A prognostication: Biden is sabotaging his re-election

This article, from Claire Berlinski‘s Substack site was written by her as well as by John Oxley, and paints a picture of Biden as a doddering old fool with no clear take on foreign policy. Biden, they say, has waffled so much on his Israel policy, including his decision to stop most military weapons sold to Israel, that he’ll lose the vote of both Muslims and Jews—a hard thing to do.  It also includes ten summaries of and links to other articles, all criticizing Biden and all worth reading. It’s a valuable piece, and those of you who are so certain that Biden will win should read the whole thing. (Claire abhors Trump, by the way; like me, she just wants the Left on a sane foundation.)

Claire, by the way, is the daughter of evolution opponent David Berlinski, but seems to have a whole lot more common sense.

Clicking on the headline may get you one free read, but you also may wish to subscribe, as I enjoy Berlinski’s prose—and ideas. (The articles are written by Berlinski and other people.) Try clicking on the headline:

I’ll quote a lot of her short article, and be sure to read the Bret Stephens article mentioned in the first sentence (it’s archived here).

I just saw this column by Bret Stephens, who echoes my sentiments almost verbatim. I hadn’t seen that when we recorded this last night, and obviously, he hadn’t listened to this podcast.1 But he wrote more or less exactly what I’ve said here.

All of this is disastrous for Biden, and thus disastrous for us all.

I figured until this that he was basically a savvy politician who understood why the American electorate put him in power quite well. Normalcy. Not extremism. But I was wrong. He’s in a bubble. He doesn’t understand how much of his support comes from people like me.

People like me—and I suspect the majority of Americans, even still—loathe the far right. They also loathe the far left and the Islamists. People like me have for years rejected the argument that Biden is dangerously in the sway of the Islamists and the far left on the grounds that it’s absurd to say so. Befuddled though he may be, Biden is clearly an old-fashioned center-leftist, firmly in the postwar American tradition. He’s not going to do anything grotesquely offensive in office. Trump, meanwhile, is literally—not just metaphorically or hyperbolically—insane, a Clusterfuck B personality disorder on cloven hooves. It really is an open question whether the American republic would survive another term under his aegis.

I still maintain this—passionately. For all his deficits, and there are so many, there’s no option but Joe Biden. The prospect of a second Trump presidency is too terrible to consider.

But until recently, I had allowed myself not to consider it. I believed, in some primitive, unjustifiable way, that it just couldn’t happen. That Americans will somehow come to their senses before Election Day.

I no longer think so. What this tells me is that Biden is so out of touch that he’s confused the campus of Columbia with mainstream American opinion. It’s an unforced and terrible error. It tells me the people around him—including his cabinet—are giving him awful advice. Neither he nor his advisors have properly understood how many Americans want to vomit when they see those spoiled, pampered, Hamas-loving campus imbeciles demanding “humanitarian aid”—for themselves. So they don’t get peckish during their sleepover parties with their little chums.

It’s not just the greasy-pole climbers like Elise Stefanik who feel this way. There’s a broad American center that cannot stand what we’ve recently seen emerging from these institutions. They will instinctively and immediately understand that Biden has decided to pander to them at the expense of our ally, and they will understand that in doing so, he has made us weaker. They may not be able to admit or articulate to themselves what causes them to stay home on Election Day. But it will be this—this, and our withdrawal from Afghanistan, our timidity in arming Ukraine, our misbegotten efforts to coax Iran back into a nuclear deal it clearly does not want. This—and Biden’s infernal mumbling, stuttering, and slurring. This—and the massive, coordinated information war that Russia and China will mount on Trump’s behalf. (There will be a hell of an October Surprise. I promise.) This, and the failure of our judiciary to swiftly put Trump behind bars— not for paying off a porn star, but for attempting a coup. All of this, together, is enough to win Trump reelection.

I have no idea how Biden made this decision, or why. How could he fail to appreciate that it’s the political kiss of death to be lauded by Ilhan Omar? Her words will be on GOP attack ads from now until Election Day.

In capitulating to his party’s loons and cranks, Biden has breathed life into a GOP argument that until now was easy to dismiss—viz., that the crackpots are secretly running his administration.

This is a disastrous headline for Joe Biden:

(The headline below is from a WBMA, an ABC news site in Birmingham, Alabama).

