#jewish maryland

[utilitycaster]

Also because I've been soliciting voter stickers in exchange for me telling you your ttrpg PCs are cool, here is mine (early voted) ft my most Maryland magnet

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

A sign reading “We Support Israel” outside a synagogue in Bethesda, Maryland was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti this week, according to the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

“The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington is deeply disturbed by the discovery yesterday of antisemitic graffiti on a ‘We Support Israel’ sign outside Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County,” the group said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Jewish Federation noted that the incident came just two days after similar antisemitic graffiti was found near Bethesda Elementary School in Maryland this past weekend. “Israel rapes men, women, and children” was spray-painted on a school sign, and “Free Gaza” was reportedly painted onto a nearby crosswalk and sidewalk.

“We call on our community and allies to continue making it clear that antisemitism and hate speech have no place in Greater Washington,” the Jewish Federation said in its statement. “We are in close contact with local law enforcement, and we appreciate their swift responses to these incidents to ensure our community’s safety.”

The Bethesda area has a large Jewish population — about 45 percent of Maryland’s Jewish community lives in Montgomery County.

The latest incidents of vandalism came amid a troubling wave of antisemitic incidents in Maryland.

Baltimore police announced on Saturday that they arrested a man who is suspected of a hate crime for setting a fire outside the Jewish Museum of Maryland earlier this month. The museum is located between two historic synagogues on Baltimore’s Lloyd Street: the Lloyd Street Synagogue and the B’nai Israel Congregation. The fire on Aug. 4 was set outside the museum but also right next to B’nai Israel, which reportedly shares a security gate with it.

Weeks earlier, Baltimore’s mayor and police chief denounced a slew of antisemitic incidents in which the homes of Jewish families in the Glen section of the city were graffitied with swastikas. As many as 10 homes were targeted in the spree of hate, according to a local NBC affiliate, shocking locals who were dismayed that the incidents occurred in their neighborhood.

Such outrages aren’t new. In December, for example, vandals twice slashed a pro-Israel sign displayed on the lawn of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in Pikesville, local media reported. In a later incident in March, a gang of teenagers mugged and assaulted two Jewish men who were walking into their synagogue. The youths reportedly chased one of the men and stole a “large amount of cash” from the other. More recently, an Israeli flag was ripped and stolen from the porch of a doctor’s office earlier this summer.

Across the state of Maryland, which had the seventh most antisemitic incidents in the US in 2023, outrages targeting the Jewish community increased 211 percent compared to the prior year, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s latest data.

[eretzyisrael]

by Michael Starr

The University of Maryland reversed its decision to allow an anti-Israel protest on the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre, following backlash from local Jewish groups.

UMD Students for Justice in Palestine and UMD Jewish Voice for Peace had been set to hold their October 7 vigil for Gazans killed in the Israel-Hamas war at the campus’s Mckeldin Mall, but the University System of Maryland (USM) said in a statement on Sunday that on the day of the Hamas-led pogrom it would limit campus events requiring permits or approval to those supporting “a university-sponsored Day of Dialogue.”

“From the beginning of the war, we have come together as a University System to urge that we use this moment to encourage conversation, compassion, and civility; to engage with one another across our differences and draw on our shared humanity and our shared values to bridge what divides us,” said USM. “These dialogues aren’t new.

USM said its intent was not to infringe on the free expression and speech of students, but to be sensitive to the needs of students as October 7 was a “day of enormous suffering and grief for many in our campus communities.”

UMD Jewish Student Union, Maryland Hillel, Terps for Israel, and Israeli American Council Mishelanu at Maryland welcomed the USM decision and thanked UMD leadership in a joint social media statement on Sunday.

[barefootbaltimore]

Join Baltimore Jewish Voice for Peace and friends for a day of family-friendly action and fellowship.

3107 N. Charles Street 12pm-6pm Nov 10 (today!)

We gather in honor of the Children’s Day of Action for Palestine, commemorating one year since Palestinian children held a press conference outside of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza to beg for safety and to “live as the other children live.” We will gather with community members of all faiths or none, young and old, to channel our grief into action by calling on Senator Van Hollen to take action and stop arming Israel now!

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced “Joint Resolutions of Disapproval” (JRD) to stop our government from sending selected weapons to Israel. Jewish Marylanders want Senator Chris Van Hollen to vote YES on the JRD. All community members are welcome to drop in throughout the afternoon to learn, grieve, and mobilize by making their voices heard.

