Credit Where It’s Due: President Trump

The convoy of released Israeli hostages
heads toward Jerusalem

To say that Curmie has been unimpressed with the Trump presidency is to err more on the side of understatement than of hyperbole.  47 has proven to be even worse than 45.  With the exception of a more robust stock market (where most of Curmie’s retirement nest egg resides) than was expected after the various silly tariffs were applied, removed, and re-applied willy-willy, Curmie can’t think of a single thing this administration has done that benefits the population at large.

There’s the authoritarianism; the reverse Robin Hood economic policies; the assaults on the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, and 14^th Amendments; the appointments of incompetent (we hope they’re only that) loyalists to head government agencies; the multiple violations of US and international law; and of course the delirious ramblings of a POTUS who now claims that President Biden (who wasn’t in office yet) ordered 274 FBI agents to infiltrate the crowd on January 6.

Trump’s non-stop stream of commentary generally comes in one of three flavors: dementia, narcissism, and lies.  The idea that he would be telling the truth about anything he claimed to have accomplished was contrary to all expectations.  Curmie explicitly doubted Dear Leader’s claim that he had negotiated an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would lead to the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. 

But whether the appropriate analog is the boy who cried wolf or a stopped clock (Curmie leans towards the former), that boast turns out to have been true, as all living hostages have been released (Curmie wasn’t going to write about this until it actually happened), and there’s a plan in place to return the remains of those who perished in captivity.

This is all good news, of course, and President Trump deserves a healthy share of the credit, not least for convincing Hamas that he was sufficiently personally invested in the deal that he would be willing and able to force Prime Minister Netanyahu to adhere to his promises.  That’s a substantial risk for Hamas, especially since only a few weeks ago Trump was talking about pretty much annihilating the West Bank and rebuilding it as a high-end resort destination.

Of course, two things should be noted.  First, whereas Curmie meant (and still means) what he said in that earlier post linked above, that if Trump could “indeed get buy-in from both Likud and Hamas, that would be a major achievement,” what has happened today is little more than a cease-fire and a prisoner exchange, with vague promises about the future that deliberately avoid the thorniest issues—a two-state solution, for example.  There will be pressure for Hamas to disarm and perhaps even to relinquish control in Gaza.  The extent to which Hamas will be receptive to those demands remains to be seen.  There is, to be sure, a long and difficult road ahead.

And let Curmie emphasize the notion of prisoner exchange: as part of the agreement, Israel released nearly 2000 (!) Palestinians rounded up in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of whom were held without trial.  (That sounds to Curmie rather like being a hostage.)  One of those released, Kamal Abu Shanab, a member of Fatah (N.B., not Hamas), claims he underwent an “indescribable journey of suffering — hunger, unfair treatment, oppression, torture and curses — more than anything you could imagine,” and that he lost 139 pounds while in captivity.  Curmie isn’t naïve enough to believe everything he’s told, but he’s also not ready to dismiss those claims out of hand.  More to the point, Curmie was blissfully unaware of the sheer number of such detainees; perhaps you were, too, Gentle Reader.  It certainly says something about American journalism that we didn’t hear more about this part of the equation.

The other point to be made here is that President Trump was not alone in bringing about this agreement.  Leaders from Norway, Italy, Egypt, Türkiye, and Qatar were certainly involved; one suspects that others were, as well.  Nor should we forget that whereas recent events represent significant progress, the release of 20 living Israeli hostages pales in comparison to the vastly greater number released in deals brokered by President Biden and others.  This is the final but not largest chapter of this part of the tale.

Further pressure was no doubt applied by the flotilla of relief vessels which attempted to run the Israeli blockage and deliver food and medicine to Gaza.  The fact that Greta Thunberg was one of those detained (and, she says, abused) by Israeli forces moved the story into higher priority for the international press.

The prospects aren’t great for a lasting settlement.  There is too much animosity, too much destruction, too much history, to be overly optimistic.  More significantly, the remaining issues—the political future of the West Bank, the degree to which Hamas disarms, deciding who bears the cost of rebuilding Gaza into a habitable locale—are even more daunting than achieving what has come to pass in the last few days.

But there is, at least and at last, a little hope.  The resolve of all concerned will be tested, and to say there are a lot of bumps in the road ahead is self-evident.  But we’re in a better place than we were a fortnight ago, and—against Curmie’s expectations—Donald Trump is a major reason, if not the major reason, why that’s true.  If he’d stop whining about how he deserves a Nobel Prize for largely illusory accomplishments, he might even deserve one for an actual success. 

He’s still an awful President, but credit where it’s due.

