February 9, 2024: A Well-Meaning Elderly Man

Biden conditions aid to Israel; Texas A&M to leave Qatar; A BS fest in the NYT

Feb 09, 2024

The Big Story

On Thursday afternoon, Special Counsel Robert Hur released his report on Joe Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents from his time as vice president. Hur concluded that Biden had “willfully” retained classified material at his home in Delaware and likely at his home in Virginia, but declined to recommend prosecution on the grounds that the evidence “did not establish Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Because Biden cooperated with the investigation and could have likely passed off his retention of the documents as an “innocent mistake,” Hur wrote, it would be difficult to convince a jury that he had acted with criminal intent, as the statute requires. Hur also noted that the president’s failing memory could present him with a viable defense at trial:

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

While this doesn’t seem like a particularly difficult thing to believe for anyone who saw Biden confuse European leaders with their dead predecessors twice over the past week—or for anyone who has watched the man speak since 2020—reporters and political hacks were quick to spin Hur’s aside as part of a GOP hit job:

But the passage above wasn’t the only indication in the report of the president’s failing memory. Hur notes that as far back as 2017, in recorded conversations between Biden and the ghostwriter for his 2017 autobiography, the president’s conversation was often “painfully slow,” with Biden “struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” “In his interview with our office,” Hur continues:

Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013—when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of his interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.

In a Thursday press conference, Biden attacked the report’s accounts of his cognitive problems in what proved to be less-than-convincing fashion:

There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, ‘It isn’t any of their damn business.’ Let me tell you something. Some of you have commented, I swear, since the day he died, every single day, the rosary he got from Our Lady of …

Biden trailed off, blinked, and moved on to a different subject without completing his sentence. Later, he referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the “president of Mexico” in the course of describing Israel’s response in Gaza as “over the top”—making it the third time he’s named the wrong foreign leader this week.

But it wasn’t long ago that Biden’s age-related symptoms, now confirmed by a special counsel, werea conspiracy theory on par with believing in the lab leak or Hunter Biden’s laptop. In September 2023, just months before the election, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning of a Russian “disinformation campaign” to spread “unsubstantiated allegations” that Biden was “mentally unfit for the presidency.” That same month, a group of scientists released a report proclaiming Biden a “superager,” or someone who retains the mental acuity of young people “well into their eighties,” while warning the public that its skepticism was evidence of pernicious “ageism.”

Experts, spooks, and reporters agree: Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes!

Reached by email, one analyst and former reporter gave a blunt assessment of what we learned from Hur’s report:

The point isn’t just that Joe Biden is stone-cold senile, which is painfully obvious to any human being over the age of 10 who watches even one minute of video— scripted or not. It’s how the entire “press corps” has now been conditioned to lie in unison, en masse, about the most obvious facts of the president’s mental condition, without winking. For someone (me) who saw themselves as a “reporter,” this reality is infinitely depressing. Yes, reporters back in the day always wrote with a finger—often a thumb—on the scales, to make sure that no one got the wrong idea and thought you were actually a mouth-breather. But there was also a basic 10th Avenue whore ethos of not giving it away for free. Now the norm is just to lie, lie, and lie about the most obvious facts of nature and then start hyperventilating about “disinformation” and how “no one believes in facts and science.” Gee, I wonder why, assholes.

We thanked our source for their perspective, then reported them to law enforcement as a suspected Russian agent.

IN THE BACK PAGES: Edward Luttwak explains how Israel proved the military experts wrong in Gaza

The Rest

→Following his press conference on Thursday, Biden issued a new national security memorandum placing new conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel, Jewish Insider reports. The memo requires recipients of U.S. aid, including Israel, to “issue written certifications that they will comply with humanitarian and international law, and that they will cooperate with U.S. humanitarian aid efforts” within 45 days. The biggest impact of the memo could be in increasing U.S. leverage over Israel with regard to the delivery of humanitarian aid. It reads in part:

The recipient country will facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance and United States Government-supported international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who has long been pushing the White House to condition aid to Israel, told reporters that the memo will “give the Biden administration much more leverage to get the Netanyahu government” to reduce civilian casualties and allow more aid into Gaza.

→The Texas A&M board announced Friday that it will close its Qatar campus by 2028, citing “regional instability.” The move comes amid growing scrutiny over Qatari investments in the United States, including in U.S. universities, and is a major blow to the Gulf emirate’s strategy of buying goodwill through lavish donations and deals with American institutions. The Texas A&M Qatar campus was one of the crown jewels of the Qatar Foundation’s higher-ed investment portfolio: U.S. Department of Education records show that A&M received $285 million from Qatar between 2015 and 2022, and conservative watchdog Judicial Watch has alleged that the true number is closer to $485 million. As part of the arrangement, the Qatar Foundation received the rights to all intellectual property developed at A&M’s Doha campus. In a Friday statement, the Qatar Foundation blamed the university’s decision on a “disinformation campaign.” U.S. Ambassador to Qatari Timmy Davis said on X that he was “disappointed” in the university’s decision, adding that the Qatar campus “proudly represents [American] values and inspires innovation for students who might otherwise not have access to an American education.”

