Michael S

🎗️✡️🇮🇱🇨🇦🇺🇸

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@EylonALevy @EylonALevy Every single time you go to see who wrote the article that disparages Israel, then check out their social media feeds you find that they are completely biased against Israel, so their articles are always slanted and are never fair and objective. No longer surprised.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@RitchieTorres @RitchieTorres I respect U 4 the right moral stand U have taken over the last 2.5 years or so vis a vis the 10/7 war. U get it right again in the 1st part of this post. The 2nd part though the reason he may not need approval is in this post which is pretty clever:

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

The USS Gerald R. Ford is not parked near Iran. It is parked off Israel. And nobody is asking the only question that matters: why.

The $13.3 billion crown jewel of the US Navy, the largest warship ever constructed, just positioned itself off Haifa. Not in the Arabian Sea where the Lincoln sits 850 kilometers from Iranian shores loaded for offensive operations. Not in the Gulf where strike range is optimal. Off Israel. Defending Israel.

This is not redundancy. This is architecture.

Two carriers. Two missions. Two entirely different strategic functions. The Lincoln is the sword, positioned to launch strike packages into Iranian airspace within hours of an order. The Ford is the shield, its Aegis missile defense systems creating an umbrella over Israeli population centers against the retaliation that follows the first Tomahawk.

America just split its carrier doctrine into offense and defense simultaneously. That has not happened since the Pacific theater in 1945.

But the positioning reveals something deeper than tactics. When Iran retaliates, and every wargame says Iran retaliates, its missiles and drones fly toward Israel. They will fly through the same airspace where a US carrier strike group is now stationed. Every Iranian missile aimed at Tel Aviv or Haifa must traverse the Ford’s defensive envelope. Shooting at Israel means shooting at, around, and through an American carrier group.

Iran cannot retaliate against Israel without engaging American naval assets. The Ford’s position makes that physically impossible. The carrier is not defending Israel as a favor. It is positioned so that any Iranian response to American strikes automatically becomes an attack on American forces, triggering the full unrestrained weight of US military response without a single additional political decision required.

This is escalation insurance written in steel and seawater. If the campaign goes longer than planned, if munitions run thin in 7 to 10 days, if allies hesitate, the Ford’s position ensures that Iranian retaliation does the political work Washington cannot do alone: it transforms a limited American strike into an act of self-defense that no ally can refuse to support.

You do not park a $13.3 billion carrier where the enemy’s return fire will hit it unless you want the enemy’s return fire to hit it.

The Ford is not there to prevent escalation. The Ford is there to guarantee that if escalation comes, it comes on terms that make American restraint politically impossible and allied participation politically unavoidable.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ https://t.co/BrzGRrU3VW

[Elisha Wiesel @ElishaWiesel]

New Yorkers - Wake up! The war is happening here, too. DSA/SJP loyalist Zohran Mamdani promotes terrorist propaganda and has called to defund the police. Keep him -- and Brad Lander who has endorsed him -- off of your primary ballot and say no to antisemitism in this mayoral election! #DontRankMamdani

[Ben Badejo @BenjaminBadejo]

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@DrJacobsRad @JustinTrudeau This is the synagogue where I 2 attended. Junior Congregation when I was a kid & went on 2 lead it. A Bimah Boy during my teens & where I led Hakafot on Simcha Torah & read the Magillah on Purim. This is absolutely vile. U want 2 protest go 2 the consulate. This is antisemitism.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

This hits home. Worth a read.

If observing may you have an easy and meaningful fast.

Gmar Chatima Tova

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

A few thoughts moments before settling into this Yom Kippur. A bit long, a bit into the weeds. Apologies.

How do we repent on this Day of Repentance - when we are still afraid and unable to really judge ourselves? When we still rage at God and man?

How do we shrink ourselves into supplicants when family members are in a war and we are called upon to be brave and present and strong to support those who struggle around us?

How do you enter the “headspace” of Yom Kippur when it seems so detached from the anxiety that surrounds us?

To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know how to pray this Yom Kippur. I suspect I’ll fail.

Here’s my attempt to make it possible.

Yom Kippur is a hard holiday, grim and serious. It isn’t user-friendly or happy or self-validating. It isn’t for the kids, it doesn’t commemorate anything. You can’t make a Spielberg movie out of it.

It’s about suffering and shame and confession and the impossibility of purity and how the painful baring of one’s soul is a necessary precursor to the emotional and spiritual release of forgiveness.

“Torment your souls,” Leviticus instructs us about this holiday.

But it isn’t the torment of the fasting. The “torment,” chapter 23, verse 23 commands us, begins the day before, “on the ninth” of Tishrei. Today. Amid the bustle of preparations and family and the feasting that precedes the fast.

The Talmud makes it explicit. In tractate Yoma, page 81, it explains: “All who eat and drink on the ninth, [the Torah] treats them as if they tormented [their souls] on both the ninth and the tenth.”

