Tucker, Tucker, Tucker. Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly sink any lower, you go and grab a shovel. Why does everyone insist on disgracing themselves by wearing the ugliest attire of antisemitism and then head-to-floor bowing before ‘King Terrorist Khamenei’? To not only side with the Islamic Republic against Israel, but to also explicitly side with them against America…

For the life of me I cannot understand humanity. I have spent the better part of a decade studying ourselves; yet, our capacity for human stupidity continually blows me away.

On the war front, Hamas is still firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Still firing rockets. At Israeli civilians. STILL FIRING ROCKETS AT ISRAELI CIVILIANS. And still holding dozens of hostages in brutally inhumane conditions. Where is the condemnation of the world for these blatant war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by genocidal terrorists? Where is the demand for the release of the hostages? Anyone? Bueller? Oh wait, the world is too busy siding WITH THE TERRORISTS…

Shame upon Humanity for ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians living under the unbelievably brutal, authoritarian, fascist, and religious fundamentalist rule of Hamas. It only took one election for Gaza to never have elections again. When Hamas rose to power after the total Israeli withdrawal in 2005 (so much for the “occupation” rhetoric—but we know they were never talking about Gaza), they quickly got to work throwing their political rivals off roofs, as well as murdering other “undesirables” like anyone suspected of being LGBTQ. And now they are murdering more Gazan civilians after torturing them first, for the simple “crime” of having protested against Hamas in the past week…

The world hates Israel. This is not new information. I have used that line before, and every time it rings just as true. The world cannot understand reality in the Jewish nation, because it does not want to understand. We all know why this is so; it is not an accident that the most divisive foreign policy issue across literally the entire world just happens to concern the only Jewish state in that world. Even Israel’s most fervent haters must at times realize they give far too much credit to the relatively small nation. At just over ten million people and approximately the size of New Jersey, they are the smallest (alleged) nuclear power in our world. They do not have the manpower to wage war like Russia, nor even like Ukraine…

There is a debate that has been raging in Israel for well over five hundred days. It is not a new debate; if you read my article on Gilad Shalit, you ought to know that taking hostages is a trademark move of Hamas. Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7th and now a decomposing disgrace to humanity was one of the over one thousand convicted terrorists that were released in the Gilad Shalit hostage deal in 2011. What Hamas learned from this is that hostage-taking is a very lucrative and efficient way to maximize their own strength relative to the indomitable strength of the Israeli people. Because Israelis refuse to leave their own behind, no matter the cost…

The persecution of a religious and cultural minority. The intentional massacre of hundreds of civilians in cold blood. The Alawites of Syria are under siege by the Islamists that drove out former President Bashar al-Assad, with their very lives in danger as you read these words. And not a single human being in the wider world cares enough to make their plight a front-page headline; because, as has been proven time and again, “No Jews, no news.” If the world cannot find some way to blame it on Israelis/Jews, the world will either find a way anyway or simply ignore the suffering of their fellow humanity. The Uighurs say hello, by the way. Remember them? No?…

Why do we fight so hard to save a world that is patently unworthy of being saved? A world where injustice is the rule, not the exception? Justify your existence, humanity, when as far as we know all of the worst moral atrocities in history have all been committed by members of the human race. What makes us worthy of even the attempt to save us from damnation…

There is little doubt this has been the hardest week since the immediate aftermath of October 7th, 2023. The revelations that have come to light with the return of the bodies of Kfir, Ariel, Oded, and eventually Shiri are so shocking to the conscience that you would have to be a monster yourself to not be moved by them. We are living in a world where Hamas executed six Israeli hostages in cold blood after starving them near to death already; yet, somehow, Hamas has topped their unending capacity for evil yet again…

Another shorter letter today; I’m having car troubles of all things and need to take it into the shop relatively early. Five hundred days since October 7th, 2023. It may as well have been yesterday for all the time it’s felt like. At the same time, things are moving so quickly now that I genuinely cannot keep up anymore…

This may be the most controversial letter I’ve written yet—and that’s really saying something. Historical facts should not be controversial; but such are the times we live in. There is a man of history who was a close ally of Hitler. A despicable human being that wanted to achieve the extermination of Jews in the territory he came from. A man that led the Nazi propaganda campaign across the Middle East and North Africa to convince Arabs to side with the Axis and rise up to “slaughter the Jews”. And even after the Nazis were defeated, he never stopped trying to exterminate the Jews of Israel…

