Lunacunts.

Lunacunts is my new favorite word.

IYKYFK

😑

I haven’t meta posted in a while. So there.

Fucking Rapaport.

Good fucking morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. I need more coffee. Black.

Michael fucking Rapaport.

Such a nice guy. A few months ago, I started following him on Instagram, I can’t remember exactly why. Must have been some profane post he made about Hamas, or something. God knows I never fucking curse, so that must have been it.

If you use Instagram at all, you know how it works. Every time you check in, the reels from the people you follow show up, along with suggestions based on your likes and views. For me it’s like cats, cats, cats, Israel, cats, cats, planes, cats, Israel, Israel, cats, cats, cats, and more cats. What can I say? I like cats a lot, pretty sure some are Hebrew cats.

So I started seeing Rapaport a few times.

At first it was okay. I mean, I remember him from exactly two things: “Copland” and “Friends”. That’s it. Both roles depict characters with the IQ of a potato. And that’s fine, someone needs to play them, and they are usually challenging for the actor. In Rapaport’s case, though, it was too good.

I mean, he was either an extremely talented actor or he was the other thing. Considering I only remember him from those two appearances, being the movie/TV series fan I am, I think the latter.

Anyway, he started popping up in my IG feed a few times, which I didn’t mind much, at first, but then it started getting a little old, and a little odd.

Then, couple of months back, there was a short outburst against Joe Biden. That caught my attention. By then, his “in your face” fuck you reels, and the constant views of the Mediterranean followed by the inevitable “and that is the river” as he pointed the phone to some hills, started to annoy me.

I almost unfollowed him, after he posted his interview with a young woman named Noam, the granddaughter of Shlomo Mansour, an 85 years old Holocaust survivor, taken hostage by Hamas, on 10/7. He was pushing his potato head BS politics on her, but she pushed back. Respectfully, but hard. She immediately saw through his intentions and stated all she cared about was getting her grandpa back.

God bless her.

But since Noam cut him off, I thought it was actually a good interview, and I didn’t unfollow him then, though I was really getting annoyed by his one trick pony show, and having his mug filling my screen, finger pointed at me, yelling the invariably boring “you crazy fucks!” The man is crass, and it was obvious where this was going.

But something flew under the radar. Until today.

I don’t watch much TV anymore. It depresses me, for reasons you are well aware of, but in the morning, I do a quick run through the news channels to see what’s up. Along the scrolling, Fox News pops up for a few seconds, and today it got my attention. You guessed it. They were singing high praise for Michael Rapaport. At first I thought it was old news, I remember some obscure podcast interview where he stated not voting for Biden wasn’t off the table, I thought that was it. But no.

They were talking about an interview he did a few days ago with Visegrad24, an infamous Twitter outlet, created by a group of “conservative friends”, “The members of this group are exceptionally close to Victor Orbán, but also to Donald Trump, although he has nothing in common with the Visegrad Group.” They are members of this thing called MEGA (Make Europe Great Again). Yeah.

That alone would be enough to make me puke, but it gets worse. 

The interview took place in Tel Aviv, by the Mediterranean, of course, and “just across” from the river, on the hills (trying not to roll my eyes too much, they are starting to hurt), and it’s a total shitshow. You can google “Visegrad24 Rapaport” in video mode. It will pop up. I do not recommend it, but the introduction is enough.

And here’s why Visegrad24 chose the snippet used in the interview intro. Sitting on a chair, with the Mediterranean Sea in the background, Rapaport says:

“My political views have changed immensely.

I will not vote for Joe Biden. At this point, when we are doing this interview, voting for Trump is on the table. People are going like, what are you talking about? That’s my reality.”

Stop watching interview. Understand fully why Rapaport is Fox News new baby. Unfollow Michael Rapaport on Instagram. 1, 2, 3. Done.

What the actual Royal fuck?!

I am too old for this shit; by now you do know I came here to eat Peeps, give fucks, and speak my mind, and if I am almost out of Peeps, I definitely have zero fucks left to give. I don’t give a fuck if your skin is green or violet, if you believe in the big taco or the big noodle, or whatever the fuck else you are. You tell me you are not voting for Joe Biden, you’re gone. Instantly. I don’t give a shit what your reasons are, maybe Biden ate your favorite pet, I don’t fucking care.