The feast is as much “torment” as the fast.

But why? “Why is the feasting on the eve of Yom Kippur comparable to the fasting?” asks the 19-century sage and poet Malbim. “Because to eat for the sake of heaven is more difficult than to fast for the sake of heaven.”

The Sages believe in the theater of religion, in the power of these theaterics - poetry, music, ritual, special spaces - to shape shared norms and build strong sacralized community.

But like the Torah, they are also afraid of these theatrics, of the repetition that robs them of their authenticity, of the way the ritual inevitably comes to replace genuine emotional and moral change.

And so they dislike the ascetic impulse, the all-too-easy holiness of self-flagellation. The fear it because it is beguiling, because it is fake.

It is far easier to die with great fanfare for a great moral cause than to live for it each day, through drudgery and effort. It is easier to get social validation from high drama than from sustained self-correction.

In Chapter 2 of his Laws of Repentance, part of his monumental codex of Jewish law called the Mishnah Torah, the 12th-century sage Rambam instructs us to begin the confession of our sins *today*, hours before Yom Kippur itself, and specifically before the start of the pre-fast feast. His explanation is sarcastic and biting and the heart of Yom Kippur: “Lest he choke during the feast without having confessed.”

The fast is meant to clear the mind, not to torment it. If you are focused all day on the fast, you’re doing it wrong. It isn’t the physical discomfort that absolves. Repentance isn’t a tit-for-tat of suffering in which self-inflicted pain earns brownie points with God or with those you have wronged.

A repentance that doesn’t torment you when you’re feasting doesn’t become more authentic or real when you’re fasting.

On Yom Kippur, our Sages teach, you stand before a God who knows you, who sees through your confusion and defenses and self-loathing to each wrinkle of your struggling soul — and luckily for us all, to the deepest core of goodness around which he built us, that inner nucleus of self buried beneath the many layers of experience and pain that drive us to do bad things.

It is this knowing God, this forgiving God, before whom we stand and confess our failings, before whom we ask for help reaching inward to that goodness that is our essential core and root and truth.

I plan to scream at God. He can take it. And then I plan to tell him about my awful year. And then I hope to obtain his help in turning inward to my innermost self, in the desperate hope that I can find it. In that moment of honesty, with God’s help, I will ask my people for forgiveness. I could have done so much more. I will ask my enemies for forgiveness too, for reasons too complex to be listed here. Then I will ask God for forgiveness. And finally, with any luck, I will ask myself for the same.

May we all know the difference between real repentance and wasting ourselves on our egomania, and may we all find solace and release in true forgiveness of each other and ourselves.

Gmar hatima tova.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

👇

[Tyler Harris Gregory 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🇮🇱 @TyeGregory]

The far right uses "DEI candidate" to hide racism.
The far left uses "Zionist candidate" to hide antisemitism. Neither are ok.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@RitchieTorres You are a beacon of Light in a vast array of darkness. Never let them silence the truth that you know that is righteous and have so importantly voiced in support of us. We see it. We need it. We appreciate it. We appreciate you, @RitchieTorres. #BringThemHomeNow #AmIsraelChai

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

Enough is Enough. She is Corrupt, Antisemitic to the Core, and Needs to go.
#FireFrancesca If you stand with Israel, Sign the petition. (link in replies to post) #AmYisraelChai

[Hillel Neuer @HillelNeuer]

EXPOSED: The UN's Francesca Albanese is running a global influence network of 100 PLO, UN & UNRWA officials and Hamas-linked NGOs to influence countries to accuse Israel of “genocide,” and to lobby countries to fund UNRWA — including with racist messaging: https://t.co/YzueEW7QOV

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@AvivaKlompas @NYPDnews @NYCMayor @NYCMayor @NYPDTransit This is unacceptable. These thugs need to be dealt with…hate crimes. On top of the homeless vagrants sleeping on cars making them unrideable (was disgusting the last time I was on the 2 train changed cars), now this crap. I’ll stick to Uber & Cabs. Safer.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

Blunt…but it’s accurate.

#BringThemHomeNow

[Mor Edge Insight @MorEdge_Insight]

Hamas, together with thousands of Gazan civilians and aided and abetted by the UN agency UNRWA, kidnapped 250 innocent people on Oct 7.

As we found out today, the hostages were deliberately kept in civilian homes for months, right in the middle of a populated area with thousands of “civilians”. In the past few months, it was discovered that some hostages were kept at hospitals and at UNRWA schools and homes of UNRWA employees. The tactic employed by Hamas and anybody else complicit with it was to ensure that any rescue mission may potentially lead to a maximum amount of casualties for the sole purpose of propaganda… and boy have Hamas and the media and the UN milked this propaganda for all it’s worth.

