Features
Playing God: A Scientific Fable
By DAVID TOPPER We know now that the universe began with a Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago.
But what about before that? How do we find out what happened then? There are no data to start with. No experimental information from which to begin. Nothing. Well, not ‘nothing’ nothing, for if that were so, there wouldn’t be a Big Bang. What do we do when we have no data?
Well, Einstein had a way of getting at such knowledge without real experiments: he called it (or maybe we later made up this term) a “thought experiment.” You see, it’s an experiment that you do in your mind. Of course, it helps if you have a mind like Einstein’s. But since he’s dead, you’ll have to rely on me – like it or not.
A good example is the first such experiment, which Einstein performed at age sixteen, and he speculated this way. He asked: “What would the world look like if I rode on a beam of light?” See what I mean by a thought experiment? Clearly this is impossible to do in reality. For one thing, nothing moves at the speed of light, neither when Einstein was a teenager nor now. But in the end, his theory of relativity came out of this idea, and he deduced that nothing can ever travel at light speed – except for light itself.
Now to my thought experiment about what happened before the Big Bang. First, don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing myself to Einstein. No way. It’s just that I’m using his method to try to penetrate what it was like before the Big Bang. What existed? Well that’s easy to see – in your mind, that is. Obviously, that was when God alone existed. Only God, all alone. Just God. Nothing else.
Hold it a sec: At this point I need to set up some parameters. Thought experiments work under idealized conditions, such as assuming no friction. For my experiment, the analogous assumption would be assuming no angels – or devils, which were just bad angels – only God alone. Frankly I don’t believe in either of those beings, unlike many people on this planet (come to think of it, probably most people), and contrary to much of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an otherwise marvelous work of 17th century literature, but groundless in heavenly reality, I’m sorry to say. Which brings me back to long before the Big Bang – and God alone.
Really, think about it. God alone means that not only were there no angels and devils, but also that there was no universe – yes, no universe – indeed, no other existing entity or entities. This also means that there was no space or time. Only God was everywhere and God was everything.
What would that be like? How to know? Well, let’s be God? You know, we’ll play at being God. Okay? Now isn’t that the ultimate thought experiment? I’m game to play being God. Do you want to come along? If you’re afraid that maybe you’ll be struck by lightning, or something bad will happen to you – well, then, leave now. Right now. Here! Stop! No one’s making you read what I’m saying. Good bye.
Otherwise, here goes ….
Being God is not all it’s cracked up to be. Everything is the same all the – … time? No. What word do I use here, since there’s no time? Just an eternal present, like me, eternal, and being all of existence. That’s me. I am everything. And everything is me. But why do I even exist? Come to think of it, I don’t know. But I should; after all I’m God, and I should know everything. But I don’t know why I exist.
The worst part is that being God, believe it or not, is being bored. Because there is nothing else except me, there is nothing to break the routine. Me alone doing, … well, what actually do I do? I exist, I tell myself. I know that! The problem is that I need something else to break the tedium and give me something else to do, besides just exist. So, I should create something. But hold on, if I do that, I will no longer be everything. I would be creating another existence, a world, and this has never been done before (whatever “before” means). A world that will exist independently of my control – unless I wish to interfere now and then with a miracle or two or three. Ah, what to do?
Why hesitate, if I know the future? Well, here’s the rub. For this case I am having my future-sense turned off. I don’t want to know the future. Not knowing the consequences of my actions gives at least some levity and surprise to my otherwise torpid existence. So, to create, or not to create, a universe, that is the question.
So, God itself contemplated this God-changing act of God.
Well, we know what happened. God created the universe with a Big Bang. And, as such, God was not alone anymore. Now there was a universe to watch over. Of course, you are now probably thinking of God looking at us, with all our joys and sorrows. But, remember: we, as human beings on this little blue planet Earth, came much later than the Big Bang. So, the next question is: right after the Big Bang, what was this newly-created universe like? What was there for God to see?
