”

“I see death a hundred times a day,” he wrote another time. “We defecate in the open and my children defecate on themselves and there is no water to clean them.”

If he survives the war, what will we Americans say to him and his children? How will we explain that we supplied bombs for this war, that we were complicit in his family’s terror and degradation?

My heart doesn’t just bleed for Israelis. It bleeds for Israelis and Palestinians and anyone else injured in war. I hate war and I believe we should only engage in war as a last resort.

It appears to be a last resort for the Israelis but it’s not for us and we should avoid making it into our war.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal take note of the pushback that President Biden is receiving from the federal bureaucracy on his policy with respect to Israel. The short version is that he has received letters from the National Security Council, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of State demanding he call for an “immediate ceasefire” and “de-escalation”. The number of signatories in total to these letters amount to something like 2,000 appointees and staff.

It should be noted that any ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas works to Hamas’s benefit. It’s an opportunity to regroup and reload. One wonders how many of those signatories are materially in support of Hamas. It’s quite fashionable in some circles.

The editors remark:

If democracy means anything, perhaps they should lose their jobs or, better yet, they should resign honorably if they can no longer support the boss’s agenda. The malcontents are a sliver of the federal workforce. Yet the job of the executive branch is to implement a President’s policies, not run a pressure campaign to change them via anonymous letters and leaks.

Unhappiness at Mr. Biden’s Israel policy is also circulating at the State Department in dissent cables. One difference is that this is a normal channel for internal criticisms, created amid the Vietnam War and used in recent years to raise alarms about Mr. Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. The signatories on the State Department cables aren’t public knowledge, but they aren’t anonymous.

Part of the problem here is that civil-service protections are so extensive that it is hard to discipline much less fire a dissenting career bureaucrat. This gives them a certain impunity when they want to agitate against an elected President’s policy.

But this isn’t how democratic government is supposed to work. Political appointees and bureaucrats are free to argue up the chain of command for a different course of action. If they don’t succeed, they can continue to do their jobs, or else they can resign. But it’s a dereliction of duty for federal workers to spend their time trying to stymie the policy of elected officials.

which you may notice is similar to things I’ve been saying here for years. It has been over a century since we’ve had major civil service reform. A century ago the federal bureaucracy was a fraction of the size of the present one. The idea behind the Civil Service Act was to create a more competent and conscientious federal workforce not a permanent and unassailable “shadow government”. Regardless of what they may believe it is the job of the federal bureaucracy to implement policy not to formulate it. They may contribute to that formulation but determining what is or is not policy is the president’s job not theirs.

Today is the 100th anniversary of my mother’s birth. Or the 101st or 102nd, depending on which of her birth certificates you believe—she had three, always on November 15 but each with a different year. She doesn’t appear in the 1920 census so that’s evidence she wasn’t older than that..

She came by having a, shall we say, somewhat flexible age honestly. Both her father and her paternal grandmother fibbed about their ages. My grandfather shaved as much as 20 years from his actual age. His mother had the extraordinary quality of only aging nine years for each ten years that passed. When she was 30 and claimed to be 29 was one thing but being 80 and claiming to be 74 must have strained credulity.

My mom was without question one of the finest, wisest, most remarkable people I have ever known. She got her first paycheck as an infant, performing on stage in vaudeville. At 85 she could still do her routine, singing the song she sang—”Dream Daddy”. Since “Dream Daddy” came out in 1923, it gives some credence to the birth certificate with her year of birth 1921.

After her vaudeville days, she bounced from one relative to another until her mom or dad could take her, not feeling really welcome anywhere. It must have been an insecure childhood but somehow she triumphed over it to become an extremely confident adult.

Happy Birthday, Mama! I can’t tell you how much I miss you.

At the Atlantic, after a lengthy reminiscence, Sec. Hillary Rodham Clinton gives her views on Hamas:

For me, Israel and Gaza are not just names on a map. I have grieved with Israeli families whose loved ones were abducted or killed in terrorist attacks. I have held the hands of the wounded in their hospital beds. In Jerusalem, I visited a bombed-out pizzeria and will never forget it.

