By Victor Davis Hanson

Aside from the rhetoric, there is a growing consensus among Western diplomats, military analysts, military officers, heads of state, and even much of the media about how to end the endless Ukrainian war.

A proposed peace will see a DMZ established somewhere along an adjusted 1,200-mile Ukraine-Russia border. Tough negotiations will adjudicate how far east toward its original borders Russian forces will be leveraged to backstep.

Publicly in the U.S. and covertly in Europe, all accept that a depleted Ukraine will not have the military strength to retake Crimea and the Donbas.

In 2014, both were absorbed by Russia during the Obama administration. Neither that administration nor any since has advocated a military effort to reclaim them.

Loudly, the U.S.—and again quietly Europe—concedes that Ukraine will not be in NATO—a confirmation that Russia will use to justify to its people its disastrous invasion, and even many Ukrainians will accept.

How will the West deter Putin from his inevitable agenda of reclaiming lost Soviet territory and Russian-speaking peoples? For now, his army is exhausted, its arsenals depleted, and its reputation shattered.

In the future, a commercial corridor, anchored by concessions to American and international mining concerns, will supposedly serve as a tripwire to deter Putin from attacking in-the-way noncombatant Americans.

More practically, Ukrainian forces will be kept fully armed. They have already inflicted perhaps a million causalities on Putin’s forces—possibly five times the dead, wounded, and missing that the Russians lost to the Taliban over that entire decade-long misadventure in Afghanistan.

If Trump can coax even a ceasefire, the oddly bellicose left will still rail about “Munich” and Trump as “Putin’s puppet.”

But after perhaps 1.5 million total Ukrainian and Russian dead, wounded, sick, and missing, transatlantic leftists will quietly admit they never had any realistic plan to win by fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

And they certainly were not willing—despite what they claimed in their spasms of braggadocio—to send U.S., U.K., European, or NATO ground troops into Eastern Ukraine.

Trump has faced criticism for his volatile, art-of-the-deal approach to Ukrainian diplomacy over the last 10 weeks.

Lost in such criticism is that the Biden administration did not even try to end the war. Instead, in the LBJ-style of “light at the end of the tunnel,” it parroted the great “spring offensive” to come. And when that gambit disastrously failed, it resorted to the banal blank check of “as long as it takes.”

Western leaders simplistically thought that sending more arms, money, and Ukrainians into the cauldron would eventually break Russia—30 times larger than Ukraine, 10 times richer, over four times more populous, and far less bothered by the mounting toll of its greater losses.

In addition, we even know the likely course of negotiations to end the slaughter.

As soon as Trump pressures Zelenskyy for a ceasefire and a rare minerals mining concession, Putin smells an advantage. So, he digs in and orders his generals to double down on terror strikes for advantage.

And then, once Trump sees that scolding Zelensky empowers Putin to back off from a ceasefire, he turns on Putin and puts far greater pressure on him: a secondary embargo on all who buy Russian oil that even the “on to Moscow” crowd had never envisioned.

Once Putin seems to agree, then Zelenskyy thinks he was had and wants a better mining deal or reconsideration of NATO or more sophisticated weapons—until Trump reminds him that the despised U.S., not his beloved Europeans, is his only route to a shaky peace.

So, we know the negotiations will have a yin and yang until there is no solution other than a ceasefire leading to a Korean-peninsula-like hot peace.

Putin always preferred to exploit the Obamas and Bidens of the world. And he did so in 2014 and 2022, rather than the mercurial, unpredictable, and ultimately dangerous Trump, during whose tenure he stayed put within his borders.

He also knows that for all the talk of his puppet Trump, the latter killed hundreds of the Wagner group, pulled out of an asymmetrical missile deal, first sent offensive weapons to Ukraine, sanctioned Russian oil and oligarchs, warned the Germans not to deal with Putin on the Nord Stream II pipeline, and bombed into extinction ISIS of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Qasem Soleimani.

So, Putin knows that India, China, and others who buy his oil will not if he reneges on his willingness for a ceasefire.

If and when peace comes, we can already foresee the misinformation that will follow: Trump deserves no credit. Zelenskyy remains the true hero. A now hollowed-out Russia was the real winner.

The only mystery?

Since when did the anti-war left prefer an endless and horrific war to a difficult, messy peace?

