What Price Technology?

 (Cross posted from Grandma's Army)

To quote Einstein: "I believe that the abominable deterioration of ethical standards stems primarily from the mechanization and depersonalization of our lives—a disastrous byproduct of science and technology. Nostra culpa! (We are to blame!)".

Nobody questions the remarkable achievements and progress that science and technology have made to our quality of life. However, it’s become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity. Our great-grandchildren know how to use smart phones and computers, from an early age. But their general knowledge is woefully lacking. What do they know of the great cultural visionaries of the past,  who introduced us to art, music, philosophy, etc.  To a world of beauty, grace and the thirst for knowledge. For the most part, they haven't a clue.

People increasingly rely on smartphones, tablets, and computers for daily tasks such as navigation, reminders, work, and entertainment. This dependence reduces problem-solving abilities, memory retention, and independent thinking. Over time, technology can become a crutch rather than a tool.

While social media enables fast communication, it often replaces face-to-face interaction, weakening emotional bonds and empathy. Families may be physically together but emotionally distant. Excessive use of mobile phones, including social media and gaming apps, especially among teenagers can lead to screen addiction. This negative impact on their mental health could cause anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

The humanities have become undervalued and split from more profitable STEM (science/technology/engineering/mathematics) fields. Humanities' vocations, many of which do not directly feed into capitalist structures, are thereby compensated poorly.

The notion that the humanities are inherently less valuable than STEM has pushed students away from studying societally important subjects. The number of humanities degrees awarded drops every year - almost 25% from 2012 to 2020, and continuing in a downward trend. This decline of the humanities could deeply hurt academia and society as a whole.

 Not long ago, students at Montclair State University in New Jersey held a mock funeral outside the university’s college of humanities and social sciences building. Carrying bouquets of flowers, they stood by a tombstone inscribed with the names of the school’s 15 departments, including English, history and sociology.                                                                        

 Fears over the future of the humanities aren’t limited to New Jersey’s second-largest public university. At many schools, those fears are already becoming reality.

The humanities are not hobbies. They are critical pursuits that have shaped the world we know today. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was inspired by philosopher David Hume. Quantum mechanics was apparently first imagined by writer Jorge Luis Borges. Medicine was influenced by Hippocrates, a famous Greek philosopher. The earliest scientists such as Isaac Newton, were deemed “natural philosophers.” Their creativity in their fields came from their understanding of the humanities.

Above all, the world could not function without English, journalism, sociology and other humanities majors. These disciplines are not only useful to STEM students, but are valuable majors in themselves. Journalists keep politicians accountable. English majors write our novels. Sociology majors point out the injustices in society. Philosophy transforms our understanding of ourselves, and the world we live in - making fundamental contributions to our economy, society and culture.

Technology, the market, and the liberal democratic state give us choices, but don’t teach us how to choose. They provide neither identity nor the set of moral sensibilities that are inseparable from identity: loyalty, respect and reverence. Technology knows how to make life easier and more comfortable, but it does not know how to make a person better. True success is not merely what a person has achieved, but what kind of person he/she has become.

An Unexpected Israeli Flag

An Israeli rescue delegation working in Venezuela’s earthquake disaster zone encountered an unexpected and moving tribute while inspecting the home of a local family in the La Guaira region.

Home Front Command engineers Itai Shtadler and Stav Daron arrived at the property as part of the delegation’s effort to assess buildings damaged in the earthquake.

As with every structure, the team first asked the homeowners for permission to carry out an engineering inspection through an interpreter. The engineers examined the exterior to identify the type of building and its structural framework before entering the house to inspect its beams and walls.

When they entered the living room, they noticed a large Israeli flag hanging on the wall. It was immediately clear that this was no ordinary flag, but one that had been sewn by hand.

The engineers were surprised, having not expected to find an Israeli flag inside the home of a local Christian family. When they asked about it, the family proudly explained that they had made it themselves and displayed it because of their Christian faith, their appreciation for the Jewish people and as a gesture to the Israeli delegation.

For members of the mission, the discovery was especially emotional because it came in the heart of an area marked by destruction and loss. As a gesture of gratitude and solidarity, one of the team members removed the Israeli flag patch from his uniform and presented it to the family.

“Throughout the mission, we were met with warmth, trust and affection from the Venezuelan people and authorities,” said Shtadler, a reserve engineer with the Home Front Command.

“Finding an Israeli flag inside a damaged home was an especially moving moment for us. It was another expression of the human connection formed during the mission and of what the Israeli delegation’s presence meant to many of the people we met along the way.”

Ambassador Yoed Magen, who heads the Foreign Ministry’s aid delegation, said the encounter was one of many examples of the support shown to the Israeli team during its work in Venezuela.

How Doha Captured the International Criminal Court

 Qatar’s Deep Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood Are Highly Relevant in Alleged Meddling in Legal Actions Against the State of Israel

Craig Considine, Sydney Rodman at JNS June 18, 2026

The International Criminal Court in The Hague is seeking the arrest of more Israeli leaders for alleged crimes against Palestinians. The court’s specious claims against Israel never made sense. Now, however, those claims are beginning to unravel because of the ICC’s own problems. New evidence suggests that the ICC has ulterior motives that go far beyond mere anti-Israel bias—and that its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is likely acting as a pawn of even more sinister actors.

It now seems that the ICC’s actions form part of a Muslim Brotherhood-led lawfare campaign, with Qatar pulling the strings. A shocking exposé published last month seemingly blew the lid off the ICC’s true motives. According to the report, which cites individuals who worked on behalf of Qatar, the Qatari government promised to “look after” Khan if he issued the arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Khan, for his part, has not denied the allegation. The report also claims that Qatar hired investigators to discredit Khan’s critics, including a U.S. senator and a woman who accused Khan of sexual misconduct.

The ICC has pursued an intense anti-Israel campaign, possibly at Qatar’s behest. In November 2024, it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza—a result of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—even though Israel’s operations produced one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios of any modern urban conflict.

These ICC measures were not just symbolic, as some claim. Instead, they produced immediate real-world consequences.

Fearing arrest, Netanyahu canceled several diplomatic trips to Europe.

Sometimes, it is more convenient to accept a dysfunctional status quo than to challenge it. Yet new allegations against the ICC’s top judge should catalyze scrutiny of the entire court.

That Qatar was working behind the scenes with Khan to prosecute Israeli leaders is a major revelation, and it may explain the ICC’s rush to prosecute Israeli officials, at a speed that is unusual for the court. As one legal expert observed, the ICC, which was only established on July 1, 2002, is “the most inactive and procrastinating court in the world—it dealt with a dozen cases only, over a period of more than 20 years.”

If the allegations are true (and the evidence strongly suggests they are), then the ICC is effectively being directed by an international criminal country. This would help explain why Khan issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders while largely sparing top Hamas officials.

After all, Hamas’s top leaders lived openly in Qatar, a leading state sponsor of terrorism that has funneled billions to Hamas and enabled the group’s operations for years. Nonetheless, none of these puppet masters has been prosecuted. Instead, if the allegations are true, they appear to have been manipulating the very prosecutor overseeing the case.

Yet the implications are more significant than meets the eye. The truth is that Qatar’s lawfare against Israel goes well beyond the ICC situation.

The case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, also in The Hague, follows a similar pattern. When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose country is a close partner of Qatar, first revealed that his country would bring a war-crimes case against Israel before the ICJ, he did so while visiting Qatar. Around the same time, senior Qatari official Mutlaq al-Qahtani met directly with Khan and a senior ICC judge, potentially working on dual tracks to indict Israel at both the ICC and the ICJ.

Qatar’s deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are highly relevant. Robert Gates, a former CIA director and U.S. secretary of defense, once described the relationship bluntly: “Qatar has long had the welcome mat out for the Muslim Brotherhood.” It is an expensive welcome mat, with Qatar shelling out billions for Muslim Brotherhood actors over the years, including Hamas, whose leaders it also hosts.

Anti-Israel lawfare against Israel is straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood’s playbook. The group’s own internal documents expose how it deliberately uses legal tactics to advance its doctrine of tamkeen—the strategy of employing seemingly legitimate tools to empower Islamist goals in the West. Chief on that agenda for the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is demonization of Israel.

Khan presents himself as a follower of the Ahmadiyya variant of Islam, a movement known for peace, interfaith dialogue and education. Yet he is actively targeting Israel, a democratic country that stands for peace and stability in the Middle East.

In addition, Khan has made several bizarre statements that amount to apologetics for the radical ideology that both Qatar and Hamas adhere to. In a 2018 interview, he asked: “Why do we have certain language that we do not see elsewhere? … Why ‘Islamic terror’? Why not ‘Buddhist terror’?” While most Muslims do not share the jihadist ideology, Khan feigned ignorance on this matter, suggesting either willful blindness or outright dishonesty.

Whatever Khan’s true motivations may be, this much is clear: The agenda that he, and the court he oversees, is pursuing is not entirely his own. The ICC is a farce—and a dangerous one at that.

 

Moral Decline in the West

 

Fawzia Amin Sido, Yazidi survivor of ISIS sexual slavery 

and captivity in Gaza, testifies at a UN Watch side event 

during the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council 

in Geneva, June 26, 2026. 

Fawzia Amin Sido’s story should have shaken the world. It did not.

That, too, is part of the story.

She was a Yazidi child from Iraq, abducted during ISIS’s assault on the Yazidis in 2014, one of the clearest genocidal campaigns of our century. She was trafficked to Gaza and held there for years by a Hamas terrorist affiliated with ISIS.

Eventually, she was extracted through the Kerem Shalom crossing in a complex operation led by COGAT, before being transferred through Jordan and returned to her family in Iraq.

Her testimony is almost unbearable to hear.

She was bought and sold. Abused. Raped. Forced into a jihadist “marriage.” Made to bear two children while still a captive.

In Gaza, she said, she was not free. She was controlled, beaten, and treated as a slave.

Hamas later claimed she had stayed there willingly. Of course it did.

This is not only a story about ISIS. It is not only a story about Hamas. It is a story about the failure of Western moral language when it is imposed on a world that does not share its basic assumptions.

The Western mind often begins with its own inherited furniture: individual rights, consent, personal autonomy, minority protection, the rule of law, secular politics, and the comforting belief that words like “freedom” and “resistance” mean roughly the same thing everywhere.

Then it looks at the Middle East, especially at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and tries to squeeze that reality into familiar templates.

Oppressor and oppressed. Colonizer and indigenous. Powerful and powerless. Brown and white. Resistance and occupation.

It is clean. It is emotionally efficient. It fits perfectly on a campus banner, which is usually the first warning sign.

Fawzia’s story tears through that script.

She was not Jewish. She was not Israeli. She was not a soldier. She was a Yazidi girl, a member of a persecuted Middle Eastern minority, swallowed by the same jihadist, patriarchal, tribal order that devours anyone outside its hierarchy.

In that world, women can become property. Minorities can become prey. Children can become trophies. And “marriage” can be the polite administrative term for rape.

This is the part many Western observers refuse to process. They read Gaza as if it were a misunderstood European suburb with worse infrastructure and an unfortunate public-relations problem. They cannot, or will not, confront the deeper reality: parts of the region are still governed by medieval instincts that have learned to speak the language of modern politics, human rights vocabulary, NGO reports, smartphones, and occasionally a press office.

Fawzia survived ISIS. She survived Gaza. She survived the moral obscenity of being told, after all of it, that perhaps she had been there by choice.

She later testified that her childhood had been stolen and that she had lived in Gaza “for years in slavery.”

And then Israel, the country so routinely accused of every crime imaginable by people who have turned selective outrage into a respectable profession, helped get her out.

