Mssrs. Putin and Xi beware: If you plan to invade Poland or Taiwan, only do so between 10am and 4pm ET otherwise Mr. Biden might be asleep.
My son finally made it through 6 weeks in Israel on a summer teen tour. The land may or may not be blessed with milk and honey as in the Bible, but there is nowhere more fun to be a teenager than partying around in Israel. There is nonstop fun there for kids with activities such as nature hikes, water parks, food markets and archeological sites — completely oblivious to the real world around them even with rockets flying nearby. The adults, well – they mostly sit home and worry. Watching snowflake parents on group chats go nuts every day gets on your nerves; I’m not even on the chats. I’m pretty glad that I don’t have to sit in my house worrying about missiles and rockets. Hitting homes with terrorist leaders in Beirut and Teheran within 24 hours is a pretty good way for the Israelis to send a message to the Ayatollah that they know where he lives. Erdogan, trash-talking in Turkey, might also take note of his expensive palaces. What I don’t understand is how you can send a drone over 1,000 miles away and hit someone, while thousands of soldiers walking around in tunnels a few miles over the border can’t find the military leaders of Hamas after 9 months. I think a lot of cynical people all over are wondering the same thing.
I’m really sorry about the length of this posting. I’ve been holding back on this posting and collecting more material due to the passage of time because of so much uncertainty around the US presidential election and the Israeli situations. The last month has been insane with developments. I am leaving on vacation, so this is deadline for me and it’s what you get now. I can’t predict the election, although I think Kamala Harris has the edge as Trump and Vance self-destruct, and I think Americans want something new and not another 4 years of drama with a mean man as the main character. Harris and her veep candidate Tim Waltz look good campaigning together and Waltz has a knack for hurling insults at Trump.
As far as Israel is concerned, something is bothering me as Israel heads into another round with Iran that might escalate into a full-blown war. Israeli newspapers are very cynical about all of this, feeling that Netanyahu is assassinating these people more with an eye toward amping up a war to keep him in power than trying to create leverage to free hostages. Biden’s team leaks quotes about Bibi “Stop Bullshitting Me.” It’s not a good place for a country to be at this time. When you go to war, you want to think that it’s clear who the good and bad guys are, and that everyone is on the same page.
Netanyahu is no idiot and he’s been around a long time. He understands things and his enemies respect him. I think Netanyahu is interested in having a full-out war now and doesn’t want to have the hostage tail wagging the dog. There is logic to this. I think that the Israelis are telling the Iranians with the recent assassinations in Lebanon and Iran that they are prepared to fight an all-out war now if they want to keep trying to wear down Israel with nonstop attacks. Considering that Harris will be more hostile to Israel (the recent meeting of Netanyahu and her in Washington didn’t go well) and Trump is unpredictable, it makes sense for Israel to move up its timetable and have its war now. Headlines such as “Biden says to Bibi: Stop Bullshitting Me” can’t be good, but Biden is a lame duck so Bibi might as well ignore him and go to war. Another 18 months and you’ll have a nuclear Iran and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s game over for Israel, the Arabs, and the West. Biden and the Israeli establishment are not happy with what Bibi wants to do and they are letting him know it. He may not care. Will the war last a month or more? I don’t know but I would think it would be short because it will be hard on civilians on all sides and Israel is not equipped to fight a long all-out war. We’ll find out what kinds of cool tech Iran and Israel actually possess and are prepared to use, because it will escalate quickly since a long war plays to Israel’s weakness; Lebanon is already in the stone age and can take a long war. Expect less kabuki theater this time around as opposed to last April (and so far Iran has been silent with Arab counterparts as to its intentions), and I would expect Israel to strike hard at Iran and wouldn’t be surprised to see Nasrallah and Ayatollah Khamenei knocked off quickly and for Teheran and oil targets to take real hits to force Iran to cry uncle. But as I will discuss later, this war might be a good thing even if it trashes Israel in a way that it has not yet experienced. It might force Israel to start dealing with real issues and to think about the future in a way that it has not till now. I have to tell you – at least I’m out there giving some color and am looking forward (and I might be right or I might be wrong); the think -tanks aren’t telling me anything about how they see the future. They are no help at all. My prognosis and analysis of the overall issues, which I think will still be valid no matter how this round plays out, follows later in this posting.
I think all these crocodile tears over the attempted assassination of Trump are a bit overboard. Nancy Pelosi saying she is praying for him – c’mon man, half the country wants the guy dead and is upset that the gunman missed. I personally can’t understand why the Secret Service would take a bullet for him so it is not a surprise to me that there was a security failure at a time where it is obvious people would try to take him out. Trump was more lucid after being shot than Biden is as president – he had the sense to show strength and his wits with a photo image that will be remembered for a generation.
I had hoped the Democratic party would be smart enough not to coronate Kamala Harris but they did it anyway. Never underestimate a party’s ability over a 50 year period to keep putting up losing candidates that are out of touch with the center of the country. I don’t agree with her on anything I can think of, I think the people who work for her are not great, and I can’t think of anything positive about her. However, I’m willing to suspend judgment and let her introduce herself again at the National Convention a month from now and then see what I think of her. She might just win: 1. Americans want something new and 4 more years of Trump promises daily drama and a dark presidency with a guy who is angry and out for revenge. 2. She picked a white man with solid military and political experience who can tack toward the center to make her look more trustworthy, and it will matter this year even though usually the veep pick doesn’t matter. So far Vance for Trump looks like a disaster of a pick; they are just cutting him apart with his own stupid words that alienate people even from the Republicans. He doesn’t add value to Trump’s ticket by appealing to anyone beyond his base. 3. She is exciting the Democratic base. America might come to like her. If I were Biden, I would resign now and let her act presidential for 3 months. If she looks somewhat competent, people would be more likely to trust her. It’s going to be an interesting 3 months and at this point I don’t know how it will end.
