8 Comments

I understand Hanania expects better from conservatives but slavish devotion to Israel is essentially bipartisan. We're ALL tired of the political posturing about Israel and Palestine.

Some perspective may be in order. The current conflict is less than 100 years old even though Israel would like us to forget their "Promised Land" was given over to pastoral nomads for many centuries.

Lastly, given Hanania's self-identification, the grim allusion to and indifference about a final Palestinian solution was sort of chilling.

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RE: politics vs culture

From the inside of a woke corporation it _feels_ very downstream of culture. Passion for DEI is very obvious and looks very organic. Top down pressure looks more like trying to rein it in, direct it in ways that don't hurt the business. I'm skeptical that the legal explanation is too clever, maybe a bit of metacontrarian catnip. (In fact the whole upstream downstream thing often feels like its mostly metacontrarians trying to one-up each other).

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Unrelated:

My Juneteenth trainings began with an authoritative statement on race. It said our understanding of race had been transformed by advances in "sociology, psychology, and anthropology". It included this segment:

> "Race is a social construct that categorizes people based primarily on physical characteristics or traits. Although it has commonly been associated with biology, it is important to recognize that race is not detectable in the human genome."

With an animation of a confused scientist searching a giant DNA helix with a magnifying glass.

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During the Exodus, Jews and (future) Greeks were expelled from Egypt. Much earlier, they were brought to Egypt from Mesopotamia by Aryans on their way back after their expedition to India. They found a refuge among ancient Serbs, Jews at Sinai, (future) Greeks at islands (Rodos). There are still so many Serbian toponyms at Sinai. At the highest peak, Mt Serbal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Serbal), Moses got 10 commandments from the God. It still has this name. The other peak is Mt Nebo (=Sky, in Serbian, still the same name). According to the final chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses ascended Mount Nebo to view the Land of Canaan, which God had said he would not enter; he died in Moab. According to Christian tradition, Moses was buried on the mountain, although his place of burial is not specified (Deuteronomy 34:6).

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I never understood why people said that Israel is the only democracy in the middle east? So Iraq and Lebanon are not democracies?

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founding

Am I really the first to comment? Remember back in the old blogging days, when the first person to get to comment would just say "First"! Good times...

I thought this was good and a fair treatment of Israel (my personal hobby horse). :)

1. I think that there is potential positive future here. The main stumbling block is the reluctance of the Palestinian leadership and people to admit the reality that they "lost" their various political gambles. They are still pining for the impossible scenario and that is preventing them from moving forward. Admitting your predicament is the first step in any solution. The Palestinians have been urged on and financed in this stubbornness by various outside parties for a number of reasons.

If this ever changes -- I can see the situation changing dramatically.

2. The "settler colonialism" of the first waves of Aliyah. Given how charged this term has become, I feel the need for an AKSHUALLY. :)

The settler colonialism, I think is true wrt culture only. Even us Ashkenazim have have 40-50% Levantine heritage.

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