Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 424

lots of arti­cles from an emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing week

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is vol­ume 424, which is sym­met­ri­cal and also the sum of 10 con­sec­u­tive primes. 424 = 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61.

Things Glen Found Interesting

Today’s roundup was dif­fi­cult to assem­ble. First, there are the obvi­ous emo­tion­al chal­lenges of read­ing too much about the hor­rif­ic raid by Hamas. If you are won­der­ing whether you should dive deeply into orig­i­nal sources (Insta­gram sto­ries from on the field, etc), no you should not. It will harm your soul. Sec­ond, there is a whole sea of infor­ma­tion and opin­ions and I have a very small buck­et. Third, it was a busy week (and today in par­tic­u­lar was quite hec­tic for me). All that hav­ing been said, if you find oth­er inter­est­ing sto­ries about the unfold­ing sit­u­a­tion in Israel, please send them my way.

  1. The best/most inter­est­ing sto­ries I’ve seen about the Hamas attack on Israel.
    • ‘We’re Going to Die Here’ (Yair Rosen­berg, The Atlantic): “First I’m hear­ing this gun­fire from the fields. But then I hear it from the road, then I hear it from the neigh­bor­hood, and then I hear it out­side my win­dow. I’m in the room with my wife, and I hear the gun­fire direct­ly out­side my win­dow, as well as shout­ing. I under­stand Ara­bic. I under­stood exact­ly what was hap­pen­ing: that Hamas has infil­trat­ed our kib­butz, that there are ter­ror­ists out­side my win­dow, and that I’m locked in my house and inside my safe room with two young girls, and I don’t know if any­one is going to come to save us.”
      • This is an amaz­ing sto­ry. 100% worth read­ing.
    • The attacks on Israel, and the response. (Isaac Saul, Tan­gle): “Am I pro-Israel or pro-Pales­tine? I have no idea. I’m pro-not-killing-civil­ians. I’m pro-not-trap­ping-mil­lions-of-peo­ple-in-open-air-pris­ons. I’m pro-not-shoot­ing-grand­mas-in-the-back-of-the-head. I’m pro-not-flat­ten­ing-apart­ment-com­plex­es. I’m pro-not-rap­ing-women-and-tak­ing-hostages. I’m pro-not-unjust­ly-impris­on­ing-peo­ple-with­out-due-process. I’m pro-free­dom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we nev­er see in this con­flict any­more. What­ev­er this is, I want none of it.”
      • This is a well-done roundup fea­tur­ing diverse view­points.
    • Dark­ness Vis­i­ble (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “The more I’ve thought and read about Israel, the more it seems that its found­ing was both a moral neces­si­ty and a prac­ti­cal insan­i­ty. The moral neces­si­ty is proven by last week­end. If Jews can be sub­ject to a medieval pogrom in their own coun­try in 2023, what hope could they ever have with­out a coun­try at all? The prac­ti­cal insan­i­ty lies in the sim­ple fact that the state of Israel was cre­at­ed on land laden with deep reli­gious sym­bol­ism, where much of the exist­ing pop­u­la­tion did not give con­sent, and despite the ear­ly promise, no coun­try for the Pales­tini­ans was ever con­struct­ed along­side it.”
      • A more com­pre­hen­sive essay than many I’ve read so far.
    • What It Would Mean to Treat Hamas Like ISIS (David French, New York Times): “…Israel’s goal is not to pun­ish Hamas but to defeat it — to remove it from pow­er in Gaza the way the Iraqi mil­i­tary, the Unit­ed States and their allies removed ISIS from Mosul, Fal­lu­ja, Rama­di and every oth­er city ISIS con­trolled in Iraq. That can’t be accom­plished by air pow­er alone. If remov­ing Hamas from pow­er is the goal, then that almost cer­tain­ly means sol­diers and tanks fight­ing in Gazan cities, block by block, house to house in an area of rough­ly two mil­lion peo­ple. The pur­pose of this newslet­ter is to give you a primer on both the mil­i­tary dif­fi­cul­ty of the task and the human­i­tar­i­an con­straints on it, along with the lim­i­ta­tions that are unique to Israel.”