We will ALL be calling Senator Van Hollen every hour, on the hour, to tell him how we and our neighbors feel about our tax dollars being used for weapons to kill Palestinians. We will also create art, write postcards, demonstrate, and learn together. Light refreshments will be available.

***

More ways to take action:

Jewish Marylanders, sign on to this letter to Sen. Van Hollen —

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tMvLLIZm-yu55RY_40efg6aa5dx8ZAHg33FQsbHw1R0/edit?tab=t.0

Everyone, keep the pressure on with emails and calls —

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/nobombs/

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

It shouldn't be a radical take to say that Jews have the right to exist. Yes, all Jews.

The Jewish woman in Maryland who is involved with her reform shul, celebrates all the Jewish holidays, and also celebrates xmas with her goyische husband? Has the right to exist.

The antizionist activist Jew in New York who goes to all the pro-Palestine events and swears she isn't being used as a token? Has the right to exist.

The homophobic rabbi in Jerusalem who advocates for bringing back the death penalty? Has the right to exist.

The secular Jew who was in komsomol back in the USSR and is now a militant atheist in Canada actively preventing his children and grandchildren from reconnecting? Has the right to exist.

The Israeli terf who would personally kill every Palestinian man? Has the right to exist.

The American kahaneist who's been living on the west bank for the past seven years? Has the right to exist.

The transgender reform Jew who writes a blog about disability? Has the right to exist.

The Jew in Iran who is an outspoken antizionist because he's afraid of the consequences if he isn't? Has the right to exist.

The Mexican Catholic who converted to Judaism after discovering crypto-Jewish ancestry and is finding her place in the Jewish world? Has the right to exist.

The non-binary, non-zionist convert who sponsors the weekly kiddush at their Conservative synagogue in Oklahoma? Has the right to exist.

The descendant of Nazis who converted to Judaism and moved to Israel and served in the IDF? Has the right to exist.

The chassid who thinks zionism is heresy? Has the right to exist.

You are going to disagree with some of these people. You are going to find some of them repulsive. You have every right to disagree, to explain why you disagree. That does not mean you can take an individual's right to exist.

[metamatar]

To counter what they view as a rising tide of prejudice, the HAF and other Hindu American groups have turned to American Jewish organizations, which they have long seen as “the gold standard in terms of political activism,” as Maryland State Delegate Kumar Barve said in 2003. Since the early 2000s, Indian Americans have modeled their congressional activism on that of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and AIPAC; Indian lobbyists have partnered with these groups to achieve shared defense goals, including arms deals between India and Israel and a landmark nuclear agreement between India and the US. Along the way, these Jewish groups have trained a generation of Hindu lobbyists and advocates, offering strategies at joint summits and providing a steady stream of informal advice. “We shared with them the Jewish approach to political activism,” Ann Schaffer, an AJC leader, told the Forward in 2002. “We want to give them the tools to further their political agenda.” Shukla told Jewish Currents that the HAF continues to work closely with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the AJC, whether by “being co-amici curiae on briefs to the US Supreme Court,” or by “lending our support to one another’s letters to Congress.”

[...] Faced with rising scrutiny over India’s worsening human rights record, Hindu groups have used “the same playbook and even sometimes the same terms” as Israel-advocacy groups, “copy-pasted from the Zionist context,” said Nikhil Mandalaparthy of the anti-Hindutva group Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR). Hindu groups have especially taken note of their Jewish counterparts’ recent efforts to codify a definition of antisemitism—the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition—that places much criticism of Israel out-of-bounds, asserting that claims like “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” constitute examples of anti-Jewish bigotry.

[...] In 2003, Gary Ackerman—a Jewish former congressman who was awarded India’s third-highest civilian honor for helping to found the Congressional Caucus on India—told a gathering of AJC and AIPAC representatives and their Indian counterparts that “Israel [is] surrounded by 120 million Muslims,” while “India has 120 million [within].” Tom Lantos, another Jewish member of the caucus, likewise enjoined the two communities to collaborate: “We are drawn together by mindless, vicious, fanatic, Islamic terrorism.”

Driven by that sense of shared purpose, the AJC and AIPAC helped train new Indian American political groups—such as the Indian American Political Action Committee and the United States India Political Action Committee—to achieve their aims in Washington. The AJC hosted seminars on political activism in DC and New York; it also brought several delegations of Indian Americans to Israel to meet with members of the Israeli government and military. “We’re fighting the same extremist enemy,” the AJC’s capital region director Charles Brooks told the Forward in 2002.

