The men of the hour

Well, of course I must tip my hat to the twenty youngish Israeli men who survived two years of ghastly imprisonment in the tunnels of Gaza. But beyond them stand the two victors: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netayahu. They did what no other pair of national leaders could have done, or arguably would have tried to do. Let the Nobel peace prizes flow!

About the dead in Manchester

Seventy-one years ago, I arrived at Southampton, England, by way of the SS United States for a year of graduate study at the University of Manchester. I lived in the village of Withington, about as far south of central Manchester as the Heaton Park synagogue is to its north. I assume that some Jews attended the university then, and perhaps a Muslim or two, but I only took notice of the Irish (they shared my bloodline), my fellow Americans, a few Canadians, and a lovely Polish girl with whom I fell desperately in love. Really, in the 1950s we didn't pay much attention to each other's religious or ethnic background, though we Fulbright Fellows had had a black waiter on shipboard. (He had us call him Jersey Joe in honor of a heavyweight boxer of the time.)

And now Manchester is home to Europe's latest antisemitic atrocity! It left two Jews dead, three wounded, and their killer killed by armed police, of whom Manchester had none in 1954. The killer's name was Jihad Al-Shamie, recently arrested for rape. We can assume that on Thursday he was globalizing the intifada, as we are regularly urged by students at our better colleges and universities. My younger granddaughter graduated from Yale not long ago, wearing a keffiyeh on her shoulders, as did more than a few of her classmates. Like Greta Thunberg and millions of other young fools, she saw nothing amiss in chanting From the River to the Sea, while not knowing the name of either body of water. Neither did the late Mr Al-Shamie, I suspect.

Take it all back, says Trump

"After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation," writes the US president on social media, "... I think Ukraine, with the help of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form." Note that the EU does not include the United States. However, he went on to say:

"With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win."

That's better, though it's not entirely clear that Mr Trump understands that we are part of NATO. (Mr Putin might also ask how many weeks it took the United States to win its war in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan....)

"We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them," he was quoted as saying at the United Nations this week. "Good luck to all!" That's a bit ambiguous. Likely the president means he's willing to sell weapons to any NATO member willing to pay the going price and then turn them over to Ukraine. This doesn't strike me as something a Real Military Power would do.

Somewhere in there, Trump was asked if NATO nations should shot down Russian aircraft that intrude on their airspace. "Yes, I do," Trump replied.

On recognizing a Palestinian state

Here's a great idea! Two years ago, six thousand Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel. They murdered, wounded, and raped some 1,500 people and carried off 250 to be held captive in tunnels deep under Gaza. That set off a war that has killed tens of thousands. What shall we do about that? Well, it's obvious: we'll recognize an independent state of Palestine! That's what 147 nations have signed on to do, including Ireland, where my parents grew up and fought their own bloody war against Britain, which along with Canada and France joined the Palestine chorus the other day.

“Why are all these countries recognizing Palestine now?” asks Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas poliburo. “The fruits of October 7 are what caused the world to open its eyes to the Palestinian cause.”

Right on. It's as if, in September 1939, Prime Minster Chamberlain had responded to Germany's invasion of Poland by declaring war on the victim instead of the aggressor. (Notably, that's exactly what Stalin did, taking eastern Poland for Moscow before annexing the three Baltic countries and invading Finland.) Hitler would be so pleased. Blame the Jews! It's the solution to every problem.

On the death of a good man

I live in a college town, so most of my friends are among the Good People who take their beliefs from the editorial pages of the New York Times. Still, I was surprised at the reaction when I lamented the death of Charlie Kirk. Fascist, catch! was scratched on one of the cartridges the killer left behind; and Bella Ciao on another, referencing a ballad sung by Italian partisans fighting the Mussolini government and their German occupiers in the Second World War.

But Charlie Kirk wasn't a fascist! Rather, he impressed me as a young Socrates, a decent conservative traveling to American colleges to engage students in friendly and respectful debate. This is a sin against the zeitgeist, apparently. He was therefore murdered by an unhinged young man with a Mauser 98, a military rifle adapted for hunting with a telescopic sight and .30-caliber bullets.

Greece got rid of its troublesome citizens by condemning them to drink poison hemlock, as Socrates was required to do in 399 BC. In 21st century America, we have the sewers of the internet, where our mentally unbalanced citizens discover that murder is an okay solution to their unhappiness. Thus a United Healthcare executive was shot in the back last December by a young man who objected to his medical insurance and - in an eerie forecast of Charlie Kirk's shooting - explained himself by scratching delay, deny, and depose on his cartridges.

Socrates might not have voted for the current occupants of the White House, but neither would he have murdered one of their supporters.

130,150 Russians killed in Ukraine

These are the men Putin has sent to die in Ukraine: 36,568 volunteers, 18,261 recruited prisoners, 14,797 conscripts, and 2,777 mercenaries. Their names were compiled by Mediazona and the BBC from published obituaries, social media posts by relatives, and other firsthand sources. Among the known dead are 5,567 officers. The figures are for the period from February 24, 2022, to September 11 this year, so they don't include the "frozen war" from 2014 to 2022. I assume they also don't include several thousand North Korean soldiers killed in Kursk province last year, nor does Mediazona track deaths among soldiers recruited or conscripted from the Russian-occupied provinces of Ukraine.

By comparison, American losses totaled 58,220 died in our Vietnam misadventure, and 33,686 in the Korean War.

Ukraine keeps its own count of Russians casualties, which now comes to 1,093,730 killed, wounded, captured, or deserted. Of the last three categories, some or many have probably since returned to active duty.

Ukrainian losses are also substantial -- about 100,000 soldiers killed, by Western estimates, along with a civilian death toll that seems to average about five every day, for a total of 6,485 over the 1,297 days since Russia launched an all-out invasion that everyone expected would be over in a week or ten days.

Bella Ciao

The lad who murdered Charlie Kirk left some empty shells and unfired bullets behind him, scratched with his musings on the atrocity he was planning. One read Fascist, catch!, which is pretty clear. Another is apt to bewilder an American audience: Bella ciao, which means Goodbye beautiful. It's the title and refrain of a partisan song still sung in Italy on the anniversary of the 1943-45 rising against Mussolini and the German occupation. One verse translates like this:

And if I die a partisan / Oh goodbye beautiful, goodbye beautiful, goodbye beautiful bye-bye / And if I die a partisan / Then you must bury me.

Tyler Robinson may get his wish for death, since Utah does have capital punishment. In the spirit of Charlie Kirk, though, instead of hoping for lethal injection, we'd do better to support Mr Kirk's charity, Turning Point USA. He believed in honest and open debate and was practicing it when the "assassin's veto" silenced him forever.

NATO steps up

The more we learn about Russia's swarm of drones over Poland on Wednesday, the more I admire Europe's response. The drones were shot down by two Dutch F-35s and two Polish F-16s. German Patriot missiles were put on alert but not fired. And the whole operation was overseen by two AWACs command aircraft, a jet from Italy and a prop plane belonging to Poland. Impressive!

NATO's weakest links now seem to be those cheapsakes in Spain and that loudmouth in the United States. I should note, however, that almost all the equipment used in downing the drones was American-built. The exception was the Polish AWACs, a Saab 340 built in Sweden, famously neutral throughout the 20th century but now a full-fledged member of NATO.