Biden disregards young voters, and maybe he can
Whitestone: If young college students voted in large numbers, the U.S. vote in the United Nations against calling for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas war might well ensure that President Biden would lose the presidential election in 2024. However, he is lucky that while they talk, they complain and they protest in large numbers, about half of young voters (18-29) don’t vote.
After a record youth turnout for young voters in the 2020 presidential election, fewer young voters plan to vote in 2024 (less than 50%), according to a new poll of young people by Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Those numbers may go down if the deaths of Palestinians and destruction of Gaza (worse than the destruction of German cities in World War II) continue into 2024 and closer to the election. Most won’t vote for Donald Trump, but they probably won’t vote for Biden either.
Most of the young people in this age group (18-29) believe that the death toll of women, children and innocent civilians in Gaza, the destruction of most of the hospitals, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise to erase Hamas regardless of the cost in lives of Palestinians is something very akin to genocide. However, it will surprise voting pollsters if more than 50% vote in the presidential election of 2024.
Biden must know this, or he would have supported the call for a ceasefire. Michael J. Gorman
Keep it coming
Fort Lee: Voicer John Woodmaska and others criticize the Daily News for featuring opinion articles about the conflict in Israel “every freaking day.” I don’t believe he really gets it. I refer all of the naysayers to an opinion article written by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal entitled “The Rape of the Israeli Women.” The truth is that Israeli women were raped, disfigured and then murdered. Maybe you will understand how brutal Hamas is. Yes, Mr. Woodmaska, I stand with Israel and urge The News to keep up its coverage. Joan L. Weisberg
Mistakes on purpose?
Brooklyn: To Voicer Samuel Mark: Your belief that violence is justified is just plain sad. This is not the last century and those past actions do not justify the current actions in the Gaza strip. I blame the current situation on many things that happened in the last few decades. I blame Netanyahu, his security people and the military. I am a veteran and can’t believe they ignored their own intelligence and did nothing to prevent Hamas from attacking and slaughtering 1,200 people. Netanyahu has lost his sense of humanity and is committing genocide. Did he do this as an excuse to destroy the Gaza Strip and empty it of Palestinians? He is putting the citizens of Israel at risk with his actions instead of working toward peace. When will the citizens of Israel realize their leader has to be removed for the sake of Israel? This is not war, it’s insanity. Greg Ahl
Absolutist ideologies
Manhattan: Avi Weiss (“Fighting antisemitism on our campuses,” op-ed, Dec. 11) correctly states that “calling for genocide against any group is a call to kill every person in that group.” Unlike he and many others, I believe there are rare instances where every member of a group is fair game for extermination. I cite Nazis, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and Boko Haram as examples. It is worth noting here that religion is nothing short of superstition, no matter how many adherents it attracts. Sadly, certain religions are bigoted at their core and perpetuate hatred of what they regard as infidels. When you believe no one gets to “the father” if you don’t accept him as your personal savior, or not being a Muslim renders you “untermenchen” (subhuman), you sow the seeds of genocide. When ultra-Orthodox Jews look upon less religious Jews as goyim to be shunned, the word for that is bigotry. Daniel Jean Lipsman
Newly permissive
Manhattan: What struck me about the congressional testimony of the presidents of three prominent universities was the hypocrisy of their positions. Essentially, they took a quasi-libertarian approach to free speech. But campuses in recent decades have prioritized more the right to be free from offense than the right to offend, laid bare by safe spaces and glossaries of microaggressions. And it seems there is a hierarchy of what university administrators regard as objectionable, and antisemitism is not high on that list. It is difficult to imagine campus policies being so accommodative if the offensive speech was directed at the Black or LGBTQ communities. Jews are regarded, somewhat inaccurately in American society and particularly by college students and younger activists, as white and privileged — swept up in a movement that sees too much through the lens of race relations. And universities, being businesses, cater to their students as businesses cater to customers. Daniel Dolgicer
Self-implicating
Sayville, L.I.: Re the bombastic badgering of the three university presidents by Rep. Elise Stefanik on the subject of free speech, I would have answered as follows: You fully support a former president who publicly called for the execution of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You fully support a former president who refuses to condemn a mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” You tell me what the rules are and then I’ll answer your question. There are legitimate questions that need to be answered, but she and 99% of her caucus are not the people with the moral high ground to ask the question. In fact, they are their own disgrace. Michael Hooker
Poetic prose
Bradley Beach, N.J.: Beautifully written, Voicer Susan A. Stark. Your words could be the beginning of a war novel. Sadly, it’s the day-to-day existence of a Ukrainian warrior. We must support the Ukrainian people to stop Vladimir Putin and his desire to reconstruct the Russian Empire. Patrick Freeman
Crazy contract
Danbury, Conn.: What the Japanese failed to do at Pearl Harbor, Shohei Ohtani’s deal with the “one dumb ownership” of the Los Angeles Dodgers just did to Major League Baseball. Michael Eddy
Shortsighted trade
Edgewater, N.J.: Juan Soto’s blockbuster deal is bad. It is gonna deplete the Yankees’ pitching depth for only a one-year rental. Brian Cashman is another catastrophe. Hong B. Kim
Best customer
Yorktown Heights, N.Y.: Rudy Giuliani’s attorney says that if he is made to pay the women he defamed, it would be the end of Rudy Giuliani. I don’t know about that, but if he should go bankrupt paying them, the hair dye industry and the Scotch distilleries are in big trouble. Anthony Vegliante
He rests his case
Melbourne, Australia: Do my eyes mislead me, or my hearing fail me? It appears that Donald Trump has “nothing more to say.” It seems that Santa has visited me very early and given me a great gift: Trump being silent. There are probably millions, if not billions, of people who will be glad of this gift — the closed mouth and hushed capital-letter spouting of messages. It looks like 2024 might be a great year. Dennis Fitzgerald
He’s had worse
Manhattan: This is the most outrageous quote I heard in 2023, which came out of the mouth of Hunter Biden. He believes that the result of his tax charge indictments “will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle.” Trust me, Hunter, if your father survived those photos the whole world saw of you smoking crack and posing in your skivvies with a red scarf around your neck like the centerfold of Out magazine, he’ll most definitely survive your nine indictments. Susan P. Siskind
Comprehensive approach
Ottawa, Ontario: The ongoing migrant crisis requires a global Marshall Plan that has credibility. One needs to ask why anybody wants to leave their own country and flock to the U.S.A. and other European countries. When basic needs are denied in their own country for whatever reasons, people go anywhere they can improve their living conditions. It is as simple as that. But there is a habit of blaming, from cities to states to federal governments. It is a shared responsibility. Perhaps a global Marshall Plan might be the answer, and the U.S. can take a leading role in this part of the world. In Europe, the U.K., Germany and France can lead the pact. There has to be a global effort that will bring the best and brightest to the table and start a serious dialogue. Anant Nagpur