First, a caveat. Before your mind rushes in the wrong direction: we are not going to bring up the drivel about the six days God made various earthly things, let alone Adam & Eve. That’s the mythology of Genesis. No, here we talk about what (within the speculative framework of present-day astronomy and cosmology) really happened.
The Big Bang universe began as a point of extremely hot, extremely dense matter that immediately doubled in size, again and again, expanding as it evolved, doubling again and again, cooling as it expanded, again and again, creating space and time as it expanded, again and again, cooling but still a dense mass, next consisting of protons and neutrons (and later other sub-atomic particles), colliding and forming the first elements – hydrogen, then helium, and so forth, again and again, expanding and cooling as it evolved. This kept up for about 400,000 years before stars and then galaxies began forming out of this chaos. And this means that for all this time that the universe was evolving, it was – and get this! – totally dark. Yes, completely dark. Pure black. Not much to see. Plus remember: now there was time (that is, the passage of time), so this 400,000-year period was a real thing for God to experience.
But there’s more! This relative darkness across the entire universe was still true for – and here’s another shocker! – the first billion (yes, I said billion) years. Even though the first stars and galaxies were now forming and evolving, they were still sparsely scattered throughout the universe, so that seeing it from the outside (if that makes any sense; I guess, a God’s sense) the entire universe was still fundamentally dark. Indeed, cosmologists call the first billion years of the universe the Dark Age. Of course, this is all a far cry from what we find in Genesis, but that’s beside the point.
Who knew about this Dark Age? Besides God that is? Actually, no one else, until recently. We’ve only realized this in my lifetime, as contemporary astronomy has discovered so much of this mind-blowing information. After the Dark Age, as the expansion continued, the universe finally lit up (“let there be light”) and it started overall to look much the way it does today. Incidentally, the new James Webb telescope, placed about a million miles from our Earth around the start of 2022, has [as I write this] just generated the first images. Eventually it will be able to penetrate back to the early universe around when those first stars and galaxies were forming – if all goes as planned.
Although this mental journey of mine began with the question of what it was like before the Big Bang, and we played at being God to find out, I feel I cannot stop here, until it gets to us – that is, we human beings on this little blue planet. So here goes.
About 4.5 billion years ago, a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust started collapsing and was set spinning, due to a shock wave from a nearby supernova, and by the law of angular momentum, the more it collapsed, the faster it spun – and, as such, pieces of it were sent by centrifugal force into orbits around a central star. The pieces coalesced and cooled, forming planets and moons, as the star shrunk into the Sun that we have now. Incidentally, the size of our Sun/star tells us that it has a ‘lifespan’ of about 10 billion years. So, this means that our Solar System’s ‘life’ is about half over. Also, when it’s about 7.5 billion years old, the Sun will grow into a red giant and encompass the entire orbit of our earth, destroying everything. In the end, it will just shrink into a dead white dwarf, having used up all its hydrogen. But that’s in the far, far future (for us). So, back to the past.
Because of the special conditions on this third planet from the Sun, around 3.8 billion years ago life began, single-cell organisms, various viruses; and by 1.5 billion years ago early forms of plants and fungi and animals. And hence it went, or really it evolved. We know that around 65 million years ago the dinosaurs and other categories of plants and animals were wiped out in a mass extinction. This event was crucial for my story, for with those giant creatures gone, physical space opened up making room for the small mammals to emerge, evolve, and ultimately dominate the planet. And thus 6 million years ago humans diverged from chimpanzees and bonobos – eventually becoming homo sapiens as we know ourselves today.
Hence, we humans finally appear in our story, having avoided the Adam and Eve myth. But we still have a residual issue to deal with. Let me explain, for here things get tricky. We are talking about life being formed in the universe. But we only know of this one case of the evolution of life: namely, here on Earth, a planet in our solar system, near the edge of what we call the Milky Way galaxy, which is part of a cluster of galaxies that … well, you get the picture.
