The Week: Hamas's Yahya Sinwar Is Dead | October 18, 2024

Plus: The Harris campaign has hit the doldrums in the final stretch.

THIS EDITION OF THE WEEK IS PRESENTED BY NATIONAL REVIEW OCTOBER 18, 2024 NATIONAL REVIEW OCT 18, 2024 ◼ Sinwere. ◼ The Israeli military has killed Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks and leader of Hamas. This is a wonderful development. His death was confirmed on Thursday by the Israeli government and supported by a powerful photo of Israel Defense Forces personnel standing over his bloody, debris-covered corpse. Sinwar, who remained in Gaza as other Hamas leaders sought refuge abroad, launched the current war by sending an army of terrorists into Israel under the cover of thousands of rockets—to massacre children, rape women, and burn homes to the ground. By the end of that horrific day, 1,200 were dead and 251 were taken hostage and dragged into Gaza. In over a year of fighting, Sinwar has refused to surrender and release the hostages because he preferred to have his people suffer if it meant that world opinion, and the U.S. government, turned against Israel. And as long as Sinwar was alive and defiantly leading Hamas, it was difficult for Israel to view its costly war in Gaza as a success. But his death can be added to a string of major successes by Israel—the killing of Hamas's political leader Ismail Haniyeh, of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and of dozens of other high-ranking leaders of both terrorist groups. Coupled with the overall campaign, Israel has dealt a significant blow to the proxies of Iran as it contemplates retaliatory steps against Iran itself. The news also serves as a severe indictment of the judgment of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who spent months warning Israel against an invasion of Rafah. Biden said going into Rafah was a "red line" for him while Harris warned there would be "consequences" because she "studied the maps." But that's exactly where Sinwar was found and killed. Whatever comes of the next round of American pressure, the job in Gaza will not be done as long as roughly 100 hostages (both alive and dead) remain and Hamas is still in control of the territory and in a position to rebuild. But it is still worth celebrating justice being served on the perpetrator of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.   ◼ The Harris campaign has hit the doldrums in the final stretch, with Donald Trump returning to polling parity in a sharply divided electorate. The campaign and its supporters are fretting above all about the Missing Male Democratic Voter. Barack Obama himself sourly blamed "the brothers" for Harris's surprisingly weak numbers among African-American voters. Hollywood is doing its part to get out the men's vote as well, although after seeing the "Men for Kamala" and "Men for Walz" ads independently filmed on behalf of the Democratic ticket by a former Jimmy Kimmel head writer collaborating with several out-of-work Los Angeles improv-comedy actors, the Harris campaign probably wishes it had left the job to the relevant professionals. "I'm a man," a series of debatably masculine men intone as a mantra in the ads. They're man enough to cry in front of their horses, man enough not to be afraid of bears . . .  and man enough to vote for Kamala Harris. The planted axiom is that men are hesitating to support her mainly because of hang-ups about their masculinity. Are Democrats, er, tough enough to face that this theory isn't true? ◼ Does anyone write their own books these days? In October, the plagiarism hunter Stefan Weber discovered that a host of passages in Harris's co-written 2009 book, Smart on Crime, had been lifted from press releases, news reports, and Wikipedia. Because the discovery was reported by the Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo, the press reflexively cast it as a story about conservatives. "Conservative activist seizes . . ." wrote the New York Times, while CNN went with "Conservative activist accuses . . ." But were the accusations correct? Per the Times' go-to plagiarism expert, Jonathan Bailey, they were, at least in part. He concluded that the core issue was "sloppy writing habits, not a malicious intent to defraud," but nonetheless "plagiarism." He stuck with that conclusion even after complaining that the Times had shown him only some of the relevant passages and that the plagiarism was more extensive than he had thought. At the very least, the incident is ironic. Harris, of course, is running to replace Joe Biden, whose 1988 presidential campaign was derailed after he was caught stealing portions of a speech delivered by the British politician Neil Kinnock. Next time Harris is asked how she differs from Biden as a candidate, she could start with, "Well, the plagiarism to one side . . ." ◼ Vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz took to the wetlands of his home state of Minnesota with shotgun in hand; sympathizers and detractors alike assumed he was trying to appeal to men, and gun-owning ones in particular. While keeping the press occupied with tales of his shooting accomplishments, Walz fumbled with his Beretta A400 for some time, seeming not to recall how to operate the semiautomatic shotgun. Combine that with his uncertain hold of the wavering firearm and his zero shots fired for zero birds, and comparison to Elmer Fudd was irresistible. A Message from AWIC America in the World Consortium Applications OPEN NOW AWC at Duke University, Johns Hopkins SAIS, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Florida seeks applications for pre- and post-doctoral fellowships.   Applicants whose research bears directly on American grand strategy APPLY HERE.  ◼ Appearing in a Univision town hall, Trump was asked about January 6. Trump said that it was primarily a "day of love." "They didn't come because of me," he said of his crowd that day. "They came because of the election. They thought the election was a rigged election, and that's why they came." True, they thought the election was rigged—because Trump told them it had been, every day. On December 19, he tweeted, "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!" It was. More than a thousand people have been convicted in the attack on Congress, with about 350 trials still pending. Trump calls the convicts and defendants "patriots" and "political prisoners." After October 7, 2023—the day on which Hamas attacked Israel—he started calling them "hostages." He has pledged to pardon them, if he regains power. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said it straight in February 2022, when he could stomach rampant revisionism no longer: "We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That's what it was." ◼ "I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798," said Trump at one of his rallies. "Can you imagine? Those were the old days, when they had tough politicians, have to go back that long. Think of that, 1798. Oh, it's a powerful act. You couldn't pass something like that today." The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 has been invoked three times: by President Madison during the War of 1812, by President Wilson during World War I, and by FDR during World War II. The act was the authority behind the internment of Japanese Americans, for which the federal government officially apologized in 1988 and which the Supreme Court has rightly held unconstitutional. If Trump has another term in the White House and invokes this act to combat illegal immigration, will it be constitutional? Constitutionalists, as always, will have to watch the White House, and the government generally, like a hawk. A Message from AWIC ◼ On its first attempt, Elon Musk's SpaceX managed to "catch" a 223-foot-tall first-stage booster rocket as it descended vertically to the tower from which it had been launched. As a feat of engineering, the maneuver was unprecedented. As a step for mankind, it was more. SpaceX's aim is to develop fully reusable rockets that can shuttle to and from space, stopping only for refueling. In this test, the company demonstrated that it could successfully land the "Big Heavy" booster. In an experiment scheduled for next year, it will try to land the capsule, too. Over the last two decades, many observers of the technology scene have lamented steps taken backward: With the end of the Concorde, we lost supersonic consumer travel; with the mothballing of the space shuttles, we could no longer return spacecraft to earth. SpaceX's innovation reverses that ugly trend. Once the project is complete, the world will have a cheap, efficient, safe system for the delivery of people and materials beyond our atmosphere, and for their return. And, as is only proper, that system will have been made in America. ◼ In the U.K., Kim Leadbeater has introduced to the House of Commons a bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide in England and Wales. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, denounced it as "dangerous," citing the "slippery slope" that has ensued "in every other place" where the practice has been legalized. "What we've seen is that people ask for medical assistance in dying because they feel they're a burden to others," noted Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto, referring to Canada, which legalized assisted suicide in 2016. The bill now before Parliament in London "sends a dog-whistle message to the terminally ill, vulnerable, elderly and disabled people, especially those on low or fixed incomes, that their lives are worth less than others," said Gordon Macdonald, a physician and the chief executive of the organization Care Not Killing. A similar bill was introduced to Parliament in 2015 but defeated. A coalition against the current campaign marches under the apt and pointed slogan "Kill the Bill, Not the Ill." ◼ A French artist—whose work plays with ideas such as "emptiness, disappearance, laziness, passivity or idleness," according to his website—had one of his pieces displayed atop an all-glass elevator in a contemporary-art museum in the Netherlands. Why? The museum likes to surprise the viewer. The artwork in question? A couple of empty-beer-can replicas. No hard feelings, then, when an elevator technician thought they were litter and removed them. Museum staff managed to recover the art before it was permanently loaned to the dump. A lesson for Dutch maintenance workers and others: If ever in doubt whether something is art or garbage, it's probably both. ◼ A half marathon is a hard race. Those who do one properly should expect at least some discomfort. Shortness of breath is one thing. But struggling to breathe at all, along with acute chest pain and marked mental deterioration: That's a different matter. Such was the case for Chrystal Rinehold about halfway through the New Jersey Half Marathon last month. Not far behind her was Shane Naidoo, an emergency-room doctor. Naidoo's position in the race was highly contingent: He had, for the first time in a road race, stopped in a bathroom, at mile 7. In fact, he hadn't even intended to be running: He had registered for the race but then made plans to go camping in North Carolina that weekend instead—that is, the weekend Hurricane Helene hit, returning him to the race, and bringing him to Rinehold's side at the moment her potentially life-threatening trauma began. He took quick action, aiding her on the scene long enough for an ambulance to show up. He then rode with her to the hospital, briefed the doctors there on her condition, and continued to check up on her after he left. Rinehold recovered from her severe dehydration. And later in the day, Naidoo finished the half marathon, one of the last runners across the line, to cheers from a few supporters who had gathered there. Though far from the front, he had more than earned his plaudits. VISIT THE WEEK ARCHIVE ON NATIONALREVIEW.COM. ADVERTISEMENT 19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701, New York, NY, 10036 19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701 New York, NY, 10036 Your Preferences | Unsubscribe | Privacy View this e-mail in your browser.