The Other UN Story

 

The chances are, Gentle Reader, that you’re well aware of the recent visit of President Trump to the United Nations.  You’ve read about his whining about the escalator, the teleprompter, and the sound system (“triple sabotage”), and about his speech, which was rambling, narcissistic, xenophobic, condescending, and mendacious—exactly as expected, in other words.  Of course, the UN says that Trump staffers were responsible for both l’affaire d’escalator mécanique and for the teleprompter problem.  Curmie doesn’t necessarily believe them, but when the choice is between someone you’re not sure about and someone any sane person would actively distrust…

But that’s not the UN story Curmie wants to talk about.  Rather, it’s about the walkout, pictured above, prior to a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  There’s more coverage of the imaginary slights to Trump, or rather his obsession with them, than about what should have been the top UN-related story of the week.  As noted above, Trump neither said nor did anything unexpected.  Neither did Netanyahu, whose fiery speech dismissed accusations of genocide in Gaza; condemned the recent recognition of a Palestinian state by nations like the UK, Canada, and Australia; and promised to “finish the job” of eliminating Hamas.

The suggestion in a New York Times article that what Netanyahu didn’t say—there was no mention of annexing the West Bank, for example—may be the true story here is intriguing, especially in light of the peace proposal drafted by the Trump administration.  Curmie is anything but a fan of 47, but if he can indeed get buy-in from both Likud and Hamas, that would be a major achievement.  This will, of course, be believed when seen, and past experience suggests that Trump is seeking a distraction from the Epstein files touting an agreement negotiated with only one side, and to which the other side has precisely zero chance of agreeing.

This essay isn’t about what Netanyahu said or didn’t say, however.  It’s about that walkout.  The first thing to notice is that there was no similar display two days earlier when Donald Trump addressed the delegates.  Trump, after all, is a primary reason, if not the primary reason, that Netanyahu can behave the way he does.  Trump has also interfered in the domestic affairs of other nations (Brazil, Argentina…); ordered the killing of the crew of a Venezuelan fishing boat in international waters because of mere suspicion that it might have been carrying drugs; threatened to annex Greenland (from an ally!) and Canada (!); made a sport of insulting foreign leaders (e.g., Zelenskyy) and reneged on promises made in the name of this country; and, since neither Congress nor SCOTUS are interested in doing their jobs, single-handedly enacted and retracted tariffs with less self-control than a two-year-old on a sugar high.

Even if you take issue with one or more of the items in the last paragraph, Gentle Reader, you must grant that there are a fair number of UN delegates who would rather be doing virtually anything else than listen to Trump ramble incoherently for an hour.  But there they sat, or at least we saw no news stories to the contrary, and one suspects that we would have.  So, why did they stay?  Out of respect?  Fear?  Sense of responsibility?  Masochism?  Curmie declines to speculate further.  But it does throw some light on the motivation for the walkout before Netanyahu’s speech.

Let us take as given that the situation in the Middle East, especially as regards Palestine, is complex and contradictory, and that one’s attitude towards that part of the world is likely to tell us at least as much about the spectator as about the spectated.  The Hamas attack just short of two years ago was horrific, and the refusal to release the remaining hostages is unconscionable.  Israel’s response is nevertheless disproportionate, and the only question is whether intentionally starving innocent children is nonetheless ethical, given that there are different rules at play in war than in peace.

Curmie first wrote about the area on his old blog (yes, on LiveJournal) in the immediate aftermath of Hamas winning the election in Palestine over 19 years ago.  He described the moment as “it's put up or shut up time for them, unless they are truly stupid enough to try to subvert the democratic movement that brought them to power.”  Alas, they did prove to be that stupid, although as Curmie wrote in a 2010 piece on attempts by relief organizations to run an Israeli blockade and deliver food, medicine, and other items to Gaza, Curmie had “overlooked the possibility of an Israeli initiative which would allow Hamas to pass the blame—legitimately, or with at least a claim to legitimacy—to the very government they so vehemently oppose.”

If Curmie had to pick his favorite essay on Palestine, it would be this one from 2014, invoking the story of the six blind men and the elephant.  In the fable, each of the blind men engages with a different part of the pachyderm, declaring with certainty that he has encountered a rope (the tail), a pillar (a leg), a solid pipe (a tusk) and so on.  Notice that each of them is completely honest and fundamentally logical in his assessment, which, of course, is at best incomplete.

Curmie wrote:

Curmie has three real-life Jewish friends (at least two of whom have commented on the CC Facebook page) who have threatened to unfriend anyone who publicly supports Hamas. Curmie also has friends, especially in the UK and Ireland, who are not only supporting but organizing boycotts of Israeli goods. None of these folks are bad people, or even particularly narrow-minded. They are just grabbing a tail and can’t imagine how someone could possibly describe the elephant as being wall-like.