First published in American Greatness

By Theodore Dalrymple

A French criminal court’s disqualification of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French populist party, the Rassemblement National, from running for office for five years, along with a sentence of four years’ imprisonment—meaning two years under effective house arrest—and a fine of $110,000 has, not surprisingly, acted like a stick poked into a hornet’s nest. The disqualification means that Le Pen will not be able to run for the presidency, which she had a reasonable chance of winning, in 2027.

Opinions range from the complacent to the apocalyptic—from “She got what she deserved” to “This is the end of democracy in France.” The one thing that nobody said, not even the accused herself, was that Le Pen was not guilty of what she was charged with: namely, the fraudulent misuse of European Parliament funds, to the tune of about $5 million, to support her political party at home. Not even she made innocence the grounds for outrage.

It might seem surprising that the French far-Left condemned the disqualification. Its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, said that the ballot box was the proper way to defeat Le Pen, not a ban on candidates like her from running. This, of course, raises the question of what impunity those running for office should enjoy: should it apply only to presidential candidates, or to candidates for any public office? And should it be for any and all crimes?

Mélenchon may not have been entirely disinterested in his seeming support for Marine Le Pen. She is the only candidate against whom he, or the Left, could conceivably win the presidency, and he himself faces investigations of a not dissimilar kind, though of a smaller scale, from those that led to Le Pen’s inculpation.

According to polls, more than half the French population believes that Le Pen was dealt with fairly, her punishment being appropriate to her crime and not different from what anyone else would have received. They found in her conviction and punishment reassurance that France remained a country of the rule of law.

A substantial minority, however, believes that she is the victim of an unequal and politicized justice. France’s judicial system is widely thought, not without reason, to be left leaning. The fact that Marine Le Pen is the second presidential candidate of the political Right to be destroyed by legal process shortly before a possible electoral victory lends credence to a perceived trend of political persecution. (The first was François Fillon, conveniently discovered to have created fictitious employment for his wife and children shortly before his electoral bid, though his wrongdoing had continued for 20 years and was widely believed to be so prevalent as to be almost normal.)

If there is an element of unequal justice in the punishment imposed on Le Pen, it lies in the fact that her disqualification from seeking public office takes immediate effect, while the prison sentence and fine are suspended pending appeal. As in many legal systems, appeals in France take time to move through the courts. Had the disqualification also been delayed, she might still have been able to run in 2027.

Will her conviction have a practical political effect? Possibly—but it may be the opposite of what was intended. If framed cleverly, in a way that encourages the public to forget or overlook her actual guilt, it could cast her as a martyr. And martyrs make good candidates. In any case, her deputy and likely successor—Jordan Bardella, a young man with a silver tongue and no real experience—is at least as popular as she is, and perhaps more so.

As Oliver Hardy put it: here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into—“you” being, in this case, France’s juridical-political class.

First published in City Journal

By Victor Davis Hanson

I’d like to talk today about China. It seems to be on everybody’s mind, but explicitly on President Donald Trump’s mind.

That’s the one common denominator that explains his interest in Panama and not to turn over our key transit from East to West Coast to China. China has no business there. And same thing with Greenland.

He’s worried about the Chinese having access to the Arctic Circle. He’s worried about their trade surplus. He’s worried about circumventing unfair trade by assembling their products in Mexico. He’s worried about them sending raw product of fentanyl.

He’s worried about their surrogates, the sort of mad pit bulls, like North Korea and, increasingly, Iran, that he cuts the leash every once in a while and says—he being China—”Go to it. Cause chaos.”

He’s worried that China is intimidating countries in the Pacific and in Asia. Some of our strongest friends—Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam. Saying things like, “The United States is in decline. You better cut a deal.”

Essentially, they’re like Japan in 1940 and they’re trying to re-fashion something like the Japanese East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. That was a mercantile system aimed at the West, which soon they were to be at war at.

So, is it all depression? No. What Trump is saying is, for us to stop this, we’ve got to balance our budget. We can’t spend $3 billion a day on interest. If we’re gonna do this, we have to have trade parity. We can’t keep running up a trillion, a trillion and a half dollars in trade surplus.

And when he looks at us at home, he says, the ESG, this environmental, social, governance, that we don’t look at productivity in stocks but whether they’re politically correct or DEI and woke, that’s anti-merit—it doesn’t work. The Chinese love it. We will not be competitive.