I have also been to Gaza. I have talked with Palestinians who have suffered greatly from the conflicts of the past decades and dream of peace and a state of their own. Before Hamas seized power, I met women using microloans from the United States to start new businesses and become breadwinners for their families, including a dressmaker who—because she was finally able to buy a sewing machine—could send her two daughters to school. My decades of experience in the region taught me that Palestinian and Israeli parents may say different prayers at worship but they share the same hopes for their kids—just like Americans, just like parents everywhere.

That is why I am convinced Hamas must go. On October 7, these terrorists killed babies, raped women, and kidnapped innocent civilians. They continue to hold more than 200 hostages. They have proved again and again that they will not abide by cease-fires, will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.

Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people. Hamas deliberately places military installations in and below hospitals and refugee camps because it is trying to maximize, not minimize, the impact on Palestinian civilians for its own propaganda purposes. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is heartbreaking—and every death means more blood on Hamas’s hands.

So the Biden administration is correct not to seek a full cease-fire at this moment, which would give Hamas a chance to re-arm and perpetuate the cycle of violence. Hamas would claim that it had won and it would remain a key part of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance.

Note that what is being demanded is a hudna. In Islamist doctrine a hudna is treated as an opportunity for regrounping or refortifying. She concludes:

Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead. At home, it will have to reaffirm Israeli democracy after a tumultuous period. In Gaza, it should resist the urge to reoccupy the territory after the war, accept an internationally mandated interim administration for governing the Strip, and support regional efforts to reform and revive the Palestinian Authority so it has the credibility and the means to reassume control of Gaza. In the West Bank, it must clamp down on the violence perpetrated by extremist Israeli settlers and stop building new settlements that make it harder to imagine a future Palestinian state. Ultimately, the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a secure, democratic, Jewish state is by achieving two states for two peoples. And in the region, Israel should resume serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia and others to normalize relations and build a broad coalition to counter Iran.

For now, Israel should focus on freeing the hostages, increasing humanitarian aid, protecting civilians, and ensuring that Hamas terrorists can no longer murder families, abduct children, exploit civilians as human shields, or start new wars. But when the guns fall silent, the hard work of peace building must begin. There is no other choice.

If you do not will the means, you cannot will the ends. What means will be required for Hamas “to go”? Most sources claim that Hamas has between 30,000 and 40,000 fighters in Gaza and is supported by a substantial percentage of Gazans—45% or even 50% by some accounts. How many Palestinians must die to accomplish the objective of Hamas “going”? Make no mistake—Hamas sees dead Palestinians as an accomplishment, a means to their ends.

How will Americans feel about our support for Israel when the number of dead exceeds 50,000? 100,000?

An action that is presently going on in Israel’s war with Hamas is an excellent illustration of the Clausewitzian concept of the “fog of war” or uncertainty in war. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is presently assaulting the Al Shifa hospital in the north of Gaza. One portrayal of the events (Human Rights Watch, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera, etc.) is that the Israelis are committing war crimes by the attack. The other (Foundation for Defense of Democracies, U. S. intelligence, the Times of Israel, the Wall Street Journal, etc.) say that Hamas is using the hospital as a base of operations and weapons storage facility and, from some sources, that the IDF is taking fire from the hospital and actively preventing patients and staff from evacuating the hospital.

Which is true? Either? Neither? Both? I have no idea. The only observations I can make are:

• Hamas has a documented history of doing precisely what has been alleged of their use of the hospital
• The IDF does not appear to be leveling the hospital
• If, for example, Hamas’s main command and control facility is in or underneath the hospital, it is a completely legitimate target, especially if care is taken to avoid killing or injuring civilians
• You might not know that from reading many major media outlets

Reuters
Al Jazeera
Times of Israel
Wall Street Journal

Two concluding points. Hamas fighters are primarily irregulars. As such they are not protected under the laws of war. And Israel is fighting on two fronts. It is fighting a pragmatic war and an information war. It appears to be doing well on their pragmatic war but may be losing their information war. They may have decided that they don’t care. That would be on-brand.