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., speaks at a rally outside an Amazon facility on Staten Island in New York, Sunday, April 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Here’s a new tweet by AOC, echoing the misguided claim that invading Rafah is a “red line”. What she doesn’t say it that crossing that line would make both Israel and the world safer.  In other words, AOC (and Biden) simply want Hamas to persist as the rulers of Gaza.

Biden has not “lost his mind.” He is upholding the word of the US.

There are 1.3 million people in Rafah. You do not need to slaughter them to go after Hamas.

Biden stated the US red line was Rafah. It would make us weaker & the world less safe to let Bibi, or anyone, cross it. https://t.co/EKaGyYnyDH

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 9, 2024

If AOC, Omar, and the other “squaddies” were in college, they’d be encamped.

One of Navalny’s last letters

Here’s actor Benedict Cumberbatch reading one of the last letters of imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, whose sudden death on February 16 is still a mystery. This letter was written about a month before that. It’s only five minutes long, so have a listen.

Last month Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, Alexei Navalny, paid the ultimate price for his beliefs, dying in a West Siberian prison after years of relentless campaigning against corruption and a near-fatal poisoning. By the time of his death, Navalny had been imprisoned for more than two years, during which time he wrote to his supporters and the wider world through letters shared on his social media accounts. This is one of the last messages he wrote.

The letter answers a question Navalny got frequently: “Why did you come back?” (He returned to Russia from Germany, facing certain arrest, after he was poisoned by Russia while in Russia.) The short answer: “If I didn’t stick to my convictions, I’d have no credibility.” What those principles are you can hear in the reading.

There are few men as brave as Navalny.  I suppose one could compare him to a soldier ordered to undertake a mission resulting in certain death, like the attacks on the Ottomans at Gallipoli. But there’s a big difference: Navalny wasn’t under orders, and voluntarily returned to Russia, knowing what he’d face.

 

h/t: Jez

SNL mocks Katie Britt

Scarlett Johansson showed up on Saturday Night Live to play Senator Katie Britt, who gave the cringeworthy In-the-Kitchen Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union address. Johansson’s was a great performance (her resemblance to Britt in both appearance and behavior are remarkable), and I’ll show you how great by putting the real Britt video at the bottom. First, Scarlett, whom I could find only on Twitter aka “X”:

From CNN:

Scarlett Johansson – otherwise known as Mrs. Colin Jost – made a cameo appearance during the show’s cold open, playing Alabama Sen. Katie Britt in her much-talked about GOP rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.

With one hand firmly raised, Johansson dressed as Britt called out Biden’s “performative” qualities (while fervently denying any performance of her own), delivering her remarks from her kitchen.

”You see, I’m not just a mother,” Johansson said. “I’m a wife, a mother, and the craziest b—h in the Target parking lot.”

The end of the skit saw a well-placed spoof of Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning racial satire “Get Out,” when Johansson took out a teacup and stirred it, causing Kenan Thompson to freeze with a tear falling down his face.

From Simon:

Sen. Katie Britt delivers the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union Address pic.twitter.com/x7mDzO1sWP

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 10, 2024

Here’s Britt’s real response, about 20 minutes long, starting at 1:18. Brit later admitted that she had no basis for accusing Biden for fostering sex-trafficking across the border.

Why are progressives so angry?

Yesterday I was walking through campus and noted that all the lamposts in the main quad are bedecked, illegally, with pro-Palestinian stickers. (It’s legal for student organizations to put up stickers, but only inatdesignated sites and so long as the organization is identified. Neither is the case here.

A few examples (there must have been about two dozen, all violating posting and demonstration regulations):

And pro-Palestinian students (considered, I think, “progressive” Leftists) are seen here in an illegal blocking of Levi Hall (the administration building) last November 3.  As far as I can find out, though this was against University rules, no punishments were levied against the participants. (I asked the admin but didn’t get an answer.)

Another illegal protest was a group of pro-Palestinian students holding a sit-in in the admissions office. In this case they were arrested, but the charges were dropped. The punishment by the University appeared to have been to write an essay about “my demonstration experience”, in which the students simply reasserted that they were right, claimed that they were being silenced by the University, and protested being punished at all.

But of course things can get even more aggressive and violent, like many of the demonstrations in London, the illegal blocking of highways and roads, and vandalism and graffiti (e.g. Jewish stars or swastikas posted in Jewish homes). You don’t see this kind of aggressive demonstration enacted by pro-Israel students or people out in the world, but those people are not seen as progressives, but as “white colonialists.”

I could go on. While most Black Lives Matter protests were generally peaceful, 7% involved violence.  Leftists opposed to Republicans felt free to confront GOP politicians and their families in restaurants, or make a fracas outside their homes.  I see that as a form of unproductive protest. Yet all of these people would be considered residing on the Left. (In this post I’m not considering violence from those on the Right, as during the January 6 insurrection.)

My assertion is that the farther on the Left you reside (i.e., the more “progressive” of a Leftist you are), the angrier you are in your public political acts and the more likely you are to either be in-your-face aggressive or to break the law. And while breaking the law for a cause is civil disobedience, it is done in a more violent manner than it was a few decades below. Further, “progressive” protestors, instead of willingly accepting punishment, assert that they should not be punished at all. (For examples on our campus, see here and here.) If that’s your view, you’re not doing civil disobedience.

I too was involved in activism during my college years, and I know how righteous you feel when you’re fighting for a cause you see as just. It not only adds a panache of virtue to your college experience, but also gives you automatic membership in a group of like-minded people.

In my case there were two causes worthy of demonstration: the Vietnam war and civil rights.  And in my memory—and I believe in general—both of these causes explicitly avowed nonviolence. Martin Luther King followed the nonviolent principles of Gandhi (granted, there were some civil rights groups, like the Black Panthers, who didn’t eschew violence), and the hallmark of the civil rights demonstrations—the things that made them effective—was their nonviolent character.  When civil rights protesters in Birmingham were attacked by police dogs and blasted with water hoses, and when white people dumped ketchup and milkshakes on civil rights demonstrators sitting peacefully at lunch counters in Greensboro, the immorality of segregation became palpably clear.

Nonviolence was, I think, the key to success—both in ending the Vietnam War and getting the Civil Rights Acts passed.  In my view, violent or angry demonstrations, like stopping traffic or yelling slogans in people’s faces with megaphones, are not devised to produce political success, but to flaunt virtue.  They are, I believe, counterproductive compared to what nonviolent or more peaceful demonstrations could do. They are counterproductive because they anger and inconvenience onlookers, and are designed to do that. You don’t get sympathy for Palestine by blocking traffic on Lake Shore Drive while shouting “From the river to the sea. . .  ”

Regardless, here is the question I’m asking, and to which I don’t have a satisfactory answer:

Why are “progressive” leftists so much angrier and violent in their protests than are more centrist leftists, as well as than were leftists of seventy years ago? What accounts for this anger?  

One explanation is that modern progressives feel that they’re on the side of history, more morally correct than their opponents. But that doesn’t wash because it was also the case for Leftist protestors of the Sixties.  I surely felt that I was more virtuous than those espousing segregation or touting the rectitude of fighting in Vietnam.

What baffles me is the much higher degree of anger from “progressive” Leftists than from more centrist ones, as well the willingness to display it in protests. I ask readers to weigh in. Perhaps you feel my data are wrong: that “progressive” protestors are not publicly angrier than liberal ones. If so, say that as well.

Live feed of the Supreme Court’s hearing of Trump’s appeal

Reader Smoked Paprika called our attention to this live-feed YouTube “video”; it lets you listen to the Supreme Court’s hearing of Trump’s appeal of the Colorado decision keeping him off the ballot. This is a big deal.

Pamela Paul on the problem with “progressives”

I hate writing the word “progressives” when I refer to people like AOC and her squad, and especially to people like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, whom I see as regressives, hoping for some form of Islamism to infect America. But the “progressives” are also regressive in not adopting the values of classical liberalism, including freedom of speech, unity instead of divisiveness, and the rejection of identitarian politics.  “Progressives” favor a form of gender activism that abrogates certain rights of women and, more important, are liable to engage in “cancel culture”. They are self-righteous, authoritarian, and not prone to compromise.

But the latest identifying marks of “progressivists” are their embrace of Hamas and the Palestinian cause, an animus towards Israel, and, as evidenced in calls for a cease-fire and an approval of BSD, an apparent indifference about whether Israel should even exist.