That fact should matter. Because Israel is not fighting a misunderstanding. It is fighting an ecosystem of terror movements, ideological cruelty, hostage-taking, sexual violence, minority persecution, and a political culture in which civilians are used as shields, women as instruments, and truth as disposable packaging.

Fawzia Amin Sido’s name should be known.

Her suffering exposes the fraudulence of so much Western commentary on this conflict. The Middle East is not a seminar room. Gaza is not an abstract symbol. Hamas is not a social justice movement with unfortunate branding. And the victims of this world are not always the ones Western activists have been trained to recognize.

There is no need to dress this story in theory.

One young Yazidi woman, rescued from Gaza after a decade of slavery, tells us enough.

The world should have listened sooner.

It still can..

Just Out of Curiosity

 (With thanks to Forest Rain Marcia)

Every once in a while random people show up on my feed and ask:

"Out of curiosity, do you ever think of the families on the other side, most of whom are collateral damage ?"

And they usually do it on posts expressing our anguish for our loved ones.

Perhaps these people do not realize that this, done in this way, is a deeply hateful question.

They wouldn't make the assumptions they make if they had not internalized hate.

And I know many Jews respond to things like this with facts and figures detailing the extreme lengths Israel goes to save lives on the other side.

That's why I think it's important to highlight my latest response to this question.

No explanations - because the hateful are not really interested in facts.

No apologies - because they should be apologizing to us, not the other way around.

My answer:

First of all, my family comes before the families of the people trying to kill me. It is morally twisted to do or expect anything else.

Secondly, why in the world do you assume that most of them are collateral damage?

The Gazan elderly, women and children who invaded behind the Hamas fighters? They are the ones who set fires and looted everything in sight.

The civilians who beat the hostages in the streets?

The children who spat on the bodies of raped and murdered women?

The women who made cookies to celebrate their great victory?

The young people who watched the live stream of the Hamas horrors in the square outside the Shifa hospital, laughing and cheering at the seeing Jews being tortured and slaughtered?

Are they the collateral damage you are referring to?

Or perhaps the people who held hostages in their homes?

Or their neighbors that knew and didn't help, even when the IDF promised 1 million dollars and safe passage for their family to a new country just for information? Are they the collateral damage you are referring to?

Out of curiosity

 

Hezbollah Tunnel on Israel's Border

 Only a few kilometers from Israel’s northern border, 

Hezbollah constructed a sophisticated underground 

drone facility designed to support its ongoing

 campaign against Israel.

WHY SO MANY ISRAELIS FEEL THE TABLE HAS SUDDENLY TURNED

 With thanks to Israel Realtime

For the past several days there are lots of questions that need answering 

Not about a specific Hezbollah attack. 

Not about a specific statement from Washington.

Not even about the details of the latest U.S.-Iran negotiations.

The question is much simpler: How did the pressure suddenly shift from Iran to Israel?

Only a short time ago, Iran appeared to be on the defensive. Israel and the United States were closely coordinated. Tehran and its proxies were under pressure. Hezbollah was constrained. The strategic momentum appeared to be moving in one direction.

Today, many Israelis feel as though the entire table has somehow been turned.

Whether that perception is fully accurate or not, it is worth examining why so many people have reached that conclusion.

The first thing that stands out is that the pressure did not only shift onto Israel, it appears to have shifted back onto America as well.

The United States was also presenting the Strait of Hormuz as a point of American leverage. The message was clear: Iran was surrounded, pressured, weakened, and unable to freely control the regional equation. Then came the ceasefire framework. From that moment, the logic of the arena changed.

After the ceasefire, Washington's priority shifted toward preserving the U.S.-Iran diplomatic track, stabilizing the region, reopening Hormuz, protecting global energy flows, and keeping negotiations alive.

That created a dangerous opening for Iran.

Tehran appears to have understood that once Washington became invested in protecting the agreement, Iran could use both Lebanon and Hormuz as leverage.

That is the deeper strategic reversal. The pressure did not only shift onto Israel. It also shifted back onto America.

Hormuz was supposed to be the symbol of American leverage over Iran. Instead, Iran is trying to turn Hormuz back into leverage over America. Because if Iran can threaten the Strait of Hormuz, pressure global energy markets, and then extract concessions through negotiations, the lesson for Tehran is obvious: Hormuz works.

Iran was militarily weakened. Its air defenses were hit. Its navy was pressured. Its regional infrastructure was damaged. But through Hormuz, Tehran still had a way to threaten the global system. That is why the negotiation looks so troubling from an Israeli perspective.

America had pressure on Iran.

Israel had pressure on Iran.

Iran's proxies were under pressure.

Hormuz was being used by Washington as a pressure point.

Then the ceasefire framework appears to have allowed Iran to reverse the equation. Instead of Iran being forced to prove it would stop threatening Hormuz and restrain its proxies, Israel and America are now the ones being pressured to avoid actions that might collapse the deal.

That is the strategic inversion. The pattern is becoming clear:

Hezbollah attacks.

Israel responds.

Iran accuses Israel of endangering the broader agreement.

The United States tries to preserve the diplomatic track.

Pressure shifts onto Israel.

That is the trap.

The problem is not that America is negotiating with Iran. The United States is free to pursue its own diplomatic track if it believes that serves American interests.

The problem is that Iran appears to be trying to turn that U.S.-Iran track into a restraint on both Israel and America. On Israel, by limiting its freedom of action against Hezbollah.

That is what makes this so troubling.

If the agreement is about Iran, nuclear de-escalation, Hormuz, sanctions, or regional stability, then why should Israel be expected to absorb Hezbollah attacks in Lebanon?

Iran's conduct suggests it is testing whether it can enjoy the benefits of diplomacy while preserving the coercive power of its proxy network and its control over strategic chokepoints.

Tehran wants sanctions relief, oil revenue, access to global markets, and reduced pressure. At the same time, it wants Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed forces to remain tools of pressure against Israel, regional states, global shipping, and Western interests.

That cannot become the new normal.

A diplomatic agreement that restrains Iran is one thing. A diplomatic agreement that restrains Israel while Iran's proxies keep attacking is something very different.

A diplomatic agreement that reopens Hormuz only because Iran has demonstrated it can threaten Hormuz again is also something very different.

That would not be de-escalation. That would be reward for coercion.

The repeated Hezbollah attacks against IDF forces should not be viewed as isolated skirmishes. They appear to fit into a broader Iranian strategy: keep pressure on Israel through Hezbollah, then blame Israel when it responds, while warning that the wider U.S.-Iran track may collapse.

That gives Tehran a powerful tool. It can attack indirectly, negotiate directly, and then demand restraint from the country being attacked.

If that equation is accepted, Hezbollah becomes more than a proxy. Hezbollah becomes a bargaining chip protected by diplomacy.

Instead of: Hezbollah attacks → Hezbollah pays a price.

The equation becomes: Hezbollah attacks → Israel responds → Iran threatens the talks → pressure shifts onto Israel.

And with Hormuz, the equation becomes: Iran threatens shipping → markets panic → America seeks calm → Iran gains leverage.

That is exactly the structure Tehran wants to create.

The West's real test is not whether it can sign an agreement with Iran.

The real test is whether it can prevent Iran from using that agreement as cover for continued proxy aggression and strategic blackmail.

Because if the message Tehran receives is that it can threaten Hormuz, activate Hezbollah, pressure global markets, and still move toward relief and reintegration, then the lesson will be obvious:

Escalation works. Proxy warfare works. Hormuz works. Regional blackmail works. 

And Israel is left facing the consequences on the ground. Both Washington and Jerusalem need to recognize the game being played.

Iran is trying to turn the ceasefire from a restraint on Tehran into a restraint on Israel.

It is trying to turn Hormuz from a point of American pressure into a point of Iranian leverage.

That is the danger. And that is why so many Israelis feel that the entire table has suddenly turned.