Where We Are This Week
Conversations with friends, Qatar's investment, Hollywood ceasefire, and a captive child.
My wife and I met up with some close friends of ours for coffee last weekend. As the café of this posh suburb of Nashville continued to fill up all around us, our children stomped along the closed circuit around our table - denoting our territory for the morning.
We hadn’t seen them for a few months and since they are bringing their second beautiful baby into the world this week, the timing of our meeting was crucial.
The conversation drifted from the personal and pragmatic to the political and philosophical. Years ago, I would have been able to view these subjects as distinct matters of their own with clear boundaries between one and the next. When I was a kid, I’d eat my meals by compartment - first entree, then side, then side. Now, I flit in and out of the portions that have been set before me.
A good meal contains parts that complement each other. Bread, cheese, wine, etc. They commingle - they enhance each other because they’re all constituents of a broader unified experience. You can’t have white beans without cornbread.
Conversation is the same. It’s impossible to silo the political from the personal. Maybe you could in times gone by, but now, it’s too easy to play connect the dots while you lay out a diverse topical charcuterie. As it turns out, there are less than six degrees of separation between cultural and political problems.
What the Left has gotten right since the cultural revolution of the 1960s is that the personal is the political. Whether you like it or not, political dialogue is ubiquitous in our modern era, and even the most mundane activities might incidentally place you in one position or another. It’s not that everything should be political, it’s just that it is virtually inescapable at this point.
And it’s not that everyone is obligated to formulate an opinion on everything but you shouldn’t shy away from delivering your honest opinion on whatever matter is being discussed - whether that be in the affirmative, the negative, the ignorant, the ambivalent, or agnostic. If you tell people you don’t like mashed potatoes, they’ll quit serving you mashed potatoes.
So, with this in mind, I noticed with pride that when we drifted into current affairs amidst the crowded coffee shop, we did not speak of Israel-Palestine, conservatism, or liberalism in hushed tones. No, on the contrary, we set about discussing the matters as if they ought to be talked about amongst friends, children, and pregnant women.
Continued with sports
I used to follow the NBA religiously. It was my favorite of American sports. During our honeymoon in San Francisco, the Golden State Warriors were ripping their way through the Western Conference playoffs and would eventually win the championship. Every night, my wife would fall asleep early - weary from the countless miles and hills we climbed during the day - and I would watch Steph Curry’s pull-up jumper.
The last season to which I paid close attention ended in 2019 with Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors (and Drake?) lifting the championship trophy. On the way, Leonard gave us one of the greatest moments in sporting history as his last-second dagger sent the 76ers to an early exit from the playoffs. Please, take a moment to watch the clip.
Despite the Raptors’ unbelievable season, the last nail in the coffin for my NBA viewership had been struck earlier that year when the Houston Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey was reprimanded for supporting the protests in Hong Kong. The NBA quickly assumed a pro-China posture and forbade any pro-Hong Kong demonstrations at events, removing fans with protests written on signs and their shirts.
The following year was 2020 - you remember that one, right? the one with the pandemic and the social reckoning? Well, league commissioner Adam Silver struck a much different tone when it came to American protests. For a short while, players were allowed to put slogans and catchphrases on the backs of their jerseys instead of their names. “System Oppression catches the ball from Say Their Names and lobs it to No Justice No Peace who slams it home.” Fans could also customize their own jersey from the league store.
Notably, messages in support of Hong Kong or criticisms of the Chinese government over their treatment of their Uyghur Muslim population were verboten. Funny way of spelling justice, yeah?
Well, as the popular nomenclature of our times suggests, when people tell you who they are, believe them.
We talked last week about how the Qatari government and its sovereign wealth fund -reminder: Qatar sponsors terrorism and lets the leaders of Hamas operate from inside its borders - are infiltrating the world of athletics. PSG, the largest football club in France, is owned by the Qatari royal family, and the 2022 World Cup, the largest sporting event in the world, was hosted in the Middle Eastern nation as the games were played in stadiums built off the backs of slave labor.
Now, the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, in exchange for $200 million, is set to take a 5% ownership in the American company, Monumental Sports and Entertainment. You guessed it, Monumental owns the NHL’s Washington Capitals and the NBA’s Washington Wizards. Between the NHL and the NBA, there are a total of 62 teams the Qatar Investment Authority could have chosen from to satiate their desire for a good ol’ sporting team, but it must be a coincidence they settled for ones that reside in the capital of our nation, right?