I pose a question – which skill is more important for a leader – martial arts or chess? We always say that good chess players are good strategists and that’s what we want in leaders. Two black belts I queried agree that chess trumps martial arts as a quality you want in a political leader. I disagree. Chess is a game played within rules and there is a finite number of possibilities. If you can memorize them and use them wisely, you can win. That’s why computers beat humans. But chess doesn’t work when the other player doesn’t follow the rules. And that’s what keeps happening – the Russians, Chinese and Islamic terrorists follow their own rules. Nobody expected suicidal terrorists to crash planes in 2001. The Russians don’t care about the consequences of an invasion of Ukraine that is generally looked at as a stupid move. The Chinese may not care similarly about Taiwan. Hamas didn’t care about what happened to Gaza and in fact wanted as many Palestinians victims as possible and didn’t do anything to protect their own people who got bombarded while they hid underground beyond reach of the Israelis. In chess, you have lots of time to decide your next move. Even in speed chess, you have a decent amount of time. In martial arts, you have a split second to make your move and the moves keep coming one right after the other. You are under severe pressure and the cost of losing is pain and loss of mobility. At its essence, people value that ability to function and that’s why on an emotional level people connected with Trump when he was shot. He showed he could make a split second decision how he wanted to handle himself. Team Biden keeps playing chess everywhere and not making any moves; the US is perceived as weak because of it. Trump represents strength. Harris needs to show that she will not be weak. Maybe she should punch Vance next time he goes near her airplane.
My sister in law found a bunch of video that had been thought lost and showed me a tape of me being interviewed by my brother 30 years ago at the end of a 2 week family trip that was meant to be momentous. This is unusual because I think it is the only thing out there that contains a video of me being interviewed for about 5 minutes and just talking. The most striking thing to me is that I can’t remember a single thing that I referred to in that video. Imagine what it will be like at the end of my life when I can’t remember virtually anything from the past. My brother recently asked me if we had all been to Paris about 30 years ago on a family trip that was meant to be remembered, and I said yes, but I didn’t remember a thing about the trip. He didn’t even remember that we had gone there. I hope my kids remember some of the cool things we did with them but at least we now have more pictures on the wall and Shutterfly books to remind us than the crummy photo albums and digitized videos from a generation ago.
My kids keep talking about pregaming whatever event is coming up, from Prom to a subject in school. So to keep the spirit alive, I said that I got my daughter something special to pregame her prom – some pineapple coconut chia seed pudding from Farmer’s Fridge that I picked up at the airport on a flight home. Bada beem….
Nowadays, my kids are growing up and they teach me stuff. On a recent weekend at a resort in the Catskills (The Mohonk Mountain House, a resort that grows as we grow), Jeremy was showing me how to shoot pool and Elizabeth was teaching me the butterfly stroke in swimming. And she swam across the lake and back, all of 300 meters. She is a certified life guard.
I went for a summer weekend to Palm Beach and the Breakers Hotel. I’ve been to that place several times over the past 40 years and every time I go there I see it again for the first time. I never remember anything, and the property has undergone many changes over the years. Wherever the rocks are that I crashed into when my dad tried to sail a catamaran, they have long since been moved and so has the fence around the property that I had to walk around in my bare feet during the hot summer when that area was not yet developed into the resort. I visited the Flager Museum dedicated to Henry Flagler who was John Rockefeller’s partner in Standard Oil and who really founded modern Florida (and built the hotel).
Several thoughts strike me when I went through his residence and other similar places I’ve seen such as the Ringling residence in Sarasota– the public rooms were dark and formal. They looked like they were meant to impress business associates and close deals. You didn’t get a sense that a family man lived there – no photos around with his wife or kids or grandchildren. These billionaires didn’t have recreation facilities – no home gyms or swimming pools. They wanted to copy European estates from centuries ago; they didn’t try to develop their own style of architecture or interiors. The same goes for the public areas of the Breakers – there are signs around telling you the architectural influences that make up the place and what you see there are some of the most beautiful rooms on the continent that were basically lifted from Europe. I’d bet that today’s Western billionaires are probably more innovative with the palaces they build. The Breakers has this old-time class, but it has also reinvented itself toward a new generation of families that enjoy coming to the place. The European old dining room area with its tapestries and golden gilded ceiling goes clubby at night and it’s a hip hangout. I had a great weekend enjoying the beach, pools and riding a bicycle around the local mansions and outdoor malls. Expect sticker shock especially with food and beverage, but compare it against European or Hampton resorts and it’s probably within reason these days considering inflation.
By the way, the Palm Beach airport is like private aviation – it took less than 25 minutes to go from the front of the hotel to the airport gate. They have mini-golf, billiards and a large art exhibit in the airport lobby. Some decent healthy food too. Palm Beach is in its own world, but it’s a nice place.
How much does a person need to save for retirement? Consider that you might live 30 years if you retire at 60. Thirty-five years ago a Ralph Lauren cotton plaid shirt was $60. This past weekend I saw the same kind of shirt for $168 in a Ralph Lauren store in Palm Beach. That is about 3x the price. That means that beyond paying your taxes, your retirement fund has to increase 300% over 30 years just to keep up with inflation. 35 years ago the price of a NYC subway ride was $1. Now it is just about $3, so it is a pretty good guide to where things were then and are now.
Sometimes I feel that when I get to my funeral, I will want to look up from my coffin and say “I just want to get this funeral over with and never see those fuckers ever again.” That’s how I sometimes feel about the world around me, and these days there’s good reason to feel that way.
