March for Israel: Heck, Every Month for Israel!

Today there was a spectacular gathering all over Washington DC as all kinds of Americans showed support for Israel. I was unable to attend due to work. Only found out about it yesterday, or perhaps I would have been able to juggle things. I saw one estimate of the attendance at 300,000, and let me tell you -- I have been there for a 250K crowd. This was not less, to be sure, from the sweeping panoramic pictures that I saw.

I understand that messaging prior to the event was clear and without rancor, addressed to the Marxist rent-a-mob whose current unifrom involves Hamas and "Palestinian" garb, to steer clear -- just don't come to our event. Either the messaging or something else had our backs today (I was not there, but I refer to Our Team), as I have not seen any untoward reports. Everything was very toward, very toward.

I'll start with an unlikely pairing, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-USA!USA!USA!) and the communist Van Jones, who both gave inspiring speeches. Chuck Schumer was there and so was Hakeem Jeffries. Schumer gave a lackluster cringe-y speech, but his heart was in the right place. I haven't watched Jeffries yet -- he also gets relatively high marks from others. I'll ask people to post other videos from the event (from the news or whatever), relevant reactions, and so forth in the comments. Help make this thread a one-stop shop for people good at scrolling! This means, yes, please check the thread before posting external links (say, Twitter or YouTube), and if a couple of them collide, no problem, of course.

This moment is the reification of a process, an argument that has played out over the last month, and the verdict is most definitely in. The United States will stand behind Israel despite a whole lot of, uh, contrary noise. And I'm not poking the people who would withhold support due to "avoiding foreign entanglements" concerns and the like. I understand and respect that. I most definitely am poking those who are on the wrong side, and in this fight as in few others, there is definitely a right and wrong side. This is a more clear good vs. evil (there I said it!) contest than any other in long memory. Nobody's perfect -- not Israel, not Ronald Reagan, not me -- but nobody needs to be perfect in order to merit a judgement worthy of fully committing to, once decided.

Here's Speaker Mike Johnson with a peppy, punchy, short speech. I approve:

And here's the aforementioned Van Jones.

Uhh... who invited this guy? Well, I'll tell you, I am grateful for this speech. He's still the commie and he does squeeze some equivocation in there, but overall, this is a remarkable speech for its portability. Who is his target audience? Not pasty white conservatives, and not pro-Israel Jews (amazing that needs clarification), and certainly not the MAGA crowd. He is speaking to black Americans who may "lean" against Israel due to other adjacencies, and he reminds them that Jews had blacks' backs in the civil rights days. This is a powerful gift for him to give. Nobody expected him to be there, to be sure, and his absence would hardly have been noted. "Where's Van Jones?" asked nobody. That makes this a moment of grace -- he had nothing to lose by abstaining, and in fact has taken a risk by speaking. You just know that easily half of his commie crew are unhappy about this.

Van Jones just made it "okay" for a large swath of the left, whites and blacks alike, to come out for Israel. He also paved a heck of a road for blacks in particular. Why should anybody need Jones to make anything "okay"? Good question, but as many have noted, a large number of the people "protesting" against Israel (protesting apparently includes murdering Jews in the street) have no earthly clue what they are talking about, and are happily stampeded into pro-Hamas nonsense as easily as they are stampeded into defending the honor of Sandra Fluke or improving the economy through inflation. None of it works, but they don't know that and they do not care. They don't have to. Their safe space is pre-approved by people like Van Jones and the rest of the Marxist media-government-professor class, and Jones just opened up the Zion Lounge.

This speech by Jones matters more than it seems. The administration will continue its feckless wobbling, and Netanyahu knows exactly what sort of scum he's dealing with in our leadership, but that is now a tightly constrained scum!

So Thank You, Mr. Jones. I don't know how sincere he is in the tale he tells of just how he got to where he is on this, but whatever. It works when he tells the story, and that's as much as I can ask. This is his "LaFayette" moment, and I'm glad he came through.

I'm glad America came through.

Post 'em if you got 'em!