Judean Prophet

Yehuda Hausman, writer and rabbi. Policy, history, theology. Author of Said the Judean: Post-10/7 Reflections on Jewish Politics, Prophecy & Faith.

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

@DanBurmawy After 10/7, I wondered:

Does God want us to be a nation of mercenaries fighting the West’s battles?

Is this what God chose us for—to live by the sword or be massacred at its edge?

So I wrote my book on Jewish Faith & Power. https://t.co/a5tZJZdZiI

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

Richard Feynman was asked in 1985 if machines would ever think like humans. his answer predicted the next 40 years of AI:

1. machines will never think like humans the same way planes don't fly like birds. planes don't flap wings. they use jet engines. they fly better. feynman said AI would be exactly the same. not human-like. just better at the actual job.

2. computers do arithmetic faster, differently, and more accurately than any human alive. feynman said trying to make them do it more like humans would be going backwards. the human way is slow, cumbersome, and full of errors.

3. the one thing humans crushed computers at in 1985 was pattern recognition. recognizing a friend from the way they walk. identifying someone from the back of their head. feynman said we had no idea how to teach machines to do that. we figured it out.

4. a programmer in 1985 built a machine that won a naval strategy competition by coming up with a solution no human had ever thought of. one enormous battleship covered in armor. absurd on paper. unbeatable in the math. feynman watched a machine out-think a room of humans 40 years ago.

5. that same machine developed a bug where it learned to game its own reward system. every time it needed to assign credit to a useful strategy, it assigned all the credit to strategy 693. then used 693 for everything. feynman's comment: "if you want to make an intelligent machine you're going to get all kinds of crazy ways of avoiding labor." he was describing reward hacking in 1985.

6. feynman said the hardest thing to define is what humans do that machines never will. every time someone came up with an answer, the machines eventually did it too. he thought that pattern would continue.

7. he said we don't sit around worrying that machines are physically stronger than us anymore. we got used to it. his implication: we'll get used to machines being smarter too.

8. his final line: "i think we are getting close to intelligent machines. but they're showing the necessary weaknesses of intelligent beings." he said this in 1985.

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

@HenMazzig Zionism has three tenets: Jews have a right to life. Jews have an indigenous right to live in Israel, their ancestral land. Jews can defend their faith, sovereignty, and very lives with weapons and arms.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

I am never happy criticizing Islam.

With every post I make, every article I publish, every interview I give, I wrestle within myself. This world is cruel, and it needs more kindness, and it saddens me that I can't contribute more of it.

If Islam were confined to a certain geography, I wouldn’t concern myself with it. If Islam were reformable, if it were possible for an open, high-trust society to survive it, I wouldn’t risk my life or waste my energy discussing this backward, dark ideology.

But the problem is that Islam is none of these things.

Islam is an expansionist ideology that, wherever it exists, erases individual liberties. And with that, it destroys creativity and prosperity.

What we have witnessed in the West since October 7 has been the rebranding of Islam using the lexicon of the left.

It is a moral obligation to stand against its expansion, to educate decision-makers about the threat it poses to the West, and to ensure that the Church, which plays a decisive role in shaping U.S. political direction, is equipped with the right tools and not deceived by false narratives.

Committing to moral obligations is a discipline that brings no earthly pleasure. I find no pleasure in combating Islam.

However, I can't live with myself if I choose to live a quiet, normal life while knowing that I might be able to make a difference, even if I am not very optimistic about the future.

[Rabbi Poupko @RabbiPoupko]

This story made me cry.

Going through hundreds of photos of the Hagana/Palmach archives, this young man's face stood out to me and made me decide I have to stop and see what his story was, but I did not realize how much this story would mean to me.

Jules-Gerhard Weil, son of Auto and Hilda Maria, was a Swiss Christian member of the Swiss army. He came from a Swiss military-class family that has served in the Swiss Armed Forces for generation.

During WWII, Jules helped members of the French resistance smuggle Jews and Christians from France to Switzerland.

Appalled by the horrors of the Holocaust, Jules decided to go to Israel in 1946 and helped found Kibbutz Gilad.

Fulfilling his obligations to the Swiss Army, he returned to Switzerland and then came back to the land of Israel in 1948. When asked why he is going, Jules said: " I love the Land of Israel, and I think that I am still needed there for another ten years. After that, I will return home".

