Category: Religion

Outnumbered Kibbutz Volunteers with M16 Rifles Defended Their Families Against Hamas Terror

(p. A1) At 6:56 a.m. on Oct. 7, [2023] Moshe Kaplan sent an urgent alert to his volunteer security force in Mefalsim, a kibbutz of 1,000 men, women and children in southern Israel where he served as security chief.

“There’s a shooting in the village from the gate!” he texted after militants fired at his car as he drove past the main entrance. Attackers later blew open a pedestrian gate nearby with explosives and flooded into the kibbutz.

Kaplan rushed home to grab his armored vest, helmet and M16 rifle, then drove off to check another gate on the northwest corner. There he found armed men were already inside the razor-wire security fence that encircled the community.

“Terrorists in the kibbutz! Terrorists in the kibbutz!” he yelled in a second, panicked voice text, begging his men to hurry. Gunshots sounded in the background. He had trained a dozen men for this moment, a surprise attack from nearby Gaza.

. . .

(p. A10) Mefalsim was one place that day where nothing for the Hamas attackers went according to plan.

Soon after Kaplan’s call for help, his volunteers rushed from their homes in helmets and protective vests worn over the T-shirts they had slept in, toting M16 rifles. Outnumbered and fighting alone or in pairs, the men mounted a life-or-death stand, communicating via walkie-talkie and WhatsApp texts to track the militants and send each other help.

They believed they had to hold off the insurgents long enough for the Israeli army to arrive. At first, they hoped the soldiers would be there quickly. But as minutes passed, and the fighting grew worse, they realized they would have to fight alone.

. . .

Palestinian gunmen who flooded out of Gaza killed 1,400 Israelis and took close to 200 hostages, terrorizing and shooting people at more than 20 Israeli towns and military bases and thousands at an all-night music festival not far from Mefalsim.

In town after town, attackers blasted through security fences that encircled Israeli villages near Gaza, gunning down residents, burning houses with families inside and taking hostages.

. . .

Video from a security camera at the main gate of Mefalsim captured some of the carnage that took place outside the main gate of the kibbutz as people fled the outdoor music festival and tried desperately to get inside, pursued by militants. A man in a white shirt was shot as he ran toward the entrance. He grabbed his right arm and dropped to the pavement, blood spilling from around his head.

Armed fighters emerged from a wooded area minutes later. Several ran to the fallen man and shot him again. Drivers who abandoned cars to hide in the bushes were attacked with grenades. A person pulled from the bushes was shot and bludgeoned with a rifle butt. The video was posted by South First Responders, a group of emergency personnel working in southern Israel, and verified by The Wall Street Journal.

. . .

Over the next hour, there were several gunfights. Security volunteers hunted for the militants who were moving alone and in pairs on residential streets. Two attackers were killed in the garden of a house by four Israeli soldiers who were home on a weekend leave. Two of the soldiers suffered minor wounds from grenade fragments.

Reskin, the landscape architect, came within sight of the main gate and saw a large group of attackers exchanging what looked like congratulations. He fired and they scattered. He next went into a nearby residential neighborhood and joined Idan Mayrovich, the team’s medic. As they walked, they saw Idan Kadosh, a resident, shooting with a handgun from his window, and he joined their patrol.

. . .

No Mefalsim residents were killed or taken hostage, protected by a dozen residents, many of them former Israeli soldiers, who had prepared for years to defend the kibbutz.

Mefalsim also got lucky. Although the defenders didn’t know exactly how many attackers infiltrated the kibbutz, they estimated it was probably around 25 to 30, a group smaller than those that attacked other local communities, which suffered far more casualties.

. . .

“There is a feeling of discomfort that we survived, and others did not,” security chief Kaplan said.

But Mefalsim, at least, had survived.

For the full story, see:

David S. Cloud and Anat Peled. “A Kibbutz Defeated Hamas Attack.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipses and bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 17, 2023, and has the title “When Hamas Attacked, This Israeli Kibbutz Fought Back and Won.”)

