Markus Schreiber/Associated Press
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Davos, Switzerland
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is largely an opportunity for the powerful to mingle with the even more powerful. For the most part, I’ve spent my time here listening to government leaders — Iran’s foreign minister struck me as an exceptionally talented dissembler — and schmoozing with business leaders, think tankers and officials at Davos’s famous private dinners and after-parties.
But the most moving stories I heard this week came from some of the least powerful people here.
“I open my eyes and feel my throat close,” Rachel Goldberg told me, describing her mornings over the previous 100-plus days. “I say a Jewish prayer and ask, ‘Let today be the day.’ And then I say, ‘Pretend to be human.’ And I put on this costume because, if I’m a ball on the floor, I can’t save him.”
She was speaking — with extraordinary self-composure — of her 23-year-old son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. On Oct. 7, he was attending the Nova music festival with a friend when terrorists from Hamas, arriving in paragliders and vans, murdered 364 people there in cold blood. Hersh and nearly 30 others tried to hide at a small roadside bomb shelter. Terrorists attacked it with hand grenades, then an R.P.G., killing nearly everyone inside.
Hersh survived the assault, barely. Goldberg showed me video footage, taken by Hamas, of him being put into the back of a truck and driven off to Gaza. The lower half of his left arm has been blown off, leaving a bloody stump. It’s stomach-churning to watch.
Goldberg is in Davos to talk to anyone who can help save and return the remaining 132 hostages, including Hersh. So is Noam Peri, who works for Google in Israel. Peri’s father, Chaim, a welder and artist from the kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gaza Strip, was taken from his home on the morning of Oct. 7.
He was hiding with his wife, Osnat, in the safe room of their house when Hamas broke through. Chaim heroically shoved a terrorist away, giving Osnat time to hide in a corner of the room. When Hamas returned, he walked out with them, losing one of his sandals along the way. They never thought to go back to check the room for additional people.
“He saved my mother,” Noam told me. She last had proof of life nearly two months ago, when Hamas shot a video of Chaim and two other elderly hostages, looking frail and afraid. He’s without his glasses, hearing aid and medication, most likely in an airless tunnel deep underground, sustained, according to the testimony of hostages who have been released, on a starvation diet — typically, two dates in the morning, a half-pita and some rice, another half-pita.
He will turn 80 in April, assuming he’s still alive.
Another elderly resident of the Nir Oz kibbutz was Eli Margalit, who was murdered that day. Hamas terrorists took his corpse with them to Gaza — presumably as a negotiating chit, and cruelly denying his family the chance of a burial and a place to mourn.
Also taken by Hamas that morning was his daughter, Nili Margalit, a pediatric nurse in a hospital in southern Israel that largely serves the Bedouin community. She was taken alive at knifepoint.
“On Friday morning, the day before the attack, I was on shift in the hospital and I was telling a friend of mine, ‘You know, tomorrow is a holiday, and our tradition is to fly white kites for peace on the border to show solidarity for Palestinians,’” she told me. “That was my intention.”
She spent the next 54 days with 20 other hostages in a tunnel that, according to her captors, was 130 feet underground. “There’s no air. You feel like you’re suffocating. No running water. There was a toilet but no running water; we flushed it once a day. The hygiene conditions are terrible,” she said. She was repeatedly told by her captors that “nobody cares about us, the government isn’t looking for us.”
As a nurse, she took it upon herself to care for the other hostages — some of whom had arrived in the tunnel with heart ailments, kidney and respiratory diseases, diabetes and other afflictions. Worse than the physical deprivation, she said, was the psychological terror. “When your spirit is not strong, you can’t survive,” she said. “The mind will make the body shut down.”
I asked her what her homecoming — which came about as part of a temporary truce in which Israel released Palestinian prisoners — was like. “My house was burned down; I don’t have a house to go back to,” she said. “It’s not about the clothes. It’s memories. Photos. My entire life on two hard drives, all gone. No sense of how my father died.”
“I want to give my father a proper burial,” she added. “To say the prayers.”
In my talks with Goldberg, Peri and Margalit, they took care to stay away from expressing any political opinions. Smartly so: The powerful in Davos take sharply different views about the war.