So no, I’m not a progressive but a diehard liberal, and, as Bill Maher says, I never moved to the right: the Democrats simply shifted way leftward.

This NYT op-ed by Pamela Paul, the former Sunday book-review editor for the paper, shows her credentials as a liberal, which in the NYT’s op-ed section, puts her almost on the Right.  Click on the headline; I also found it archived free here.

According to Paul, self-described liberals are increasing in number (17% of Americans in 1992 to 25% in 2021), though “still lower than the proportions of those who said they were ‘conservatives’ or ‘moderates’.” Progressives are less numerous, constituting constitute 6-8% of the population, but they are LOUD. And their ranks will grow as younger college students grow up and regurgitate the political pabulum they were fed in college.

Here’s how Paul distinguishes progressives from “normal” liberals:

In an increasingly prominent version of the progressive vision, capitalism isn’t something to be regulated or balanced, but is itself the problem. White supremacy doesn’t describe an extremist fringe of racists and antisemites, but is instead the inherent character of the nation.

Some aspects of contemporary progressivism look less like actual progress and more like a step in reverse. Whereas liberals hold to a vision of racial integration, progressives have increasingly supported forms of racial distinction and separation, and demanded equity in outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Whereas most liberals want to advance equality between the sexes, many progressives seem fixated on reframing gender stereotypes as “gender identity” and denying sex differences wherever they confer rights or protections expressly for women. And whereas liberals tend to aspire toward a universalist ideal, in which diverse people come together across shared interests, progressives seem increasingly wedded to an identitarian approach that emphasizes tribalism over the attainment of common ground.

More reactionary still is the repressive nature of progressive ideals around civil liberties. It is progressives — not liberals — who argue that “speech is violence” and that words cause harm. These values are the driving force behind progressive efforts to shut down public discourse, disrupt speeches, tear down posters, censor students and deplatform those with whom they disagree.

Divisions became sharper after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, when many progressives did not just express support for the Palestinian cause but, in some cases, even defended the attacks as a response to colonialism, and opposed retaliation as a form of genocide. (One might argue that it is similarly illiberal for universities to suspend or cut funding to student groups that support Palestinian rights, as several have done, though those actions often came after chants by the groups that administrators considered threatening toward Jews.)

All this stands in marked contrast to the liberal stance that more speech is better speech, allowing for the free exchange of ideas. As David Frum, not generally considered a liberal himself, wrote recently in The Atlantic, “how is a society ever to settle its most important questions if it follows the rule ‘The more important a question, the more strictly its discussion is forbidden’?”\

And, of course, the cancel culture:

. . . .This brings us to the most troubling characteristic of contemporary progressivism. Whereas liberals tend to pride themselves on acceptance, many progressives have applied various purity tests to others on the left, and according to one recent study on the schism between progressives and liberals, are more likely than liberals to apply public censure to divergent views. This intolerance manifests as a professed preference for avoiding others with different values, a stance entirely antithetical to liberal values.

What a strange paradox that at the very moment the word “liberal” is enjoying a renaissance, liberalism itself feels on the wane. Many liberals find themselves feeling lonelier than ever.

It only feels on the wane because progressives are so damn loud. Liberalism is increasing, but perhaps not fast enough to keep Trump from being reelected.  Here are the latest poll numbers from FiveThirtyEight; and they’re are damn depressing (click to enlarge)

As for the Presidential polls of Trump vs. Biden, Trump can’t lose for trying. Yes, this is within the margin of error, I think, but it’s way too close for me.

 

Group of “science-savvy” UK liberals urge denial of the sex binary

This is an object lesson not only in the pollution of science by ideology, but also in how to make a fool of yourself by not learning about other areas of science before you pronounce on them.

A reader affiliated with a UK earth-sciences department sent me a letter circulated around that department, but it’s also circulating widely. The link goes to the whole letter but I’ll reproduce only part of it:

From an authority figure:

I know that many of us are concerned with the current ‘kicking woke ideology out of science’ rhetoric.  An open letter drafted by a number of scientists urges politicians to reject that:  ttps://hull.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/edi_in_science.  Please do sign and share as you think appropriate.

Note the urging to sign the letter, which, since it comes from a university official,  be considered a violation of the Kalven Principle of Institutional Neutrality if it were in Chicago.

