"The hostage deal is a mistake, undoubtedly, but one the Israeli government has to make.
While the agreement will endanger the lives of IDF soldiers, and raise the likelihood of copycat attacks in the future, the political constellation has forced Netanyahu's hand."
Thread. Those were the words I wrote in Nov. 22, '23, before the previous hostage deal between Israel and Hamas was signed.

As the sentiment against the current deal is boiling to the point of hysteria, it is time to do this again.

1/14

Following yesterday's discussion of Israeli annexation of Druze villages, Erdogan publicly states that Syria's major cities could become Turkish provinces.

Discussed region: Purple.
Turkish occupied territories: Black.

What interests does Turkey have in this region? Yesterday, Dec. 14, 2024, President of Turkey spoke before his party at Sakarya.

He indicated that the post-WWI situation in the middle east was over. Essentially, he is saying what everyone has known for years: The Sykes-Picot paradigm is a mess and needs to be junked.

The Druze of southern Syria have publicly declared their desire to secede from Syria and be annexed to Israel.

Based on topography this is what the annexation would look like.

The IDF has already taken over the DMZ in yellow and moved into some of the Druze towns.
Thread. For a recap on who the Druze are, see my thread from earlier this year:

https://x.com/HAHazony/status/1817669025003897053

It's been two days since Assad fled Syria, the government collapsed, and the rebels took power.

Why then does the fighting continue?
Why is Turkey bombing northern Syria?
And what are the key Turkish interests in Syria?

Thread. Turkey played a pivotal role in toppling the Assad regime, supplying HTS with armored vehicles & Toyotas.

The Rebels; "Shaheen" suicide drone is allegedly of Ukrainian design, how it found its way to Syria is still unclear, but Turkey may have played a role

In the past two days, Israel has bombed more than 250 targets across Syria.

Simultaneously, IDF forces have moved into the Israel-Syria demilitarized zone.

Why is Israel getting involved in the Syrian war?
What are the core Israeli interests?
Thread. Assad's regime was propped up by Iran and Hezbollah. Israel's war decimated these forces and kicked the legs out of Assad's defenses.

In Aleppo, the first city to fall to the rebels, Hezbollah troops had been fully withdrawn. Assad was left alone.
Israel caused Assad's collapse

In the past year, some have declared that Christians and Nietzscheans are inherently opposed, that collaboration between the two is impossible

What exactly was Nietzsche's view of Christianity?

And is a political alliance between Nietzscheans and Christians possible? Thread.
Nietzsche took Christianity very seriously. He devoted attention to it in most of his works. The faith was, to him, THE great question of our time.

Nietzscheans who fail to take Christianity seriously should be dismissed as unserious people.
1/

Israel's war with Hezbollah in 2006 is considered one of the IDF's poorest military operations. '06 is remembered bitterly in Israel. With news of the first deaths in the IDF incursion into Lebanon, one wonders:

What went wrong for Israel in 2006? Will it happen again?
Thread. Israeli leadership deeply misunderstood the Second Lebanon War.

In fact, they didn't even call it a war, they referred to it as a mere military operation and assumed it would be over quickly.

In practice, the war lasted for 34 days.
1/

In 10 days:
*Mossad struck 5,000 Hezbollah operatives in "pager attack."

*IAF assassinated Hezbollah command in one strike.

*Hezbollah's leader killed during Netanyahu UN speech.

Wasn't this war about occupation in Gaza? Why is Lebanon involved? What happens now?

Thread.





The first thing you have to know is that this is a war between Israel and Iran.

As @Amir_Avivi has said many times, Iran has constructed a ring of fire to strangle Israel from all directions:

Hamas in Gaza,
Hezbollah in Lebanon,
Militias in Syria and Iraq,
Houthis in Yemen.
1/

The IDF has now released photos proving the rocket was of Hezbollah origins, amounting to a clear casus belli. If Israel was looking for the reason to invade Lebanon, they just got it.

Who are the Druze? Why did Nasrallah target them? Why now?
And how will Israel respond?

https://twitter.com/HAHazony/status/1817568468108997057

The Druze are a small ethno-religion of some 1-2 million living mostly in the Levant.

The faith dates back to ~1000 A.D., emerging from Shi'a Islam under the influence of various philosophies.

Their beliefs are esoteric, & knowledge about their faith is hard to verify.

I've always preferred cross-country driving to flying, a holdover from my hitchhiking days.

When the gloom & despondency of the common discourse bring me down, driving across America is the perfect antidote, crossing the most beautiful land of the free & home of the brave.

🧵 Seeing Appalachia, the great lakes, the flatlands of the Midwest, the wooded South & the forests of the Northeast, and the vast number of rivers bursting forth in the great circulatory system.

The vivacity of nature in this place is striking.
Surely life overflows here.

2/13

People are often perplexed where to begin with Nietzsche.

Nevertheless, I believe reading Friedrich Nietzsche can be a beautiful adventure and, done right, induce a heady love of life and an aspiration to nobility and virtue.

How then to get started?

Short thread/ First, editions: What translations should you buy?

Kaufmann's translations are best. He captures soaring, witty, and radiant writing better than any other.

For books he didn't translate, Hollingdale's translations will suffice.
Cambridge editions are pricy, so buy 2nd hand.

The Hobbit films are not without their faults, but in ways, the movies are made with much love.

The movies capture well the strong Christian Zionist undertone of the story.

An unassuming Englishman falls in with a group of Jews on a quest to reclaim their homeland.

Thread. The movie begins with a fable about an ancient people whose kingdom lay far off in the east.

They were destroyed by a great monster, & "robbed of their homeland."

Then they "wandered the wilderness," never forgiving & never forgetting. A "mighty people brought low."

1/26

On April 14th, for the first time since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran declared open war on Israel.

Why did the Iranians attack?
What will be the Israeli response?
And how does the US fit into all of this?

Thread. The Iranians claim the attack was a response to Israel's assassination of a general at their embassy in Syria.

See below, the general was not in an embassy.

Some believe that the attack was nevertheless at attempt by the Ayatollahs to save face.
This is unlikely.

1/22

The US allowing the UN resolution for an immediate ceasefire between Israel & Hamas is not surprising in the least--anyone paying attention has been expecting it.

Why do conflicting interests necessitate a parting of ways between Biden & Bibi?

reuters.com/world/middle-e… Many will recall that half a year ago, early in the war, Biden, in a massive show of strength, sent two carrier fleets & a nuclear sub to the Mid-East.

Now the Biden admin seems to have broken from their support of Israel, allowing calls for immediate ceasefire.

abcnews.go.com/International/…

Most know that in the Old Testament, God chose one people as his own: Israel.

It's less well-known that God also chose one nation to be his sworn enemy: Amalek.

Who were the Amalekites? What was their relationship to Israel? & why did God decree their destruction?

Thread. Only once in the entirety of the Biblical narrative, does God name a whole people as his enemies.

In Exodus, we are told, that the Israelites' deity declares "an eternal war" against the Amalekites because they "raised a hand against the throne of the Lord." (Ex. 17:16)

2/20

The hostage deal is a mistake, undoubtedly, but one the Israeli government has to make.

While the agreement will endanger the lives of IDF soldiers, and raise the likelihood of copycat attacks in the future, the political constellation has forced Netanyahu's hand.

Thread/20 From the beginning of the war, Netanyahu has maintained that there are two objectives:

1)The destruction of Hamas's military and government capabilities.

2) Rescuing the hostages.

Bibi needed these two objectives to gain the support of two parts of the Israeli electorate.

2/

I was five years old on 9/11, I don't recall that tragic day.

I had never experienced a national tragedy until the events of Black Sabbath, October 7th. 2023.

So what is a national tragedy? How is it different from personal tragedy, & how do I find hope in these dark days?
1/ Let's start with this:

There is no way to conceptualize 1,500 dead people.

Each person is an infinitely complex being. When we have an intimate relationship with someone, we explore the never-ending labyrinths of their inner world.

2/20

Many Jewish donors are distancing themselves from American academic institutions which either supported Hamas war crimes on Black Sabbath Oct. 7th, or failed to clearly take a stance against them.

Ongoing Thread. 1. David Magerman cuts off funding permanently to U Penn.

I am moved by the outpour of support for my family & my people by Christians, Hindus, & others.

While sympathy is apricated, I feel obligated to impress upon well-wishers that I have never felt so proud to be a Jew.

Privileged information shows Israel in all its beauty. You are all already well informed of the atrocities committed by the Hamas animals in recent days.

These war crimes were perpetuated following an impressive military incursion into Israeli territory.

The invaders razed civilian centers under the fog of war.

Much ado has been made about TikTok being an espionage tool, & that very well may be the case.

Regardless, TikTok is a poison at best, and an instrument of psychological warfare at worst.

What is TikTok really? & why do people get sucked into it for hours and hours on end?

/1 TikTok is addictive. This form of media is capable of sucking people into a wormhole, shutting off their brains for hours.

A user may absentmindedly click an interesting-looking video, & find herself hours later, staring at the screen, feeling numb & drained.

/2

The Parable of the Madman is perhaps the most important & most abused piece of philosophy of the past 150 years.

No words capture our times more than Nietzsche's "God is dead."

But what did Nietzsche mean when he said God is dead, and why was it important for philosophy?

1/ Often the parable is invoked by smug atheists to disparage religion, indicating how foolish faith in God is in “our time.”

Similarly, religious people use Nietzsche as a stand-in for the view that religion is stupid & there is no reason to have faith.

Both miss the point.
/2