Well, that was certainly a week. There are years when weeks happen…this was a week where years happened. The title of this letter is somewhat ironic, but also a fairly accurate observation of history between any two randomly-chosen points in the timeline. The Middle East changes all the time, is what I’m saying. Some things, however, are here to stay. Israel is here to stay. Those who side with Israel are also likely here to stay: Bahrain and the UAE for example, courtesy of the Abraham Accords. I wonder who else would like to join about now…

I’m under a lot of stress right now so this will be a shorter letter than usual. It has been another week with little good news; however, that makes the little good shine all the brighter. Several more Israeli hostages have been released from Hamas captivity: Arbel Yehoud, Agam Berger, Gadi Moshe, Ofer Kalderon, Keith Siegel, and Yarden Bibas. Additionally, five of the eight Thai nationals in Hamas captivity were released: Thenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakham, Sriaoun Watchara, Seathao Bannawat, and Rumnao Surasak…

I have less optimism to offer today. The weight of it all is…well, you know. If you’re reading this newsletter, you probably understand.

First, there is some tearfully good news. Four more girls and young women have returned home from Hamas captivity: Karina Ariev, Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa, and Liri Albag. Their names and their faces are so familiar to me that it genuinely makes me cry to think that they are finally, finally home. The video of bloodied Naama being taken…but she is home. May they all know only peace for the rest of their lives…

I write in the early morning hours of January 20th, 2025. Inauguration day. By this afternoon, Trump will again be President and in the process of sending out a purported one hundred executive orders he has ready to go. A lot of things may be different by the time I write to you next. But as I’ve said before, domestic politics are not my wheelhouse…

They say that you can’t kill an idea. They have never met me before. Galileo ended millennia of geocentrism stemming from Aristotle’s work. The dogmatic Aristotelians of the middle ages—like the Catholic Church, for example—restricted heavily and persecuted free thinkers like Copernicus, Kepler, and most famously Galileo for daring to oppose the status quo. They turned all their considerable power against heliocentrism; yet, they eventually had to concede defeat…

Before October 7th, 2023, I often wondered how otherwise ordinary people—Germans, specifically—could get swept up in the monstrosity that was the NSDAP and eventually the Third Reich. The gradual process of dehumanization of the “other” was an incredibly devious play by Goebbels and Co; sometimes not immediately obvious. Surely, though, a good number of Germans must have seen through the lies pushed by ‘Völkischer Beobachter’ and ‘Der Stürmer’ and eventually the entire media empire of the Nazis. How did they end up goose-stepping along with the “true believers”?

For the first letter of the new year, I think it is worthwhile to reflect on what we are fighting for. Why are any of us here reading and writing and thinking on these issues? Why are we engaged in this discussion and arguing for the side we believe in, sometimes at great personal cost? Why does what we are doing here, now, matter?

A Dose of Sanity wouldn’t really be a newsletter if I didn’t do one of these. I kicked this weekly letter off on May 28th of this year. 33 editions (including some extras) later and I’m still here with no intention of slowing down. I have recorded death and I have recorded hope. Tragedy and loss mixed with what I hope has been inspiration and a little wisdom. My biting wit and anger at injustice in the world. My hopefully amusing anecdotes and sidetracks of random history.

But to take it from the top:

Has there ever been a point in human history where the trajectory of future events is more predictable? Given what we now know after witnessing the events of the 20th century, there should not be a single student of such that doesn’t understand the peril of our present catastrophic rise in antisemitism and hatred. The consequences of rising antisemitism are more than apparent in the mounds at Bergen-Belsen and the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. And it wasn’t just Jews and Roma that lost their lives to Nazi evil. Tens of millions of people died. Our entire world was fundamentally reshaped. And we did survive it to come out on top—but what if we hadn’t? It’s not a challenging thought experiment to imagine the tables turning the other way, like Man in the High Castle…

I’ve just been waiting for someone to comment on last week’s newsletter in which I went into detail on the situation in Syria and dropped a fairly controversial line: “...the leadership of the faction now controlling Syria—just across from the Golan Heights…”. Unfortunately, that edition did not get as much attention as some of my others. C’est la vie. If you don’t get why that statement is controversial, just wait…