Better than gold
What’s about the only thing more badass than a 17-year-old winning a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI)?
That 17-year-old intentionally forfeiting his gold medal by wearing an Israeli flag while the medal was announced, defying the IOI’s boycott of Israel (for background on this boycott, see my post from 2024).
Kol HaKavod (mad respect) to Yotam Budnik, who incredibly, has also won a Gold Medal (which he was allowed to keep, apparently) at the International Math Olympiad. And congratulations to the entire Israeli team, which (incredibly) would apparently have had a higher overall score than the US team, had it been allowed to compete as an official team at all.
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Comment #1 August 20th, 2026 at 11:49 am
I objected the ban of the official Israeli team in 2024, which even resulted in Israeli students missing out on the 2025 IOI because Israel refused to send an un-offical team. But I don’t think that this flag stunt was a good idea either, a high school coding competition should not be about politics, this might lead to even more students missing out on future editions.
Comment #2 August 20th, 2026 at 12:30 pm
Congrats to the Israeli team for their results!
That said, they really should have known better. National flags have been prohibited at IOI for several years.
This isn’t a partisan issue meant to punish Israeli competitors in particular. The rule is meant to keep nationalistic displays and political messaging separate from a competitive programming event.
Comment #3 August 20th, 2026 at 1:09 pm
Jonah #2: No, this wasn’t some neutral rule that happened to get applied to Israel.
Israel was banned from competing under its own flag, alone in the world with the exceptions of Russia and Belarus, ignoring the obvious disanalogy that Russia and Belarus invaded their neighbor in a horrifying aggressive war, whereas Israel was invaded. This decision was made at an IOI in Egypt that the Israeli team was barred from attending for security reasons, ensuring that Israel would have no chance to object. In that context, Budnik’s forfeiting his medal to protest the “Zionrein” nature of the competition — something with echoes of the Nazi and Soviet past — seems pretty damned heroic to me. I think this kid is going places in life.
Comment #4 August 20th, 2026 at 2:06 pm
Congratulations to Yotam Budnik!
For context regarding the IOI and Israel, see Scott’s post from 2024.
Comment #5 August 20th, 2026 at 2:07 pm
Jonah #2
> National flags have been prohibited at IOI for several years.
That’s interesting, so presumably they also revoked the medal of the guy who wore the UK flag in the same picture?
Comment #6 August 20th, 2026 at 3:00 pm
If an IOI participant insisted on wearing a swastika, how would you feel about that? Should the event organizers allow him, because of “freedom of speech?”
Comment #7 August 20th, 2026 at 4:34 pm
Jonah #2:
Look at the picture here:
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/israeli-student-stripped-gold-medal-computer-olympiad-waving-flag-il28hhij
Some guy is wearing a UK flag. Was this other guy punished for that too?
Comment #8 August 20th, 2026 at 4:55 pm
Truly amazing! כל הכבוד!!
I wonder, do they also impose sanctions on the Palestinians, who, unlike Israel, were the ones who instigated the massacre?
Cue the obsessive haters in the comments…
———-
From Google:
The Israeli students at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) competed as independent, neutral contestants rather than an official national team. Under IOI sanctions enacted by a General Assembly vote, contestants from Israel were barred from using national symbols or representing their country officially.
Led by team leader Ron Ryvchin, the four Israeli students achieved an outstanding competitive result, securing a total of three gold medals and one bronze medal.
Yotam Budnik (Gold – Disqualified): A 12th-grade student from Rehovot who earned a gold medal based on his test performance. During the live-broadcast closing ceremony, he unfurled and wore an Israeli flag as a protest against the restrictions. The IOI international committee immediately held an emergency session, disqualified him, and wiped his name and perfect score from the official global leaderboard. While organizers demanded the physical gold medal back, Budnik refused to hand it over and kept it.
Comment #9 August 20th, 2026 at 6:52 pm
Heroic. Well done Yotam.
Comment #10 August 20th, 2026 at 6:55 pm
James #6: Stupid question. A ban on hate symbols is fine. The Israeli flag is not a hate symbol. It represents a country where 10 million people live, many of them because they had literally no other place on the planet that would accept them after their families were murdered, by murderers with ideologies not so different from yours. Oppose the current Israeli government all you want, but if you don’t share the morality of the Nuremberg Laws, Israel’s flag should be allowed just like the flags of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and dozens of other countries responsible for vastly worse human rights violations than Israel, in vastly less existential circumstances. Further troll comments from antisemites like yourself will be left in moderation.
Comment #11 August 20th, 2026 at 8:08 pm
Regardless of the outcome, I think it’s a very unfortunate incident. Of course he has the right to express his political opinion, and by the letter of the law, he has to be disqualified.
Comment #12 August 20th, 2026 at 9:58 pm
Am yisrael chai!
Comment #13 August 21st, 2026 at 1:07 am
It is sad that IOI has become so politicized.
They boycott Israel for reasons that many other countries would not be boycotted for.
Is Myanmar boycotted for ethnic cleansing of Muslim Rohingya? Or China for their treatment of Muslim Uyghurs? …
There is a deep historically persistent demonization of Jewish people.
Scientific organizations should stand up and not let their governments use them to score political points. But most of them are morally weak and will not dare to stand up to the policy of their oppressive governments. While in Israel at least there is a strong and serious criticism of policies of the government.
And it will not achieve anything because the current right wing government if Israel is beholden to the far right interests and doesn’t care about this kind of pressure on Israel’s scientific community which are mostly opposed to the policies of the current Israeli government and support a humne moving conditions and rights for non-militant Palestinians. Most Israelis do not support occupation of Gaza nor the Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories. These kind of boycotts weaken the moderate side and strengthen the extremists.
Viewing Israel’s population as a monolithic group that supports the current Israeli governments policies is stupid. Don’t they know that there has been many big national protests inside Israel by Jews against the policies of the far right Israeli politicians and Bibi?
These people are either ignorant or hypocrites.
Comment #14 August 21st, 2026 at 1:21 am
Respect to Yotam Budnik !!
Comment #15 August 21st, 2026 at 7:39 am
Greetings from Brazil!
I completely agree that the Israel flag represents a country of people not the decisions made by its government. Still, I have to admit I don’t know too much about why Israel was invaded and why now there is popularized negative image of Israel in most western social media. Is there any book you could suggest me about this?
Comment #16 August 21st, 2026 at 7:47 am
Theorist Israel #8: Ironically, Palestine has a team that can compete like any national team.
Linh #11: Note that many other students may and do wear flags. The law banning flags has not been enforced in at least a decade. The problem is specifically the Israeli flag, because Israel was officially boycotted from the IOI.
