David Tennant Saying He Wants A Black Woman Politician To "shut Up" And Not Exist Anymore Because She

Fernando Valenzuela Anguamea,

From Etchohuaquila, Mexico, Fernandomania took baseball by storm. Like the lava lizards of the Galapagos Islands, breathing through your eyes to throw the nastiest of screwball, the world wasn't ready.

For years, he was the voice to so many around the world. I'm so glad you became immortalized with your number retirement.

Even without being in the hall of fame you'll always be a cornerstone to Dodger history

We will forever miss you.

"If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!"

RIP, "El Toro"

Update post:

Most of this will be about the unprecedented attack of the Islamist regime of Iran against Israel, but first I have to take a second to mourn a 14 year old boy, who was murdered in a Palestinian attack on Friday. At around 6 in the morning, teenager Binyamin Achimeir led his sheep herd out of the farm he lives in, but a few hours later, the sheep returned to the farm without him. At first, it was feared that he had some accident, or was dehydrated, and thousands of people voluntarily joined the search for him. On Saturday, at around noon, the IDF found his body, with signs of brutal violence on it. Based on the forensic evidence, he was murdered by several Palestinian terrorists, and he fought back. The army is still hunting down the murderers. May Binyamin's memory be a blessing.

Right, back to the Islamist regime of Iran's attack on Israel. I posted about it as soon as the news started being aired here, in case someone didn't know about it. The news broke past the normal time when people watch news on TV in Israel, I noticed it by chance right before I was about to turn in for the night. I'm physically okay, but I didn't get that much sleep, I had to wake up early to take care of some stuff, so I AM very tired, which is why I'm not going to do the usual thing I do, which is to look for English journalistic sources for everything, but I have no doubt even the stuff I won't look up can all be easily found online.

On a personal note, I can tell you that at 1:43 in the morning I heard the first explosion, but no sirens went off. A few more explosions followed, and only then did we hear the sirens. It was scary, for a moment we couldn't tell whether we're hearing explosions of missiles from neighboring areas, or whether something went wrong with the sirens, and we need to hurry into the bomb shelter. It seems like in Jerusalem specifically there was some issue with the sirens, I heard a reporter mention it. Also, the alert app didn't go off, even though it should have, at the latest when the sirens did.

This is what the Temple Mount looked like from an Iranian attack that could have easily destroyed the al-Aqsa mosque (it's not in the frame, but it's right next to where this was filmed):

Quick background: Iran is the biggest financier of anti-Israel terrorism for decades now, including funding Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, all of which have been a part of a continuous attack on Israel since Oct 7 as Iran's proxies. Iran has sent its own military seniors to help and instruct those local terrorists, in places like Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Israel has eliminated them whenever possible, this is not something new. On Apr 1, Israel carried out such a strike, in which it targeted 7 Iranian army seniors in Damascus, Syria's capital. Iran claimed Israel targeted the Iranian consulate in this city, but diplomatic buildings are all publicly listed. Iran has an embassy in Damascus (in a separate location) and no consulates. That's why the magnitude of Iran's response to this has taken Israel by surprise, because the Israeli strike wasn't that out of the ordinary. In fact, the US assassination of Iran's military commander, Qasem Soleimani, back in 2018, was a far graver blow for the Iranian regime, and yet it did not lead to an attack as massive as the one launched against Israel last night.

It is now known that some of the attack waves against Israel were intercepted by other countries, including The US, the UK, France and Jordan. It's been said that there's at least one more Arab country that helped in intercepting Iran's attack, but it can't be publicized. Many countries denounced Iran for attacking Israel.

We don't have numbers regarding the full size of the attack. Out of all the countries who participated in curtailing this attack, we know that the US has intercepted at least 70 suicide drones and 3 cruise missiles, while Israel has intercepted at least 185 suicide drones, 36 cruise missile and 110 ballistic missiles (that last one is the missile type that causes the most damage). Israel's interceptions are said to have been 99% successful, but like I said, no defence system is perfect. A small number of ballistic missiles did land inside Israel. One hit an Israeli air Force base in the south. There's over 30 people who got injured when rushing to the bomb shelter in the middle of the night (elderly people, including Holocaust survivors, have died from such injuries), and over 30 more ended up in hospital due to severe mental health reactions. On top of that, there's a 7 years old Muslim Bedouine girl who was injured by interceptors debris. A friend of her family that I heard being interviewed said the family wanted to go to the communal bomb shelter, but before they even had a chance to make it out of the house, the girl was hit by the debris piercing into their home, and she is suffering from severe head injuries. The hospital is currently fighting for her life.

The estimate of how much it cost Israel to defend its citizens from this one attack last night is 5 BILLION shekels (which is over 1.3 BILLION US dollars). That's for one night.

Israel will respond. According to one reporter I heard, that was decided as soon as it was clear how big the attack is, so this isn't about how much damage Iran caused, it's about how it crossed several red lines. This is the first time Iran itself attacked Israel itself, it's not an attack on an extension of Israel, nor was it done by using proxy terrorists. Israel has had terrorist organizations attacking it continuously since 2001, but this is the first attack from a fellow sovereign country since Iraq (led by tyrant Saddam Hussein) in 1991, so that in itself is crossing a red line. The size of the attack is also considered an escalation on Iran's part. In 2019, Iran launched a smaller scaled suicde drone attack on Saudi Arabia, and the latter's western allies refused to launch a counter attack, which led to these countries being seen as unreliable, and some Middle Eastern countries renewed their ties with Iran. That's why how it would seen in the Middle East if Israel doesn't react to an even bigger attack, and how it might drive more moderate countries to grow closer to Iran, is another consideration in why Israel must respond. Not to mention that launching such a mass attack basically caused a paralysis of the country once the first intel became known. For example, all educational activity (schools, universities, you name it) has been canceled, Israel's air space had to be closed, every single ambulance across the country had to be manned, and so on. That is not something any country can simply shrug off. Not to mention, Israel financially can't afford this reality to become normalized.

Not to mention, Israel tried to contain Hamas, PIJ and Hezbollah's rocket attacks for decades. What we got for it was the invasion and massacre on Oct 7. The lesson for most Israelis is that containing mass attacks on our population only leads to worse ones.

That said, there's also no desire here of getting dragged into a war on another front while we're still in the middle of one in Gaza and with Iran's proxies on several more fronts. So, Israel is looking for a balanced response, one that won't let this mass attack slide, but hopefully doesn't make matters much worse.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

LOS ANGELES DODGERS ARE THE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!!!

Volcanic Eruption l Iceland l May 2024 (x)

I heard many allegations from my friends that Israel is explicitly founded as an "ethnostate", and claimed that "having a secular state instead of an apartheid state" would solve many issues of the ongoing conflict. What's some advice to give when discussing with people using such strong terms to describe Israel?

Hi lovely!

I honestly hope that your friends are even willing to listen to the answer. One of the big problems we have, is that it's easy to make up a lie demonizing Israel to people willing to automatically believe the worst about the Jewish state. It takes time, effort and a lot of words (which is taxing for both sides) to explain the truth. So there has to be willingness to listen and learn. I hope your friends prove worthy of your efforts. *hugs*

Okay, so here's the thing about the term "ethnostate." It means a state with a specific ethnic majority (unlike an immigrant society), but most people using this term to vilify Israel do it as if it means "pure ethnostate," which is a state with only one ethnic group having citizenship and rights. In other words, while Israel is a Jewish state in the sense that it is a Jewish-majority state, they use the term as if it means that Israel is a Jew-only state. But Israel isn't a pure ethnostate, and in fact, that doesn't exist anywhere in the world. In Israel, 26% of the population is not Jewish (21% of Israelis are Arabs, 5% belong to other non-Jewish groups).

More than that, Israel has never been interested in being a Jew-only state. I know the narrative of these people is that Israel intentionally committed an ethnic cleansing, expelling Arabs, but that's not the case. The Arabs started a war against the Jews (which they referred to as a "war of extermination") and at a certain point, the leadership called upon the Arab population to leave, so they can make way for the Arab armies which would invade Israel once it would declare independence. One historian in a documentary I watched about this, said that about 80% of the Arabs fled of their own accord, about 10-15% fled because, once the war started, there was also violence between the Arabs themselves (settling scores under the cover of the fighting), and the rest, which means 5-10% of the Arabs, were expelled by lower ranking Israeli army commanders, due to those locals' hostility, violence, and unwillingness to accept the new sovereign Israeli state. Meanwhile, Arabs who were willing to accept Israel, who did not take arms against the Jews, were allowed to stay and become citizens. Those 120,000 Arabs became the foundation of the 2 million Israeli Arabs today. More than that, Israel actually promoted a plan to allow about tens of thousands of Arabs back and give them land, so long as they were willing to accept the new Israeli state, and not take arms again against its Jewish citizens. Only a really small number seized that opportunity (in part because they were still at the stage where they thought any day now, the Jewish state would be dismantled by the Arabs anyway), but those who did are, once again, proof that Israel wasn't into ethnic cleansing.

Bottom line is that the partial ethnic cleansing of Arabs wasn't a result of the Jewish refusal to live alongside Arabs, it was a result of the Arab refusal to live as citizens of a Jewish state, or in an Arab state which would coexist with a Jewish one, it was a result of the Arab refusal to accept the Jews as equals.

Sometimes, I feel really bad for Arabs who did not want the war, who could have lived at peace with the Jews, but their leadership and society forced the war on them. Other times, I remember they could have stayed there, remained peaceful towards Jews, like the 120,000 Arabs who were immediately a part of Israel once it was established. I also remember that they could have spoken up against the war before it broke out, at that stage when everyone was sure the Arabs would exterminate the Jews in a matter of months at most. If they would have spoken up then, it would have been them speaking up against the ethnic cleansing and intended genocide of Jews. Where were they then? Where were their voices when the Arabs were considered the strong side?

And I remember Petach Tikva, a Jewish moshava established in 1878, and how the Jews founded a new water well, that the Arabs benefitted from as well, after they had polluted the existing water well with cattle carcasses. I remember that when the Jews started working in agriculture there, they allowed Arabs to come and live with them in this small Jewish community (22 Muslims and 2 Christians), I remember the Arabs said, "Al-bracha ind al-yahud," the blessing is with the Jews, meaning they recognized the Jews were doing something right, and the Arabs themselves were benefitting from this. I remember the Arabs complimented the Jews on how hard working they were in the fields. And I remember that none of it mattered, and that by 1886 (just 8 years after its founding), Petach Tikva was targeted in an organized Arab attack, where one woman was murdered, beaten to death (Rachel Haddad Ha'Levi), and 5 people were injured, including Rabbi Aryeh Leib Frumkin (the great grandfather of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks), who the Arabs thought they had beaten to death. There was no State of Israel yet, there was no "theft" of land, Petach Tikva was founded on land bought and paid for, there was no occupation, there was no ethnic cleansing, no discrimination of Arabs, and yet seeing the Jews start to build themselves up as equals, in a community of their own, not just as second class citizens in cities where they were always a vulnerable, undefended minority, was enough to launch this violence.

To drive this point home, you can ask your friends about the ethnic cleansing of Jews by Arabs, which occurred in the Land of Israel, and are they opposed to that? Hebron and Gaza City in 1929. East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (re-named by the Jordanains during that year the West Bank) and the Gaza Strip in 1948. There are currently ZERO Jews in what is supposed to become the Palestinian State, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, promised it would stay that way. I wouldn't call the Palestinian-ruled territories a pure ethnostate, because they do have small non-Muslim, non-Arab minorities (although those minorities have been shrinking in size due to persecution since Israel gave over control of these areas to the Palestinians in the 1990's), but in terms of my specific minority group, I can't ignore that these territories are Jew-free, and that the future Palestinian state is meant to remain ethnnically cleansed of Jews. So, if your friends truly mind ethnically cleansing, will they call out the Palestinians on that? Would they vilify and demonize the future Palestinian state, the way they do Israel?

Back to Israel today, and the other allegation. According to the law, ALL Israeli citizens are to be treated the same, regardless of faith or ancestry. The apartheid in South Africa was a system where racism didn't just exist in society, it was coded into law. That means by law, government officials could only ever be white. It means the citizen rights of non-whites were by law limited, either reduced or revoked completely. That's not the case in Israel. Here, Jews and non-Jews enjoy the exact same citizen rights. For example, non-Jews were members of the Israeli parliament since our very first elections (mad respect for Seif el-Din el-Zoubi, who saved the 6 Arab villages that his family inhabits in Israel, by insisting that they don't join the fighting against the Jews, and was elected a member of the Knesset in 1949, and was even appointed at one point as its Deputy Chief). And here's a former Israeli Arab minister and member of Knesset, Isawwi Frej, refuting the apartheid allegation himself:

Also, for the record, Israel IS a secular state. The law here is secular, not the laws of Halacha (which is actually why some ultra orthodox Jews are anti-Zionists. Not because they're against a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, but because the State of Israel isn't Jewish enough in terms of its rule and laws for their liking). Israel IS Jewish, but in the same way that the US is Christian. There are certain cultural influences and indications, but religion doesn't rule the state, and there is more than enough room for people of religious minorities to practice their faith, and have all of their rights and freedoms.

I hope this helps! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

Presenting: OTTER CHAOS 🦦

Praying for Israel

Praying for the Jewish people around the world

The antisemitic, anti-Israel victim blaming for Iran’s attack has already begun. Give yourself permission to ignore it and to shut it out. The opinions of people who have never cared and will never care about our humanity don’t matter. All that matters is supporting each other and remembering that we are a beautiful people, stronger and more resilient than our enemies can possibly imagine.

No nation or empire in three thousand years has succeeded in wiping out the Jewish people. They have all tried and they have all failed.

We will outlive them

עם ישראל חי 🇮🇱

Mauna Loa (Hawaii), the world's largest volcano, awakens with earthquakes and lava after a 38 year slumber, Nov 2022 (source: NBC News, USGS)