If we look at the border, you can’t have an open border with 30 million illegal aliens. That is a drag on productivity. You have to have security.

So, what he’s doing is, in all these areas, is identifying the threat that China poses and why we, with an open, transparent, and capital society, can achieve our preeminence or guarantee our preeminence, if we make changes.

And it’s not necessarily a pessimistic picture. I’ll just give you some statistics.

Yes, China has 2,000 fighters. We have 1,500. But fighters aren’t the only story. There are bombers, there are logistic planes, there are intelligence planes. When you look at all of the U.S. Air Force, we have about 1,500 more planes. And we have over 500 fifth-generation fighters. I think they only have about 60.

Yes, they are building 200 times more ships than we are.

Remember, we built the largest navy in World War II that turned out, by 1945, larger than all the navies in the world. We were building a liberty or freedom mercantile vessel, big 10,000-, 12,000-ton vessels, every five days. We built 3,000 of them. We built 120 carriers of different classifications.

So, we were the shipbuilder and now China is. But when you actually look at our fleets, we still have 11 fleet carriers and Navy groups around them. They are over 100,000 tons. They’re all nuclear. China has two and it’s building a third. We have about 85 to 87 submarines. They have about 60. But every one of ours is nuclear. Not theirs. They only have about six or seven.

If you look at all of these statistics on economics, they have 1.4 billion people. We have about 335-340 million people, but we produce one and a half times of nominal gross domestic product as China. So, one American produces one and a half times more goods and services than his four Chinese counterparts.

If you look at per capita income, we’re still ranked sixth in the world. China’s 73. Americans have a lot more purchasing power per capita than Chinese.

So, what Trump—let me put this all together in conclusion. China is ascendant and we are static. Trump comes in and he’s looking at things at home that will restore our global preeminence—fiscal discipline, secure borders, merit-based education, energy development. And he says, “Right now we still have the lead. And we will maintain this lead. But if we continue down the trajectory we’re on, we’re gonna be in big trouble.”

Final note. We have 5,500 deliverable nuclear weapons. China has about 500. But they’re billing six or seven a month. And they want to get up to 1,000 in five years and then keep going.

So, what Trump is doing, again, is he’s saying, “Right now our system is much superior—energy, agriculture, productivity, GDP, per capita income. But the trends in the future are not good. And if we don’t change, our rival will dominate the world. And I’m not gonna let that happen on my watch.”

And I think that explains a lot of his, otherwise, sometimes, inexplicable worries, from Greenland to Panama, to the border, to our universities.

First published in the Daily Signal

By Conrad Black

The conviction for embezzlement of French Rassemblement National leader Marine Le Pen invites concern that the French are setting off down the same road of politicisation of the justice system and criminalisation of legitimate political policy differences as was so unsuccessfully attempted by the late and universally unlamented Biden administration against President Trump. Indictments of French political leaders have become almost as commonplace as those of Israeli political leaders, but in Israel the Supreme Court is self-renewing, benefits from the absence of a Constitution and in its place a “Basic Law” that requires only conscientious conformity with “sensible Jewish tradition.” Instead of coequal executive, legislative, and judicial branches as in the Constitution of the United States, Israel’s judicial branch exercises powers at least equivalent to the combination of the legislative and the executive and purports to reserve the right to be represented in every department of government including the Armed Forces, where its agents may arbitrarily determine the legality or otherwise of any initiative.

In such an absurd system, it is little wonder that despite successfully conducting a war of reprisal against the barbarous Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, the wartime coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting a bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred battle for jurisdiction with the Israeli Supreme Court and has just won the first round. In such a system, where a perverse attempt at reconciliation of Talmudic concepts of justice, in which Jehovah is ostensibly believed sometimes to occupy the mind of a terrestrial Israeli ruler and provide divine direction for the chosen people, it is little wonder that former prime ministers Rabin, Sharon, and Olmert (who was imprisoned), as well as Netanyahu and several former presidents, have had serious legal problems. Much of it is obviously politically motivated, but the escalation of these disagreements to indictable offences is also a legitimate contest between the sacred texts of Jewish theology and the exigencies of a modern democratic state.

