#chutzpah

by Brendan O'Neill

A new definition of chutzpah just dropped. It’s people thinking they can spend 16 months crying ‘Crush the Zionist entity!’ and then wring their hands over the threat of ‘ethnic cleansing’. It’s protesters thinking they can wail ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ – shorter version: erase Israel – and then accuse others of wanting to ‘cleanse’ the Middle East of ‘problematic’ people. It’s an activist class that is consumed by a burning hatred for the very idea of a Jewish homeland thinking it can lecture its opponents on the importance of respecting other people’s homelands.

I can stomach some hypocrisy, but I draw the line at pontifications on ‘forced removal’ from a political set that dreams of removing the Jewish State from the family of nations. Behold the orgy of sanctimony that has greeted Donald Trump’s nutty proposals to push Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip so that he might turn it into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’. We’ll come back to Trump’s vision, if you can call it that. But first we need to take down the idea that he has unforgivably put ‘ethnic cleansing’ on to the agenda for the Middle East, for the truth is that the West’s influential Israel-loathers did that long ago.

The fury over Trump’s Gaza idea is intense. He proposed resettling its population so that the Americans might go in and remake the place. We will ‘rebuild’ this ‘demolition site’, he said. The right-thinking are horrified. He’s flouting all the ‘established laws’ of international relations, says the Guardian. One wonders where this white hot fury was during earlier crusades of ‘nation-building’. From Bosnia to Libya, Iraq to Afghanistan, Washington and its allies dispatched local leaders, caused mass exoduses of people, and assumed the godly right to remake said country in their own ‘democratic’ image. And the Guardian often supported it. Keep your wigs on, people – Trump is not the first US president to propose ‘rebuilding’ a nation.

Still the cries of ‘ethnic cleansing’ have come thick and fast. Trump’s proposal would amount to an ‘alarming escalation’ in the ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestinians’, says Human Rights Watch. The UN also says it is ‘ethnic cleansing’. The left has been Trump’s noisiest critic. We know Israel has been ‘plotting the violent removal of Gaza’s surviving population’, says one commentator, and now these ‘genocidal’ ambitions are being abetted by the American president. Student radicals at Columbia University in NYC are damning Trump for ‘advocating for ethnic cleansing’ – a ballsy position for a campus where just a few months ago Jewish students were being told to fuck off back to Poland.

Undermine the vole

Chutzpah in Day to Day Financial Stuff "...that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."#Chutzpah https://www.canajunfinances.com/chutzpah-in-day-to-day-financial-stuff 

by Virginia Kruta

Actor and comedian Jon Lovitz laid into Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) in a Friday post on X, saying that her post wishing Jews everywhere a “Happy Hanukkah” was “the definition of the word ‘chutzpah.'”

Pointing out the fact that Tlaib had voted — and bragged about her vote — against the recent House Resolution condemning anti-Semitism and affirming Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, Lovitz called out the “hypocrisy” of then turning around to offer Hanukkah greetings.

“Happy Hanukkah to our Jewish neighbors in #12thDistrictStrong and beyond. May this be a time of love and community for you and your loved ones,” Tlaib posted in honor of the first night of Hanukkah on Thursday.

“The definition of the word, ‘Chutzpah!'” Lovitz posted,  “As a member of Congress, I voted NO against a resolution condemning antisemitism and recognizing the right of our ally, Israel, to exist. Then, a few days later, wished the same people, Happy Hanukkah. It would be laughable, if you’re [sic] hypocrisy wasn’t so disgusting.”

Lovitz was not the only one to take issue with Tlaib’s post.