[hazbin-but-good]

another hazbin hotel rewrite/redesign?

yup! and i'm so serious about it that i made a whole blog for it. i'm a white queer ex-cath tran doing this as an art and writing exercise, so feedback from other creatives + jewish and/or racialized folks is especially welcome.

i'm putting this post and only this post in the main tags for visibility. also, not gonna link my main, but i do make my own original stuff, and i encourage fans and haters alike to do the same.

anyway, here's a mostly good-faith 1.7k-word essay on the original. i think it's pretty funny and brings up some less talked-about points. correct me on the facts, disagree with my opinions, and ask clarifying questions, but don't come at me with any piss-poor reading comprehension.

the hellaverse is garbage, and here's why

cw: strong language, stronger opinions, intersectional feminist critical discourse analysis

1. vivienne medrano, the person

medrano was born as a well-off white-passing latina (salvadoran-american) in bougieass frederick, maryland. while attending new york's top art school, she got popular on deviantart-tumblr-twitter by being a prolific multifandom fujoshi furry who's more into ornamental character design than storytelling. upon graduation, she leveraged her fanbase and industry connections to make the hazbin and helluva boss pilots, get helluva made for youtube, and get hazbin made for amazon prime.

like every woman online, she gets harassed for no good reason, and as a certified autist, i will defend her right to be dumb, weird, annoying, and bad with words. however, there are legit reasons to criticize her:

racism, misogyny, homophobia, fatphobia, some antisemitism, past transphobia, past ableism

shitty boss, bad friend

cowardly, vindictive, manipulative, thoughtless behavior

skeevy friends

sucks at taking criticism

in short, i think she desperately needs a PR person and someone to clean up her digital footprint.

2. medrano's art

incurious

inauthentic

noncommittal

creatively stagnant

overindulgent, and the indulgence isn't even fun

shallow and childish framed as complex and mature

bland and boring framed as shocking and subversive

to be clear, i'm at peace with the existence of suckass art like this; i just think the money, attention, and praise it gets are unearned and should go to more interesting works, of which there are infinite.

medrano's had the time, money, and social cache to grow as an artist, learn from the best, and take creative risks, but she hasn't. if she truly has nothing more to offer, she should let her collaborators take the wheel, but she doesn't do that either. instead, she keeps getting more and more resources to make the same baby bullshit, and that pisses me off. she could be the nicest person ever, and this fundamental arrogance would still make her art blow.

stop with the pointless guilt: liking medrano's work does not make you stupid or evil. however, if you stay in the kiddie pool of culture, if you refuse to engage with a diversity of art, if the hellaverse is your point of reference for anything media-related, you can't expect to have your opinions on art, media, or culture taken seriously. you have not earned a seat at the table. you gotta hit the books first.

i cannot emphasize enough how much incredible stuff is out there if you're willing to look further than what social media and streaming services put right in front of you. if you come away from this blog having learned about just one new artist or piece of art, i'll be a happy camper.

3. the hellaverse

a. empty and confused

hazbin and helluva's content and marketing has no clear target audience. the subjects are inappropiate for teens, but the execution is too childish for adults, and lemme tell you what i don't mean by that, first.

not inherently inappropriate for teens:

sex and sexuality

violence, including when it intersects with the above

politics and religion

not inherently childish:

animation (any style)

comedy

episodic writing and/or loose continuity

young characters

fun, happiness, optimism, the power of friendship, cuteness, tenderness, sincerity, etc.

what i mean is that these shows are literally about adult characters who fuck, smoke, drink, do drugs, go clubbing, work full-time, manage their own finances, and deal with stuff like bureaucracy, sexual violence, domestic abuse, marriage, divorce, late adoption, and family estrangement.

however, none of these "adult" things are given enough specificity to create drama or comedy. it's all too stock, vague, flat, weirdly sanitized, and thus utterly banal—pure aesthetics on top of bad saturday morning cartoons. it's exactly what i'd expect from a sheltered disney kid who needs to log off and get into their local gay scene ASAP so their only contact with things like poverty, policing, addiction, and sex work stops being facile movies and TV.

if the shows were aware of this and played with it, that could be amazing, but they're not. they give you the mickey mouse version of the world with a straight face and then play looney tunes sound effects to try to make you laugh and sad_violin.mp3 to try to make you cry. now that's funny.

