As a Texan, I’ll take my chances on Beto over Cruz. Cruz is incapable of change and will never be anything but a mini-trump. Beto is a reasonable human being with the potential to lead the way on this and other issues.

Ronan Farrow talked a little bit about the Israeli role in Trump’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal on Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Just FYI.

Chris Cuomo (CNN?) hammered netanyahu about Israeli nukes and his warmongering speech. It’s about time someone pointed out Israel’s hypocrisy about their own nukes.

I guess not being Jewish gave me a more clear-eyed perspective. The fact that the abused became the abuser was plainly obvious to me all along. Have to wonder and worry about what happens to this cycle in the future. Perhaps that is the true Israeli fear at this point.

What if Palestinians were given equal rights and freedom? What would they do to those who had denied and abused them for over 50 years–whether in the same or a separate country? Could the Palestinians, as a people, rise abuse what was done to them and stop the cycle of violence and oppression and forgive their abusers? Could they behave better than the Jewish Israelis have done and continue to do?

I think about this whenever I read about the population statistics that are written about so seriously–maintaining the Jewish character (majority) and state and all.

Had an Israeli friend. The government was paying to try to get her pregnant through artificial insemination to boost the Jewish population–complete with all sorts of genetic testing. I can’t really quite explain it, but that just feels like some creepy sci-fi dystopian novel with echoes of the “perfect race” thing the Nazis tried to do.

Israeli society is pretty messed up.

Excellent summary of the morality of the situation in Israel and Palestine. I would add greater emphasis needs to be placed on America as a whole–Christians, Jews, and just all of us– for ignoring our own complicity in the continuing degradation and oppression of the Palestinians. We should all be ashamed.

I always find these type of articles interesting as a person-who-is-not-Jewish.

I think the coming issue will be less about young American Jews than just young people (and people of all ages in general) learning about the inequality/human rights issues in Israel–all made possible by the US govt and financed by US tax payers.

Also, the whole idea of any one country based on maintaining a majority population of one religion and/or ethnicity and trying to call itself a democracy with freedom for all is inherently illogical.

How does a country maintain such a majority population of one religion/ethnicity? Through what means? There are no answers to these questions that are consistent with democracy and freedom. You will keep running into a logical and ethical brick wall.

This is the basic problem with the idea of a single religion/ethnicity democratic country.

I am not so young, but as I learned and talked about Israel with other non-members of the tribe, this has become a big issue for us outsiders.

Heard Chris Matthews on Hardball (MSNBC) say some stuff about Netanyahu and the Iran deal and Israel wanting the US to fight a war with Iran for them.

I am not so sure all this bombing/belligerence will be received by the public as smoothly as when Bush started the Iraq War. I think people are taking to the streets now for multiple reasons and there will be more pushback than Bush got. (More than just my letters to senators.)

I don’t remember anything being said about the Bolton-Adelson connection, though.

Hey Chris_K –thanks for the references. I’ll keep an eye on that website. I knew about Bernie–part of the reason I supported him in the primary.

On a practical note, I’d like to request a story about prominent American politicians who do not toady up to Israel. (If there are any.) That would help me out when voting. Thanks.

First of all, “Also here in Denmark, it is now very much at the fore, “—ha ha! Nice touch. Well done.

“He generally regards all international attempts to ban circumcision as being motivated by anti-Semitism.” –All right, folks. This just needs to stop. Every discussion, disagreement, or criticism of anything that could remotely be related to Israel/Jews is not antisemitic.

(I hate chick peas. I will not touch hummus. Am I antisemitic? Anti-muslim? My point is that constantly crying antisemitism is really crying wolf these days. Save it for the times when it really happens.)

“Circumcision has nothing to do with medical advantages. It has to do with the meaning of life and its higher purpose.” I can’t say for sure what the meaning of life is, but I’m 100 percent certain it has nothing to do with circumcision.

If your faith, your morality, your conscience somehow rests on circumcision, then that’s pretty ridiculous. Maybe it could be the way you pluck your eyebrows–at least people could see that everyday. –and you could even include women in the tradition! (Perhaps that would put a wrench in the perpetuation of patriarchy?!) Or just carry around a pet rock. Or something else equally silly.

On a more serious note, what about males who are injured or otherwise don’t have current evidence that they were circumcised–or I’m sure there’s some condition where they could not be circumcised because of the way they were born?

And what about women? Female genital mutilation is a horrific practice and is a cause of serious medical issues including death. So I won’t make light of the idea of women and circumcision. Suffice it to say that the idea that a faith that puts so much emphasis on a “flagpole” is probably not a faith worth following.

And I don’t think the Jewish faith is a “flagpole” faith. It is one of the great religious traditions in the world. And at its heart, it does good. Just as Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism and the best parts of the world’s other religions send goodness into the world when adherents follow the true spirit of those faiths. I say “spirit” singularly because all goodness has the same origin. That is a rock of faith to believe in.

No flagpoles required.