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.
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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.
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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.
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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

Unfortunately, @DennisPrager simply does not know what he's talking about.

1) One shouldn't consume pornography because it rots your brain -- not because of religion!
The "science" is "clear" on this.

2) Judaism does not permit the consumption of pornography for anyone.

https://twitter.com/cnsnews/status/1646736299032813569

To be clear:

The data is very clear, pornography is addictive and has extensive harmful effects on ones psychology.

Judaism prohibits the lustful gaze ("shmirat haenaim"). One is not to look at a person who is forbiden to them in a lustful way.

Elementary Judaism.

Greeks and Hebrews on military technology:

Thucydides makes much issue of the trireme, the Greek warship, and it's importance for deciding wars in the 5th ct. BC.

The Corinthians, Athenians, and Spartans, all recount the decisive role of the warship. The number of times that sea faring and ships are numbered as the WMD in Thucydides is too great to count. Atheninian versatility and might comes from Pericles' wisdom of building a dominant navy. The Spartans,trying to catch up in the arms race, begin developing their fleet.

For 1,000 years the Temple stood at the heart of the Israelite kingdoms.
Built by King Solomon in 950 BC, the Temple stood until raised by the Romans in 70 AD.
During this time, it served as the home of the Lord, where Kings & Prophets spoke to God, bringing justice to the land. The Temple was first destroyed by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC.

The small kingdom of Judea, a shadow of its former might, was swallowed by the Mesopotamian empire like so many others.

At that point, it seemed that the Judeans were destroyed and their God forgotten.

Thread. Why does academia churn out generation after generation of liberals, and recently, neo-Marxists?

Conservatives will have you believe a liberal cabal is brainwashing your children.

This misses the heart of the problem. New conservative universities aren't a solution.
/1 University life is first and foremost a liberal life.
The academic EXPERIENCE, every element of the material conditions of the student, shapes him into a liberal.
This happens before the student ever hears a liberal idea, regardless of whether he holds conservative beliefs.
/2