Comment #17 August 21st, 2026 at 10:18 am
Ricardo Trifásico #15: Thanks for writing! You’re absolutely right that, if a fair-minded outsider who didn’t know anything about the history of modern Israel, or the 2000-year history of Jewish statelessness and persecution before it, saw the sheer volume of international vituperation directed toward this one tiny state, it would be natural to assume the tiny state must’ve done something evil enough to deserve it all. The feeling would only deepen once they realized just how many prestigious organizations, celebrities, journalists, academics, etc. had joined the bandwagon, and how many Jews and Israelis themselves were severely critical of the current Israeli government. It would take unusual diligence for our observer to figure out that this was more a story about
(1) a 2000-year-old shapeshifting conspiracy theory that sees “the Jew” as the central agent of evil in Western civilization—a conspiracy theory that laid the groundwork for the Holocaust, and then immediately reoriented itself toward the Jewish state once it was founded in the Holocaust’s aftermath,
(2) a total collapse of standards in journalism, academic humanities departments, etc. that used to protect against such conspiracy theories, massively accelerated by the rise of social media,
(3) Israel being a boisterous democracy with tons of genuine disagreement (just like the US has many millions of patriots like me who nevertheless detest Donald Trump and what he stands for, and presumably similarly for Brazil and Bolsonaro), and
(4) Jews being a people with a millennia-long tradition of disputing everything, even the case for their own continued existence.
On reflection, I should probably be grateful that anyone without a direct stake in the conflict manages to figure all this out, rather than shocked that more people don’t.
Anyway, if you’re serious about wanting to read more, one beautifully-written contemporary book is On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray. Sam Harris, Haviv Rettig Gur, and Dara Horn also tell Israel’s story with unusual moral force and clarity. For the original founding concept of Israel, you can go all the way back to Theodor Herzl, and his remarkable novel Altneuland. Beyond that, pretty much any history of Israel that’s not written from a Soviet agitprop perspective will explain to you the basic sequence of events of the last century—most importantly,
(1) the numerous plans for partition and coexistence that were put forward,
(2) the (sometimes reluctant) Zionist acceptance of those peace plans,
(3) Arab leaders’ rejection of the plans and decision to launch wars instead to try to kill as many Jews as possible for the greater glory of Allah,
(4) the dramatic, improbable Israeli victories in those wars despite being massively outnumbered, and then
(5) the Arab (and later, Soviet and Third-World leftist) handling of the humiliations of those losses, by rewriting history to present themselves as the beleaguered victims all along—almost exactly like what the American South did following its loss in the Civil War.
What’s incredible about the current moment is merely that intellectual and moral standards have collapsed so far that this “Lost Cause” mythology—which presents Israel’s Jews as the villains of the story for wanting to live, and their neighbors as heroes for wanting to kill them—is winning, all over the world.
Comment #18 August 21st, 2026 at 10:28 am
The IOI is enforcing its regulations very selectively (see the post-IOI 2023.version of the regulations here: https://ioinformatics.org/files/regulations23.pdf ).
– Before IOI 2024, Israel was not invited. S5.6 obliges the host to have every country that competed in any of the past three IOIs invited. Israel had competed since 1996.
– The General Assembly then voted to sanction Israel. Israel had no vote, because it had no delegation, because the invitation required by S5.6 was never issued. The Israeli delegation was not permitted to take part in the discussion online either.
– The students competed remotely and won three golds and a bronze. S5.10 requires attendance certificates for all participants and awarding certificates for all medallists, by the end of the Olympiad. Two years on, they have received neither certificates nor medals.
No one has faced any consequence for any of this.
– At IOI 2026, Budnik wore an Israeli flag on the podium and was disqualified within the hour, struck from the rankings and asked to return his medal. Contestants from other countries wore their national flags at the same ceremony. (The only relevant rule, S5.14, bars objects “that may obstruct other people”; N5.14 mentions flags, but N1.2.2 says Notes are not part of the formal Regulations.)
I have seen people call Burton and Tan antisemites. I don’t think that is right, and I don’t think it is necessary. Nothing above requires anyone to guess at motives.
The simpler explanation is about power. Rules bind whoever cannot push back. Israel had no vote and no delegation, so S5.6 and S5.10 went unenforced for two years with no consequence to anyone. A 17-year-old on a stage had no leverage at all, so he was disqualified within the hour. Whatever they intended, the discretion ran one way every time, and always in the direction where nobody could answer back.
That is the lesson for IOI students beyond algorithms. Formal rules are not self-executing. They hold when someone with standing can insist on them, and they bend when nobody can. This holds much much more generally to the way Israel is treated in many other contexts.
Comment #19 August 21st, 2026 at 1:17 pm
@Scott #17: I think your answer to Ricardo, or something like that, deserves a page of its own, more prominent than an answer to comment of a post that presumably won’t be the most recent soon.
I wonder whether it would be possible to organize an open letter of this sort, signed by multiple people known in their field, and make it known. Not only the position, but also justification, with the fact that most media chooses to ignore. Something like UC professors’ petition to re-instate SATs, which became quite famous.
Comment #20 August 21st, 2026 at 2:27 pm
Scott: your comment #10, in answer to #6, is so spot on. Bravo to Yotam.
Comment #21 August 21st, 2026 at 5:51 pm
“A ban on hate symbols is fine. The Israeli flag is not a hate symbol”
True, but, for me, somehow the Israeli flag has now joined a very small group of flags that instantly give me butterflies in the stomach when I see it (like the Chinese flag).
It didn’t use to be this way, quite the opposite.
It’s not something I enjoy or can control, it’s a spontaneous subconscious reaction.
It grew from what I’ve seen, heard, and read those last few years.
Comment #22 August 21st, 2026 at 5:59 pm
I forgot to add that I expect most of the world to also now have the same reaction when seeing the USA flag, I totally understand it because I’m actually nearly ashamed when I see it too, my own flag.
Instead of pride I feel an urge to apologize and give excuses.
Comment #23 August 21st, 2026 at 6:09 pm
I don’t particularly trust people who are too attached to their “national” flag.
Ideally I’d like to live in a world where there’s no flag, except maybe Starfleet flags.
Until then we’re gonna keep killing one another in huge numbers, once in a while, by definition.
Comment #24 August 21st, 2026 at 6:26 pm
Flags literally come from the need to visually show everyone else one’s claim on some freshly conquered territory – aka “planting the flag”.
Fundamentally it’s about managing ownership of space, the most valuable commodity for any living organism.
What’s one of the very first things Aldrin and Armstrong did after landing on the moon?
What’s the first thing Russians soldiers do when they take a small village in Ukraine?
…
Comment #25 August 21st, 2026 at 6:51 pm
Scott
“the 2000-year history of Jewish statelessness and persecution before it .. saw the sheer volume of international vituperation directed toward this one tiny state”
The reason you were born a US citizen is because your family came here, right?
Like many from other persecuted groups who found freedom of religion and protection in the USA.
