Zechariah 12

[Athanasius]

But you are always the ass…

No wait

Did I type that out loud.?

Correct call, not just because of this exchange in which Oscar advocated for Hamas in the most disgusting passive aggressive sugar wouldn’t met in his mouth morally and intellectually superior manner, but because that has been his general approach to all of us throughout

Yeah, and I read back to around July 12th when the exchange of the day was Mamdani and intifada, and the treatment of "intifada" there was fantastically disingenuous. Reading then up through today (August 11th), well, decision made.

[Sojourner]

While one can find subtle nuance in most things, in order to see it in the Nazis or Islamic terrorists as Oscar claims, one must step outside of reality. It's beyond me how one can think advances in science achieved during Hitler's reign somehow balances out a calculated, concerted campaign of genocide against Jews. Oscar has always has been a black cloud on the forum me, and I won't miss him. Athanasius made the right call.

[Fenris]

Continuing on this bizarre topic, the French government will no longer be issuing work visas for Israelis who work security at the Israeli airline's El Al counter. El Al security are extremely thorough and very good at picking out individuals who will cause trouble, or worse. This means that the security will fall to the French TSA or equivalent. Do I have a good feeling about this? I do not. 

[RabbiKnife]

Continuing on this bizarre topic, the French government will no longer be issuing work visas for Israelis who work security at the Israeli airline's El Al counter. El Al security are extremely thorough and very good at picking out individuals who will cause trouble, or worse. This means that the security will fall to the French TSA or equivalent. Do I have a good feeling about this? I do not.

I hope El Al stops all its flight to The Land of Surrender Monkeys immediately.

[Fenris]

Just some thoughts.

I wonder if the Jewish time in the West is over.

Jews have been in the West since there was a West. They lived in Greece and Rome before the first century. It was not always a peaceful coexistence. As Jewish essayist Maurice Samuel once put it, “no one loves his alarm clock." And Jews, however imperfectly they lived their lives, did represent a higher calling of perfecting the world under God's rule.

If Jewish existence in the west ends, I do not think that it will look like previous negative encounters in the west. There were mass expulsions of Jews in the middle ages, England in 1290, France in 1308, Spain in 1492, and so on. There were pogroms and mass murder against Jews, during the Crusades, for example, or the Cossack revolution in Russia led by Bogdan Chmielnicki, which murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews. And of course we have the Holocaust. But I don't think Jewish life in the West will end in those ways. I think it will be something softer, something more insidious. It will be that fact that Jews won't have the same rights or legal protections as other citizens. For example, a 65 year old French Jewish woman named  Sarah Attal-Halimi was murdered by her neighbor, one Kobili Traoré, an African Muslim. He shouted "Allah Ahkabr" while he beat her to death and then threw her body out of the window. He was found not guilty of the murder because he was high on marijuana at the time. It's little things like that. They add up. It's even happened here, under the Biden administration Jewish students on college campuses were harassed and not permitted to go to class by protesters. This behavior was not punished until Trump became president. What is a NYC under Mamdani going to look like? Or an America under a president AOC? Does anyone believe that Jews will receive fair and equal treatment under the law?

[RabbiKnife]

T S Eliot concludes “The Hollow Men” with the triad “this is the way the world ends” then “not with a bang, but a whimper.”

As the West secularizes everything and as church remains silent to evil in support of the Christian-Industrial Religious Complex, those expressing faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will become more and more excluded and marginalized, and of course the Christian Industrial Religous Complex has a 2000 year old history of using Jews as scapegoats

[Athanasius]

The West is already dead, we're just all still a bit slow in recognising it.

For now, I grab my popcorn and watch as authoritarianism takes hold. I would have never guessed it'd be called "Donald".

[Fenris]

As the West secularizes everything and as church remains silent to evil in support of the Christian-Industrial Religious Complex, those expressing faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will become more and more excluded and marginalized, and of course the Christian Industrial Religous Complex has a 2000 year old history of using Jews as scapegoats

Europe is already post-Christian. More people attend services at mosques than at churches. Does the same thing happen here? For a long time I have felt that Europe is a "Christian" continent while America is a "Judeo-Christian" continent. Does that stave off what is happening in Europe? I do not know. 

