deborahdeshoftim5779

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Marvellous!

Carl Frederik Sørensen (Danish, 1818–1879), "Danish Ships in Rough Seas" (details), 1877

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I love any still lifes with violins!

Still life with flowers and a violin, circa 1750 Jean-Jacques Bachelier

Floral Friday

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The living embodiment of the Hebrew phrase Am Yisrael Chai (The people of Israel lives).

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But it is worth asking what lies behind this intense drive to criticise Israel, often in the most magnified and – many would argue – wildly inaccurate terms? Why not Syria, or Ethiopia, or Yemen, or Turkey? Or North Korea, or Venezuela, or Sudan? Jones is neither Jewish nor Palestinian. To my knowledge, he has never set foot in Israel, not even for a holiday in Eilat or to attend Tel Aviv Pride, and he is not known for spending much time in the Arab world. Neither is there any reason to think he is on the payroll of the Iranian regime. What’s with the obsession? What is it about the Jewish state that so agitates him? Jones would reply, of course, that he simply objects to “genocide”. In fact, he has argued this on X. “Yes, I’m obsessed with fighting a genocide being facilitated by my government,” he posted today. “Guilty! This is not something be ashamed of. It is the people who stayed silent, or who cheered on this abomination, who should be ashamed. They will never scrub the shame away.” But all people of sound mind know that there is no genocide in Gaza. Nobody sensible takes these claims seriously, not even Keir Starmer. Not even, might I add, David Lammy. The tunnel vision is inexplicable. It seems pretty hard to produce decent journalism when you’re in such a frame of mind. I think of the time, for instance, when Jones watched traumatic GoPro footage of the Hamas atrocities, took notes, and used them to create a video of his own claiming that there was “no conclusive evidence of rape”, in spite of the multiple eyewitnesses and the morgue worker (interviewed recently by Allison Pearson) who described treating female bodies that had been so brutally assaulted that their pelvises had been shattered.

British journalist Jake Wallis Simons, asking why fellow journalist Owen Jones has such an obsession with denouncing the State of Israel.

Jones' attempt to question or deny the fact that the Palestinians committed rapes and gang rapes on October 7 is morally grotesque. This is not what people like Owen Jones were claiming during the MeToo movement; instead, they insisted that all accusations had to be believed, and this included accusations of possible sexual harassment and/or bad sexual encounters that occurred years or even decades ago.

By contrast, the evidence of Palestinians raping Israelis is overwhelming-- and the Palestinians produced that evidence. Hamas terrorists wrote detailed instructions in Arabic and in Hebrew containing orders for rape. Palestinian photographer Mahmoud Abu Hamda boasted on X that very day about obtaining sexual slaves ("sabayas" in Arabic). Palestinians took photos and videos of women they had violated, including German-Israeli tattoo artist Shani Louk, stripped almost naked and paraded on a truck, with Palestinian men sitting on her body; they also filmed Naama Levy, aged 19, who was dragged from a truck bleeding heavily into her tracksuit, which is a clear indication of rape.

The only reason Owen Jones tries wriggling out of this with his "no conclusive evidence of rape" is because he is too afraid to acknowledge that the people he supports are barbaric monsters. Given how much energy Owen Jones has expended into denouncing the State of Israel, such an acknowledgement would be ruinous to his career and his fictitious aura of moral superiority, the latter of which appears more important to him than a modicum of restraint and balance in his reporting.

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And victims don't take hostages in the first place. Victims don't buy hostages as personal slaves, including sexual slaves. Victims don't ignore multi-million dollar rewards to help rescue and return said hostages. Victims don't refuse to punish war criminals that took part in a terrorist attack.

The whole idea of eternal Palestinian victimhood exists simply because people want it to exist, not because it is true.

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Fascinating. I thought the Ukrainian desire to join the EU was more recent, like a decade ago.

A crowd of people waving the flags of Ukraine and European Union in central Kyiv one day before the Independence Referendum on December 1, 1991

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Jawohl.

Der Igel ist das beste Beispiel für einen bewaffneten Frieden.

The hedgehog is the best example of armed peace.

Wilhelm Busch (1832 – 1908), German poet and cartoonist

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I check off so many on this list.

you know you’re a writer when…

you spend 30 minutes choosing the perfect synonym for “said” only to change it back to “said.”

you google “how long does it take to bleed out” at 3 a.m. and now the FBI is probably watching you.

you write one sentence, stare at it, rewrite it 14 times, and somehow end up back at the original version.

“this scene is so important” but you have no idea what the scene actually is or why it’s important.

you come up with the best story ideas… in the shower… with no way to write them down.

your characters feel like real people but also you’re like “who are these guys and what do they want from me?”

your brain says “start writing!” but instead you reorganize your desk, reread your notes, and spend two hours naming a side character who shows up once.

you’ve cried over your WIP exactly 67 times and will do it again because the pain is the point.

you reread something you wrote and think, “wow, did i peak as a writer three months ago?”

every writing session begins with the sacred ritual of scrolling social media, opening unnecessary tabs, and procrastinating until panic sets in.

you have no idea how long a chapter should be, so you just… vibe.

you can’t watch tv or movies without mentally critiquing the plot, dialogue, and pacing.

your writing playlist is 98% vibes, 2% songs you’ll actually listen to while writing.

you keep a “murder notebook” but swear it’s not suspicious because it’s for your novel (probably).

the phrase “just one more draft” is your eternal mantra, even though you’ve rewritten this thing more times than you can count.

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So cool! I know the verb лежать in Russian. There's also ложиться.

To lie & to lay

A lot of native speakers of English use to lay instead of to lie in sentences such as I'm laying here. It might seem like a recent thing and some people deplore it as a sign of the decline of their beloved English language, but speakers of English have used to lay instead of to lie for more than six centuries: it already started in the 14th century.

Several sister languages of English, such as Frisian and Afrikaans, went even further: they completely merged the verbs for 'to lie' and 'to lay', one being absorbed by the other. In Frisian, there's only one verb: lizze (cognate with to lie), which has both meanings, whereas Afrikaans only has lê (cognate with to lay). The western dialects spoken in the Netherlands only have legge(n) in the present tense and use the past tense forms interchangeably.

Slavic

Descendants of Proto-Indo-European causative verbs can be found in many daughter languages. However, as far as I know, only Germanic and Slavic preserve the descendants of Proto-Indo-European *legʰyeti (to lie) and *logʰeyeti (to lay) as pairs. Here are some examples from Slavic:

Ukrainian лежа́ти (ležáty) 'to lie' vs. ложи́ти (ložýty) 'to lay'

Polish leżeć vs. łożyć

Macedonian лежи (leži) vs. ложи (loži)

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I see the media also won't report how Syrian Druze villages and some Yazidis have asked for-- wait for it-- Israel to annexe their homes to protect them from HTS.

I guess that will be pretty difficult to explain to the masses who believe that the entire region hates Israel, and that it's Israel's fault.

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@jupitersmegrim But Elizabeth Bennet started pining for Darcy almost as soon as she recognised Wickham's lies. She memorised his letter, for starters. She was wrecked with shame because of how he viewed her family.

Later on, she was lying up awake at night wondering what he was thinking, whether he was thinking about her, and whether there was any chance of him renewing his proposal. She was also longing for him after he left following news of Lydia's infamous elopement; she was desolate that he was leaving; she assumed he now saw her in the worst light and wanted nothing to do with her; she finally realised that they would have made an excellent couple.

Then she became wild with desperation for news of his possible involvement in recovering Lydia. She quite definitely wanted to see him again after that, but he was far away.

What about when she told Lady Catherine that the wife of Mr. Darcy would 'have extraordinary sources of happiness attached to her situation'?

And what about her internal self-torture over whether he was still in love with her? Where she kept pretending not to be surprised that he was so grave and silent, while being incredibly disappointed? She could barely even concentrate on anything or anyone else, including while serving coffee.

I think Elizabeth Bennet was keen to downplay how much she wanted Mr. Darcy, not least because of how acrimoniously she had rejected him. But her own aunt already saw right through her when she pretended she wasn't disappointed that Wickham was chasing after another girl and was therefore dropping his interest in her. Because before Darcy, she was mad about Wickham: she 'went away with her head full of him'. And who can forget her temper tantrum (albeit silent) when he didn't show up for the Netherfield Ball?

Elizabeth Bennet did a lot of pining. She was just too witty, too dishonest with herself, and too proud to admit to it.

The most underappreciated thing about Pride and Prejudice is that it's a romance wherein the heroine barely spends any time pining for her love interest.

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Deserves another reblog, especially for the millions who refuse to accept that Palestinian terrorism is Islamic terrorism.

uribreakingnews

The West is next. ➡️ @uribreakingnews

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So, all those charity workers and so-called Palestinian doctors and nurses stood by and did nothing while hostages were being abused right under their very noses. And they are still standing by and doing nothing to this day. That's who these people are, and the only reason the Palestinians are getting away with this blatant moral bankruptcy is because the rest of the world allows them to.

Rescued Israeli hostages Noa Argamani and Ilana Gritzewsky spoke out today about the deplorable treatment they faced in Hamas captivity.

Today is #HumanRightsDay, let’s not forget there are STILL 100 hostages facing these inhuman conditions in Hamas’s tunnels. They were kidnapped on October 7th 2023 and they are the main reason for this war.

We must #BringThemHome now!

Hen Mazzig

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You need to understand that the United Nations isn't trying to be serious by adopting such a resolution. The UN knows that the majority of its members are rogue states and/or failed Third World states that violate women's rights every day of the week. And it is this miserable conglomerate that is dictating morality to the few civilised and free nations on this planet.

Remember that the United Nations spent several weeks refusing to address the targeted rape campaigns committed by the Palestinians on and after October 7. The fact that the Palestinians have bought multiple hostages as sexual slaves has never been addressed, let alone condemned, by the United Nations.

Before that, the United Nations failed to condemn and isolate Iran not only for what many consider as the murder of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, but also for later reports of schoolgirls being poisoned as a threat against protesting. The United Nations capped this display of moral bankruptcy by inviting the 'Butcher of Tehran', Ebrahim Raisi, to give a speech. When Raisi died in a helicopter crash, the United Nations called for a minute's silence. No such respect was shown to Mahsa Amini, or the countless Iranian women and men who have been challenging the bloody regime that Raisi supported.

The United Nations isn't trying to be serious by adopting a resolution against Israel on women's rights. Its members know that this resolution is preposterous. Countless UN members know that they are the world's biggest violators of women's rights. These include Congo, Pakistan, Iran, China, and so on.

The United Nations isn't trying to advance the cause of women's rights, as the above two examples (along with many others) demonstrate. Instead, the organisation is hijacking the issue of women's rights in order to make political statements and manufacture consent for demonisation of Israel. And the organisation gets away with this simply because the majority of undemocratic, unfree, and uncivilised nations use that majority to ensure compliance with their agenda.

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The best genre of family portrait is and will always be Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife

Barbara Krafft, Die Familie Anton von Marx 1803

Marie-Geneviève Bouliard,Monsieur Olive & family 1791

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Panteón, Roma

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Utterly magical.

Budapest, Hungary