Perhaps it's my biased hearing, but Jake Sullivan, the president's National Security Advisor, seems positively ebullient that the U.S. will be sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. He's in his element, somehow.
Sullivan, notably, is one of the chief purveyors of the Russia collusion hoax. He smeared Trump, and he also lied to Congress about Michael Flynn, whose job he now holds after helping to push him out of it.
No one ever asks Sullivan about that -- or why anything he says about Russia should be considered credible, since he lied about Russia so egregiously, and simply for political gain, in the past.
He has, however, been asked about cluster bombs. The justification keeps changing: first we were told it would help the Ukrainian offensive; now it is a "bridge" because artillery shells are out.
The latter point is really significant: the Ukrainians no longer have ordinary shells, and nor do we. Sullivan says that far-more-deadly (to civilians) cluster munitions are a stopgap "bridge" in the meantime.
As to objections by the UK and others, Sullivan has tried, several times, to minimize these, describing them as a process of checking the legal boxes for signatories to the Oslo treaty banning the bombs.
What happened to the promises of diplomacy? What's the prospect of using these munitions -- a weapon of last resort -- to achieve any kind of battlefield success that translates into diplomatic gains?
I'm not opposed to cluster bombs in certain situations. I just think that there is no real prospect of getting past the stalemate in eastern Ukraine, and it's time to get the sides talking, not just shooting.
This week'd portion begins the book of Numbers. Interestingly, the Hebrew name for the book is "In the Desert," not "Numbers." The portion, which happens to be my bar mitzvah portion, focuses almost as much on the names of the princes of each tribe as the number of soldiers it fielded. It also focuses on the configuration of the tribal camps around the central Tabernacle and the Levites.
So why "Numbers" instead of "Names" or "Places"? The numbers are, to be sure, a unique feature of the opening of this Biblical book -- but they are not the focus of the rest of the narrative. The Hebrew focuses on the place where the events in the book take place, because essentially this is the narrative of the Israelites' wanderings from Egypt to Israel, across 40 years. We move from the giving of the Torah and the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, to the final valediction of Moses in Deuteronomy -- Bamidbar is the story of wandering that happened in between.
The question of ...
This week's portion begins with the laws of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year that restores all land to its original (tribal) owners. It also explores laws of property and labor that will apply in the Land of Israel, and the laws of vows and inheritance.
The Israelites are presented -- not for the last time -- with the essential moral choice that they must face, and the rewards for choosing well, along with the consequences for choosing poorly.
We learn that doing good things will earn God's protection from enemies. That does not mean that victims of terror, God forbid, were sinful. But it does mean that we can respond to evil by committing ourselves to a higher path.
This week's portion describes the major sacrifices that are to be offered by the Jewish people, including those that are offered only by the priestly Kohen class, and physical requirements of the people (men) who serve in that role.
Inter alia, there are interesting commandments -- such as an injection to treat animals with respect and care, first, by letting a mother animal nurse her offspring for a week before being offered in any sacrifice; and second, by refraining from slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day.
The commandments regarding animals remind us of the purpose of those regarding human beings: to uphold a divine connection, through ritual.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm
