Welcome to a hump day (“Горб кече” in Meadow Mari): Wednesday March 18, 2026, and National Sloppy Joe Day. I love them (a vmore hamburger-y version in the Midwest is often called “loosemeats”), but haven’t had one for years. It was a staple of cafeteria school lunches when I was young. Here’s one with coleslaw:
It’s also National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day, whatever that is. And that’s about it for holidays today.
Here’s an explanation of the cookie:
National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day celebrates lacy oatmeal cookies, commonly known as lace oatmeal cookies. They differ from regular oatmeal cookies in two ways: they are particularly thin cakes, similar to wafers, and they are often topped with Sorbet or ice cream.
Oatmeal cookies, which are healthy but not tasty, are the rhubarb pies of cookies. And they’re even worse when they put raisins in them (another desperate attempt to make a healthy cookie).
Oh, and there’s a Google Doodle put up yesterday celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Click below to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 18 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Obituaries first. Biologist Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford biologist who became famous as the author of The Population Bomb, has died:
Paul R. Ehrlich, an eminent ecologist and population scientist whose best-selling book, “The Population Bomb,” was celebrated as a prescient warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine but later criticized by conservatives and academic rivals for what they called its sky-is-falling rhetoric, died on Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 93.
His death, at a nursing facility in the retirement community where he lived, was caused by complications of cancer, his daughter, Lisa Marie Daniel, said.
As a young professor of biology at Stanford University in the mid-1960s, Dr. Ehrlich was known for his absorbing lectures on evolution, in which he described what plants and animals faced on a planet stressed by industrial pollution and rapid population growth. He distilled those lectures into an article published in December 1967 in New Scientist magazine.
Six months later, encouraged by David Brower, the executive director of the environmental group the Sierra Club, to write a book on the subject, Dr. Ehrlich published “The Population Bomb.” In 233 pages, he asserted that the planet’s condition began to deteriorate rapidly in the 1950s, when the rate of population growth exceeded the increase in food production — or, as he put it, when “the stork passed the plow.” He called on couples to limit their families to one or two children.
Witty, knowledgeable and not at all reticent, Dr. Ehrlich gained a huge audience on television, especially on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” which he appeared on roughly 20 times. His forecast of food riots in the United States and of imminent global famines caused by escalating population growth found a worldwide readership.
One of the best-selling nonfiction books about the environment to date, “The Population Bomb” sold three million copies and transformed Dr. Ehrlich, who was 37 at the time, into one of the global environmental movement’s most recognized leaders. His influence motivated international governments to convene conferences on controlling population, and his message was heard in private homes across the industrialized world as couples conceived fewer children.
Dr. Ehrlich expanded on his thesis in “The End of Affluence” (1974), which he wrote with his wife, Anne H. Ehrlich, who wrote or edited 15 books with him. The book forecast a “nutritional disaster” in the 1970s, predicting that “before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity.”
Ehrlich was a good scientist (he studied butterflies) who became The Chicken Little of Biology, and perhaps in love with his fame. His predictions of overpopulations and famine were not met, but perhaps for reasons he couldn’t predict. Here’s an op-ed in the LA Times (click to read; you’ll have to block ads):
An excerpt from the LAT article:
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is not that Ehrlich turned out to be so wildly wrong, but that he was so obviously wrong from the beginning. My old boss Ben Wattenberg battled Ehrlich throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His feud began with a 1970 article for the New Republic titled, “The Nonsense Explosion,” in which Wattenberg explained that even as Ehrlich was writing about soaring birthrates, birthrates were already declining.
Ehrlich’s defenders — and they are legion — argue that he was a true prophet in that prophets issue apocalyptic warnings that, if heeded, can be avoided. This is more nonsense. He said mass “die-offs” were unavoidable with even the best policies, and the anti-growth fads he supported largely made things worse.
Simply put, his pessimism was simply too big to fail.
*War news. Israel says it’s targeted and killed two important figures: Ali Larijani, an important official in running Iran since the death of the Ayatollah and the injury of his son, and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij (Iran’s plainclothed police who killed so many protestors in January).
