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Ruth King

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Is the Department of Education Dead On Arrival? The DOE is on the ropes, and should be ended, not mended. by Larry Sand

By on February 24th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/is-the-department-of-education-dead-on-arrival/

While the federal government has spent money on education and developed education policies since the 19th century, the U.S. Department of Education didn’t become a stand-alone agency until 1980 when, courtesy of President Jimmy Carter, it split off from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Carter advocated for creating the department to fulfill a campaign promise to the National Education Association. Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in 1979. In response, the NEA subsequently issued its first-ever endorsement in a presidential contest.

Just what is the function of the DOE?

As former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos explains, it doesn’t run a single school, employ any teachers in a single classroom, or set academic standards or curriculum. “It isn’t even the primary funder of education—quite the opposite. In most states, the federal government represents less than 10% of K–12 public education funding.”

DeVos adds that it does shuffle money around, adds unnecessary requirements and political agendas via its grants, and then passes the buck when it comes time to assess if any of that adds value. “In other words, the Department of Education is functionally a middleman. And, like most middlemen, it doesn’t add value. It merely adds cost and complexity.”

In 2024, the DOE employed over 4,000 people whose salaries and benefits came to $2.7 billion, and the department’s total budget for the year was $79 billion.

One of the purported reasons the DOE was brought into existence was to lower achievement gaps. But after spending over $1 trillion since its inception, it has done no such thing. The results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and math test, given to 4th and 8th graders, were announced in January and showed that 4th graders continued to lose ground, with reading scores slightly lower, on average, than in 2022 and much lower than in 2019.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Searching for Condemnations in the Muslim World Fake quotes from grand muftis condemning Hamas show just the opposite. Daniel Greenfield

By on February 24th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/searching-for-condemnations-in-the-muslim-world/

After Hamas paraded the coffins of 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel to the cheers and jeers of its supporters, before turning over the coffins, locked with keys that did not fit to Israel, people looked for something to restore their faith in the goodness of mankind in the Muslim world.

Millions thought they found it in fake quotes from the grand muftis of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“What we say today in Gaza is a disgrace to Islam, an act of blasphemy against Allah,” Saudi Grand Mufti Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh (pictured above) reportedly claimed in one viral social media post.

“Hamas has brought shame to Islam on a level never seen before,” Grand Mufti of Dubai Ahmed al-Haddad allegedly proclaimed.

Photos of the two Islamic religious leaders illustrated with these quotes racked up millions of views on social media. Some even found their way into news stories sourced from social media.

The problem was that the quotes were fake and never existed outside social media. The Saudi quote was soon disavowed while an Emirati journalist stated that the local media had “never heard of them” and that they were “mere rumors”.

Why did so many people spread and probably invent these fake social media posts? Because they wanted to believe that Muslim religious leaders would condemn Hamas mocking the bodies of the Jewish children it murdered and there was still some hope for decency left in the world.

But those condemnations don’t exist.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Judicial ‘Resistance’ Is Setting Itself Up for an Epic Smackdown The lower court judges are acting unconstitutionally. Josh Hammer

By on February 24th, 2025

https://spectator.org/judicial-resistance-setting-itself-epic-smackdown/

America, unfortunately, has long been suffering from a crisis of civics. Put simply, many Americans are woefully ignorant about the structure and features of their government. But every so often, an opportunity emerges to reteach some basics. The media’s predictable shrieks and howls of “constitutional crisis” notwithstanding, we are in the throes of a grand separation-of-powers standoff that will both serve as one such edifying civics lesson.

First: Enter the energetic executive.

In his frenetic opening weeks, President Donald Trump has channeled the spirit of The Federalist No. 70, in which Alexander Hamilton argued that only a unitary executive can govern with “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch.” In starker, more modern terms, this newer Trumpian era has fully embraced two key principles associated with close MAGA allies: Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” and Elon Musk’s “move fast and break things.” The crux is that people are easily distracted, often overwhelmed, and frequently overcome by shiny-object syndrome. This is especially true in today’s 24/7 social media environment.