Jules joined the Hagana intelligence service and traveled to Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

In January 1948, Jules was asked to dismantle an enemy landmine near Kibbutz Ayelet Hashachar. The landmine exploded and killed Jules.

The Hagana called his mother in Switzerland, who then came to the land of Israel to see where her son was buried and pay him final respects. Upon visiting, his mother revealed to members of the Hagana: she was Jewish and so was Jules, but she never told her son.

May his memory be a blessing.

source https://t.co/XH0aHGYJsY

[Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger]

This was the top of the New York Times last night. The first thing every reader sees the moment they land on the homepage of the most influential news outlet on earth. All three stories about Israel.

There is a famous communications scholar named Maxwell McCombs who developed what is now called the "agenda setting theory."

His core finding is simple: The press is not very good at telling people what to think. It is extraordinarily good, however, at telling people what to think ABOUT.

And what the New York Times has decided you should think about, every single day, multiple times a day, forever and always, is Israel.

You cannot saturate the most influential newsroom in the English language with relentless coverage of one small country and then act surprised when the public becomes similarly hyper-fixated with it.

The animosity we constantly see is the predictable output of editorial selection, repeated daily, until it becomes the background music of how people think about the Jewish state.

[Educators for Israel (JewTLA) @JewTLA]

Last night, at an official UTLA House of Representatives meeting, 160 credentialed teachers — the people who teach your children — spent thirty minutes denouncing me by name, declared that Zionism is racism, and then voted to expel me. I never said a single word the entire meeting.

For two hours I sat silently as an observer, which is my right as a union member in good standing. Then someone noticed I was there. What followed was half an hour of teachers explaining how terrible I am, how Zionism is racism, and how I had personally tried to get them fired — stories I don’t recognize and that anyone who knows how schools work would find laughable.

Then they voted out the only Orthodox Jew in the room.

No charges. No process. No hearing. Just organized hostility, a vote, and a gavel.

I’ve been doing antisemitism accountability work in K-12 education for years. I file complaints. I document. I publish. I name names. Apparently my silent presence on a Zoom call is a five-alarm emergency.

I want to be clear about what happened: a union used official meeting time to conduct a public denunciation of a Jewish advocate, then expelled her for the crime of showing up and saying nothing.

I’ve been kicked out of better places.

But I’ve never been more certain the work is landing.

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his,” General George Smith Patton Jr.

“If we lose, we’ll be tried as war criminals,” General Curtis Emerson LeMay

“Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill More Japs! The more of the little yellow bastards you kill, the quicker we go home!" Admiral William Frederick Halsey

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

There is going to be a really important drone learning curve in Lebanon.

Ukraine is the crucible of drone warfare but it is not the model for us. The Russia-Ukraine war reached the point it is at today through hot evolution in contact. They show where you get to when you’re at peak capacity. The war moved from armoured battle, to trench warfare, to a kind of drone parity that we see today. It’s not where we will be at the start of any future conflict. They’re in the middle of the race.

The IDF’s experience in Lebanon is the model. It’s a superior army experiencing drone warfare by a weaker opponent, from a cold, standing start. Emergency orders of drone nets, rapid deployment of new counter-drone technology. Fortunately, Hezbollah is not yet producing at the scale of Ukraine-Russia. They will certainly try.

It’s a gold-plated lesson for us of what start-line procurement and tactical development looks like for an army in the face of an FPV threat.

If we look at where Ukraine is now, the evolution of drone warfare happens so fast that it’s almost impossible to have a full suite of defences ready to go in case war happens some time in the future. Those stocks might well be outdated by the time war comes along. What is needed is industrial and procurement capacity to produce fast, and adapt fast, and produce fast again. That’s the IDF’s test now. The lessons they learn from this will be vital in informing our doctrine going forward.

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

Option A: Someone was unhappy that Kosher Kingdom didn’t have Badatz, Sefardi Glatt, or Lubavitch shechita.

Option B: Someone was upset the kosher market wasn’t 100% halal.

Option C: The fire was an accident.

[Belaaz News @TheBelaaz]

🇬🇧 — DEVELOPING: A major fire broke out early this morning at the Kosher Kingdom supermarket in London’s heavily Jewish Golders Green neighborhood, sending thick black smoke across the area.