In France, where secular and ecclesiastical matters have been profoundly separated since, at the latest, the final and unconditional disembarkation of the Bourbons in 1830, there is no such excuse. Apart from collaborationist prime minister Laval, who was executed for treason in 1945, the last French leader who was seriously incarcerated was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who was imprisoned for six years prior to being elected president of the Second Republic and establishing and occupying the throne of the Second Empire. But he had attempted an armed insurrection, and while the sentence was excessive, it was not completely unwarranted. In a special category of profound differences in wartime were Marshal Philippe Pétain and General Charles de Gaulle’s exchange of death sentences, which as the victor, de Gaulle commuted so the Marshal could spend the last ten years of his very long life at leisure on the comfortable island of Île d’Yeu.

But more recently, former president Jacques Chirac had substantial legal problems after leaving office but ultimately benefited from the respect due to a former president – his sentence was suspended. Less clear are the charges against Chirac’s successor President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Prime Minister François Fillon. None of these recent cases have clearly emerged as either just or unjust in the court of public opinion but Sarkozy appears to be facing six months in prison and Fillon’s fate is unclear. The political futures of both appear to have been foreshortened as a result of them. It is indicative of his civility and equable decency that the present prime minister François Bayrou, who was himself acquitted in a scandal about paying for fictitious jobs and survived a controversy over suppression of information about clerical molestation of children in a religious order in his Pyrenees district, has expressed misgivings about the Le Pen judgement.

It is not clear, at least to the outsider, whether France is suffering from a comparative lack of ethics with numerous occupants of its highest offices of state, or is rather suffering from a pandemic of overheated politics leading to perversion of the prosecution system. It has always been clear, these last several years, that the latter condition is what afflicted the Biden administration as it flailed and floundered towards its end and attempted to fend off the adversary that it had likely cheated in 2020, by hurling a far-fetched series of impeachments and indictments against Donald Trump. It backfired badly in the late election and Mr. Trump has been acquitted by the largest jury in history (78 million voters).

Mme Le Pen deserves the presumption of innocence and the French appeal process has in all modern cases reduced sentences against prominent political indictees. But these charges are similar to more than a hundred others against Euro MP’s that have been settled with repayments and Mme. Le Pen remitted €330,000 several years ago. This reeks of the cancelled election in Romania, the spurious charges against Italian vice-premier Matteo Salvini, the prosecution of successive recent presidents of Brazil, and the fatuously unfounded charges against Donald Trump. Whether there is a legitimate complaint against Mme Le Pen or not, it won’t work: either she will be vindicated or will have to sit out the election and will lend her popularity to the RN nominee who will be able to run without her political baggage but with her support. The tired, globalist, euro-Federalist, climate change-alarmist soft Left is crumbling, and corrupt prosecutors will accelerate rather than soften their fall.

First published in the Brussels Signal

By Victor Davis Hanson

There’s two things that ring true about Europeans and their relationship to us Americans.

No. 1, they never feel or they never admit that they’re emulated. They admit they’re affected by the ill effects they think of America, but they’re not influenced by us.

And No. 2, they’re the stalwarts of democracy. We have these pathologies of swinging hard to the right, or we’re yokels, or we’re anti-democratic, or we’re MAGA fanatics. But the Europeans are pristine Democrats, we’re told. And they’re independent of America.

But something’s happened that belies those two allegations or assumptions.

No. 1, suddenly, Europe is copying the lawfare of the United States. Remember that Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis, Jack Smith, and E. Jean Carroll, in civil and criminal suits, for four years tried to destroy President Donald Trump. And they had over $400 million in fines that were leveled at one point. And there were 91 felony indictments. I think Alvin Bragg actually convicted him of 32. This was in addition to trying to remove him off the ballot in 20 states and raiding his home.

So, the Europeans wouldn’t do that, would they?

The second thing is that this was a destruction or an attempt to warp democracy, not to let Donald Trump be on the ballot, to put him behind jail bars.

So, let me just tell you what’s going on in Europe. In February, this conservative, which is usually in the media termed a hard-right, far-right group, in Germany, the Alternative for Deutschland, the Alternative for Germany—it won 21% of the vote. It skyrocketed. In some areas of East Germany it won 40%.

Whether you like it or not, it represents democracy. A lot of people are fed up with German energy policy, German immigration policy, German social policy, radical environmentalism. And what did the Germans do? They immediately said, even though they have 152 seats in their parliament, the second-largest, no party—no left-wing, right-wing, centrist party—will make an alliance with them to get a majority of seats under parliamentarian democracy to run the government.

In other words, even though they had the greatest increase in their popularity, they were ostracized because somebody declared them unfit, even though they had a mandate of the people to be the second-most representative party of Germany.

In March, in Romania, a kind of an obscure conservative, right-wing candidate came out of nowhere, Calin Georgescu. And he, in the first round, he came in at the top. And he was predicted, this May, that he might be the elected prime minister of Romania.

And what happened? They declared him unfit. They said that he was—does this sound familiar—colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin’s puppet. And therefore, they removed him from further consideration. They took him off the ballot.

There was no supreme court above that court, as there was in the United States, that said, “You can’t do that.” So, he’s off the ballot. He can’t be even considered, even though he was the largest vote-getter.

And then we come to this week’s news that Marine Le Pen, the head of the most conservative party in France, who has got enormous momentum—enormous momentum because of the violence of radical Islamic groups inside France, the open borders, the dissatisfaction with the blank check given Ukraine, etc. I could go on and on. Many of the same problems that we’re dealing with here—the far-left agenda.

It was probably scheduled to get more votes than anybody. And she had a pretty good chance, in three or four years, to replace French President Emmanuel Macron. And the high court did what? They said that she had expropriated funds, campaign funds. In other words, that she was blending—does this sound familiar—blending her own campaign with funds allotted from the European Union for other purposes. In other words, there was a distinction without a difference.

In other words, they only applied this law to her because they were terrified she was going to win in the next presidential election.

First published in the Daily Signal

By Bruce Bawer

n March 31, Norway’s biggest TV channel, state-owned NRK1, broadcast a special half-hour program, beginning at 9:15 PM — prime time, mind you! — entitled Festen etter fasten, or “The Party after the Fast.” The occasion was the end of Ramadan, the holy month of dawn-to-dusk fasting on the Islamic calendar, and the beginning of Eid al-Fitr, during which Muslims celebrate the end of the fast.

“Be a part of the year’s Eid celebration!” read the cheery program note on NRK’s website. “NRK invites you to a party with exciting guests, delicious food, and great music!” Who could resist?

Under Islam, eating and fasting are, like everything else, a big deal. In many (if not most) Muslim countries, eating in public during Ramadan can lead to arrest — and worse. In Western Europe, this isn’t the case. Yet. But hey, it’s only a matter of time. You can see it coming. In recent years, imams in Western Europe have increasingly thundered that non-Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to eat in public during the holy month — it’s simply, they say, a matter of respect (as is every other attempt to control the lives of infidels). And every time Ramadan rolls around, there seem to be even more videos than there were last time in which you can see Muslims badgering fellow passengers on public transport for daring to sip a soda in their presence.

Meanwhile, more and more leaders across Western Europe are taking part in Ramadan-related activities. That sound you heard on March 2 was Queen Elizabeth rolling over in her grave while King Charles welcomed 360 guests to Buckingham Palace’s first Iftar meal. Iftar, of course, is the meal that’s eaten after sundown during Ramadan. (Yes, I hate knowing these things too.) On March 31, Charles issued a statement in which he wished British Muslims a happy Eid.

No word yet on whether he issued a statement congratulating British Muslims for breathing.

Anyway, back to NRK’s big Eid show. It was hosted by NRK news anchor Rima Iraki (42), born in East Berlin to parents from the Levant who brought her to Norway when she was five. She had four guests, three of them men. Hkeem (27), born in Oslo to immigrants from Ghana and Niger, is a famous pop singer. Tarik Elyounoussi (37), born in Morocco, came to Norway at eleven and was a successful athlete, playing for soccer teams all over Europe. Arman Surizehi (32), born in Lillehammer to Iranian parents, is a well-known actor on Norwegian TV.

There was also one woman: Ayesha Wolasmal (38), who was born in Oslo to Afghan refugees and who studied terrorism and radicalization at King’s College London. She’s been a diplomat and foreign-aid worker, and in 2021 was among those who were evacuated in Biden’s brilliant Kabul airlift; last year she published a book about the Taliban.