Those two mantras explain how we get these remarkable first few weeks — this more assertive, more dynamic MAGA machine. We see “move fast and break things” in such moves as the executive orders on birthright citizenship and rooting out both “diversity, equity and inclusion” and gender ideology from the federal government.

We see it in the U.S. Agency for International Development wind-down, and we see it in the anticipated termination of the Department of Education. And we see “flood the zone” in the daily frenzy of executive orders. Indeed, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf’s daily physical handing of new executive orders to Trump to sign has emerged as an unlikely cable TV fixture.

And now: Enter the judicial “resistance.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas’s October 7 Massacre Is Part of Its Jihad to Destroy Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on February 24th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21424/hamas-jihad-to-destroy-israel

Some people in Israel are demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu step down and agree to Hamas’s demand to end the war in the Gaza Strip…. These Israelis fail to understand that the October 7 massacre is just another phase of the Islamists’ Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Since its violent, brutal takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has done nothing to help the local residents. Instead of building hospitals, schools and economic projects, Hamas, with the help of Iran and Qatar, has devoted huge resources to manufacturing weapons, such as rockets and missiles, and building a massive network of tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, in a document published shortly after the October 7 attack, openly admits that it is opposed to the presence of Jews in Israel. The document frankly admits that the conflict did not start as a result of the Holocaust, or when Israel declared independence in 1948, or on October 7, 2023, but 105 years ago, “including 30 years of British colonialism and 75 years of Zionist occupation.” The document goes on to explain that Hamas “is a Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement. Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.”

Hamas’s 1988 charter emphasizes the importance of Jihad as the main means for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) to achieve its goals…

Significantly, the charter quotes Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, as saying: “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam abolishes it, as it abolished what went before.” Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

US President Donald J. Trump would do well to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, the font of all the Islamic jihadist organizations, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Such an act would make it difficult for those countries that promote and finance jihadi terrorists to keep on doing so.

What happened on October 7 should be seen in the context of Qatar’s, Iran’s and Hamas’s continuing Jihad. The massacre on October 7 was just another phase in the Islamist groups’ efforts to eliminate Israel. After the October 7, massacres, the Qatari government media consistently praised the massacres, and weeks ago vowed more of them.

Anyone who believes that Hamas would abandon Jihad as a result of a ceasefire agreement is engaging in extreme self-deception. Hamas has not yet accomplished its mission of destroying Israel. Hamas’s main goal, especially now, is to remain in power after the war…. Any deal that keeps Hamas in power would pave the way for the Islamist murderers, rapists and baby-killers to carry out still more massacres against Israelis.

Regrettably, there is no alternative to eradicating Hamas.

Some people in Israel are demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu step down and agree to Hamas’s demand to end the war in the Gaza Strip, as if Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel was just another round of fighting with the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group.

These Israelis fail to understand that the October 7 massacre is just another phase of the Islamists’ Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Hamas did not attack Israel on October 7, 2023, just because it wanted to release Palestinian convicts from Israeli prisons or improve the living conditions of the Palestinians under its rule in the Gaza Strip. The attack, resulting in the murder of 1,200 Israelis and the wounding of thousands more, as well as the abduction of more than 250 to the Gaza Strip, came as part of Hamas’s Jihad to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

1-In-3 Americans Distrust Climate-Change Claims Made By Activists, Policymakers: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

By on February 24th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/02/24/1-in-3-americans-distrust-climate-change-claims-made-by-activists-policymakers-ii-tipp-poll/

Until recently, the U.S. and the rest of the developed world pursued a costly global policy of “net-zero” carbon emissions to battle the supposed ill-effect of climate change. But President Donald Trump has changed all that by ending the U.S.’ commitment to the global net-zero effort. Will today’s highly partisan voters support Trump? The latest I&I/TIPP Poll data suggest a high-degree of skepticism among many voters over global warming’s threat.

Three-quarters of those responding to the I&I/TIPP Poll agreed there are reasons for “public skepticism toward climate-change policies,” while just over a third of voting-age Americans say they themselves “distrust” the information used to sell previous climate-change policies.

For the national online poll, taken from Jan. 29-31, 1,478 adults were first asked: “How much do you trust the claims made by climate change activists and policymakers?” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

While 50% said they either trust “completely” (20%) or “somewhat” (30%), another 36% said they “completely” (20%) or “somewhat” (16%) distrust claims made by climate activists and politicians.

Once again, political affiliation plays a role in how voters see the issue. Democrats overwhelmingly say “trust” (67%) over “distrust” (21%) the climate-change claims that have been made, but Republicans are more skeptical, with 37% answering “Trust” and a 51% majority answering “Distrust.” Among independents, responses were somewhere in the middle, at 47% ‘Trust” and 35% “Distrust.”

Trust in the climate claims rises with income. Of those earning $30,000 or less a year, “trust” was 46%; for those at $30,000-$50,000 a year, 47%; for those at $50,000-$75,000 a year, 51%; and for those over $75,000, 63%.

A follow-on question asked the following: “What do you think is the main reason for public skepticism toward climate change policies?”

The responses showed what really concerns people most about the public response to the hypothetical threats of climate change. Of those responding, 25% cited “Lack of clear, transparent scientific data,” 22% responded “Perceived hypocrisy of leaders and activists,” 17% agreed on “Economic consequences of proposed policies,” and 8% answered “Media exaggeration of climate risks.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Alternatives to the Two-State Solution Few mantras have been more maddening–or more obviously wrong–than “there’s no alternative to the two-state solution.” Bruce D. Abramson

By on February 24th, 2025

https://bda1776.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“So let’s be very, very clear here. The idea that the PLO had reformed, at its best, represented the elevation of hope over evidence. It evaporated entirely in September 2000, when Arafat launched a terror war rather than accept a state.”

Here’s what it means to break the Overton Window.

A couple of weeks ago, President Trump suggested evacuating the Gazans from the hellhole in which they’ve been trapped since 1948. The world was aghast. But all that Trump did was speak an obvious, overdue truth that some of us have been shouting from the sidelines for decades.

For years, we’ve heard a unanimous chorus of “respectable” voices chanting their mantra: “There is no alternative to a two-state solution.” They chanted it even though it was obviously false. The status quo, for example, was an alternative. So was the alternative around which the entire Palestine Liberation movement had been founded: Genocidal extermination of the Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state. So was the completion of the population exchange that had begun when the Arab countries exiled all of their Jews into Israel. So was an Israeli military victory resulting in either another refugee crisis or a massive body count.

The “respectable” crowd just disliked all those alternatives, so they pretended they didn’t exist. Of course, many of these same folks also hewed to the mantra “there is no military solution” to conflicts, even though nearly every important turning point in history followed a decisive military solution to a longstanding conflict. Credibility and consistency were never big with that crowd.

Now, it was bad enough when we had to hear that nonsense from the anti-Israel crowd and the ignorant pollyannas (both very large groups). What was worse was hearing it from savvy pro-Israel analysts who should have known better.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

SYDNEY WILLIAMS;EDUCATION MATTERS

By on February 24th, 2025

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

A recent editorial in The Washington Post, lamenting threats to close the Department of Education, referred to a “landmark” 1983 Reagan Administration report, “A Nation at Risk.” The editorial divulged “that 13 percent of American 17-year-olds – and up to 40 percent of minority youths – were functionally illiterate” at the time. The editorial claimed the United States had been falling behind its adversaries, which caused businesses and the military to spend millions of dollars on “costly remedial education and training programs.” The editorial added: “Test scores have improved (apart from an alarming slippage in recent years), and presidents from both parties have worked to make American schools more accommodating for children with disabilities, and to improve low-performing schools.” But has that been true?

Today, the Department of Education spends approximately twenty-two times as much per student as it did forty years ago, yet the results are dismal. According to the recently issued report from the U.S. Department of Education – the bi-annual National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card – 60% of fourth graders scored below what the NAEP deems a proficient level in math. 8th Graders fared worse, with 75% performing below proficiency. In reading, almost 70 percent of students scored below the NAEP proficiency level. In the report, the author Stephaan Harris quoted Governing Board member Patrick Kelly of Columbia, South Carolina: “Student academic achievement is the cornerstone of national success and security. This makes a lack of academic progress today a direct and urgent threat to our collective future.” It does; education is the foundation on which our democracy is built.

Internationally, our students are not where they should be. According to the 2022 to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, American students did best in reading, ranking 9th overall, behind Macau and Canada. In science, however, they ranked 16th, behind Slovenia and the UK. And in math, the ranked 34th, below the average and behind Norway and Malta.  The scores, according to Education GPS, “…are among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics. In reading and science, results confirm a long-term stability in result,” albeit at a mediocre level for a nation that prides itself on its schools.

These tests foretell a depressing story. We are a nation that has been the technological, medical and science leader of the world; and some might argue its cultural leader. Yet our public schools are a disgrace, with minorities and the poor suffering the most.

School choice is the obvious answer, but it is widely opposed by teachers’ unions, and therefore by most Democrat politicians. Open Secrets reported that, for the 2024 election cycle, the two largest teachers’ unions, National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave a combined $32 million to candidates, with 94% going to Democrats. That dollar amount was up from $4 million twenty years ago. In the meantime, a Heritage Foundation survey (2023) found that 47% of House members and 51% of Senators enroll their children in private schools. In a February 1 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Michael Bloomberg wrote: “In New York, the teachers union has fought to maintain a cap on the number of charter schools, [schools that] have dramatically raised achievement levels, even as student waiting lists grow longer.” Hypocrisy thrives.

These tests foretell a depressing story. We are a nation that has been the technological, medical and science leader of the world; and some might argue its cultural leader. Yet our public schools are a disgrace, with minorities and the poor suffering the most.

School choice is the obvious answer, but it is widely opposed by teachers’ unions, and therefore by most Democrat politicians. Open Secrets reported that, for the 2024 election cycle, the two largest teachers’ unions, National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave a combined $32 million to candidates, with 94% going to Democrats. That dollar amount was up from $4 million twenty years ago. In the meantime, a Heritage Foundation survey (2023) found that 47% of House members and 51% of Senators enroll their children in private schools. In a February 1 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Michael Bloomberg wrote: “In New York, the teachers union has fought to maintain a cap on the number of charter schools, [schools that] have dramatically raised achievement levels, even as student waiting lists grow longer.” Hypocrisy thrives.

The world faces many problems, and it is not simply the threat of foreign powers, like China with its Belt-and-Road initiatives, a revanchist Russia wishing to reclaim its lost empire, a Middle East under the threat of Iran and Islamic terrorism, or African Christians having to live with daily threats. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing are in their infancy. We must, as J.D. Vance warned our European partners in Munich, confront “the enemy within.” We must not allow fear of censorship prevent us from speaking out. We should, as Noah Rothman wrote in the January 2024 issue of National Review, “summon the courage to repudiate what passes for sophistication in the academy and renounce the trite moral relativism that cannot distinguish between the Western world and its enemies.” Western liberalism, which dates back two-hundred-and-fifty years to the Enlightenment, is under attack. One consequence has been the divisiveness of our political parties. Another is manifested in the current crop of political leaders from both parties.

