A note on Trump and a note on Israeli society
On Trump
At the end of our February 5 gathering with Sarah Leach, I played a clip from the Ezra Klein show. The guest was M. Gessen, a Russian American journalist. Gessen was a journalist in Russia during the rise of Vladimir Putin. Eventually, he was forced to flee. Gessen now works for the New York Times, and he appeared on the Ezra Klein show on January 10, 2026, almost three months ago. He explains the totalitarian bargain. It’s very prescient.
I have no idea what will happen next in Iran. Because no one knows. It’s madness.
Cuba is next, probably in the summer. Trump mentioned Greenland again as he complained about NATO on his personal social media site.
On Israeli Society
It’s hard to overstate the moral decay of Israeli Jewish society. It’s disturbing. According to Israeli (and Iranian) journalist Orly Noy, Israel is “a genocidal state”in need of “denazification.” It’s an awful thing to have to write, but we must speak honestly now. I am grateful for Noy’s courage and clarity. And it’s not just “this extreme right wing government” or Netanyahu. Netanyahu and his government are a good representation of Israeli Jewish society. Jewish Israelis have completely lost their way.
Israel is an apartheid state that is murdering, torturing, terrorizing, and expelling Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as I write. This is from the United Nations press release about its March report on Israel’s use of torture.
Israel’s systematic torture of Palestinians, long shielded by decades of impunity and political cover, has become a defining instrument of ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, a UN expert warned today.
“Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, in her new report to the UN Human Rights Council.
“What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly: a regime of organised humiliation, pain and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels.”
And that’s not the worst thing that Israel is currently doing in the world.
Since March 2nd, Israel has killed almost 1,800 people in Lebanon, and injured nearly 6,000. Israel has forcibly displaced over 1 million Lebanese people (20% of the entire population of Lebanon) and now occupies 14% of Lebanon.
The Israeli military released the following video, showing their demolition of whole communities in southern Lebanon.
Today, April 8, the first day of the supposed ceasefire, Israel bombed Lebanon relentlessly, killing at least 254 and wounding 1,165.
On the U.S.A and Israel
The two most destructive and dangerous countries in the world are Israel and the United States. They both have democratically-elected leaders who are carrying out the will of their religiously-devoted voters.
Iran is run by Muslim fascists who killed tens of thousands of their own citizens a few months ago.
These words from James Baldwin come to mind: “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”