Let it be said that none of the men were bearded. Nor, unlike many of the Muslim men whom one sees in the streets of Oslo, did any of them wear a djellaba (robe) or taqiya (skullcap). Both of the women, for their part, were expertly made up and wore tasteful jewelry. Both had long, luxuriant auburb hair, which was not covered by a hijab. And everyone was dressed elegantly.

The premise of the show was simple. Sitting in a pleasant room that was decorated with candles, around a beautifully set table that was covered with heaping plates of food, Iraki and her guests talked about their lives, about how they’d found their way to their vocations, and, at least briefly, about the role that Islam has played in their lives.

The conversation was charming, amusing, and honest. And, above all, civilized. A couple of the men bonded over being told by their parents that their career choices were bringing shame to their families. Several of the participants discussed the ways in which they’d had to break with their family traditions in order to have the lives they have now. None of them seemed to be terribly religious; perhaps one or more of them aren’t really believing Muslims at all. (Apostate Muslims, to be sure, tend not to announce such things to the world, given that the Islamic punishment for apostasy is death.)

It was interesting to observe the way in which Iraki and her guests conducted themselves. Often, when Muslim women in Norway are obliged to socialize with men who aren’t in their families, they’re accompanied by male relatives serving as chaperones. That didn’t happen here. On the contrary, the women interacted with the men in an easy way and on an equal footing; and the men, in turn, treated them with respect. There was a good deal of laughter. When it was time for dessert, the group moved into the adjoining room, which contained a wall of shelves filled with books, and was served cakes by a handsome young man who gave off very non-heterosexual vibes.

In short, aside from the menu and some of the clothing choices, these were five highly Westernized people sharing an entirely Westernized experience. In no way was it representative of the social lives of most Muslims in Norway.

Whom, I wondered, did NRK think it was kidding? Maybe a few unworldly Norwegians in remote parts of the frozen far north, where Muslims are still relatively thin on the ground, might be persuaded that this half-hour was presenting a realistic image of Muslims in Norway. But any Norwegian who lives in a reasonably large town or city knows better. And Norwegian Muslims themselves certainly weren’t fooled.

Watching this show, I imagined Muslim husbands all over east Oslo furiously turning off the TV lest their wives get fancy ideas about what their lives might be like without Islamic social control. And I pictured their imams beginning to write splenetic sermons about the show.

For my part, toward the end of Festen etter Fasten, I surprised myself by breaking into tears. Why? Because I was thinking about all the Muslim women in Norway who’ve never had and never will have the opportunity — an opportunity taken for granted by non-Muslim Norwegians — to sit comfortably at a table like that and speak their minds freely with a group of decent, intelligent, and accomplished people. And I was thinking something else, too; good God, if only this were the reality of European Islam!

But it wasn’t. It was fantasy. It was propaganda.

Every Christmas Eve, NRK broadcasts hours of live programming, complete with cooking and baking and holiday music, that reflects the way in which most Norwegians actually celebrate Christmas. This Eid show was apparently supposed to be a Muslim version of that. But it presented a thoroughly phony picture of Islam — a picture founded in the naive European illusions of half a century ago, when European politicians opened up their borders to armies of Muslim immigrants in the foolish belief that the only significant differences between Islam and Christianity were culinary, sartorial, and ceremonial.

Patently, the aim of this show was to make us all feel that everything’s just plain dandy — that the Muslims among us are no different from us. Instead, it served as one more reminder that NRK isn’t only a TV channel whose hefty budget is covered by the extortionate taxes that are squeezed out of us every year; it’s Norway’s largest and best-financed deliverer of what laughingly goes by the name of news. Alas, much if not most of what NRK presents as news, day in and day out, is hard-core, reality-challenged propaganda of the first order. Which is most assuredly what they were serving up in Festen etter Fasten.

First published in the American Spectator

By Gary Fouse

 There have been polls recently that indicate that a growing percentage of the younger generation of Americans believes that the Holocaust was a myth or was greatly exaggerated.  Given the state of education in America and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, largely inspired by the pro-Palestinian movement, this might not seem surprising.

Even though it makes no sense whatsoever.

Aside from the photographic and film evidence gathered at concentration camp sites and the obvious question of where those 6 million people disappeared to, there are other points, which, all too often, are forgotten.