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Wrote that the Source of Modern Black Anti-Semitism Is a Post-MLK Generation of Academics Who Oppose Black Integration

(p. A13) More than 1,000 black pastors are pressing President Biden to restrain Israel in its war with Hamas and threatening that if he doesn’t do so, it will cost him black support in November [2023].

. . .

What makes the Palestinians more worthy of sympathy—especially since, unlike these other groups, they have turned down numerous offers of statehood and have made terrorism their tactic of choice?

Perhaps it is that their antagonists are Jews. In a 1992 article, the historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. pondered the causes of rising antisemitism in the black community. He considered the influence of “Christian anti-Semitism, given the historic importance of Christianity in the black community.”

. . .

He cited the “brutal truth” that the “new anti-Semitism arises not in spite of the black-Jewish alliance, but because of it.” The alliance had been formed by a previous generation of black ministers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., who sought integration. The new generation of Afrocentric leaders, including pastors, needed to keep blacks isolated to establish their own power.

Mr. Gates noted that “it is among the younger and more educated blacks that anti-Semitism is most pronounced” and that this bigotry “belongs as much to the repertory of campus lecturers as community activists.” More than 30 years later, these words seem prophetic.

For the full commentary, see:

Alan Dershowitz and Andrew Stein. “Why Do Black Pastors Oppose Israel?” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, February 1, 2024): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 31, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The article by Gates mentioned above is:

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars.” The New York Times (July 20, 1992): A15.

How Does Larry David “Brilliantly” Use “Stereotype” and “Caricature” to “Mock Deadly Serious Issues” Without Getting Cancelled?

(p. 24) On “Curb,” David starred as “Larry David,” simultaneously the world’s most comfortable and uncomfortable man, registering his complaints to a cast of sounding boards: . . .

. . .

. . ., David has . . . played with material that could explode on a lesser comic. In a classic episode, Larry becomes addicted to a Palestinian chicken restaurant that raises a furor when it opens a branch next to a Jewish deli. (While the plot might seem uncomfortably prescient during the Gaza war in 2024, when it premiered in 2011 it alluded to the controversy over a planned Islamic center in Lower Manhattan that was mislabeled a “ground zero mosque.”)

Larry is unsettled, as a Jew, by the militant posters on the restaurant’s walls. He is seduced, as a mortal, by the delicious poultry and by a Palestinian woman he meets there, who turns him on with antisemitic dirty talk.

Does the episode stereotype? Does it caricature? Does it mock deadly serious issues? Yes — brilliantly. It blows straight through offense into transcendence, guided by the comic philosophy that all people are debased, fallen and governed by low passions, above all Larry David. He ends the episode in a parking lot between two furious crowds: a group of Jewish protesters, including many of his friends, and the Palestinian counterprotesters, including his girlfriend — tribe vs. tribe, socialization vs. appetite, the camera pushing in on Larry’s anxious, indecisive face.

For the full commentary, see:

James Poniewozik. “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; ‘Curb’ Spun Something Special Out of Nothing.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, February 4, 2024): 1 & 24.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 20, 2024, and has the title “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Made Something Out of Nothing.” The online version says that the print edition has the title “‘Curb’ Spun Gold Out of Gripes and Grievances” but my national version of the print edition had the title “‘Curb’ Spun Something Special Out of Nothing.”)

A Miraculous Machine in the Middle-Ages That Did Nothing to Improve the Lives of the Masses

Before the industrial revolution clever inventors sometimes devised elaborate and amazing machines. The Antikythera mechanism is a famous example. Though these machines amaze us, they usually did little to improve the lives of those who lived at the time of invention. Why? Maybe the answer is that just before the industrial revolution, entrepreneurs were encouraged and enabled (through property rights and patents) to apply amazing inventions to the betterment of the people.

(p. C9) What kind of a book do we have in “Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend”?

. . .

The authors call the book a “clockwork”; its many disparate parts are joined in scrupulous devotion to a 16th-century automaton—an object, they write, which is at once “a sculpture, a machine, an icon, and a messenger.”

The figure is of a Franciscan friar, about 16 inches tall, carved out of wood, cloaked in a modern replica of the garb he once wore. His 5-pound weight is due to an intricate iron mechanism that fits inside his wooden body; it is wound with a key.

. . .

Imagine, Ms. King and Mr. Todd suggest, what it would have been like to see this automaton at the time of its creation. He is placed upon a candlelit table. His feet take steps under his tunic—but he actually glides on three wheels, making his movement seem ethereal. He is deliberately slow. This is not a mechanism meant to thrill us with speed and virtuosity. His movements are graceful, solemn.

As he moves, the friar raises and lowers a cross in his left hand and strikes his chest with his right, as if declaring “mea culpa.” He also lifts the cross to his lips and fixes his gaze steadily, perhaps at an observer at the opposite end of the table. He looks down at the cross, up at the observer, and begins to turn: “You let out half a breath,” the authors tell us, “but as his full body pivots on the table, feet in motion, head forward, his eyes slide left in their sockets to stay fixed on you!” Then he changes direction, staring at what might be another observer. There is no doubt about his seriousness; the impact on believers, in the half-light, would have been considerable.

. . .

In seeking to learn more about the friar’s provenance, Ms. King contacted Servus Gieben, a Dutch-born Franciscan who served as the director of the Franciscan Museum in Rome. In his correspondence with Ms. King, Gieben, who died in 2014, reaffirmed his theory that it may have been commissioned by Philip for his son Carlos. In 1562, at the age of 17, Carlos fell down a flight of stairs and so gravely injured his skull that he was not expected to survive (either the injury or the era’s “treatments”).

. . . The corpse of a Franciscan friar, Diego de Alcalá (ca. 1400-63), had remained free of decay after his death that it was thought to have healing powers. And behold: Once it was laid upon the dying prince, Carlos soon began to recover. Philip II spent 26 years petitioning four consecutive popes to recognize the miracle and declare Diego a saint. (He ultimately was, as the city of San Diego now affirms.)

Gieben suggested that the facial resemblance between the automaton and Diego was evident. And what better way, he thought, for Philip to honor Diego than by providing his often wayward son with an admonitory reminder in the form of the penitential friar himself, created by the most brilliant clockmaker in the empire. As Don Carlos was brought back to life, so an inanimate automaton would turn animate.

Even today, the authors suggest, the friar remains “a small miracle. Or the image of a small miracle. Or the metaphor of a large miracle. Or an artificial miracle.”

For the full review see:

Edward Rothstein. “A Wonder of Another Age.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, December 23, 2023): C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 22, 2023, and has the title “‘Miracles and Machines’ Review: Mystery of the Clockwork Man.”)

The book under review is:

King, Elizabeth, and W. David Todd. Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2023.

Nazis Allowed Charitable Feeding of Enslaved Camp Inmates, to Increase Their Productivity

(p. A13) The remarkable story of Janina Mehlberg almost didn’t see the light of day. A Holocaust survivor and a mathematics professor in Chicago, Mehlberg stood out for making her way in an academic field dominated by men. But while teaching her students and giving conference papers, she was privately writing an account of her life’s most remarkable episode: her daring impersonation of a Polish aristocrat in World War II, a deception that allowed her to aid Poles who had been imprisoned by the Nazis.

. . .

The Majdanek camp held Polish prisoners forced into slave labor, Russian prisoners of war, and Jews who would be murdered either by being shot at close range or poisoned by gas.  . . .  As “the Countess,” Mehlberg served as the head of the Polish Main Welfare Council, visiting the camp regularly. The haughty, demanding countess negotiated ways to bring soup, bread, medicine—and hope—to a great many Polish prisoners. Betraying little emotion, this hidden Jew became a sort of patron saint by appearing again and again to witness their suffering and alleviate it as best she could. “Janina’s story is unique,” the authors assert. “She was a Jew who rescued non-Jews in the midst of the largest murder operation of the Holocaust.”