I wrote many times about the wolves amongst us, the splinter cells, the ones who seem to be on our side but are really on their own private Idaho. Be aware of these fucks. And be merciless when it comes to stop their stupidity on its tracks. It matters. We need unity, we need all the people we can get in our ranks, both regarding Israel’s fight for survival, and the fight for the survival of our own democratic society. But unity does not mean blindness.

You have seen it and experienced it many times, in Social Media and in the MSM. People who look like allies turn out to praise Trump, to reveal themselves as bigots, to show they only care for themselves. Someone posted a pro Palestinian demonstration where a LGBTQ+ sympathizer was turned away, and among the replies, one self proclaimed Zionist immediately stated that was good, and next we should isolate all LGBTQ+ scum. How thoughtful and inclusive.

We share our space with people who seem very nice and leveled headed, we take their praise, we laugh with them, and we cry with them, and we even welcome their occasional hug, in times of need, but do not hesitate to expose their real selves when they are revealed. We shouldn’t have the room, the time, or the patience to accommodate such people, for they only care about themselves. It’s a grift. Wake up to reality, as Ol’ Blue Eyes would say.

It’s a shame, I know. I admired some of these people, Michael Rapaport not so much, but I considered him an ally. We are not all blessed with high IQs, and we are certainly not perfect, but if by now you don’t understand voting for Biden is our ONLY option to stop fascism, you are pretty fucking dense, and you pose a danger to us. You are a threat. And as such, you must be exposed as a threat.

You may still like Michael Rapaport, and may still laugh at his jokes, but after this I am not in the mood to laugh anymore. He had lost that ability, to me, anyway, I just chose to stop giving him air on my feeds. You do you, naturally, but me, I have lost all interest in this kind of fucks. I’m done.

So happy Tuesday to everyone, except Michael Rapaport.

He can go fuck himself.

To Hate and To Love.

My brother from another mother, @ne_oublie5150, reminded me of how different Portuguese and American cultures use the verb “to hate”. This about his reply to my good morning post, today, in which I returned to the subject of hope versus hate.

I briefly replied to him, but it brought back memories of my life in Portugal, regarding how we comprehend and feel hate itself. Curiously, the same applies to the verb “to love”.

The cultural difference between the Portuguese and Americans are many, but I assimilated this particular one when learning English as a foreign language. Being able to speak English reasonably well from tender age, just by watching English language shows and movies, which are always subtitled in Portugal, my parents decided to enroll me in an English School when I was very young, so I practically learned Portuguese and English at the same time, academically speaking.

Not a word of Portuguese was spoken in those classes, it was a fully immersive language school, so my understanding of how English speaking people use and define “hate” and “love” were quickly reinforced, as I had noticed it quite obviously watching movies and TV series. It became second nature to me, as everything else related to the English language, and I still dream in both languages, though these days dreams in Portuguese are rare.

Patrick (@ne_oublie5150), mentioned his care when using “to hate” in a sentence, which goes along the lines of not giving way to such a feeling, as in its appropriate use. The inappropriate use is my point.

When speaking in Portugal, we are extremely reluctant to use “to hate” (and “to love”), not just because we value the exact meaning of those feelings, but because we have lots of words to express their less “valuable” variants.

In America, we “love” Coca-Cola and we “hate” Pepsi, we “hate” dogs and “love” cats, we go about hating and loving everything under the sun, without much thought. And this happens not for the lack of vocabulary, but for cultural reasons. And okay, also because the average vocabulary of an average American is like 200 words, thank you American Education System. But the truth is, culture is responsible for this banalization of hate and love.

The downside to this is how hard it is for people in Portugal to say “I love you”, not that we are cold hearted folk, we’re just very careful about it. We compensate by being extremely affectionate, and using body language to express warmth, rather than words. But when a Portuguese says he loves you in the mother tongue, you better believe he or she loves you a lot more than he or she loves Coke. And it’s serious.

Same goes for hate. Portuguese find it hard to hate small and big things, but when we say we hate someone or something in Portuguese, you bet we really hate it. We don’t “hate” rain, we hate Nazism. Perhaps the best illustration of this cultural difference is the use of those verbs in question form, like “Don’t you just hate snow?”, or “Don’t you love that movie?” Erm… Come to think of it, you don’t really “love” movies, or “hate” snow. But don’t you just love to say it?

This is not going away. It is what it is. If you think I am bashing American culture for this one aspect of it, you’re wrong. But it deserves some thought, when it comes to hate itself, and how we perceive it in America. It’s a trivial thing, almost like an afterthought, permeating society at all levels. How easy Americans find to hate. And I am not talking about linguistics now. I am talking about feelings. Words may deceive you, and it’s easy and cheap to say “I love you”.

It’s also too easy and cheap to say “I hate you”, of course, but while most people seem to know the difference between loving a cat or loving a person, many see no difference in hating Pepsi or hating someone. Very recently, a lot of dumb people hated Bud Light so much they shot palettes of it with AR-15s, which they also do when they hate people. They shoot them with AR-15s too. Hate comes easy, and dies hard.

My reluctance in using the verb “to hate”, in English, started when I came to live in America. I stopped saying I hate things, left and right. At first I didn’t realize why, but then it hit me. Unlike in Portugal, hate in America is a very big problem. It’s like a disease without a name. It’s like an unfamiliar scent you can’t identify but smell everywhere. It’s all around us.

I first felt it as happening towards immigrants, then towards people who are not white, then towards people who are different, and finally, to tip the scale, hate towards Jews.

I know all kinds of hate towards people are wrong, but for some reason, hate towards Jews is the one that really bothers me. Maybe because I was so affected by the Shoa, as a child. Maybe because it reminds me of Nazism.

In any case, I stopped using “to hate” all together, when referring to ordinary things I just dislike, or talking about people I can’t stomach, or ideas I despise. I reserve hate for things I really do hate, like racism, fascism, and antisemitism. Those I really do hate. But I can’t bring myself to hate people. Maybe because I would happily destroy a vicious idea that I truly despise, but I find no joy in the destruction of human beings, no matter what they believe in.



Which brings me to hope over hate, again.

I do hate the fanaticism of those who today represent the most significant threat to the world as we know it. The Islamic Jihadists. But I don’t hate them. I despise them. Hate is a blinding feeling. When applied to ideas it forces you to be ruthless in the pursuit of their undoing. But you don’t want to feel that way about people.

If you do, you will lose your humanity, and you rarely come back from that. Mainly because you will no longer be able to tell the difference between right and wrong, Justice and revenge. And because if you commit excesses against an ideology, you can correct them, but if you lose your mind against people, and end up causing their death, you can’t bring them back. And no matter how sorry you are after, you will pay a terrible price for it.

So please try not to hate. Even if you just love to hate pineapple in pizza. Try not to. Sooner than you think, easier than you expect, it won’t be the pineapple in the pizza you’re hating, but the person who likes it. Don’t be a hater.

Also, try to love people, not pizza. Pretty soon you will find out that you can live without pizza, but some people you really need in your life.

It’s 5:55 am in Jerusalem.

Good night, and good luck.

Shani Louk.

I have the little polish boy’s picture engraved in my mind, his little arms in the air, walking by SS soldiers out of the Warsaw ghetto, most certainly to his death. The photographer was probably an SS himself. That little boy became the symbol of the oppressed Jews in Europe, because of this photograph. Shani Louk will in all probability become the symbol of her massacred brothers and sisters and their suffering, because of her horrific photo. The difference is, no one awarded the SS a prize.

April Fools.

Good April Fools morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee is black, and hot.

April 1 was the day I got my legal resident status, back in 2009. And it was no joke. Of course the irony was not lost on me, yet the path to citizenship was clear and here I am today, a first generation immigrant in America. People don’t realize it. I am a white European. I “belong”.

It was always my perception that we are all immigrants here, no matter the generation, and this truth is so often forgotten. Forgotten to the point where some of us believe we were not colonizers, once. Yet some of us are descendants of those who lived in the original colonies. They are referred to as such. The Thirteen Colonies.

Come to think of it, considering this is taught in school, it’s pretty rich those kids protesting Israel, calling it a colonial power, seem to overlook this.

The last colonial power in Palestine was the same we once were subjected to: Great Britain. Of course they didn’t call it a colony, but that’s what a protectorate is, minus the colonists in enough numbers to justify its precise definition as such.

The practical effect is pretty much the same, though. I wonder how many of those kids shouting for global intifada in the streets know this. I wonder how many of them even care.

They’re just kids. We know that. Just as the ones massacred at the Nova festival were. The difference between them is this: after 10/7, I have not heard of one single Nova survivor calling for the extermination of Palestinians, while in America, and around the world, the privileged kids in the streets are calling for the extinction of Israel. Think about that, for a minute.

