I just want to go home

Here’s @dduane​’s first take on it and the finished product. We’ve made even more photogenic batches since.

Kneading is easy as well; either let your machine do it, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, get hands-on. It’s like mixing two colours of Plasticine to make a third. Flatten, stretch, fold, half-turn, repeat - it takes about 10 minutes - until the gloopy conglomeration of flour, yeast, salt and water that clings to your hands at the beginning, becomes a compact ball that doesn’t stick to things and feels silky-smooth.

Here’s what before and after look like.

My Mum used to say that if you were feeling out of sorts with someone, it was good to make bread because you could transfer your annoyance into kneading the dough REALLY WELL, and both you and the bread would be better for it.

Then you put it into a bowl, cover it with cling-film and let it rise until it doubles in size, turn it out and “knock it back” (more kneading, until it’s getting back to the size it started, this means there won’t be huge “is something living in here?” holes in the bread), put it into your loaf-tin or whatever - we’ve used a regular oblong tin, a rectangular Pullman tin with a lid, a small glass casserole, an earthenware chicken roaster…

You can even use a clean terracotta flowerpot.

Let the dough rise again until it’s high enough to look like an unbaked but otherwise real loaf, then pop it in the preheated oven. On average we give ours 180°C / 355°F for 45-50 minutes. YM (and oven) MV.

Here’s some of our bread…

Here’s our default bread recipe - it takes about 3-4 hours from flour jar to cutting board depending on climate (warmer is faster) most of which is rise time and baking; hands-on mixing, kneading and knocking-back is about 20 minutes, tops, and less if using a mixer.

Here ( or indeed any of the other pics) is the finished product. This one was given an egg-wash to make it look glossy and keep the poppy-seeds in place; mostly we don’t bother with that or the slash down the middle, but all the extras were intentional as a “ready for my close-up” glamour shot.

I think any shop would be happy to have something this good-looking on their shelf. We’re happy to have it on our table.

Even if your first attempts don’t work out quite as well as you hope, you can always make something like this…

A Jew makes a Jewish story. It gets popular. It gets readapted. The Judaism is erased. We get told to get over it and make our own stories.

A Jew makes a Jewish story. It gets popular. It gets readapted. The Judaism is erased. We get told to get over it and make our own stories.

And guess what? You can see yourself in the story without erasing the original meaning at all! You can add to it instead of replacing. You can see a POC character as queer as well without making the character white. You can see a queer character as disabled without making them cishet. And you can see a Jewish character as belonging to another minority group without erasing their Jewishness.

Would you be upset if your canonically queer character was treated as cishet by the wider fandom and by new adaptations? How about your canonically disabled character? Your canonically poc character, native character, mentally ill character?

Would you be upset if the story you like that's a metaphor for being queer, or poc, etc etc was being rewritten to erase that metaphor?

Here is a website that goes over the story though I've heard there are a few different versions.

https://projectshalom2.org/StoryTour/the-finger-an-old-jewish-horror-tale/

Who are you 300 people.

Also I saw you do crochet which I also do! Here's a blanket I finished early this month

“My name is Greta Thunberg, and I am from Sweden. If you’re seeing this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped.”

That somber statement by Thunberg, a 22-year-old Swedish climate activist, appeared in one of 11 “SOS Call” videos uploaded after a boat bearing a symbolic amount of aid to Gaza — alongside high-profile activists like Thunberg — was intercepted by the Israeli navy late last night. In the videos, each of the 11 activists participating in the expedition on a boat called the Madleen, launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, describe themselves as having been “kidnapped” by “the Israeli Occupation Forces.”

Breathless social media posts about the boat’s interception flooded my feed. “This is the last image we have of the humanitarian crew,” one picture was ominously captioned. Posters begged for the international community to free the “hostages,” whom Israel has said will be deported. But the outcry belied the obvious: It was exceedingly predictable that the Madleen’s voyage would end this way. Israel was never going to allow the blockade around Gaza to be broken, and the activists onboard knew they would be detained, thus the pre-recorded “SOS” videos. The videos aren’t a worst-case scenario call for help. They are, if anything, the point of the whole performance.

Activism is inherently performative. A hunger strike, a march, a sit-in, an encampment; all are premised on visibility — creating a spectacle that will provoke emotional responses and change minds, thus prompting tangible political change. The most successful actions are often characterized by the most compelling performances.

Too bad for the activists of the Madleen: As far as meaningful political theater goes, their work isn’t great. There’s a difference between understanding that activism is a kind of art form — in which building a powerful narrative is key — and performative activism, which happens when the focus shifts from the desired political goals to the activists themselves.

The journey of the Madleen falls firmly into the second category.

Thunberg and her fellow humanitarian crew may have aimed to draw attention to the punishing Israeli blockade on Gaza, which has been in place since 2007, and the devastating decline of humanitarian conditions within the strip, where acute malnutrition is on the rise. But now their vanity — or bravery, depending on how you see it — has become the story, drawing attention away from the Palestinians who live in Gaza.

The difference in visibility between the two protests speaks to a problem plaguing the pro-Palestinian protest movement: It hasn’t been effective.

Compare that failure to another protest with a predictable outcome: The repeated protests of Standing Together, a joint Israeli and Palestinian political movement that has, since mid-May, repeatedly marched to the Gaza border carrying aid.

Once there, the protesters chant in Arabic through bullhorns about their desire to end the war. Each time, they are detained and beaten by the police. After one protest, Alon-Lee Green, one of the group’s co-directors, was placed under house arrest.

