Palestine Should Put the Victim Card Back in the Deck and Accept Responsibility, But Likely Won't (Pt. 3)

Approaching the nine-month anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attacks seems surreal. Even before I knew the full extent of Hamas' barbarism that day, I had a weird gut feeling that something seismic was coming soon and I was right. It was not only the major surge of anti-Semitism that was taking place worldwide. It felt like a gigantic shift in morality in the so-called "international community." Here is Gaza, a quasi-state/proto-state (still does not have sovereignty, so I am struggling with the type of label to provide here) with a government run by anti-Semitic terrorists, that rape, kidnap, torture, murder, and decapitate over 1,200 Israeli citizens. Any other country that would have gone through that trauma on a national level would have reacted the same way, if not more aggressively. Look how the United States reacted after 9-11: it sent troops to Afghanistan and started a 20-year war. But when Israel does it to make sure that October 7 never happens again, it is the fault of the so-called "Zionist aggressor" that it does not want to be genocidally annihilated by Hamas.

Then the Gazans have the gall to play victim. Palestinians playing the victim card in spite of being consistently aggressive in its goal to wipe out Jews has been the theme of this blog series. In Part I, I pointed out how the Jew-hatred is not just part of the Hamas regime, but a common feature of Palestinian society. There is no peace-loving majority in either Gaza or the West Bank. Their collective desire to have the Middle East free of any Jewish presence predates the Oslo Accords of 1993, the 1967 Six-Day War in which Israel annexed some land as a result of a defensive war, or even the creation of the modern-day state of Israel in 1948. 

In Part II, I addressed the main accusations the pro-Palestinian cohort likes to lob against Israel, including genocide, apartheid, colonization, ethnic cleansing, and occupation. I illustrated how none of those accusations withstand scrutiny. Even if Israel somehow ended up being one or all of those things, I point out how history is replete with war and displaced citizens, yet everyone else in history except the Palestinians has found a solution to resettling and making the best of their new reality. That is because the Palestinians are hell-bent on taking out the Jews, which brings be to the final Part of this blog series...

There were multiple opportunities to move forward and accept a deal which included a de facto Palestinian state: the Peel Commission of 1937, the UN Partition Plan of 1947, UN Resolution 194 (1949), UN Resolution 242 (1967), the Cam David Accords (1978), the Oslo Accords (1993), the Camp David Summit (2000), the Olmert Peace Plan (2008), and John Kerry's Peace Plan (2013). If they wanted a state, they could have had one by now. Apparently, trying to wipe out the Jews has been and continues to be a higher priority than peaceful co-existence. Plus, it is difficult to negotiate when the other side's bargaining position is "you all die and disappear." They wanted all the land in 1947 and still do. Again, what do you think "from the river to the sea" means? It is not a call for a two-state solution, I can tell you that much.  

On top of rejecting multiple peace offers over a period of time spanning the better part of a century, those airplane hijackings, attacks on Olympic Games, the intifadas, suicide bombings, and all the times that the Arab side said "no" to a two-state solution unsurprisingly hardened the Israeli people against the Palestinians. October 7, 2023 was the last straw for Israeli society. The obstacle to Palestinian statehood is not "Israeli aggression." It has almost exclusively been driven by [Palestinian] Arab rejectionism and the embrace of terroristic violence. If you hear the pro-Palestine crowd's side, nothing is ever Palestine's fault because Palestine is the embodiment of victimhood that the woke Left loves so much. 

If Palestinians launch suicide bombings, a border wall to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel becomes Israeli oppression. If Hamas gets elected and launches rockets into Israel because it wants to destroy Israel, Israel gets the blame for putting up a blockade, even though it is a legitimate form of self-defense. Israel does not have a military presence in Gaza from 2005 to October 2023, yet it still somehow ends up being an occupying force. What is crazy is that Hamas can break a ceasefire and incite a war by raping, kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and decapitating civilians and be perceived as the victims. 

It does not matter that the Palestinians voted in a known terrorist organization, that Hamas uses its citizens as human shields, that Hamas' corruption causes the Gazan economy to crumble, that Palestinians and Arab nations have rejected every single peace treaty with Israel since the beginning of this conflict, or that the Arab side incited every war since 1947 in the hopes of wiping out Israel. This unwarranted support from the so-called "civilized" world exonerates Palestinians while removing their sense of agency. This patronizing, phony call for de-colonization turns the Palestinians into grown children who are never responsible for their actions. Call it a soft bigotry of low expectations on the international scale. 

Not accepting responsibility is a key feature of victimhood. This is a problem because having sovereignty entails accepting responsibility. The problem is that the Palestinians have developed a culture of victimhood. Not only has Palestinian identity been built around victimhood for several decades, the United Nations' organization to help Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, merely exists to teach Palestinians to hate and kill Jews while perpetuating Palestinian victim status. 

It is easier to garner international sympathy by playing victim than it is to reconcile with Israel or to create a peaceful Palestinian society. It is not a few bad apples in Gaza, but a society in which the majority prefer hating Jews to loving their neighbors. Even if Hamas disappeared today, it would take major reforms in its political institutions and education system to undo the Jew-hatred that has taken a firm hold. When you top that with the reality that taking responsibility for one's life is a hell of a lot more difficult than blaming others, I decidedly remain skeptical about reform in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as enduring peace in the Middle East.

Drop the T from LGBT: Why The Gay Rights Movement and the Trans Rights Movement Need a Divorce (Pt. I)

In the 2010s, the Western world saw a significant uptick in the acceptance of gay rights, particularly in the United States. There was the Supreme Court ruling making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states; the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell; applying employee discrimination protections to LGBT individuals; and going from most U.S. citizens not approving of gay people to accepting them. As acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals increased, the culture war in the U.S. diverted its attention to another group of people: transgender individuals.  

During Pride Month, I thought about the abbreviation LGBT. There has at least some historical basis for grouping the LGB (Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual) with the T (Transgender) in the abbreviation LGBT. Let us forget for a moment that the abbreviation has gotten longer and longer with more confusing variants, whether it is LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, or LGBTQIA2S+. I have to ask myself why the LGB remains with the T, never mind the rest of those in the alphabet soup acronym. Some will argue that gay rights and trans rights go hand in hand because both gay individuals and trans individuals do not fit into normative sociological assumptions about sex or romance. 

As we will see shortly, I do not think that is sufficient to keep the LGBT grouped as one entity. Much like with any rocky marriage, I also question the relationship between the gay rights movement and the trans rights movement to the point where I think they should go their separate ways.

Simply because both gay people and trans people do not fit normative sociological assumptions does not mean we should group them together. We never grouped the civil rights struggles of various racial minorities to that extent. Sure, there were alliances, but civil rights for Hispanics were not grouped together with civil rights for African-Americans because each group has separate concerns and needs. Nor did we group the cause of the Civil Rights Movement with the gay rights movement, even though the fight for same-sex marriage had significant parallels to the fight for interracial marriage. 

From Stonewall until about the mid-1980s, it was not called LGBT; it was called the gay community. During the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, gay rights activists were using LGB. It was not until the late 1990s when the T was commonly added with LGB to make the acronym LGBT. The fact that the T was not added shortly after Stonewall in 1969, which was the beginning of the gay rights movement in the U.S., suggests that it was not immediately apparent that the T belonged with the LGB. 

Sexual orientation and the gender identity are supposed to be two different concepts. This differentiation is not merely theoretical or abstract. To quote an article from U.S. News, "Unlike members of the trans community, who are working against their biology and trying to change who they are physically, gay or lesbian people are trying to be nobody but themselves. They are not seeking surgery or hormone treatments. They love [those of] the same [sex]; they don't want to be a different [biological sex]." 

Being gay is about sexual orientation, whereas being trans "is anchored in an alternative gender identity." Homosexuals are naturally attracted to people of the same sex. That is spelled out both in the prefix "homo-" and the suffix "-sexual." Gay people do not have issues with their biological sex. Being gay has meant rejecting a strict definition of gender norms while still claiming biological distinction vis-à-vis same-sex attraction. Gay men and lesbians tend to expand and re-define gender concepts. For gay men, there is anything from the leather daddy all the way to the fem boy. Lesbians ranged on the femininity spectrum anywhere from lipstick lesbian to being butch. 

In contrast, the trans movement adheres to more strict, classical definitions of what is masculine and what is feminine. Additionally, trans people are dealing with gender dysphoria, which means they are not fine with their biological sex. They can use such procedures as hormone replacement therapy, gender-reassignment surgery, and presenting themselves as the opposite sex in the hopes of dealing with that dysphoria. 

