Surprised Wallaby Noises

I'd tell you what I used to do, but I'd have to bore you to death. As for what I'm doing now, inshallah, all will be clear.

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@wartranslated Russia has gone from the second army in the world, to the second army in Ukraine, to the second army in Russia, and now—with the arrival of the North Koreans—tied for third.

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@P_Kallioniemi @washingtonpost I wish I hadn't bought a yearly subscription. I've now cancelled it. I wish I could have done so more meaningfully.

[Karen Attiah @KarenAttiah]

I didn’t sign up to be a journalist to be silent on what matters most.

I didn’t come here to be a coward. Some of us really, truly believe in speaking truth to power.

We were betrayed today.

[Fred Wellman @FPWellman]

When you get a Top Secret clearance you have to report any foreign travel, contacts, and relationships you have. If you have regular contact with threat countries like Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, and dozens of others you are grilled on it. If you lie...you lose your clearance. If you develop relationships and don't report them...you lose your clearance. If you have those relationships...you lose your clearance. We have a guy with a TS clearance, overseeing classified contracts, and control of equipment that can literally get our troops killed if turned off...who is friends with our most bitter enemy and doing favors for him undermining our allies...and it seems the GOVERNMENT FUCKING KNOWS ABOUT IT and has done nothing. Do your fucking jobs. When my kid gets killed because Elon flipped off Starlink it will be his blood on your fucking hands because you didn't want to make the billionaire or his insane followers mad at you.

[Australia Institute @TheAusInstitute]

David Littleproud is right - fire ants are an urgent threat.

Our research found that fire ants could kill 6 Queenslanders and cost households $188 million annually if not eradicated. #auspol
https://t.co/d23gxzsaR7

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

There really is literally no evil or ill in this world behind which the little shit in the Kremlin is not pulling strings. I keep thinking that it has to be figurative, but no.
It's not like he actually cares about the Palestinians. He's got pals stowing wealth in Israel for him.

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

JUST NOW: WSJ reveals that Russia has been providing targeting data to the Houthis for their attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

Data was passed through members of Iran's IRGC who are embedded with the Houthis.

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@Marmel @RpsAgainstTrump I left the country largely to minimise my contact with people like JD Vance, but I am prepared, Senator, to do almost anything just to hurt Russia and the Russian government. There's no price in the lives of others and our taxes I will not pay. Russia is the enemy. Always was.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

This is not true. The truth is stranger and more interesting.

Israel still runs its marriage laws according to the Ottoman Empire’s millet system, in which minority communities self-govern through officially recognized religious bodies.

So does Lebanon, by the way. So do other parts of the Middle East. With differences in each place and some changes over time, it’s still fundamentally the old Ottoman way of doing things.

So the only fully recognized state-approved marriage is thus religious marriage controlled by religious conservatives.

And since Jewish religious law doesn’t allow it, Jews can’t marry non-Jews in the official rabbinate.

But here’s where it gets weird: Muslim sharia courts in Israel, also funded and appointed by the state, *can* marry Jews and Muslims - as long as the Muslim is the man. Why? For the same Ottoman logic: because Muslim religious law allows Muslim men (but only men) to marry Jewish or Christian women.

There are also Catholic canon law courts, Druze religious courts, etc. Each community has one.

The Ottoman millet system.

Why does this system survive, especially given polls that does that most Israelis don’t want this system?

Two reasons.

1. We can’t agree on what would replace it. It’s part of our larger secular-religious culture war.

2. We don’t actually live in this system unless we want to.

Because alongside this most restrictive of marriage laws in the free world, another less formal system operates, available to all, accepting of all, including LGBT and interfaith and every combination thereof.

That second system is called “yeduim betzibur” in Hebrew, or “known in public.” It’s essentially what Westerners would call common-law marriage.

And it’s comprehensive, granting a broad cross-section of marriage rights, including to interfaith and same-sex couples, since the 1990s. For example, inheritance, end-of-life decisions for each other, adopting kids together.

Until 2014, when gay marriage became universal in America, Israel was ahead of most of America in terms of specific rights granted to gays - i.e., the most illiberal *formal* marriage law system in the free world sat atop one the most liberal *de facto* marriage law system in the free world.

As I said, strange and interesting.

The current speaker of the Knesset, for example, a powerful conservative politician from Likud, is a married gay man with kids.

This year, because of the war, same-sex partners of soldiers hurt or killed in the war became officially recognized partners for the purposes of military stipends.

My wife and I, two children of rabbis, don’t like the religious rabbinate system, so we married outside it. But we’re still married in the eyes of the state and of everyone we know, including Haredi friends who were at our wedding. Nobody bats an eyelash when you marry outside the official system.

The gap between the old formal system and the lived reality is profound.

Finally, there’s a third option: Marrying abroad. It’s a 45-minute plane ride to Cyprus, which does a brisk business marrying Israelis at Larnaca city hall. Israel is obligated by international treaties to recognize those marriages.

And sitting next to those Israelis in the waiting room? Lebanese couples who are there for the same reason.

When anti-Israel people go after us on questions like this - on those places where we don’t fit the Western liberal norm - it’s nearly always for things that reflect our deep cultural roots in the Middle East. We’re a complicated and sometimes tense mixture of two civilizational worlds. Literally. Half of Israeli Jews hail from Europe, half from Islamic lands.

It makes more sense on these kinds of social questions to think of us as a less dysfunctional Lebanon than as a darker-skinned Switzerland.

If, as Saturday Night Live wants you to believe, the Arab Middle East will soon turn gay-friendly if everyone “stops bombing us,” that liberal Arabness will look like Israel.

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@Gerashchenko_en Obviously, The Secret is required reading material in Russian propaganda offices.

[Keith Olbermann @KeithOlbermann]

SHADOW IS MISSING ON ROOSEVELT ISLAND. Last seen at the bus stop near the Octagon. He's 25 pounds and chipped:
985113009419897. If you've seen or found him please call 888-466-3242 and PLEASE RT SHADOW!

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@abcnews What's the matter, Kim? Feeling neglected because we're busy watching more important countries with, I'm going to say it, saner and more attractive dictators fight wars with their forever enemies?

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@DrewPavlou The admiration for silly gestures by so-called freedom fighters who are actually murderous thugs starts sadly early in Australia.

The admiration for idiotic gestures by simpletons is new and I'm not sure I care for it.

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@AlanBixter @TheAusInstitute What is with our politicians giving people money for submarines we don't end up getting?

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@Edtechris @SwannMarcus89 @portraitinflesh Yes. Swann was pointing out there appears to be something wrong with these people.

We've seen them. We've all seen them. It's very sad.

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@Osint613 And nothing of value was lost.

Shame they didn't get more of them.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

New York Post Cover: ‘Rat in a hole’

[Alex Ryvchin @AlexRyvchin]

Sinwar planned the October 7 atrocities to ignite pan-Arab pride, unify the Islamic world in armed conflict against Israel and leave it crippled, politically, economically and militarily.

Today, Sinwar died alone wrapped in blankets like a rheumatic housewife. Hamas is reduced to small batches of terrorists incapable of waging war or ruling Gaza. Only Hezbollah materially joined the Hamas war and its leader is also dead.

Israel on the other hand is not only in tact but enjoys a greater advantage over its enemies than at any point in its history. Peace with Egypt, Jordan and the Abraham Accord states holds. The US alliance holds. The Palestinian movement in the West has been exposed as a regressive, anti-western malignancy. Iran is isolated except for its band of pantomime pirates in Yemen.

Everything has been laid bare and peace now beckons.

[Surprised Wallaby Noises @amfellman]

@CentroLeaks @PokeThrowbacks I like this world and I choose to live in it.

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

LMAOOO, trump bussed his attendees out to Coachella and then STRANDED them in the desert at night.

This is fucking HILARIOUS!
He doesn't pay his bills.

What. Did. You. Expect? 😆