It was a clarifying weekend both in the Middle East and in Washington. Clarifying in the first place because Israel got some of its mojo back in the staggering rescue of the four hostages in broad daylight from separate buildings in the Nuseirat refugee camp—which is technically under UN control, let us not forget. And one of those buildings was an UN refugee school. In other words, the UN was being used as a hostage prison. So we had four Israelis being used as slaves and household workers in territory controlled by the the world’s “peacekeepers.”

Those of us who have long advocated literally blowing up the UN buildings in Turtle Bay in Manhattan—one of the first covers of the long-defunct magazine Insight, which I edited beginning in 1985, depicted the UN tower being dismantled, so that’s how long ago this idea has been percolating—now have renewed reason to press our case. The UN pays no taxes. Tear it down and there’s a huge development site in the most desirable spot in the city that could return billions in lost revenue. Meanwhile, the UN could be relocated to someplace that could use its commerce and doesn’t mind how it sheds blood and treasure in the name of Israel-hatred, like Lagos or South Sudan, and where there are no boutiques for the wives of monstrous dictators to buy stuff marked up especially for them. Rid my city of this organization that employs out-and-out neo-Nazis like UN “special rapporteur” Francesca Albanese, a person (I hesitate even to call her a person) whose views on Israel might cause Josef Goebbels to say, “Well, now you go a little far.” Not to mention one of the world’s greatest villains at the moment, UN General Secretary Guterres, a man who demonstrates the way in which a lifelong commitment to socialism now practically requires all-but-open Jew-hatred to maintain its purity as an ideological calling.

So that was Clarifying Moment #1. Clarifying Moment #2 was Israel getting itself off its back foot after a series of weeks (months) in which its people were losing heart, patience, trust, and the ability to see that the goal of destroying Hamas could ever be achieved. Part of the expression of this loss of drive was the default return to Israel’s own lousy politics, which saw its apotheosis in the decision of the dummkopf of the Israeli middle, Benny Gantz, fulfilling his pledge to exit the war cabinet and government (obviously at the behest of the Americans who began the drumbeat for Bibi Netanyahu’s ouster, like Chuck Schumer, who now cannot appear before a Jewish audience without being rightly and deservedly booed for his declaration of  “Am Yisrael Naw Dog” on the Senate floor a few weeks ago).

Gantz is, to be charitable, not the sharpest stick in the drawer—indeed, Ted Baxter of the Mary Tyler Moore Show would beat him on The Price Is Right— but quitting ON THE DAY OF THE HOSTAGE RESCUE rather than waiting another 36 hours or something so that the country could at least have a few minutes to celebrate shows off the parlous political skills that will likely see him failing yet again whenever elections do actually take place.

Forget Gantz’s narischkeit, and the dumbfounding New York Times headline that read “Israel’s Euphoria Over Hostage Release May Be Fleeting”—a clear case of the wish being father to the thought, since the New York Times doesn’t want Israel to experience any euphoria, ever, unless perhaps it were to support “gender-affirming surgery” for two month-olds. Israel has had a moment here to see that it hasn’t lost the spirit of Entebbe, and it came just when it needed to come, and they will have their euphoria even if the NYT’s Joe Kahn would rather they sit shiva for his corrupted and contaminated news desk.

Clarifying Moment #3 came with the news that the Biden administration is still calling for negotiations leading to a ceasefire after, by my count, the seventh rejection of the same by Hamas since Bibi Netanyahu’s secret offer a couple of weeks ago. Secretary of State Blinken, a man who cannot say no, including when someone suggests it would be smart for him to play high-school guitar while Ukraine burns, will be back in the region for the eighth time to urge Hamas to accept the deal. Why is this clarifying? Because it now suggests, here and for all time, that the Biden team is stupid.

I don’t mean that they’re unintelligent. They have high degrees from places. They may have even read half of Tocqueville in a survey course. They could do well on The Price Is Right. They’d probably come in second on Jeopardy and get Lee’s Press-On Nails as a consolation prize. But they’re stupid tactically and strategically because they are banging on a door that will not open. Which leads me to believe they are likely following the specific instructions of their boss. I’m talking about the Big Guy, who doesn’t know when there isn’t a chair for him to sit on during the moment everybody is supposed to stand in honor of those who died on D-Day. That Big Guy orders them about, and if they don’t listen he yells at them and they don’t like it and so they do what he says.

Supposedly the carrot the Biden Brainless Trust is dangling in the region is a tripartite security deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Which would, of course, be a good thing. But like the stupid people they are now proving to be, they seem not to understand the very thing that led the Saudis to view Israel as a potential ally more than a decade ago: The idea that Israel means business and does what it must to survive and built itself a tech sector the Saudis want to learn from. Allowing Hamas to survive, which is implicitly part of the big American deal, will not lead to normalization. The Saudis do not want an Iranian vassal state in Palestine. Their entire foreign-policy purpose is to counter Iran. I know that. You know that. Everybody in the world knows that. Even Tony Blinken’s guitar is gently weeping at his dangling a carrot to Israel and Saudi Arabia that neither wants, needs, nor will accept.

And finally, Clarifying Moment #4, here at home. What happened in Washington on Saturday as Biden tried to recover from the chair incident was a full-blown demonstration across the street from the White House that can only be described as a Hamas rally—complete with the desecrations of American statuary. The footage from this nauseating event, including Park Police standing mute and ineffective as spray cans mottled the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette—who is no longer an obscure figure from the past but is now known to all Americans under the age of 25 as America’s best friend from the 18th century due to Hamilton—is a gift that will keep giving to Republicans and Trump as they head to the November elections.

Clearly the Biden administration told the cops to stand down, for reasons likely having to do with the same thought process that led Kamala Harris to mourn the Israeli rescue as she gave a speech in Michiganistan. John Stuart Mill once put it this way: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” Here I’m presuming the Biden administration are the good men, since I don’t think they want Lafayette Square to look like Kabul in 1989 and would like Lafayette’s statue unmolested. But while they may be good, the Biden Brainless Trust stinks at running this country in a time of crisis and they stink at managing world events and they stink at hiding the fact the president doesn’t know when there’s not a chair for his ass.