“The Counterfeit Countess,” too, is unsentimental. The writing is matter of fact; the authors include data about the numbers of meals served, the details of negotiations with Nazi officers, the changes in camp conditions as the war unfolded. Mehlberg recognized that the Germans were making trade-offs within their sick paradigm of racial superiority. Would it be more efficient to murder Poles or starve them while they worked? She persuaded Nazi higher-ups to let her organization provide thousands of tons of food to prisoners so that they could do the work that would feed the Nazi war machine. German commanders decided it served their interests to allow “the Countess” to continue providing food and medicine to enslaved workers.

For the full review see:

Michael S. Roth. “BOOKSHELF; Fake Title, Real Courage.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Jan. 25, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 24, 2023, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘The Counterfeit Countess’ Review: Fake Title, Real Courage.”)

The book under review is:

White, Elizabeth B., and Joanna Sliwa. The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024.

Hamas Murdered Israeli Peace Activist at Music Festival

(p. A8) Maya Mizrachi grimaced at the group of eight Israelis calling for peace with Palestinians in front of Israel’s military headquarters this month in Tel Aviv.

A year ago, Ms. Mizrachi, 25, had protested alongside them, carrying a sign that called for Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank. Now, she had bumped into them by accident, on her way home from a nearby rally calling for the return of Israeli citizens held hostage in the Gaza Strip.

“I don’t think there are more than eight people in all of Israel who would protest against the army right now,” said Ms. Mizrachi, who is a student. “I can’t even bring myself to do it.”

. . .

According to polls conducted in the two months since Oct. 7 [2023], Israelis have moved decidedly to the right on a number of political issues, including support for settlers in the West Bank, endorsements for far-right politicians, and even the re-establishment of a military occupation of Gaza.

“The trauma of what happened on Oct. 7 shifted Israeli society. It made them question the most basic tenets of whether they were safe in their homes,” said Tal Schneider, a political columnist for The Times of Israel. “They are calling now for more — more military, more protection, more hard-line policies.”

. . .

The towns and agricultural communities that line Israel’s border with Gaza were once bastions of the left. Many villages there were founded as kibbutzim, socialist agricultural communities. Over the years, many residents used their proximity to the Palestinians in Gaza to help deliver aid and run solidarity campaigns.

On Oct. 7, the closeness of those communities to the border made them vulnerable to the attack by Hamas terrorists. Well-known peace activists, including Vivian Silver, a founder of Women Wage Peace, were among those killed. The attack made the survivors rethink policies they had previously championed.

Before Oct. 7, Larry Butler, 73, a resident of Nir Oz, considered himself a leftist. As a member of Peace Now, he participated in rallies calling for the evacuation of Israeli settlements in Gaza, which were disassembled in 2005.

Now, displaced in a hotel in Eilat, a resort town on the Red Sea, Mr. Butler has questioned his beliefs. “I guess I’m somewhere in the middle,” he said, “but I’m definitely not left and I’m definitely not right.”

In Tel Aviv, Ms. Mizrachi’s turn against the left came soon after Oct. 7, when she discovered that a high school friend was among those killed at the Tribe of Nova music festival.

“The irony is that she was the biggest peace activist I knew,” Ms. Mizrachi said. “She was the one who got me involved in the movement to begin with,” she added. “I used to joke that she made me a leftie. Now I can’t say that I am.”

For the full story, see:

Sheera Frenkel. “After the Oct. 7 Attacks, Israelis Are Becoming More Politically Conservative.” The New York Times (Wednesday, December 20, 2023): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 19, 2023, and has the title “Israelis Abandon Political Left Over Security Concerns After Oct. 7.”)

Britain’s Socialized National Health Service (NHS) Stripped Parents of Control, Leaving Indi No Choice but to Die

(p. A13) Indi was born with mitochondrial disease, a degenerative condition that prevents cells from producing energy. When her parents and the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, England, disagreed over whether she should be kept on life support, the NHS turned to the courts to strip the parents of decision-making authority. The U.K. High Court agreed, overrode the parents’ wishes, and ordered life support removed.

. . .