First of all, Germany has acknowledged it.

In the aftermath of the war, it is true that Germany was late in coming to terms with the Holocaust. In West Germany, the standard response was: “I was never a Nazi”, or “We knew nothing about it”. In the former East Germany, the standard position was that only West Germans were Nazis, which was ridiculous on its face. In the late 1960s, however, with youthful unrest that was sweeping the W young Germans started asking hard questions to their parents’ generation as to the Holocaust and other atrocities committed in the war. Added to the evidence that had previously been presented in the numerous war crimes trials, there was no option but for Germany to face it head-on. Since then, several generations of German youth have been fully taught in schools about what happened during the Nazi period. In addition, there was the much-publicized 1970 visit of then-Chancellor Willy Brandt to Warsaw, where he knelt before the Warsaw Ghetto monument.

So, if the Holocaust was a myth or greatly exaggerated, why would Germany fully acknowledge its guilt? Why would Germany pay reparations to Jewish survivors?

Secondly, and more specifically, there were many major perpetrators who confessed to their participation in the mass murders of Jews. None other than Rudolph Hoess, who was the commandant of Auschwitz during a period of its maximum activity, confessed after being captured. He was brought to Nuremberg, where he testified in the first (and most famous-there were 13 in all) war crimes trial against the major defendants (Hermann Goering, etc). He fully described the process of gassing arriving Jews at the Birkenau extermination camp. In addition, during his captivity, Hoess put his confession into writing, which has become a book. The English edition is entitled: “Death dealer-The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant of Auschwitz, by Rudolph Hoess, Da Capo Press, 1996. Hoess was eventually transferred to Poland, where he stood trial, was convicted, and hanged at Auschwitz itself.

He was not the only one.

Paul Blobel was the commander of a unit that was part of Einsatzgruppe C, one of 4 such units that followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Their task was to round up civilians, Jews, and partisans in occupied areas and murder them. Einsatzgruppe C  was active in Ukraine, and it was in Kiev that Blobel oversaw the infamous Babi Yar massacre of some 33,000 Jews in September 1941. Blobel was also active in disinterring murdered civilians and burning their bodies to erase all evidence of the mass massacres as the Wehrmacht was retreating before advancing Soviet forces.

In 1947-48, Blobel and others stood trial in Nuremberg as part of the Einsatzgruppen trial. Without remorse, he described his actions, but only admitted to 10-15,000 deaths. The court found he was guilty of many more, possibly 60,000. In 1951, he was hanged at Landsberg Prison in Bavaria.   Here is a post-war deposition by Blobel from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

Another defendant in that trial was Otto Ohlendorf, the commander of Einsatzgruppen D, which was mostly active in southern Ukraine, Romania, and Moldavia (Moldova). Prior to his own trial, Ohlendorf testified at the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals on January 3, 1946. He described the orders his unit was operating under and his own role in the murder of 90,000 Jews and other civilians. His testimony can be read here.  He was later convicted in the Einsatzgruppen trial and was hanged at Landsberg Prison in 1951.

Then there was Adolf Eichmann, who stood trial in Israel for his crimes in 1961, was convicted, and hanged the following year. He did not deny the Holocaust or his role. He was merely following orders. Here is his final plea to the court.

The Einsatzgruppen, like other units and death camps, were required to send detailed reports to their superiors in Berlin as to the numbers of Jews and other civilians killed. Many of these documents were recovered and used as evidence in the trials.

Aside from the names above, there were others who admitted to their roles in the Holocaust, and there were other trials aside from the Nuremberg trials. Trials were held against war criminals in Dachau, and the British conducted their own trials in their zone of occupation, including the trial of female guards in various death camps (several of whom were hanged). However, I think the point has been made. In their book, Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust, Michael J. Bazyler and Frank M. Tuerkheimer (New York University Press 2014), make the point that in virtually all of the above trials conducted against Nazi war criminals after World War 2, virtually none of the defendants denied the Holocaust. Their various defenses were that they were following orders, were innocent, or had no knowledge of the events, let alone participation. But none of them tried to make the case that the Holocaust was a lie or did not happen.