But I struggle to imagine how anyone of good conscience can take any view except to desire — and loudly demand — that Hersh come home to his parents, and Chaim to his daughter and wife, and that Nili be able to bury her father, and that all the hostages, irrespective of every other consideration, be freed and brought home now. It bears repeating everywhere, every day, until the day finally comes.
Bret Stephens is an Opinion columnist for The Times, writing about foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural issues.
The Electric Car Con Explained
By William Levin in the American Thinker
Is electricity a source of energy? Most people will answer yes, which is incorrect. Electricity carries energy but it is not itself a source of energy, which in the U.S. is supplied 60% by natural gas and coal, 18% nuclear and 22% renewables (hydro, solar and wind).
The related question is whether cars are a major consumer of energy and hence a significant contributor of Co2 emissions? Again, most people believe both statements are self-evidently true, hence the importance of moving to electric cars.
In fact, cars (light-duty transportation) account for less than 5% of global energy demand, with U.S. cars accounting for 19% of the global car fleet, declining to under 15% by 2050 as car demand grows faster outside the U.S.
Putting these facts together, and they are indisputable facts, provides a stunning insight.
The U.S. car fleet accounts for a mere 1.0% of global energy demand (5% x 19%), declining to 0.8% by 2050. So even if the U.S. shifts 100% to electric-powered cars, the maximum climate impact in 2050 is a meaningless 0.2% (22% x 0.8%) reduction in global Co2 emissions from the current electric grid, up to a maximum of 0.5% assuming solar, wind, and hydro can, implausibly, power 60% of electric demand.
In other words, there is no factual basis to claim that the government mandate to switch to electric cars will have any material impact on global Co2 emissions.
This is not a debatable point -- it is easily verified, it is correct under any view of climate science, and it remains true even if solar and wind magically grow sixfold over the next 25 years, which is highly unlikely given the need to build a new transmission network, estimated at more than 200,000 miles of wires crisscrossing the country, and devise totally unknown, unproven, and likely impossible to achieve large-scale, economic battery storage.
Nor does the picture change materially if the entire world goes 100% electric for cars. In that case global Co2 emissions fall a mere 3.5% in 2050 versus a baseline of 24% electric adoption by 2035.
Put simply, cars are not a meaningful source of global emissions and electric cars do not and cannot curtail the continued reliance on fossil fuels in electric generation. On top of this, counting all sources, the U.S. is responsible for only 14% of all global Co2 emissions, declining to 9% by 2050 due to rest of world economic growth.
But facts count for nothing in the Biden era. The EPA seeks to force conversion to electric cars through draconian limits on tailpipe emissions. American taxpayers foot the bill for billions in subsidies to electric cars. California leads the way in mandating conversion to electric cars. Perversely, the major auto companies have signed onto the electric agenda, the harbinger of future bailouts.
Perhaps most galling is the continuous misleading of the public.
By law every new car must affix a window sticker with the following statement: “Vehicle emissions are a significant cause of climate change and smog.“ Any private company marketing such demonstrably false claims would be subject to ruinous civil and criminal liability.
If going electric yields virtually no climate benefit, why bother buying a battery-powered car, with limited range, high purchase cost, and low resale value, the death knell to affordable leasing costs?
Consumers are smarter than the government in figuring out that battery-powered cars are a raw deal, resulting in widespread reports of missed sales forecasts, high unsold inventories, and cancellation of future projections by the major auto companies.
Here again the new car sticker hides economic reality by featuring in bold type a hypothetical five-year operating saving versus an average conventional car, based on the cost of gas and electricity.
By sticker math, savings rise as gasoline prices increase, hence the perverse and persistent administration incentive to force high gas costs on Americans, except in an election year. And the savings disappear as electric costs increase.
Already there is no operating benefit when charging stations routinely cost $.40/kwh-$.50/kwh, a fact conveniently not mentioned in the sticker calculation. Nor are consumers warned of the inevitable sharp increase in electric rates if the grid must absorb high-cost solar and wind, as in Germany where electric rates already are $.45/kwh, removing any incentive for electric cars. At current gas prices, a typical hybrid costs less to run on gas once electric prices exceed $.24/kwh.
Taking the broader view, fossils fuels currently account for 80% of global energy supply. Even if the world aggressively grows solar and wind, fossil fuels in 2050 continue to supply 68% of all energy.
