Writing from Jerusalem during the war years.
I pulled the trigger on the gun.
Whom I shot and why I shot him doesn’t change this fact or its consequences for those affected.
I pulled the trigger on the gun and now his neighbor’s son is starving.
It turns out that gunfire makes it hard to make that bread.
I pulled the trigger on the gun and now his neighbor’s son is starving and wants to shoot me.
I’ll just tell his neighbor’s son whose fault it really is.
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.
I was reading a book by Sadhguru last night
(Uh Oh I’m in the new age to Hindutva pipeline now)
He was talking about taking responsibility for everything
Not blame or guilt but the chosen agency to respond to any and every situation, however we choose
A rather radical form of responsibility, if I may say so
But it rings very true in a Jewish sense
My question: How much of our mode of relation in this war reflects a choice to be responsible?
Why can’t we be targeted in Gaza like we are in Lebanon?
What is with the collective punishment as a negotiation tactic?
Since when did collective punishment not play into the hands of Hamas, a religious fascist organization that seeks the suffering of Gazans as a tool to manipulate public perception against Israel?
We plod and stumble through this horror of a deal after over a year and a half of war. The ayatollahs’ Islamo-fascist lapdogs parade the corpses of captured children, exchanged for living murderers and would-be murderers hailed as heros on resistance tv. Our economy suffocates as we collectively gasp for air. Still no elections.
Meanwhile the neoreactionaries and White Christian Supremacists have finally succeeded in taking over the US government, granting all practical power over Americans to the executive branch under the rule of POTUS, with the legislature, judiciary, and opposition relegated to party line toeing, toothless barking, and feckless hand-wringing, respectively. Will there even be elections?
Meanwhile the people of Ukraine stand alone against Putin the Great in his quest to contain America and control Europe, destabilizing the political processes of his democratic enemies and encouraging white nationalists across borders to scapegoat immigrants for all their personal and collective problems. Hailed by let’s face it far too many Americans and Europeans alike as a savior of western civilization, Putin accuses his victims of perpetrating the very same illiberal dictatorship that he has forced on Russia for years. Still no elections.
Meanwhile the Chinese megastate – empire, really – is slowly regaining its position as the world’s dominant economic power, slowly implementing it’s fifty year martial plan for political domination of Taiwan, the rest of east Asia, and the Pacific, slowly inserting itself into the infrastructure of countless countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, slowly overcoming all challenges to the astonishingly long arm of its ruling party. Elections??????
Meanwhile I’m just trying to raise my daughter right in the face of so many influences dragging her down, to teach her values and wisdom and love and awe and courage. I fail so hard at truly living these things myself, it’s no wonder she has trouble finding her way in them, too.
But what can we do? Our world is on fire. For those of us who’ve been through our own traumas, it’s been on fire for some time. Some days all I can do is make sure she knows she is loved. Some days the teaching and the parenting and the future-building will have to wait for tomorrow.
“Did you hear the news, Russia is fighting NATO.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, yes! Russia is fighting NATO.”
“So how’s it going?”
“Well, 70,000 Russian soldiers are dead. The missile stockpile has almost been depleted. Ships are sunk. A lot of equipment is damaged, blown up.”
“And what about NATO?”
“NATO hasn’t even arrived yet.”
😂😂😂😭😭😭
h/t Joe Bishop-Henchman : the appropriate response to Putin’s apologists and narrative pushers
Since I first heard of the Bibas family’s capture, I thought the chances were remote that Shiri and the kids would survive captivity. It seemed unlikely to me that their captors would take the trouble to care for the children, and it seemed likely to me that their mother would either spend her last breath protecting her children or be unable to cope with the trauma of losing them. People are, after all, just people. רחמנא לצלן
Some may hear that belief and say I’m a pessimist.
Some may hear my belief in a stable and enduring solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict and say I’m an optimist.
The truth is I’m just a realist. I see what’s before my eyes and I extrapolate accordingly. Events tend to follow known patterns and can be anticipated.
Sometimes I’m wrong. Usually I’m right.
But my glasses are neither dark nor rose colored.
May we never lose another family the way we lost the Bibas family.
יי ינקום דמם
יי עוז לעמו יתן
יי יברך את עמו בשלום
Meanwhile here in the Land:
“Israel is about to free 110 Palestinian prisoners, including major terror convicts, nobody knows where they are going” (h/t Times of Israel)
But hey, we’re getting three hostages back!
After over a year of reducing Gaza to rubble!
Leaving Hamas funded, armed, and in power!
This deal, bro.
This. Deal.
All I can do is pray. Learn. Try to be less reactive. Try to be more helpful. Let a little light shine through the clouds. The rest is up to the Creator.
I wrote a big long post about how aspects of this deal just don’t sit right with me, as I watch it unfold.
Deleted it.
Trying this approach instead: Given that This Is The Deal – what do we do after the exchange? What is the plan? Elections? Investigations? Strategy for finally dealing with Hamas?
Or return to October 6?
In moments like this, fear surges. The imagination runs wild. Defense mechanisms kick in. But we need to keep our collective eye on the prize: Change.
A New Deal for Israel.
The war in Gaza failed.
Hamas is still active, funded, armed, in power, and well-liked abroad.
Now can we have a strategy plz?
+ Elections
k thnx