Sharks have begun feeding

 The price of flights out of Tel Aviv are now about 10 times higher than normal... and TACO Trump has already scheduled a trip to Oslo for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

An end to the 8-day war?

Make no mistake about this. The ceasefire between Iran and Israel announced today is the very same one that was on the horizon 4 days ago... before TACO Trump intervened out of bloodlust and a pathological need for attention. The main difference is only that the current ceasefire is somewhat more fragile due to Baby's megalomania. Let's not forget - and certainly Iran won't forget - that TACO Trump left the G7 meeting, allegedly going back to Washington to get an "unconditional surrender" from Iran. When asked about Macron's remark about a potential ceasefire, Baby insulted Emmanuel, claiming that the French President generally gets things wrong. So has TACO Trump himself now gotten things wrong by proudly trumpeting as a great achievement the very ceasefire that he actually delayed?

Underneath Bibi and Baby

And by "Baby" I mean Taco Trump. Here in Israel, despite Baby's aggressive intervention, after another torrent of Iranian rockets has just come down overhead, it still does not feel like peace.

To argue that there can be no peace between Israel and Iran is nonsensical. Less than 50 years ago the two countries had friendly relations. It was only aftrr the Shah was deposed by religious extremists that the situation deteriorated. So the problem with Iran is not the people of that country or its technological accomplishments but rather its regime. Of course, regime change is a very difficult task - obviously much harder than just eliminating some nuclear enrichment plants - but that is what is required. And, personally, I think there were far better ways - less destructive and more effective - to achieve that goal than warfare. Politicians will always seize any excuse to praise themselves and trash their opponents. But regime change could have been pursued in a far less costly fashion by friendly means... obviously not friendly to the current Iranian regime, but friendly to the Iranian people. It is said that when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Caught between Bibi, Baby, and Khamenei, we are all of us the "children of Gaza".

The Children of Gaza

For some days now I've been contemplating the good that might come from Israel's war with Iran. And though this result is a long way away, it occurs to me that one lesson to be learned would be the horrific consequences of war. I know it's been said many times before, but perhaps that's because humanity has still not heard the message. Maybe we should all take a minute to think about the children of Gaza (also the name of a fictional novel that I will never find the time to write). Those innocents have undergone two years without being able to go to school due to the terrifying recurrence of rockets exploding above their heads and on their friends. The sound alone over such an extended length of time must be devastating. Will Israelis learn this lesson, now experiencing the trauma of what they've been inflicting on Gaza? Somehow I doubt it. Rather, the prevalence of religious dogma tends to stimulate a hatred of the other faster than self-examination.

End the war, free the people

With internecine war a third party might make gains, but the main combatants are always losers. A military victory becomes a public relations defeat; and the public relations win, a military loss. This is what we see in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To talk of "war crimes" is almost meaningless when the real crime is war itself.

When governing becomes a private business

In every sense that matters, the would-be self-perpetuating political leaders of Israel have already lost the current war with Hamas. They have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by outdoing Hamas in every despicable fashion. And now their brazen and unfettered self-indulgence is naked for all the world to see. At a time when negotiations for a ceasefire and the return of any surviving hostages might be making some viable progress, in large part courtesy of Qatar's intermediation, the Israeli Government has closed the Qatari news agency in Israel, Al Jazeera, branding it as a mouthpiece for Hamas. This was a unanimous Cabinet decision, and it may well be "the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet". (CBS news report)

Police presence at Columbia University

Well, now that this has happened... and I think it was unavoidable and even appropriate... one of the first questions I'd like answered is whether any of the persons occupying Hamilton Hall are not registered Columbia students.

This should not be construed to mean I endorse Israel's brutal and largely unrestrained retaliation in Gaza. Indeed, I do not. But I also think that the protests sweeping American campuses today lack much of the legitimacy that drove the Anti-Vietnam War movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Again, I am not at all saying that the lives of Palestinians don't matter. Of course they do. And what is happening in Gaza is every bit as unconscionable as the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that murdered, brutalized, and kidnapped Israeli civilians, including many women, children, and senior citizens. But US troops are not on the ground in Israel; and there is a valid argument to be made that what is happening in Gaza began as a defensive action, regardless of the fact that it is now clearly an offensive action and highly excessive.