While the NHS thought continued treatment would be futile, other experts disagreed, including at the Vatican’s Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital. As part of its religious mission, Bambino Gesù specializes in treating children with rare diseases. Doctors there offered a treatment plan they thought could help Indi, free of charge. The Italian government even made her a citizen so that she could be airlifted from England.

. . .

For the U.K., the offer of free treatment by willing doctors ought to have been the end of the story. The government didn’t have to pay another penny. The grateful parents simply wanted the freedom to take their daughter to the experts in Rome.

Instead, the NHS went back to the same court and judge to insist it remained in Indi’s best interests to die in the U.K. The court again agreed and overrode the parents’ desire to take Indi to see the experts in Rome. The judge ordered that they could take her only to one place: to the hospice to die.

The parents had no choice but to comply. Lest they try anything else to save their daughter, the parents were sent to hospice with a security escort and police presence.

Deprived of treatment and with her parents forbidden to help her, Indi died within two days, under the watchful eye of the government that said all along it was looking out for her best interests.

For the full commentary, see:

Mark Rienzi. “Britain’s NHS Left Indi Gregory to Die.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 20, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

“The Aggressions of Brutes and Incompetents Brandishing Governmental Authority”

(p. C7) The story of David Koresh and the siege of the Branch Davidians’ compound near Waco, Texas, is by turns gripping, harrowing and nauseating. The initial raid of the compound, called Mount Carmel by its residents, resulted in the deaths of six Davidians—two of them finished off by a fellow cultist after they were badly wounded—and four federal agents. After a 51-day standoff, the FBI tried to flush out Koresh and 85 remaining Davidians with tear gas. The compound, built haphazardly of plywood, caught fire. A government report later claimed that the fire had been set deliberately, though the few Davidians who fled in the final assault deny this. Seventy-six people died in the conflagration, some with bullet holes in their skulls. The dead included 25 children and two pregnant women.

The initial raid, conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, occurred on Feb. 28, 1993. Two accounts of the event—Jeff Guinn’s “Waco” and Kevin Cook’s “Waco Rising”—mark the 30th year since the catastrophe. Another book, “Koresh” by Stephan Talty, will appear in April from HarperCollins to memorialize the standoff’s fiery conclusion on April 19, 1993.

All three books are impressively researched and written with storytelling verve. Each account, though relating the same sad tale, is distinctive. Mr. Guinn has interviewed an array of ATF and FBI officials. Mr. Cook tells the story mostly from the Davidians’ viewpoint. And Mr. Talty delves the deepest into the history and twisted personality of David Koresh.

. . .

. . . the ATF and the FBI—and by extension Attorney General Janet Reno and the Clinton administration—managed to make the word “Waco” a symbol of governmental violence and persecution.

. . .

(p. C8) The details of what happened when the agents arrived can’t be fully known, but we know that Koresh came out, unarmed, to meet the ATF contingent and asked to speak. Rather than arresting him as ordinary police officers might have done, the agents stormed the place with shouts of “Search warrant! Lay down!” The first shots appear to have come from the raiders: They shot the dogs, Alaskan Malamutes, penned outside the compound.

The Davidians had vague expectations of apocalyptic violence from Babylon—their term, drawn from the Book of Revelation, for the outside world. Evidently some drew the not unreasonable conclusion that the time had come. Hearing shots fired, they shot back. So began an hours-long chaotic gunfight that left 10 dead and scores wounded.

. . .

Agents outside the compound shouted curses at the Davidians and mooned them—a fine enticement to come out. ATF deputy director Daniel Hartnett led Reno to believe, wrongly, that the Davidians were heavily invested in illegal narcotics. FBI officials convinced her, based on the slenderest evidence, that Koresh and others were “beating babies” inside the compound. That the U.S. attorney general bought this unlikely story, and indeed relied on it in approving the FBI’s half-baked tear-gas-raid proposal, is among the rankest instances of ineptitude in the whole shameful episode.

When at last the FBI penetrated into the compound with tanks—all the while announcing over a loudspeaker, “This is not an assault”—agents fired “ferret rounds,” plastic tear-gas canisters, into the compound. The vast majority of Davidians would not leave, even when the fires ignited. The FBI called for assistance from the fire department, but bureau agents had long since cut off the flow of water to Mount Carmel; restoring it would probably take hours. When fire engines arrived at a checkpoint half a mile from the compound, the FBI official in charge directed the checkpoint agents to “keep them there.”

Did the ferret rounds start the fire? The government classified these devices as “nonflammable” and alleged, with inconclusive evidence, that the Davidians started the fire. Both Mr. Cook and Mr. Guinn note significant evidence that ferret rounds are often combustible. In 1999, the Dallas Morning News revealed that “pyrotechnic” ferret rounds, specifically designed to combust, had been used hours before the fires began—a fact that several government lawyers and an FBI agent omitted to disclose in 1993. A government report released in 1999 concluded that those rounds didn’t cause the fire, but the details were far too murky to change anyone’s mind.

. . .

The opinion makers of America’s media and political class frequently bemoan the existence of antigovernment radicals and right-wing conspiracy theorists as if such people are motivated exclusively by irrationality and delusion. But although Mr. Jones and a thousand other paranoid fulminators may be tragically wrong about many things, their anxieties often stem from the aggressions of brutes and incompetents brandishing governmental authority.

For the full review of three books see:

Barton Swaim. “Agents of Armageddon.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 27, 2023, and has the title “Three Books on the Siege at Waco.”)

The three books under review are:

Cook, Kevin. Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America’s Modern Militias. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2023.

Guinn, Jeff. Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023.

Talty, Stephan. Koresh: The True Story of David Koresh and the Tragedy at Waco. New York: Mariner Books, 2023.

“A Plausible Case for Hounds in Heaven”

(p. A17) My mini bernedoodle, Sugaree, meets me at the door when she hears me on the front porch steps. She jumps in anticipation—all four legs catching air—until I enter the hallway. It’s a love that doesn’t diminish.

This is my welcome every weeknight when I come home from work. I haven’t split the atom, ended world hunger or even brought her a new chew toy, yet I am honored like Pompey the Great in his third Roman triumph.

. . .

British writer C.S. Lewis . . . in “The Problem of Pain,” . . . made a plausible case for hounds in heaven. Lewis thought sufficient selfhood might exist in dogs and other domesticated animals that their immortality is subsumed within their master’s heavenly destiny.

. . .

God surely has use for a creature that teaches us so much about love.

For the full commentary, see:

Mike Kerrigan. “Our Dog, Who Art in Heaven.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 3, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The C.S. Lewis book mentioned above is:

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. San Francisco, CA: Harper One, 2001.

Lower-Middle-Class Chinese Risk the Darién Gap to Seek Opportunity and Freedom in the U.S.

(p. B1) Mr. Gao said he felt he had no choice but to leave China.

“I think we will only be safe by coming to the U.S.,” he said, adding that he believed that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, could lead the country to famine and (p. B4) possibly war. “It’s a rare opportunity to protect me and my family,” he said.

A growing number of Chinese have entered the United States this year through the Darién Gap, exceeded only by Venezuelans, Ecuadoreans and Haitians, according to Panamanian immigration authorities.

. . .

Their flight is a referendum on the rule of Mr. Xi, now in his third five-year term. Boasting that “the East is rising while the West is declining,” he said in 2021 that China’s governance model had proved superior to Western democratic systems and that the center of gravity of the world economy was shifting “from West to East.”

Every immigrant I interviewed this year who passed through the Darién Gap — a journey known as zouxian, or walking the line, in Chinese — came from a lower middle-class background. They said that they feared falling into poverty if the Chinese economy worsened, and that they could no longer see a future for themselves or their children in their home country.

In Mr. Xi’s China, anyone could become a target of the state. You could get in trouble for being a Christian, Muslim, Uyghur, Tibetan or Mongolian. Or a worker who petitions for back pay, a homeowner who protests the delayed completion of an unfinished apartment, a student who uses a virtual private network for access to Instagram or a Communist Party cadre who is found with a copy of a banned book.

. . .

Another migrant I spoke with who crossed the Darién Gap, Mr. Zhong, who wanted to use only his family name for fear of retribution, has a background similar to Mr. Gao’s.