The reason is quite straightforward. The major sources of energy, and hence global energy emissions, come from non-car sources that are extremely difficult or technologically infeasible to convert to renewables, namely industrial, commercial transportation (heavy-duty trucking, aviation, marine, and rail), and residential/commercial. The government focus on cars is political theater.
Nuclear energy can uniquely reduce emissions to zero in these sectors, but for reasons well-known, war has been successfully declared on nuclear energy in the U.S. and it is not growing globally at the exponential rates needed to solve global Co2 emissions permanently.
The continued dominance of fossil fuels explains what is otherwise inexplicable: Warren Buffet’s multi-billion-dollar investment in oil companies, especially Occidental Petroleum, and the recent surge in oil acquisitions, notably ExxonMobil paying $58 billion for Pioneer Natural Resources and Chevron’s purchase of Hess Corp. for $60 billion.
Those with the greatest knowledge, betting real money, know oil and gas are here to stay. Without skillful, continuous oil and gas investment in the billions and trillions in the U.S. and the world, global oil and gas production by 2050 would drop more than 70% from current levels, yielding economic Armageddon.
The Biden Administration response is astonishing. As reported by the Department of Energy in September 2023, the National Security Council has issued an edict banning government employees from attending any international conference that promotes fossil fuel production, with limited exceptions.
Yet even at 68% market share for fossil fuels, global emissions will be cut significantly. By a factor of three, the most important lever of global greenhouse gas reduction is not growth in solar and renewables, but continuous private sector innovation in energy efficiency, reducing energy content per unit of output.
Missing in climate change discussions is its inhumane logic. Global emission increases through 2050 are due to population growth and rising economic activity in China, India, and the rest of the developing world (i.e., non-U.S. and Europe). GDP growth raises living standards. Falling GDP and population reduction outside the developed nations are the true, but strategically hidden, moral epicenter of the climate change agenda.
China, India, Asia, and Africa are not buying what world elites are selling as they self-righteously jet to exhilarating climate confabs. No one should. Demanding that 80% of the world, or some six billion humans, sacrifice their well-being, and their children, is an immorality never before articulated and rationalized.
The hard truth is that no set of actions can remotely meet the arbitrary IPCC requirement for a 70% reduction in global Co2 by 2050, certainly not the puny contribution from electrified cars and indeed nothing short of a horrific determination to strangle the world whole.
By all means purchase a battery-powered vehicle if it pleases you. But do not imagine for a moment that it saves money or is doing anything that matters for climate change.
We are ruled by liars, fools and demons, too often all three in one.
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TOTAL AGREEMENT and that is what Obama wants?
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Biden’s two-state ‘solution’ would be a disaster for Israel
By Michael Goodwin
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To those who hate America and are neo-Marxists, as are most mass media people, open borders is the way to go.
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Fetterman says American dream is threatened by 300,000 illegal immigrants swarming southern border
'I honestly don’t understand why it’s controversial to say we need a secure border,' the senator told CNN anchor Jake Tapper
PMW director: 'The massacre was a result of PA education'
The director of the Palestinian Media Watch explains how the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the October 7th massacre
Palestinian Media Watch founder and director Itamar Marcus spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News at the Sovereignty Movement conference in Jerusalem about the influence of the Palestinian Authority on the people of Gaza.
“Hamas’s deeds did not happen in a vacuum - it was the result of a generation of Palestinian education. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for education in Gaza as well,” Marus said.
“The Palestinian Authority teaches that the reason there have been massacres of Jews for centuries is because the whole world has needed to defend itself against them. Palestinians are told that Europe decided to solve its Jewish problem by stealing Palestine and sending the Jews there.”
“They are also told that this is the word of Allah, with one religious leader after another saying that Jews are Satan, the root of all evil in the world. It creates an incredible message that not only do we hate the Jews, so does the rest of the world, and so does Allah.”
He commented on reports of plans to have the Palestinian Authority take control of Gaza after the war: “The PA is part of the problem, and cannot be part of the solution. If they were to take control in Gaza, another generation would feel they were justified in doing Allah’s work by massacring Jews - something that must be avoided at all costs.”
