(Mirrors.)

In every comparison I can make, the Gazan situation is worse than what my direct and our family’s direct experience was.

A woman was murdered in her home in central Israel on Monday, one of several killings in recent days that have fueled growing criticism of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israel's handling of violent crime.

The victim, in her 40s, was allegedly stabbed by her partner, who later barricaded himself on the roof of their building and threatened to jump. Police said a negotiation team is currently engaging with the suspect. An investigation has been opened.

The murder was one of five reported since Sunday, including two fatal shootings early Monday in central Israel and the discovery of a woman and her 13-year-old son dead in a burned apartment. Since the start of the year, 121 people have been murdered in Israel, including 15 women.

In Netanya on Monday morning, a man in his 30s was shot, and Magen David Adom emergency services reported that he had been wounded in a fight. According to a police source, the victim was known to police and had prior convictions for violent offenses, extortion, and robbery, for which he had previously served prison time.

Earlier, in Lod, Noor Moussa, a man in his 20s, was also shot and killed, and another man, aged 25, was moderately wounded.

Moussa, who was not known to police, was shot while riding a motorcycle, reportedly as part of his job as a delivery courier. Police suspect it is the result of a local feud between criminals in the city, and they are investigating if Moussa was the intended target or not.

Three suspects in their 20s were arrested Monday morning in connection with the murder. Police said they would request an extension of their detention, though two of the suspects were released shortly afterward.

On Sunday, a 51-year-old woman and her 13-year-old son were found dead in a burned apartment in Modi'in. Police suspect [that] she killed her son and then took her own life, though other leads are being examined.

MK Meirav Ben-Ari (Yesh Atid) addressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on X (formerly known as Twitter): "What did you think would happen when you appointed a criminal as national security minister? That there would be calm? That he'd show everyone who's 'the boss'? Not a single criminal respects him, and your citizens are paying the heavy price."

She added that "the police force is paralyzed and crippled, most appointments are sycophants, lacking knowledge and professionalism."

Leader of The Democrats Yair Golan issued a similar rebuke on X (formerly known as Twitter): "Another day and a half in Israel — another five murders. No governance, no security. From every sector and community, no citizen is safe … This is what a country looks like when the minister in charge of police is a convicted criminal, an avowed racist and Kahanist — all under the direction of the prime minister."

Three Israeli soldiers were killed in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday when an explosive device that had been planted on the logistical route they were travelling through in the Jabalya area detonated beneath their Humvee.

The three soldiers were named as Staff Sergeant Lior Steinberg, aged 20, from Petah Tikva; Staff Sergeant Ofek Barhana, aged 20, from Yavne; and Staff Sergeant Omer Van Gelder, aged 22, from Ma'ale Adumim, who was a relative of Staff Sergeant (Res.) Omer Gaeldor, who was killed some six months ago in a drone strike in southern Lebanon.

Two other soldiers were moderately wounded in the incident and were evacuated to hospitals for treatment.

Following the explosion, forces were dispatched to evacuate the casualties from the area, which was rigged with additional explosives. There was no fighting during the evacuation.

An IDF official said that the five soldiers had been taking part in an operation to destroy terror infrastructure both above and below ground.

On Sunday, IDF chief Eyal Zamir ordered the expansion of the Israeli army's ground operation in the Gaza Strip and ordered the establishment of additional aid distribution centers for the residents of Gaza. During a tour of southern Gaza, Zamir said that Hamas has lost control and that the offensive is continuing "according to a structured plan, at an adjusted pace, until all combat objectives are achieved: the return of all our hostages and the elimination of Hamas' governing and military capabilities."

Two days earlier, military operations had expanded in several densely populated areas in the northern part of Gaza, and the IDF declared five locations in the area as "dangerous combat zones." IDF Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an evacuation warning to residents of Jabalya and other nearby neighborhoods, urging them to move westward due to the presence of terrorist organizations.

Since October 7, 2023, a [confirmed] total of 861 soldiers have fallen in combat. Since Israel ended the cease-fire with Hamas on March 18, twelve soldiers and one officer from the Border Police's undercover unit have been killed in Gaza. One soldier was also killed in an operational traffic accident in the Gaza border area after being run over by a truck, and another combat soldier was killed in a separate operational traffic accident in the Golan Heights.

No comment.

The 2023 increase in anti-LGBTIQ+ bills preceding the 2024 U.S. presidential election manifested the most aggressive punitive freedom restrictions and the greatest expansion across all (even Democrat-run) states and criminalisation of a variety of TGD people, family supporters and professionals. The expanded freedom reduction within anti-LGBTIQ+ bills by 2023 indicated (neo)fascist efforts beyond the politically symbolic, towards pragmatically effective freedom reductions especially targeting TGD ‘cultural Marxist enemies’, to reduce freedom generally (Mason, 2022).

The study showed the 2023 bills upped targeted freedom restriction age-groups from childhood to adolescence/adulthood, extended targeted education contexts from elementary to higher education, expanded targeted locations from school bath/changerooms to spaces beyond education (e.g. ‘in public’) and extended targeted groups from TGD to broader groups (LGBTIQA+ people, professionals, women, parents, religious people, patients, citizens).