Regardless what the UN and the media or anybody else want to claim, 100000% of the responsibility for any casualties rests solely on the hostage TAKERS, not the hostage RESCUERS. Israel has a duty and a responsibility to do whatever is necessary to protect their citizens and to rescue them. The fact that there was 50 or 100 or 200 or even 1000 casualties is not on Israel but on the perpetrators of the kidnappings and all those complicit in it.

There was a gunfight, and people were killed. Both sides were shooting so both sides hit civilians or anyone who was killed and injured. But again, the sole responsibility for any casualties lies with the kidnappers. They kidnapped the hostages. They took them deep into Gaza. They kept them captive in highly populated residential homes. Israel’s sole concern is to rescue the hostages. It’s really that simple.

If you don’t want people to die, don’t start a war, kidnap civilians and place them in the middle of a large population. To even attempt to criticize Israel in any way for any deaths is not only immoral and wrong, but it’s dangerous. Because the moment we assign even an ounce of blame on those rescuing hostages, you are giving a green light to terrorists everywhere to use the tactic of hostage taking and human shields and preventing the hostages from ever being rescued.

The issue of morality here does not lie with Israel but with any party of any kind even attempting to lay the blame on Israel. This isn’t a movie. This is real life and this is war. And it’s high time all the leftist imbeciles grow up and wake up. They are empowering terrorists to use tactics that are war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are the problem, not Israel. If anybody honestly does not understand the very basic concept of this, then seek help or f*** off.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

ב׳ה Am Yisrael Chai!

The best news!!! Cried Tears of Joy.

They look ok physically from the reports, but mentally what they have endured will take time to heal. 🙏🏻 for them.

And we will get them all back whether the rest of the world is with us or not.

#BringThemHomeNow

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

For the first time in 8 months, they will be spending tonight with their loved ones.

Good night.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@Sen_Gounardes @LindaBRosenthal @FoodAllergy @Elijahsecho Thank you for this. As a resident of NY and as a father with a son who has a severe peanut allergy, who carries his with him at all times…this is greatly appreciated. This will inevitably save lives. 🙏🏻

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@CherylWroteIt I have a confession to make. I’m Jewish. I’m Canadian from the strong Jewish community in Montreal. I live in the US. I’m 1/2 Ashkenaz/1/2 Sephardic. My mother’s family had 2 flee from Morocco. I’m a Zionist. So are my sons. And I’m prouder than ever.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

This 👇

[Kiyah Willis @kiyahwillis]

“Free Palestine” is code for “unleash genocide on Jews”

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

This 👇. #AntiZionismIsAntiSemitism

[Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la]

Because the pro-Hamas protests are a coalition of spoiled white kids, jihadists and self-hating Jews. None of them go to HBCU’s.

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

@Joe_Roberts01 Maybe they should just go to Gaza…there is plenty of aid getting in there…so much aid being let in the UN can keep up and distribute it. Just sayin’…

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

Proof that this radical hateful organization is not Jewish no matter if it was initially started by 2 Jews who are “AsAJew” Jews. BTW desecrating our religion & religious customs 2 make their statements proves just how hateful & antisemitic they are. #AntizionismIsAntisemitism

[Michael S @LD_Buckeye]

This is chilling. It’s not right in any way shape or form. The leaders of these institutions and a lot in government allowing this to go on, hell cheering this on, are feckless. Things need to change now.

#AntizionismIsAntisemitism

[Shai Davidai @ShaiDavidai]

I want to send a public message to Mr. Cas Holloway, the COO of @Columbia University:

Cas, you're are really great guy. I know it. I saw it in your eyes today. This is why know that, deep-down, you know I'm right. You may not like my style, but I know you agree with almost everything that I have been saying. I just know it.

I am still trying to understand how you could stand just stand there, look me in the eyes, and not let me in to campus. How could you keep a straight face when you capitulated to the pro-Hamas mob yet refused entry to the most vocal voice for the Jewish and Israeli students, staff, and faculty at Columbia.

I think I know how.

You were just doing your job.

You were just doing your job when you denied a Jewish professor access to campus (by the way, all I wanted to do was to read the names of the 133 hostages, thanks for asking).

You were just doing your job when you sided with those that support Hamas.

You were just doing your job when you couldn't say for a full minute whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. (remember that meeting? It's all recorded. You were just doing your job).

Look, I get it. You're scared. You are worried about how the pro-Hamas extremists (and the brainwashed cult they've amassed) will react if you try to disperse them.

But that's exactly how terrorism works. It's an ideology that forces you to act in certain ways through explicit and implicit threats. Hamas doesn't need to bomb all the buses in Israel for me to still be scared of riding a bus in Tel Aviv.

It's the same at Columbia. At this point, the pro-Hamas mob at Columbia has broken basically every possible rule of the university (and possibly multiple State and Federal laws). The NYPD has stated that they are ready to act, if President Shafik lets them in. And you're the person who needs to make that call. That is damn scary.