But now you’re saying that’s not enough, it’s your right to take back your piece of the pie in the middle east, your ancestral land, and the nation that took in your ancestors should be 100% behind that project.
Basically you want your cake and eat it too.
Imagine if all the persecuted groups who sought shelter in the US did the – maybe Americans of Mong ancestry would retake their ancestral land in South East Asia, and we should our military to assist them in that project, no matter how much it pisses off China, Vietnam, etc.
Hell, why not start by giving back the entire country to Native Americans – it’s their ancestral land after all, no?
I guess those ethnic groups better get their shit together and start winning gold medals!
That’s the only way they will matter.
Comment #26 August 21st, 2026 at 6:55 pm
I agree with you on the antisemitism and on the “not all citizens of a country agree with their government, and should not be penalized because of that”.
I am curious about your opinion on the situation on the West Bank. You seldom mention about it, but it’s often in the news I read, for example the last one said:
> In a joint statement released by the German government on Friday morning, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, and Norway initially declared that the expansion of settlements in the West Bank must be stopped. They stated that the project pushes a peaceful solution further away and is also damaging Israel’s international reputation.
In fact the last statement seems to be the intended design by current government, so that a 2-state solution is never achieved and that they can blame the international community for “hating” Israel even when (unlike in this case of the IOI) they have actual reasons/standing to criticize it (for the breach of international laws which make these additional settlements illegal)
Comment #27 August 21st, 2026 at 7:39 pm
You’re Welcome! #25: You fucking moron. You shithead.
Yes, the US let in a couple million Jews, including my great-grandparents, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Motivated by antisemitic eugenicist theories, it then closed its doors to further Jewish immigration, and sat by and accepted basically no further refugees even as two-thirds of Europe’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust … only a couple decades after Jews had given the world Einstein and Von Neumann and all the rest, a tragedy from which math and science and Europe and human civilization still haven’t recovered. The US went so far as to turn around a Jewish refugee ship in New York harbor so that its passengers could die in Hitler’s gas chambers, despite knowing their probable fate. Incredibly, even after the Holocaust, the US still refused to let the survivors in. Many of them, including my wife’s grandparents who survived Auschwitz and the Nazi labor camps while their families were murdered, literally had no place on the planet to go other than to the new State of Israel.
But you already basically knew all that, didn’t you? You just want my family dead.
Comment #28 August 21st, 2026 at 7:55 pm
Anon #21, #22: If the Israeli flag now gives you “butterflies in the stomach” whenever you see it, to me that just shows what a thorough PR job the world’s antisemitic propagandists have done. Next time you see it, try thinking of my wife’s grandparents, who lived rather than died because of what that flag represented.
As for the American flag, I’d say that the more the Trump goons defile it (as secessionists, racists, antisemites, etc. defiled it in earlier generations), the more important it is for those of us who still support liberalism and the Enlightenment to reclaim what the flag has stood for since the days of Washington and Franklin.
Comment #29 August 21st, 2026 at 10:44 pm
Del #26
Can you explain in your own words why would the currently discussed expansion of settlements in the West Bank be detrimental to a two-state solution? Ideally after spending a couple of minutes examining the relevant maps.
Comment #30 August 22nd, 2026 at 1:06 am
Scott,
The Geopolitical game played at much higher levels are defining the world events today, Ukraine , Israel are mere pawns in this game of chess. The systematic dismantling of the western liberal world order is well underway
Late Senator Lindsey Graham –
The road to ending this war, the road to peace, passes through Beijing more than it does (through) Washington, Kyiv, or Moscow
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent –
Urged China to cooperate with the US, would impose the toughest sanctions in history on Iran
Comment #31 August 22nd, 2026 at 3:34 am
Scott, if you were a member of Kneset, would you vote for or against the recent death penalty law? If for, why? If against, why?
Comment #32 August 22nd, 2026 at 5:39 am
MK #31: I don’t know, I’d have to learn more about it. As I understand it, an argument against is that Israel has a long history of restricting the death penalty to literal Adolf Eichmann himself — and changing it might be part of a package of the right-wingers trying to change the country’s whole liberal-democratic character (as with the nation-state law, etc), so that strategically, liberal Israelis should just oppose the whole package rather than considering its items individually.
But there’s also an argument for: namely, when terrorists who gleefully mass-murder Jews are taken alive and imprisoned, there’s then a massive incentive to kidnap Israelis in order to get those terrorists released in hostage exchanges, exploiting the Israeli public’s well-known weakness for getting its people back alive no matter the cost, which is what’s normally ended up happening — Sinwar, the mastermind of October 7, was famously one of the thousand released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. If Sinwar had been put to death and was no longer available to be exchanged, how many tens of thousands of people on both sides would right now be alive rather than dead?
It’s also weird to do regular targeted killings of terrorists (as, of course, the US and other countries do as well), but then be squeamish about the death penalty in cases where the terrorists happen to be captured alive. In general, it seems to me better to try terrorists than not to try them, especially when trials would let all the horrifying details — the raping women before killing them, shooting the children hiding in a safe room through the wall until their crying stops, bragging to one another about how many Jews they killed, using the victims’ phones to call their families so their families can watch them die, etc etc — could be broadcast to the world, just like in the Eichmann trial, and all the world’s intifada fans could have another opportunity to come face to face with exactly what it is that they support.
Comment #33 August 22nd, 2026 at 6:17 am
Scott #32: Thanks. My (one of many) issues with that law is that, for some reason, I have little faith that the label “terrorist” will not be applied indiscriminately, as a tool of terror and intimidation. I also have very little faith in due trial. Just look what happened in the course of US “war on terror”; if anything, the situation in Israel is going to be much worse. Meanwhile, there are also Jewish terrorists, e.g. in the West Bank, but they will be exempt from this law. I find it really hard not to see this as a colonialist-type arrangement.
(also, for the record, I’m not an “intifada fan” – just seeing some potentially nasty parallels here; I wish the liberal element would prevail over Ben-Gvir type extremist psychos)
Comment #34 August 22nd, 2026 at 7:35 am
Great article, Scott. We all know a participant wearing the Palestinian flag wouldn’t be banned. And #25: Israel vaccinates and feeds the Palestinians, yet Americans don’t do sh!t for the Native Americans. Funny how people always manage to call out others for not doing enough, and yet they won’t do the bare minimum for the people in their own backyard.
Comment #35 August 22nd, 2026 at 7:54 am
MK: the violent settlers certainly don’t help. But, like any other group of people, some are violent and others are peaceful; you can’t say they’re all terrorists. Likewise, not all Palestinians are members of Hamas.
Side note: isn’t it strange how we don’t have to agree with Trump or the Iran war to believe America still has a right to exist?