Iran’s top security official and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ volunteer force were killed in overnight strikes in Iran, Israeli officials said Tuesday, claiming to have eliminated two of Tehran’s most senior remaining officials.
Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, and Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij, were “eliminated” in strikes overnight, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
Iranian authorities did not immediately comment on the strikes or Israel’s claims. A post on Larijani’s X feed appeared to show a handwritten tribute to Iranian Navy servicemen ahead of their funeral this week, but it was not clear when it was written.
Larijani’s death would mark one of the highest-level assassinations of Iranian officials since the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a strike on his Tehran compound on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The military campaign has decimated Iran’s political and military leadership, destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged civilian buildings, but the weakened Iranian regime maintains its grip on power and has stifled shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices spiking.
The Israel Defense Forces also announced the deaths in separate statements Tuesday, saying Larijani was killed in an airstrike near Tehran. Iran’s “de facto leader” led national security coordination across the country, including the repression of anti-government protesters, the IDF said.
Larijani had recently shared photos and videos that appeared to show him in Tehran on Friday for a march marking Quds Day, a day of solidarity with Palestinians held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.
Here’s the WaPo diagram of the government hierarchy of Iran and those who have been eliminated (click to enlarge). They really need to know the proper meaning of “decimated,” which has come to mean “destroying everyone/every thing” instead of its original meaning.
That’s pretty good striking, but how does Israel know Iranian leaders are dead before Iran even confirms it? Spies? Those without “killed” labels should be shaking in their slippers. At any rate, the regime is not collapsing yet and I’m scared to think that this war will end like the one in Gaza, with many of the oppressors still in power. (Hams still controls a lot of Gaza with its armed goons patrolling the streets).
*U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that despite several weeks of war, the hard-liners remain in charge in Iran and are consolidating power.
Western officials and analysts who study Iran said they see little near-term prospect of a “regime change” end to the 47-year-old Islamic republic or the rise of a more democratic government. The latter is a goal cited by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sometimes by President Donald Trump, who has said he’ll know the war is over “when I feel it in my bones.”
U.S. intelligence assessments issued since the war began predict Iran’s regime will remain intact and possibly even emboldened, believing it stood up to Trump and survived, according to two people familiar with the assessments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. U.S. Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, meanwhile, are angered and alarmed at being the targets of retaliatory barrages of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones.
One European official said the likeliest postwar scenario is a “rump IRGC regime” in Tehran that will retain some nuclear and missile capability as well as the support of regional proxies, though the regime will be “degraded enough that we’re in a better place than we were.”
Trump has been receiving “very sobering briefings” on the U.S. intelligence, said one of the two people familiar with the assessments. And he was told of the likelihood of a more entrenched IRGC before he gave the go-ahead to jointly launch the war with Israel, this person said.
“It wasn’t just predictable,” they said. “It was predicted. He was told in advance.”
He got the predictions, and they might be right or they might be wrong. Nobody knows what will happen save that we have at least several other weeks of war ahead of us. In the meantime, I wonder what the good people of Iran are thinking and feeling now that they haven’t yet been liberated, and perhaps never will be. But note that one by one, the leadership is being eliminated. What will happen when there’s not enough left to “consolidate”?
*The Free Press reports that “Canada no longer feels safe for Jews“. The author is Casey Babb, an expert on antisemitism. And remember, as the article notes, Jews have had a significant presence in Canada for a long time (there’s a list of notable Canadian Jews on Wikipedia).
Last month in Toronto, at one of the largest synagogues in North America, I stood in the back of a dimly lit auditorium and listened to law expert Natasha Hausdorff speak at length about Israel, antisemitism, and threats to Jewish life in Canada. To attend the event, guests had to pass through a police checkpoint, wait in freezing temperatures to get an entry badge, and then go through metal detectors. The venue was teeming with security both inside and out.
This has become the norm in Canada, and for good reason. Just weeks later, that same synagogue, along with two others in the city, was riddled with bullets. Then, in what police are calling a “national security incident,” two suspects shot at the U.S. consulate in Toronto, leading to beefed-up protection for U.S. and Israeli diplomatic buildings in the city.
The question many Jewish Canadians are now asking is, how long before we experience our own Tree of Life or Bondi Beach attack? Virtually everywhere I turn, Jews in Canada are not only wondering whether this country can remain our home, but if it’s ever truly been ours to begin with.
. . . . Yet, since the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, that has been turned on its head, and the expectation of Jews for safety, security, and acceptance in Canada now feels like a shattered illusion. There are no warning sirens alerting us to run to bomb shelters like in Israel, but we live with a general unease that comes with isolation and a growing sense of abandonment and betrayal. Jews in Canada have been forced to recognize that, making up just one percent of the population, they are no less a minority than their ancestors were in Kishinev, Baghdad, or Kielce, and now may face the kinds of threats that drove Jews away from the places that they once called home.
According to a report published by B’nai Brith Canada in April 2025, there were 6,219 antisemitic incidents in Canada in 2024, or an average of about 17 incidents of harassment, vandalism, and violence per day, or nearly one incident an hour for every hour of the year. Data released by Statistics Canada confirms the severity of the situation, showing that between 2020 and 2024, antisemitic hate crimes in Canada nearly tripled.
At the time of writing, it is not yet mid-March, and already 22 antisemitic incidents have been reported in Toronto alone, accounting for nearly 65 percent of all hate crime reports in the city. In addition to multiple shootings of synagogues, numerous Jewish-owned businesses in Montreal were recently vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, and earlier this year in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a synagogue and childcare center were spray-painted with swastikas and other hate symbols.
A bit more:
Heather McPherson, a sitting Member of Parliament, is sponsoring a petition asking the current government of Canada to investigate Canadian citizens who have served in the IDF—effectively including almost all immigrants from Israel, where military service is mandatory—on suspicion that they may have committed war crimes.
There are also the weekly demonstrations across the country, veiled as Palestinian activism, which often include vile antisemitic content and images reminiscent of Nazi Germany, calls for Jews to “go back to Poland,” direct threats to “Zionists,” and a wide range of libels used to vilify Jews and Israel. Virtually none of this is considered a “hate crime” here, yet it all fuels a deep and growing sense of seclusion, helplessness, and alienation.
From coast to coast, demonizing and targeting Jews has become so normalized that large swaths of the Jewish community are beginning to retreat inward.
The situation in Canada has become so dire for Jews that Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada, recently described the country as one of the world’s leading “centers of antisemitism.”
You could tell similar stories about Belgium and Spain, and to a lesser extent France. Nobody loves the Jews, or, as Dara Horn said in her book, they love only the dead ones.
*Here’s a video of Barbra Steisand, now 83, paying tribute—and offering a bit of singing—to Robert Redford at the Oscars on Sunday. Redford died last September at 89. I love Babs, one of the two greatest female pop singers of my lifetime (the other was Karen Carpenter), as well as a great actor and director. Redford was, in my view, the handsomest actor of our era, and also a very good one. They starred together in only one movie, “The Way We Were”, a romantic tearjerker from 1973. The song she sang at the Oscars. written by Marvin Hamlisch, was the theme of that movie theme (original release here). Her voice has gone, but what do you expect at that age? She retired from singing long ago, but managed to come up with a tune for this tribute.
The final bittersweet scene, when Hubbell (Redford) meets ex-wife Katie (Streisand) in front of New York’s Plaza Hotel, where Katie is demonstrating to ban the bomb. They haven’t seen each other for years, have a sad, extended goodbye, and slip out of each other’s lives. If you look into the dictionary under “handsome”, you’ll see Redford’s picture.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili plays Galileo:
Hili: And yet it moves.
Andrzej: Some are still not sure.
In Polish:
Hili: A jednak się kręci.
Ja: Niektórzy nadal nie są pewni.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day, with the caption, “While many are feeling green and rather drunk, I prefer St Gertrude of Nivelles,patron of cats and gardeners.
