Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Preoccupied

Showing posts with label Preoccupied. Show all posts

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Defense Ministry Could Save 2 Billion Per Year By Not Ordering Donuts From Roladin (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Tel Aviv, November 21 - An audit of spiraling military expenditures amid the current war has determined that the quickest, most effective avenue for cutting costs involves switching suppliers for the annual Hanukkah refreshments, and refraining from purchase of those products from a chain whose elegant holiday pastries make even the wealthy balk at the prices.

The authors of the study hope that their findings and recommendations will have an impact in time for this year's festivities: Hanukkah begins on the twenty-fifth of the Jewish month of Kislev, coinciding in 2024 with Wednesday night, December 25 - about a month from now. If Ministry of Defense and IDF staff can be prevailed upon to order donuts from sources other than Roladin, the authors write, then savings can amount to more than two billion shekels - about 530 million US dollars.

Defense Ministry spending could fall further, despite the mounting expenses of the October 7 war, already in its second year, if Hanukkah donuts expenditures disappear entirely - though the team of auditors doubt the feasibility of such a cut, which they worry could spark mutiny. However, the tantalizing possibilities of expanding such an austerity policy to other government entities has economists, government accountants, and civic watchdog groups thinking that the entire national budget could shrink by up to seventeen billion shekels per annum by forgoing Roladin Hanukkah donuts.

Jewish celebrations of Hanukkah have long featured the consumption of food fried in oil, a custom documented as far back as the High Middle Ages. The practice commemorates the Talmud's narrative of the festival's origins, when the Hasmoneans who liberated the Temple from Seleucid occupation in the second century BCE found only one undefiled flask of oil to light the candelabra as mandated in the books of Exodus and Numbers, a quantity sufficient for only one lighting. But it lasted a full eight nights, until new oil could be produced and procured. Earlier sources cite other reasons for the eight-day observance, but the story of the oil miracle fired the popular and gustatory imagination in more lasting ways.

Roladin, a cafe-style bakery and patisserie, has locations in every major Israeli city and town. Their year-round fare compares in price to other establishments of similar target markets. For Hanukkah, the chain has for years advertised its stylized, complex, and artistic donuts for Hanukkah - with a commensurate rise in the price of each one as the designs became more and more elaborate.

Market observers expect this year's Roladin offerings to include some new, even more expensive feature, such as pieces of the True Cross.

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Iran To Protect Navy, Oil From Israeli Strikes By Sinking Them Underwater (PreOccupied Territory)

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Bandar Abbas, November 17 - Escalating strikes between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel have leaders of the former worried about the vulnerability of its military and merchant vessels, a weak point in the regime's economic security, and as a result they have given preliminary approval to a plan that will send those vessels to the bottom of the Persian Gulf to prevent Israeli airstrikes or cruise missiles from hitting them, sources in Tehran reported today.

The Islamic Republic's continued support for various terrorist militias around the Jewish state, plus its own multiple ballistic and cruise missile attacks, prompted several Israeli reprisals and preemptive operations, the latest of which neutralized Iran's air defense systems, among other strategic targets, rendering sensitive and precarious pieces of the regime's strategic assets only one airstrike or other attack away from destruction or severe damage. Among those assets are elements of Iran's nuclear weapons program and the country's oil export facilities. Tehran will likely send those tankers and a number of both dockside and floating facilities to the sea bed, out of reach of Israeli bombs, missiles, or drones.

"Underwater environments wreak havoc with missile guidance systems," explained Iranian military expert Ayeet Mehrd. "Even pilots attempting to sight their targets visually cannot do so if the target lies below a certain depth. It makes obvious sense to protect whatever Iran can by sinking it in the Persian Gulf preemptively."

Analysts compared the move to siting important military installations or positions underground. "We know that tunnels and underground facilities are a staple of Iran and its proxies in the region," noted Mideast commentator Ahopyu Draoun. "Recent reports even have the Khamenei regime digging tunnels in Tehran itself. The principle for the maritime and naval assets is the same, but without all the digging."

Draoun also noted some potential pitfalls of the move. "Israel has a navy and even submarines," he observed. "Iran's defensive capabilities in that area are... less than impressive. Still, an Israeli operation all the way around the Arabian Peninsula, beyond the Strait of Hormuz, to hit those now-underwater targets, and back again, probably exceeds Israeli naval capabilities. Probably."

The Iranian sources further disclosed that the senior leadership of the regime had begun to lean in the direction of the submerging of the assets rather than a rival proposal involving the movement of the tankers into the interior of the country where Israeli naval assets could not reach them.

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Hezbollah Fans Upset At Wrong Side Involving Mosques In Fight (PreOccupied Territory)

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Beirut, November 7 - Supporters of the Iran-backed Shiite militia exercising political control of Lebanon and forcing the country into armed conflict with Israel railed again today against the Jewish State for deploying munitions in or against Muslim houses of worship, arguing that only one party is permitted to violate the sanctity of such sites for military purposes, while the other, Jewish one must refrain from acting against any military personnel, materiel, or facilities there.

Hezbollah advocates issued further criticism today of IDF operations to destroy structures in southern Lebanon that form part of Hezbollah's military infrastructure. They called the demolitions, which targeted all structures regardless of their pre-conflict use, a violation of the sanctity of the mosques, in which Hezbollah should be permitted to continue locating their positions, tunnel entrances, weapons caches, and other resources.

"The Zionist Entity continues to violate everything sacred by involving mosques in the fighting," declared Mustafa Massiqr of the city's Dahiyeh neighborhood, a Hezbollah stronghold. "Islamic houses of worship are strictly reserved for prayer, study, some community activities, and serving as missile-launching sites or assembly points for our brave fighters."

"The world must condemn the Zionists, but it is only their American backers who make this possible!" charged Massiqr. "This phenomenon, of foreign bankrolling and arming of a malign entity in the region, is illegitimate and must be stopped," added the enthusiastic supporter of Iran bankrolling, arming, and training Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah, and various Iraqi militias for its own hegemonic ends.

Human rights organizations and international humanitarian organizations echoed Massiqr's position. "Israel has demonstrated again and again its disregard for the hors de combat status of houses of worship," stated former director of Human Rights Watch Ken Roth. "As if the allegation that someone else had made such a facility a military site can justify atrocities. We saw it in Gaza, as well: Israel thinks armed groups supposedly taking up position in a hospital makes that hospital a legitimate military target. As if we apply such provisions to Israel. Everyone knows we don't."

UNIFIL troops similarly noted that Hezbollah's buildup around the UN peacekeeping force's positions deserved no comment or criticism, whereas Israel's attempts to get the UNIFIL troops out of the way in order to target Hezbollah positions was inexcusable. "Outrageous," declared the head of the Irish unit. "Israel can't just do what its enemies do."

That phenomenon parallels the one in which only Israeli retaliatory action attracts characterization as "escalation."

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Amid Tight Michigan Race, Harris Promises To Add Nasrallah To Mt. Rushmore (PreOccupied Territory)

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Dearborn, October 31 - The Democratic Party nominee for the presidency made further efforts this week to maintain an edge with Muslim voters in this crucial swing state, with a campaign statement today that, if elected, she will commission a likeness of the recently-eliminated leader of Hezbollah alongside those of four iconic US presidents in South Dakota.

The Kamala Harris for President organization issued a statement via X and several other online media to the effect that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel assassinated in a targeted airstrike on his Beirut bunker just over a month ago, deserves to have his face commemorated and venerated next to those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

The X post also contained a short video clip of Harris attempting a Lebanese Arabic accent as she sang the praises of "Sayed Nasrallah" and the hope he brought to millions of Shiite Muslims.

Polls have Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump at a statistical dead heat in several swing states. Both candidates and parties have made overtures to the American Muslim communities, especially in this area of Michigan, a stronghold of the demographic. Trump campaigned there last week, securing an endorsement from one prominent community leader, though the extent of that leader's influence remains open to debate. Muslim Americans have favored the Democratic Party, by and large, for at least two decades, especially after 9/11 and its aftermath, when a GOP administration held power.

Recent dissatisfaction among vocal elements of the community regarding what they view as the Biden-Harris administration's insufficient response to Palestinian suffering in the Gaza Strip has led to numerous threats not to vote for Harris in the election - despite her rival having moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the city as the capital of the Jewish State, acknowledged the legitimacy of Israeli settlement in territories the Palestinians claim, and brokered regional peace deals that sidelined the Palestinian issue, when he held the office from 2017 to 2021.

The impact of Harris's Rushmore promise remains unclear. Her choice of Nasrallah over, for example, the more-recently-slain Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza, an actual Palestinian and not merely the head of an Iranian proxy militia, has raised eyebrows among both Muslims and political analysts.

A campaign spokesman explained that they had originally decided to promise a likeness of Sinwar, but selected Nasrallah instead when engineers warned them that the size of his ears would render an accurate reproduction impossible.

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Israeli Left, Bleeding Support, Sees New Voters In Captured Hamas Fighters (PreOccupied Territory)

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Israeli Left, Bleeding Support, Sees New Voters In Captured Hamas Fighters

Tel Aviv, September 26 - The shrinking contingent of the politically-progressive sector of the electorate in the country hopes to combat its diminishing prospects of ever holding power again, banking on a plan to replace their long-gone contingency with imprisoned terrorists taken in and around the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year, a spokeswoman for one of the parties disclosed today.

Leaders of the once-mighty Labor Party - now a fraction of its former self - and its counterpart in The Democrats, Meretz, hit on the notion several weeks ago as survey after survey indicated that despite widespread distaste for incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his bare-majority, narrow-right-wing coalition, and its failure to anticipate and prevent the current war, the Labor-Meretz odds of ever holding significant political influence in national elected office grow ever longer, amid broad public acknowledgment that the flagship enterprise of the Left, which involves generous concession to Palestinian ambitions, has resulted not in peace, but in increased terrorism and barbarism by Palestinian terror groups.

That last element gave The Democrats leaders an idea: why not harness the Palestinian vote?

"Obviously the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can't vote," explained Yair Golan, a former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff and the party leader. "But we do have plenty of them in prison, and I don't see them being allowed back home anytime soon, certainly not while the fighting still rages. All we have to do is get the Supreme Court, which has the same ideas as we do, to grant them citizenship. Shouldn't take too much. At least our kind still controls that institution."

Party insiders acknowledged that appealing to Israelis - even to Israeli Arabs - has no chance of returning the Left to power. "Even Meretz on its own, as far left as it was, couldn't attract the Arab vote," recalled former Meretz chief Zehava Gal-On. "We were still nominally Zionist, even if we had a self-defeating definition of the term. That was too much for most Arab voters, who, if they voted at all, generally preferred their own parties. We made overtures to them repeatedly, especially as Jewish Israelis increasingly rejected our delusions of peace breaking out, to little avail. There's even less chance that as a joint endeavor with Labor, which built and expanded the whole Zionist enterprise for the first four decades of the state's existence, we could make a successful appeal to that ambivalent demographic."

"Imprisoned Palestinian terrorist it is," she concluded.

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Rhetoric That Inspires Violence Is Wrong! Unless It's Pro-Palestine Rhetoric, by Rashida Tlaib (PreOccupied Territory)

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Rhetoric That Inspires Violence Is Wrong! Unless It's Pro-Palestine Rhetoric.

by Rashida Tlaib, Congresswoman, 12h District, Michigan

Detroit, September 19 - Donald Trump and J. D. Vance have continued their irresponsible, reckless speech even after the atmosphere they created with such talk resulted in two attempts on Trump's life. Aside from being dangerous, such talk is simply wrong. Well, if it isn't in favor of Palestinian resistance it's wrong. No amount of violence on behalf of Palestine could disqualify the cause.

Republicans and conservatives in general have long resorted to inflammatory rhetoric that inspires violence. Activists such as Libs of TikTok do the same. But they refuse to take responsibility for that rhetoric, which threatens lives - even their own! - and safety. Anyone who votes for politicians who speak they way Trump and Vance speak automatically support political violence, which betrays all of our fundamental values.

That is, if the perpetrators commit political violence on behalf of ordinary causes. On behalf of Palestine, however, both the violence and the rhetoric that prompted it attain sacred, unassailable status.

Anti-abortion protesters accuse providers of murder, and then someone bombs an abortion clinic; Libs of TikTok posts a clip from a trans teacher, and the teacher's school gets bomb threats; President Biden tweets that Trump is "a genuine threat to this nation" and "a threat to democracy," and someone tries to shoot Trump.

Hmm. Maybe that last one is okay, as well. I will have to consider it. Trump is pretty pro-Israel so perhaps it counts as "pro-Palestine" rhetoric.

My point is, we must not, cannot, as a civilization, tolerate talk that calls for, or implies support for, harming people or property to advance a political agenda. Except the agenda of Palestine, which we must liberate By Any Means Necessary™. When it comes to Palestine, unleash your inner rape-apologist and Nazi-analogy-maker. Everything goes.

Journalists and politicians have a responsibility to call out and challenge talk that incites violence, wherever, and by whomever. Trump, Vance, and their acolytes must tone down their inflammatory speech, which has already raised tensions among immigrants in Ohio and sparked torrents of online harassment and hate speech. As a child of Muslim immigrants, I have developed a special sensitivity to rhetoric that makes marginalized people afraid.

It's still alright for you to make Jews afraid, though, because you're doing it in the name of a Free Palestine, through blood and fire, as the chant goes. Also the "From the water to the water Palestine will be Arab" chant, which we western Muslims sanitize as "will be free."

Stop the violent speech!

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Report: Gaza Not Starving, Just Won't Eat Because Full Of BS (PreOccupied Territory)

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Gaza City, September 12 - Journalists and observers from international aid organizations revised their longtime dire assessment of the food situation in this war-torn territory today, replacing their characterization of it as "famine" with "actually there's plenty of food but no one has room for it because they're so full of s***."

Representatives of the World Food Programme, Oxfam, and other not-for-profit aid groups confirmed this morning that in fact malnutrition figures for the Gaza Strip have not exceeded pre-war levels in the eleven months since hostilities erupted in earnest last October 7 with a Hamas invasion and massacre in southern Israel. This lack of starvation persists despite alarm bells from the same organizations since October that Israel's blockade of the territory put 2.3 million Gaza residents at risk, with apocalyptic descriptions of the depravations ahead if Israel continued its operations there. Israel did continue its operations, making significant strides toward crushing the Hamas threat, even as the IDF facilitated the entry of hundreds of food and aid trucks per day. The NGOs continued to warn of imminent famine throughout the ensuing months - and have now issued a statement recognizing that the fear of starvation stemmed from Gaza residents abstaining from the food, not for lack of it, but for excess of BS permeating the Gaza ecosystem and their own bodies.

"It turns out Palestinians don't have much room for food because they've already swallowed so much horse***t," explained International Committee of the Red Cross spokeswoman Wata Crock. "We never took that into account when we made our assessments over the last eleven months. It turns out that UNRWA, we at the Red Cross, the European Union, and various individual governments in Europe have been helping to shovel all that s*** down the throats of successive generations of Palestinians, with the largest fecal element the notion that Israel can or will be destroyed and it's better to focus on pursuing that goal than on creating something positive for themselves as refugees always have."

"That doesn't leave much room for food no matter how much is delivered," she noted.

The NGOs assured inquirers that the discovery will not change the way they discuss Gaza. "The facts aren't the point," stated an irritated Amnesty International representative. "You still think we care about facts? We have an agenda, and a narrative that serves that agenda. Now are you going to pick up that spoon full of crap and eat it, or do I have to force it into you?"

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Rats, Roaches Pretty Sure They'll Finish All The Food Aid Before Leftist Group Finally Gets Around To Delivering It To Gaza (PreOccupied Territory)

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Tel Aviv, September 5 - Vermin busy consuming the "famine relief" resources at a warehouse in central Israel expressed confidence today that they will have time to eat the entire stock of products, because the organization storing it remains unlikely in the foreseeable future to find a suitable public-relations moment to make an ostentatious demonstration of providing the relief to the starving Palestinians to the south.

Rats, roaches, houseflies, and various other creepy-crawlies made their prediction Thursday afternoon, following months of idleness in the facility rented by the Standing Together movement, which has been laboring to identify and exploit an opportunity to signal their righteousness in as public a fashion as possible by supplying several tons of food to Gaza, where reports of hunger persist despite no actual shortage of food or any spike in the incidence of malnutrition since Israeli operations in the territory began late last year.

"We're pretty sure we can finish all of this before it can be delivered," asserted Remy, the head of a rat clan that now numbers in the thousands. "I wasn't so sure when the food storage began back in February, but back then we were just a handful of rats. In the intervening months we've had help from maggots, cockroaches, ants, and the occasional feral cat. With our reproduction rate and the approaching temperate weather of the autumn, it will take, I should say, no more than six weeks to get through the entire supply."

The other scavengers seconded Remy's assessment, with provisos. "Cold weather might set in and slow us down," cautioned Ahmad, a cockroach. "That could extend the timetable into the winter. There's certainly no air conditioning in here, so I doubt there's going to be heating, either. There's also the remote possibility, though it remains a possibility, that Standing Together will bite the bullet and decide to deliver whatever food is left."

"I admit that latter possibility is a long shot," he acknowledged. "Far-left activism doesn't lend itself to effective aid operations. It's primarily about feeling righteous, not about helping those who need it. I appreciate the selfishness. Game recognize game."

Israeli Arabs who contributed the bulk of the foodstuffs have grumbled about the failed delivery of their donations, while Gazans who have tracked the project continue to complain that the organizers appear more interested in finding ways to create a disruption and media circus to embarrass Israel than in providing any actual aid.

"But we're used to that from our own leaders already," conceded a Deir al-Balah resident.

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Haifa Port Strike Thwarts Iranian Espionage Ops (PreOccupied Territory)

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Haifa, August 25 - Labor unrest at Israel's busiest port has rendered useless an intelligence-gathering effort by the regime in Tehran to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the facility, an operative acknowledged today.

Three undercover Iranian spies found their espionage work impossible to accomplish over the last five weeks since gaining access to the port, the leader of the group disclosed Thursday, because the place remains perpetually on strike.

"I don't know how any imports end up in the country," admitted Mohsen Najad, 40. "We've seen some office personnel and a couple of emergency maintenance folks come through, but no one's done a lick of actual work in all the time I've been here. I can't find out a scrap of the information I'm supposed to collect on capacities, security, inspections, technology, or logistics. My contact in Beirut is getting annoyed."

His comrades, who, under mission orders, must not be seen to come in contact with him, shared similar concerns. "I've been having a wonderful time off from work, since the union decided no one sets foot there," he conceded. "But at a certain point a guy's gotta do his job, and I can't do my job without doing my other job. It's going to look suspicious, eventually, when I haven't been paid but can still afford to live."

The man appeared unaware that union power in Israel has guaranteed wages for port workers far in excess of basic expenses, and that regardless, Israelis tend not to pay much attention to whether their checking account balances are in the black or in the red, and would therefore not notice him living beyond his means.

The third member of the operations team noted that he had to warn the other two, via their indirect communication methods, not to work too hard, exhibit punctuality, or volunteer for any duties beyond the absolute minimum required of their job descriptions. He further cautioned them that performing up to requirement, and not coasting on union protection to maintain job security, would be a surefire way to blow their cover. He cited for them the case of Israeli counterintelligence catching a mole because the foreign agent used correct Hebrew grammar.

"That last bit was an important point, because otherwise we'd have worked hard on mastering proper Hebrew not just for nothing, but it would have compromised everything," acknowledged the team leader.

In the absence of their designated espionage work, the three men have made daily, hours-long trips to various recreational and sensual facilities in Israel and marked the outings as "for research purposes" in the reports to their handlers.

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IDF Bulldozers Clearing Rafah Buffer Zone Find Your Phone Charger (PreOccupied Territory)

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Kibbutz Nahal Oz, August 15 - The Israeli Military Engineer Corps unearthed the cord for your device that you couldn't remember misplacing, an army spokesman announced today.

IDF soldiers working to widen the empty area at the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt demolished twenty buildings in the last several days, in the rubble of which they found your phone charger, said unit spokesman Colonel Matt Ein.

"In the course of work to secure the buffer zone for the long-term safety of our troops, Corps engineers found the item in the ruins of a three-story apartment building," stated Col. Ein. He noted that it matches the description of the one you forgot where you put it last month.

"It will be available at the Kissufim Base starting tomorrow," he added.

Israel has entrenched its military presence along the Gaza Strip's frontier with Egypt as part of a strategy to eliminate the resupply of weapons and other materials to Hamas and the other terrorist organizations operating in the territory. The IDF has discovered dozens of tunnels, some spacious enough to accommodate small trucks. The long-term operations to locate and neutralize the tunnels may take years, during which time the IDF will need an area clear of potential sniper positions in which to conduct the work.

You claim to have last used your phone charger late last week, perhaps Thursday afternoon, and since then cannot recall where you might have placed it. In the meantime, you have borrowed substitutes from increasingly-annoyed siblings, coworkers, roommates, and erstwhile friends, each of whom hoped you would decide quickly to simply replace the missing charger instead of continuing to pester them when they were not the ones who could not keep track of a simple piece of technology.

This week's discovery throws a wrench into the works of that expectation. Relief showed on the face of your nearest coworker, which transformed into dread upon his realization that you will in all likelihood decide to retrieve your charger from the IDF when you get the chance, and not acquire a replacement, which means that until that unknown time when you finally get your act together to go pick the damn thing up, you will continue to rely on the chargers of those around you and those around you are already sick of your irresponsible, freeloading ways.

Colonel Ein also announced the unit has uncovered a tremendous number of house and car keys, single socks, and that ninth-grade homework assignment you completed but failed to hand in and no one believed you when you swore up and down you'd done the work.

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No Accident: Waves Of Messianic Process Coincide With Spread Of Chocolate (PreOccupied Territory)

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Jerusalem, August 8 - Scholars of Jewish history, Jewish lore, and cultural anthropology made a startling discovery last month: that the first traceable development toward fulfillment of the Biblical prophecies of Redemption began at the same time as the dissemination of the cacao plant product beyond the Americas, and that each subsequent advance in the manufacture and economics of the product occurred at much the same time as landmark events in the Ingathering of the Exiles and the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland.

A team of researchers from the Hebrew University shared their insights in an article in the upcoming issue of the history journal Trendlines. In it, the group laid out its observations that the spread of chocolate from the New World to the Old, the addition of sugar and milk, the transformation of the beverage from the province of the super-rich into a product accessible to the middle class, the revolutionary step of producing solid bars, and the geopolitical developments that saw American soldiers bring chocolate to people who had never encountered it, among other phenomena, closely paralleled the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 - then from Portugal in 1497 - many of whom resettled in communities in the Land of Israel, then under Ottoman control, that formed the backbone of a lasting robust Jewish presence in the land that laid the groundwork for the success of the Zionist project hundreds of years later.

The article begins with the observation that Christopher Columbus's delivery back to Spain of cacao beans from the Caribbean in 1502, his fourth voyage to the West Indies, as Jews were resettling around the Mediterranean and elsewhere following their expulsion from Iberia. The decades following that calamity saw the establishment of renewed Jewish communities in the Land of Israel by Ottoman invitation. Several of those communities remained strongholds of Jewish life in the land for centuries.

That growth occurred in parallel to the spread of chocolate through Europe, mostly among the upper classes; initially, cacao beans fetched a higher price than gold. However, increased production in the New World under European conquest increased the product's availability and put it in reach of the non-aristocrat.

The eighteenth century saw a drive among followers of the early Hasidic movement to reclaim messianic longings following the Shabtai Tzvi debacle, just as the consumption of solid chocolate began to take hold. The popularity of the solid form of the foodstuff grew as similar redemptive fervor seized followers of the Gaon of Vilna and the Hatam Sofer in the early nineteenth century - just as the process of adding alkaline salts to chocolate was discovered, reducing its bitterness.

In the mid-nineteenth century both the introduction of moldable chocolate - and the first mass-market chocolate bar - came into being contemporaneous with Jewish religious thought that explicitly called for proactive measures to spark the prophesied ingathering of the exiles. Two of the most iconic names in chocolate today, Nestlé and Hershey, launched their brands right just as secular political Zionism got underway in the form of mass immigration to the Holy Land from Russia and the advocacy work of Theodor Herzl.

The authors also note the post-WWII spread of affordable chocolate throughout the world that parallels the establishment, growth, and increasing power of the State of Israel, the first sovereign Jewish entity in the land since Roman times.

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IDF To Send Soldiers Accused Of Torturing Terrorists To NYC Where DA Will Drop Charges (PreOccupied Territory)

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Tel Aviv, August 4 - Israel's chief military prosecutor announced today that she intends to transfer to the jurisdiction of the Manhattan District Attorney the cases of Israeli military personnel who, prosecutors allege, engaged in physical and sexual abuse of Hamas militants who invaded the country on October 7 of last year on a murder, looting, kidnapping, torture, and rape rampage, with the case now all but assured to end with no formal indictment of the men because the Manhattan prosecutor's policy favors not prosecuting violent crimes.

Military Advocate General Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi issued a notice this morning that her office will move nine soldiers, who stand accused of torturing terrorists captured on October 7, to New York City, to face potential prosecution there and not in Israel, under Alvin Bragg. There, she noted, criminal offenders of the most unpleasant sort face routine release and dropped charges, unless they carry the name Donald Trump.

"We have already begun filing the paperwork," she disclosed. "Under current procedures, the process takes two to three weeks at most. Military police will escort the accused to Manhattan where New York authorities will take them into custody. From that point, given the precedent of the District Attorney there, we expect the men to face arraignment, a setting of bail if the presiding judge so orders, followed by a withdrawal of the DA from the case and the return of the accused to Israel."

The nine men face accusations that they sexually, psychologically, and physically tortured Hamas terrorists whom they were guarding after the latter fell captive amid the IDF and civilian response to Hamas's "Al-Aqsa Flood" invasion of southern Israel last October. The operation claimed the lives of about 1200 Israelis and injured thousands more, in addition to mass rape and the kidnapping of about 250 Israelis into the Gaza Strip. More than a hundred hostages or bodies of hostages still remain in Gaza following several negotiated releases and a few IDF operations to rescue hostages or retrieve bodies.

Right-wing Israelis, egged on by certain political figures, attempted to storm the facilities earlier this week where the nine men were held, demonstrating against the attitude that the terrorists have any remaining humanity, and therefore human rights - or at the very least postponing any inquiries into the torture allegations until after the war against Hamas has wound down. MAG Tomer-Yerushalmi acknowledged she might consider dropping charges against some of those arrested for the riot if they identify as the traditionally-immune anti-Netanyahu protesters.

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