Excerpts:

Thank you for expressing an interest in signing the letter to the Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology and Chairman of the Conservative Party, regarding their position on ‘kicking woke ideology out of science’.

The text of the letter is given below. This text has been generated collaboratively by scientists from different disciplines, people with expertise in the relationship between science and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and those with lived experience of marginalisation. Some have signed the letter, while other valued contributers have felt unable to sign publically. A fully referenced PDF version of the text is available at Open Letter to UK Government.

Here’s a bit of the letter. You can see the full text at the link.

Dear Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology,

We are writing to express our anger and disappointment at the speech given by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology at the Conservative Party Conference 2023, and accompanying social media post. These state that government policy will be ‘kicking woke ideology out of science’ and that ‘Conservatives are safeguarding scientific research from the denial of biology and the steady creep of political correctness.’ This was described as a plan “to depoliticise science”.

We are extremely concerned about both the content and possible implications of the speech, and what it says about the government’s views on both science policy and inclusion. We address these directly as follows:

And here’s the invidious bit involving denialism of scientific fact in the name of ideology (it’s apparently in response to the speech discussed above):

• ‘Denial of biology’. From the Secretary of State’s speech it is clear that this refers to the government’s increasing adoption of policies that put the lives and wellbeing of trans people at risk. When it comes to sex determination it is simplistic binary arguments, such as those used by the Prime Minister himself, that deny biology. The biology of human sex is significantly more complex than just XX chromosomes = female and XY = male. There are multiple levels of “biological sex”, including genetic, anatomical, physiological and hormonal, which may not align with each other 11,12. Even within genetic definitions of sex, there are multiple interacting genes involved in complex networks 11,12. Sex determination at birth is on the basis of external genitalia, so does not consider the multiple factors contributing to “biological sex”. Additionally, up to 1.7% of the population have Differences in Sex Development (DSD) or are intersex 11–13. To appeal to “biological sex” as the Secretary of State has done is over-simplistic, unscientific and exclusionary rhetoric under the pretence of objectivity 14. Furthermore, as the Secretary of State acknowledges, biological sex and personal/social gender identity are distinct. At least 0.5% of the UK population identify as a different gender to their sex registered at birth 15. Combining DSD, intersex, non-binary and trans communities, this represents nearly 1.5 million people in the UK that the government implies should be excluded from participating in biomedical, sports science and other research. Research in many contexts does not need to (nor should) restrict itself to a binary definition of sex or gender, and can be inclusive of intersex, non-binary and/or trans participants without losing scientific rigour. The Secretary of State directly criticises initiatives such as the Scottish Chief Statistician’s guidance with respect to sex and gender 16, but such pragmatic advice ensures accuracy in data collection and research design, and alignment with legislation including the Equality Act 2010 and the Data Protection Act 2018. We find it disturbing that over-simplistic or scientifically illiterate arguments about complex biological systems are being used to stoke so-called culture wars and make the UK increasingly hostile towards people identifying as intersex, non-binary and/or trans. Reductive and discredited biological models have been used to underpin historical and contemporary human rights abuses through scientific racism and eugenics 17,18, and have no place in modern scientific inquiry.

Virtually everything in this section is a distortion or outright lie. First, if you’re defining male and female, then you don’t use chromosomal complement, even in humans, but rather determine whether someone has the equipment to make small mobile gametes (males) versus large immobile gametes (females). Determining someone’s sex is as simple as that, though the other stuff, like chromosomes, genitalia, and hormones, are highly correlated with biological sex. It’s a big mistake, but a deliberate one, to conflate the definition of sex, which shows that sex is indeed a binary, with the correlates of sex, which are bimodal and almost binary, but could be called “strongly bimodal.”

The “it’s complicated” argument floated above is made for only one purpose, and that purpose is outlined in the first sentence:

From the Secretary of State’s speech it is clear that this refers to the government’s increasing adoption of policies that put the lives and wellbeing of trans people at risk.

No, the “simplistic binary notion of sex”, which happens to be true, does NOT put the lives and wellbeing of trans people at risk. Biological truth doesn’t have the ability to do that. What would risk the lives and well being of trans people is true transphobia: the fear and hatred of trans people that could translate into mistreatment and denial of their fundamental rights. That’s a question of morality, not biological fact.