. . .

The trouble for Mr. Zhong, now in his early 30s, started last December [2022] when police officers stopped his car for a routine alcohol test and saw a copy of a Bible on the passenger seat. They told Mr. Zhong that he believed in an evil religion and tossed the Bible on the ground and stomped on it. The officers then took his phone and installed an app on it that turned out to have software that would track his movements.

On Christmas Day, four police officers broke into a home where Mr. Zhong and three fellow Christians were holding a prayer service. They were taken to the police station, beaten and interrogated.

Like Mr. Gao, Mr. Zhong came across social media posts about the Darién Gap. He borrowed about $10,000 and left home on Feb. 22 [2023].

. . .

Mr. Zhong soon moved to a town of 30,000 people in Alabama. He had grown up near Chengdu, a city of 20 (p. B5) million. Now he felt truly alone. He works at a Chinese restaurant 11 hours a day, he said, and is unwilling to take a day off. He has learned to cook General Tso’s chicken and other Chinese American dishes. The pay is much better than in China, and he can send more money home. Every Sunday, he joins an online religious service, hosted by a church in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, another community with a large population of Chinese immigrants.

He told me a joke over the phone: “Why did you go to the United States?” someone asks a Chinese immigrant. “Aren’t you satisfied with your pay, your benefits and your life?” The immigrant responds: “Yes, I’m satisfied. But in the U.S., I will be allowed to say that I’m not satisfied.”

“I can live like a real human being in the U.S.,” he said.

. . .

. . . Mr. Gao got his work permit, bought a car and started delivering packages for an e-commerce company. He makes $2 per package. The more he delivers, the more he makes.

. . .

On one Wednesday in November [2023], Mr. Gao said, he woke at 4 a.m., delivered more than 100 packages and didn’t get home until after 9 p.m.

He took the next day off. When the motorcade of Mr. Xi, who was in San Francisco for a meeting with President Biden, drove by, Mr. Gao joined other protesters on the sidewalk, chanting in Chinese, “Xi Jinping, step down!”

For the full commentary, see:

Li Yuan. “THE NEW NEW WORLD; Why More Chinese Are Risking Danger in Southern Border Crossings to U.S.” The New York Times (Monday, December 4, 2023): B1 & B4-B5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 3, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

An Observant Muslim Bears Witness to the Genocidal Slaughter of Israeli Jews on October 7, 2023

(p. A17) A fetal heartbeat flutters and then stills, a bullet lodged in the embryonic heart. The mother survives the shooting and her child’s stillbirth. A body that has been decomposing for almost three weeks lies on the autopsy table, riddled with knife and bullet wounds. Another is nearby, the man’s bluetooth receiver still clipped onto his shirt. Death came as a surprise.

This is Israel. I arrived on Oct. 19 [2023] to spend 10 days as a human-rights observer with the permission of the nation’s Foreign Affairs Ministry and help from Israel Defense Forces officer Kobi Valer. As an observant Muslim, I felt a duty to come and bear witness. What I saw will remain with me forever.

. . .

One word continually came to mind: genocide.

. . .

The Oct. 7 genocide was different, more barbaric than anything before it. The attacks were cloaked in the language and metaphors of Islam, yet corrupted with cosmic enmity for the Jewish people, Judaism, global Jewry and the Jewish state. They revealed again that Islamism is a virulent impostor of Islam with intentions anathema to the faith. And there was no doubt of Islamism’s guilt: I saw real-time footage generated by the Hamas commandos’ own GoPro cameras. I heard phone calls exclaiming the Shahadah—the Islamic declaration of faith—as they murdered, executed, burned, pillaged and then broadcast their crimes.

. . .

The Oct. 7 attack was premeditated, organized and targeted, seeking to destroy as many Israelis as possible. Hamas tortured and immolated its victims, including children, pregnant women and the unborn.

For the full commentary, see:

Qanta A. Ahmed. “The Scenes of Genocide I Saw in Israeli Morgues.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023): A17.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 10, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)