Moreover, not only can good, compassionate, people disagree about how to proceed, but we must reject false dichotomies.  As Curmie has mentioned several times (here and here, for example) it is perfectly possible to support humanitarian aid in Gaza for suffering people without supporting Hamas.  It is possible to argue against the Israeli government without being antisemitic, just as it is possible to condemn the policies of Kamala Harris without being sexist or racist. 

It is also possible, without sanctioning a governmental policy that could legitimately be described as a war crime, to understand the disquiet, even thousands of miles away from the Middle East, of American (British, French, etc.) Jews, who not without reason regard the October 7 attack of two years ago as a symptom of a global assault on their culture that has been going on for millennia. 

All of the above is a long-winded introduction to a basic point.  The way out of this morass is through argumentation, which is, of course, the very purpose of the UN to begin with: better a war of words than a war of missiles.  A week and a half ago, Curmie wrote about the attempt by a collection of student groups to disinvite an Israeli actor/director who was scheduled to give a lecture at Michigan State University: “In particular, students’ unwillingness to even listen to opposing viewpoints is deeply disturbing.”

But those are college kids.  Curmie spent half a century in which the majority of the people with whom he came in contact were post-adolescents.  Those folks are trying to find their way in a world they’re only beginning to understand.  They’re exposed to people and ideas the like of which they’ve never encountered before.  It’s unfortunate, even “disturbing,” that they are so tempted to exclude The Other, but openness to the hitherto unknown, at least to the point of allowing alternate points of view to be expressed, is part of the maturing process, and is, in Curmie’s opinion, one of the principal benefits of college. 

The delegates who so ostentatiously walked out before Netanyahu’s speech aren’t college kids.  They’re adults, and representatives of their nations.  It might not be asking too much to expect them to act like it.  Curmie wouldn’t walk across the street to hear Benjamin Netanyahu speak, but that isn’t Curmie’s damned job.  It is theirs.  Their entire raison d’être is to listen to someone with whom they disagree, search for points of accord, and try to make the world a better place for everyone.

They couldn’t be bothered, opting instead for what they undoubtedly believed was virtue-signaling but was really simply an abdication of responsibility.  But, just as that law student at Cal-Berkeley back in the spring of ’24 did her cause more harm than good by being an entitled ass, so did these yahoos hurt their cause by seeking attention rather than solutions.

As noted above, disagreeing with the Israeli government doesn’t mean you’re antisemitic.  But if you claim to be a diplomat, refusing to listen to the Israeli PM when you endured a harangue by Donald Trump pretty much means that you are.  

 

Hypersensitivity, But the Right Result at Michigan State

Roy Horovitz

You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, but Curmie’s best guess is that this particular attempted suppression of free speech on a university campus comes from the left, as the right-wingers who were chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville a few years ago are now chest-thumping supporters of Israel, up to the point of branding criticism of the Netanyahu regime or the Israeli military as anti-Semitic and demanding punitive action against those who disagree.

The good news is that the scheduled lecture, “Welcome to Theaterland: The Theatrical Scene in Israel Today with Roy Horovitz” at Michigan State University went ahead as scheduled on September 12.  (You can read a little about Horovitz and the topic of his lecture here.)  Apparently, the fact that Horovitz is Israeli was enough to try to silence him (well, sort of…), however, as there was a bill passed overwhelmingly (!) by the General Assembly of the Associated Students of Michigan State University (ASMSU) demanding its cancellation. 

Of course, the ASMSU had no authority to prevent the presentation, and they knew it.  They didn’t even go public with their proclamation until the day of the event (and it received no press coverage beyond the campus, at least that Curmie can find, until several days after the speech went forward).  This would seem to be the proverbial tempest in a teapot, except…

No one would deny that the situation in Gaza is both complex and disquieting.  Curmie has made several attempts to make sense of it all, especially here, here, and here.  Emotions are high on both sides, and not without reason.  Curmie struggles to find anything positive to say about either Hamas or Likud.  But the barbarity inflicted on an overwhelming innocent Palestinian population is indeed outrageous.  To that extent, ASMSU has something of a point.

But, Gentle Reader, you will note that there are two qualifiers in the previous sentence: “to that extent” and “something.”  Taken as a whole, the bill is problematic in the extreme. 

First off, it assumes that inviting a guest speaker who happens to be Israeli is somehow “harmful to Palestinian, Arab, and allied students and is ignorant to the current global context.”  “Harmful”?  Really?  How?  Even if Horovitz was taking a stance on the situation in Gaza, which he wasn’t, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone with a modicum of maturity could feel threatened, let alone harmed.  And to suggest that literally anyone in a position to invite speakers to a university would be ignorant of the context is absurd.