Of course, there may have been an evolution of life elsewhere in the universe, and there is much speculation today of this probably being true, due to the recent discovery of many planets out there that are circling around stars with conditions likely conducive to living things. But, despite the fact that lots of people believe that alien beings exist and that they have been and still are visiting us in their UFOs, the scientific reality is that we on Earth are the only known case of life in the universe. And hence the only example where we can again continue playing God.
We have the story of God’s creation as told in Genesis. But what would a God who created the Big Bang say?
Well, you see: I did create a universe! I guess it was kind of on a lark, but here it is anyway. And time, as noted, began. The passage of time. And space too. Of course, your smart guy Einstein spoke of space-time, but that’s a story for another time. Although, by the way: he was right!
It started with the Big Bang. And you know what happened then, as this universe evolved from that point of almost infinite density to the universe as it is now, 13.8 billion years later. Quite an achievement wasn’t it? Worthy of all the praise that humans like to shower upon me with their prayers, starting with the Psalms.
So, my universe was quite an accomplishment. And I was not bored during that early Dark Age, because I could see into that dark space and watch as stars were forming, and as they clustered together into galaxies of various sizes and shapes. With my future-sense turned off, it was a marvelous show for me to watch. It kept me constantly occupied, and never bored.
Nevertheless, it was difficult realizing that this universe had taken something from me, out of me, away from me – for I no longer was, as before time began, all that was. Now there was this other entity – and growing, constantly taking up more space – well really creating space as it went.
Now that the universe is here, in existence, what will happen to it? Your cosmologists today have three scenarios as to what will happen as the evolution of the universe continues. One: it expands faster and faster forever, with everything dying in the process. Two: the expansion eventually slows down, but that takes forever, and again everything dies in the meantime. Three: the expansion finally stops and the process reverses, such that it returns to the Big Bang, and then (probably) it starts all over again. This is a cyclic universe. To be honest (can God be anything but honest?), I peeked into the future to see which one of the three is going to happen, but I’m not telling you now. Let your future scientists find this out as they probe deeper into my creation.
Death, of various kinds, was built into the system. If I didn’t like what I saw I could do away with it as quickly as I made it. Strange perhaps, but I was exceedingly upset at the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. They were interesting to watch, and seemed to be having a good time on your planet. Of course, there was lots of violence and fighting – after all, they were dinosaurs.
Frankly, the violence and death prepared me for you humans later on. The extensive warfare between human groups, on and on. No one ever seemingly living in peace. Of course, I should have been prepared for this with the heavenly battles between the good angels and the bad angels. But it still bothered me deeply. On Earth, the animals mainly kill for food. Actually, some don’t, and I see that your scientists are now discovering some of these sadistic animals. But you humans kill for the most trivial reasons. So, yes, many times I thought of …well just taking the lot of you out of your misery. Wiping out all that I made. Incidentally, that Sodom and Gomorrah story in Genesis is nothing compared with what I saw, and still see. But I’m leaving you alone, along with the rest of the universe.
Wait a minute. What are you doing, talking about angels? I thought we both knew that there were no angels. A fantasy of humans. Have you been reading Milton or something?
I read everything. And I like Milton, and how he portrays Satan and others.
Yes, of course you read everything. What am I thinking? But angels are a myth, so why perpetuate a falsehood?
You are saying this, not me.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You must be teasing me? I know that God cannot tell a lie. But it looks like God can tease.
Why is this angel/devil thing so important to you?
Oh, so you’re going to turn this around against me. I’m not going there. You and I both know there are no angels, of any types. That’s why you created the universe. And I’ll just leave it there. I’m done. You may have the final words – as long as you don’t mention angels.
You must remember this: the universe is just an experiment; an experiment is just a query – all done to alleviate my ennui, purging my melancholy and gloom. However, in time, it was replaced by rage and pain, shock and despair at how you humans behave. What did I make, I ask myself? The few righteous on your planet feel the same way. The Rabbis (who incidentally believe in dybbuks) say my job was incomplete and you humans have to complete it – to perfect it. They are right.