b. old and tired

let's make like americans and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. even within the confines of the USA, home of the hays code, the red scare, and reaganite propaganda, this neopuritan fascist state ruled by 1000 megachurches in a trenchcoat, the indie/underground animation scene has been doing crazier shit for decades. anti-war films in the 60's, bakshi movies in the 70's, the simpsons shorts and r-rated movies in the 80's, adult swim and MTV in the 90's, flash/newgrounds/youtube in the 00's, streaming in the 2010's—so what are we doing in the 2020's with this wet white rice drowned in expired ketchup? i feel crazy making this point because it's obvious if you've watched these things, but if you haven't, you're gonna be like "well, there's gotta be something new here". no! there isn't! in the words of jimmy "the scot" jordan, nothing, nothing, NOTHING!

c. ideological purgatory

actually, there is one thing in these shows i've never seen before: the presbysterianism. shout out some interesting or at least intentional presbysterian art in the comments, because the way these ideas are presented here is not compelling. it just makes the rainbow neoliberalism even more confusing and contradictory.

i guess the big presbysterian things are protestanism, calvinism, and, uh, big church government? presbysterians, get your shit together. get your brand down. catholics have BDSM and vampires, evangelicals have TV and corporatism; what do you have? celtic crosses? no wonder medrano has such uninspired ideas on divinity.

d. queer deficiency

when i look at a piece of art, i ask myself: "what does this give me that i can't get from the hunchback of notre dame (1996)?" if the answer is as limp as "uhh, gay people, i guess", i can probably look for my gay shit elsewhere and rewatch the hunchback of notre dame (1996) in the meantime.

but let's say that you have no standards. you've been waiting for ages for a show about gays by the gays for the gays, and by god you're gonna get it. this is it! here we go! time for some

generic twink obliteration

male sexuality as aggression and dominance displays

WLW (sex and chemistry not included)

a couple straight femdoms

and the stalest sex jokes known to man

...yeah, it's not very queer. and by "queer", i mean "questioning or subverting gender norms (including sexual roles) within a given cultural context regardless of creator identity and intent". i'm not a queer studies scholar so LMK if there's a more specific term for this, but whatever you call it, it's not in the hellaverse much.

there's not even any transness, literal or metaphorical, just ancient drag jokes. i guess the writers thought we would've been too controversial. so much for an indie animation studio that prides itself in the diversity of its staff both above and below the line, bakshi-style. i wonder how medrano, a bisexual woman, would've felt if told that a lesbian main couple in hazbin would be "too controversial".

4. spindlehorse and the vivziepop brand

spindlehorse toons underpays its overworked staff and keeps outsourcing more and more labor to even more overworked freelancers overseas to cut costs. a rainbow sweatshop is still a sweatshop, and just because these practices may be "industry standard" doesn't make them any more ethical.

the studio has also been repeatedly accused by current and former employees and contractors of creating a hostile and abusive workplace. AFAIK, it still has no dedicated HR person, and victims are too afraid of retaliation like blacklisting and online harassment to speak out.

this is exactly the stuff that unions exist to prevent. as i'm writing this, the IATSE (the parent union of TAG, which is the parent union of all US animation unions) is negotiating with entertainment industry executives for better working conditions, and if the execs fuck around like last year, it's strike time again. so watch this space, voice your support, and don't cross any picket lines.

i hope spindlehorse unionizes, but until then and for these reasons, i don't think you should give money to the company.

first of all, all content on amazon-owned platforms is ok to pirate, and all youtube ads are ok to block. everyone involved in making the episodes has (or should have) been paid upfront, so you're not taking the bread out of anyone's mouth.

next, let's look at the succulent offerings of the official vivziepop merch shop:

$10 pins and keychains

$15 sticker packs

$20 mugs and acrylic cutouts

$25 shirts

$30 metal cards (not even tarot)

$40 lounge pants

$50 mini backpacks

random $80 skateboard deck

forgive my latin americanness, but this is all stuff you can get made by a local metalsmith, print/sublimation shop, or just crafty people in your life. it's cheaper, customizable, and better for the environment to skip all the shipping and packaging. also, not painting your own skateboard is poser shit.

