Udi

It's Purim right now, a Jewish festival which is entirely Persian. My heart, my thoughts and my prayers, such as they are, are with the Iranian People.

There'll be a Jordanian princess flying in defence of Israel again. This region really could be a wonderful place.

Revolutions and uprisings don't normally work when regime forces are willing to fire on demonstrators (Hungary 1956, the Prague Spring in Czechoslovak in 1968, Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989)... But no revolt or uprising has ever had such an air force before.

You can't spend 47 years saying, "Death to America! Death to Israel" and then be surprised when the US and Israel eventually do something about it.

I just realized something this morning:
many anti-semites truly don't realize that they're anti-semites.

Has everyone else always known this?
(Honest question BTW)

Watching City lose the derby reminds me of what I used to feel like watching United lose a big match: I feel like I've just watched the best stand-up comedy ever. (You can guess which team I support)

...or the "Looting of Safed" of 1834?

What would Christopher Hitchens say?
I can't hold a candle to his him, but I'm quite sure that given his experience esp. in Kurdistan, similar to my family's in Hungary, he'd still approve of the toppling of a dictator. In 1944, despite Stalin's crimes, it was the glorious Red Army. Now it's Trump.

Good Shabbos
...or, if you see this tomorrow, a gut Woch.

BTW. I don't know whether or not you're a Zionist but for me, with everything that has happened and is happening, I use those interactions with anti-semites to strengthen my own Zionism.

I spend too much of my time responding to anti-semites online. I've made it a sport. I enjoy it some of the time. I wish I could advise you not to do the same but I would be being massively hypocritical.

Second piece of virtue signalling using Gaza* by Rutger Bregan in his Reith Lecture: the genocide scholars were warning that a genocide might be happening. It didn't happen. But in many minds now it did and is stated as a fact in passing in the midst of another discussion.

*The first vis Hiroshima👇

Question:
We dropped the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs on Gaza and killed less than one Hiroshima bomb in Hiroshima (counting Hamas fighters too and going still by numbers provided by Hamas). This in the most densely populated place on the planet.
How exactly did that happen?

Thanks

They're second in the league and have only lost twice, which is the same as Barca who sit above them. So...?

If the United States continues its claim to Greenland then Denmark should claim Maine and Massachusetts. Surely there were Danish Vikings there before the pilgrim fathers.

About time

Was that the basis for the TV drama Six Feet Under?

WTF?

I wonder why.
(I mean that seriously BTW.
What's different this night to all other nights?)

I get that, but if you look back you were responding to *me* talking about what led to 7/10 and I wasn't talking about that. Perhaps that word triggered you and I'd understand completely. I've also been swimming in a cesspit of online anti-semites.
BTW. I love your use of "darling".

BTW. When there finally is a state inquiry into 7/10, as for the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, do you really think the findings will be: it was all Hamas's fault? No, because the whole point of Zionism is that we aren't just helpless victims, we're responsible for our security.

... The conceptsia, which has now been shown to have been false group think, collapsed on 7/10.
The father/chief architect of the conceptsia was Bibi.
The fact that Bibi allowed Qatari cash to go to Hamas while his office also took Qatar's money also adds a bitter taste to that equation.

OK. In Israel we talk of the "conseptsia" (like the English word "conception"): the idea prevalent in security circles, eg esp the IDF, shin bet and the PM that Hamas was deterred, ie. that they wouldn't act due to fear and that it was good to keep them in place and Fatah weak in the West Bank...

Why? Please explain.

Exiting as a response/reward to terrorism strengthens those who support/commit terrorism. If you want to divide and rule, that's a theory (which led to 7/10). But to do so by strengthening those who want to attack you (and had murdered many civilians) seems bonkers.

...You get security cooperation and agreements with Arab states in exchange for some prisoner releases ('twas after the 2nd intifada) and withdrawals in stages on the understanding that the IDF enters if necessary, but as an army rather than as a police force protecting/dealing with settlers.

I think Sharon did know. He set it up to strengthen Hamas, the same reason that Netanyahu let through all those suitcases of cash from Qatar (assuming it wasn't all just corruption).

As I say, the idea was to do it in such a way which would strengthen those who want a negotiated peace:
...

Yes, it's one of the best words.
Most of the kids starting school this year in Israel are from non-Zionist homes (mostly Arab and Ultra-Orthodox).

...For clarity: the thought after Oslo collapsed/2nd Intifada was to do it unilaterally while either pretending that it's negotiated and/or coordinating it in a way which would strengthen the Palestinians who wanted to negotiate. The manner of Sharon's unilateralism was not a peacenik idea.

Withdrawing unilaterally wasn't a peacenik idea—it was Sharon (the "father of the settlements"). It weakened the Palestinians who wanted to negotiate & strengthened the grip in the West Bank (and also Hamas). And yet, controlling Gaza or South Lebanon was never good for us. No-one sane wants it now.