Hello again and welcome to this week's edition of Laura's Links.
It's a rather mild evening here in Southern Ontario, and the kinder, gentler weather has melted a healthy chunk of the snow that buried us over the past week or so. It kind of feels like spring is approaching, but I don't want to be lulled prematurely into a state of Gaia complacency. Winter is hovering still right around the corner, and I won't be happy till I either see the tulip buds start to sprout, or hear the robins chirping first thing in the morning. The birds are not back in town yet. So we wait.
I spent a lot of time today once again trying to hide from social media posts about the funeral of Shiri Bibas and her children Ariel and Kfir. Imagine Shiri's sister whose parents, only sister and two nephews were murdered. Imagine Yarden, in his orange yarmulke, remembering the first time he told Shiri he loved her, apologizing to his family for not being able to protect them, confessing to missing the smell of his beautiful baby, and begging Shiri to watch out for him so that he doesn't descend into darkness. It's absolutely agonizing to contemplate.
I see the images of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir on a loop in my mind, and the utter terror in Shri's eyes. I feel physically weak when I try to push away the thoughts of what was done to her babies, no doubt in front of her eyes; I try not to think about what she was made to watch or do, or what was done to her before she was finally murdered. I don't want to write too much about it because Palestinian terrorism hits home very personally for me and mine, but I very much appreciated Mark's take on the topic, in the essay "Hamas on Parade" that he published this week right here at SteynOnline.
This has essay garnered almost 200 reader comments to date, some very spicy. So if you're not a member of the Mark Steyn Club already, you should consider signing up to join the conversation about this and many other topics du jour. Suffice to say that with respect to the Palestinians, there is a societal problem.
Now I'll share two essays and one X post that more or less reflect where I'm at with this: the great Liel on the Bibas children, Israel and Gaza; Amichai Chikli's thoughts on the matter, and another sombre take from the always insightful Seth Mandel of Commentary Magazine, which was reprinted by the Free Press.
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I'll leave you with two other things I've been thinking of this week that have to do with America and Israel. The first is about timing and seizing the moment and the second is reciprocity. President Trump, whom G-d spared from assassination, has a lot of work to do in order to re-civilize as much of our civilization as he possibly can in the next four years. In his second term, he is attacking the rot on all fronts and has installed a lot of brilliant persons on his team who are also committed to the task at hand. He's attacking the permanent, rotten bureaucracy, and slaughtering sacred cows left, right and centre. He's bucking the Jew-hating, America-hating, Western-loathing orthodoxies and has fully flipped the "Palestinians deserve a state" narrative on its head and pretty much RIP-ed it.
Timing.
Now's the time.
Timing is a factor for Israel as well. Israel has a chance to do something absolutely remarkable with Gaza, with President Trump's backing – and no, not genocide. I think we have already established that inasmuch as the Jews are good at a very many things, mercifully, we do suck at genocide. The population of Gaza has been consistently increasing over the past years. There no Jew-inspired genocide going on in Gaza.
Timing. I pray that Israel is up to this task and opportunity at this time.
Then there's reciprocity.
No matter what the Jew-haters of the world say, the Jews in general and Israel in particular, have put quite a lot of good into the world. You know how everyone repeats that utterly stupid, simplistic and moronic quote from Golda Meir about there will be peace when the Arabs love their children as much as they hate the Jews? It's ridiculous on so many levels and I don't have time to comprehensively demolish it right now.
My take is, you know when there will be peace? When Palestinians start driving Jews to Palestinian hospitals for life-saving surgeries like murdered hostage Oded Livshitz did for decades. When Jews are taken to Palestinian hospitals not as Hamas hostages, but to have their lives saved.
It's when Muslims open new synagogues in their countries as we have seen under the Abraham Accords, particularly in the UAE. Peace is when Jews and other infidels can walk in Muslim neighbourhoods without fear of being attacked or raped. When working class, British schoolgirls can grow up in English towns without being raped and groomed by Pakistani rapescum. Peace is when Europeans can have Christmas markets again without getting AllahuAkbared.
Reciprocity.
Timing and reciprocity.
And now, rest for a weary, uppity Jewish mom.
See you in the comments as I'm able.
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North America:
You cannot hate the legacy media enough.
LA Mayor Karen Bass wants to speak to whoever is in charge of Los Angeles.
"I did a deep dive into Jeffrey Sachs and although I knew he wrote books promoting mass migration, I had no idea he was literally the brainchild behind the mass migration scheme we have been experiencing in the United States since 2010.
"Liberals are uncool now." Yes.
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Israel and Jews:
From Lebanon with love (she's amazing, I follow her on Instagram, you should, too).
"The Deep State Doesn't Get Any Deeper Than This" (excellent, must read)
Singing Shalom Aleichem in Arabic in Gaza.
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The Great Walkbackening, Accounting and Reckoning:
There should be some kind of law(s) against this revolving door.
This evil criminal, anti-human crap is still going on. Human against human crimes against humanity. Glad the Vice President is on the case. What the heck is going on in Ohio??!!?!
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The Formerly Great Britain:
Everything seems fine in Britain.
Britain is run by an evil, die-hard, communist bastard.
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Evi Kooks 'N' Trans:
The thing that they tell us never happens seems to have happened again.
Meanwhile in Edmonton, Canada (and remember Alberta is allegedly more conservative than other Canadian provinces).
This is the story of a girl named "Elliot" from Nova Scotia.
This is a doozy.
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Human Grace:
It's open thread time! Log into SteynOnline and let Laura know what you think of these stories or other happenings from week that was. Commenting privileges are among the many perks of membership in The Mark Steyn Club. While going off topic is permitted on Laura's Links, do stick to the other rules as you engage: no URLs, no profanity, and no ad hominem attacks.