So, I tell you: do as the Rabbis say. Get off your buns and change the world.
The experiment continues.
Praise the Lord!
You broke the deal. I’m not going to bite at that dybbuk thing. Who knew that God would pull my leg? Pushing boundaries, coming close to, but not quite, telling a lie. What a jokester. Who knew?
Praise the Lord!
Features
WINNIPEG EMPLOYERS SHOULD USE AI TO TRAIN, NOT JUST TRIM
By Dr. GLEB TSIPURSKY Generative AI has already entered everyday Canadian work. Statistics Canada reported that 35.9% of workers used generative AI in the previous 12 months. For Winnipeg employers, the important question is no longer whether staff will use these tools. The more consequential question is what kind of workforce employers will build while they use them.
An updated Stanford University analysis found employment among workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with less-exposed peers, with the gap widening over time. That trend should concern Winnipeg employers because the work most exposed to automation often overlaps with the work through which beginners develop professional judgment.
Entry-level employees do more than produce first drafts, conduct basic research, summarize information, prepare routine analyses, or handle standard customer questions. Those tasks are also training. Repetition teaches people what good work looks like, where common mistakes appear, when a situation is routine, and when something unusual requires escalation.
If employers simply remove that work, they may save time today while weakening the pipeline of people capable of handling harder work tomorrow. A firm can automate a junior task quickly. Rebuilding several years of missing experience later is much harder.
The better approach is to redesign entry-level work around AI-assisted apprenticeship. New employees can use AI to produce a first draft, but they should also verify the output against reliable sources. They can use AI to summarize a customer issue, but they should explain which facts matter and what remains uncertain. They can use AI to analyze routine information, but they should flag exceptions and bring consequential decisions to experienced colleagues.
That changes the role of junior employees without eliminating the learning built into the role. Instead of rewarding people for producing routine work manually, employers can reward them for checking AI output, spotting edge cases, asking better questions, and knowing when human judgment is required.
Managers also need to change how they supervise. If a junior employee submits an AI-assisted answer, the manager should ask how the employee verified it, what assumptions the system made, what could go wrong, and what would cause the employee to escalate the issue. Those questions turn AI use into a training process rather than a shortcut around learning.
Winnipeg’s small and mid-sized employers may be especially well positioned to take this approach. They often cannot afford to separate technology adoption, training, and talent development into different departments. The same manager who wants more productivity today also needs capable employees next year. That makes it practical to connect AI use directly to coaching and skill development.
Employers should also resist measuring AI adoption only by time saved or tasks completed. Those metrics matter, but they can hide whether the organization is developing stronger judgment. A more useful set of questions is whether employees are catching more errors, escalating the right exceptions, becoming more independent over time, and learning which decisions should remain human-led.
None of this requires employers to preserve every old task exactly as it was. Some routine work should disappear. The goal should be to preserve the learning function, not the old workflow. If AI removes one form of repetition, employers should deliberately replace it with another way for junior staff to practice, receive feedback, and encounter progressively harder decisions.
Winnipeg businesses can gain real productivity from AI without turning entry-level work into a dead end. The strongest employers will use AI to accelerate the development of beginners rather than treating beginners as the easiest cost to remove. That approach can improve productivity now while still producing the experienced professionals Winnipeg will need in the years ahead.
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Adapted from: The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results (Georgetown University Press, 2026). https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/aibook
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a behavioral scientist called the “Office Whisperer” by The New York Times, helps tech-forward leaders stop overpaying for AI while boosting engagement and innovation. He serves as the CEO of the AI consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, and wrote eight books, including The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results (Georgetown University Press, 2026).
Features
IPL 2026/27 Preview: Beer Sheva Defends Its Crown
Israeli football enters the 2026/27 season with a genuinely open title race for the first time in years. Hapoel Beer Sheva claimed a dramatic sixth championship last May, edging Beitar Jerusalem by just three points after a campaign interrupted by regional conflict and settled almost entirely on head-to-head form. That kind of finish leaves scores unsettled, and every major club has spent the summer either reinforcing a title push or plotting revenge. With four Israeli sides now competing in European qualifiers simultaneously, the new Ligat ha’Al campaign carries more weight than it has in years.