The editors of the Chicago Tribune make a plea for reducing the federal deficit:

The yearly deficit has topped $1 trillion — once a nearly unimaginable figure — now for several years running. It was $1.7 trillion in the fiscal year just concluded, and the financial world barely cocked an eyebrow. The federal government has no problem floating debt; the dollar remains strong.

This won’t last. Even America, as economically powerful as it is, can’t run on a credit card forever.

and

Many won’t remember, but the 1980s featured several deficit-reduction efforts involving budget hawks from both parties. There was 1985′s Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law, which sought to tamp down the large deficits during the Reagan era. That didn’t work, but Clinton-era tax increases combined with the economic boom of the 1990s produced budget surpluses.

Since the dawn of the 21st century, however, a combination of ill-advised tax cuts, wars and economic crises and pandering to big-spending progressive agendas have brought deficit spending back with a vengeance. The bipartisan rump groups of the ‘80s weren’t particularly successful, but that doesn’t mean such an effort couldn’t be now.

As was the case nearly four decades ago, lawmakers from both parties have to buy into the project in order for it to have any chance to succeed. Likewise, the president has to provide vocal support, spending political capital to give it momentum.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, federal insurance programs whose spending is on autopilot, will have to be part of any cuts, since together they account for 45% of federal outlays. Those safety-net programs have proven to be political “third rails,” so any trims to them likely would have to be needs-based.

Remarks like these always remind me of Augustine of Hippo’s prayer: “Oh Lord, give me chastity, but do not give it yet.”

I opposed the Bush tax cuts. I opposed the Trump tax cuts (except for the cut in the corporate income tax which was a necessity). I support decreases in federal spending including the Department of Defense but I also support reducing its mission commensurately.

I do not think we’re going to reduce the deficit while Republicans still believe that all tax cuts pay for themselves and Democrats believe that deficit spending always stimulates the economy. I do not think we’re going to reduce the deficit in an election year.

I think we should reduce the deficit and this graphic from the Federal Reserve illustrates why:

The higher the debt grows the more difficult it will be for growth to offset it..

I just don’t think we’ll do it yet.

At RealPolitics they excerpt a snippet from an interview of David Sacks in The Hill’s podcast, that may deserve some consideration:

So what you see now is there is no agreement within even the Ukrainian senior leadership, between Zelnsky and his advisors, and between Zelensky and his top general, about what is happening in the war.

I think now the truth has broken out, which is that Ukraine is not winning this war, the counteroffensive has been a failure, and if they don’t start doing something different, they’re headed for disaster.

BRIAHNA JOY GRAY: Why do you think we’re getting this news now, that we’re getting the Time Magazine piece now? Certainly, circumstances on the ground haven’t been tony for Ukraine for a very long time, if ever. Do you think this is really about the United States making a choice about which of two ongoing wars it wants to throw its resources behind, and this is all being provoked by the fighting in Gaza? Or do you think it is being driven by the frustration with people inside his own regime, like this general who has been speaking out? To what do you attribute the change in tenor?

DAVID SACKS: I think that if Zelensky continues with this strategy of insisting on advances, there is a great fear on the part of the administration and within his own general corps that Ukraine will collapse.

Is he right? Is Ukraine on the verge of collapse?

Frankly, I doubt it and I suspect Mr. Sacks is misreading Ukrainian politics.

In his most recent New York Times column Tom Friedman says that it’s time for President Biden to promote a peace plan in the Israel-Hamas conflict and that it should be the plan that his predecessor called for in 2020:

Biden needs to say: “Israel, we are covering your flank militarily with our two aircraft carriers, financially with $14 billion in aid, and diplomatically at the U.N. The price for that is your acceptance of a peace framework based on two states for two indigenous peoples in Gaza, the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel. This plan is based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, which was also the cornerstone for negotiations in the peace plan put forward by President Trump in 2020.