Jeremy told me that his friend’s brother put on a mask, went to Columbia University’s campus and sold Palestinian flags to demonstrators for $30 each. If you can’t beat them, at least profit from them. The security guards at Columbia think that the people selling the flags is the funniest part of the whole thing.
A central aim of college protesters was to get universities to divest themselves of investments involving companies that do business with or support Israel. The problem with this divestment is that it would greatly increase the costs of running endowments and it wouldn’t really hurt Israel because there are plenty of other investors to pick up the miniscule slack that universities would create if they divested. When you start to think about what the protesters want, we’re talking about divestments from all kinds of companies and everything including US Treasury bonds (the US supplies Israel with arms, right?) which would increase money management costs at least 3x and as much as 8x the fees on endowment principal currently charged by companies that manage their funds, according to the Economist. If college presidents would have just come out and said “OK we’ll do what you want and we’ll divest. And by the way the cost of tuition will go up next year $20,000 to pay our increased costs and loss of endowment value”, do you think these demonstrations would have continued for 5 minutes?
Gay Pride Weekend in NYC is like a national holiday. But I’ve been thinking – what would happen if the whole world was gay? In 100 years there might not be any more children and if there were, they would not resemble their parents. Would gay guys all want to go out with adopted kids from some other country? If you think about it, to be gay means to be freeloading off society which produces more people and somebody to pay taxes because otherwise both would be gone after a generation.
How is it possible that Saturday Night Live is so bad? This TV show has been on the air for over 40 years, only gets produced about a dozen times a year and the writing is so bad that I have no doubt that my kids and I could produce way better stuff. A recent article in the Economist talks about the lack of “funny” in late night TV comedy and says that they are so afraid of offending people and appearing to take one side or the other that they just shut up. The funny stuff is not on broadcast TV.
Here’s an example of something funnier. Lots of kids from the local prep school have been going around after school these days sneaking into very expensive apartment buildings in Manhattan with great facilities such as gyms, pools, saunas, climbing walls, basketball courts, bowling alleys and golf fairway setups. Evidently, security in many of these top-end buildings is awful and the kids just have their run of the place. Here’s a quote from a note they wrote to one of the buildings: “We’re very sorry to be trespassing in your building but we can’t resist because your security is so terrible. We are terrified what it must be like to be a resident in your building.” The city’s progressive district attorney refuses to prosecute thefts of up to $1,000 of merchandise, so city kids who are not short of spending money think they can shoplift with impunity in local convenience stores for sodas and snacks. They can jump turnstiles in subway stations and hop on city buses because they see lots of other people not paying for public transport and not being stopped. It’s the most awful civics lesson we can be giving to our kids. Kids see that nobody gets punished (and the cops don’t even bother stopping them because they know nothing will happen), so they think they are suckers if they do the right thing.
We were talking about how Elizabeth was learning self-defense as she prepares to go away to college and a gap year abroad in Israel. I’m more afraid of those corn-fed boys waiting for her in Missouri than Arabs in Israel. Jeremy has 4 sure-fire ways to get a bad boy off you: 1. Act like you are autistic. 2. Scream at your attacker “Touch me and You’re Gay!” 3. Tell them you’re gay with a contagious disease such as AIDS. 4. Sputter feminist crap at the attacker.
When I go to the grocery store and see that a box of breakfast cereal now costs $8 which cost $6 a year ago and that the cream cheese which was $5 a year or two ago is now $7, I feel that Trump is going to be the next president. When I travel around the country and talk to Uber drivers, I keep hearing that they are finished with Biden because he hasn’t made their life better.
The Economist has an article warning America not to underestimate the current state of science in China. People think that China produces fake science and that it’s not really good. Not true, they say. Chinese science is world class, and Western efforts to keep China down have backfired as the country is increasingly self-reliant and has made companies such as Huawei stronger than ever. The publication recommends more cooperation and less paranoia; this would just make America stronger because it plays more toward its strengths rather than closing itself off to progress fearing weakness.
Can you believe that Putin stole a super bowl ring from New England Patriots owner? According to CBS, he was in Moscow, showed him the ring, and Putin put it in his pocket, was surrounded by 3 KGB agents and walked out. Obama convinced him not to pursue getting it back, saying it wasn’t worth World War III and basically forced him to declare it a “gift” to Russia. So at least we know that Putin, beyond being whatever he is, is a petty thief and pretty much a piece of you know what. So if you ever meet him, don’t show him anything valuable.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia romps Ukraine. I don’t feel that I really know what is going on there. You read that Ukraine is holding off Russia and that Russia is gaining territory. That time runs against Russia but a year or two is a long time and so far Russia seems to be getting everything it wants despite sanctions. (I’ve never thought much of sanctions.) Biden took too long to get arms to them, he didn’t really crack heads with the Republicans to make it happen faster and seemed satisfied to just blame them while doing nothing, and he was always hesitating to send them anything that would cause an ending other than a stalemate. Even if he can blame the Republicans, he is currently the president and owns this and, on top of the botched withdrawal in Afghanistan, looks weak, especially on TV. Trump will be like Macron; he will kiss up to Putin until he realizes he was played and then he’ll become his biggest enemy, because Trump does not like going down as a loser. Kamala Harris? Can you imagine Putin or Xi being afraid of her when she says “Don’t”?
I’ve noticed that close to 50% of the Russians who left Russia since 2022 when the Ukrainian war started have moved back. Not necessarily because they wanted to, but because countries that took them in have sent them back. Turns out that most people don’t care for Russians, and in places such as Turkey, Georgia, Emirates and Europe, they are being evicted with non-renewal of residency or business permits. They also don’t want to lose what they own in Russia. Putin gets a propaganda victory and Russians get put in their place. If they don’t like Russia, they’ll have to change Russia from within or live with this guy for another 10 years or more.