Comment #36 August 22nd, 2026 at 8:00 am
Good for Mr. Budnik. And I’m glad he refused to return the medal to these lowlifes; he earned it.
An interesting aspect of this issue: when I Google news on “Yotam Budnik” to find out more, there are many Israeli and Jewish media organizations reporting on it, but no major mainstream media outlets so far as I can tell except for … FOX news. Maybe ABC, CNN, NYT etc. will report on it soon, although it’s been over three days…
Comment #37 August 22nd, 2026 at 11:06 am
[Comment removed at commenter’s request, keeping this here to preserve the comment numbering.]
Comment #38 August 22nd, 2026 at 12:20 pm
Scott #32: I’ve been a long time reader of your blog and usually really appreciate your takes, although I quite disgree with your views on isreal. Now, for the first time, I really feel like I need to comment. How is the rationalization of the death penalty in your comment in any way compatible with a world view resting upon enlightenment values? Why not defend torture with reference to potential lives saved? Why not the sacrifice of old or disabled people (we might want to spend the money elsewhere, after all)? I don’t think one needs to know much history to realize where such lines of reasoning lead. It’s not a world I want to live in, and very much the world terrorism wants us to end up in.
Comment #39 August 22nd, 2026 at 12:39 pm
Vladimir #29
First, it’s not matter of map, but of building trust among the two populations.
Second, I know only what I see in the (European mainstream, mind you) news: settlers in the West Bank (as also MK#33 hinted), do whatever they please to Palestinians people and homes, harassing people, breaking their properties, setting things on fires, capturing land and instigating hate. Often under the watch of Israel’s police/military in violation of the law. I’m curious about what Scott thinks about this. It’s all fake or distorted news as for Gaza? I understand his attitude of “all we tried in the past failed”, but past people are all dead, fortunately (Arafat) or unfortunately (Rabin), so we would still need to be a “best effort” with today’s people.
Netanyau and his cabinet making outrageous claims about West Bank and 2-state solutions anyway (that can’t be false as well), and perhaps this is the root of the problem causing the above.
Comment #40 August 22nd, 2026 at 1:23 pm
Its definitely not more bad ass – or even equally bad ass – to simply drape a flag of your home country around your shoulders as it is to win gold at IOI.
Surely you can be a bit more objective.
How many people have won gold at IOI at 17 vs. how many have draped the Israeli flag around their shoulders? Even if banned… clearly its more impressive and more bad ass to win gold. Sorry not sorry.
Comment #41 August 22nd, 2026 at 2:46 pm
George Boole #40: The badass part, as I would’ve thought obvious, was that Yotam literally forfeited his IOI gold medal because he realized that a bigger question was at stake, of whether or not Jews get to be equal participants in the world. I’ll let anyone who did something similar at age 17, or can plausibly show that they would have, stand in judgment over the impressiveness of that act.
Comment #42 August 22nd, 2026 at 3:48 pm
Del #39
“but of building trust among the two populations.”
You apparently refuse to recognize the fundamental obstacle with your proposal (as did Trump). At least reference an appropriate historical context for the conflict as set out in the Hamas’ rallying cry, and chanted at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the EU-Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud. Jaish Muhammad soufa ya’oud.
Comment #43 August 22nd, 2026 at 6:22 pm
“The badass part, as I would’ve thought obvious, was that Yotam literally forfeited his IOI gold medal because he realized that a bigger question was at stake, of whether or not Jews get to be equal participants in the world”.
This is just one aspect of a terribly complex narrative, as implicated by your own “going places” remark.
Comment #44 August 22nd, 2026 at 6:40 pm
That the Jews have suffered beyond their due is universally acknowledged by all people of “good will” methinks. Brandishing this banner demonstratively is hardly well-advised, in my judgement.
Comment #45 August 22nd, 2026 at 6:59 pm
AG #44: That’s exactly why I don’t do it until people put me on the spot!
“Hey, explain it again, why does Israel need to exist? Why can’t we just turn over half the world’s Jews to the mercies of neighbors who see slaughtering the Jews as their profound cosmic obligation and highest joy of existence, as did the Nazis from whom they inherited much of their ideology?”
Then, and only then, I have no choice but to remind people about realities of history that they may have forgotten.
Comment #46 August 22nd, 2026 at 7:13 pm
What you do is commendable: the anthropocratic civilization of the Enlightenment (were it to survive) would doubtless count you among its heroes. Nevertheless, I wish you would take a somewhat less assertive (and somewhat more reflective) posture when it comes to the Israel+.
Comment #47 August 22nd, 2026 at 7:51 pm
AG #46: Since October 7th, alas, every attempt to have a “reflective” conversation about Israel, in an open forum like this one, has quickly been hijacked by ideologues who barely even try to hide the fact that they would cheer the deaths of my family members. I can no more have a civil discussion with such people, than you could with people who’d cheer the deaths of your loved ones. All I can do is make it clear to them that I’m not one of the useful idiot Jews, that I’ve learned enough history to see them for exactly what they are.
Comment #48 August 23rd, 2026 at 12:48 am
AG #46
I am not Jewish but am dhim just as are the Jewish people. I have respect for this young man’s statement and feel kinship with him. The contrary is true when I read your writing here and understand the symmetries that are implicit in your statements. The symmetries that you invoke do not exist.
Comment #49 August 23rd, 2026 at 8:58 am
Silvan #38: The morality of the death penalty seems to me like a perfect example of something that a liberal Enlightenment society can debate: does it really deter crime? Is it categorically wrong? Are some crimes so heinous that nothing else suffices?
For my part, I have not the slightest doubt that there are some crimes that really do deserve death — much worse than death, actually — but also major reservations about how the death penalty is applied in practice in the US. (And of course, the “prisoner exchange” considerations don’t apply to the US the way they do to Israel.)
As it happens, just the other day I encountered the following striking passage from Thomas Sowell floating around the Internet:
Just the sight of a forlorn man on death row can be touching. The media cannot show that same man when he was exulting in the savagery of the crime that brought him there, cannot show his sadistic joy when he was raping and torturing a little girl who was tearfully pleading for her life. If they could show that on television, many of those people who gather outside prison to protest his execution might instead be inside volunteering to pull the switch.
Comment #50 August 23rd, 2026 at 10:53 am
Scott #49: Thank you very much for the reply. The morality of the death penalty in terms of retribution (which is where the Sowell quote points to) was not really the issue I was addressing in my comment. It is the rationalization of the death penalty, i.e., the cold perception of a human being as a commodity whose life can be valued against other potential human lives (or whatever else) and, should the math not work out in their favour, killed. It is this view that eventually leads to fascism, T4 and genocide in my opinion.
As to the death penalty as a form of retribution: Retribution is is course one of the fundamental purposes of punishment, for better or worse, and if a society decides that its ultimate form of retribution is murder, then so be it. This society should then be honest however and concede that it kills to still its thirst for vengeance.