As I brought up in my nuanced take on transitioning and biological sex, it is true that the procedures mentioned in the previous paragraph can alter some aspects as it relates to biological sex (e.g., conditional alteration with hormones, certain secondary sex characteristics). It is also true that in spite of the transition, the biological sex with which they are born essentially remains intact. The politically incorrect truth is that the transition remains an incomplete one. This is not a statement of malice or bigotry, but one of biological reality and of the technological and medical limits of transitioning. In Part II of this blog series, I will discuss further how that biological reality plays into what it means to be homosexual and how putting gender identity on a pedestal to the point of inaccurately thinking of biological sex as a social construct adversely impacts the gay community. 

Because gay people are different from trans people, gay rights are different from trans rights. Yes, both groups have dealt with prejudice and discrimination for being different from the heterosexual majority. There has been some overlap with discrimination in such areas as employment and housing. But other minority groups have also dealt with similar prejudice and discrimination, and yet we are not calling for some umbrella term or grouping to cover all minorities. Furthermore, gay people are not directly affected by such trans-related topics as medical interventions (whether for adults or children), bathroom access, participation in sports, or having legal documents state their gender identity as opposed to their biological sex. 

I have more to say and I will cover that in Part II. In the meantime, I will conclude Part I by highlighting another key difference. The gay rights movement had a "live and let live" approach. They wanted a seat at the table and equal access. With marriage, the majority of gay rights activists were not looking to upend the institution. They were looking for participation rights. The trans rights movement is much more authoritarian in its tone. Trans rights as fought for in our time are not about liberation. The trans rights movement has been about coercion and demanding validation and unwavering devotion to gender ideology and their perceived reality that comes with a "believe this or else" posturing. This notion is brought up by British think tank Civitas: 

"Whereas the gay rights movement was demanding more freedom from the state for people to determine their sex [and romantic] lives unconstrained by the law, the transgender movement calls for the opposite: it calls for recognition and protection from the state in the form of intervention to regulate the behavior of those outside of the identity group. Whereas in the past, to be radical was to demand greater freedom from the state and institutional authority, today to be radical is to demand restrictions on free expression in the name of preventing offense."

Palestine Should Put the Victim Card Back in the Deck and Accept Responsibility, But Likely Won't (Pt. 2)

The war in Gaza has been raging on for eight months. There are a lot of things that frustrate me to no avail about the Middle Eastern conflict. Here you have Hamas take October 7, 2023 to commit the largest pogrom against the Jews since the Holocaust by raping, kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and decapitating civilians in a barbaric manner. By carrying out this pogrom, Hamas broke a ceasefire and instigated a war with Israel that Israel did not want in the first place. These past eight months have been a reminder that Palestine has done a convincing job playing victim not solely during this latest war, but for years. I wrote a piece about a couple weeks ago in which I began to analyze the Palestinian mentality and how victimhood has shaped its identity. 

Part I of this blog series included looking at Hamas as an organization and how the Jew-hatred is common among everyday Palestinians. I also pointed out how Israel has been fighting Jew-hatred for decades and how that animus even predates the creation of the modern-day state of Israel. I finished by asking about the alleged atrocities of Israel, the so-called "aggressor." Let us non-rhetorically examine the main accusations the pro-Palestine side likes to launch at the pro-Israel side similar to how Hamas likes to indiscriminately launch rockets at Israel:

• Genocide. As I brought up last December, Israel is not committing genocide. Israel's intent is not genocidal. If Israel wanted to, it could have carpet-bombed Gaza by now, which would have been a whole lot cheaper and would have kept Israeli soldiers out of harm's way. The civilian-combatant ratio in the Israel-Hamas War is one of the lowest in modern urban warfare. Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties, as Chair of Urban Warfare at West Point John Spencer illustrates. This accusation conveniently ignores Hamas' genocidal intent, the very intent that drove the October 7 attacks.
• Occupier. Going back to my 2015 analysis, the West Bank and Gaza are disputed territories, not occupied territories. It is especially difficult to accuse Israel of being an occupier in Gaza when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 under the false hope of "land for peace." Hamas has been running the show since 2007. 
• Colonizer. Israel has sovereignty over one country the size of New Jersey, which also is less than 1 percent of the Middle East. Those are basic geographical facts. The Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. Also, if you want to talk about colonizing, look at the British, French, Spanish, and yes, the Arabs. Read more analysis here on the accusation of colonization.
• Ethnic cleansing. A little difficult for Israel to be ethnically cleansing with nearly 2 million Arabs within its borders. In contrast, what do you think the chant "from the river to the sea" means? Answer: it's ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians do not want a single Jew in their midst. 
• Apartheid state. I brought this up last October. Much like any other developed nation, the living conditions for minorities is not perfect. Nevertheless, Israeli Arabs are able to participate in civil society, politics, and the economy. Arab Israelis have the same rights as Jews or anyone else in Israel. In spite of its imperfections, Arab Israelis have more political and economic freedoms in Israel than they would in other Arab countries. It is a far cry from the extreme form of racial segregation that once existed in South Africa. 

Aside from this Holocaust inversion being morally reprehensible, these accusations lobbed against Israel do not withstand scrutiny when examined. It is even more frustrating because the Palestinian elements are projecting their true, genocidal intent onto Israel. However, for argument's sake, let us incorrectly assume for one iota for a second, that Israel is committing genocide, ethnically cleansing, colonizing, occupying Palestine, and/or being an apartheid state. It would not matter. Why? 

History has its vicious moments. Countries and borders change, and that change has been predominantly driven by war. Innocent civilians sadly die in warfare, as was certainly the case in World War II. People getting displaced during and after warfare is sadly all too common. 12 million ethnic Germans were forced out of various European nations as a result of World War II. A million Greeks were shoved out of Turkey in 1923. What about the one million French out of Algeria in 1962? Then there's the Syrian and Ukrainian refugees in modern-day times. During the 1940s, nearly a million Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries in response to modern-day Israel becoming a nation-state. 

People learned to make the best of the new reality. They learned to cope with the harshness and unfairness that life has dealt. When Mexico lost in the Mexican-American War, they did not clamor for having Arizona or California back. No, they realized that the United States was as likely to give up Los Angeles as Israel will be to give up Tel Aviv. Mexico moved on and created one of the world's largest economies. The Irish came to an accommodation with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 after fighting for about 30 years. The Kosovo War ended with negotiations. I could list more examples, but the point is that everyone comes to an accommodation...except the Palestinians. More on that in the final part of this series. 

Exercise and Fitness Are Not Fascism or Right-Wing Extremism, No Matter What Left-Leaning Pundits Think

Last July, the news satire website Babylon Bee released a satirical piece entitled Obese Man Explains to Doctor He's Just Fighting Far-Right Extremism. If only such a view were limited to the world of satire. This is one of the things I enjoy about Babylon Bee -- it is so spot-on that the satire mimics reality. Or rather, that might be the case because we live in such topsy-turvy times that the world is turning into one big inadvertent parody. 

Take a look at the article that The Guardian posted earlier this month: Getting fit is great -- but it could turn you into a rightwing jerk. This article from writer Zoe Williams is one of the latest examples of how a once-reputable media outlet has since devolved into passing off baseless psychobabble as news. The Guardian is sadly not the only ones publishing this liberal dribble. Time Magazine claimed exercise is based in white supremacy. MSNBC believes that exercise and hypermasculinity go hand in hand with right-wing extremism to the point where they linked it to Hitler. 

Let us forget for a moment that there have been plenty of fascists and right-wing extremists who have not gone to the gym. What is driving this nonsensical view? I had to go back to a piece I wrote in 2022 about how those on the Left are, on average, less happy than everyone else. One of the factors I discovered about happiness is the correlation between conservatives and fitness. The thing is that these Left-leaning commentators have the causality backwards.

It is not that going the gym turns you into being more right-winged. As I pointed out, conservatives are more likely to accept personal responsibility, which includes taking care of one's health (Chan, 2019). Conservatives value conscientiousness (Schlenker et al., 2012), which entails such features as impulse control, self discipline, and being task-focused. It is the values that drive the actions, not the other way around. 

It makes me wonder why Zoe Williams at the Guardian ripped on fitness as a form of self-actualization. After all, self-actualization is the highest stage on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Reaching a sense of self-actualization is a good thing. I figure that Williams is using such lines "the more self-actualized you become, the higher you are on self-righteousness" possibly as a form of projection, but certainly as a defense mechanism. 

It has sadly become all too common for those on the Far Left to go ad hominem on things they find disagreeable, whether it is anti-capitalist views or calling almost everything racist. The reality is that obesity is an unhealthy lifestyle. Physical fitness should not be a political statement, but simply as a part of a healthy and happy life. Yet the response of many on the Far Left has been to embrace fat acceptance and fat positivity. From this viewpoint, it is not an individual's fault if they are fat. They argue that sugar is addictive and advertising of fast foods is too strong for people to overcome the temptation. It is their unfortunate circumstances that make people obese and there is nothing that can be done to surpass it.