Yet today, there are people who deny the Holocaust. How can they be so ignorant? There are several reasons; hatred of Jews, Israel, or both, being indoctrinated, and the lamentable fact that this history is no longer receiving the attention it deserves in our schools and universities, especially at a time when it is more relevant than ever. With the passage of time and the passing of the people who were either victims, perpetrators, or witnesses, the first-hand accounts are silenced. The field is increasingly left open to the propagandists, the conspiracy theorists, and the simple lunatics and idiots.

The documentation is still there, however. It is incontrovertible and must be used to counter the lies. It is incomprehensible that what people from Hermann Goering to Rudolph Hoess to Adolf Eichmann did not deny, what the nation of Germany does not deny, is denied by people today, either out of sheer ignorance or sheer malice.

By Phyllis Chesler

The elite “woke” faculty and administration at Columbia and, for that matter, at all the Ivy-League universities in America, are insisting that violence, harassment, bullying, blocking access to traffic, to classrooms, and buildings, as well as destroying property, are protected by civil, free speech, and academic freedom rights.

They are dead wrong, but it’s almost impossible to reason with cult members. Is the increasing violence that characterizes “peaceful” protests funded by secular left-wing and religious Islamist money? And is such violence considered permissible because it is seen as righteously revolutionary? How much are our campus encampments influenced by Jihadi spectaculars in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa?

I began writing about this back in 2004, and over the years, a myriad of other universities, human rights organizations, and major media outlets have followed the Ivy League and Democratic Party’s yellow brick road.

Torch a city–but if you do it in the name of Black Lives Matter–and to “protest” alleged police violence–it is considered a “peaceful protest.”

Curse, terrify, threaten, and beat up a visibly Jewish male or female student and that, too, is “free speech” expressing itself peacefully.

Are the anti-Zionist/pro-Palestine free-speechers totally unaware that their demonstrations in America are fueling Hamas’s, Hezbollah’s, Qatar’s, and Iran’s prolonged, multi-pronged, and deadly assaults on Israel? Is this exactly what they’re after as they play-act being the most virtuous of victims?

Have those Israelis who have been hotly protesting Netanyahu’s war-time rule ever considered raging against and actually blocking Hamas and Iran rather than trying to bring down a democratically elected government with which they happen to disagree? (They lost. They refuse to accept it. If they can’t win–they’d rather have the entire government fail.)

Ahem. Whom does this resemble?

I am totally in favor of cleaning out the Augean Stables that American universities have become–an almost impossible task–but I appreciate the concerns of those who fear the consequences of a chain-saw approach. I understand the fears about deportation without due process, evidence, a trial, and a decision–but do we really want pro-Hamas Jihadists on our campuses, violent criminals on our streets? For how long are we willing to fund their lawyers, trials, and appeals, and pay for their food and housing?

An American judge told me that this is precisely why America is exceptional; this is why we are levels above most of the world. Do we want illegal child rapists, pimps, human traffickers, drug lords, and Jihadists living among us? Don’t we already have enough of their home-grown counterparts?

An Israeli protestor said that they will not descend to the level of barbarians, that in their view, it is quintessentially “Jewish” to stand for peace and for a two-state solution, even if both are very dangerous illusions in the Middle East. Are these Israelis willing to commit suicide for the sake of their ethical principles rather than fight back to survive the genocidal war being waged against them?

Please allow me to recommend two very enlightening articles: First, Gadi Taub’s current piece up at Tablet, “Netanyahu Takes on Israel’s Deep State,” and Irina Velitskaya’s article in Commentary titled “The Coalition for the Sentimental and the Homicidal. There’s a word for it in Russian: poshlost.”

Finally, last night I again chanced upon the film Operation Finale, directed by Chris Weitz and starring Ben Kingsley, Oscar Issac, Lior Raz, and others. The film portrays how the Shin Bet captured Adolph Eichmann, who was leading a safe and quiet life in Argentina, and brought him back to stand trial in Jerusalem. It was a daring exploit, perhaps a bit on the shady side, but when faced with monsters, it is a better choice than what? Just shooting him down dead in South America, versus using him, but in a fair trial, to show the world what the Nazis had done? I did not mind, not one bit, that the judges sentenced him to hang.

Did you? Thus, parenthetically, how long does Israel have to pay to feed, shelter, educate, and provide medical services to Jihadists with blood on their hands?

First published in Phyllis’ Newsletter