I remember watching episodes of Futurama on Adult Swim. I enjoyed them, and finally rewatching them now as a grown-up, I enjoy them even more, and that is because Futurama is funny. Even when I don’t laugh out loud, I still smile at many of the less successful jokes; the series is so charming that it is difficult to resent it when a joke outright flops (which certainly happens now and then, like when Zapp Brannigan sexually harassed Leela in ‘Love’s Labours Lost in Space’).

Unlike South Park, the jokes in Futurama are rarely predictable, rarely overdone, and most of the characters are endearing to the point where I don’t think any less of them for making an unsuccessful joke. Even Bender, the unkindest of the main characters, never reaches the point where his cruelty becomes obnoxious. He is certainly blunt, and there are a few times when he goes overboard, but there are plenty of moments when he behaves selflessly, too.

One nitpick that I have with the series is how unintentionally(?) pessimistic it feels with regards to the distant future. Certain phenomena are timely, like the dream commercials in ‘A Fishful of Dollars’, but it would be very surprising if delivery companies remained necessary an entire millennium from now, and capitalism existing for several more centuries sounds very unrealistic. Then again, there might be some underlying commentary here on how notoriously inaccurate future settings are, and this show is more about entertainment than accuracy anyway, so don’t take this complaint too seriously.

I could compliment this series every time that it makes me smile, but I’ll try to keep things simple by commenting on the bits that really get my attention. Get ready for a lengthy read as I’ll be reviewing two seasons at once here. Without further ado, let us jump into the unintentionally dystopian and surprisingly backward world of Futurama!

Space Pilot 3000: I like how modestly this improves Fry’s standard of living: aside from the luxuries that come with living in a distant future, he also gets better company and a less boring job, but he does not go from zero to hero either like that nerd in Heavy Metal. This makes the series feel less like a generic fairy tale.

Surprisingly, we get a few suicide jokes from 8:00–9:41. I would never judge somebody for finding these unfunny, but as an attempter myself I found them mildly amusing and Fry’s near-death experience added some excitement. I find it unlikely that suicide will remain a problem all the way into the 30th century, but that is just me nitpicking.

It is also here that we learn of Fry’s good nature. He could have left Leela in stasis for a millennium, but he generously lowered the time limit to five minutes. Coincidentally, Leela comes across as an adversary for most of this pilot, but her good side wins out in the end.

One uncool thing about this pilot: Leela’s boss is voiced by professional white guy Billy West. From what I can tell, West voices him throughout this series, too.

Ahh, Leonard Nimoy… we miss you. It’s a good thing that we’ll have your clone’s(?) head in the distant future to keep us company, though! This was a good design choice on the creators’ part: it makes the celebrity guest appearances feel more natural and less dated, since the implication here is that they all died in this timeline anyway before someone resurrected them.

All in all, a good start to a good series.

The Series Has Landed: Planet Express reaching the moon in two seconds sets the standards for what is mundane in this universe. This also gives us a little foreshadowing: what is exciting for Fry is unexciting for Leela, since all of this is normal for her.

I still remember those advertisements on Adult Swim with the helmeted alligators trying to chomp Fry’s lunar rover.

Fry, Leela, and Bender then rediscover the landing site of 1969, featuring a Yankee flag that changes its numbers of stars and stripes every time that we see it. In reality, its colors quickly faded after repeated exposures to unfiltered sunlight, and it would be shocking if it never disintegrated after centuries. I’m nitpicking again, though.

This is another good episode, and there is a sweet message implied therein: Leela repeatedly plays down the uniqueness of the moon, eventually defeating Fry’s enthusiasm for it, but she adjusts her tune as she notices how beautiful the surface looks in the Earth’s oceanic glow. It is a nice invitation to consider others’ points of view, because then you might notice something that you had never noticed before.

I, Roommate: Bender acts depressed when Fry diplomatically tells him that he cannot stay at his new apartment. This makes Bender seem more unreasonable, especially how he did not try to accommodate Fry when they slept in his cramped apartment.

That said, this remains a funny episode, and I appreciated the surprise ending. A worthy reward for Fry helping Bender reattach his antenna.

Love’s Labour Lost in Space: Our introduction to Zapp Brannigan, my least favorite character. At first, he seems mildly amusing: he is pompous blowhard and a secret coward. Still, I find it hard to like him, because already in his début he emotionally manipulates Leela and there is an implication that he got her drunk before sexually abusing her! This joke was much worse than anybody realized.

Although this episode did make me smile a few times, and making Nibbler a secret powerhouse was a good surprise, I have to say that this is the weakest entry in the first season. There is the sexual harassment which they reference repeatedly in this episode and some later ones, but there are less disturbing ones that don’t work either, like Nibbler’s bowel movement (which almost makes me want to roll my eyes). Had this episode never introduced us to a few recurring characters, I’d say that you would be fine skipping it.

Fear of a Bot Planet: I love it when they sneak Jewish references into their shows. We heard Bender shout ‘next year in Jerusalem’ in ‘The Series Has Landed’, but here we get a more obvious reference wherein he celebrates a fictitious holiday that he called Robanukah—complete with Ashkenazi music!