A recent article in Foreign Affairs breaks new ground and suggests that whether or not the US cares about what goes on with Ukraine, there are European countries that simply cannot afford to have Russia win, such as Poland and Finland. France has made such noises too. Nobody wants Russia in the Baltics or invading Moldova and then other countries. These countries could go outside of NATO and commit troops to the war effort. Even if they don’t directly engage Russian troops, they can do other duties that allow the Ukrainians to put their manpower to its most efficient use against Russia. Russia wouldn’t want to attack these European countries for fear of triggering a NATO reaction. It’s a good bluff, and it makes sense that Europe might go in this direction. Trump can sit there and say he doesn’t care and Biden can dither with half-hearted measures, but neither can ignore several European countries that say to him either lead or be left behind while we muck up Europe and deal with the Russkies on our terms instead. There have been some good articles proposing new strategies for Ukraine in this war. They are not going to be able to drive Russia out of Ukraine; they may have to sacrifice some territory but they will have to wage more guerilla-type warfare to wear down the Russkies and eventually go back on the offense. The Russians just have more arms, people, money and steadfast support unlike the West which cannot be taken for granted. I think that unless people in Europe take initiative, Russia is likely to win this war over time if it is left to the USA.
The Economist does a good job of explaining why this rush to crack down on gangs worked in El Salvador but is not going to work in other countries in Latin America. They are just different kinds of gangs in the other countries, much more organized and backed with international syndicates in a way that the rag-tag gangs in El Salvador were not.
I read three books this Spring about people from the Trump administration. Jared Kushner seemed like a guy who I would want to be president. He cut through a bunch of crap and got stuff done. MBZ from the Emirates liked working with him; he said there were 3 types of American diplomats: those who slept through meetings, those who read from note cards and those who stuck to talking points and couldn’t go beyond them. He liked that Kushner wanted to listen to what other people had to say and to be flexible at finding solutions to problems. I credit Kushner with getting a vaccine together 10x faster than a Democratic president would have. Mike Pompeo’s book did not move me much and I read a bit and skipped over the rest. David Friedman, who served as ambassador to Israel, also seconded a lot of what Kushner said and told this interesting story about having found Trump about $25 million that he never knew he could get, and then Trump was very stingy about paying his legal fee afterward. They both gave Trump a lot of points for being decisive and cutting through the BS to the heart of a matter. I come out a bit less apoplectic to a potential Trump presidency after reading the 3 books.
American military senior commanders give Israel’s military high marks for their work in Gaza. They say that Gaza is 10x more complex than anything they have ever had to deal with in Iraq or Afghanistan. What impressed me about the recent hostage rescue mission was that the Israeli officer who was killed was the leader of the operation who led in front of his men, which is quite different from the American model where commanders lead from behind.
I was actually watching the BBC News anchor who asked an Israeli “couldn’t they have warned the terrorists before entering the building to rescue the hostages?”, probably the stupidest comment ever made by a news anchor in the history of television.
Now that the Israelis extracted some hostages from an apartment building, I assume Hamas will move the rest underground where the Israelis appear to have a zero success rate of doing anything lasting beyond Whack a Mole.
Three major observations from analysts who have extensive experience with Israel and close relationships with top leaders: 1. Relations between the Israeli military and the prime minister are the worst in 40 years. They don’t trust the prime minister for making decisions for the good of the country and feel that they can’t go and win the war because he is indecisive and politically motivated. 2. Even centrists don’t want to have Palestinians working in Israel. The only future between Israel and Palestine is separation, and occupation does not mean separation. 3. On one hand you have an incompetent government; on the other is the civil society, which they feel has been amazing filling in the gaps where the government has failed. Israelis are not down on themselves, and they are optimistic about their future and feel that they have a renewed sense of purpose. Israelis score higher on the “happiness” index than Americans; they are strangely optimistic and stubborn – a “stiff necked people” as it says in the Bible. Remember that earlier this year I wrote about my visit there in January when I asked people why they didn’t just pick up sticks and move to Panama away from all these Arabs and people thought I was nuts – look at all that we have built up here, they said. Why would we want to leave? To my mind, why would I ever want to be there? Well, that’s why we have differences among people around the world. We don’t all see things the same way.
Bibi lasted through July, meaning he will be around until 2025 because the parliament goes into 3 month recess during which the government cannot be brought down. If Trump wins, Bibi will feel he can work with his right-wing allies; if Harris wins, he will have to choose getting along with Washington over these allies.
Now for something important from the desk of Global Thoughts. I think that people both on the left and right and inside Israel are stuck on rewind as if the future of Israel depends on what it decides to do with the occupied territories. To my mind, this is beside the point. The Iranians and their proxies have succeeded in making life hell all along the 1948 borders, and whether or not the Israelis control the 1967 territories is irrelevant. They can strike pretty much at will in Tel Aviv, Haifa, the North and the South. Kibbutzes in the Galilee are being abandoned, most US airlines are not flying into the country for over a half a year, universities are seeing a catastrophic-level brain drain of talent, and the Iranians seem to be sitting pretty throwing whatever they want at Israel and not suffering any consequences. Over a 30 year period, Israel has opposed their nuclear program mainly to a draw and little by little the Iranians inch toward achieving their goals. Within 1-2 years they will be a nuclear power that the Israelis and the Americans cannot touch. Even if they never go nuclear, they can take out Israel’s electrical system in an hour, make the country unlivable in a week, and they are developing interesting weapons that can paralyze Israel as we know it. This is not my doomsday – these are facts, and Israelis are increasingly aware of them, but have no real answers. Regional analysts are not talking about this because it’s inconvenient.