the hazbin website also has $15 pins, one $20 keychain, and $6 trading card packs. people are weird about trading cards, so if for some reason you wanna gamble for a mass-produced bit of cardboard, plastic, and tinfoil, at least bulk-order for all the vivziepoppers in your area so it's less of a huge waste. better yet, trace the designs and make infinite bootlegs.

at the end of the day, buying merch is not activism. your bulk order of trading cards will not save any wage slaves from getting evicted from their overpriced studio apartments. however, the shop links you to all the credited artists/designers, and more of your bucks will actually reach them if you buy their designs directly, then turn them into body pillows or life-sized bronze statues or whatever the fuck.

go through the credits of any episode of helluva or hazbin, and you'll find even more creatives you might wanna support. get jinkx monsoon's albums on CD. subscribe to actually good artist, animator, and composer gooseworx. lots of voice actors now have patreon, cameo, or self-hosted pages where you can write better lines for their characters and have them read it. these things may not look as shiny as Official Merch™, but we all need less plastic shit and more culture anyway.

[brightlotusmoon]

I was just listening to my husband telling our roommate the story of how when he was young in the 80s living in Prince George's County in Maryland, their new black neighbors were getting harassed by Klan members, so his parents - the only Jewish family in the neighborhood - went over with weapons and his mom sat by an upstairs window with a rifle and his dad (who had worked for the government as a man in black) stood like a sentry on the lawn and put out the burning cross and threatened to stab anyone who came at them. Yes, they all moved out. No I don't have more details. But the conversation sprang from how one of our neighbors, an older white guy, was wondering why we weren't ever going to support Trump.

Punch Nazis. Tell others to punch Nazis. Be loud about punching Nazis. Help your neighbor watch Nazis through a rifle lens. Etc.

[flagwars]

Second Place Flag Wars: Round 1

This tournament features the second place winners of every Flag Wars tournament I’ve held! So many amazing flags have made it to second place and have come so close to winning. This is why I’m giving all of these flags a second chance to win a tournament. Let me know in the comments which flag you want to win!

Round 1:

1. Aroace version of Gilbert (Gilbert, West Virginia Pride Flag Wars) vs. Bisexual People’s Flag of Milwaukee (Bisexual Fusion Flag Wars) vs. Wales (Dragon Flag Wars)

2. Inuvialuit (Native American and First Nations Flag Wars) vs. Lesbian Seychelles (National Pride Fusion Flag Wars) vs. Chuhuiv redesign by Горіхус (People’s Flag Wars 2)

3. Moscow, Russia (Olympic Flag Wars) vs. Rockville, Maryland (Maryland Flag Wars) vs. Commune of Revachol (Disco Elysium) (Video Game Flag Wars)

4. Rägavere Parish, Estonia (Historical Flag Wars) vs. The Federation Flag by The-Hill-Billy (Australia flag redesign) (People’s Flag Wars) vs. Pocatello, Idaho (2001-2017) (Worst Flag Wars)

5. Raseborg, Finland (Finland City Flag Wars) vs. Lesbian (Flag Wars) vs. Kyoto Prefecture (Japanese Prefecture Flag Wars)

6. Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Russian Federal Subject Flag Wars) vs. Amphibious Amigo by pinchemijita (Animal Crossing Flag Wars) vs. Byhalia, Mississippi (2023 New Flag Wars)

7. Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine (Regional Flag Wars) vs. Stráz pod Ralskem, Czechia (Sunflower Flag Wars) vs. Lesbian recolor of Salem (Salem-Verse Flag Wars)

8. Denobula (Star Trek Flag Wars) vs. Inverted Queer Chevron (Inverted Pride Flag Wars) vs. Bechlín, Czechia (2023 New Czech Flag Wars)

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Do you have any advice for vetting sources on I/P? I just got a book at a local bookstore and was wondering how I should go about determining any biases?

Great question. I addressed this in my I/P Reading List. I'm pasting below my section on the methodology and source vetting process I followed while compiling this list:

