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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

23: Trade/Tariff

No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal — if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans — why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to the nearly 60,000 that Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war? ............... It is the leading military power of its region, stronger now that it has decimated Hezbollah and humbled Iran. It could have bombed without prior notice, instead of routinely warning Gazans to evacuate areas it intended to strike. It could have bombed without putting its own soldiers, hundreds of whom have died in combat, at risk. ............. the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has been the world’s best-performing major stock index since Oct. 7. 2023. ........... the first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher? ........... Genocide does not mean simply “too many civilian deaths” — a heartbreaking fact of nearly every war, including the one in Gaza. It means seeking to exterminate a category of people for no other reason than that they belong to that category: the Nazis and their partners killing Jews in the Holocaust because they were Jews or the Hutus slaughtering the Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide because they were Tutsi. ............. the fact that over a million German civilians died in World War II — thousands of them in appalling bombings of cities like Hamburg and Dresden — made them victims of war but not of genocide. The aim of the Allies was to defeat the Nazis for leading Germany into war, not to wipe out Germans simply for being German. ............ As for the destruction in Gaza, it is indeed immense. There are important questions to be asked about the tactics Israel has used, most recently when it comes to the chaotic food distribution system it has attempted to set up as a way of depriving Hamas of control of the food supply. And hardly any military in history has gone to war without at least some of its soldiers committing war crimes. That includes Israel in this war — and America in nearly all of our wars, including World War II, when some of our greatest generation bombed schools accidentally or murdered P.O.W.s in cold blood. ............. They are war in its usual tragic dimensions. ............ What is unusual about Gaza is the cynical and criminal way Hamas has chosen to wage war. In Ukraine, when Russia attacks with missiles, drones or artillery, civilians go underground while the Ukrainian military stays aboveground to fight. In Gaza, it’s the reverse: Hamas hides and feeds and preserves itself in its vast warren of tunnels rather than open them to civilians for protection. ...............

These tactics, which are war crimes in themselves, make it difficult for Israel to achieve its war aims: the return of its hostages and the elimination of Hamas as a military and political force so that Israel may never again be threatened with another Oct. 7....... Those twin aims were and remain entirely justifiable — and would bring the killing in Gaza to an end if Hamas simply handed over the hostages and surrendered. Those are demands one almost never hears from Israel’s supposedly evenhanded accusers.

............ genocide — a word that was coined only in the 1940s — is to retain its status as a uniquely horrific crime ......... The war in Gaza should be brought to an end in a way that ensures it is never repeated. To call it a genocide does nothing to advance that aim, except to dilute the meaning of a word we cannot afford to cheapen.

EU’s Response to Trump’s Tariffs “If they want war, they will get war” The shift prompted Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and its largest exporter, which had previously been more dovish on U.S. retaliation, to swing closer to France’s more confrontational position ....... Europe was willing to lower tariffs and buy tens of billions of dollars of U.S. energy products and advanced semiconductors. ........ Even German officials, who have pressed for a quick deal, no longer see an agreement with the U.S. as the most likely outcome ......... a 30% tariff would “practically prohibit” transatlantic trade ......... France has consistently advocated using the ACI, but others have baulked at what some see as a nuclear option. Trump has warned he will retaliate if other countries take action against the United States. ........ Germany and France together account for approximately 34% of the European Union’s total population. Germany represents 19% and France represents 15% of the EU population. These two countries, along with Italy, comprise almost half (47%) of the EU’s population. .......... Answer One: Do nothing ......... Tariffs are a tax on consumers. So it Trump want to be raise taxes on US consumers, then let him. ............ Besides, it’s impossible to negotiate with someone who cannot be trusted to honor any deal he makes....... Vietnam thought Trump agreed to 11 percent tariffs only to discover the deal was really 20 percent. ........ Given tariffs are a tax on consumers, so are tariff retaliations........ If your neighbor blows off his foot, do you really want to do the same? ......... Mexico and Canada could block exports of auto parts. Canada has oil the US needs. ......... Mexico provides most of the hospital kits for the US. Blocking those kits would cause shortages and negatively impact patient care. It would also cause delays in treatments and compromise patient safety. ........ Canada and Mexico are also leading exporters of copper to the US. And Canada is the largest Aluminum exporter to the US.

I Watched It Happen in Hungary. Now It’s Happening Here. Mr. Pressman served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary from 2022 to 2025. .......... Take the judiciary. I met leaders of Hungary’s sole independent judicial body in October 2022 to discuss their work. For months afterward, their faces (and mine) were plastered in the papers, branded as traitors and foreign agents, just because they had raised concerns about the rule of law in Hungary. The response from other powerful judges? Silence. ............. Or take the private sector. Since Mr. Orban became prime minister in 2010, the state has awarded billions in public contracts to his son-in-law and childhood friend, a former plumber named Lorinc Meszaros. What have Hungarian business leaders said? Nothing. ............ Last year, when Mr. Orban’s close associates reportedly told a multinational retailer to give the prime minister’s family a cut of its business, did other multinational companies speak up? They did not. ........... Institutions and professions that have long acted as bastions of critical inquiry, civilized contestation and government accountability have fallen silent. ............ During my time in Hungary, I saw Hungarian mayors tell themselves that they were pursuing a savvy strategy by appeasing Mr. Orban even as he effectively stripped them of their revenues and authority. ........ Investors and executives bought into this narrative, even as their businesses and entire sectors fell prey to economic policies intended to enrich Mr. Orban’s family and friends. ............ Hungarian judges bought into it, even as Mr. Orban’s machine slowly swallowed their profession. Some saw capitulation in simple terms: as the only way to preserve their access to resources and keep the people who worked for them employed. “We’ll eventually get through this,” they surely told themselves, “but first, we must go along.” ............. Those best positioned to uphold democratic norms chose the comfort of an illusion over the courage of action. They were and are invisible by choice — and that choice disfigured them and ultimately their country. ........... The lesson of Hungary is this: We cannot claim to care about democracy only when it costs nothing. President Trump, like Mr. Orban, no doubt believes that everyone can be bought. America’s elites are proving him right. There is a Hungarian phrase I heard often: “Van az a penz” — “There’s always a price.” ........... To the stewards of our nation’s great cultural and commercial institutions: Don’t dupe yourselves. The illusion that you are smarter than the strongman, that you’ll outmaneuver him with silent cleverness, is just that — an illusion. Now, more than ever, your principled leadership matters.

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