But being scared is not an excuse for not doing the right thing.

Being scared is not an excuse for choosing the pro-Hamas mob and their violent chants over the Jewish professor who believes in co-existence.

The problem is that you are not alone. There are thousands of administrators like you all over U.S. campuses who are also scared. Like you, they want to stay out of it. Like you, they are just doing their jobs.

And there were millions of Germans like you in the 1930s. Good Germans, upstanding Germans, who were just doing their jobs.

Who do you think ran the universities of Berlin and Munich and Heidelberg and Frankfurt in the 1930s? Who helped the Hitler Youth check out books by Jewish authors to burn outside of campus?

Administrators. Just like you.

Cas, what I am trying to say is learn from history. Now is not the time to just "do your job". The entire nation is looking at you. You have the opportunity to show your kids, show your family, that when the time came, you stood up for what's right.

Do the right thing:

1. Disperse the illegal encampment
2. Expel the radical extremists who are brainwashing this pro-Hamas mob (and start enforcing the suspension of those leaders who are miraculously ack on campus)
3. Dismantle all of the students organizations in CUAD (the coalition behind all the antisemitism and calls for terrorism on campus) and suspend all their leaders.
4. Deal with your pro-Hamas faculty. Do something about them. Seriously.
5. Restore my right to be Jewish in public wherever I want to be.

I have every right to be on campus.

Don't bow to those who cheer on Hamas.

Don't just "do your job".

(btw - If they won't let you do this, quit. Show the world what you stand for. Be a hero. I know it's scary, but I promise - if you do the right thing, I will have your back. It's never personal for me. Never has been, never will be.)

[Shai Davidai @ShaiDavidai]

I want to send a public message to Mr. Cas Holloway, the COO of @Columbia University:

Cas, you're are really great guy. I know it. I saw it in your eyes today. This is why know that, deep-down, you know I'm right. You may not like my style, but I know you agree with almost everything that I have been saying. I just know it.

I am still trying to understand how you could stand just stand there, look me in the eyes, and not let me in to campus. How could you keep a straight face when you capitulated to the pro-Hamas mob yet refused entry to the most vocal voice for the Jewish and Israeli students, staff, and faculty at Columbia.

I think I know how.

You were just doing your job.

You were just doing your job when you denied a Jewish professor access to campus (by the way, all I wanted to do was to read the names of the 133 hostages, thanks for asking).

You were just doing your job when you sided with those that support Hamas.

You were just doing your job when you couldn't say for a full minute whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. (remember that meeting? It's all recorded. You were just doing your job).

Look, I get it. You're scared. You are worried about how the pro-Hamas extremists (and the brainwashed cult they've amassed) will react if you try to disperse them.

But that's exactly how terrorism works. It's an ideology that forces you to act in certain ways through explicit and implicit threats. Hamas doesn't need to bomb all the buses in Israel for me to still be scared of riding a bus in Tel Aviv.

It's the same at Columbia. At this point, the pro-Hamas mob at Columbia has broken basically every possible rule of the university (and possibly multiple State and Federal laws). The NYPD has stated that they are ready to act, if President Shafik lets them in. And you're the person who needs to make that call. That is damn scary.

But being scared is not an excuse for not doing the right thing.

Being scared is not an excuse for choosing the pro-Hamas mob and their violent chants over the Jewish professor who believes in co-existence.

The problem is that you are not alone. There are thousands of administrators like you all over U.S. campuses who are also scared. Like you, they want to stay out of it. Like you, they are just doing their jobs.

And there were millions of Germans like you in the 1930s. Good Germans, upstanding Germans, who were just doing their jobs.

Who do you think ran the universities of Berlin and Munich and Heidelberg and Frankfurt in the 1930s? Who helped the Hitler Youth check out books by Jewish authors to burn outside of campus?

Administrators. Just like you.

Cas, what I am trying to say is learn from history. Now is not the time to just "do your job". The entire nation is looking at you. You have the opportunity to show your kids, show your family, that when the time came, you stood up for what's right.

Do the right thing:

1. Disperse the illegal encampment
2. Expel the radical extremists who are brainwashing this pro-Hamas mob (and start enforcing the suspension of those leaders who are miraculously ack on campus)
3. Dismantle all of the students organizations in CUAD (the coalition behind all the antisemitism and calls for terrorism on campus) and suspend all their leaders.
4. Deal with your pro-Hamas faculty. Do something about them. Seriously.
5. Restore my right to be Jewish in public wherever I want to be.

I have every right to be on campus.

Don't bow to those who cheer on Hamas.

Don't just "do your job".

(btw - If they won't let you do this, quit. Show the world what you stand for. Be a hero. I know it's scary, but I promise - if you do the right thing, I will have your back. It's never personal for me. Never has been, never will be.)