How Beer Sheva Won It
Ran Kozuk’s side did not simply outscore the league last season; they won the moments that mattered against the team chasing them hardest. Beitar Jerusalem lost twice to Beersheba across the regular campaign and could only draw both playoff meetings, a pattern one report summed up bluntly: if you want to be champions, you have to beat the champions, and Beitar never managed it. Kings Kangwa was named the league’s most valuable player, while captain Miguel Vitor and goalkeeper Ofir Marciano anchored a squad that closed out the title with a 4-2 win over Maccabi Tel Aviv. Owner Alona Barkat has kept that core together, giving Beersheba a real shot at back-to-back titles, assuming Champions League fixtures don’t wear the squad down.
Beitar’s Response and the Chase Pack
Losing a title race by three points after leading for large stretches tends to force change, and Beitar Jerusalem has responded accordingly. Almog Cohen, previously the club’s sporting director, has stepped into the head coach role, replacing Barak Itzhaki after the campaign ended in disappointment. Captain Yarden Shua, veteran forward Omer Atzili and Dor Hugi remain the attacking core, though the club opens the season without injured midfielder Adi Yona, a blow given how much Beitar leaned on midfield control last year. Maccabi Tel Aviv arrives with a different kind of statement: despite finishing outside the top two domestically, they won the Israel State Cup in a chaotic 2-1 final against Beersheba that produced six red cards, suggesting the squad has quality to challenge again even if consistency remains the question mark.
The Return of European Football on a Bigger Scale
What separates this season from recent ones is the sheer number of Israeli clubs competing for continental places at once. Beersheba enters Champions League qualifying as domestic champions, though for security reasons their ties have been relocated to Szombathely, Hungary rather than played at home. Maccabi Tel Aviv, seeded thanks to a healthy UEFA coefficient, goes into Europa League qualifying against the winner of Sheriff Tiraspol and Aluminij. Beitar Jerusalem and Hapoel Tel Aviv both enter Conference League qualifying, the latter having secured their spot via a fourth-place playoff finish. Playing qualifiers on neutral ground has become routine for Israeli clubs, and it hasn’t stopped them from competing credibly.
Mid-Table Ambition and the Promotion Effect
Beyond the four clubs chasing European nights, the middle of the table looks unusually competitive heading into August. Hapoel Petah Tikva and Hapoel Tel Aviv both returned to the top flight after a season away, and Hapoel Tel Aviv’s playoff run last term shows promoted clubs can climb quickly rather than simply survive. Maccabi Haifa and Ironi Kiryat Shmona, both capable of springing results against the traditional big three, will look to use a full pre-season to close the gap. That added depth tends to produce the unpredictable midweek results that make a 14-team division worth following from the opening whistle.
What to Watch as the Season Kicks Off
Beersheba’s fixture list is the one to track first, since balancing Champions League qualifying with league form in August and September will say a great deal about whether this squad has the depth to go back-to-back. Beitar’s response under a rookie head coach is the second storyline, particularly whether Cohen can get more out of a group that dominated possession last season but couldn’t finish off the champions when it counted. For fans following these storylines match by match, tracking how the market prices each side into the opening rounds is a useful gauge of who bookmakers actually rate, and anyone comparing options for the season ahead can check out the best betting sites in Canada for a sense of how odds and coverage are shaping up before a ball is kicked.
Between a defending champion carrying continental fixture congestion, a rival reshaping its coaching staff, and a deepening mid-table, Ligat ha’Al enters the new season with more storylines running in parallel than it has had in years. Whether Beer Sheva backs up their sixth title or Beitar finally converts near misses into silverware, the opening weeks should offer the first real clues.
Features
Musings from Dizengoff Street – by Bruce Brown (updated August 14)
(Posted August 18, 2026) And the beat goes on in the strait. A bit quieter lately although may be heating up again with the 60day ‘ceasefire’ officially expired. And while Iran occasionally lashed out over the last two months, they did not attack Israel. How do you spell deterrence. According to my Yiddisha mama, its spelled ‘Pftt. Pftt. Pftt‘.
(August 14, 2026) Despite three years of varying degrees of warfare. Moody’s biannual report of the Israeli economy was quite positive. Basically, the report saw no pressures on Israel’s credit rating. While the macro data remains strong, Israel still faces a complex geopolitical situation further complicated by upcoming elections (we pondered about how crazy that is in an earlier muse). And Israeli’s inflation rate for the first half of 2026 fell to a historic five year low of 1.2% (vs Canada’s 2.6%). As for my own pocketbook. Haven’t had an infamous Israeli bank overdraft in years. So all is fine.
If that’s not enough economic voodoo talk for one musing. According to one famous barometer. Israel moved to second place in the Economist’s Big Mac Index. Introduced in 1986, this tasty indicator compares the purchasing power parity across countries by measuring the price of a McDonald’s Big Mac -which most can relate to- against the benchmark U.S. burger. So while a Big Mac in the U.S. costs $6.22. In Israel it costs $7.67, the second most expensive place to buy the hamburger in the world, Switzerland being the most pricey at a whopping (no reference to Wendy’s) $9.04. While the cheapest Big Mac can be enjoyed in Indonesia at only $2.38. Canada ranked 22nd of the fifty-four countries considered, at $5.85. Parity. Smarity. I’m going for my Big Mac fix. Just after I finish writing this muse….
(August 11, 2026) Bravo Boy George. We certainly will dance again! And what better way than with his new reggae tune. Now Boy George is dealing with a hostile backlash against his just stand for Israel. Having to withdraw from London’s East End production of Jesus Christ Superstar where he was going to play – guess it. King Herod. Never a big Culture Club fan, but I am anyway -as a sign of support- going to download his greatest hits to my Spotify library. And hoping to have a chance to buy a concert ticket should Boy George perform in Israel. Kind of reminds me of Bob Dylan’s 1983 song Neighborhood Bully. Also in defense of Israel. I’m going to download that song as well. Although don’t think he was hounded the way Boy George is now. Sign of the times I guess.
+++++
Coming clean. I sometimes find myself chanting, to no one in particular, that snappy little ditty ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ Now why can’t we come up with something as catchy. With such an impressive gene pool of great Jewish songwriters. George Gershwin. Irving Berlin. Burt Bacharach. Carole King. Neil Diamond. Leanard Choen. Paul Simon. Gene Simmons, Amy Winehouse. Bob Dylan. And yes, even the Buddhist Boy George. And still… gurnish! No wonder we’re losing the global PR battle
(August 8, 2026) Outside Basimta Café in Central Jerusalem. Love the red shirt against a tiny sea of black. Not sure I am shrugging because of the ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat or the lack of an ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat. For the last six weeks Israeli headlines shouted about the cafe chaos. With the ultra-religious blocking entrances and storming the café. While shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Upsetting the secular amongst us just wanting to enjoy our Saturday iced matchas. So the wife and I thought we would check it out. And. Yes. Buy something to support the business. Uproar. Not. Blocked entrances. Not. Storming the café. Not. Albeit there were police barriers separating the devout protesters from the coffee drinkers. The protesters being just a few dozen black clad, pious Jews. Mostly teenagers. And yes. Shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Certainly underwhelming in its reported mayhem. Reminds me of the famous saying misattributed to Mark Twain – “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do, you’re misinformed.” But I did enjoy my iced matcha.
(August 6, 2026) Here we go again. Another round of forever negotiations. As someone who negotiates for a living. The way things are going in the straits. If I had to recommend a book on the subject to a new hire. Between The Art of the Deal, A Presidential Edition by Donald J. Trump or The Real Art of the Deal by the Mullahs of Iran with a special forward by the IRGC. Well. I would choose the latter.