Today, as I write these words, @lisaaronowatelier is at the site of the Nova festival. She sent me a few photos. She placed a little rock for me on one of the memorials set for the victims. I wish I could have done it myself.

The survivors cry, born of the indescribable pain and suffering of October 7, is “we will dance again”. No hate, no violence, no revenge. Just the sincere wish they may one day dance again.

In contrast, their brainless privileged counterparts in America call for the death of Jews. What they are calling for is that those survivors may never dance again, may never be happy again. Such a despicable thing to express. Such a heartless and hateful thing to feel, even considering the fact that suffering was since imposed on Gaza, as a consequence of the war Hamas started. That’s no excuse.

I feel the pain in the heart of Israel for the ones they lost on that terrible day in October, I never once called for the extermination of Palestinians, even if I know many of them, in Gaza, support Hamas. I feel deeply for those suffering the consequences of war, but I don’t believe calling for the destruction of Israel is the answer either. I know these extremes exist, but the truth is very few among those pro Israel feel this way, while many, most even, of those pro Palestine do.

Someone on Threads mentioned the infection of these pro Palestine mobs by the hate spewed by Hamas. It feels that way, like a disease. Where does it come from, all this hate towards Jews? It’s rooted in antisemitic currents that were never washed away, revived by a few malicious actors, and embraced by millions. And suddenly, in the aftermath of 10/7, instead of grieving those lost to Hamas violence, supporting the unconditional defeat of Hamas, and a quick end to the war, here we are.

None of those things matter to these soulless ghouls shouting “from the river to the sea”, for the death of Jews all over the world (for that is what global intifada means), and insulting, harassing, assaulting, and killing Jews, not in the name of Palestine, but in their own name. With their own antisemitic hate.

It makes me physically sick to watch these disgraceful people shouting hateful, thoughtless words against those who still try to reason with them.

There’s a short video taken in New York City by @_danielbraun (I will post the link at the end of this string) where he confronted a crowd of pro Palestine protesters with a simple concept:

Let’s stop teaching our children to hate and kill.

He was trying to engage with dialogue, starting from a self evident perspective, but he was met with disbelief, and eventually, towards the end, with the usual hysterical yelling. There is no chance of dialogue with these people.

They are impervious to facts and reason, and blinded by hate. And since almost all of them have no real skin in the game, one can assume this hate comes from self loathing alone. They get no sympathy from me. The fact they hate their pathetic lives is no excuse. They support those who would slit their throats in a second, who see them as trash. Only privilege allows such mindless behavior, they are well aware of it, so in the darkness of their souls, they hate themselves more for it.

Yesterday I told you I choose hope over hate, and I do it every day, but I also choose to close my door on these haters. Nothing good comes from engaging with them, so I denounce them, I expose them whenever I can, and I do my part to remove their discourse from our lives. Not engaging cannot mean not recognizing them, we can’t ignore them, for they represent a clear and present danger to us all.

Yesterday, during the celebration of Easter at St. Patrick’s cathedral in New York City, pro Palestinian protesters disrupted the ceremony inside the cathedral. A Catholic holy place. Not Jewish. They were promptly expelled. So, yes, they are coming for us all, not just the Jews, make no mistake about it.

Watching the scenes from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if some protesters, for whatever reason, disrupted a Muslim ceremony inside a mosque.

I am pretty sure all the rabid Palestine defenders would have a complete meltdown, should anyone have tried to disrespect a Muslim holy place like that. We’d never hear the end of it. But like all things demonstrative of their hate, and all things happening here and in Israel that show clearly who is right and who is wrong, this incident never made the news.

Hate is all around us, we can’t ignore it. But we can, we must, choose hope. 178 days after October 7, there is a little rock by a memorial of one of the Nova festival victims, at the place where she lost her life. It was placed there in my name. It’s my very small way of being present, and remembering the beautiful young lives lost that day. And it is my hope that many more kids, here and around the world, raise their voices against those who choose hate.

Today, April 1, it is my wish that those kids who feel pain in their hearts for those taken from us at the Nova festival, may raise their voices over the hateful ones. Not in anger, but in hope. And may they proclaim in one voice that they too shall one day dance again.

It is perhaps foolish of me to wish for such a thing, but it is nevertheless my wish, today.

That we may dance again. One day.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Link to Daniel Braun’s Instagram video HERE.