” ” St. Gertrude died on St. Patrick’s day in 659, aged 30 or 31, and the cat attribution is a bit questionable.
From Stacy:
From The Language Nerda:
From Masih. The gang-rape of nurses appears to be true (see here and here). Not a good look for Starmer:
A Sky News editor and representatives of prime Minister of UK @Keir_Starmer’s government attended a party at the Iran’s regime embassy in London celebrating the anniversary of the Islamic Republic. On the same days the regime’s security forces stormed a hospital and gang-raped… pic.twitter.com/GnImr8JwL3
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 17, 2026
I can’t remember where I found this, but it’s very sad. I wonder what will happen to the soccer players who tried to defect and then decided to go back home. Iran was horrible enough to arrest their families just to get lure them back in the country.
Just so people understand what happened here:
These women claimed asylum because they were likely to be tortured and killed for a gesture standing up to the regime. The regime then started kidnapping their families instead to force them to come home and face likely execution. https://t.co/vPlEVc0jsC
— AG (@AGHamilton29) March 16, 2026
Another one I found:
How a ladybug unfolds its hidden wings to take flightpic.twitter.com/ma9s1AngJI
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 17, 2026
Two from my feed. Another from Massimo:
Such an incredible performancepic.twitter.com/RSSA5RxgOX
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 17, 2026
. . . and a lovely ballerina:
🩰 Svetlana Zakharova 18 years old How beautiful. She looks like air when she moves, it astonishes me 💗😍🌹 pic.twitter.com/cU3o6rZi7G
— ✨🎻Harmonic melody🎻✨ (@diep84930) March 17, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Czech Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was eleven years old. https://t.co/DO5YdLDI0x
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) March 18, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. I’ve posted the first one before, but it’s worth seeing again. If you’re near Exeter, go see it:
thinking about the medieval cat door in Exeter cathedral again
— weird medieval guys (@weirdmedieval.bsky.social) 2026-03-16T19:58:33.183Z
Matthew says this is the third Guardian article about Colossal in the last year. Is the paper credulous?
I can see every ancient DNA scientist in the world currently cringing about @itiscolossal.bsky.social scientists' lack of gloves when sampling moa bones 🤦♂️ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
— Nic Rawlence (@nicrawlencenz.bsky.social) 2026-03-16T02:20:03.773Z
A scientist can make predicitions. When those predictions are wrong and he insists that they weren’t, he becomes a prophet.
And then he is right no matter what he says.
Interesting point about decimate, here’s what the dictionary I use says :
[begin quote ]
USAGE
Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is ‘kill one in every ten of (a group of people)’
This sense has been superseded by the later, more general sense
‘kill or destroy a large percentage or part of,’ as in ‘the virus has decimated the population’. Some traditionalists argue that this and other later senses are incorrect, but it is clear that these extended senses are now part of standard English. It is sometimes also argued that decimate should refer to people and not to things or animals such as weeds or insects. It is generally agreed that decimate should not be used to mean ‘defeat utterly’
ORIGIN
late 16th century: from Latin decimat-‘taken as a tenth’, from the verb decimare, from decimus ‘tenth’.
In Middle English the term decimation denoted the levying of a tithe, and later the tax imposed by Cromwell on the Royalists (1655).
[ end quote ]
Many such cases… maybe ultimate, … I’ll probably think of some later…
Sadly, at least some AI bots provide this incorrect explanation:
Decimate
The Latin term for to reduce by 90% is “decimate.” This term is commonly used in English to describe a significant reduction in quantity or number.
When I asked Microsoft’s CoPilot specifically for a Latin phrase to describe “To reduce by 90%” I got this: nad decimam redigere. I don’t think that we’ll be seeing the correct usage any time soon.
Sooooo, I have a question about the AI :
10-1=9
Let 10 be 100%
Then :
1 is 10% of 10
9 is 90% of 10
If 10 is decreased by 1, it is decreased by 10%, leaving 90% of the starting number.