If Iran’s plan is to make Israel unlivable and drive its citizens to get up and leave, maybe Israel’s plan should be to do the same to Iran? The Iranians want to have a proxy war but not get blowback on their own soil. Israel spent 1-1.5 billion dollars on that Saturday night defending itself against the Iranian attacks. Damn, that’s an expensive night out. Israelis don’t want to have to keep spending that kind of money or absorb attacks from Iran and its proxies and not have the opportunity to stick it to the Iranians and not just its proxies. But everyone also needs to get real. Israel finds the northern border situation intolerable; the US Secretary of State said on July 1st that Israel had effectively lost sovereignty over its northern border. Israel would like to go to war against Hizbullah, but that might not really work out well and the Israeli defense establishment knows that. The head of Israel’s electricity utility said that Hizbullah could take down Israel’s grid in an hour and the country is living in a “fantasy land” if it thinks it can go on very long without any electricity or internet. Israel threatening to bomb Lebanon into the “stone age” is not really impressive when you consider that Lebanon is already living back in the stone age without electricity in many places. A senior level US person tells me that the US could still destroy Iranian’s nuclear program but only for another 1-2 years; the Israelis are probably not capable of stopping it and so far over 30 years it has been pretty much a stalemate in terms of Israel versus Iran on the covert level. Israel gets a point, the Iranians counter.
In a certain way, this is all very simple to me. If the Iranians get the bomb, the entire Middle East will never be the same again. Israel will be a basket case of a country, but so will the Arabs around them. Just as tourists for the past several years cannot know if Israel is open for tourism at any given moment, neither can Jordan or Egypt. Egypt was always on the brink but now deprived of Suez Canal revenues due to Houthis disrupting shipping in the area, it is bankrupt. Even Dubai loses out when there is instability in the region. I can’t know if my kid can go on a summer program, a year abroad, if my flight to visit my kid in Israel will happen on any airline other than ELAL, or if companies who owe money in Israel will pay their bills. Can you loan them money or invest in them? The Israelis have to put the Iranians in their place. The Americans and Europeans can cluck from the sidelines but the consequences of inaction are not theirs. Biden said “Don’t” to the Iranians and they told him to F— OFF.” They are more scared of the Israelis and they need to be. Otherwise, it’s over for everyone and nobody will be able to live a normal life with any security at all. It’s not just the Iranians – it’s also these proxies. Life has to be unbearable in the countries where the proxies operate so that it is not only the Israelis who live at risk, but them as well. In Lebanon, the citizens will force Hizbullah to stop if it is unbearable for them, and they are letting them know that they don’t want to be dragged into another war. And that’s the only way they will stop. In Iran, there was recently a football game and the government called for a moment of silence for Gaza. Fans erupted and told the Iranian government to stick their moment of silence up their ass – they are tired of having a sick economy, corrupt and coercive government and an almost-state of war to pretend to be fighting for the Palestinians. I read an article in Foreign Affairs that said that so far there hasn’t been a demonstration in Iran for Palestine in excess of 3,000 people, which is much smaller than anything that’s happened in the West.
I know that Israelis currently think that a two-state solution is a ridiculous idea just as the rest of the world thinks it is the most obvious way to move on from all this. I have two thoughts: What would have happened if in 1948 the Arabs had accepted Israel as it was and didn’t fight partition? And assume that the 1967 war never happened. The Israelis today would presumably be living in a state that was meant to be in 1948. It would be much smaller than it is today, but I’d bet it would have been richer and happier. Think of Singapore, a city state that is also on perpetual alert against Malaysia but at least lives in peace. Presumably, the Israelis wouldn’t have made grabs for larger borders. If they had, I don’t think the world have supported it. So I doubt claims that land for peace can’t ever work. What I have noticed over the years though is that unilateral withdrawals by Israel don’t bring peace; they have to be negotiated and the Arabs have to be involved and part of the deal. This has worked with Egypt and Jordan and that’s presumably how it will work with Palestine. I really do think that this time the UAE and Saudi Arabia want this to happen and are willing to put themselves out there. It is an option that should be given a chance to succeed. It’s a risk but to my mind it is a necessary risk because after about 80 years of this, it’s clear to me that what’s been done by Israel in purportedly managing the conflict has not been successful.
My second thought: An interesting article by Tom Segev, an Israeli historian writing in Foreign Affairs, discusses decades of Israelis trying to “manage” the Palestinian issue. He concludes that the two parties cannot see living in peace with each other. That was what David Ben Gurion concluded 100 years ago and nothing has really changed on both sides. So stop trying, he says. Delineate either borders or zones of influence and work out living arrangements that give each side the space they need, even if it is not what either side totally wants. My question: Can this be done without the Iranians constantly trying to stir up the pot? Maybe. At some point, the mullahs will lose their country to the Revolutionary Guard or to something else. People in Iran hate the theocracy they have and as I’ve said, they are against diversions to all these proxy wars while Iranians go hungry. I think that if the Arab world shows Iran that they are at peace with Israel, it will be hard for the Iranians to keep stirring the pot if nobody really agrees with them. Take the Palestinian issue off the table and there’s nothing left to unite radicals in the region against Israel. They’ll have to find something else to hate. I’m sure they can think of something.