      • Unlocked — a thor­ough arti­cle from an author with high­ly rel­e­vant exper­tise.
    • Hamas prac­ticed in plain sight, post­ing video of mock attack weeks before bor­der breach (Michael Beiseck­er &  Sarah El Deeb, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “A slick­ly pro­duced two-minute pro­pa­gan­da video post­ed to social media by Hamas on Sept. 12 shows fight­ers using explo­sives to blast through a repli­ca of the bor­der gate, sweep in on pick­up trucks and then move build­ing by build­ing through a full-scale recon­struc­tion of an Israeli town, fir­ing auto­mat­ic weapons at human-sil­hou­et­ted paper tar­gets. The Islam­ic mil­i­tant group’s live-fire exer­cise dubbed oper­a­tion ‘Strong Pil­lar’ also had mil­i­tants in body armor and com­bat fatigues car­ry­ing out oper­a­tions that includ­ed the destruc­tion of mock-ups of the wall’s con­crete tow­ers and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions anten­na, just as they would do for real in the dead­ly attack last Sat­ur­day.”
    • As Deaths Soar in Gaza From Israeli Strikes, Egypt Offers Aid, but No Exit (Declan Walsh, New York Times): “Egypt has long insist­ed that Israel must solve the Pales­tin­ian issue with­in its bor­ders, to keep alive aspi­ra­tions for a future Pales­tin­ian state. Allow­ing large num­bers of Gazans to cross over, even as refugees, would ‘revive the idea that Sinai is the alter­na­tive coun­try for the Pales­tini­ans,’ said Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Cairo Uni­ver­si­ty. A relat­ed sce­nario that wor­ries Egypt is that it could end up as the de fac­to admin­is­tra­tor of Gaza.”
      • Egypt, of course, is the only nation besides Israel that shares a bor­der with the Gaza Strip. It is often over­looked by Amer­i­cans because we don’t know our geog­ra­phy very well, but Egypt is equal­ly involved in pre­vent­ing the migra­tion of the Pales­tini­ans in Gaza.
    • How Hamas breached Israel’s ‘Iron Wall’ (Samuel Grana­dos, Ruby Mellen, Lau­ren Tier­ney, Artur Galocha, Cate Brown and Aaron Steck­el­berg, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The fence was breached at 29 points, accord­ing to the Israel Defense Forces. Though there wereIs­raeli guard tow­ers posi­tioned every 500 feet along the perime­ter of the wall at some points, the fight­ers appeared to encounter lit­tle resis­tance. The bor­der was min­i­mal­ly staffed, it soon became apparent,with much of Israel’s mil­i­tary divert­ed to focus on unrest in the West Bank.”
      • Detailed and quite inter­est­ing. Also not very long to read.
    • The Pro­gres­sives Who Flunked the Hamas Test (Helen Lewis, The Atlantic): “In the fevered world of social media, pro­gres­sive activists have often sought to dis­cred­it hate­ful state­ments and unjust poli­cies by describ­ing them as ‘vio­lence,’ even ‘geno­cide.’ This ten­den­cy seems grotesque if the same activists are not pre­pared to crit­i­cize Hamas, a group whose found­ing char­ter is explic­it­ly geno­ci­dal… Fit­ting Israel into the inter­sec­tion­al frame­work has always been dif­fi­cult, because its Jew­ish cit­i­zens are both his­tor­i­cal­ly oppressed—the sur­vivors of an attempt to wipe them out entire­ly—and cur­rent­ly in a dom­i­nant posi­tion over the Pales­tini­ans, as demon­strat­ed by the Netanyahu government’s deci­sion to restrict pow­er and water sup­plies to Gaza. The sim­plis­tic log­ic of pop inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty can­not rec­on­cile this, and the sub­ject caused schisms with­in the left long before Saturday’s attacks.”