As our business and governmental elites cozy up with Hamas’ sponsors, some aren’t taking it lying down. The parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old American-Israeli who was abducted by Hamas on October 7th, have taken to pleading with the NHL in hopes the organization has enough leverage to assist with the release of their son.
I could summarize an email they sent to the NHL commissioner but I’ll let the angry, desperate words of Goldberg-Polin’s parents speak for themselves.
“It is unconscionable that Qatar can refuse to arrest Hamas leaders and yet be welcomed into the ownership not just of a pillar of American society like the NHL, but specifically as part owners of the only NHL franchise based in our nation’s capital,” they say in the email. “Extensive reporting in recent years has detailed how Qatar has spent untold millions on lobbyists and PR flaks; the NHL may be enabling sponsors of Hamas to increase their already remarkable political influence in the U.S.”
“We believe that buying into the NHL, and into Washington, DC in particular, is a top priority for the State of Qatar. Thus, pressure from the NHL on Qatar might be uniquely impactful. While an estimated 150-200 innocent civilians, including 20 Americans besides our son, are being held hostage, the leaders of Hamas ultimately responsible for the kidnappings and the murders of 1,400 innocent souls are living openly in Doha.”
“The choice for the NHL is stark. Why would the NHL want to welcome into its ranks the very people who empower the Hamas leaders to continue overseeing in real time a gruesome and unspeakable terror campaign, including holding Americans and others hostage? Qatar’s refusal to arrest Hamas leaders should be a red line for the NHL. Only once Hamas leaders in Doha lose their freedom can the hostages in Gaza, including our son Hersh, gain theirs,” the letter concluded.
American sporting organizations spend the winter months honoring breast cancer awareness and Latino and black history months but have no interest in addressing their very real conflicts of interest when it comes to profits and human rights. The NHL has not responded to the email, and Monumental has offered no comment regarding their new business partners’ affiliation with a terrorist organization. Money talks, terrorism is ignored.
Film and other places
One can only imagine the grief and frustration a parent might feel hoping to get their child back from the hands of people who’ve made a habit of slaughtering innocent civilians. And one can only imagine that frustration would be compounded when those standing in the way of your child’s safe return - or the retribution of their captors - aren’t just Hamas, but actors, artists, and colleges of the West.
In the weeks after October 7th, flyers were hung on college campuses and public spaces with the names and faces of the men, women, and children who were taken captive by Hamas. What at first I thought was a one-off has turned into a trend is pro-Palestine activists ripping those flyers down or pasting their posters over them. Resistance!
Pro-Hamas sentiment has only been thinly veiled as support for the Palestinian people and has been overwhelmingly present in American cities and colleges over the last two weeks. Chants of ‘Glory to our martyrs’ and ‘We Don’t Want No Two State’ (meaning a two-state solution) have been echoed around the United States lately.
On Wednesday, Jewish students at New York City’s Cooper Institute had to be barricaded inside the school’s library for their own protection as a small anti-Israel protest turned threatening. And I’ve seen countless videos of pro-Israeli counter-protestors accosted or assaulted over the last week.
The outpouring of support for the Palestinian cause the entire world has seen over the last two weeks was galvanized by a pure act of terror committed by Hamas. If that doesn’t send a shiver down your spine, I’m not sure what will.
I’ve not seen one demonstration that was at once pro-Palestine and anti-Hamas. I’m not saying that position doesn’t exist, but it’s evident that it’s not the predominant concern of protesters. And I haven’t seen one protest, one call to action from the left demanding that the United States, the EU, and the United Nations cease to send any amount of funds to the Gaza Strip.
But what do our political betters in Hollywood have in mind instead? A call for a ceasefire! Yes, of course, Israel has the right to defend itself but let’s make sure Hamas isn’t too eradicated, okay?
I didn’t choose for it to be this way, and neither did you. I was happy to watch the NBA until they took a decidedly anti-human rights stance. I was happy to wear Nike, an American clothing brand, until it lobbied against the prohibition of using forced labor to manufacture goods.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the release of the anglophone Napoleon movie that Joaquin Phoenix is starring in, but it looks as if I’ll be happy not to watch it as well.
Every innocent death is a tragedy, and every innocent Palestinian death lies at the hands of Hamas. A ceasefire only helps lengthen Hamas’ 17-year reign of terror and oppression of its own people. Everything is political. Nothing is sacred. Protest everything.
This one is for Jonathan Polin and Rachel Goldberg and their son.
To a better next week.
~FDA