In Jack Canfield's The Success Principles, the first chapter is about how you take 100 percent responsibility for everything. To quote Mark Manson, "Just because something is not your fault does not mean it is not your responsibility." The premise behind this notion of radical responsibility is that it does not matter if it is your fault; you take ownership for the situation and make the best of it regardless. As I brought up in 2022 when discussing obesity: 

Life has always been a struggle...It takes time and effort to go and exercise. It takes discipline to follow a diet or exercise regiment. It takes impulse control to not eat compulsively, smoke, or drink too much alcohol. The whole premise behind personal development is that you are not fine just the way you are and there is always room for self-improvement. It should not matter if there is more processed food or if more people sit at a desk for eight hours at work. Anything worthwhile in life takes time, patience, effort, and discipline. Health habits, discipline, self-control, and prudence used to be considered values, but not in a country where self-gratification is more important than self-improvement. 

I see a similar antagonistic, hateful reaction from the Far Left when it comes to Israel. Zionism is a repudiation of centuries of Jews being oppressed and marginalized and it is beyond the pale for the Woke World that the marginalized would want to and succeed at overcoming victim status. Those who decide to exercise are taking an increased amount of responsibility in their personal lives. Those who go to the gym and become fit are invalidating the "you are fine just the way you are" mentality. In addition to shedding the fat or the pounds, people who go to the gym and become fitter shed the excuses and the victimhood mentality. 

Exercise is a pathway to that self-actualization. Personal responsibility, self-control, and discipline are characteristics that increase likelihood of success, health, and happiness. While these sound like positive attributes, it would explain why the woke Left gets angry and calls exercise "extreme right-winged behavior." Numerous examples of people overcoming obesity to become their healthiest selves refutes the victim-worship that has become so prominent in U.S. society, particularly on the Far Left. 

I think the values that going to the gym inculcate is even more than threatening political power of the political Left or the clout the Woke have in U.S. culture. The reason why these commentators are on the offensive is because their strategy of reducing people to their circumstances is at odds with reality. The cognitive dissonance results in them attacking what is an otherwise non-political activity that has been proven to improve life outcomes. As someone who believes in personal responsibility, their inability to cope with these realities is not my problem; it is theirs. I am going to take my personal responsibility to continue to exercise and find ways to be my healthiest and happiest self.

Biden's Asylum Executive Order Will Not Fix the United States' Broken Immigration System

As more and more undocumented workers cross the border between Mexico and the United States, President Biden is figuring out how to placate the majority of Americans on the immigration issue, especially in an election season. Last week, Biden announced his executive order to de facto shut down asylum for those crossing the border. According to the executive order, the U.S. government will cease to take asylum cases when there are more than 2,500 border apprehensions a day over a seven-day period and will expire two weeks after that number falls below a per diem average of 1,500 apprehensions for a week. 

This executive order has a number of problems. The first, as pointed out by Cato Institute's analysis on the executive order, is that there have not been less than 1,500 apprehensions since October 2020, which, as a reminder, was during a pandemic. Why would you set a goal that has not been attainable in post-pandemic times? It also means that asylum is based on number of border crossing and not the strength of an asylum case. This defeats a primary purpose of providing asylum. 

The second is that the United States has been down this path before with shutting off asylum. It was a pandemic-era policy called Title 42 that was started by Trump and was continued by Biden. Title 42 did not work out well. As my analysis on Title 42 from last year illustrates, Title 42 neither had an effect on COVID cases nor did it slow down immigration. If anything, there were more border crossings during Title 42 than there was during the heyday in border crossing in the 1990s.  

Third, closing off asylum will give asylees no other legal recourse. Instead of trying to go through a legal path such as asylum, they will be incentivized to enter illegally and evade detection. This means more trespassing on private property, more crimes, more deaths of migrants, and more altercations between Border Patrol agents and migrants, much like we saw during the Title 42 era. 

This leads to my fourth point, which is that this executive order is ignoring the labor demand to work in this country, which includes 8.9 million job openings in the private sector as of April 2024. There is no legal path for 99.4 percent of those who want to work in the country, not to mention that the average asylum case takes about four years to process. As I brought up last month, allowing for lawful entries into the country minimized the number of illegal border countries. Immigration is good for the U.S. economy, and yes, that includes the immigration of those identified as low-skilled labor. The sooner that the U.S. government makes entry to the country easier by removing arbitrary caps and red tape, the sooner we can solve the issues at the border. While Biden adopting Trump-like immigration policy might score some political points, it will do next to nothing to help with this country's broken immigration system. 