→This week, we’ve been open in our view that Israel is winning in Gaza and thus has no reason to cave to either Washington or Hamas’ demands for a cease-fire—an assessment apparently shared by the Israeli security cabinet. We mention that in order to introduce our Image of the Day, taken from The New York Times’ Israel-Hamas War homepage on Friday morning. While nearly everything contained in the image is BS (to put it politely), it offers a useful window into how the White House is attempting to message the conflict:

Just for fun, let’s take a closer look at the item about U.S. intelligence officials assessing that Israel is not close to eliminating Hamas. Surely that’s based on some state-of-the art battlefield assessment, right? Not exactly. According to the Times, U.S. officials “raised doubts about whether the destruction or elimination of Hamas is a realistic objective, given it operates like a guerrilla force, hidden in a network of tunnels that are difficult to penetrate.” You’re telling us they’re in tunnels? Someone better tell Yoav Gallant.

And what about the group’s combat strength? Wrong question, according to officials:

Operations that kill militants often radicalize others, swelling the ranks of enemy organizations. And U.S. officials say death counts of fighters do not give an indication of whether a government has addressed the core issues driving the war.

Now you, an ordinary ignoramus, might think that by killing Hamas’ fighters and obliterating its command-and-control infrastructure, the IDF is impairing Hamas’ ability to fight. Would that it were so simple! In fact, Israel is actually swelling Hamas’ ranks through “radicalization,” which will continue until Israel addresses “the core issues driving the war,” presumably by granting the Palestinians a state on U.S. terms. Think of it in terms of ISIS: As we all know, it’s impossible to defeat a terrorist group on the battlefield, since “operations that kill militants often radicalize others.” That’s why the U.S.-led siege of Mosul, Iraq, not only failed but also doubled ISIS’ combat strength and forced President Obama to recognize Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as rightful caliph of Iraq and al-Sham.

Wait, our sources are telling us that didn’t happen. Huh. Then maybe U.S. officials’ assessments are off.

→Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted his two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin to X on Thursday. There’s a lot in there, much of it a somewhat long-winded lecture by Putin on Russian history from the Kremlin’s perspective, interspersed with Carlson’s largely unsuccessful attempts to get Putin to blame the war on NATO expansion. Carlson also asked Putin to release detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich; Putin demurred, but suggested he was open to freeing Gershkovich via a prisoner swap.

Watch it here: https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1755734526678925682?s=20

→Hezbollah fired one of its largest missile barrages of the war late Thursday, launching at least 30 rockets at the town of Meron in Israel’s Upper Galilee, seriously wounding one IDF officer and lightly injuring two troops. The missile attack was allegedly in retaliation for a Thursday Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon targeting a top Hezbollah commander, Abbas al-Debes, who was either killed or injured, according to contradictory media reports. The IDF’s infantry chief, Brig. Gen. Eran Oliel, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday that the army can “handle” a multifront war.

→The Scroll spoke on the phone yesterday with the Manhattan Institute’s Daniel Di Martino for an alternate perspective on the Senate border deal. We didn’t record the conversation, but we emailed Daniel two questions after our conversation. Below is a lightly edited version of our email exchange.

How would the deal’s provisions have been an improvement over existing law?
The bill would mandate and provide resources such that every migrant is vetted for credible fear with a much higher bar of credibility. This should result in most illegal immigrants being immediately deported after being arrested. To this end, the bill increases detention and deportation capacity and ensures single adults are detained. Among those who are released after passing their credibility interview, they will have a final asylum determination within 90 days and be fully admitted or deported. Under current law, they’re allowed to wait years inside the country because we allow all illegal immigrants to claim asylum and have only 700 judges to decide millions of cases.
The bill’s other most important provisions are that it limits Biden’s ability to parole migrants without actual humanitarian reasons and funds ICE, Border Patrol, and USCIS such that we have enough agents and asylum officers to arrest, detain, and deport as many illegal immigrants as possible. On top of these improvements, it creates a new authority to completely suspend the right to claim asylum if 5,000 migrants are encountered or arrested per day along the border. This is not an allowance, but an additional limit that doesn’t exist now.
Critics of the deal say that the president already has the authority to solve the crisis under existing law. Why are they wrong?
The president can do more to secure the border, but he alone can’t solve the present crisis. He could use expedited removal more often, use emergency authority to hire more asylum interviewers, and pressure other countries to stop illegal immigrants from outside the Western Hemisphere.
But a single deportation costs thousands of dollars, and detention space is very limited, so if Congress does not appropriate the funds required to secure the border, we simply will not be able to. And under our current laws, anyone physically present in the United States is entitled to claim asylum and have their claim heard, even if they entered illegally. That’s why Trump released over a million illegal immigrants during his term. The president cannot make illegal entry more illegal than it is, nor can he override the right to asylum without Congress.