The best antidote is an educated populace. “Education is the movement from darkness to light” is a quote attributed to Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. Martin Luther King believed that the purpose of education was to help people “to think incisively and to think for one’s self.” This is particularly true as it applies to our roles as citizens. Our youth must read our Constitution, understand what makes our government unique, and how rare it is in the annals of mankind. All public school students should have some familiarity with the canon of classical liberal Western thought.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dictator Trump? That’s Just Silly James Allan

By on February 23rd, 2025

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/america/trump-is-no-dictator/

Let me start this reply to Roger Partridge’s column (Trump’s War on Constitutional Democracy) by laying my cards on the table.  I know Roger Partridge.  He is one of the best lawyers in New Zealand.  He, like me, has grave worries about the sort of judicial activism or judicial usurpation of the role of Parliament that he sees over across the Tasman (and which, in enervated form, is on clear display here in Australia too).  Indeed, Roger and I have worked in parallel and at times together to try to rein back  the current imperial judiciary in New Zealand, a set of top judges seemingly intent on making significant inroads into parliamentary sovereignty simply by decreeing new supposed realities in big-ticket cases.  Indeed, in an excellent recent report, ‘Who Makes the Law? Reining in the Supreme Court’, Roger sets out the problems chapter and verse and then offers proposals to ameliorate this big-ticket problem.

He and I are fully in agreement about what is happening in New Zealand and I support all of his proposals. But for my purposes today I thought it best to begin by noting how much he and I agree about the state of Antipodean judicial and constitutional affairs.

I need to note that because I certainly do not agree with how Roger has characterised the first month or so of the second term of President Trump in Saturday’s Quadrant Online.   Readers who haven’t done so should first look at what Roger argued. Here’s a sample:

♦ Roger notes that Trump has made 50 executive orders since taking office a little over a month ago.  (Roger does not tell readers that Joe Biden issued 60 such orders in more or less the same amount of time.)

♦ He condemns Trump’s use of emergency powers as regards justifying tariffs on Mexico and Canada and suspending asylum applications.

♦ He claims that Trump is trying to rewrite the 14th Amendment by executive order to stop birthright citizenship.

♦ He praises the lower Federal Court judges who have issued nationwide injunctions to stop the suspension of asylum claims and birthright citizenship applications.  Indeed, he cites what some of these judges have said.  But Roger never lets readers know that every such injunction-issuing judge was a Democrat appointee.

♦ He notes J.D. Vance’s questioning of whether unelected judges have this authority to override executive power and Vance’s assertion that such actions by judges is constitutionally illegal. For Roger, that sort of scepticism ‘reveals a fundamental attack on constitutional government’.

As an aside, when Roger writes a report detailing how New Zealand judges have gone off the rails – and they have – by legislating from the bench is he not in that context ‘openly questioning judicial authority’?  And what’s wrong with such questioning?  Moreover, there would be plenty of left-wing Kiwis in the so-called ‘Judge’s Party’ who would word-for-word characterise Roger’s who-makes-the-law? critique as ‘a fundamental attack on constitutional government’.

But back to the US.  Is the Vice-President somehow constitutionally prevented from criticising unelected judges?  If so, that’s a constitutional norm I have never heard of and certainly would not support.  I think what Roger really appears to dislike is the hint Vance makes that the Trump administration might in extremis simply ignore these lower court injunctions – you know, the way President Lincoln did when he flat out ignored the Supreme Court’s writ of habeas corpus as regards arbitrarily detaining citizens and the way that President Jefferson wrote what he would do if democratic executive government were to be hamstrung by activist judges.  I will come back to this issue.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Germany is ripe for revolt The German elites were wrong about everything. Fraser Myers

By on February 23rd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/22/why-germany-is-ripe-for-revolt/

As Germany’s federal elections approach this weekend, chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats (SPD) are bracing for their worst results since 1887. The SPD is battling with its equally unpopular coalition partner, the Green Party, for a humiliating third place, behind the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The coming bloodbath for Scholz’s government speaks to far more than the haplessness of his leadership or the unpopularity of his party. Germany has just endured two years of recession – the longest economic slump in its postwar history. Industry is in freefall, shedding almost a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs since the start of the pandemic. A series of terror attacks by Islamists and asylum seekers has made many Germans wonder if the state can do its basic duty to keep them safe. Talk of German efficiency and punctuality now sounds like a sarcastic joke, as roads and bridges fall into disrepair, trains are routinely late and infrastructure projects are plagued by delays and cost overruns. One in five German children lives in poverty. Germany is not merely in an economic downtown – it faces a profound structural crisis, largely of its elites’ own making.