[Fenris]

For now, I grab my popcorn and watch as authoritarianism takes hold. I would have never guessed it'd be called "Donald".

Trump is far from a prefect president. However, with regards to the topic at hand of exclusion of Jews from public life, he is reversing the trend of what is going on in Europe.

Being Jewish means seeing the world differently (as I know Christians do also). If a country is good to its Jews, then we tend to view it as a benevolent country, as they usually are. If a country is bad to its Jews, then its about to get bad for a whole lot of other people really soon. In this sense Trump is far preferrable to Obama, or Biden, or Kamela, or Starmer, or Macron...

[Fenris]

The Toronto film festival cancelled a documentary about the October 7 attacks by Hamas, because, wait for it, the terrorists who filmed the attacks own the footage and haven't given consent to show it.

[Athanasius]

For now, I grab my popcorn and watch as authoritarianism takes hold. I would have never guessed it'd be called "Donald".

Trump is far from a prefect president. However, with regards to the topic at hand of exclusion of Jews from public life, he is reversing the trend of what is going on in Europe.

Being Jewish means seeing the world differently (as I know Christians do also). If a country is good to its Jews, then we tend to view it as a benevolent country, as they usually are. If a country is bad to its Jews, then its about to get bad for a whole lot of other people really soon. In this sense Trump is far preferrable to Obama, or Biden, or Kamela, or Starmer, or Macron...

A concern I have is that unless Donald really did try to hold onto his seat of power (and that comes with its own grave concerns), when the pendulum swings, the authoritarian actions he's taken will be adopted by whoever next comes into power. If that group isn't favourable towards Israel, it will have the ability to be far crueller towards her than if Donald hadn't acted as he did. I guess I'm worried that "yay Donald" risks being a short-term reprieve.

Donald leaves in 2028, and the Democrats win, now more authoritarian than ever.

I'm in a country that is in the process of stripping from me a large portion of my legal protections. Why? To be US Lite buddy-buddy with Donald.

[Fenris]

A concern I have is that unless Donald really did try to hold onto his seat of power (and that comes with its own grave concerns), when the pendulum swings, the authoritarian actions he's taken will be adopted by whoever next comes into power. If that group isn't favourable towards Israel, it will have the ability to be far crueller towards her than if Donald hadn't acted as he did. I guess I'm worried that "yay Donald" risks being a short-term reprieve.

I agree with everything that you said here 100%. I'm a small government conservative, maybe even a libertarian, and any expansion of government power is bad.

Still, we had the choices that we were given, and Donald >>>>>>>Kamela. We will deal with the 2028 problems in 2028.

I'm in a country that is in the process of stripping from me a large portion of my legal protections. Why? To be US Lite buddy-buddy with Donald.

Which country is that, if I may ask?

[Athanasius]

I agree with everything that you said here 100%. I'm a small government conservative, maybe even a libertarian, and any expansion of government power is bad.

Still, we had the choices that we were given, and Donald >>>>>>>Kamela. We will deal with the 2028 problems in 2028.

For all our sakes I hope they're "better" problems than 2025 problems, and probably also 2026, 2027...

Which country is that, if I may ask?

The UK

[Fenris]

For all our sakes I hope they're "better" problems than 2025 problems, and probably also 2026, 2027...

Who knows. They will for sure be different problems.

The UK

I think your government is embarking on an entirely different set of problems, unrelated to the Donald. The opposite in many ways. But yes, authoritarian.

[Sojourner]

Still, we had the choices that we were given, and Donald >>>>>>>Kamela.

That's what it boils down to. We had a choice between two candidates--as an independent like the Libertarians still struggles to gain traction against the two major parties.The bottom line is, for all Trump's faults, he was a better choice than what the discombobulated Democrats had to offer, and a majority of American voters recognized that, so here we are. What happens in 2026 and 2028 is anybody's guess.