This is what I have to say to people who think that Israel must not compromise with the occupied territories and that the Arabs only understand force: So far, the Israelis have not succeeded gaining any sort of peace within Israel, let alone within the occupied territories. The northern border communities are being decimated; Kiryat Shmona has gone from 24,000 to 3,000 and people are not returning to the border area. People are not going to want to live near Gaza. These are areas of Israel that are within its 1948 borders. As I said earlier, Secretary of State Blinken recently remarked that the Israelis had lost sovereignty over their northern border. Let that sink in a bit. They can continue with the delusion that holding onto everything will keep the country strong and that to compromise is suicide. My feeling is that holding onto everything has still resulted in a country after close to 80 years that is a pariah and a fraction of what it could be if it had more stability. It might be better to compromise now that there are solid Arab partners out there that are willing to get their feet dirty for the sake of a better future. It’s not because they like Israel. They have solid reasons of self-interest to come to grips with the Jewish State and it’s worthwhile to consider them.
There is a good reason for the whole region to come together and want to do this. The Iranians are going to threaten not only Israel with the bomb, but the entire region. As I said, nobody will want to invest anywhere in these countries or be tourists or even live in these countries. Israel and Saudi Arabia are in this together along with the UAE, Egypt and Jordan. Either Iran becomes a regional player that makes sense or, as a spoiler, it is going to make the entire area unlivable. So the task out there is to get the forces of stability to create enough momentum to get Iran to come along and to recognize that it is not going to win simply by standing alone out there destabilizing countries and using the Palestinians as a cudgel to rationalize its existence. At some point, Iran will change. The country has no historical reason to hate Israel or Jews. The current regime created this ideology and to all indications it’s never really caught on inside the country.
I’m being told that within Hamas leadership there is real debate as to whether to recognize Israel in return for a 2 state solution involving a return to 1967 lines. It would be strategically wise for Hamas to do this because there is no chance that Israel today would agree to it. It’s also interesting because a two-state solution is precisely what Hamas is against and what would eventually put it out of business. I’m still in favor of a 2 state solution, but it has to lead to a better situation than what currently exists – just having terrorists keep attacking Israel and then having Israeli troops constantly raiding the Palestinian side is just more of the same with a flag in between. People are conveniently forgetting there was a ceasefire in Gaza with a real border in place until Hamas broke it.
Not only Hamas is thinking about the future; the Israelis and Arabs are also quietly thinking about what comes next. Even if they don’t say so. It seems everyone except the Israeli government which is ignoring advice it is receiving from America and Europe that tried to learn from its mistakes earlier this century and made reports it has forwarded to Israel. That’s part of the reason Western governments are increasingly angry with this government. It doesn’t help that Mr Abbas on the Palestinian side is an old crank at this point who is not interested in doing anything on his part beyond cosmetic. Moreover, it will require a leap of faith on both sides and some head-banging by strong parties on the sidelines. A good number of Israelis hate all the Palestinians in Gaza and want to see them dead. They know that civilians joined militants on October 7. But then I also read that the minute the Hamas militias come up from the tunnels, they turn their guns on other Palestinians trying to reassert their control over the area. Theirs is a reign of terror over their own. I believe that if the coercive element was taken away, many of these Palestinians would like a better future without Hamas, so I like to believe that the “support” Hamas has is wide but not deep but that they have never been offered a good alternative to Hamas; trading them for a corrupt Palestinian Authority is not a real trade and so far nobody has come up with anything better (and the Israeli idea of getting “good” Palestinians to rule over them is not going to happen because Hamas will just shoot every one of them) and Israel is not going to eliminate them. I don’t have a real problem with Palestinians in Gaza hating Jews and Israel based on everything they have been exposed to through propaganda and several wars. On one level, killing 35,000 people to get to a leadership that still remains free after 9 months makes no sense, so at least I can grant the hatred that exists there. The only question to me is what they would do if they could have the keys to a normal life. Something has to give here. The world doesn’t want another 80 years of this crappy conflict; Israel will never know peace for another 80 years and people won’t want to live or visit there. So far, all they really have to show for 9 months of this war is that the Hamas hid in the tunnels and they come out as soon as the Israelis go away. The Palestinians of Gaza are still more afraid of Hamas than they are of Israel because they are still really the ones in charge. It’s exactly the shitshow I envisioned when I first wrote about this in mid-October.
I’m not talking about whether the Israelis are fighting a just war or proportional war or whether their army is upholding the laws of war. From what I hear from major American generals around the world, they think the Israelis are doing a great job under extremely difficult circumstances and say that nothing they’ve ever seen anywhere in the world comes close to the situation in Gaza. My point is that whether or not all the above is true, the question to me is whether this war is “working.” Are the Israelis buying more stability and peace for themselves by continuing this campaign in Gaza? Is all this activity in the Territories producing value to Israel beyond making religious and nationalistic ideologues feel they are doing God’s work? Does Israel want to be ostracized as an apartheid state with poster children like Ben Gvir and Smotrich giving the world the ammunition to do it? Foreign researchers in Israeli scientific institutions is down 70% partly because Israel on a resume is deadly for an academic career amid the BDS movement worldwide. Whatever it is, BDS is out there and it is having success amid left-leaning campuses and supportive administrations that are implanting themselves as well in companies and government. These pressures are going to affect Israel’s future and America’s next Democratic president and majority congress are not going to be as touchy feely toward Israel as Biden and the last generation of leaders were. My feeling is that the Israelis who are trying to prop up the country with the territories are not going to gain much security for all that they are doing, and that even though the majority in Israel thinks that a two-state solution is garbage, I still think that times have changed and that it may be a better alternative than to try to maintain the status quo. I see a very dark future for Israel in maintaining the status quo.