TODAY IN TABLET:

The Forgotten Pioneer of Movie Music, by Karen Iris Tucker

The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Ottalie Mark left her mark on the film industry—and the music industry—a century ago

SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.

Why Israel Is Winning in Gaza

The tactical victory that Hamas achieved on October 7, with all its scenes of unimaginable horror, has become a leading driver of its strategic defeat

by Edward Luttwak

Anyone who has ever been in combat knows that the enemy is almost always invisible, because to remain alive one must remain behind good cover: The one and only time I saw live enemies walking toward me, I was so astonished that I hesitated before opening fire (ill-trained, they were walking into a blinding sun).

It is the same in urban combat, but much worse because the invisible enemy can be a sniper behind a window—and any one of the countless apartment houses in Gaza has dozens of windows—or he can wait with an RPG at ground level to pop out and launch his rocket, whose short range makes it of little use in open country but is amply sufficient across the width of a street. Mortars, which launch their bombs parabolically in an inverted U, are exceptionally valuable in urban combat because they can attack forces moving up one street from three streets away, beyond the reach of immediate counterfire.

Finally, there are mega-mines: not the standard land mines with five to 10 kilos of explosives placed on the ground or just under, but wired demolition charges with 10 times as much explosive covered over with asphalt, to be exploded when a tank, troop carrier, or truckload of soldiers is above them.

That is why, from the start of Israel’s counteroffensive into Gaza, almost all the media military experts, including colonels and generals festooned with campaign ribbons (though few if any had ever seen actual combat) immediately warned that Israel’s invasion of Gaza could not possibly defeat Hamas, but would certainly result in a horrifying number of Israeli casualties, before resulting in a bloody and strategically pointless stalemate.

And that was before it was realized that there were hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath Gaza, from which fighters could emerge from invisibility to attack advancing soldiers from the rear, or to set up instant ambushes in apparently cleared terrain, and through which encircled fighters under attack could safely escape. In the special case of Gaza, moreover, the crowded urban battlefield offers endless opportunities for the easiest of tactics, because contrary to accusations that only expensively educated U.S. college students could possibly believe, Israeli soldiers do not deliberately kill innocent civilians going about their business. Therefore Hamas fighters can be perfect civilians walking alongside women and children right up until the moment they duck into the right doorway to take up prepared weapons and come out shooting

Yet as of now, after 124 days of fighting in both Gaza and in the north against Hezbollah, a total of 562 Israeli soldiers have died—a total that includes 373 soldiers and local security officers, who died on Oct. 7 itself, when any and all immediately available soldiers—only some of them as organized units—rushed in to fight Hamas infiltrators wherever they could find them. Even a single death is immensely tragic for an entire family, and quite a few are entrepreneurs with employees who depend on them, so that every single death gravely affects many in many ways.

That must be said and emphasized before adding that the actual number of Israeli soldiers killed in the counteroffensive until now is not in the thousands suggested by the beribboned skeptics who were gleefully echoed by the malevolent, but under 300 as of this writing. In other words, only a very, very small number, given the magnitude of the forces involved on both sides, and the exceptional complexity of the battlefield. By way of comparison, 95 U.S. Marines and four British soldiers were killed in the six-week-long, 2004 battle of Fallujah, the famous Pumbedita of the Talmudists but a small town, fighting some 4,000 Sunni fighters. In Gaza, estimates are that Israel faced approximately 30,000 trained Hamas fighters at the start of the war.

Regardless of what happens from now on, the Gaza fighting to date has been an exceptional feat of arms. A conservative estimate—the lowest I have seen—is that approximately 10,000 Hamas fighters have been killed or terminally disabled, along with an equal number of wounded who may or may not fight again in the future.

The sensational 1 to 50, or near enough, kill ratio achieved by the IDF in fighting Hamas in Gaza is all the more exceptional for reasons that neither official Americans nor official Israelis care to mention, albeit for different reasons.

The first is tactical and technical. Without saying more, it is fair to conclude from news accounts that Israel’s very innovative methods to surveil, penetrate, and destroy Hamas tunnels have been markedly and unexpectedly successful.

But the constraints placed on Israel’s combat operations have been very severe, and a major impediment to its fight.