Comment #51 August 23rd, 2026 at 11:20 am
Silvan #50: Thank you for the dialogue!
Personally, I’m not nearly as allergic as many people are to saying that, yes, a central purpose of having a justice system is to mete out retribution and vengeance appropriately.
That’s because, if you probe people on why “retribution and vengeance” are necessary, they really will cash it out in utilitarian terms—i.e., that a precondition to having a civilized society at all is for everyone to understand that horrific violence by some members of the society against others won’t be tolerated, coddled, or excused in any way whatsoever.
Ironically, even leftists will endorse the concept of “retribution and vengeance,” so long as you limit your attention to the crimes that are most ideologically salient to them: for example, Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults, or Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian farmers, or a smirking cishet white teenager beating up a black trans teenager just because he can.
Comment #52 August 23rd, 2026 at 12:14 pm
Regarding the death penalty, one should also consider the alternatives. If we expect the criminal to spend the life in prison, then many will say that is fine or some even see that as worse. However, practically with terrorists in Israel often the alternative is spending some years in prison and then being released in a deal. So if you have to choose between these alternatives that is a different question.
Comment #53 August 23rd, 2026 at 2:11 pm
Yiftach #52: Right, that’s the point I was making before.
More generally, though, we could say: it can be hard for victims and their families to trust that “lifetime imprisonment” actually means lifetime imprisonment, if they’ve seen many supposed life sentences commuted in the past and know that their government is amenable to pressure. In which case, it’s understandable why they’d agitate for the death penalty.
Comment #54 August 24th, 2026 at 9:01 am
Scott #10, It’s been almost 3 years now since October 7, 2023. Sure, at that time any sanctions for Israel’s supposed “aggression” were unjust and hypocritical. Israel was the defending side, facing the largest aggression since the Yom Kippur war. But now is not 2023. For all China’s or Saudi Arabia’s or Iran’s human rights abuses, they haven’t spent the last three years indiscriminately bombing civilians, killing tens of thousands of them (Iran has recently killed at least thousands protesters though, and IMHO it should be sanctioned accordingly). Do you sincerely believe IDF, the most capable armed forces in the Middle East by such a giant margin it is laughable to even make comparisons, fully backed by Trump’s administration, needed 3 years to fail at destroying the rule of Hamas in the Gaza strip by completely occupying it? Given the fact that Hamas is a militia without heavy weaponry that is much smaller than IDF, has worse training, worse intelligence, worse weapons, and that is completely surrounded on a tiny piece of land under complete IDF’s fire control? There used to be an excuse of IDF taking extreme measures to reduce collateral damage, it even used to be true. Now the entire Gaza lies in ruins, tens of thousands of civilians are killed, indiscriminate bombing of civilians has been witnessed by the whole world and documented by everyone from Palestinians to Israeli themselves, and Hamas is still in power. I could buy it for several weeks, at most for several months. Not for f****g years. How come otherwise sane and intelligent people like yourself are still buying it now? I was always at the side of Israel in discussions regarding this conflict that took place in 2023 and even in 2024, but enough is enough, and honestly, I don’t know a single non-Jewish person who would still defend Israel in this conflict at this point of time. October 7 was a terrible crime. It doesn’t negate the terrible crime that Israel has committed in response.
Comment #55 August 24th, 2026 at 9:44 am
Fulmenius #54: Israel’s strategy in Gaza has surely left a lot to be desired, but there are special factors that made this unbelievably hard. Gaza has one of the most thoroughly radicalized populations in human history, probably more radicalized than the German or Japanese populations during WWII. And unlike in WWII, one can’t simply decimate the aggressor country, take over, and install an occupation force—firstly because standards have changed, but secondly because Israel is held to standards that no other country would ever be held to (this is one of the main things people don’t understand, that Israel has been restrained, trying to separate out civilians and get food, electricity, etc. into a territory hellbent on its total annihilation). Hamas also had 250 hostages as a bargaining chip, and the most extensive tunnel network in human history with which it could extract steep costs in dead Israeli soldiers. And Israeli society values its people’s lives to the extreme extent that every last individual dead hostage and dead soldier becomes a giant national story—which, whatever its virtues, is a massive strategic weakness.
Having said that, just today I read the news that child malnutrition in Gaza is now well below the prevailing rates in the Middle East. Particularly if moderate Arab countries play a real role in the reconstruction, maybe there’s reason for cautious optimism.
Anyway, I’m far from a military or geopolitical expert and I know that. It’s darkly “fortunate” for me that ~95% of the online vitriol that I’ve felt compelled to respond to never even reaches the point where military expertise would become relevant, because unlike you, it stood eager to condemn Israel already on October 7, 2023 (and long before then), just for the intolerable crime of existing.
PS. If you’re looking for examples of highly informed non-Jews who enthusiastically defend Israel: Douglas Murray, John Spencer, Brianna Wu?
Comment #56 August 24th, 2026 at 9:49 am
Regarding the death penalty, sure, you have to deal with the possibility that lifetime sentences sometimes get commuted and criminals are released, which sucks for the victims’ families, and there’s the risk of released criminals committing new crimes…
but you also have to weigh that against the fact that many people who were put to death turned out to be innocent, think of what their family have to go through as well. Lifetime imprisonment (no matter how perfect or imperfect) is at least reversible, unlike an execution.
So it’s about the cost for society of false negatives and false positives, and how it aligns with our values.
For example, deaths from homicides are at 18,000 a year in the US.
But we tacitly agree that sacrificing 40,000 people a year on the roads is acceptable considering all the benefits we get from cars.
And for all the benefits of firearms, the sacrifice is 45,000 deaths a year (homicides, suicides, accidents).
Comment #57 August 24th, 2026 at 10:05 am
Yiftach #52
My belief is that anyone that purposefully commits heinous crimes against women and/or children have forfeited all consideration of their humanity. Under my definition to be considered a human requires more than just being a bipedal animal that speaks.
In the US prisoners typically fight their execution so apparently consider prison preferable to the alternative.
Fulmenius #54
I assure you there are many non-Jewish people that fully support Israeli actions at this point in time.
Comment #58 August 24th, 2026 at 10:50 am
@MK #31,
Current situation: a jihadis either (1) commits mass murder because he knows that he’ll eventually be traded for a hostage by a next jihadist, or (2) commits suicidal mass murder to go to heaven.
Knesset’s decision to institute death penalty for terrorists intends to close the 1st door, the one to fame and eventual fortune. Alas, it does nothing about the 2nd door, the one to heaven. In fact, it merely converts the 1st door into the 2nd one.
What Israel is badly missing is the ability to convince people that committing a murder is a bad thing. Alas, Israel is very bad in convincing anybody of anything, even the most self-evident things.
