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Sent to me from a member of our Australian wing:
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A comprehensive analysis of bias from my friend Beni in Israel. Xxxx E
A casual observer unfamiliar with the mind-boggling complexity of our region, would probably be confused by the conflicting Palestinian-Israeli narratives.
Furthermore, images of displaced Gazans moving (mostly on foot) north and south are disconcerting to say the least, even for many people more familiar with the Near-East arena. The adage, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words,’ is especially apt in this instance.
Admittedly, sympathy for the displaced people in Gaza should take into account that many of them still support Hamas. I base this assumption on a relatively recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR).
It’s difficult to assess how much of this support for Hamas stems from the incidence of casualties among innocent bystanders. Foreign news media outlets invariably cite figures supplied by Gaza’s health ministry and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In their reporting they rarely mention that both are subservient to Hamas.
On a number of occasions, I have mentioned Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer, who claims the IDF is one of the most moral armies in the world. Kemp is often verbally attacked by critics of Israel, especially regarding the ‘innocent bystander casualties’ issue.
Responding to critics he said “Of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.
More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately uses civilians as human shields.” ….” The IDF has done more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”
When foreign policy and defence experts tell Israel it does not need strategic depth, they do not take into account how small Israel is.
One often overlooked aspect of Israel’s predicament vis-à-vis its not-so-nice neighbours, was highlighted by Dr. Eric R. Mandel in an op-ed he wrote for the Jerusalem Post recently. Dr. Mandel is the director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Information Network, senior security editor of The Jerusalem Report and a contributor to The Hill and The Jerusalem Post. He regularly briefs member of Congress and their foreign policy advisers about the Middle East.
"When foreign policy and defence experts tell Israel it does not need strategic depth, they do not take into account how small Israel is"
The total area of the State of Israel is 22,145 sq.km (8,630 sq. miles), of which 21,671 sq. km is land area. Israel is some 420 km in length and about 115 km across at the widest point.
In size it’s much like New Jersey. At 7,354 square miles (19,050 km2), New Jersey is the fifth-smallest state in the union, but with close to 9.4 million residents New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation. Most of its problems can be dealt with by local authorities, none of them are defence-related.
Before October 7, Israel’s lack of strategic depth was considered manageable by many Israeli and American political and security experts. After that infamous Saturday morning, the importance of strategic depth has emerged as a profound vulnerability.
“The reason it is essential to grasp Israel’s size is that so many Israeli critics and advocates demanding that Israel return to the indefensible 1967 lines (Green Line, or 1949 Armistice Line) like to portray Israel as a Goliath terrorising the helpless Muslim world.
They choose to ignore how tiny Israel is when one looks at a map – less than 1% of the landmass of the greater Middle East. Even we in America, Israel’s only true friends, underestimate Israel’s security needs due to its small size because we think of Israel as powerful and impenetrable, in part due to its multi-layered anti-missile system, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, and Patriot missiles.
Being perceived as fighting above its weight both demographically and geographically has allowed lazy journalists to portray Israel as an invulnerable superpower persecuting its neighbors, and their readers come away with the impression that Israel can take the risks nations with a much larger land mass could.
As proof of the international prejudice against Israel, which didn’t begin on October 7, some 69% of worldwide protests in the first week after October 7 were against Israel, even before it started its ground operation. Three months later, according to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), there have been 7,557 protests against Israel since October 10, and only 602 protests in favour of Israel. Small nations that are hated have no margin for error.
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is a pro-Israel American think tank based in Washington, D.C., focused on the foreign policy of the United States in the Near East.
The Washington Institute’s executive director Robert Satloff commented on the feasibility of the Biden administration’s current diplomatic plans in the region, based in part on what local officials said during his recent group trip to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and the PA: -
“One cannot but be moved by the enormity and depth of the human tragedy, among Israelis and Palestinians alike.
In private, Arab states are rooting for Israel to destroy Hamas—one senior Arab official even said, “Israel is fighting for us in Gaza, and if it wins, it will succeed in defeating an Iranian proxy for the first time in forty years.” But Arab states are focused on their own security and their own interests and are either unwilling or unable to play much of a role in shaping the outcome in Gaza or helping fill the vacuum that will be left by the Hamas defeat they all privately say they want.
By and large, Arab states would like to roll the clock back to October 6, except on one point: they all face domestic political urgency because of mass sympathy for the Palestinians and Al Jazeera-fueled outrage against Israel, which has caused them to channel energy into producing some tangible progress on the goal of Palestinian statehood, energy that wasn’t there on October 7. It’s not readily apparent that this emerges from the people of Gaza, who surely have other things on their mind; it is a requirement of postwar diplomacy that is only connected to the war by the upsurge in popular affinity for the plight of the Palestinians.”
The countdown to Ramadan has already begun. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir will not be permitted to bar Arab Israelis from praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan, Israel’s war cabinet has ruled. This would effectively sideline Ben Gvir, who said in mid-February that Palestinian residents of the West Bank should be barred from attending prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan. Ben Gvir is also reported to have sought to limit Arab Israeli visits.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank to march to Al-Aqsa Mosque to pray on the first day of Ramadan on March 10. If it’s a one day event maybe it will be uneventful.
Have a good weekend.
Beni,
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Greenblatt is an Obama disciple so no surprise.
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Rabbis Call Out ADL for
"Slanderous" Attacks
Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing over 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in matters of American public policy, today called out ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt for “slanderous” attacks after he took on the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In a post on X, Mr. Greenblatt likened “disturbing conspiracy theories & neo-Nazis at CPAC” to anti-Semitic rants from the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan and “frenzied protesters” targeting Bari Weiss and Jerry Seinfeld in New York City.
“Last week I attended my sixth CPAC representing CJV,” remarked CJV Managing Director Rabbi Yaakov Menken, “and felt even more welcome than previously. Its website announces that ‘CPAC Stands with Israel.’ The general session included a panel on campus Antisemitism and another featuring the father of an Israeli hostage. And, of course, there was the Shabbat at CPAC program, which Nick Fuentes attempted to disrupt last year after being ejected from the main conference. Against all of the foregoing, Mr. Greenblatt attempts to characterize the conference based upon intruders who got past security instead of its events and speakers. That is gratuitous slander.”
CJV noted an ongoing pattern of partisan bias, as the ADL has attacked conservatives, conservative organizations, and even free-speech advocates while minimizing left-wing antisemitism. Last year the ADL also targeted CPAC and its speaker Chaya Raichik, the Orthodox Jewish woman behind the popular Libs of TikTok account on X. The ADL included Raichik in a “Glossary of Extremism” until she threatened to sue, at which point it immediately quailed and retracted her listing.
In November the ADL issued a statement implying that two policy organizations, the National Center for Public Policy Research and the National Legal and Policy Center, employed “conspiracy theories or conspiratorial language… that could be interpreted as an anti-Semitic dog whistle.” Both of these organizations are robust fighters for Israel and against antisemitism. As with Raichik, the ADL targeted a Jewish writer, Ethan Peck, by name—who, in this case, is an Israeli-American advocate on behalf of Jewish interests and against antisemitism and terrorism.
“The ADL appears as concerned with a target’s politics as whether he or she is actually hateful—much less anti-Semitic,” added Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, Chairman of the CJV Rabbinic Circle. “In the Raichik case, its accusations were not merely blatantly partisan but, by the ADL’s own admission, indefensible. But it appears the ADL learned precisely the wrong lesson from its debacle; it used couched weasel words to avoid a similar reaction from Peck, rather than sticking to what is both true and protects Jewish interests. For the ADL to fritter away its credibility during an unimaginable surge of antisemitism in America is dangerous to everyone, and our community most of all.”
Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) represents over 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis as the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America. A 501(c)3 non-profit, CJV promotes religious liberty, human rights, and classical Jewish ideas in American public policy.
And:
How the Free World Is Failing the Hostages
By Seth Mandel
Sixty-eight days after Hamas kidnapped her son Hersh, Rachel Polin-Goldberg was asked how she was doing. “It’s not describable how any of us are doing to people who haven’t been through it,” she responded.
It was up to 144 days when I read the recent profile of her in the Wall Street Journal, and one imagines it is now more than twice as indescribable. Polin-Goldberg has become the unflagging emissary of the hostage families, giving speeches, meeting with world leaders, giving interviews.
When I pulled up this latest profile of her, I had just read a different story on the hostages: Hamas has yet again rejected a ceasefire deal that would see some hostages returned. And reading the two stories back to back really highlights the degradation of the debate over the hostage negotiations in the West.
This is not two states arguing over where to place a maritime border. We’re not watching neighboring countries negotiate over the sharing of a water source. No one’s finalizing a free-trade agreement, or a mutual-defense pact. The entire discussion should center on one thing: the world pressuring Hamas and its patrons to release the hostages.
Hostage talks fall into a familiar pattern. The conversation in the media quickly turns to the reasonableness of Israel’s government and where its priorities are. A perfect example of this inane framing came in the Washington Post’s most recent update on the talks. “In recent days,” the Post tells us, “Israel has signaled a willingness to engage more seriously on efforts led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to reach a weeks-long cease-fire in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of many of the more than 100 remaining hostages being held in the enclave.”
Come again? Are reporters now assessing whether Israel is taking this “seriously” enough? As if Qatar is working hard on bringing the hostages home and just needs Israel to do its part.
Qatar has one responsibility here: to get the hostages out. There is no reciprocal Israeli obligation to Qatar.
Israel has obligations to its citizens, of course. And its carrying out of those obligations is what the world is complaining about. I guarantee you that “Israel taking this more seriously” can be arranged; I also guarantee the people calling for it won’t like it one bit. Nobody in the British government, MP Andrew Percy said to the House of Commons last week, “has any business [or] agency at all in telling the state of Israel where it is able to operate to seek to rescue hostages who are being raped by Islamic terrorists who hold them.”
The clip of Percy’s speech—which included other noteworthy lines—quickly made the rounds on social media precisely because it stood out. But it shouldn’t have. Every politician in the free West should talk this way. This should be the baseline approach to bringing home the hostages. Hamas invaded Israel and kidnapped over two-hundred people. They refused to free them, so Israel sent its military into Gaza to try to bring them back. That’s where we are.
Hamas could end this in an instant by surrendering and returning the hostages themselves. Forcing Israel to go in and get them—at the cost of more of its citizens’ lives along the way—is bad enough. But for free citizens of the West, not to mention their governments, to harangue Israel for going in to get its captive citizens requires a personal level of comfort with hypocrisy that is shockingly common among supposed defenders of the liberal world order.
Occasionally someone shows some spine. Two weeks ago, a lunatic Hamas propagandist yelled at New York City Mayor Eric Adams on the street, “you’re complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. I just want to know: How many Palestinian children, how many killed Palestinian children will it take for you to call for a ceasefire?” Adams calmly walked over the man and answered him in four words: “Bring the hostages home.”
Correct answer. Every second that Hamas forces this war to continue is a tragedy.
I wonder whether such exchanges are any consolation to Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her fellow suffering hostage families, or whether the rarity of someone showing an ounce of moral grit robs the moment of its power to encourage. If you’ll forgive me, I think it’s time for world leaders to “engage more seriously” in bringing the hostages home and holding the perpetrators accountable until that happens.
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Tom Friedman is full of himself, loves to drink his own bathwater and is seldom right. He remains the darling of the Liberal Set who also drink their own bathwater and soap themselves with The NYT's.
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On the ‘Biden Doctrine’
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and Biden whisperer, claims that in just eleven months the White House seeks the end of five ongoing crises (in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria); the effective containment of Iran; a de facto two-state solution; and normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. This, he says, is the Biden Doctrine. The problem is that the premises that might have once made this ‘doctrine’ appealing were systematically destroyed over the last three years. The culprit is none other than the original Biden Doctrine, as practiced over the last three years.
Joe Biden would not be the first American president to have a doctrine for dealing with the Middle East. With Friedman’s piece, Biden may be the first to christen a doctrine before its birth or to conflate it with a ‘grand bargain’. At the start of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine originated on the so-called ‘Northern Tier’ as Greece, Turkey, and Iran came under pressure from the Soviet Union. Truman offered to help those countries resist the threat.
In 1957, in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis, Dwight Eisenhower offered U.S. support to any Middle Eastern country that was threatened with armed aggression. About a decade later, Richard Nixon promised to furnish American allies in the region with military assistance as a bulwark against Communist expansion. After the humiliation of the Iranian Revolution, and on the heels of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Jimmy Carter propounded the Carter Doctrine, which pledged to use military force if U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf were threatened. If, as was the case with Biden’s predecessors, a doctrine consists of a substantive commitment or actual actions, the Biden Doctrine has come and gone. Team Biden now seeks to clean up its mess. It will have a hard time doing so.
When it came to office, the Biden administration sought to base foreign policy on something more than pragmatism alone. The goal was to reassert America’s “moral leadership.” To that end, Candidate Biden campaigned on a pledge to “reassess” relations with Saudi Arabia, claiming that Riyadh’s leadership killed “children … and innocent people” in Yemen. He pledged to make the Kingdom a “pariah,” and to end the war in Yemen. U.S. Iran policy would step through a portal back to the halcyon days of 2015; the nuclear deal with Iran would be revived. Washington would scale back its “entanglements” in the region. The Biden administration cannot be blamed for a lack of trying to implement a vision. It can be blamed, though, for pursuing a policy with no clear notion of leverage, that most basic element of foreign policy.
By February 2021, the Biden administration paused arms sales to the Kingdom, implied official Saudi involvement in the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, ended support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, and delisted Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. No doubt owing to the Kingdom’s sense of abandonment, the first round of normalization talks between Riyadh and Tehran began the following month.
In June, Biden made its first unrequited overture to Tehran, requesting the return of the Iran nuclear deal.
In August, there was the carnage of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan—the greatest humiliation that the United States has experienced since the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979.
In January 2022, the Biden administration literally snubbed the UAE after Dubai and Abu Dhabi were targeted in an unprecedented drone and missile attack. This compelled the Emirates to attempt to normalize their ties with Tehran, which it did that August.
The administration inherited a situation where the interests of the United States, Israel, and its partners in the Gulf had converged around the primary goal of stemming Iran’s regional expansion, with the subsidiary goals of fighting Islamist extremism. It actively wrecked that consensus. It triggered a period of reflection for America’s allies in the Gulf, forcing them to reconsider the entire underlying logic of their relationship with the United States. The new Biden Doctrine is made for a context that no longer exists. Its constituent policies matter decisively less in the world that the first Biden Doctrine created.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the new thinking reported by Friedman is the abiding fixation with securing an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Once upon a time, this could have been a strategic construct akin to the one wrought by the Nixon administration: a ‘twin pillars’ doctrine for the 21st Century, with two U.S. allies supporting each other in the pursuit of a set of interests shared by all three parties. The last three years have undermined the convergence of interests that make this possible.
Today, such an agreement would have significantly less strategic content. Since October 2022, Iran and its Yemeni proxies have given Saudi Arabia a modicum of peace and quiet in exchange for normalization and disengagement from Yemen. It is in Riyadh’s interest to bide its time, to focus on its ongoing political and economic transformation, and to better prepare for a future collapse in relations with Tehran. A confrontation with Iran is not in its interest right now, and it would likely not change its stance for a Biden administration that is pivoting out of political desperation and months away from a coin-flip of an election. An agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh would perhaps be a silver lining. It would do little to dispose of the numerous dark clouds that have gathered around the region.
The other striking aspect of the emerging doctrine is the plan to take irreversible steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state (“NOW”, as Friedman impatiently writes). The hypothetical merits of a two-state solution and the Palestinian right to self-determination are not in dispute. The problem is context. The Biden administration’s approach to the idea of ‘legitimacy’ resembles its notion of ‘credibility’, in that it perceives it as both fluid and dispensable. Israeli President Isaac Herzog put it best when he told Davos that “no Israelis in their right mind” are thinking about the peace process. Pushing it, in the midst of a war no less, has served to damage the willingness of Israeli politicians and the Israeli public to listen to the United States. In the political aftermath of October 7, it is ludicrous to think that any Israeli politician would be able to make a case for a ‘dialogue’ with the PLO, let alone push for progress towards a two-state outcome. There is no Rabin or Sharon with security credentials that could soothe the Israeli psyche. Israel even struggled to find an adequately uncontroversial former chief of staff to lead the IDF’s post-October 7 inquiry. There is no political configuration in the Knesset that would entertain such an effort
And:
The West’s rot from within
The increasingly vitriolic hatred of Israel and Jews should be ringing alarm bells about Western civilization itself.
By DOUGLAS ALTABEF
Like almost everyone else, I watch the news about the latest wave of anti-Israel hate—and increasingly Jews in general—with a sense of the surreal. Is this really happening? Who are these monstrous haters? And where is the reaction, the condemnation, the revulsion in the face of this vile stuff?
The tropes are all too familiar: Israel is attacked as a genocidal, apartheid, colonialist enterprise.
What is increasingly unnerving to me, however, are the wider implications of this hate. In other words, putting Israel aside, what does all this venom say about those who spout it and the societies from which they are emerging?
Simply stated, the disdainful rejection of Israel represents the disdainful rejection of what has made Western countries successful, prosperous and strong. Israel is the present-day embodiment of the spirit, energy, resolve and courage that were once characteristic of Western societies, particularly the iconoclastic United States of America.
We need to distinguish between political hatred and metaphysical hatred of Israel. Political claims can be countered with the facts. There is rampant ignorance that can be addressed, and the historical record can be clarified. Whether the other side has any interest in these facts is another question, but errors can be corrected.
Far less susceptible to any kind of engagement are the metaphysical differences between Israel and much of the West, differences that are becoming increasingly, even jarringly, apparent
These differences are manifold, but are perhaps based on the fact that Israel is still a “project,” a “cause,” an evolving movement that can be addressed and impacted by any and all of its citizens.
Israel is still an adventure. That adventure requires an appreciation and embrace of Israel’s particularity. Israel proudly sees itself as pursuing its own unique destiny, one that seemed in danger of dissolution on Oct. 6, but which received a painful but necessary corrective the following day.
Religious Israeli Jews see that destiny as the fulfillment of God’s promise to the Jewish people that we would be restored to our own Land. Many other Jews see it as an opportunity to build a homeland for the historically embattled and besieged Jewish people. They believe this is a world-class undertaking in and of itself, regardless of any theological dimensions.
This is the stuff of dreaming, creating and, yes, adventure.
My organization, Im Tirtzu, founded in 2007, took its name from Theodor Herzl’s clarion call: im tirtzu. “If you will it, it is no dream.” The reason we chose this name was simple yet profound: Israel must continually be willed into existence.
Israel was born as a state in 1948, but its existence is formative, fluid and always dependent on the efforts and resolve of its citizens.
The same mindset and resolve are the roots of the founding of the United States. The Puritans were, like the Hebrews, a covenanted people with a particular mission. That sense of mission empowered and directed generations of Americans, culminating in Abraham Lincoln’s prophetic-like awareness of the need to cleanse the horrific stain of slavery from the soul of the nation.
But can we say that such awareness still exists? In an America that increasingly prizes victimhood rather than excellence, that seems to prefer dumbing-down into a morass of identical misery to a nation in which some uber-achieve, can we say that the America of Lincoln can still be found?
I believe that, to an increasing cohort in the West, Israel has come to represent an enemy that is the same enemy they perceive in their own societies. Call it neo-Marxist, call it nihilism, call it whatever; it is a spirit of resentment of that which has traditionally been extolled and prized.
America’s rush into wokeism and DEI repression has inevitably led to hatred of both Israel and the American Jews who somehow, unaccountably, punch above their weight in American society.
To the woke mind, Israel’s success must be a product of oppression, because this mindset cannot accept that differently abled people and peoples could possibly succeed without rigging the system.
It is frightening for Israelis to see the hatred on ready display on campuses and in communities across the United States. But it is far more frightening to consider the corrosiveness, the self-destructiveness that such madness represents for the West itself.
Whether it is the craven fearfulness of England’s political class or the clueless leadership of America’s elite academic institutions, those of us who root for the West and understand that, while particular, Israel is not an island unto itself, shake our heads and plaintively ask: What will turn this around? Can it be turned around?
For Israelis, I believe, Western nihilists’ growing irrational hatred of us and of themselves must be seen as a red badge of courage—a reminder that we are doing something profoundly right.
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Dear Richard,
From Berkeley, California, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, American colleges and universities have struggled enormously to protect Jewish students from rising anti-Semitism.
The numbers from American Jewish Committee’s State of Anti-Semitism in America 2023 Report highlight this growing, unsettling trend.
44% of current or recent college students were affected by anti-Semitism during their time on campus.
Even before Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks on Israel — the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust — anti-Semitism was rising on campuses across the country. In the days, weeks, and months afterward, the reality for Jewish and pro-Israel students has only become more troubling.
AJC’s State of Anti-Semitism in America 2023 Report revealed:
25% of current or recent college students say they avoided wearing, carrying, or displaying things that would identify them as Jewish
24% of current or recent college students reported feeling uncomfortable or unsafe at a campus event due to being Jewish
26% of current or recent college students say they avoided expressing their views on Israel on campus or with classmates
These numbers are unacceptable and underscore the need for action.
AJC CEO Ted Deutch put it best, “Campus administrators need to do better for their Jewish students and ensure they are not only physically safe on campus, but that the Jewish community and Jewish culture on campus are supported and given the resources they need to grow and thrive.”
As the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people, AJC refuses to accept a world in which Jewish students and parents have to live in fear of anti-Semitism.
Here are some steps you can take and resources you can share to help make campuses safer for Jewish and pro-Israel students:
Take Action: Urge Congress to implement the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Anti-Semitism and ensure American Jews, including students on campus, are safe
Listen: People of the Pod: What It’s Like to Be Jewish at Harvard Among Anti-Semites and Hamas Supporters
Use and Share: Confronting Campus Anti-Semitism: An Action Plan for University Students, which includes ten things students can do right now.
Together, we can make a difference in the urgent fight against anti-Semitism on college campuses.
Sincerely,
Melanie Maron Pell
AJC Chief Field Operations Officer
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Now the lighter side. Time for some humor.
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