In compiling this list, my process and methodology were as follows: I first wrote down all the relevant works I could think of off the top of my head, all hailing from my fields of Biblical Studies and Modern Jewish History. I then reached out to my friends in Modern Middle Eastern History, Conflict Studies, Jewish History, etc for recommendations, lists, and insight; one of my friends, an ABD PhD candidate in Modern Middle Eastern History, was particularly helpful in helping me understand Israeli historiography, and pointing me towards the best works in the field of Arab Nationalism. After taking their recommendations, I conducted a series of google searches using “‘relevant search term’ site:.edu” to ensure that I received results from only academic domains. From there, I read syllabi for university courses, and examined comprehensive exam reading lists. After that, I searched the catalog of the New York Public Library using any and all relevant search terms, and I also conducted targeted searches on Amazon. By the time I finished, I had a 50 pages filled with book titles. My next step was to divide the list into categories, deleting irrelevant titles and repeats as I went along. After dividing the books into categories, I put each title through a rigorous fact checking process. I checked the publication material for each book to ensure that it was either a. published by an academic press with a built in peer review process, and/or b. written by an academic historian—either a faculty member, or someone with an MA or PhD in history. If I was still unsure after that step, I searched the title in the University of Maryland’s database system, and read the academic (meaning, peer reviewed) book reviews of the title. From there I either kept it on the list or removed it. As I approached the late-Ottoman period, I became extra-critical of relevant titles. At this point, I made sure to read book reviews from at least two academic journals in different fields/subfields to ensure not only the text’s legitimacy, but its ability to hold firm against the scrutiny of scholars in multiple fields. I tended to remove a work if the word “polemic” appeared in the reviews. This said, many of the works on this list, particularly, but not exclusively, in the Post-1948, Arab Nationalism and the Modern Middle East, Conflict Overviews, and Historiography Narratives, Memory and Theory categories will be slanted, or biased. Considering the topic at hand, this reality is both inevitable and perhaps necessary. I do advise you, however, to read any books you select from these categories critically. The vast majority of these books are academic histories (simply put, I don’t trust popular historians with this topic), so if you are not accustomed to that type of writing, be sure to read the Introduction of whichever books you select very carefully, and understand that you are reading to learn—not necessarily to enjoy. In terms of my categorization…it is imperfect and becomes admittedly fuzzy once we get into the late Ottoman Period. I’m not even 100% comfortable with some of these categories, but alas, if there is one thing I learned from Library Science it is that categories are both terrible and inevitable in the organization of information.

[eretzyisrael]

Good News From Israel

In the 16th July 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

Israeli personally tailored therapies can cure infections and infertility.

Israeli surgeons don’t need electricity to save a life in Ethiopia.

Israeli scientists won awards from France and NASA.

A new European fund is to invest a quarter of a billion dollars in Israeli startups.

An Israeli startup will generate electricity from Taiwan’s choppy seas.

The Israel Premier Tech cycling team won the 9th stage of the Tour de France.

An Israeli NGO is saving the bees – one swarm at a time.

This newsletter edition is entitled "Chai-Tech", merging the term "Hi-Tech" with "Chai" - the Hebrew word for "Living" / "Lives". The reason is that there is so much recent news about Israeli technology to benefit human lives.

Almost all the medical articles involve Israelis using hi-tech to save lives, including breakthroughs in personalized medicine, global vaccines, stroke monitors, digital  insoles, brain disease diagnosis, prescription checkers and the innovations of Sheba Medical Center.

Israeli life-saving climate-tech features high in this newsletter with Israel's plans for a 1,000-strong delegation to COP28, the recent climate-tech delegation to the UK, 15 Israeli Climate Awards candidates, France's award to an Israeli hydrogen scientist, and Taiwan implementing Israel's wave energy solution.  Israeli hi-tech is also benefiting the environment by using seaweed to generate electricity, turning potato waste foliage into a food source, more vegan substitutes for meat, sustainable farming solutions and ultra-efficient space propulsion.

Other hi-tech programs include multi-million investments into Israeli companies developing 3D printed organs, security for schools, digital health, food-tech and agri-tech solutions. No wonder Israeli hi-tech startups are actively being sought by the US States of Virginia and Maryland.

The photo shows the construction of a solar roof over the soccer pitch of our local school in Netanya, providing shade to the young players, and green electricity for the school and the grid. Another "high"-tech solution making life better for the next generation.  Am Yisrael Chai!

Read More: Good News From Israel

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Sales of stolen Palestinian land must be stopped!

Across the United States, demonstrations have been organized against the illegal sale of stolen Palestinian lands. Protesters compare these events to the “Indian Land Sales” that were conducted in the U.S. West.

Many of these protests have been viciously attacked by police and Zionist thugs. That was the case in Los Angeles at the Adas Torah synagogue on June 25. Brutal police attacks against protesters have also occurred in Pikesville, Maryland (just outside Baltimore), and Nassau County, New York (near New York City.)

