Our Best Stuff on Israel, Springfield, and Another Assassination Attempt

Hello and happy Saturday. I’m a sucker for a good spy novel or film: I read a lot of Tom Clancy while procrastinating in college (I still find reasons to quote from the film version of Hunt From Red October), and I knew David Ignatius as a novelist before I realized he was a Washington Post columnist. James Bond, Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne … anything that leaves me on the edge of my seat. Readers, I cannot wait for the film version of what Jonah has dubbed “Paging Hezbollah.” 

The Lebanon-based, Iranian-backed terrorist organization has been firing missiles into northern Israel since October 8, 2023, a day after Hamas invaded the country. Charlotte reported in August that all-out war between the parties seemed increasingly imminent and that Hezbollah “poses a more formidable threat than ever before.” She also noted on Tuesday that Hezbollah has been firing rockets even deeper into Israel in recent weeks. 

Amid speculation that an all-out war was looming, Israel pulled off a remarkable series of attacks against its enemy to the north. On Tuesday at about 3:30 p.m. local time, thousands of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives detonated nearly simultaneously. The official death toll was 12, with thousands injured, but Israel was just getting started. On Wednesday, with pagers no longer an option, Hezbollah walkie-talkies exploded, killing at least 20 and wounding hundreds. 

So how did Israel do it? From The Morning Dispatch:

Israeli intelligence, anticipating a need, set up a shell company ostensibly based in Hungary to supply Hezbollah with all its low-tech needs, the New York Times reported. The company fulfilled legitimate orders from non-terrorists, but the batteries of the pagers it sent to Hezbollah—as early as 2022—were fitted with a special component: explosives. Reuters reported that the devices involved in the second round of explosions—mostly walkie-talkies intended to be used during a war with Israel—were purchased five months ago along with the bulk of the pagers.

But Israel wasn’t done yet. Hezbollah had turned to pagers after Israel had been able to target and take out senior leaders by tracking their cell phone locations. With those pagers and then walkie-talkies taken out, there was nothing to do but meet in person. On Friday, an Israeli airstrike took out Ibrahim Aqil and 16 other commanders in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force. Aqil had long been wanted by the U.S. for what our friends at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies called a “central role” in the 1983 Marine barracks and U.S. embassy bombings  in Lebanon that killed more than 300 Americans, and he was in charge of Hezbollah’s military operations.

Like I said, I can’t wait for the movie. But as Jonah pointed out in his Friday G-File, not everyone was so enthused by the Israelis’ stunning success. He takes issue with an NPR report that described Hezbollah as a “militant and political group” and said those killed were “people shopping and going about their daily lives,” as well with those on the left who claimed falsely that Israel also blew up civilian pagers. He writes:

When Israel pulls off a maneuver that is unprecedentedly precise and surgical in its minimization of collateral damage, they’re still the bad guys. According to the laws of war and common sense, Israel would be entirely justified to send commandos or bombs after every Hezbollah senior official it could identify. Instead, it blew up their pagers.

We will have more on this important story next week. In the meantime, thanks for reading and have a great weekend. 

The Exotic Cat-Eaters of Springfield, Ohio

The most exciting Slack message I’ve received in a while came the morning after the September 10 debate: “Kevin is going to Springfield.” Donald Trump—who apparently missed the fact check we published earlier that day—had repeated on the debate stage baseless claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. We sent Kevin to Springfield to see what is really going on there. He starts off by noting that poor people have been coming to Ohio in search of work since before it became a state—including J.D. Vance’s hillbilly ancestors who left Kentucky and settled in towns just like Springfield. Kevin quotes a local businessman who praises his Haitian employees and criticizes Vance for not realizing how important immigration is for maintaining a steady workforce. He talks to a Haitian community leader who said that his fellow immigrants would benefit from more English classes and cross-cultural education. What didn’t Kevin see? Anyone eating pets. And he has some choice words for the man who helped elevate the false claims, the man who represents the people of Springfield in the Senate: J.D. Vance. (He has a lot of choice words for Vance, actually.) He writes: “A different and better sort of man would understand that bearing false witness against 15,000 poor and vulnerable people in the pursuit of political power is the same as bearing false witness against anybody else.” 