The ASMSU claims that they “obviously believe in freedom of speech”… well, except, you know, Gentle Reader, when they don’t.  But their real issue is that “the university... has adopted a stance of neutrality on the issue.”  Exactly which issue that is—the situation in Gaza or the decision to invite Horovitz—in unclear from the reporting.  Either way, the MSU administration got it right.  Miracles do happen.

Moreover, the principal argument against Horovitz’s appearance is that he is “IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] personnel.”  Seriously?  First, he’s former IDF.  More significantly, with very rare exceptions under extraordinary circumstances, literally every Israeli adult has served in the IDF, willingly or otherwise.  Curmie quotes Beloved Spouse: “who doesn’t know that?” 

You don’t believe in free speech if you don’t think it applies to those whose ideas you cannot support, or even if you find them offensive or “hateful.” (Donald Trump and Pam Bondi, please take note).  If you don’t think Mr. Horovitz should appear on your campus, you have a number of options, the foremost being: don’t go.  There are several means of protest, too, because your speech is as protected as his is.  But you look silly, and indeed hurt your own cause, if you want to deny him the opportunity to speak and your primary objection is that he once (perhaps against his will) was a member of a military outfit that subsequently engaged in some pretty questionable acts.  It’s rather like cancelling a WWII vet because of My Lai or Abu Ghraib.

The bill, in other words, is a silly amalgam of paranoia, petulance, and virtue signaling.  Of course, if the ASMSU statement was a little… erm… over the top, the response from a coalition of campus Jewish organizations is not above criticism.  Yes, they’re right on the basic issue, that the “legislation directly violates the purpose of our student government which should represent all students and foster an open exchange of ideas.”  But it’s a stretch to suggest that the “safety and belonging of Jewish students on campus.”  Again: “safety”?  The reason to oppose this bill is that it’s stupid, not that it’s in any way threatening.

In brief, then, words like “harmful” and “safety” overstate the case on both sides… or at least Curmie hopes so.  If encountering a perspective other than one’s own causes damage beyond mild perturbance, then the fragmentation of society into rigidly defined camps borders on the inevitable.  Curmie may have criticized some aspects of FIRE’s recently-released report on free speech on university campuses, but that doesn’t mean that the findings aren’t a cause for concern.  In particular, students’ unwillingness to even listen to opposing viewpoints is deeply disturbing.  Couple that with hypersensitivity on all sides of virtually every issue, and the ability of educational institutions at every level to fulfill their mission is imperiled.

Curmie does not impugn the motives of either set of students—neither the ASMSU nor the coalition of Jewish organizations and their allies.  They’re speaking out against what they perceive as an inappropriate action, and even if Curmie thinks they’d benefit considerably from a thicker skin and a diminution of hyperbole, they have every right to do so. 

A couple of nights ago, Curmie and Beloved Spouse streamed an episode of the British crime drama “Professor T.”  Our hero, both brilliant and quirky (isn’t that always the case?), is a police consultant whose real job is as a professor of criminology.  In the latter persona, he closes the episode with an intriguing discussion of how easily empathy can morph into hatred.  That seems both relevant to the situation at Michigan State… and chilling.

(By the way, the original Belgian version of “Professor T” with Koen De Bouw in the title role, also available for PBS members to stream, is even better than the British show.  If you’re willing to read subtitles, Gentle Reader, Curmie recommends it highly.)

Skeezix, Gaza, and Empathy

Here’s a cat cafe in Gaza
It seemed appropriate.

Those who know Curmie personally know that he and Beloved Spouse recently came to the awful but necessary decision to have their elder cat, Olivia (aka Skeezix), euthanized.  That sent him back to his “other,” seldom-used blog, to a post about when Skeezix was the younger cat in the family and her older “sister,” Helena (Catbert), was dying. 

As I wrote five years ago:

...seeing her sister’s lack of appetite, Olivia made sure that her sister had had first shot at anything she might want. It was more important to her that Helena eat than that she herself get the choicest food. She didn’t make a big deal of it; she just did it. And then, when it became clear that Catbert wasn’t going to be wanting any food [when we came home from the vet’s without her, clearly very sad], she calmly reverted to her normal behavior. 

It is a sad but ultimately ennobling fact for our species: our pets have better ethics than we do.

Olivia was always a great comfort to Curmie and Beloved Spouse; whenever we were ill or sad, she magically appeared on the scene to help us through the bad times.  She never got along quite as well with her younger sister, Hermione (Snippet) as she did with Helena, but in Skeezix’s last days, Snippet showed obvious concern for her sibling, touching noses in what was clearly a gesture of compassion, for example.  Her yielding of the choicest morsels to her elder sister wasn’t as obvious as Skeezix’s had been, but it was there.  Empathy is not merely a human quality; it is innate across much if not all of the animal kingdom.

It’s also worth noting that the outpouring of sympathy and support from friends (over 200 reactions on Facebook alone) to our loss has been both overwhelming and much appreciated.  Curmie has heard from more than a few former students he had no idea were still on Facebook, and from professional colleagues he’s never even met in person.  Current students (Curmie is back in the classroom as a sabbatical replacement this semester) who barely know me have been especially kind, and, no, I don’t think it’s to increase their chances of a good grade.  We are, in some way, hard-wired to care about others.

Well, most of us are.

In one of those coincidences that lead to blog posts from people like Curmie, I happened across an essay decrying the media’s presumed obsession with chronicling the suffering in Gaza.  The inhabitants asked for it, you see, by electing Hamas, and the Israeli military is just trying to protect their citizens from further attacks by a terrorist organization.

To this, Curmie responds in a manner familiar to his students, especially in his Asian theatre classes: yes and no.  I have no sympathy for Hamas, but of course they’re not the ones bearing the brunt of the Israeli attacks, because active belligerents make up only a small percentage of the residents.  It may indeed be true that the average Gazan now supports (as opposed to “joins”) Hamas, but it doesn’t take a strategic genius to figure out the idea that someone might be less likely to align with the folks who are bombing you than the ones opposing the bombers.  “The enemy of my enemy…” and all that.

It’s also more than a bit of a stretch to say that current Gazans elected Hamas.  Half of the people in Gaza weren’t even born the last time there was an election there.  Half of those who were hadn’t reached voting age.  Not everyone voted.  Oh, and Hamas got a plurality, not a majority, of the votes; they got a majority of the legislative seats, but not of the votes.  In other words, the number of Gazan residents who ever voted for Hamas is perhaps as high as 10%.

Is this relevant?  Sort of, to the extent that the pro-Israeli arguments are rendered less legitimate.  The overwhelming majority of those dying, starving, and otherwise in peril in Gaza have done nothing to warrant punishment.  They’re simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Of course, that is the way of war.  Those who make the decisions are seldom the ones who suffer most.  The citizens of Melos in the Peloponnesian War, of Antwerp in World War I, of Hiroshima in World War II (to name but three from literally hundreds of examples), were innocent, but that didn’t save them.  Those who perished in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, were similarly targeted without cause.

It is certainly possible to view at least many of the untold deaths in similar circumstances over the last three millennia or so in primarily strategic terms: had this horrible thing not happened, then an even worse fate would inevitably have occurred.  

Sometimes.  But the key word in that sentence is “primarily.”  It is reasonable enough to argue that capitulation to tyranny is never acceptable.  Curmie is a native of New Hampshire, where the state motto is “live free or die.”  I get it.  And whereas it makes us uneasy to think in terms of how much “collateral damage” is acceptable, it is naïve to believe that such conversations are anything but commonplace… and necessary.  Military decisions are in a different category than what to watch on TV tonight.  There are significant real-world consequences, both positive and negative.

Getting into the weeds and weighing considerations like responsibility and proportionality is fraught with peril.  Everything becomes a matter of perspective, and decisions are likely to tell us more about the decision-maker than about the relative merits of opposing positions.  Curmie isn’t going to get involved in such disputes, as there is much to be said on both sides.  He’ll go only so far as he’s already gone, when he wrote “Are the Israelis the “good guys” here?  No.  They’re the less despicable guys.” 

All that said, Curmie just can’t wrap his head around the utter lack of even a modicum of sympathy for those caught in the proverbial crossfire through no fault of their own.  No, Gentle Reader, they didn’t fucking “ask for it.”  They’re just trying to survive a horrific set of circumstances that they had little if anything to do with creating.

Even if we don’t agree that politico-military decisions should override humanitarian concerns in at least some such cases, we can grant that there’s an argument to be made.  And concentrating exclusively on the suffering of one set of victims (in this case, innocent Gazans) while ignoring another set of victims (equally innocent Israelis) is at best sloppy journalism.

But anyone who insists that basic human compassion and empathy for those who suffer are unwarranted simply because of who they are and what a minority of their ancestors thought was a good idea… such a person is just a little too close to a monster for Curmie’s taste.  And Skeezix would not approve.

The Axios Survey, For What It's Worth

Once upon a time, Curmie was something of a math whiz-kid; he’s really good at easy math.  We don’t talk about analytic geometry or natural logarithms in polite company, but various applications of algebra, from grading spread-sheets to strategies for investing the retirement nest egg, have been very much a part of Curmie’s world for a long time. 