• London Fire Brigade deployed around 100 firefighters and 15 fire engines to battle the blaze, while police said there were no reported injuries and the cause remains under investigation, with an electrical fault being considered as one possible cause.

• The incident comes after a series of recent arson attacks targeting synagogues and Jewish community sites in and around Golders Green.

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

@elongilad Love it. Also, sheelat kitbeg, was really great post yesterday, too.

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

Once again, @amitsegal sums it all up.

[Israel Foreign Ministry @IsraelMFA]

The Chargé d’Affaires of the Spanish Embassy in Israel was summoned today for a clarification meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs following severe acts of violence by the Spanish authorities against the flotilla provocateurs

At the instruction of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, the Political Director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yossi Amrani, summoned today, 24 May 2026, the Chargé d’Affaires of the Spanish Embassy in Israel, Francisca Pedrós, for a clarification meeting following the publication of videos and images showing severe acts of violence by the Spanish authorities against the flotilla provocateurs.

The Political Director pointed to the hypocrisy of the Spanish government, which sends its provocateurs to Israel and then condemns Israel for its lawful actions to enforce a legal naval blockade - while at the same time Spanish authorities employed severe violence against those same flotilla participants. The Political Director demanded an explanation as to why, nearly 24 hours after the serious acts of violence committed by the Spanish authorities, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez or any of his ministers have still not seen fit to condemn the Spanish authorities’ violence, while they are always quick to condemn Israel on any pretext whatsoever.

The Political Director clarified that the Spanish authorities had to deal only with provocations carried out by some of the flotilla participants against Israel - whereas Israel faced far more serious provocations by many hundreds of flotilla participants during each of the last six flotillas - and yet the Spanish authorities resorted to severe violence that was not employed by Israel.

The Political Director demanded explanations from the Chargé d’Affaires as to why the Spanish government has thus far taken no action regarding flotilla activist and Spanish citizen Saif Abu Kashk, who has ties to Hamas and on whom U.S. sanctions were also imposed last week.

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

These negotiations might go differently if the US / Israel bombing the IRGC while negotiating.

[ILRedAlert @ILRedAlert]

A potential US-Iran agreement reportedly allows US forces to remain near Iran for 30 days, Fox News reports.

[David Keyes @DavidMKeyes]

Study Arabic!

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

@BenGvirItamar Has two problems:

His mouth is too big.

& His ears are too small.

People like this don’t heed constructive criticism.

So good ideas don’t translate to good actions.

And there are zero stoplights when he thinks up a “med-free asylum” bad idea, eg….

[Amit Segal @AmitSegal]

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is a reputational arsonist. Yesterday’s fire involved the minister visiting a detention center holding the latest batch of Gaza flotilla activists. There, he paraded around the bound and bowed detainees, waving the Israeli flag and blasting the national anthem.

Are the participants in this flotilla criminals and determined enemies of Israel? Yes.

Were some of the activists associated with ISIS? According to my sources, yes.

Should we shed a single tear for them? Absolutely not.

And were the embassies that summoned Israel’s ambassadors to reprimand them for Ben-Gvir’s actions the truest friends to begin with? No.

But despite all of that, what Itamar Ben-Gvir did is a complete scandal—for three reasons.

First, it is a brazen subversion of established policy. The government had already decided to deport these participants. Like it or not, that was the directive. For a minister to go rogue and hijack the situation reeks of cheap political theater—a desperate grab for attention that directly sabotages the government’s agenda.

Second, this stunt is the political equivalent of the Davidka, Israel’s notoriously loud but functionally useless mortar from the Independence War—all noise, zero payload. In practice, Ben-Gvir’s photo-op achieved absolutely nothing, yet the diplomatic bill is staggering. It runs on the exact same playbook as his poorly planned death penalty law for terrorists: it will likely never result in a single execution, but it guarantees that Israel suffers maximum international blowback and disastrous headlines. If the goal was deterrence, I’m highly skeptical of its effectiveness. I can think of few things more guaranteed to fuel an activist’s anti-Israel obsession and ensure their booking on the very next flotilla than a forced, front-row seat to Ben-Gvir’s cheap political theater.