      • This one is espe­cial­ly worth read­ing for uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents. It high­lights weak­ness­es in a per­spec­tive you are often taught from.
    • A wound­ed, weak­ened Israel is a fiercer one (Haviv Ret­tig Gur, The Times of Israel): “Hamas seemed to do every­thing pos­si­ble to shift Israeli psy­chol­o­gy from a com­fort­able faith in their own strength to a sense of dire vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. And it will soon learn the scale of that mis­cal­cu­la­tion. A strong Israel may tol­er­ate a bel­liger­ent Hamas on its bor­der; a weak­er one can­not. A safe Israel can spend much time and resources wor­ry­ing about the human­i­tar­i­an fall­out from a Gaza ground war; a more vul­ner­a­ble Israel can­not. A wound­ed, weak­ened Israel is a fiercer Israel. Hamas was once a tol­er­a­ble threat. It just made itself an intol­er­a­ble one, all while con­vinc­ing Israelis they are too vul­ner­a­ble and weak to respond with the old restraint.”
  2. Some theological/Christian per­spec­tives:
    • The Way Out is Through: Peace Must Start with the End of Hamas (Marc LiVec­che, Prov­i­dence): “Israel must do every­thing pos­si­ble to min­i­mize the toil on the inno­cent, and to mul­ti­ply hell on the mon­sters.”
      • The author is a research fel­low at the Naval War Col­lege and is writ­ing about just war the­o­ry as it applies to the con­flict between Israel and Hamas.
    • Amid Israel-Hamas War, Local Chris­tians Seek Right­eous Anger and Gospel Hope (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Noth­ing about this sit­u­a­tion is right or good,” said Lisa Loden, a Mes­sian­ic Jew­ish mem­ber of the Beth­le­hem Insti­tute of Peace and Jus­tice. “But there is a strong desire to see the Lord use these events to draw peo­ple to him­self.”
    • Israel’s 9/11: The Need for Moral Clar­i­ty (Bernard N. Howard and Ivan Mesa, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Moral clar­i­ty also allows for suit­ably one-sided prayer. It’s right to pray for the swift defeat of Hamas. The mur­der­ous oper­a­tions room of Hamas will nev­er pro­vide good lead­er­ship for the Pales­tini­ans liv­ing in Gaza. We should by all means pray for both-sided things too: the sal­va­tion of peo­ple on both sides; the pro­tec­tion, heal­ing, and com­fort of peo­ple on both sides; and the growth of the church that lives inside the bor­ders of both nations. Even as we pray for these both-sided things, let us bold­ly call on our God to thwart, frus­trate, and defeat the one side that is hell-bent on ter­ror­ism.”
    • Amer­i­can Chris­tians Should Stand with Israel under Attack (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Some­times, espe­cial­ly in the ear­ly moments of any war, we may be uncer­tain about who is right and who is wrong. There is no such moral con­fu­sion here. Hamas—and its state sponsors—attacked inno­cent peo­ple, as they have done repeat­ed­ly in the past, this time employ­ing a force and bru­tal­i­ty pre­vi­ous­ly unseen.… As Chris­tians, we should pay spe­cial atten­tion to vio­lence direct­ed toward Israel—just as we would pay spe­cial atten­tion to a vio­lent attack on a mem­ber of our extend­ed fam­i­ly. After all, we are graft­ed on to the promise made to Abra­ham (Rom. 11:17). Our Lord Jesus was and is a Jew­ish man from Galilee.”
  3. Some Stan­ford-con­nect­ed arti­cles:
    • This Was Nev­er Sup­posed to Hap­pen (Amichai Magen, Per­sua­sion): “Ana­lysts keen to con­vey the mag­ni­tude of Octo­ber 7th to Amer­i­can audi­ences have already tagged it Israel’s Pearl Har­bor or 9/11. Nei­ther label ade­quate­ly cap­tures the day’s true sig­nif­i­cance. A more accu­rate name might be some­thing like ‘Israel’s civic Yom Kip­pur.’ Why? Because the very exis­tence of the State of Israel was sup­posed to guar­an­tee that a day like this would nev­er hap­pen. In the Yom Kip­pur War of Octo­ber 1973—when Egypt and Syr­ia launched a sur­prise assault—Israel lost some 2,700 sol­diers, but it man­aged to effec­tive­ly pro­tect its civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. No Israeli towns or vil­lages were ever breached. The social con­tract was hon­ored, albeit at a ter­ri­ble price. On Octo­ber 7, 2023, it was pri­mar­i­ly civil­ians who were killed, maimed, and kid­napped. This was the day when the IDF wasn’t there to defend the peo­ple it was cre­at­ed to pro­tect.”
      • The author, him­self Israeli, is a Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor and Fel­low in Israel Stud­ies at the Free­man-Spogli Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • The impact of Hamas’ dev­as­tat­ing attack (Matthew Wigler, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Like most Jews, I seek the peace and secu­ri­ty of Israel as a Jew­ish state in the indige­nous home­land of the Jew­ish peo­ple, a safe haven after mil­len­nia of per­se­cu­tion where Jews can final­ly claim con­trol over their own des­tiny. Like­wise, like most Jews, I also dream of a future of dig­ni­ty and free­dom for the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple, who, by the very same prin­ci­ples of self-deter­mi­na­tion, deserve a state of their own in a land that they too have called home for many cen­turies. How­ev­er, Hamas’ ide­ol­o­gy of hate and meth­ods of ter­ror­ism are con­trary to that vision.”
  4. Oth­er inter­est­ing stuff not relat­ed to the war:
    • 5 Rea­sons Gen Z Is Primed for Spir­i­tu­al Renew­al (Kyle Richter & Patrick Miller, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Our last meet­ing of the year was big­ger than the first. We start­ed with 300 stu­dents and end­ed with 400. That nev­er hap­pens. Then in the fall of this year, it hap­pened again: 500 stu­dents attend­ed our first meet­ing; 600 showed up the next week. This doesn’t hap­pen.But it did. And it’s not unique to us. As we talk to cam­pus min­is­ters and pas­tors from San Fran­cis­co to Jack­sonville, Billings to Atlanta, DC to Dal­las, we know we aren’t alone. Some will urge cau­tion before draw­ing con­clu­sions. Isn’t this the era of dechurch­ing, decon­struc­tion, and ris­ing “nones”? But data lags behind real­i­ty and we don’t want the church to miss what may be hap­pen­ing.”
    • The Copen­hagen Inter­pre­ta­tion of Ethics (Jai, Sub­stack): “The Copen­hagen Inter­pre­ta­tion of Ethics says that when you observe or inter­act with a prob­lem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the prob­lem worse, even if you make it slight­ly bet­ter, the eth­i­cal bur­den of the prob­lem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In par­tic­u­lar, if you inter­act with a prob­lem and ben­e­fit from it, you are a com­plete mon­ster. I don’t sub­scribe to this school of thought, but it seems pret­ty pop­u­lar.”
      • A few years old, but real­ly good.
    • Repro­ducibil­i­ty tri­al: 246 biol­o­gists get dif­fer­ent results from same data sets (Anil Oza, Nature): “In a mas­sive exer­cise to exam­ine repro­ducibil­i­ty, more than 200 biol­o­gists analysed the same sets of eco­log­i­cal data — and got wide­ly diver­gent results. The first sweep­ing study1 of its kind in ecol­o­gy demon­strates how much results in the field can vary, not because of dif­fer­ences in the envi­ron­ment, but because of sci­en­tists’ ana­lyt­i­cal choic­es.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

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Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

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