None of these problems began in earnest in the Scholz era. The chancellor is merely the current frontman for a long-running ‘consensus’ that has now become unsustainable and unsupportable. Tellingly, at the last federal elections in 2021, Scholz campaigned as the continuity candidate following the long reign of CDU chancellor Angela Merkel, under whom he served as vice-president and finance minister in a ‘grand coalition’. He even aped her signature ‘Merkel rhombus’ hand gesture to ram this point home. The accusation that ‘politicians are all the same’ rings far truer in Germany than elsewhere. Every mainstream party is implicated in this crisis.

Foreign admirers of Germany praise the ability of its politicians to form a consensus, rather than squabble or try to score partisan points. This is what makes Germany a ‘grown-up country’, as John Kampfner puts it in his staggeringly poorly aged 2021 book, Why the Germans Do it Better.

A less charitable interpretation of contemporary German politics would be that its leaders are gripped by groupthink. Policies, ideologies, ways of doing things become easily entrenched. The result is that when the ideas of the day are bad, they are shared not only across parties, but also by the broader elites, in business, media and culture. The main challenge to this received wisdom comes from the fringes, and so it can comfortably be ignored. Not even a change of governing party will necessarily lead to a change of course.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Suffer the Little Children Hamas’ grotesque display of murdered hostages exposes the brutality of its lies, while the West’s moral confusion enables its propaganda. By Carl M. Cannon

By on February 23rd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/23/suffer-the-little-children/

In his most powerful novel, Russia’s greatest 19th-century novelist wrestles with the most difficult moral problem faced by people – the suffering of innocents. At their father’s funeral, Ivan Karamazov recounts to his younger brother Alyosha, who is training to be a monk, graphic examples of sadistic acts committed against children.

“Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her,” Ivan says. “They’ve planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains.”

If evil exists in the world for the purpose of granting mankind free will, thereby revealing the existence of God, Ivan wants no part of religion. He also tells his brother of a married couple, “cultivated parents,” who subject their daughter to horrific beatings and torture and lock her in the outdoor privy in the freezing cold.

“Can you understand why a little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her?”

“The Brothers Karamazov” is fiction. But such horrors describe the real-life world we still live in. It was the world on display today when Hamas released the remains of four Israelis it kidnapped in the savage attack of Oct. 7, 2023. The oldest was Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when abducted. Who takes an 83-year-old man?

The other three were members of a family whose names and likeness are familiar to everyone in Israel. They should have been known to everyone in the civilized world. Shiri Bibas was 32 when she was kidnapped by Hamas along with her red-headed sons, Ariel, then 4, and Kfir, who was not quite 9 months old. “Leave her alive, she has children with her,” one of the terrorists can be heard saying on a video they shot. “Let no one harm her so that they know of our humanity.”

Hamas’ idea of “humanity” was on full display Thursday in Gaza, as Hamas used the four dead hostages’ coffins as a grotesque prop, complete with their photographs and a photo of Benjamin Netanyahu rendered as a vampire. An inscription reads, “The war criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi army killed them with missiles from Zionist warplanes.”

There is, of course, no reason to believe these four people were inadvertently killed in an Israeli airstrike. It’s possible, but Hamas lies constantly about its crimes. It lies about its own hospitals being bombed, lies about casualty numbers, lies about food in Gaza, lies about hostages’ well-being, lies about everything. Its propaganda is as transparent as it is crude.

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