♨️♨️90 years ago, the Maronite Patriarch openly called for brotherhood with Jews:
Patriarch Anthony II Peter Arida openly condemned the treatment of Jews in Germany in 1933. He addressed an encyclical calling on Maronites throughout the world to dedicate their Sunday prayers and homilies to the Jews of the world. He explained that Hitler's Germany had distorted Christian teachings: "We ought never forget that the Jews are our brothers in humanity, and that Almighty God has chosen them, and no one else, as keepers of His Divine Oneness and His Eternal Truth." The message was in line with a series of memoranda that the patriarch had begun dispatching to various Lebanese, French, and Jewish organizations, beginning in May 1933.

Anthony II Peter Arida (August 2, 1863 – May 19, 1955)
( Arabic: أنطونيوس الثاني بطرس عريضة)

🧵1/n An exchange took place between Jewish leaders and Maronite Christians in the 1930s and 1940s. Their rapprochement unfolded in the years before the State of Israel was founded.
A typewritten document from 1942, published by the Jewish Agency’s Zionist Archives, contained a remarkable statement by the Maronite Patriarch, Anthony II Peter Arida, made in 1937

🧵2/n

WSJ: Mystery Drones Swarmed a U.S. Military Base for 17 Days. The Pentagon Is Stumped.
U.S. officials don’t know who is behind the drones that have flown unhindered over sensitive national-security sites—or how to stop them

Oct. 12, 2024

U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline.

Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors.

For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.

The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.

The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port. Officials didn’t know if the drone fleet, which numbered as many as a dozen or more over the following nights, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces.

Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.

Reports of the drones reached President Biden and set off two weeks of White House meetings after the aircraft first appeared in December last year. Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon’s UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond.

Drone incursions into restricted airspace were already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth.

U.S. officials said they didn’t know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones.