This Is The Closest To A Comic-accurate Gomez I've Ever Seen In A Live Action Adaptation, Too.

I'm an American national married to a German citizen and living in southwestern Germany. I am also a Jew who is the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors. I work for a local school as a teacher and afterschool helper.

In both the town I live in and the town I work in, there are remnants of Jewish life from before the Holocaust, but it is highly likely that I am the only Jew to set foot in either town in the present day.

Tomorrow is October 7th, 2024.

So what am I doing?

Tomorrow, I am bringing a few hundred honeycake muffins to work. They were made using my grandmother's recipe. I will be sharing them with my students and the rest of the school, for a sweet new year for them.

A recipe that the Nazis did their best to wipe out...

being shared by a Jewish teacher in a German school...

on the anniversary of the largest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Because we Are Still Here, and we will dance again. We shall share food, and kindness, and traditions, again.

Am Yisrael Chai

Scott Westerfeld is up there with Suzanne Collins as "Sci Fi futuristic dystopia authors who had Something To Say And Damn Well Dedicated Themselves To That Something."

Just to remind you, this is the wonderful record that UNRWA schools have, when it comes to the education they provide to Palestinian kids (and we can all figure out what it translates into):

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

NOBODY TOUCH ME THOSE ARE GOLD ACCENTS ON HIS KEFTA

Reminder that Christmas is a religious holiday and all the things that come with it (the tree, the colors, the traditions, etc.) are apart of it (even if you don’t celebrate for religious reasons it still is) and if you say “Oh it’s just part of the season” you’re throwing your Jewish & other not Christian religious participants under the bus

Another Colleague Conversation

I recently had a conversation with a friend and colleague about stuff they shared regarding the rescue operation of the four hostages. They had posted the tweet from the Deeja account that said in all capital letters that Israel used an aid truck. I reached out because 1) I know this person to be reasonable and evidence based, and 2) I knew they were coming from a place of genuine concern that was being manipulated. For context, this friend is a brilliant geneticist that I have know for nearly 2 decades as we did our undergrad together and have stayed in touch ever since. They're a kindhearted person and their work has led to some breakthroughs that highlight this trait as they've worked on certain types of genes that can have detrimental mutations when expressed. As I've said before, a lot of people are empathetic and sympathetic individuals to the plight of others, and those behaviors are being manipulated for nefarious reasons.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Me: Hey G, that thing you shared about the aid truck? Yeah, that's not the complete story or accurate.

G: What?! What do you mean?

Me: It wasn't an aid truck that they used. In fact, only that tweet and Al Jazeera were reporting that initially. All the other sites, including pro-Israel and anti-Israel, were reporting a civilian truck of some sort. Most said a moving/furniture truck.

G: Wait. Hold on. So it was a moving truck then?

Me: Well...we now know it was a soap truck.

G: Why the fuck are people saying it was an aid truck then?

Me: You know the reason.

G: Yeah...okay, admittedly I am not well informed on all this. Thank you for reaching out and correcting me. Do you have any suggestions on how to stay informed? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (Now this is where it gets interesting because at this point they say something that I knew was a thing on some level, but hadn't really put the pieces together.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Me: Well, I wouldn't share anything from Al Jazeera. All they do is spout Hamas propaganda. I'd also avoid accounts that share from them as well, unless you're really interested in what the propaganda is itself. I'd avoid JVP since they're the Autism Speaks of Jewish groups. And also avoid SJP groups, many of them openly support terrorist groups and have been recently endorsing domestic terrorism. G: Wait, wait, wait. AJ is bad? I've been following them since we were in undergrad.

Me: Since undergrad?

G: Yeah, they were the only ones covering news in a Lefty manner. Like, remember when Occupy Wallstreet broke out during grad school? They were the one of the few news sites that covered it in a left leaning manner.

Me: Ah fuck...that makes sense. Okay. So. AJ is the state media of Qatar, think of it like RT or Sputnik. Qatar has literally hosted the leaders of Hamas for years and they live there in multi-million dollar homes. AJ pretty much acts as the propaganda mouthpiece for Hamas through Qatar.

G: But what does that have to do with how they covered stuff when we were younger?