Palestine Should Put the Victim Card Back in the Deck and Accept Responsibility, But Likely Won't (Pt. 1)

"All eyes on Rafah." That meme kept getting posted by people on my social media a couple of weeks ago. It was in response to Israeli airstrike on the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood targeting Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, two senior Hamas officers that were responsible for carrying out terror attacks. Unfortunately, the strike also hit a fuel tank nearby that caused the deaths of 45 Palestinian civilians. It was the most deadly strike since the Rafah offensive started. While there has been third-party analysis, the incident is still under investigation. As such, I do not want to get into the particulars of the incident at this time or jump the gun like much of the media did with the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion in which it turns out the Palestinians were responsible. 

What I will say is that incident reminded me of an important aspect of this conflict: the Palestinians got really good at playing the victim card. People reacted adversely to Tel al-Sultan strike because what they see is suffering women and children in a burning camp. No one wants to see that sort of suffering. Rafah has been turned into a war zone. To quote the media outlet Spiked:

But who did this? Who was it that decided to use this former city of civilians as a launchpad for war? Who was it that posted their military commanders there, hid their ammunition there, fired their missiles from there, [and] dragged hostages there? Who was it who hid the machinery of war among the women and children of Rafah, knowing full well bloodshed would ensue? 

It was not Israel. Israel was busy evacuating over 900,000 civilians because Israel has done its utmost to minimize civilian casualties, which is tricky in urban warfare. It was Hamas who did this and was responsible. Hamas has a penchant for using its own citizens as human shields and storing military assets in civilian infrastructure, much like it did when it was using an UNRWA school as a military compound that was recently attacked. As the offensive in Ramah reminds us, Hamas maximizes civilian casualties as a part of its strategy, thereby showing no regard for its own citizens.

You cannot separate Hamas from the rest of Gaza or Palestine, as much as some pro-Palestinian activists would like to do. Hamas is not some separate entity that forced its will upon an otherwise peace-loving people. Hamas was voted into power in 2005. Hamas became the ruling government in Gaza as of 2007 and has de facto been the ruling government ever since. 

Palestinians are not protesting the Hamas regime. I bring this up because protest, rebellion, or revolution are acts that many citizens in authoritarian regimes have performed throughout history when they are fed up with the existing regime, even risking their incarceration or death to do so. Gazans are generally content with their current government, which is evident from Palestinian survey data from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has shown and continues to show. These survey data also show that most Palestinians do not have a qualm with violence towards Jews and the death of Jews. 

Yes, war is brutal. I would rather have a scenario in which diplomacy worked out better. War comes with considerable economic costs and death. A price of war is casualties. If that were truly unpalatable to the Palestinians, maybe they should not have broken the ceasefire and incited the war by raping, kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and decapitating Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. Or at the very least, they could end the war by releasing the hostages instead of prolonging the war by using them as a bargaining chip. 

Shortly after the October 7 attacks, Hamas leadership stated that they would like to carry out those atrocities again and again. Hamas' hatred for Jews and warmongering are not new. It dates back to its founding in late 1987. Read the original Hamas Charter, especially the Introduction and Article 7, where the Charter specifies wiping out Jews. What is worth reminding people of is that Arabs wanting to wipe out Israel predates Hamas' existence. 

The following sequence of events dates back to 1948: Arab nations attack Israel, Israel retaliates, Israel wins, and the leaders of Arab nations cry foul because Arab culture is an honor-based culture in which Jews have historically been viewed as second-class citizens vis-à-vis the dhimmi (ذمي) status (you can also check out Surat 2:61, 5:64, and 5:78 in the Qu'ran). The Arabs have always rejected a two-state solution because they have wanted all the land in the Middle East and still want all the land. This animus has not existed for a few years or decades, but can be traced back centuries. While there are many complicated aspects of the Middle Eastern conflict, that simple undercurrent has been a constant in the Arab approach to the modern state of Israel since its establishment in 1948. 

But what about all the heinous crimes that Israel is committing? Shouldn't the Palestinians resist the atrocities of the alleged "Zionist aggressor?" Those are questions I can address for the next Part of this series. 