Comment #59 August 24th, 2026 at 11:43 am
Scott #55
Thank you for a calm and thoughtful answer. However, I cannot agree with most of your argumentation. First of all, what is your source for Gaza having a more radicalized population than Germany or Japan in WWII? As far as I can remember, just before the October 7 massacre the support level for Hamas inside the Gaza strip was around 30%, and that’s in a totalitarian state where the support level of the regime is always overstated in polls. Even now the PCPSR numbers (which are, quite possibly, inflated) give the support level of around 1/3 for Hamas inside the Gaza strip. During WWII, German and Japanese cities were annihilated by the Allied air raids, their citizens had no Internet, and could at most listen to the “enemy voices” on the radio, the punishment for which could be quite severe. Japanese citizens were preparing to attack American soldiers on the islands of the Japanese archipelago with literal bamboo sticks. Where is the evidence of anything remotely resembling this happening in Gaza? Even if it did happen, it wouldn’t significantly change the outcome or the timeline of IDF militarily overcoming Hamas, if that was their real goal. During colonial wars, Europeans who were often only slightly better armed by today’s standards usually managed to destroy vastly numerically superior armies of native peoples who lacked organization and tactics. During the Iraq War of 2003, the Coalition forces annihilated the Iraqi who fought on their own land and who had ten years of previous war experience from the Iran-Iraq war. During the Yom Kippur war, the IDF managed to destroy numerically, and even, at certain aspects, technologically superior armies of the Arabic states, trained and coordinated by Soviet generals. The technological and organizational disparity between IDF and Hamas (let alone between IDF and the ostensibly nonexistent Molotov-armed Gazan militia) is immeasurably greater than that between the Europeans and the Qing China during the Opium wars. No amount of fanaticism from the Palestinian part could stop or even slow down the IDF if they really tried to occupy the sector (which would be the only practical way to destroy Hamas, and destroying Hamas once and for all was the official goal of this whole campaign). Palestinians trying to stop IDF would fare much worse than Aztecs trying to stop the Conquistadors. And we don’t see any such attempts, no banzai attacks of hoards of fanatics, only the regular Hamas light infantry and suicide bombers. So no, by no means the official military goal of IDF was “unbelievably” hard, or even just hard, especially compared to what this army had to perform just a few decades earlier. As I said, the usual excuse of evading collateral damage doesn’t work in this case either, because we now have around 100% of capital buildings destroyed and at least 60 000 civilians killed without the major military goals reached. For comparison, the 2003 invasion of Iraq killed between 3000 and 8000 civilians, with the rest of the death toll resulting from the ensuing civil war.
Now, as opposed to this, the officially communicated political goal of destroying Hamas once and for all AND saving the hostages AND trying to convince the world it was all strictly necessary application of force was impossible, and everyone knew it was impossible from the very beginning, and I’m sure both IDF generals and Bibi knew it better than anyone else. They declared they would pursue these mutually exclusive goals anyway, and they continued to do so over the course of two years. And even when all hostages who were still alive were freed in a deal that had been on the table for months, a deal that didn’t result in a destruction of Hamas, a deal the terms of which were subsequently violated by Hamas if Israel is to be believed, even after that Hamas was not destroyed, and civilians in the Gaza strip continued to die from bombs. The only reasonable explanation for all these actions of Israel in my eyes is that destroying Hamas and establishing a new Palestinian government in the Gaza strip was never the actual goal of Bibi and his co-conspirators, the goal was to make the suffering of the civilian population of Gaza so insufferable that some of the Arabic states would be “forced” to accept them as refugees, after which the Gaza strip could be annexed. And if that plan were to fail (as it did), actually destroying Hamas was never a preferable outcome for Bibi either, even though disregarded the deaths of Palestinian civilians completely, because then he would lose the most convenient external enemy with which an eternal war can be waged.
Finally, I don’t believe Israel being held to a higher standard than its opponents actually changes anything here. First of all, Israel is pretty insistent on being not Hamas. That implies a certain standard (the standard of not being bloody terrorists, that is). Of course, there are leftist teens wearing T-shirts with Che who would blame Israel no matter what, and whitewash Hamas no matter what, and there are leftist professors discriminating Jewish teens, and I’m sure they can be insufferable to the Jewish population of American university campuses. But they hardly influence Israeli military decisions. Again, right now, Israel is headed full throttle to the status of a pariah state without having destroyed Hamas, and, despite some states being always happy to blame Israel no matter what, for most of the civilized world their current opposition to Israel is the result of Israel bombing civilians for three years in a row without any apparent end goal apart from killing more civilians.
Comment #60 August 24th, 2026 at 4:14 pm
Fulmenius #59: I think a comparison with the Second Russian-Chechen War (1999-2009) might be pertinent (from a military standpoint).
Comment #61 August 24th, 2026 at 4:47 pm
Ridiculous(on the part of the IOI)! What patsies!
Comment #62 August 24th, 2026 at 6:16 pm
Fulmenius #59
Immense difference between fighting uniformed troops in combat formations vs Hamas irregular forces. Vietnam and Afghanistan may be the closest US analogies and certainly not WW 2. After years of fighting in VN the US had not achieved a military victory and fired up the escape helicopters. Afghanistan is also similar in that the opposing forces were irregulars. After years of war the US threw up its hands and withdrew.
Israel would have depopulated Gaza quickly if a bombing strategy was adopted similar to RAF bombing of Germany or US bombing of Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan but they couldn’t look to the US experience for guidance to a quick victory. The US has never quickly vanquished irregular troops even with enormous advantages in weapons. I do not understand what prompts you to consider it should have been an easy task for the IDF.
I have no idea the source of your numbers for the 2003 Iraq invasion. They don’t match the Iraqi Body Count Project that has 12,000 deaths just in 2003 due to Coalition forces. Again when fighting uniformed troops US forces easily triumphed but once it transitioned to irregulars, as is usual, the US military stalled. The US surge in 2007 was focused on irregulars in Baghdad and then 2015-2017 still fighting irregulars in the North that included air strikes.
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
Comment #63 August 24th, 2026 at 6:45 pm
Also the US as the occupying force in Iraq had responsibility to provide security for the population. It was unable to do so as irregulars fought amongst themselves.
Comment #64 August 24th, 2026 at 9:37 pm
AG #60
Well, not really for multiple reasons. First of all, during the Second Chechen war the Federal forces were quite successful at taking cities like Grozny (while during the first war they had famously suffered terribly doing so). But most importantly, the comparison doesn’t stand because of Chechnya being a large mountainous region that is impossible to control in its entirety, and impossible to surround, as IDF does with the Gaza strip, the same reason why comparisons with Vietnam and Afghanistan by OhMyGoodness don’t stand, and my own comparison with the Iraq invasion and the Opium wars only stands as a steelmanning. The entire Gaza has more a less the same area as the single city of Grozny, and even during the first Chechen war, the terribly managed and poorly trained Russian army took that city in a matter of weeks, despite suffering an initial defeat.