So 10 was reduced to 90% of its original value.
That’s all the time we have for today’s edition of Pilpul Is Easy!.
Tune in tomorrow when we look at cereal, and the order in which milk, cream, fruit, or nuts is added. 😁
The key feature was that the 10% of the mutinous Roman legion to be punished with decimation were chosen by lot (plus the singled-out ringleaders.) This provided the appropriate education and still preserved the fighting force. Thus shown the error of their ways, the lucky survivors could be reformed into other legions with confidence that they wouldn’t foment mutiny again.
Decimation was a deliberate punitive act under military justice, not a random combat phenomenon as the Romans used the term. Historian Margaret MacMillan (no relation) says that once a military formation loses 10% of its starting strength to combat or disease, it will either surrender or lose enough combat effectiveness to need to be be rotated out of the front line to regroup with new recruits. (The Japanese defence of Iwo Jima and Okinawa was conspicuous in that very few surrendered.) This normal wartime process wasn’t considered decimation.
As to its modern use, well, English evolves.
Evolves, yes. It seems to me that much of the recent evolution of the English language is caused by people just not understanding what words mean.
I cannot see anyone educated in either military history or Latin not knowing the origin or proper usage of decimate.
That is true of any population at any historical time. That’s HOW languages evolve.
Enormity, for one. From the OED (on my Mac) :
“Enormity traditionally means ‘the extreme scale or seriousness of something bad or morally wrong”
But now its :
” Today, however, a more neutral sense as a synonym for hugeness or immensity, as in ‘he soon discovered the enormity of the task’, is common.
Nevertheless, the sense of ‘great size’ is now broadly accepted in standard English, although it generally relates to something difficult, such as a task, challenge, or achievement”
Seems a million wrongs make a right. And let’s not forget the completely wrong usage of “it begs the question” when it should be “it raises the question”.🤦
Iran taking hostage dissidents’ families isn’t out of line in that part of the world. It isn’t uncommon in Saudi Arabia if a guy is suspected of terrorism and wanted, the cops sometimes will arrest his brother or cousin… and wait for the accused to turn up at the police station.
D.A.
NYC
Noted last night to great astonishment, Andy Borowitz seems to think that those thinking that Iranian women are being blinded in one eye over hijabs are hallucinating. Anyone else see that?
I can’t find it. Do you have a link?
I don’t seem to be able to extract it, but it’s in his FB stream, March 16. Just enter Andy Borowitz in the search box.
Though he was wrong about humans, it’s worth noting that Ehrlich was right for most non-human species, with the exception of things like rats, cockroaches, dandelions. The sky really has fallen, but not for us.
To be fair to Ehrlich, farming in the ’60’s was very different then what we enjoy today.
The term “industrialized agriculture” is used today as a pejorative by many, but it is the most productive, least GHG-emissive way to produce crops. It is why we are still on track to feed the many billions more people we have in the world today and in future. Ehrlich’s mistake was not to anticipate that revolution, but few did.
When Ehrlich was born (in 1932), an acre of land planted with corn yielded 26.5 bushels. When he completed “Population Bomb”, that acre yielded 80.1 bushels.
It is now right around 180 Bushels per acre.
It seems unlikely that he could have looked at USDA records of agricultural trends and not noticed the more or less steady increase in efficiency after WW2.
The force multiplier was the small farm tractor. The companies that expanded greatly for war production of tanks and other war necessities were set up perfectly to produce tractors and implements for all the young farmers who came home from the war intending to build a nice little house and farm with machinery instead of horses.
One thing I did not expect to see in the data was that while yield per acre showed a fairly steady increase, the number of acres planted with corn was fairly consistent over the same period.
Well, the agricultural revolution was well underway.
If one wants to make predictions about food shortages, it is a good idea to investigate what is going on in the field. the work of Norman Borlaug was known by the time Ehrlichs book came out.
It is a shame that most of the obituaries of Ehrlich that I have seen fail to mention the classic Ehrlich and Raven 1964 paper that stimulated the modern study of co-evolution (a term that the paper may even have introduced).
Paul Ehrlich’s death is another great blow to biology, following as it does closely on the heels of Robert Triver’s announced passing last week. These were two of the greats in our field of evolution and ecology, and their legacies will long last. Many thanks and RIP to both of these intellectual luminaries.
“Oatmeal cookies, which are healthy but not tasty, are the rhubarb pies of cookies.”
That’s blasphemy, and I for one, won’t put up with it !
Yes, oatmeal cookies with raisins (or are one or two of them houseflies?) are an abomination. And, yes, a bad oatmeal cookie is much worse than a bad chocolate chip cookie. But these bad cookies are mass-produced. It’s almost impossible to make a bad chocolate chip cookie in your own oven, and quite easy to make wonderful oatmeal cookies yourself.
Toward that end, here is the NYT recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I make all the time. They’re delectable, chewy, chocolaty, and have the same caramelized sugar taste and feel of a Toll House. Rhubarb pie (ugh) will be the furthest thing from your mind.
Hint – Take them out a tad early and let them cool before trying to remove them. And adding nuts – peanuts, pecans, pistachios, or cashews – bumps them up a notch too.
https://archive.is/qG91U
Very good. I suggest substituting butterscotch chips for the chocolate, and adding some maple flavoring. Amazing.
As happens, I am the weird one in that I like oatmeal cookies. If they have raisins, I like them less, but they still won’t last long around me.
I’m the contrarian who will be trying out raisins in my excellent rhubarb tarts.
That sounds like the “two-hit” model of oncogenesis. Or the “double-tap” method of battlefield execution.
But yes I love home-made oatmeal cookies. Butterscotch chips sound like a good enhancement — thanks Sastra — because I don’t particularly like them with chocolate chips. OCs are one of the very few sweet or savory comestibles that chocolate doesn’t enhance.
Back in the day we used to eat them as refrigerator cookies: left to chill as little balls of unbaked dough. Not supposed to do that any more, what with E. coli O157:H7 in the flour.
“His predictions of overpopulations and famine were not met, but perhaps for reasons he couldn’t predict. ”
For some reason, that brought this exchange to mind:
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
“Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?”
The report from The Free Press is distressing. But I see it all around me: people whom I have known all my life, relatives and friends, who have become antisemitic since the Oct.7 massacre. Or were they that way all along and I just did not notice?
Last October, I attended a remembrance event in Ottawa, where one of the speakers was a survivor of Oct. 7th, and the security was much as described by Casey Babb. It was pretty shocking to me, as a Canadian, that things have gotten to this point.
Anyone who has read Victor Klemperer can see the similarities. In Canada! In 2026!
Here in the US, in a town and neighborhood I have lived in virtually all of my life, I have sensed a new, uneasy silence around me at times. It may be that I am simply becoming more boorish with the years, but I really do sense an uneasiness about it all. You’re not paranoid if they are really after you.
I have a mezuzah outside my front door, and I feel a twinge of worry whenever someone—a contractor, the UPS guy, even a neighbor—glances at it. What are they thinking? Do they know what it is? Are they making a mental note? My parents, who learned at a young age to live under the radar even in the United States, posted their mezuzah inside the front door, rather than outside. Do we need to go underground and become crypto-Jews again?
We cannot self-identify as victims nor develop a victim mentality, Norman. No matter how old and frail we become.
I have one on my front door despite being an atheist – a “hat” friend gave it to me but he has been unsuccessful in saving my soul. 🙂
It being there is a bit of a fake though as since we have a “desk” downstairs only my 7 neighbors and invited guests can ever see it. Food delivery maybe but they’re all West Africans and Latinos.
I’m not sure what my policy would be if I lived in a stand alone home.
I’d probably keep it up – I don’t things are that bad yet, Norman.
D.A.
NYC
Me, too! I’m an atheist with a mezuzah—a big, ornate one by artist Gary Rosenthal, very close to this: https://www.garyrosenthal.org/product/gm2-narrow-pointed-copper-mezuzah-with-glass/. (Sadly, he is going out of business.) I’m not going into hiding.