New Meta-Analysis Confirms Rent Control Causes Way More Harm Than Good

Housing prices continue to spiral out of control in the United States. Last January, Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies released a report showing, amongst other findings, that about half of renters in the U.S. pay 30 percent or more of their income to rent. This price spiral contributes to at least 60 percent of U.S. citizens living from paycheck to paycheck. One idea to deal with the rising costs is rent control. 

Rent control is a government-imposed price ceiling that imposes a limit as to how much a landlord can charge a tenant for rent. The states of Carolina and Oregon have rent control, whereas such states as New York and Maryland have some local jurisdictions with rent control. Rent control might sound like it has good intentions because it is supposed to, as proponents argue, "stop landlords from exploiting tenants." However, a recent meta-analysis in the Journal of Housing Economics shows a brutal picture of the economic realities of rent control (Kholodilin, 2024). After looking at 100 empirical reports and examining 26 potential effects, what did the author find? 

Analysis from the libertarian Cato Institute had the following to say on the study: 

The research near consistently finds that rent control leads to less mobility (not least, because people don't want to give up their rent-controlled properties), more people living in properties unsuited to their needs, and higher rents for uncontrolled units. The vast majority of studies examining each find that rent control leads to a lower supply of rental accommodation, less new rental housing construction, and a fall in the quality of rental housing too. 

These findings confirm mainstream microeconomic theory on the matter. I first analyzed the topic of rent control in 2014 and again in 2022. As the supply-demand graph shows below, rent control constricts housing supply while making non-rent control housing more expensive. It also disincentivizes property upkeep, which also lowers property value. Rent control makes quality of life more miserable for those living in rent control units, as well as bringing down the entire neighborhood. If cities with rent control want to get their housing prices under control, do not maintain rent control policy. If you are thinking about rent control, steer clear from a policy whose negative effects are both predictable and well-documented. Bringing housing prices down has a multi-faceted solution, but one of those facets needs to be that rent control is non-existent in the municipality.  

Same-Sex Marriage Did Not End Up Harming Fabric of Society or Heterosexual Marriages

As we commence Gay Pride Month, I reflect on the progress that has been made for LGBT rights, much like I have in previous years. It seems like only yesterday that religious conservatives were making the case that legalizing same-sex marriage would ruin society. If you read this brief from the Far-Right Family Research Council, allowing for same-sex marriage would mean fewer marriages, less monogamy, and more divorce. The trope that same-sex marriage would harm families and ruin society was a common one among social conservatives in the early 2000s. It turns out that their fear-mongering was based on conjecture and nothing else. 

Last month, the nonprofit research organization RAND Corporation came out with a study showing how unsubstantiated it ended up being (Karney et al., 2024). After examining 96 studies that spanned over 20 years, the researchers at RAND concluded there was no adverse effect of same-sex marriage on the general U.S. population, especially for different-sex couples. There was no retreat from marriage or an increase in non-marital co-habitation as naysayers wrongly predicted. There also was not a negative shift of young adults towards marriage. If anything, the researchers found some evidence that legalizing same-sex marriage actually increased marriage rates for everyone.

This same RAND study found that same-sex marriage has unambiguously been a positive for homosexuals and same-sex couples, whether that was a decline in syphilis, HIV, and AIDS; stabler relationships; higher earnings; higher rates of ownership; and lower rates of hate crimes against LGBT individuals. 

Allowing for same-sex marriage is also good for the economy. According to research from the Williams Institute, 293,000 same-sex marriages boosted local economies by $3.8 billion within the first five years of Obergefell v. Hodges. There are also the economic benefits of marriage more generally, whether it is the ability to better pool resources, qualify for loans, tax incentives, or the potential for reduced insurance costs. The economic benefits make sense, especially when I look back on a piece I wrote in 2017 about the economic costs of homophobia. 

In spite of what social conservatives imagined, the sky did not fall. Marriage equality did not weaken the marriages of heterosexual couples. If anything, allowing for consenting adults to enter the contract of marriage strengthened the institution. Intuitively, that makes sense because who consenting adults decide to marry does not affect anyone else, especially given the lack of a clear causal mechanism. Plus, given how stabilizing of a force marriage can be and how it creates kin networks, it does not surprise me to see that extending marriage rights to same-sex couples ended up being a net benefit to society. In addition to same-sex marriage advancing freedom, we can empirically add "improving the institution of marriage" to the list of reasons why same-sex marriage should remain legal.