Comment #65 August 24th, 2026 at 10:24 pm
OhMyGoodness #62, #63
When it comes to actual fighting, irregular forces have little chances against a regular army, armies are regular for a reason. Fighting a guerilla and trying to control a city are very different tasks, and no militia can successfully perform the latter facing a modern army. As I answered to AG, the comparisons with Afghanistan and Vietnam don’t stand, both because of the different goals of the belligerents, and because the Gaza strip is vastly smaller. Vietnam is around 300 000 km^2 of mostly jungles and mountains. It has a lengthy ground border with Laos, which is also mostly jungles and mountains. Through that border, and through the border with China North Vietnam received constant military aid from China and the Soviet Union. It also had an army that grew to be around 1 000 000 strong. The same is true for Afghanistan – 650 000 km^2 of mostly mountains, with a lengthy ground border with Pakistan (and even so, the Americans still managed to successfully occupy it without killing 60 000 civilians). The Gaza strip is less than 400 km^2, three orders of magnitude smaller than Vietnam of Afghanistan, of mostly urban area that is otherwise flat as a table and devoid of foliage. It’s border is under complete Israeli control, even the part that faces Egypt. The number of Hamas fighters is low tens of thousands, if even that. The only way they can receive light weapons and ammo from the outside (nothing like MiGs, tanks and modern SAMs that the Vietnamese had in abundance) is through the hand-dug underground tunnels passing under the short border with Egypt, which is again, under complete IDF control.
Comment #66 August 25th, 2026 at 2:54 am
Fulmenius is an interesting case:
July 2024 (https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8074#comment-1981087, almost 9 months after Oct 7): IDF >> Hamas, therefore Hamas’s continued survival is evidence that Israel is constraining itself to protect civilians.
August 2026: IDF >> Hamas, therefore Hamas’s continued survival is evidence that civilian-protection constraints cannot explain Israel’s conduct.
One must wonder what happened to him in the interim.
Comment #67 August 25th, 2026 at 4:08 am
Fulmenius #65
I don’t understand your statements about irregulars that are currently defined as-“ militias, guerrilla fighters, insurgents, private armies, and mercenaries”. The current usage of “irregular” doesn’t even include some sort of un-uniformed troops in classic military style combat formations. The US problems have been with irregular troops albeit guerilla fighters in the jungle or militias in Fallujah and Baghdad.
Here is the discussion from Wiki about regular vs irregular forces=
“ The Third Geneva Convention of 1949 uses “regular armed forces” as a critical distinction. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a non-governmental organization primarily responsible for and most closely associated with the drafting and successful completion of the Third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (“GPW”). The ICRC provided commentary saying that “regular armed forces” satisfy four Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) (Hague IV) conditions.[2] In other words, “regular forces” must satisfy the following criteria:
being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates to a party of conflict
having a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance
carrying arms openly
conducting operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war
By extension, combat forces that do not satisfy these criteria are termed “irregular forces””
The dense population of Gaza makes it susceptible to wholly indiscriminate WW 2 style bombing if the Israelis chose to use that tactic. They didn’t.
The Iranians have developed an approach (used against their own people)-using moderately indiscriminate methods in urban centers. They use Jeep mounted 50 cal machine guns. The Israeli’s could have used this type of moderately indiscriminate suppression also. They didn’t.
They chose the very difficult high discrimination tactic of sending ground forces in to a densely populated urban environment and trying to identify Hamas from non Hamas. If you believe that to be easy you should walk point on some real patrols in Gaza and demonstrate to the Isreli’s just how easy it is.
Comment #68 August 25th, 2026 at 4:26 am
As best I can tell you used an archaic definition of “irregular”.
Comment #69 August 25th, 2026 at 5:46 am
Jeez, after all the military operations and civil efforts in Iraq the Islamist militias are still active and have provided support to Iranian suppression of their own citizens in densely populated areas by manning jeep mounted 50 cal weapons and without regard for innocence.
The Russian experience in Chechnya was considerably different than you have portrayed and the rise of the Kadyrov family at the start of the second war pertinent. Even so the Breslau school hostage taking was total barbarism late in 2004 and then various bombings inside the Russian Federation later. Ramzan Kadyrov has lessened the activity of Chechen Islamists and could provide a model for Gaza so long as you are willing to accept the tactics employed.
Comment #70 August 25th, 2026 at 6:51 am
Just one more comment-
First it was the Beslan school hostage taking and not Breslau as spell checker imagined.
Second-I have no idea what is in Netanyahu’s mind but the relocation of the Gazans may in fact be an appropriate solution to the problem of Hamas.
If I meet someone on the street in Gaza it is usually the case that I can’t know if Hamas or not-Hamas. Further, the likely case is that Hamas efforts will continue so long as the young are educated by the current system that is effectively education for recruitment. In this case likely that Israeli citizens will continue to suffer attacks inside Israel.
In this case what course of action best preserves expected human-years of expected life not only for Israeli’s but innocent Gazans? A relatively humane (with respect to expected total human-years of life) would be relocation of the Gazans to some other country.
The countries actually willing to take them are few because secular governments know they are relatively radicalized as Dr Aaronson has stated. If Hamas is unpopular in Gaza that doesn’t mandate that the population in majority now, and certainly in the future, are willing to accept Israel’s right to exist nor necessarily the right of any secular governments right to exist. Theocratic Iran might be a good location but they serve the purposes of Iran where they are located in Gaza.
I don’t accept that relocation of the Gazans is necessarily unacceptable on humanitarian grounds and in fact may minimize expected future loss of life.
When I lived in Houston waves of Middle East immigrants from different countries took up residence in the city. During a wave of Palestinian immigration I would speak with them in public settings trying to better understand their beliefs. My conclusion was that underneath it all they maintained beliefs in Islamist teachings. Allah would at some point smite the dhimmi and Muslim’s would rule the Earth. Hearsay evidence of a sort but that was my personal experiential conclusion. This is consistent with relatively insular immigrant Muslim populations in the West proclaiming adherence to Sharia Law.
Comment #71 August 25th, 2026 at 7:00 am
I apologize for the typos. It was somewhat better when the edit period was available here but even still typos got through as I rushed to type my flood of thoughts. After I type Submit they jump off the page mocking me.
Comment #72 August 25th, 2026 at 1:42 pm
What about(ism?) Azerbaijan waging war with Armenia. No probs! What about(ism?) countries funding the Sudanese genocide of blacks? As per the International Committee of the Red Cross and I quote “About 130 armed conflicts are raging today, twice as many as 15 years ago –June 29”. What a jolly situation that is! But let’s take the gold from the kid who earned it, instead of ACTUALLY solving the problems in the first place. And if Israel is banned from displaying its flag for whatever reason, what about the countries that sell it weapons. I guess they are free to proudly wear theirs. Let’s punish the kid, maybe that will bring world peace. Morons.