How the Myth of the Coequal Branches Became the Norm

It’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day news cycle, especially in the heat of a presidential election year. Every once in a while, it’s good to slow down and do a deeper dive on issues or philosophies or trends. That’s why we’ve started The Monday Essay, a “a fresh perspective … about long-term, big-picture questions about politics, policy, and culture.” To kick things off, we asked Jay Cost to write about how we landed on the notion that the three branches of government are “coequal.” Cost writes that the framers intended for Congress to be the original branch, then traces the evolution of the idea that the branches are equal, starting with Andrew Jackson’s claim of coequality and James Buchanan’s effort to keep congressional Republicans from investigating corruption. Congress pushed back, which rendered the issue dormant until Richard Nixon came along. He also discusses how presidents have tried to claim more authority and how Congress has allowed that to happen. He writes: “Our Constitution establishes strict boundaries between the lawmaking and executive functions of government because the framers believed that this was an important way to safeguard liberty. But again, in fits and starts, those barriers have been broken down, so that the writing of the law and enforcement of the law have become indistinguishable.”

Hot-Blooded

What does it say about our times that Donald Trump faced a second assassination attempt last Sunday and we’re barely talking about it? Granted, the gunman was spotted by Trump’s Secret Service detail and fled when an agent shot at him, and was later detained. And plenty happened this week (see above!). But surely some of it has to do with the fact that the former president himself pretty much returned to business as usual. And while he blamed Kamala Harris for stoking the violence against him, his supporters complained that liberals and the largely liberal mainstream media ignored left-wing rhetoric—particularly that Trump is a threat to democracy—that could incite violence while emphasizing the dangers of inflammatory right-wing rhetoric. In Boiling Frogs, Nick wonders if maybe, just maybe, the conservative media is the problem here, in how it treats Trump as a “basically normal Republican politician.” He writes: “Trump’s defining political characteristic, the one that sets the tone for the institutional culture of his movement, is that he disdains norms. That being so, why shouldn’t an unusually lowbrow demagogue who works tirelessly to encourage blind loyalty among his supporters bear more blame for incitement than an uncharismatic mainstream liberal like Biden or Harris?”

And here’s the best of the rest.

• What was behind the riots in the United Kingdom after the senseless murder of three girls at a yoga and dance class in a seaside town? And what explains the electoral gains of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in Germany? Anti-immigration sentiment is the easiest explanation, but James Bloodworth writes that it’s really more about deindustrialization, globalization, and the workers who were left behind.
• If you missed the news about North Carolina GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, well, consider yourself lucky. CNN published an exposé alleging that Robinson had frequented—and left disturbing comments on—an online pornography forum. Robinson was already trailing in the race and is expected to lose, but as Dispatch Politics reports, the scandal could have implications for other Republicans on the ballot—including Donald Trump.
• Grant Lefelar profiles Marty Kotis, a University of North Carolina trustee who has “led efforts to eliminate affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at UNC” and worked to shift money from DEI efforts toward campus safety initiatives in light of the rise of anti-Israel activism on campus.
• In Sunday’s Dispatch Faith, Karen Swallow Prior addresses how polarization has affected K-12 education, with religious and political conservatives expressing disdain for public schooling. She argues that Christians can support public schools even if they choose not to send their own kids, and points out that religious leaders from Martin Luther to the Puritans understood the importance of education. History, she notes, is full of Christians who “recognized both the link between poverty and lack of education as well as the Christian duty to help alleviate such suffering.”
• And the pods! On The Dispatch Podcast, Mike Warren calls in from his reporting trip to North Carolina, and former Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp joins Steve and Sarah to discuss the latest campaign news. Jonah welcomes Kevin to The Remnant to discuss his trip to Springfield. And Sarah and David took Advisory Opinions on the road to Princeton, where they discuss the effort by elite universities to remain politically neutral and ask whether the Supreme Court has a leak problem after a recent “behind the scenes” story about the court in the New York Times.