Even keeping in mind Mark Twain’s observation that there are three kinds of lies—regular lies, damned lies, and statistics—Curmie has been fascinated by statistics since he was a little boy.  Of course, knowing the numbers is only part of the story; it’s the conclusions we draw from that raw material that matter.

First, we need to consider the possibility that the facts are not only misinterpreted, but actually wrong.  Ask anyone who paid even a little attention in high school English who the groundlings were at the premiere performance of Hamlet, and you’ll get a variation on “the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.”  The evidence is two-fold: it cost only a penny to attend, and there are dirty jokes.

But the fact is that we don’t know how much it cost to attend.  We have a grand total of two contemporary sources that state what the standard admission fee was at the Globe.  It’s a reasonable surmise, but still not a certainty, that Hamlet cost the same as other plays.  But whereas we assume that a penny was an insignificant amount of money, it turns out that as a percentage of the disposable income of a journeyman laborer, the price of admission to the Globe was almost identical to a cost of a ticket to the National Theatre today.

Curmie also has it on good authority that, notwithstanding Victorian era claims to the contrary, well-educated and even wealthy people think dirty jokes are funny at least some of the time.  That whole “my head in your lap… country matters” business?  [Note: in Elizabethan England, the “t” in “country” would have been part of the first syllable.]  Oh, Will, you naughty rascal!

One more thing: the Globe was an outdoor theatre, dependent on daylight for spectators’ ability to see the stage action.  The butcher, baker, and candlestick maker were butchering, baking, and candlestick making at that hour.  Hamlet’s audience would likely have looked like that of a Broadway matinee today: people who don’t need to work or are visiting the city, or those who worked different hours (the Inns of Court often did business at night, for example).

Curmie was thinking about all these things when he read the Generation Lab poll commissioned by Axios about the concerns of today’s undergraduates.  Titled “Exclusive poll: Most college students shrug at nationwide protests,” the article suggests, among other things, that perhaps the protests on American campuses won’t hurt President Biden’s re-election chances as much as might have previously been believed.  Students don’t blame him for the situation in the Middle East as much as they do Hamas, you see. 

Curmie apologizes for bluntness, but the idea that literally anyone would suggest that Biden was more responsible than the actual combatants has crossed the line into full-blown lunacy.  If you want to say he hasn’t handled the situation as well as he might have, you’ll get no argument from Curmie.  But to say that he’s more culpable than Hamas (or Likud, for that matter) is begging for a nice padded cell.

Curmie does stop short of declaring the entire poll and its interpretation redolent of bovine fecal matter, but that one eyebrow did indeed shoot upward and the opposite eye did close to a squint.  Believing that it definitely cost exactly a penny to attend Hamlet or indeed that the groundlings were who your high school English teacher said they were requires considerably less of a leap of faith than trusting these poll results.

For one thing, the questions are incompetent.  Notice that neither antisemitism nor freedom of speech and assembly is an option.  Of course “the conflict in the Middle East” didn’t generate as many responses as issues that affect students directly: healthcare, education funding, etc.  

The Vietnam War, the source of student protests in Curmie’s youth, was a different matter: college-aged young American men were being drafted and used as cannon fodder for a war many of them thought was unjust.  It’s hardly surprising that there were a lot of protests on university campuses.  What’s happening now in Gaza has little direct relevance except to those with relatives in either Israel or Gaza.

More to the point, given that there are an estimated 15.8 million undergraduates in the country, that “small minority (8%)” of students who have taken part in a demonstration on one side or the other represents over one and a quarter million students.  That’s a lot of folks in Curmie’s neighborhood.  There are multiple unknowns here: the percentage of demonstrators on each side of the dispute, for example.  It’s evident that a significant majority support the Palestinian (not to say Hamas) position: we’ve certainly heard more about them, and one doesn’t often stage a demonstration in favor of the status quo.  “Don’t divest” comes up rather short as a rallying cry.

We also don’t know why those students were involved in protests.  For some, no doubt, the demonstrations were more social than political.  For others, they were an excuse to skip class.  And to suggest that there was a fair amount of naïveté in evidence is only to state the obvious.

But even granting that the Venn diagram of those who see the conflict as a major concern and those who have actively taken part in protests isn’t exactly concentric circles, there is a good deal of overlap.  The statistic that jumped off the charts to Curmie but apparently not to Axios’s Sareen Habeshian was this: the number of students saying they’d demonstrated about the situation in Gaza and Israel was over 60% as high as the number who consider the Middle East a “most important” topic. 

That’s an extraordinarily high number.  Even if half of the demonstrators weren’t true believers, that leaves a third or so of those who regard the conflict as of high importance willing to demonstrate on behalf of their beliefs.  When was the last time, Gentle Reader, that you saw a demonstration about those issues more students allegedly care more about: better healthcare, education funding, or gun control? 

Even demonstrations about abortion access (speaking of an absurd omission in a poll about what matters to college students!) have faded as the Dodds decision moves further into the past.  (Perhaps abortion issues may have been folded into the umbrella of “healthcare,” explaining why it was the number one response to the survey?  If so, why?)

One of Curmie’s professor friends suggests that today’s college students, a group we might call the post-COVID generation, are angry at the world at large, and the conflict in Gaza and Israel is as good a flashpoint as anything else.  Perhaps.  But Curmie, old fart that he is, revisits Buffalo Springfield’s biggest hit, linked above, which is chillingly relevant 57 years after it was recorded.  It’s difficult to decide what the most telling line is.  “There’s battle lines being drawn / Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”?  “Young people speaking their minds / Getting so much resistance from behind”?  Or maybe the opening line, “There’s something happening here / What it is ain’t exactly clear”?

The one thing that is clear is that this survey tells us more about Generation Lab and Axios than it does about what today’s undergrads are thinking.

This But That: Musings on Israel and Palestine

Curmie’s personal Facebook page lists his political affiliation as “Contrarian,” or at least it used to do so; that piece of information seems to have vanished, and there are more important things to do than investigate further.  That self-description holds, whether it’s visible to others or not. 

I was never in my adult life more conservative than when living in the small Iowa town that hosts the largest Democratic caucus in the state; whereas there were significant right-wing voices among my colleagues on the faculty of the small college where I taught, they were definitely in the minority.  

Nor have I ever been more liberal than when living in an East Texas Congressional district that elected and kept re-electing Louie Gohmert, often by landslide margins. (He’d still be my Congresscritter except for an ill-fated run for Texas Attorney General).

What this suggests is that when surrounded by largely one-sided rhetoric, Curmie tends to see the flaws in that perspective magnified relative to its strengths.  Whether that’s an admirable exercise in critical thinking or merely a stubborn petulance at being told what to believe sort of doesn’t matter.  It is what it is.

Curmie is also, of course, trained in theatre, and has taught over two dozen sections of acting classes, most of them grounded in the Stanislavsky system of beginning with a character’s objective.  This approach is especially useful in playing antagonists or even villains: they aren’t evil (necessarily, at least), they just see the world a little differently.  The world is a complicated place, and pretending that it is otherwise leads to potentially dangerous oversimplification.

Context matters, in other words.  Always.  That doesn’t mean that context is all that matters, or that every rationale for an action (or inaction) is legitimate—logically, legally, morally, or ethically.  Nor does it mean that just because we agree with a perspective with respect to Issue X, we are unable to disagree about Issue Y.  It is possible, for example, to say that the Biden presidency has been largely unsuccessful and still think it’s better than any of the alternatives currently presenting themselves.  It’s possible to acknowledge that there is considerable corruption in Ukraine and still support them in their struggle against Russian aggression.  And so on.

It is also possible to grant that allegations that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians shares some similarities with apartheid have some merit (the fact that these screeds are generally overblown does not mean they’re entirely fabricated) while also condemning without the slightest hesitancy or reservation the recent attacks by Hamas against Israeli citizens (and those from other countries, including the US).  Rape, murder, and kidnapping of non-combatants, of children and the elderly, cannot be countenanced under any circumstances whatsoever.  Curmie won’t go into details here, Gentle Reader.  You’ve probably been following this story as closely as he has, and there comes a point at which the sheer horror of the situation defies description.

And then, of course, there was the reaction, or, rather, series of reactions.  The Israeli military launched a massive bombing attack on Gaza, dropping nearly as many bombs on that small area in less than a week as the US employed in the entirety of Operation Desert Storm.  They cut off electricity to the region.  They imposed a mass and immediate migration. 

The Israelis (both here and throughout this essay, Curmie uses this term to refer to the Israeli government, not the citizenry) claim with no little justification to be defending their territory and their citizenry.  Also (of course) they claimed to be attacking Hamas installations rather than Gaza in general.  That said, there has been no little death and destruction suffered by people who had no part in the attacks in Israel.  Are the Israelis the “good guys” here?  No.  They’re the less despicable guys. 

Another response, of a different kind, was that of both the international left and a bunch of unthinking post-adolescents.  Blaming the situation wholly on Israel is profoundly stupid, yet so many individuals and organizations have effectively become spokespeople for terrorism.  This is not, of course, a unanimous response of the left any more than suggesting that all Jews want Gaza obliterated.  As a friend of Curmie, a man well to Curmie’s left politically, posted on Facebook, “When the topic turns to Israel, I step away from the Left.”

