The Israel-Hamas ceasefire “flips the power dynamic in a way that lets the one non-state actor here tell everyone else what to do,” warns Commentary’s Seth Mandel.
“That is because, simply, Israel values life and Hamas cherishes death.” “President Biden should pay close attention to how much he can trust the terrorists”; the group’s “claim it needs more time to locate the other hostages and secure their custody” is a “strategy for prolonging the ceasefire and thus the terror group’s time in power and ability to prepare for another round of war with Israel.”
E.g.: Newly-freed Hila Rotem Shoshani, 13, says she was held with her mom Raya until recently, yet Hamas now says it doesn’t know where Raya is. “Hamas is lying” so it can “continue murdering and torturing innocents. It cannot be allowed to succeed. That’s the whole ballgame. Everything else is noise, and Biden should filter it out.”
“Call them ‘zombie’ schools,” snarks Vince Bielski at RealClearInvestigations of the “unknown numbers” of big-city schools that “have lost so many students in the last half-decade that many of their classrooms sit empty.”
Districts “temporarily sidestepped the tempest of shutting schools” thanks to vast federal COVID grants. As that aid recedes, they face “mounting pressure to shrink their oversized districts, setting up the next battleground over public schools.”
In cities like Oakland and Denver, teachers unions claim “unfair labor practices”; others cite a “tactic of white supremacy culture.” Charter-school-expansion requests get rejected to “help protect a district’s funding.” Fact is, closure plans should “focus on finding ways to transfer students to better schools, including charters, even if districts take a financial hit.”
Pro-Palestinian students have issued a list of demands to officials at Harvard, which (with other colleges) is suffering from moral “confusion” over Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities, frets The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn. “The places that are supposed to be exemplars of how a civilized community behaves have become prone to loutish behavior as well as incoherent in their responses.”
Campus demonstrations aim “to make honest debate impossible by silencing, inconveniencing or intimidating” dissenters. Another failure “has to do with moral distinctions”: “Who is morally culpable when a combatant hides inside hospitals or behind civilians? What does it tell us about Hamas that increasing numbers of Palestinian deaths are part of its war strategy?” Students should “ask the questions. That’s what a university is for.”
As the House moves to expel Rep. George Santos, Merrill Matthews at The Hill flags a way to punish “members of their party who act inappropriately”: “Both the House Republican Conference rules and Democratic Caucus rules allow for the expulsion of a House member from their Conference or Caucus.”
So Republicans can expel Rep. Matt Gaetz from their caucus over his GOP-damaging antics, and Dems can oust Rep. Rashida Tlaib from theirs, as “her antisemitic comments” lead voters to see “some Democrats siding with the terrorist group Hamas.” Taking “a visible and public stand” against their behavior is “an important option now because voters need both parties to demonstrate as much moral clarity as possible.”
The Biden ’24 campaign’s effort to fight “misinformation” on social media is now led by ex-White House staffer Rob Flaherty — who’s a central figure in a landmark lawsuit over “government censorship of social media,” notes the Washington Examiner’s Byron York.
That suit that indicates “what Flaherty and the Biden team really wanted to do was ban speech that was contrary to or inconvenient for Biden administration policy.” Problem for Flaherty’s new effort: “People have experienced Biden-era inflation in their own lives.
They know what it has done to their finances.” And “no Biden effort to suppress discussion or attack “misinformation’ will change what those people already know to be true.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board