Claudia – re: “Anyone who has read Victor Klemperer can see the similarities.”
Thank you for the mention, reminder, I need to re-read and read what I’ve not.
I find this thread heart-breaking. I don’t want to boast about the little things we’re trying to do to help. I’m just profoundly sad and angry that they are necessary.
Jim – I have noticed the uneasy silence too. I am not a Jew, but I support Israel and am anti-Hamas. That is enough to make me persona non grata at certain gatherings, even some of my close family members. I can hardly believe that these people stand up for Hamas 100%. The Muslim Brotherhood termites are dining well up here in Canada. So many brain washed, middle class, white people around me, old and young.
Dan – It’s shocking to read “I Will Bear Witness” now. When I read the two books when they first came out, it was easy to think that that was then and this is now. Not so much anymore. Depressing and scary.
Leslie – please do boast. I want to hear what you are doing, because maybe I can do it too.
Thank you, claudia. To be able to talk with these people if the opportunity arises out of the silence, I have taken the mission to know facts as well as one can through reading as much as I can on the land as I think i have said here before, starting around 2000bce…who lived there, who conquered who when, up through now. With emphasis on 19th century through now. Books read include Herzl’s The Jewish State, antonius’ The Arab Awakening, morris’ 1948, Oren’s Six Days of War, Rabinovitch’s Yom Kippur War, Gilberts Atlas of the Arab Israeli Conflict, along with documents from numerous organizations AND very importantly a selection of readings on post modernism and the anti enlightenment mindset that allows for the oppressed/oppressor philosophy which all these little shits seem to spout so easily.
I also have an advantage of familiarity with a story to start with…what I remember from religious and hebrew school in the 1950’s where we had emigrants from europe and a holocaust survivor among the teachers.
I have twice during the local demonstrations in the Fall of 2023 on a college campus taken on the little palis by strongly countering their bullshit placards with my voice. Could never just silently walk by I have decided.
I love the mission you have taken on! Thank you for all the book suggestions. I have read a couple, but not all of these.
It’s so hard to have these conversations though. I find people get really defensive very quickly, and don’t want to hear “facts”. But I will persevere.
Btw, though I am not Jewish, I do have two Jewish grandchildren (in the U.S.) and I worry about their futures.
On decimate. Wouldn’t it be TERRIFIC if NICE words never changed? This EGREGIOUS MANUFACTURE of ARTIFICIAL words with SILLY meanings—how AWFUL! I don’t mean to BULLY or even be NAUGHTY; my comment is meant to be GAY!
Roughly ten of the above words now commonly mean nearly the opposite of what they once meant or have taken on entirely different denotations. Unless you are Bill Clinton—in which case you might add one, but it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.
On a more serious note: Every targeted and dead leader in Iran is a man. A male man. Let that sink in. Every single one. I wonder why that might be.
Has anyone ever noticed before that the Iran leadership does not seem to include any women? Am I the first? Is it some kind of sexist place?
The Velayat-e faqih, which must rule until the return of the missing 12th Imam, cannot include women. Notice all the faqihs have beards—but if sex is a spectrum, as our faquihs of Gender Theory tell us, the beards may not be altogether definitive evidence.
As a Canadian goy with family history of helping Jews survive the Shoah, I feel obliged to help in countering the antisemitism, but I am also scared to show support publicly. Which says something about how bad it got. It really is a big problem because most young people have been brainwashed. It is uncanadian to scapegoat people. They need to be reminded that they have to change.
While Canada does seem to be a leading country in woke antisemitic incidents, there is no lack of them in the US. It is not just the physical attacks on Jews, but the tolerance of them by many in mainstream politics. When someone can attack restaurant sidewalk diners for speaking Hebrew, and the authorities do not recognize it as a “hate crime”, it is worth paying attention. And of course theirs is that small example of an antisemites being elected mayor of a city that was once referred to as “Hymietown”.
Meanwhile the European gauche is going more and more islamo 😔