If you want to reduce this to one sentence here it is: The Israelis better compromise with the Palestinians because soon enough the Iranians and their proxies will have enough capability to make it miserable for Israel inside their 1948 borders if they don’t. This is new stuff after close to 80 years and the Israelis for all their bluster will not be able to stop it, whether or not they have the biggest bad-ass right-wingers in their government or not. It’s ironic that the Arabs are coming to grips with Israel, but the Persians are the ones forcing the issue with the Palestinians. That is my strategic view in one paragraph if I have to reduce it to one. It is a situation in where leftists and rightists can both be right, but do you care? I’m interested in what will work even if the result might not be ideal for anyone. But that is the essence of compromise and sometimes it works. The people involved may feel that I don’t see the situation on the ground as they do, but I’m pretty sure that 80 years of seeing things their way is not getting them anywhere and that in the near future they will realize they are stuck in a more dangerous situation than they ever imagined that they can’t get out of. Global Thoughts is usually ahead of the curve, you know. Sad, but true.
Here’s a prediction. There will be a war with Lebanon, maybe soon or maybe later. But it will come because there is nobody on the Lebanese side that can control Hizbullah, an entity that doesn’t care about what happens to Lebanon just like Hamas didn’t care about Gaza. There is no deal that can be enforced, which is why there will be war. If you’re going to have a war, why not have it now when the northern border has already been cleared of residents. The whole place is a shooting gallery already. The Israelis will probably win or draw, but the cost of the war will be terribly painful. Much of the country will spend a month inside a bomb shelter and lots of infrastructure will be devastated. Thousands will be killed. The Iranians will have succeeded where the Arabs had failed in forcing the Israelis to confront the fantasy of having it all, and there will then be real negotiations toward a two-state solution. This is analogous to 1973; before the war, Israel had no interest in negotiating with Egypt. They thought they were on top. After the war, the Israeli illusion of superiority was crushed and peace was made, albeit with an enthusiastic Egyptian at the top. This war will be sick, but it might be the kick in the ass that Israel needs to move itself into a more stable future. Sometimes you have to see that you cannot win what you want in order to accept something in the middle.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett was in NYC this week and I heard him speak and observed him up close at a reception. He is more personable than Netanyahu and seems more “real.” His English is perfect and he is not afraid to answer tough questions and pick a side on an issue. I liked the way he performed as prime minister. He passed a budget for the first time in 3 years, built a wide coalition and has real business and military experience. People like working with him. He said he was open to returning to the job. I think he’s a good choice for it. if he gets in, Iran is going to have a harder time with him because he wants to take this regime out. So will the ultra-Orthodox who don’t want to be in the army. And he is certainly anti-woke saying it absolves people of personal responsibility: “In Israel, we don’t have time for triggers and pronouns.” He’s a tough cookie, but he wants people to do a better job of trying to get along and “stop the BS” — the “Seinfeld” fights about nothing that are tearing people apart. He says that on all the big issues in Israel today (the Palestinians, religious coercion and judicial review), there is wide agreement and the fights are phony.
Next issue: In most of the world, there are not enough babies being born. Israel is the only rich country in the world in which enough babies are being born to replace the people working now. Many countries are worried about this and are looking at financial incentives to get people to have more babies. The Economist says this is a mistake. Most of the reductions in births are coming from teenage kids who are going to college and waiting longer to have babies. This is a good thing; encouraging teenagers to have kids is going to produce lots of poor uneducated babies who will be a drag on these countries. Less than 10% of kids who are born to someone without a college degree ever wind up getting a college degree.
Charleston, South Carolina has changed a lot since I last visited there almost 15 years ago. King Street has great shopping for women’s clothes; my daughter enjoyed seeing all the colorful dresses and brands she is not used to seeing here in NYC. She did notice that street fashion here is more toward “fitting in” while in NYC it is more like having your own style. Someone in town who studies fashion confirmed this observation as correct. We visited the College of Charleston, which was a beautiful campus just off the main area of the city. It’s a small school but a great place to chill in a small city. Problem is that there is little housing because the city became so expensive that the kids have no affordable places near campus to live. The whole city became that way – a townhouse apartment you could have rented for $700 15 years ago now costs $7,000 a month. Locals who didn’t have that kind of money have been chased to the suburbs, and wealthy people have taken up second or third homes here. Problem is that there are no convenience stores in the center of town because there are not a lot of residents here. You walk out of your hotel and there is no place to grab anything to eat unless you want to sit down in a restaurant or café. The tradeoff is that for 150 years prior to this, the city was always depressed and nothing was happening. Everyone was equally poor and miserable. Now it’s a pretty wealthy town, like it was about 300 years ago.
We stayed at the Charleston Place hotel, which is a great property with a rooftop pool and health club right in the center of town. Except for having to step up 3 feet to get into your shower-bath, it’s a nice hotel and its fine dining restaurant is one of the best in town. We didn’t see any bad food here; we ate modern Southern cuisine at Revival (which also has a cool rooftop place with bar food) and Basic Kitchen had good vegetarian food right near the hotel on King and Wentworth. A nice thing about downtown Charleston is that you can walk everywhere. We went to a farmer’s market in a central square and to the city market, took a ghost tour at night, and did a walking tour of the historical district. We went outside the city to Middleton Place, an old plantation where you could see an old house and pretty gardens. For a future visit, I would look at Boone Plantation which might have more authentic remains instead of restorations. We took the boat ride to Fort Sumter which was not the most exciting way to spend your afternoon, but I thought it was a good civics lesson and it was a nice ride and it was a sunshiny day. Fort Sumter was where the first shots of the American Civil War occurred. The airport is about 25 minutes ride from center of town, and they have made the place really nice with decent food options as well.
Karen and I went on annual shore leave without the kids to Vermont and stayed at the Woodstock Inn in Woodstock VT. It is a 30 minute ride from the Lebanon, New Hampshire airport. You can fly there from Westchester airport just north of New York City in a little plane, which doesn’t fly if the weather is bad. Even if the weather is good, you get tossed around enough to not want to do this regularly. But when you fly, it is out of a private terminal without TSA security checks. Cape Air is about $500 a person round trip with refundability. There is a shuttle to that airport from Penn Station in NYC. The flight is an hour.
