Read yesterday and today

There is a story, I think from the French writer Charles Péguy, about a man who goes to heaven. Jesus says to him, “Show me your wounds,” and he replies, “I have none.” It meant he never lived.


Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe


Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.


H.L. Mencken


What if one reason Israelis are so happy is that brutality has become pleasurable? … Today, violence is not only liberated from the trap of “shooting and crying” … or from acceding to the call of Naftali Bennett ... of “no more apologizing”: It is also becoming joyful. Probably the clearest manifestation of the ostensible joy of violence takes the form of what’s referred to as “happy Jews.”
In 2015, journalists Akiva Novick and Chaim Levinson explained in their report, “The Complete Hilltop Lexicon,” that happy Jews are those “who are not bound to the archaic conventions and rules of morality, and carry out ‘price tag’ [retaliatory operations against Palestinians] with a smile on their face” … Invitations to carry out pogroms are circulated on colourful, cheerful posters that look more like flyers for an open-air rave than calls to violence …
Dr Ariel Handel, Israeli political theorist, author of Normalizing Occupation: The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements, In an article in Ha'aretz Hebrew edition on 3 August headlined "No Wonder Israelis Want War. Violence Has Become a Source of Joy". Acknowledgements to Alastair Crooke