He confirmed the reports that the Hamas plan for October 7th was readily available on Palestinian Media: “It was all out there. They published videos of training for this as early as August. Although we didn't know exactly when, we knew they were planning something like this. Much like in 1973, people in positions of power in the military intelligence blinded themselves by saying that we were too strong to attack. The results have been tragic.”
And:
Contrast this hateful Harvard professor, who must be a Jimmy Carter disciple, with Itamar's essay. Ironic that Carter is attributed with including human rights into our diplomacy but his deeply Baptist orthodoxy caused him to tag Israel with being an "apartheid" nation.
Carter was a tragic, bitter figure. A modern day Shakespearian Hamlet.
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CUNY invites ‘ethnic-cleansing’ accuser to speak about Zionism
Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history at Harvard, recently signed a petition that slandered Israel as a country of “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacism.”
Guess which “expert” has been invited to lecture on Zionism at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center?
The answer, incredibly, is a professor who accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing”; advocates restricting U.S. aid to Israel; and has accused American Jews of having a sexual infatuation with the Jewish state.
Derek Penslar, a Canadian-American professor of Jewish history at Harvard University (where else?), will speak on “Zionism as Hated Object and Hating Subject” as part of a Nov. 16 webinar sponsored by the CUNY Graduate Center.
Penslar has a long record of taking extremist positions on Israel.
In an interview with the London Jewish Chronicle on March 14, 2013, he said: “What happened to the Palestinians [in 1948] wasn’t genocide. It was ethnic cleansing.”
Writing in Fathom in April 2021, he accused Israel of “perpetuat[ing] oppression, resistance and hatred.” He also claimed that “Israel bears its share of responsibility” for all the Arab-Israeli wars that have taken place since 1948.
As recently as Aug. 4, he signed a petition that slandered Israel as a country of “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacism.” In it, Penslar and his colleagues also denounced Israel’s government as “a regime of apartheid” and called on the Biden administration to “restrict American military aid from being used in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
For the record, that would mean (among other things) that Israeli soldiers would be prohibited from using American-made rifles to guard synagogues, kindergartens and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, or in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of French Hill, Gilo and much of Ramot.
The petition Penslar signed was also laced with conspiracy-mongering. It claimed that Israeli legislative reforms concerning the balance of powers between the judiciary and the Knesset are actually part of a secret plot to “deprive Palestinians of equal rights.” In reality, many of those reforms have already been adopted, yet not a single Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel has been deprived of any rights.
His strangest anti-Israel accusation appears in his new book, Zionism: An Emotional State. Many radical academics believe that they can psychoanalyze the entire Jewish people; they see Zionist patriotism as a series of hot-headed “emotional” reactions and overreactions.
In truth, Zionism has always been a clear and rational way to address the reality that faces Jews in a hostile world. Embracing Zionism in response to inquisitions, massacres, pogroms or the Nazis’ genocide is not “emotional”; it’s a very logical answer to Jewish suffering.
In a recent interview with the New Jersey Jewish Standard, Penslar elaborated on his bizarre psychoanalysis of the Jewish people. Since 1948, he asserted, American Jews have supported Israel out of “an almost erotic love.”
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According to Penslar, “It was the love of a new Jewish body, tanned, virile, Paul Newman-like men, women in short shorts. … More and more people [were] using the language of falling in love with Israel, which you hadn’t heard before. … It was about love. About eros. The Israeli soldiers are an essential component of it.”
(He was referring to Newman acting as the lead Jewish character Capt. Ari Ben Canaan in the 1960 historical drama “Exodus.”)
This isn’t merely ignorant; it’s highly insulting. American Jews do not love Israel because the hot weather of the Middle East tans bodies or encourages people to wear shorts. “Falling in love” with Israel has nothing to do with sex. American Jews love Israel because it’s a wonderful country, because of all it has accomplished, and because of pride in the restoration of statehood after 2,000 years of national homelessness and persecution.
If this is the kind of “expert” on Zionism employed by Harvard and who the CUNY Graduate Center features as a speaker, is it any wonder that Zionism is so badly misunderstood on college campuses today?
The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.
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Hamas Toll Thus Far Falls Short of Israel’s War Aims, U.S. Says
First known U.S. estimate of Hamas’s death toll shows the group’s resilience after months of war
By Nancy A. Youssef in Washington, Jared Malsin in Istanbul and Carrie Keller-Lynn in Tel Aviv
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