“Bibi, do you remember what you said about that Trump plan that gave Palestinians about 70 percent of the West Bank for a state, plus an expanded Gaza Strip and a capital in the area of Jerusalem?” Biden could add. “Here’s the Associated Press story of Jan. 28, 2020, to remind you: ‘Netanyahu called it a ‘‘historic breakthrough’’ equal in significance to the country’s declaration of independence in 1948.’”

The Palestinian Authority foolishly rejected the Trump plan outright, instead of asking to use it as a starting point. This is a chance to make up for that mistake — or be exposed as unserious.

There are times when I wonder what opinion writers are smoking and this may be one of them. Several questions come to mind:

1. Does Mr. Friedman remember Harry Truman’s remark from back in 1952? “If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat.” In that light does he really think that Mr. Biden would advocate a plan proposed by Donald Trump?
2. Doesn’t that fly in the face of what President Biden has been saying since the beginning of the conflict?
3. Is this really the time to promote a peace plan? Specifically, is calling for a peace plan when the fate of the hostages Hamas seized on October 7 is still up in the air?
4. Would either the Israelis or the Palestinians support such a plan? There’s reason to believe that both groups see a two state solution as unworkable.
5. What good would a two state solution do if significant minorities in both camps are willing to oppose the other violently?

and that’s just off the top of my head.

The editors of the Washington Post exhort Senate Democrats to accept House Speaker Johnson’s proposal for preventing a federal government partial shutdown:

There’s much to dislike about Mr. Johnson’s plan for navigating the House Republicans’ internal divisions while preventing a shutdown, including its ungainly nickname, “a laddered continuing resolution.” As the moniker suggests, the plan would pass one short-term package to fund the military and veterans programs, agriculture and food agencies, and the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development until Jan. 19 and another to fund everything else until Feb. 2.

This sets up an ugly spending fight early next year, and it offers no additional aid for Israel and Ukraine — which the Biden administration urgently wants. Gimmicky as it is, though, Mr. Johnson’s proposed two-step increasingly looks like the best of many terrible options. Passing something like it averts a crisis and keeps the government funded at current levels through the holidays. It would also give the new speaker a very small victory as he gears up for tougher fights ahead. Getting the big funding bill done (for now) would let Congress use the rest of the year to focus on Israel and Ukraine. In short, it buys time for veteran lawmakers to try to find a way forward between two groups: far-right House Republicans, who say they will vote only for budget bills that slash domestic programs by at least 8 percent, and pretty much everyone else, who prefer to stick with the deal President Biden and Mr. McCarthy made in May. That agreement would keep spending essentially unchanged in 2024.

Senate Democrats are wise to express “openness” to this House GOP idea. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he supports it. House Democrats and the White House, at least behind closed doors, should do the same.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues and the war between Israel and Hamas intensifies, the world needs U.S. leadership. Shutting down the government, even briefly, would create a distraction for the Biden administration and undercut this nation’s credibility. On top of that, the U.S. creditworthiness is at stake. All three of the top credit rating agencies have now cited U.S. political dysfunction — including repeated shutdowns or near-shutdowns — as a reason to think twice about the nation’s future ability to manage its debts. The last near-shutdown, in September, triggered higher borrowing costs for weeks. If Republicans truly want to cut costs, they could start by avoiding these crises.

The passage I would like to focus on is the one I’ve highlighted. Is that actually true? Can you provide an example since 1995 in which U. S. leadership was a critical factor in preserving justice or maintaining the peace? I can’t come up with one. I would like to think of the United States as a force for good in the world but, frankly, I don’t think that’s been the case for a while.

That’s not a rhetorical question. I would really like to be proved wrong.