Comment #73 August 25th, 2026 at 3:50 pm
Fulmenius #59
“ Palestinians trying to stop IDF would fare much worse than Aztecs trying to stop the Conquistadors. “
This is an interesting statement but the Conquistadors relied on guile rather than strength of arms. A good example is the Battle of Cajamarca. If you want to read a good story about how 180 Spaniards effectively defeated 80,000 seasoned troops of Incan king Atahualpa (who was the winning answer in the high school quiz bowl segment in the movie Day After Tomorrow) then this fills the bill. Many of Pizzaro’s troops were so frightened at the outset they are reported as urinating into their battle gear from abject fear.
Actually Cortez conquered the Aztecs in a similar manner by taking Emporer Moctezuma II hostage. Cortez was a master at manipulating local politics to his advantage. It was a coalition army that allowed him to take the Emperor hostage. I think he had less than 1000 Spanish troops with him when he ordered their ships to be destroyed.
It seems to me that the Conquistadors were victorious due more to deception and manipulation than strength of arms. I am sure their muskets were useful for party tricks to amaze local populations and to provide a distraction at crucial times.
Comment #74 August 26th, 2026 at 4:13 am
Alex #72
I believe the organization that oversees the IMO is based in The Netherlands so understandable and agree moronic. So many of these things have a weak tether to reality and make sense only in the context of ideological excess.
The EU’s constant suits against US e-companies are having a negative effect on global internet access as they try to reform the world to be consistent with their ideation. It becomes risky for smaller companies to allow access to international users not knowing what the legal consequences might be in the EU. The proposal from UK law enforcement to extradite individual US citizens to stand trial for their posts to the Internet would be beyond tolerable.
I read that a few months ago a that UK citizen posted video of his visit to a legal gun range in Florida was detained for the video upon return to the UK.
At least they didn’t criminally charge this student for excelling at math which they know to be a racist/sexist subject. Yes moronic.
Comment #75 August 27th, 2026 at 4:48 am
I can’t make any definite statement and so this is just idle speculation-
Usually (maybe) there are random groups at random times predicting the end of the current world and the return of the Mahdi/Jesus/Messiah/Muhammad. At this time, it seems to me, there is a convergence with impactful Muslim/Christian/Jewish groups (sects ?) taking actions to speed this with the expectation it will happen in the near future.
I could speculate further what conditions might prompt this convergence, other than it being a reasonably expected imminent objective event, but I have used up my allotment of idle speculation with my convergence hypothesis.
Comment #76 August 27th, 2026 at 11:27 am
Scott #3
“ ignoring the obvious disanalogy that Russia and Belarus invaded their neighbor in a horrifying aggressive war”
Pretty funny considering the CIA just went to Russia to beg them to stop their aid to Iran, with promises to cut even further any US support to Ukraine…
Comment #77 August 27th, 2026 at 3:24 pm
Hue Xizi #76: A visit by the CIA director to Kremlin is a singular event indeed. The last time it took place was to warn of the consequences of the imminent invasion of Ukraine — in plain, CIA language. The true reasons for the current visit will become apparent in due course; your speculation is just one among many (much more compelling alternatives — to the best of judgement).
Comment #78 August 28th, 2026 at 4:13 am
AG #77
What do you believe best (better) fits the facts? I am just interested in your reasoning and not asking in order to provoke a quarrel of any kind.
My guess is it has something to do with the latest mother of all embargoes against Iran since this seems to occupy administration focus at this time. The other matter of global importance is some kind of escalation due to potential attacks on military component manufacturers supplying Ukraine that are located in a NATO country.
Comment #79 August 28th, 2026 at 4:24 am
I should add to the global importance list the use of air burst tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine and a ground penetrating nuclear weapon against Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facilities by the US in Iran.
Comment #80 August 28th, 2026 at 6:41 am
AG #44, just curious. Do you speak in such condescending terms to other persecuted minorities, or just Jews?
Comment #81 August 28th, 2026 at 3:46 pm
Please accept my sincere apologies if you found my poorly phrased (and perhaps altogehter ill-advised) comment condescending.
For what it is worth, I am not sure my views on the conflict in Gaza are terribly different from that of Scott:
https://mathsandsoundingoff.wordpress.com/2025/06/23/to-what-extent-is-the-war-in-gaza-justified/comment-page-1/#comment-39
Comment #82 August 29th, 2026 at 2:52 am
AG #81
Does this mean you are not willing to share the scenario that better fits the facts?
Just based on the focus of this administration at this time I assume the embargo on Iran was included in the topics discussed. A sufficiently important message to justify this trip would be that if this latest embargo is ineffective then the US will use a tactical ground penetrating nuclear device as a last resort against the Pickaxe facilities in Iran. A weakness of this guess is that no indication the same message has been sent by similar means to the Chinese.
If the premise is accepted that this was a message for only Russia, and not China, then the primary reason for the trip is more likely about Ukraine and/or EU security The message carried then likely to eliminate doubt about what the US response will be in the case of some particular Russian action.
I doubt it was primarily about Cuba or any other potential, or actual, conflict area. I don’t believe anything other than Iran and Ukraine rise to a sufficient level of importance to justify the trip.
I would be pleased if you point out flaws in my comments.
Comment #83 August 29th, 2026 at 2:37 pm
Also then-
Was his landing in Riga symbolic of something-almost certainly.
Comment #84 August 30th, 2026 at 2:55 am
There was most likely the intended immediate and specific symbolism but also the unintended broader symbolism. The broader symbolism is that no one takes the EU seriously except the EU and US progressives. They can’t be relied upon for their own protection and have descended to the level of leftist crackpot whiners for albeit conducting the International Math Olympiad or use of the global internet or even seeing to their own borders.
Comment #85 August 30th, 2026 at 9:56 pm
When I was at the IMO many years ago, at the closing ceremony the Israeli team sat behind us. The program for the ceremony was translated into several languages. One of the Israeli kids flipped through the book and joked to the others: “not in Hebrew? I’m standing up and leaving.” I knew enough Hebrew to understand what he was saying (ein be Ivrit? ani omed ve yotzeh) and smiled.
Just wanted to record that bit of comedy that might otherwise disappear, like tears in the rain. Some of those guys are well known mathematicians/CS’ers now.
Comment #86 September 3rd, 2026 at 1:20 am
OhMyGoodness: Thank you for urging me to upgrade the link I posted:
https://mathsandsoundingoff.wordpress.com/2025/06/23/to-what-extent-is-the-war-in-gaza-justified/comment-page-1/#comment-36