Me: Well, there was a meeting in 1993 in Philly of Hamas members that was wiretapped. Those wiretaps were submitted as evidence during some trials in the 00s and they revealed that Hamas had planned at that meeting to use the language of progressive Westerners to garner support for their cause and manipulate them.

G: oh

G: Oh, fuck!

G: So you're saying they purposefully set themselves up to be more sympathetic to Leftists and manipulate them through using their jargon and it's on tape?!

Me: Yep. Here's the link (https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/2023-10/the-hamas-network-in-america.pdf)

Me: Now there's a lot more to that doc. It goes over how they planned to set up research groups to influence academia, political groups for politics, and charity groups to raise money. The latter of which is what the 00s trials were about.

G: Fuck...that's well planned out. I can't believe it's on tape.

Me: Mhm, it's right there. I'm surprised it's been allowed to go on this long though. I think after all the dust settles we might see some Bush Era Patriot Act shenanigans go on.

G: I wouldn't be surprised.

G: Thank you for reaching out and letting me know. I can't believe I fell for that.

Me: It's totally okay, and understandable. If you have questions about anything please feel free to reach out.

G: Again, thank you so much. I will.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What G said about Al Jazeera though and how they'd been following it for years stood out to me. I remember when Occupy Wallstreet happened and AJ was reporting on it. I remember so many American news sites denigrating the movement and AJ was one of the few that was actually covering those protests in an objective manner. We didn't have a lot of the Left news sites that currently exist today. It was a wasteland of center and right wing sources as far as the eye could see. But that makes sense for the time period and why AJ is still so prevalent in Left spaces.

As I told G, the 93 meeting documents Hamas members talking about using the language of Westerners against them and infiltrating their spaces to garner support. With AJ being the mouth piece of Hamas and having been one of the few "Left" leaning news source since Occupy...well, they've been grandfathered in to Leftist spaces as "trusted". That's why so many of these Western activists will accept an AJ article with no question or critical analysis, it's one of the go to sources and has been for a long time.

I'm a little mad at myself that I didn't remember the coverage of Occupy and other events in the USA by AJ and how they were framed until G brought it up. I'm second guessing all the times I read articles back then and my reactions. G admitted they're now doing the same. To think that many of us older Lefties have been manipulated for years because we had some friendly coverage of our opinions is disheartening. But then again, how many of us actually knew what AJ was, who was running it, and what the agenda is/was? I mean, hell, I'm a forensic consultant and consider myself well versed on big cases, but I didn't know about the HLF stuff until Vidino's report came out (the doc mentioned and linked above).

The internet has come such a long way since then. I'm hoping that when this is over that many of these news sites, Leftist and otherwise, will reconsider how they interact with AJ and other such groups. It's quite clear that we've been in a long con, and something has to change.

edit: thirteen hours later and I know it doesn’t matter except for my own documentation, but his bluff got called. he’s definitely too much of a coward to take them up on this:

“if you are too afraid to witness the truth of what took place, we beg you to stop speaking on the matter.”

as much as I believe the hostages deserve to be acknowledged, I cannot STOMACH them being exploited and tokenized by these rancid celebrities who don’t actually care about Jewish lives and just want to use our deaths for their own ends. I’m furious at all the leaders involved in this too, Bibi and Biden wholly included, the difference is that I know the direct blame is on Hamas, which he can never bring himself to mention, and I’m not online spreading blood libel to millions of people. this man has done nothing but post misinfo and antisemitic propaganda for months. sit down, shut up, and stop pretending that you care about anything other than using his murder for your own purposes. people love dead Jews is not a compliment.

K.A. Applegate's letter to fans re: the ending the Animorphs series

Dear Animorphs Readers:

Quite a number of people seem to be annoyed by the final chapter in the Animorphs story. There are a lot of complaints that I let Rachel die. That I let Visser Three/One live. That Cassie and Jake broke up. That Tobias seems to have been reduced to unexpressed grief. That there was no grand, final fight-to-end-all-fights. That there was no happy celebration. And everyone is mad about the cliffhanger ending.

So I thought I’d respond.

Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don’t end happily. Not ever. Often relationships that were central during war, dissolve during peace. Some people who were brave and fearless in war are unable to handle peace, feel disconnected and confused. Other times people in war make the move to peace very easily. Always people die in wars. And always people are left shattered by the loss of loved ones.

That’s what happens, so that’s what I wrote. Jake and Cassie were in love during the war, and end up going their seperate ways afterward. Jake, who was so brave and capable during the war is adrift during the peace. Marco and Ax, on the other hand, move easily past the war and even manage to use their experience to good effect. Rachel dies, and Tobias will never get over it. That doesn’t by any means cover everything that happens in a war, but it’s a start.

Here’s what doesn’t happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt. Life isn’t a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown. Even the people who win a war, who survive and come out the other side with the conviction that they have done something brave and necessary, don’t do a lot of celebrating. There’s very little chanting of ‘we’re number one’ among people who’ve personally experienced war.

I’m just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I’ve never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn’t going to do it at the end. I’ve spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I’ve written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To think about the right and wrong, not just the who-beat-who. And to tell you the truth I’m a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I’d wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping. Wars very often end, sad to say, just as ours did: with a nearly seamless transition to another war.

So, you don’t like the way our little fictional war came out? You don’t like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don’t like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you’ll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.

If you’re mad at me because that’s what you have to take away from Animorphs, too bad. I couldn’t have written it any other way and remained true to the respect I have always felt for Animorphs readers.

K.A. Applegate

A kid’s book series that didn’t coddle it’s readers just because they were children? How awesome is that? I think this series did an even better job than Harry Potter at showing how horrible and horrifying war is. Harry Potter still gave us that happy “everyone is married and has a family” epilogue, and we rarely (if ever) saw the characters truly dealing with nightmares or PTSD like symptoms from what they’d experienced. Animorphs showed readers how horrifying war is from the start - book 1 has Jake suffering through nightmares because of what he’d seen. Animorphs doesn’t give readers the easy “all of x group are evil” way out. The series starts off allowing readers to think Andalites = good and Yeerks = bad, but then goes on to fully pull the rug out from underneath us when we learn how Andalites treat disabled members of their society, and how horrible it is for Yeerks when they don’t have a host. Nothing about the war is comfortable for either the readers or the main characters.

This series ran from 1996-2001, and the characters are 13 when the war starts, and 16 when it ends. Each book is between 150 and 200 pages long, and even though there are a butt ton of books, I think everyone who enjoys YA/childrens lit should give them a shot. Though if you do, beware extreme 90s-ness. Many plot lines and jokes are extremely reliant on the time in which the books take place, so the sooner you get “if they’d had a cell phone, this wouldn’t even be a thing” out of your head, the better. Like, one of the books’ plot is that the CEO of the AOL equivalent is being targeted, and that would allow the alien invading force to control the entire internet. So yea, it’s very of it’s era. But still excellent!

I found it so bizarre when I came across posts on Tumblr talking about a random Palestinian online influencer by her first name (yeah, I know she has a "press" vest, so people call her a journalist. Seriously laughing at anyone thinking or pretending like there's any free press in Gaza. If you're Gazan and have a "press" vest, you got it from Hamas, or it was at some point approved by Hamas). But it's not just the way they talked about her by her first name, as if she was someone they personally knew, and therefore could fully trust, it's the way that there were instructions passed on from her to the masses reading the posts. "Bisan said" this and "Bisan asked that we" that, and I felt like I was reading the instructions of a cult leader being passed down to the cult members. Honestly, it might as well have said, "Saint Bisan" the way that she's quoted like her every word is to live and die by.

Examples will be attached to the end of this post.

Anyway, turns out Saint Bisan has asked people to donate to her and other Gazans, and then just decided to keep all that money to herself? What a shocker.

And I'm gonna stress again she's got some sort of a connection to Hamas, or she wouldn't be able to pass herself off as a journalist. That's where everyone's money has gone to. Someone with at the very least ties to a genocidal, antisemitic terrorist organization, responsible for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, with their only greater victim being the Palestinians themselves, when Hamas uses them as human shields or directly kills them.

Anyway, here's just two random examples of some cult-like posts with instructions from "Saint" Bisan...

Oh, and I just read that before the war, her family's home and her office were in the neighborhood of Rimal. Before the Oct 7 massacre, that was considered a luxury neighborhood, and ONLY people affiliated with Hamas were rich enough that they could afford to live there. She's been saying that she's Hamas all along. People just don't know the nuances of her language.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)