(August 3) Bravo Yoav Segalovitz, Liberal Yesh Atid MK and Monsour Abbas, United Arab Ra’am MK and party head. For breaking a glass ceiling where a Jewish lawmaker joins an Arab political party. No less a political earthquake in my little shtetl. Which can significantly impact coalition block arithmetic and posturing and strategy in the upcoming elections. Now Ra’am can be considered a legitimate ‘Zionist’ partner when forming coalition blocks and potentially pushing the ‘center left/right’ party over the 60 seat majority threshold. In our crazy parliamentary democracy defined by a multi-party (about fourteen!!), proportional representation system. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Israel’s proportional representation model of governance is the best parliamentary democracy system except for all other forms of working democracies. Stay tuned for more amateurish political musings as we move towards Israel’s 26th national election – five of them held since 2019.
(August 1) Although both sides say they are open to diplomacy. Neither really trusts the other. And American military action, or its threat, continues. I read headlines in the middle of the night -it’s a nervous habit lately– that the Dynamic Duo of Trump and Netanyahu may again strike in unison. Possibly this weekend. Yikes! Prompting me, at 2:30 AM, to dash around the house stocking my safe room. Bottled water. Canned food. Medicines. Documents. The beat goes on….
If it’s crazy here. It’s insane in Italy. With a recent online ‘Jew Hunt’ in the Milan area. Before being removed, the digital forms urged reportings of Israelis and Italian Jews staying in local hotels. The infamous Global Sumud Movement -yes, the one coordinating ‘peace and humanitarian’ flotillas to Gaza- was somehow connected. Although they deny involvement?! This deranged decree was looking to identify Zionist tourism and Zionist neo-colonization in Italy. I’ll stick with stocking the saferoom.
Then there’s New York Mayor Mamdani, a Global Sumud Movement supporter, threatening to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if he comes to New York. But since discovered he has no legal right for such a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic antic. Maybe Mandami should be arrested! Or at least impeached. For being a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic mayor.
Here’s a post Bruce sent us Friday, July 31:
WARTIME MUSINGS
Should credible threats against FLOTUS and ‘FSOTUS’ (first son..) not be justification to attack first.
As for yesterday’s summit. Netanyahu really can’t win. Explainer. If Trump now attacks without victory its ’cause of Netanyahu. If Trump now attacks with victory its ’cause of Trump. And, in Israel, if Trump doesn’t attack -victory or not- Netanyahu failed in his eighth meeting with Trump. And if Trump does attack -victory or not- half the country will vilify Bibi anyway. Missing a permutation?
Ya. I know. Kinda’ need a definition of victory for that musing to work.
And here in my little shtetle. We go to sleep unsure if there will be a code red in the middle of the night. And if not. We wake up thinking it will be tonight. How do you define stress?
Seemed like an appropriate way to end this musing.
Bruce Brown is a former Winnipegger who made aliyah to Israel over 35 years ago. Bruce first began writing for us – in his own inimitable style, in 2012, during what was known as “Operation Pillar of Defense.” His occasional musings on aspects of life in Israel that were far from what you’d typically read in other reports from Israel were hugely popular – both in the print Jewish Post & News and on this website.
We’re now glad to report that Bruce is back writing for us – this time on a regular basis. We will post Bruce’s reports as they arrive – with the date of each post at the beginning of that post.
Here’s some information about Bruce – and awards he’s received for his writing:
Bruce Brown. Canadian born. Now living in Israel (for a long time). Bruce works in Israel’s hi-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night. He received the Americal Jewish Press Association’s award for writing excellence in 2019 and 2015. And wrote the1998 satire, “An Israeli is….”. Bruce’s visuals are AI-assisted and created with ChatGPT under his inimitable visual concept and creative direction. Bruce’s musings are political, social, economic and personal. With lots of biting, contrarian, sardonic, irreverent and mischievous insights.