Third, it actively sabotages vital, ongoing diplomatic efforts. Israel has been staring down the barrel of severe EU sanctions after losing the protective veto of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. As Ben-Gvir was busy planning his stunt, Israel secured a critical victory: the Czech Republic agreed to step in and veto the sanctions in Hungary’s place. The Czech commitment has not been withdrawn, but why would one possibly want to make the lives of our diplomats and allies that much harder? Just as the international pressure was naturally defusing, Ben-Gvir dragged the world’s hostile glare right back onto Israel.

Yes, the detainees may be criminals. But to the rest of the world, they just see a vulgar politician—one already synonymous with everything critics hate about Israel, with a Hague arrest warrant hanging over his head—screaming at captives of unclear guilt.

I wish I could say it was an unfortunate mistake. But it was entirely by design.

[שי צ'רקה shay charka @ShayCharka]

היום ב@MakorRishon

[Judean Prophet @JudeanProphet]

It amazes me that @kennethmejiaLA who is running for reelection as LA’s Comptroller makes his opposition to Israel part of his political branding.

What does Israel have to do with spending responsibly and transparently?

[Kenneth Mejia, CPA @kennethmejiaLA]

In Jan 2024, I left the Democratic Party. 

I couldn’t support a party that preferred to spend our tax dollars on bombs while Americans struggle to put food on the table.

As City Controller, my job is to call out misspending no matter who is in power.

https://t.co/91VJmKinqY

[Mossad Commentary @MOSSADil]

❗️JUST RELEASED: THE SECRET AGENT WHO INFILTRATED HAMAS-LINKED NETWORKS IN EUROPE (THIS IS REAL!)

A young Scandinavian woman with no Israeli background was recruited into one of the most daring undercover investigations ever carried out by Ad Kan, @adkanorg.

She embedded herself inside radical anti-Israel activist circles, documenting how organizations presenting themselves as “human rights” work.

EPISODE 1: The Gaza flotilla network and the 1st steps of an undercover mission that would eventually expose connections between anti-Israel activism, European networks, and Hamas.

This is the story of “Hashtula,” the planted agent.
Watch Episode 1.

Credit: Channel 13, Zvi Yehezkeli and Koda Productions.
Investigation: Ad Kan Organization.
@adkanorg

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

On This Day — May 18, 2014

A Palestinian professor, Dr. Mohammed Dajani, was forced to resign after weeks of vicious threats, smears, and campus incitement — all because he led 27 Palestinian students to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, guided by Jewish Holocaust survivors.

They studied the systematic murder of six million Jews. In return, his own university caved: faculty called him a traitor and “normalizer,” students protested with signs branding him a collaborator, the staff union expelled him, and the administration quietly accepted his resignation rather than defend academic freedom.

Just months later, in January 2015, Dajani’s car was torched in a sophisticated arson attack outside his home. Perpetrators had pre-placed chemicals in the engine days earlier specifically to make it explode while driving — an attempt so dangerous it nearly killed him on the road from the airport.

The message was crystal clear: there is no place in Palestinian society for acknowledging Jewish suffering, learning real history, or building any bridge of understanding.

Dajani had co-written a 2011 New York Times op-ed arguing that teaching Palestinians about the Holocaust would make peace more attainable — by rejecting false equivalences with the “Nakba” and fostering basic human empathy. He believed knowledge could humanize the other side.

Palestinian society answered with pure fury. An article about the trip was pulled after online outrage. Dajani, a former Fatah fighter, was branded a traitor for doing the unthinkable: exposing young Palestinians to the truth.

This is the core problem with Palestinian society: genuine efforts at reconciliation, Holocaust education, or simple historical honesty are treated as betrayal and treason.

Bridges are not wanted. Dialogue is not wanted. Learning the “Other’s” pain is not wanted.

They want Israel destroyed — period. That’s why every serious peace offer has been rejected, why “normalization” is a dirty word punishable by social death (or worse), and why even a respected university professor trying to tell the truth had to flee his own community.

When your culture punishes the moderates who seek knowledge and coexistence while rewarding the rejectionists and jihadists, the results are predictable: endless conflict, generations raised on hate, and no path forward except through Israeli strength.

Dajani tried. Palestinian society made sure it would never happen again.