Author: Mike Coté

Et tu, Biden?

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The backstabber-in-chief strikes again.

The past months have seen a slow, but steady turn against Israel in the White House. Criticism of Israeli policy and warfighting has increased, the already-soft treatment of Iran and its regional proxies has somehow grown even limper, and fruitless negotiations meant to stall Israeli advances have helped entrench Hamas behind Gazan civilians in Rafah. The Biden team has floated sanctions against IDF units, legally penalized individual Israeli settlers for stoking violence in the West Bank – most of which has been driven by Palestinian terrorism – and stated that a necessary Israeli advance into Rafah to defeat Hamas would be a ‘red line’ not to be crossed. None of these actions have been applied to Hamas, the terrorist entity that caused this war, nor to its sponsor in Iran, which just a few weeks ago launched a direct barrage of ballistic missiles and suicide drones at Israel proper. The White House forced Israel into a mere symbolic strike in response, which does nothing to truly deter Iranian belligerence and further endangers both Israeli and American lives. In short, Israel is treated like an adversary, while Hamas and Iran are dealt with as akin to allies.

Rhetorically, the Biden administration is sounding more and more like Bernie Sanders or the Squad every single day; it would be unsurprising to hear the president use the genocide smear in the coming weeks. Its spokespeople have lambasted Israel for everything under the sun, including failing to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is not only false, but demonstrably so. Almost nothing, however, has been said about Hamas’s blatant theft of that aid for its own use. Israel has been told to ensure civilian populations have safe areas to evacuate to, but the White House has treated Egypt – the nation that ran Gaza for decades and has plenty of space for a temporary influx of Gazan refugees into the Sinai – with kid gloves. Hamas is assumed, against all extant evidence, to care deeply for the Palestinian people under its charge, while Israel is deemed to care so little about its hostages in Gaza that it would sacrifice their potential release for Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future.

Whether it is a response to rampant leftist protests on college campuses, the potential for Israel to actually win the war it is fighting – something America seems desperately allergic to – or Biden’s flagging poll numbers ahead of the November election, the outcome is the same: turning on our closest regional ally.

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The Anti-Israel Protest Dictionary

Mike Coté1 Comment

Anti-Israel protest terms defined, A to Z.

The past few months have seen a surge in protest encampments on college campuses across the United States. These have spawned in response to the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza, but go far beyond seeking an end to war – they instead seek an end to Israel as a nation and Israelis as a people. The protests have been violent, illegal, and violative of university rules, yet they have been praised throughout the media and the chattering classes, including by politicians on the progressive left. There are some solutions to these protests – including my modest proposal – but we must understand them while they remain operative. One of the ways these protesters – and leftists more generally – camouflage their true venom is to redefine terms to make them sound reasonable and benign. This came up recently on Twitter, when the word “intifada” (see actual definition below) was defined as merely “shaking off,” which is, I think, the definition of chutzpah.

In that vein, here is a glossary of terms that have shown up repeatedly at these protests and in the fawning media coverage of them. And these are the actual definitions of these words and phrases, not the invented benevolent or neutral meanings used by the left to hide their real intentions.

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A Modest Proposal – Students for Palestine Edition

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** This is the third in a recurring series, in which I offer some modest proposals – in the venerable tradition of Jonathan Swift – for American and international politics. **

For the past several weeks, pro-Palestine protests have been roiling American college campuses. These have been appearing on and off for the six-plus months of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, but they have reached an apex of annoyance since early April. Protests have hit institutes of higher education in nearly all states, from public universities like UT Austin and the University of Colorado at Boulder to elite private colleges like Princeton, NYU, and, most infamously, Columbia. These demonstrations blur the lines between students and outside agitators, as both sets cover their faces with keffiyehs, shout the same antisemitic slogans, and jointly engage in illegal acts.

The newest strategy for these petulant children involves creating pseudo-permanent encampments on university quads, taking them over with demands for a self-imposed Israeli defeat in Gaza and a full divestment of their specific colleges from Israel-related companies, among other more banal requests like making classes Pass/Fail for protesters. They’ve occupied university buildings – creatively renaming them, including as “Intifada Hall” – accosted Jewish students, invited famously antisemitic speakers like Linda Sarsour, and, I kid you not, praised totalitarian states like North Korea that have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. All of this falls under the organized movement calling itself the Popular University for Gaza. These demonstrations have disrupted university life during finals season (really choice timing there, guys), but most professors seem perfectly fine with that. Some even have gone so far as to either allow these truant students to receive good grades simply for protesting or to participate in the protests themselves – including attacking cops and learning the hard way what that brings in response.

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(Flyover) America, the Beautiful

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Some thoughts on an All-American cross-country road trip.

Our family recently took a multi-day cross-country – well, 2/3 of the country, at least – road trip as part of our relocation from New Jersey to Colorado Springs. We packed the baby, the dog, and as much of our stuff as possible into our Hyundai Palisade and took off from the East Coast for the long drive to our new abode in the Mountain West. That drive, ironically enough, was exactly 1,776 miles, a fact that got me thinking about the history, people, and incredible beauty of this amazing country as we started the three-day sojourn across eight states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado. Over the course of the approximately 28-hour drive – with plenty of stops for baby breaks and dog defecations, naturally – I pondered those ideas and saw them reflected in the places we passed through. I also took away one key lesson that will remain with me for the rest of my life: the pejorative coastal elite label ‘Flyover Country’ is an absurd misnomer.

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A Curious Case of Twitter Censorship

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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

When Elon Musk purchased the social media platform Twitter in late 2022, we were told that the acquisition would create either a hellhole of despicable rhetoric or a paradise of unfettered free speech, depending on who was doing the talking. The progressive left that had previously held the levers of power on the platform were terrified of a dystopian future of misgendering, hate speech, and electoral interference, while the online right saw Elon as something of a secular savior, restoring the rightful balance of power in discourse. In reality, he is neither. The New Twitter (I refuse to call it X, as I’m not a toddler) is remarkably similar to the Old Twitter, especially in the ways that matter most: censorship of speech. Story time!

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