Entropy Begets

You are directly harming your own cause.

Refusing to acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel doesn’t materially change the reality that Israel is a sovereign nation with over ten million citizens. When leftists in the west chant “from the river to the sea” and “we don’t want no two states”, regardless of the intention, what do you think Israelis hear? What do you think a people that has faced genocide in living memory, from which our population still has not recovered, gets from that? We don’t hear it and consider your points, we hear it and remember all of the times Israel has been attacked with genocidal intent, and only survived through our own defense.

And what does this ultimately result it? It results in Israelis who no longer believe in the peace process. It results in Israelis who feel a visceral sense of fear which leads to doubling down on national security. It leads to diaspora Jews feeling unsafe in their communities and immigrating to Israel.

Of course, he didn’t. He knew they were never going to get to Al-Aqsa, and that they wouldn’t hold the Otef for more than a few days. He knew what would follow. So why did he do it?

(side note: anyone else never want to hear those numbers again?)

Bill Murray and Gilda Radner, New York City Uncredited and Undated Photograph

“Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.

So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know. 

And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.