One of the biggest sources of headlines comes from Harvard, where some 30+ student organizations signed off on a proclamation declaring Israel to be “entirely responsible” for the Hamas attack.  Making the obvious point that the Hamas attack “did not occur in a vacuum,” the statement then proclaims that “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”  Uh… no.

But here’s the thing: many members of those student organizations didn’t even know that such a statement was even being considered until after it had been signed in their name.  “We didn’t read or understand what we were signing” is a pretty lame excuse for an Ivy League student; “We didn’t even know it was happening,” on the other hand, is legitimate.

Some brief observations:

1. Sometimes things that appear simple are actually complex.  There’s a good and—from Curmie’s perspective, at least—balanced discussion of some of this over at TheConversation.com.

2. Does the mere presence of non-Muslim visitors at the Al-Aqsa Mosque constitute a “desecration”?  Curmie’s definition of the term would require a higher threshold, but he’s an agnostic of Christian heritage, so what does he know?

3. Policies of the Netanyahu regime in particular no doubt had a triggering effect, indirectly precipitating the Hamas attack. 

4.Sometimes things that appear complex are actually simple.  There is no excuse, none, for what Hamas did.  Context is one thing; excuses are another.

5.There’s a difference between collateral damage and specifically targeting civilians.  That does provide context (there’s that word again), but there’s also a point at which knowing in advance that the collateral damage will be catastrophic becomes relevant.

6. It is virtually certain that Hamas takes shelter among innocent civilians, so any attack on Gaza will have civilian casualties.  Both sides know this.  Neither seems much to care.

7. Hamas’s energy, indeed its very existence, is defined negatively.  It is focused exclusively on the elimination of Israel (and perhaps of Jews in general), not on improving the lives of Palestinians.  This is one of the few points on which Curmie will brook no denial.

8. Silence is not always complicity.  Taking some time to organize ours thoughts—for those of us privileged enough to not be directly affected, at least—would seem a better option than saying something you’ll regret.  Not having words is not a moral or ethical failing. 

9.The same people who (rightly) argued that criticism of Barack Obama wasn’t inherently racist or of Hilary Clinton inherently sexist are now suggesting that criticism of the Israeli government is, in fact, inherently anti-Semitic.  It isn’t.  Nor is criticism of Hamas inherently Islamophobic. 

10. Lots of people in Israel don’t support their government’s policies with respect to Palestine; lots of people in Gaza don’t support brutality against Jews.

11. Kids in Gaza are just as innocent as those in Israel.

12. You can be a member of a group without supporting everything that group does.  No elected officials in a real democracy are ever supported by all their constituents, or even without reservations by their supporters.  Any American who can’t or won’t acknowledge the failures of the candidate they voted for in a recent election is not worthy of consideration.  Anyone who merely parrots the party line—any party line—is unworthy of consideration. 

13. It is not merely illogical but unethical to blame (or praise, for that matter) all members of a group for something the majority or the power-mongers do.  American citizens aren’t responsible for what our military does just because a slight majority of voters (as opposed to citizens) elected the Commander-in-Chief.  The same logic applies both to Israeli citizens and to residents of Gaza.

14. Simply being a member of a group—a local chapter of Amnesty International or the Nepali Student Association, for example—which has hitherto not done anything stupid regarding Israel and Gaza should not lead to doxing.  People who make decisions are responsible for those decisions; people who don’t even know a decision is being made are not. 

15. We can count on some self-important CEO (the usual apologies for redundancy) to engage in preening twatwaffledom in any circumstance.  No one should accept a job with a boss who engages so freely and publicly in proclaiming guilt by association.  Curmie is looking at you, Bill Ackman.

16. We are placed in the unfortunate situation of having to believe news reports, which, given the sloth of most journalists and editors, are often misleading if not outright prevarications.  Skepticism is definitely in order.

17. To the extent that such poor journalism is the result of bias rather than garden variety incompetence, it tends to backfire.  The truth has a nasty way of finding its way to the light, and uncovering false allegations (e.g., of an Israeli attack on a Gaza hospital) tends to discredit subsequent, accurate, reporting from the same source.

18. The only hope for the situation not getting worse is the release of the hostages.  We can be shocked by Israel’s response, but we cannot reasonably condemn it out of hand.  Horrific and appropriate are not always contradictory terms.

19. Should this release occur and the assault on Gaza continue, the Israeli government bears the responsibility for the continued carnage.

20. Curmie doubts that the release mentioned in #19 is likely to happen.  Alas.

21. It is possible to support Palestinians and still condemn Hamas’s slaughter of innocent people.  How do I know?  The guy I see in the mirror does both.