Israel has a fair amount of field artillery in the form of the common 155 mm caliber gun-howitzers, just like the U.S. and other Western armies. But it also has much smaller, much cheaper Israeli-made 160 mm heavy mortars that deliver 30 kilos of high explosives at shorter ranges. The Israelis should have used them abundantly in the Gaza fighting, because parabolic fire is just the thing in urban warfare, but did not because of their own avoidance of collateral casualties … and because of continued alarms and warnings from the U.S.

That was most certainly the case with the exceedingly restrained, indeed inadequate use of Israel’s air power in Gaza. In the 1991 “Desert Storm” attack on Iraq, for which I received a letter of commendation from U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill A. McPeak for target selection before and during the bombing, I never deliberately selected a civilian target. But I do not recall anyone ever telling me that a valuable military target must not be attacked because there may be civilian casualties. But in Gaza, the Israeli air force was hardly allowed to contribute more than a fraction of its strength to the fighting, in deference to the insistent requests coming from the White House.

All this makes the Israeli success in the fighting to date all the more remarkable.

One reason is known to all: The Israeli army remains wedded to the British method of intensive and prolonged individual instruction for its soldiers before their in-unit training, so that nobody enters Gaza without at least a full year’s worth of combat instruction, much more than their American counterparts had in Vietnam when the U.S. last used conscripts.

Another reason is that the IDF did not fall into the illusion that normal infantry soldiers, howsoever well-trained, could venture into invariably booby-trapped and deviously interlinked Hamas tunnels and fight successfully. More than 25 years ago, the IDF established its Yahalom (an acronym that means “diamond” in Hebrew) combat engineer unit that specializes in tunnel warfare to learn all its many tricks and perils, so that when a new tunnel entrance is discovered in Gaza by advancing troops there is no rushing in Israeli-style, until Yahalom soldiers arrive to lead the way, very carefully. By substituting low-frequency sensors, heavy earth-moving equipment, minidrones, and bullets for jet fighters, heavy artillery, and smart bombs, Israel has effected massive cost savings while reducing its reliance on U.S. resupply—and taking the steam out of propaganda claims about bombing and artillery massacres.

Finally, there is the equipment much of it unique to the IDF, and already in high demand by foreign armies. Israeli Merkava tanks, unlike the seemingly formidable German Leopard tanks that failed to spearhead Ukraine’s big offensive, were not penetrated and cooked by the remarkable Russian Kornet missiles that Hamas also has. That’s because, in addition to its thick armor, each 60-ton Merkava went into Gaza with its own Trophy counterweapon that intercepts incoming missiles and rockets at close range.

Also unique to Israel is the turretless Namer infantry carrier, a battle taxi in effect, that allows Israeli troops to move about in the perilous urban space protected by more armor than any combat vehicle in history. When armored vehicles enter defended urban areas they must do so almost blindly, because their commanders cannot stand in their turrets to look all around, as they do in open ground, without fatally exposing themselves to close-in artillery and mortars, and also snipers. Yes, there have always been observation slits, periscopes and protected sights but they only offer narrow views, of little use when a hundred windows and balconies overlook the fight.

In the Namer by contrast, nobody has to stand in an open hatch to view all 360 degrees of the outside world, because the locked-down crew can see everything on large screens whose images come from microcameras safely embedded in the armor.

Even when Israel’s infantrymen in Gaza must dismount, or advance on foot from the start, they are guided by the warnings and directions of their commanders, who monitor their movement and those of any enemies close by with the cameras of their minidrones that can see them from above, while other flying cameras look for snipers and for mortar crews in the next street over. While these days even Iran manufactures drones, Israel was the first country to produce remotely piloted vehicles as they were originally known some 60 years ago, and still today leads the way, producing both the smallest—mechanical flying insects—and some of the largest. They are especially useful in Gaza because it takes many eyes to surveil the very complicated urban landscape.

None of the above would matter if the troops fighting in Gaza were not determined to ensure that they will not have to come back, by fighting as hard and as long as necessary to grind down Hamas until nothing is left of its fighting strength. Of that the best evidence is provided by a misunderstanding: The soldiers of a reserve battalion of several hundred, rotated out after much hard fighting to bring in a fresh battalion, mistakenly thought that Israel was starting to retreat altogether, and staged a protest until they were reassured—and also reprimanded—for protesting while still in uniform.

It is now evident that the tactical victory that Hamas achieved on Oct. 7 with all its scenes of unimaginable horror has become a leading driver of its strategic defeat, by compelling the Israeli government to persist in spite of the atrocious plight of the hostages, by motivating IDF troops to fight until its destruction, and by forfeiting much potential support even from within the Arab world, allowing all Arab governments that had them to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. That feckless American college students sing its praises will not avert the well-deserved fate that awaits Hamas, and without the heavy casualties that some feared while others gleefully anticipated.