We enjoyed the hotel; they have great facilities including indoor and outdoor pools, a great gym, spa, and good food. You can borrow bicycles. We went up several hiking trails to see the views from atop a mountain, went antiquing, took a cooking class in someone’s home, saw a cool river gorge in nearby Queechee, walked around the city and saw covered bridges and the main street with its shops. We had lunch at Simon Pearce next to a waterfall and a covered bridge (food was excellent). The Farmer’s Market grocery has some of the best poppyseed hamantashen I’ve ever had. You never know…. We visited King Arthur Flour’s café and grocery that sells all kinds of baking products and bakery goods. Their cinnamon buns are great and I liked the chia seed pudding cup. It is 10 minutes from the airport. On the way back, I had to drive home close to 5 hours because of thunderstorms, but I just kept the Avis car and didn’t give back the keys until they boarded our flight (and they cancelled just before boarding). This was a nice place to go with or without kids; it’s a 5-star resort and it’s right in the middle of a town that Laurence Rockefeller basically built. It is the postcard model of what you hope a Vermont town will look like. I really love the legacy of the Rockefellers. They appreciated leisure and luxury and built beautiful places around the world for people to enjoy even today. I’ve been told to return for fall foliage or in December when they have pre-Christmas festivals.
I’d been waiting to release this edition to see what would happen in the USA after Biden did so miserably in the debate. Jeremy was abroad at a summer program in Israel and said that he and his 15 friends got up at 4am their time to watch the debate. The verdict: They are all depressed and say the country is fucked, no matter who wins. And these kids are not exactly political animals. They are into sports, but they were obviously concerned enough about what was going on to actually get up and watch this.
This is a new kind of problem America has never had. The Russians had these octogenarian rulers during the 1970’s one after another until the whole system fell apart under Gorbachev. But they never had to show up to a debate; the Politburo simply put them into their offices. America is a democracy, and people are angry right now at the White House and Democratic Party for lying to the people and covering up Biden’s infirmities and having a charade of primary elections without a real choice when America needed a choice. First the White House waited 45 minutes into the debate to say he had a cold; then they say he was jetlagged even though he returned from Europe 2 weeks ago. A whole lot of BS there. Then I read that he is using teleprompters even in living room meetings with small groups of donors because he can’t say anything without notes and he doesn’t allow questions. This is pathetic. The press also has egg on its face because all the analysts were not saying what blazed through on everyone’s TV in just a few minutes.
Somebody suggested having Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank run for president; that would be great. He could raise a billion dollars in an hour and Trump would be over and out.
I’ve also been waiting to see what would happen in Israel. I guess the war in the North had to wait until Bibi visited DC and addressed Congress. This after all is all about him. I don’t think he is at all concerned that parents want to regain some kind of normalcy on the northern border in time for the beginning of the school year September 1.
If you’ve read this far, thank you for your attention.
In case you were wondering what I would propose if I were president, here’s my short-list platform:
- Cut the budget and deal with entitlements and taxes, based on whatever I can get 60 senators to agree to. Given that 80% of DC offices are empty for several years, we can make cuts. The president needs to work with Congress and move toward a situation where the country doesn’t keep switching directions every time a different party wins an election when the original policy was shoved down by one side over the other. The best policies are bipartisan; those deals last and they fix real problems.
- I want an end to the cultural wars and the DEI bullshit. The goal of America is that each person has the ability to compete and the best people should win. We win by providing the means for people who lack money to compete; but we do not take away spaces from the best people to make room for people simply because of the color of their skin.
- A more dynamic foreign policy to deal with Russia and China. We are too much on auto-pilot and you shouldn’t believe that everything we currently do is the best we can do. We have too many sanctions, tariffs and we do have to take greater concern for the requirements of these other countries who feel that we are strong-arming them and rigging the rules of the game to favor us, simply because we can. I am in favor of competition and not trying to keep the other side out of the box or crying all the time that we cannot fight and win. America needs to be less scared and accept the challenges of great power competition. We will win because we will do better and therefore convince the world that we are the better side to be aligned with.
- I would try to engage directly with Iran and junk some taboos and find some regional understandings along with the Gulf. Obama tried to go over their heads and pissed everyone off. They are a player and we have to deal with them. Israel needs to be pressured to play ball and not hold everyone hostage to Bibi and his minions. The Americans could make it very uncomfortable for him and they haven’t done it.
- Divisive issues such as abortion and gun control should be left to the states and the federal government should stay more neutral about it. It’s just one of those things that needs not to be a distraction making it impossible to find common ground running the country. Also, I have never seen any gun control measure that actually works and, although I prefer to see women have the choice about abortion, you have very strong feelings about this subject from almost everyone and they don’t agree.
- The Supreme Court needs more legitimacy, and the president needs to put forward nominees that are more centrist and stop turning this court into a partisan joke.
- Immigration is another issue to solve based on whatever 60 senators will agree to. There are compromises that are out there and this has been footballed around for over 25 years.
- I believe that government should stay out of people’s private lives. If you want to wear a mask or not, have gay sex, get an abortion – I really don’t think the government should be telling you what to do unless what you are doing affects someone else like an assault or battery (and I don’t just mean offending their sense of morality or saying things that hurt). People should be able to read the books they want and college campuses should promote free speech in a way that does not favor one side over the other but that also protects against acts of violence. We need more of a Live and Let Live spirit in the country; there is no difference between censorship coming from the Left or Right.
