All The News That's Fit to Spin

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

Just a few quick pipeline notes before we get into it:

First, I sent this reminder to the readers of JUDITH and I want to include them here for the Never Alone community as well:

This coming Sunday, July 20, at 10 am Paficic time — which is 1 pm Eastern and 8 pm in Israel — Nicole Graev Lipson will join us via Zoom to talk about Never Alone Book Club’s July pick: Mothers And Other Fictional Characters.

As I’ve said before, the writing in this book is an absolute knockout. I could not put this book down and I believe the prose is Pulitzer-worthy. These are incredible essays, and JUDITH had the honor and privilege of running one of them, Tikkun Olam Ted, in our fiction section. If you didn’t have a chance to read it then, please don’t hesitate to do so now to get a taste of Nicole’s talent and level of accomplishment.

Again: this is the first book club event we’ve scheduled on a Sunday so that Israelis can join, and I very much hope that many of you will. If attendance is good, I’ll be happy to keep scheduling on Sundays so the whole Jewish mishpucha can come.

If you’re on Facebook, please visit the Event section within the Never Alone Book Club’s page and RSVP.

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Second, I am thrilled to announce a new feature that JUDITH is offering: the Tell Me More podcast hosted by the luminous Sally Wiener Grotta!

Her pilot podcast just went up about an hour ago, and this is her introduction to it:

For this inaugural episode, I chatted with author L.J. Cohen about the inspirations, author angst, and years of growth behind her latest novel Litany for a Broken World. Set in the very real world of Boston's unhoused population, Litany for a Broken World is a rich interweaving of multiverse fantasy and metaphysical science fiction that brings tikkun olam (the concept that each of us are responsible for repairing the world) to a modern retelling of The Wizard of Oz. And it's filled with characters (and a dog) that will stick with you for a long time.

L.J. Cohen is the author of eight other novels and was among the first wave of indie writers to qualify for membership in SFWA - Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Derelict, the first book in her Halcyone Space series, was named a Library Journal Self-e Select Title and Book of the Year in 2014.

I hope you’ll listen to their riveting conversation! The link to do that is HERE.

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Okay, onward. Another day, another bout of asking myself just what a girl can find to read these days that isn’t full of ridiculous spin and/or sane-washing of the current U.S. administration.

This week the New York Times has truly outdone itself, with an op-ed headlined I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It, in which yet another “good” Jew is trotted out to say, as if it hasn’t been said a thousand times already: at first I was reluctant to call the war in Gaza a genocide, but now my inescapable conclusion — as much as it pains me to say it — is that Israel is committing genocide.

The writer, Omer Bartov, goes on to darkly warn that Israel — “whatever the stand of its individual citizens may be” — will “carry this mark of Cain long after the fires of hatred and violence are put out.”

Again, such dramatic pronouncements seem only to apply to Israel.

In response to a single terror attack that represented 1/12 of the scale of the October 7th massacre, the U.S. waged war on Iraq for 8 long years and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians — men, women and children. Is the U.S. carrying a mark of Cain? Is it a pariah among the good nations of the world?

Gaza is governed by an openly genocidal regime that savagely tortured, raped and slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, one by one, in less than 24 hours. Is Gaza carrying a mark of Cain? On the contrary, it appears to be the darling of progressives across the globe.

Then there is the article of today (titled: Handshakes or Airstrikes: What Does Israel Want in Syria?) in which Patrick Kingsley pretends to be mystified over Israel’s decision to strike Damascus in defense of the Druze in Southern Syria, who were being brutalized by the government forces of Ahmed al-Sharaa (aka Abu Mohammad al-Julani).

After al-Sharaa’s rebel faction (known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS) toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, the former al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliate sought to re-brand himself as a force for regional stability and moderation. He donned a three-piece suit and embarked on a charm-offensive circuit aimed at convincing western world leaders that he’s left his terrorist persona in the past. And this seemed to work, at least in the U.S., which dropped HTS’ terrorist designation earlier this month.

Kingsley reports: The specific spur for Israel’s actions this week was the Syrian government’s deployment of forces to southwest Syria to contain fighting between Bedouin tribesmen and Syria’s Druse minority.

“Contain fighting” is a very interesting way to describe a torture and murder spree, perpetrated by Syrian government forces upon the Druze.

Per JNS: Syrian government forces carried out a four-day massacre this week of the Druze minority in Suweida, a Druze town in southern Syria. An estimated 300 Druze were slaughtered in a series of barbaric atrocities perpetrated by troops loyal to the new Syrian president, Abu Mohammed al-Julani.

The Druze in Israel, generally speaking, are among the most loyal and valiant citizens of the Jewish nation, and they pleaded with Israel to intervene on behalf of their Syrian brethren.

Israel did so decisively and effectively, to my profound gratification.

While in Israel, I stayed for two nights in the Druze village of Isfiya, a remarkably peaceful area where murals like this one are blessedly emblematic of the harmony and goodwill there.

I’ve also read so many stories over the past decade in which the Israeli Druze have gone to great lengths to protect their Jewish neighbors.

I was thrilled that Israel stepped up to protect their Syrian siblings.

My family doesn’t even blink anymore when I erupt in profanity while reading the news. Such was the case today in response to this assessment by Kingsley:

Israel’s brazen strikes this week on Syrian government forces and infrastructure… exemplified how Israel… is now more likely to use force to pre-emptively address perceived threats — even if it derails diplomatic efforts to achieve the same goal.

“It seems very discordant,” said Itamar Rabinovich, an Israeli historian of Syria who led Israel’s negotiations with Syria during the 1990s. “It runs against the effort to negotiate.”

The strikes reflect Israel’s post-2023 military doctrine, which combines, Mr. Rabinovich said, “a very strange mixture of paranoia following Oct. 7 and a sense of power following the success in Lebanon and in Iran. And the result is this preference for using force rather than diplomacy.”

Oh, FFS. Where to even start?

Post-2023, my ass. What is the Begin Doctrine, if not exactly that? And which has been in force since 1962?

And paranoia, my ass! This is gaslighting taken to an art form. What just happened to the Syrian Druze is a prime example of how Islamist jihadism has always treated ethnic minorities who have had the misfortune of dwelling within the former’s domain.

Seriously, what am I supposed to read? WAPO sold out when Trump was re-elected. Twitter used to be gold for up-to-the-moment on-the-ground commentary, and now it’s a Nazi wasteland. All mainstream media is doing some form of sane-washing and equivocating when it comes to our fascist government.

The more left-leaning outlets are all aligned against Israel, to the point of active censorship and ruthless spin-doctoring to cast Israel in the worst possible light for every single thing she does.

And while I believe in reading my ideological enemies, if only to know what they’re saying, it’s much harder to swallow paying them. And yet of course it’s nearly impossible to access the content without doing so.

If anyone has recommendations for me, please send them.

Okay, fam. Tomorrow I’ll be posting a new Jews Of The Universe column, which I hope you will read and share, because to date, it’s the most important one I’ve ever written.

Looking forward to being back with you then.

Much love in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.