It’s interesting how MAGAs are so uncomfortable with complexity. And so hung up on showing gratitude to Dear Leader, whether warranted or not. 🧐
Gil
On the Fordow Strike
Reportedly, the Fordow mountain nuclear enrichment site has been hit with 12 bunker buster bombs, each weighing 15 tons. It may be too early to tell, but by all indications Khameini’s nuclear program has been essentially closed.
That is the good part of the story.
The bad:
– POTUS authorized this action without seeking let alone receiving any kind of Congressional approval, as is required by the US Constitution to preserve the balance of power in the US government (and specifically, to make sure it is really the people’s will to go war). This action is the latest in an unimaginably long line of offenses against the US Constitution committed by POTUS and it does not bode well for the special relationship between the USA and Israel. Israel needs an ally governed by a sane, competent leader who respects the US Constitution as the source document that truly made America great.
– Bibi is showing no signs of ending the war now that the Iranian nuclear program has been closed. Ever since October 7, Bibi has used and abused the public’s trust in the Israeli government’s commitment to our security, to create a seemingly endless wartime scenario – the only scenario in which his fragile coalition of corrupt populists tenuously continues to exist, investigations and elections are continuously postponed for “after the war,” and he himself stays out of jail. Furthermore, while the reasons for action in both Gaza and Iran may be justified – Hamas needs to be neutralized, the ayatollah can not get nukes – we sit in our bomb shelters and bunkers without any guarantees or confidence that the actions themselves are carried out in a strategic, effective, or moral manner.
.
War is primitive sht that goes back millions of years in our history as a species. I appreciate the necessity of sometimes needing to kill before being killed, in this primitive world in which we choose to live, but I do not celebrate it.
I pray for peace, for myself, my family, my community, my city, my nation, my region, my species, all sentient beings.
May we all continue evolving towards the stars.
May none of us need to go back into a bomb shelter today.
When Somebody Tells You Who They Are
It amazes me that there are people who consider Israel the aggressor against Iran in this or any war.
The missile barrages did not start with the IAF’s bombing of nuclear and military sites, which itself did not occur in a vacuum.
The “pushy” “aggressive” Jew is a stereotype created by people who are uncomfortable with our noncompliance, our self-assertion, our unwillingness to accept the fate others have in store for us.
Now we have an air force and those same kinds of people are outraged that we have the temerity to take Khameini’s death threats at face value and accept the evidence of our eyes and ears.
“When somebody tells you who they are, believe them the first time” – Maya Angelou
So Frum
I’m so frum that whenever an ayatollah fires a hypersonic missile barrage, I put on my shoes left foot first
Hypersonic Missiles Overhead
I’m sitting in the stairwell with window rattling booms and thunderous rumbles overhead, chatting with ChatGPT about these hypersonic missiles that Khomeini is firing at me, and the whole concept of shooting and intercepting missiles beyond the atmosphere is fascinating.
On Superstition
If someone is superstitious
Telling them they’re bad for being superstitious
Will not make them less superstitious
Teaching them – dare i say, inspiring them – to reason, trust, be confident, and have equanimity will make them less superstitious
Rambamist Elitism
Why do Rambamists write so many posts about how other Jewish people are basically idolators?
What does this actually accomplish?
Is it possible that to whatever extent Rambam may have been something somewhat approaching a philosophical elitist, emulating that tendency may not actually be productive towards promoting Torah, or in the cases of most people who aren’t Rambam, even warranted?
* Asking as someone who believes that the Mishne Tora is the best guide to halakha and that philosophy is the key to understanding the Torah and having a real relationship with the Creator, and who prays according to siddur haRambam.
Shadows on the Cave
Many sleepers
Have called me the enemy
Of the nightmares they create
Sleep walking through the streets
Sleep talking of
This and That
Tribes and Sins
Good and Evil
You’re dreaming,
I remind them
These are but shadows
You cast onto the wall of your cave
Cyber Dust
Some antisemitic dude came to my profile overnight and laugh reacted to like twenty of my latest posts.
My brother in Moses, why so obsessed? 🧐
The passive aggression is a lil ridic.
We’re out here in Jerusalem building a better future for Palestinians and Israelis alike and antisemitic losers are sitting in their dorm rooms leaving the world nothing but ignorant comments and angry laugh reacts that will do nothing but gather cyber dust in the eventually deprecated databases of someday former social media giants.
Stay Frosty Friends 😎
Erasing Indigenous History
Erasing thousands of years of indigenous history, especially when it’s not at all necessary in order to support the human and civil rights of Palestinians or the integrity of their collective narrative, is not antifascist or decolonial.
It is antisemitic, both in what it says (that Jewish history is at worst literally nonexistent and at best an inferior historical artifact forever subordinate to the colonizer’s political and cultural claims) and in what it implies (that Jewish people are thieving liars not worthy of the basic human right to self-determination in all senses of the word).