Despite the futility of their act — the aid they carry will never make it to Gaza, and they know it — there is a profound symbolism in the picture of Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike, risking their lives and professional futures to speak out against the war.

So why aren’t Al Jazeera and CNN flocking to the border fence to monitor their well-being? Why aren’t the same people who spoke out furiously about Thunberg’s “kidnapping” giving any attention to a protest with the same aims, coming from within Israel?

To be fair, the members of Standing Together are not world-famous, like Thunberg. It is natural that she draws more attention — it’s why she chose to participate in the flotilla in the first place.

But beyond that truth, I think the difference in visibility between the two protests speaks to a problem plaguing the pro-Palestinian protest movement: It hasn’t been effective.

It has been nearly 20 months since the Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing war in Gaza. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed; the strip is largely unlivable; hostages are still rotting in tunnels; children are starving; and the goals for the war have grown increasingly nebulous. Despite the intensifying international protests and global outcry, the circumstances of the Palestinians and the Israeli hostages trapped in Gaza have only grown worse.

Given the Madleen’s inevitable failure to reach its stated destination one might wonder why it was attempted at all. Is the point to try to help Palestinians in Gaza? Or just to show the world that the movement to help them is still functioning — even if it’s not achieving anything?

The flotilla gave the international community the chance to feel useful to Palestinians in a moment where we are painfully not. It was a protest that centered international observers and the activists on the Madleen, not the suffering civilians this protest effort is advocating for.

People cared about the flotilla because it gave them a sense that they were doing something productive. They couldn’t personally bring aid to Gaza, but they could cheer for people who were trying.

That cheering doesn’t do anything for the people who actually need help. It just makes us feel better.

Stop talking about how you "would have hidden Anne Frank."

Anne Frank was not special.

You know her name because Otto Frank put in a considerable amount of work to make sure his daughter wasn't forgotten.

She is not your martyr or your saint.

She was a teenager who wrote that she believed people were good at heart, and then she was murdered by people who absolutely weren't.

And honestly, I don't want to hear a word about her by people who don't even know her sister's name.

I mean that was never a fact I disputed. But it's different when the dots connect or when everything falls into place as the sayings go.

It went from (in no particular order) Jews having to explain that October 7 is bad actually, to explaining that supporting groups like Houthis is bad actually, to explaining the danger in lionizing/glorifying a man who set himself on fire, to explaining that terrorist groups (Hamas, Houthis, etc) oppress their own people, to explaining (again) that protesting outside synagogues is bad, to explaining that saying slurs like Zio and Zionazi and using rhetoric (Zionists control the media and Zionist-Occupied Government) that is no different than Neo Nazis and White Supremacists is bad actually, to explaining that...well hopefully you get it by this point. Or maybe not.

Your words have power. The words you use, the rhetoric you wield? That is power, and it's fucking dangerous to use violent and inflammatory rhetoric, which Jewish people kept saying and everyone else kept deflecting about. This isn't some newfangled fucking concept either if you can understand how far-right rhetoric can be dangerous, then you can understand it's inverse.

But the pro-Palestine movement has been insisting for months that speaking about the hostages = encouraging the war. Something I have tried to push back on at every opportunity. It's hard for me to articulate why but this just demonstrates so clearly how twisted this all is.

the "free palestine" movement has become synonymous with violence and jew-murder. when they shout in their protests "for gaza" and "globalize the intifada", this is exactly what they mean. it started with white america with their cushy little comforts, finding a new cause to latch onto and virtue signal. it spread under the guise of anti-zionism and became supercharged because of the war. never forget that on the morning of october 7th, columbia professors were already shouting to protesters that they should "be exhilarated, else they are not human".

the movement dehumanizes jews worldwide unless they bend the knee to their own destruction. but there is no differentiation between jews minding their own business, and even the most anti-zionist jews. in the end, they are all seen as subhuman. it has been that way since the days of pogroms in europe, when the idea of zionism first floated around as a means to end our exile, escape the barbarity of antisemetism, to a haven in our ancestral homeland. america embracing the ways of 19th century europe is nothing new, but the kaffiyah they wear to mask their face and glorify themselves as martyrs is the very same that the peaceful people of gaza wore when they were pillaging our countryside and murdering our children. they call it resistance while they butcher us. they call it protest, they say it is antizionism, not antisemetism. globalize the intifada means immortalizing the most deadly time for jews inbetween the holocaust and october 7th, as a good thing, and spreading it around the globe. it means making killing jews moral again.

the JC

Shani Louk. Sarah Milgrim. Yaron Lischinsky. Vivian Silver. Oded Lifshitz.

all dreamed of peace, and more than a dream, they worked and strived for it in reality. they will be remembered.

(linking Hen’s post because it includes video, click through if you can.)

They don’t need to pull the trigger themselves— they just need to keep telling millions of people that Israelis aren’t human. That killing us is “resistance.” That anyone who defends us deserves to be destroyed.

This is how it starts.

Online.

With jokes, streams, panels, and hashtags.

Then it ends in gunfire.

You can’t claim to care about justice and stay silent about this.

May Yaron (Christian Israeli) and Sarah’s (American Jewish) memory be a blessing 💔

The man who allegedly walked up to two Israeli embassy staffers and shot them dead Wednesday night reportedly told eyewitnesses he “did it for Gaza.”