These sales of stolen land are usually conducted in Jewish neighborhoods, often inside synagogues. Protesters — many of whom are Jewish — make clear that they are demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians, not attacking Jewish people.

That doesn’t prevent the corporate media and capitalist politicians from smearing these righteous protests as “anti-Jewish.” Arkansas statesman Tom Cotton issued a statement demanding “action from DOJ [Department of Justice] and White House on synagogue attack by pro-Hamas mob.”

[icedsodapop]

By pausing time on October 7th and excluding its aftermath, the tours reinforce that myopia, consolidating a focus on Jewish victimhood and a refusal to see Israel as the perpetrator of Palestinian suffering. In the process, they succeed in bolstering American Jews’ sense of identification with Israel. As one rabbi who participated in a Federation mission from San Diego wrote upon her return home: “I saw the result of evil. I feel more committed to Israel and its future than I have felt in a long time.

(...)

Scholars have explored the ways in which visiting sites of atrocities, however disturbing, can also be “a means to affirm and reproduce particular identities,” in the words of Duncan Light, a professor of tourism studies. Visiting the 9/11 memorial—which drew 37 million people between its opening in 2011 and 2018—can bolster Americans’ sense of patriotism, even in the face of the long and deadly wars that followed; visiting the beaches of Normandy can inspire pride not only in the Allies’s World War II victory, but in the US-led world order it produced.

(...)

Death camp tours “make the victim so much the object of identification that one comes to see oneself as if one is at the gates of the crematorium, instead of [Israel] being a country with nuclear capacity,” Feldman told me in an interview. “It becomes impossible to identify with anyone other than the victim, and the victim is me, and this is our eternal condition.”

(...)

Not unlike prior forms of Jewish “dark tourism,” the trips I joined seemed intended to reassure participants that they could support Israel while retaining the moral clarity of the victim. For example, at the end of the Kfar Azza tour, Shpak, the kibbutz member, explained that the community had once been invested in peace and co-existence efforts, “but everything was broken and trampled in our children’s blood.” Shpak told our group that in the past, he had found it painful to witness the suffering of the other side. “I admit and confess that not this time. I have no sympathy for what’s happening on the other side,” he said. Other leaders on the trips I witnessed frequently glorified the war effort. In one case, a group’s Israeli driver boasted about having driven bulldozers bigger than our large bus into buildings in Khan Younis. Various guides echoed well-worn pro-Israel talking points arguing that Palestinians are not a people, or that the Nakba—the mass dispossession of Palestinians in 1948—was not a case of ethnic cleansing. This messaging has clearly affected participants. “There aren’t a lot of ‘innocent’ Gazans,” one member of a rabbinic trip wrote in a blog post. “After hearing the stories from those who were there, I am truly sad to say that this is the reality.” Greg Harris, a rabbi from Bethesda, Maryland, who led a trip for his congregation, told me that while, in the US, “it is perceived that Israel is retaliating against the Palestinian people,” in fact “that is not what is happening”—a truth that participants grasped “just by being there in Israel.”

(...)

As I walked through the festival grounds, the earth was literally shaking beneath me. The artillery fire and explosions from Gaza were the loudest thing I’d ever heard in my life, and everyone, myself included, instinctively jumped at each blast. Just two words into the kaddish that one tourist recited for the festival victims—yitgadal veyitkadash—an explosion sounded so closely and powerfully that I felt the vibrations in my spine. And yet, aside from their reflexive flinching, the tour guides did their best to ignore the din.

When trip leaders did acknowledge the sight of Gaza on the horizon, it was usually to emphasize how close danger lies to the Gaza Envelope communities. Standing at a lookout point over the enclave, Ehrlich, the tour guide, gestured back at the Israeli city of Sderot behind us, saying, “See the beautiful houses being built despite years of attacks?” And when trip leaders made note of the sounds of death all around us, it was only to assure us that we were safe. “Don’t worry too much about the booms. They’re our booms. They’re not coming in on this end,” one group I followed was told. And, later: “You’re going to hear a lot of booms. There’s currently something going on in Khan Younis, literally across the border here. It might shake you up a little bit, but don’t worry, it’s us, not them.”

(Emphasis mine)

[ravenssunshine]

neil josten is 100% jewish. you don’t get to be born nathaniel abram wesninski from baltimore maryland and be not jewish. as an adult he would definitely seek out a jewish community and reconnect to his faith. k thanks for listening