Palestine statehood=cruel fiction, Democrats need a new agenda ASAP and other commentary

Foreign desk: Palestine Statehood = Cruel Fiction

The history of Palestinian terrorism does not by itself make “subsequent recognition of statehood impossible,” observes Philip Cunliffe at Compact, but the real question is “what is it that is being recognized?”

We can’t ignore the “brute fact that there is no independent Palestine to recognize.” Gaza “has been reduced to ruins” while the “West Bank is honeycombed with Israeli settlements.”

Hamas, the putative power in Gaza, is “cowering in tunnels.” Offering “the mirage of statehood” under these conditions is “worse than a mistake; it is to trade in illusions.”

While the Palestinian diplomatic class will “enjoy the hospitality at international conferences,” statehood “will do nothing for ordinary Palestinians.”

Violence that erects fictional states “is not only morally reprehensible but also politically futile.”

Pollsters: Democrats Need New Agenda ASAP

Wall Journal Journal polling shows “Trump’s approval rating is 6 points underwater,” and Kaiser Family Foundation surveys find “nearly two-thirds (63 percent) hold an unfavorable view” of the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Yet congressional Democrats loudly assailed “large-scale cuts to social and healthcare programs without offering a coherent agenda or alternative,” lament Douglas Schoen & Carly Cooperman at The Hill.

“To have any chance of taking at least one chamber of Congress, Democrats need a new agenda” that addresses “immigration, the economy, education, and energy policy.”

Remember: “The centrist, forward-looking agenda put forward by former President Bill Clinton pulled the party out of the political wilderness.”

A similar “middle-of-the-road agenda” can “save Democrats today.”

From the right: Zohran’s Coddled Lefty Base

Zohran Mamdani’s “dreams of turning America’s capitalist engine into a national beacon of entitlement” are selling because “New York is now a city with hundreds of thousands of little Zohran Mamdanis,” fumes Tablet’s Armin Rosen.

While “New York has gotten more right-wing” in recent years, “the city’s much more numerous liberals have polarized in the other direction.”

And much of Mamdani’s support comes from “young and often childless transplanted degree holders living off public or family subsidies,” who are either “insulated from the consequences of urban decline” or think leftism is the solution.

“Mamdani’s impending victory” is the result “of the slow death of New York’s pragmatic and productive middle class” and the rise of a new class of city dwellers who enable “an activist government” to experiment on society.

Space beat: Wonders of a Nuclear Moon Base

As NASA’s new interim head, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy just “directed the agency to put a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor on the moon by decade’s end,” cheers Ross Andersen at The Atlantic.

“This is not a lark. If humanity means to establish a permanent settlement on the moon, nuclear power will almost certainly be essential to its operation. And a lunar base may well be the most wondrous achievement in space exploration that people reading this will see during their lifetime.”

Just imagine: “an astronomer at a lunar base,” peering out “from a porthole, seeing the Earth shining in the sky,” while a crater-sized radio dish on the other side — “a giant ear” — listens for “messages from other Earths” and beyond.

Conservative: Academia’s Smug Lawlessness

“American universities act with impunity” in “breaking the law” to engage in “race-based hiring,” reports John Sailer at City Journal.

It’s an “open secret” that schools “engage in preferential treatment” in hiring, such as “prioritizing candidates” from “underrepresented groups.”

A recent memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi “singles out the use of ‘unlawful proxies’ ” in hiring, or “workarounds” such as “diversity statements” that “advantage applicants” who “discuss experiences intrinsically tied to protected characteristics.”

Universities have “long used such criteria as racial and ideological proxies in faculty hiring,” and thereby “have developed ready-made career paths for scholars who share a commitment to social justice.”

Bondi’s guidance, properly enforced, will create a “massive reckoning” for American universities that continue to violate a “longstanding principle” of anti-discrimination law.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board