And this bit is wrong in three ways:

Additionally, up to 1.7% of the population have Differences in Sex Development (DSD) or are intersex 11–13. To appeal to “biological sex” as the Secretary of State has done is over-simplistic, unscientific and exclusionary rhetoric under the pretence of objectivity 14. Furthermore, as the Secretary of State acknowledges, biological sex and personal/social gender identity are distinct. At least 0.5% of the UK population identify as a different gender to their sex registered at birth 15. Combining DSD, intersex, non-binary and trans communities, this represents nearly 1.5 million people in the UK that the government implies should be excluded from participating in biomedical, sports science and other research.

Once again, we see exaggeration of the proportion of people who don’t fall into the sex binary. It is at most 0.018%, not 1.7%, the latter a frequently-seen  and erroneous figure based on wonky data from Anne Fausto-Sterling, a figure that even she retracted later.

Second, trans people are not the same as intersexes. Trans people are, most often, people of one of the two sexes who want to assume the persona of a member of the other sex. The sex binary has nothing to do with invalidating trans people; in fact, trans people, being of one sex but wishing to be of the other, demonstrate the binary nature of sex.

Third, except for participation in sports, I don’t understand how the 0.018% of people who are true intersex, or people of different genders (a social construct) are “excluded from participating in biomedical and other research.” Perhaps the tiny number of true hermaphrodites would be excluded from being in the category “male” or “female”, but they could still be subject to biomedical research.  As for sports, well, transwomen should not compete with biological women in athletics, and that’s the one “exclusion” I support.

The people who are circulating this letter are damaging science by denying scientific truth, as well as using outmoded data that we all know is wrong. They also damage the debate over trans people by pretending that their treatment must somehow depend on whether there’s a sex binary. Once again I’ll say it: the binary nature of human sex has no bearing on the debate about the rights and treatment of trans people. 

To say that the sex binary is “overly simplistic” or “scientifically illiterate” is to brand oneself an idiot.  If this reflects the conventional wisdom of the Labour Party (for the attacks above are on positions apparently espoused by two Tories), then Labour is in trouble.  First they got in trouble by being anti-Semitic, now they’ll get into more trouble by being anti-biology.

Videos of antigovernment protests in Tel Aviv

By now you’ve surely heard of the antigovernment protests in Israel triggered by the Netanyahu administration’s dissatisfaction with the powers of the Supreme Court.  This is a complex issue, and I don’t have a dog in the fight, but I urge those of you who want such a canid to read up on the issues. Here’s one place to start, but it’s just a start.

My only comment is that if Israel had a constitution, which it doesn’t, these protests would be unnecessary, as the constitution would spell out a separation of powers that would settle the issues. However, it’s too late for that: 7 million quarrelsome Jews (and another 2 million non-Jews) could never decide on a constitution now. That’s instantiated by this old Jewish joke:

Yeshiva University wanted to burnish its image, so, taking a lesson from the Ivy League, decided to start a rowing team. But the crew came in last, and by a mile, in its first race. So the Yeshiva coach sent a scout to watch how the other schools trained for the races.

He came back and reported: “Coach, we have it all backwards. It’s supposed to be eight rowers and one coxswain yelling instructions, not eight coxswains and one rower!”

At any rate, I haven’t seen any demonstrations but one of my fellow travelers, Jay Tanzman, went to them on Sunday and took three videos. (There was no violence.) I’ve put them on YouTube with Jay’s permission and have added Jay’s notes (indented):

There was a main stage (not shown) on which bands and speakers appeared. This clip shows one of several screens set up throughout the area that showed what was happening on stage. I couldn’t gain a high vantage point from which to film to show the scale of the demonstration. However, toward the end of this clip there is an overhead shot, presumably taken by a drone I saw above. If you zoom in, you can see how big the crowd was. The media is saying there were 120,000 attendees (I had guessed 100,000).

Protestors marching:

At one point, the band played the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah [“The Hope”], and the crowd instantly stood up and started singing along. It was very moving to watch.

Watching these videos again, I was struck by the plethora of Israeli flags carried by the protestors.  They are parading their Israeli-ness while still protesting the government. I doubt that the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol had that many American flags!

Here’s a more professional but less spontaneous version of Hatikvah, performed at “the 68th Israeli Independence Day Torch Lighting ceremony in Jerusalem, May 2016.” There are English subtitles.