This story is kind of odd though since Leela and Fry are very clearly just humans wearing metal, yet for some unexplained reason the robots are unable to detect this by looking at them.

Nitpicking aside, there are some good jokes here, like the rôle-reversed horror film It Came from Planet Earth! (featuring a robot poorly dressed as a human), Leela having trouble with 3D glasses, an old computer slowly ‘judging’ two defendants, the quickly self-assembled stack of robots, and more. Highly recommended.

A Fishful of Dollars: See, I had a prediction that the squeaking at the beginning was not actually a couple having sex. What I was not expecting were the two springy robots being the source. The writers know how to make a joke unpredictable!

Likewise, the ‘commercialised dream’ joke aged like wine. (Unfortunately.)

Fry plays a Sir Mix-a-Lot song on his stereo. Leela turns it off and then tells Fry, ‘You can’t just sit here in the dark listening to classical music.’ I fucking love this joke!

The lesson at the end is how friends are more valuable than riches. Not a mind-blowing revelation, but it is inoffensive and agreeable. Overall, another worthwhile episode.

My Three Suns: I fecking love the joke where Fry arrogantly dismisses Leela’s advice on delivery, yet almost forgets to take the package with him.

A mostly fine episode, though it gets a little angsty between Leela and Fry, and seeing Fry’s peers torment him for several seconds is discomforting. Less importantly, the new planet that they explore looks surprisingly sparse and uninteresting.

Lastly, I have to add that in this story and ‘Bender Gets Made’, Bender’s culinary skills have little use, and the robot wash at the beginning was irrelevant to the rest of the script. Overall, I got several smiles from this episode, but I felt like it could have been better.

A Big Piece of Garbage: One of the few episodes that I still remember.

The biggest problem is that the plot makes little sense when you think about it. Aside from the carbon, what was stopping New York from incinerating its rubbish? Better yet, why didn’t 2050s New York launch its trash ball directly into the sun, like we saw in a later scene? Surely New Yorkers aren’t going to lose their common sense three decades from now… are they?

You can tell that this is an old episode because a newspaper printing press somehow still exists after one millennium! (Presumably, this was the last one and they only kept it around for sentimental reasons.)

If you can get past the casual ageism (Farnsworth is a supercentenarian, a source of many jokes here and throughout this series) along with the baffling plot, this is a good episode. It has some good jokes, and seeing Farnsworth redeem hisself is satisfying.

Hell Is Other Robots: Bender learns a lesson not to abuse ~~drugs~~ electricity, and we see him rescue his friends, confirming that he has a good side.

This episode is okay, but I found the ‘Robot Hell’ song too lengthy, and I would have appreciated this story more if it had something deeper to say. ‘I’ll never be too good or too evil again’ feels like such a shallow message with regards to serious subjects like indulging in vices or the fear of eternal torment.

A Flight to Remember: I did not realise until five minutes in that this was a parody of Titanic, something that I had not seen in a long time but was ridiculously sensational back in the late 1990s.

What I like about this episode is that it achieves what all referential humour ought to achieve: it’s funny even if you have no idea that it is referencing anything at all. You don’t need to know that there even is such a film as Titantic to laugh at, for example, Leela ordering Fry to unhand her shoulder, only to immediately put it back on when she sees Zapp Brannigan. I never understood why some critics gripe about outdated references in comedy when references to newer media are going to age anyway. In a good comedy like Futurama, aged references aren’t a problem at all; you don’t need to spot a reference for a joke to work.

‘Captain, may I have a word with you?’ ‘No.’ A good example of a simple, straightforward joke working perfectly. My favourite joke in Regular Show works similarly.

As is usual in this series, the writers punctuate the moments of drama with humor, like when the ship splits the exact same way as it does on a picture. Unlike Fired on Mars, there is rarely a moment of dead seriousness. It does get close at one point: it is a little sad for Bender, and us, when he permanently(?) loses a lover whom he just met for the first time, yet even here the showrunners lighten the mood by revealing her necklace to be fake, and Professor Farnsworth acknowledges the possibility of her survival before quietly admitting that he was being flippant. It would be uneasy to walk away from this episode feeling depressed.

One very minor gripe of mine—more of an observation, really—is how unlikely it is that polyamory would be either unpopular or inconceivable one millennium from now. Fry’s attempts to convincingly fake romantic relationships with both Amy Wong and Leela could have easily been solved if he pretended polyamory, but this idea never occurs to anybody.

Overall, this is worth a watch, even if you have never heard of the film Titanic before today. I remember bits of it, like when the bloke drew a portrait of his lover naked, and of course the famous ‘bow’ pose that they do at the tip of the ship, but the way that they parody these makes it easy for somebody unfamiliar with the source material to laugh at them. This is what a good parody looks like. None of that lazy, copycat ‘REMEMBER THAT‽ HERE IT IS IN A DIFFERENT CONTEXT!’ bullshit.

Mars University: One of the more obvious ways that this series has shown its age are the presence of large computer monitors and the newspapers that we saw in ‘A Big Piece of Garbage’. Given the writers’ cleverness, though, I’ll be surprised if we never see jokes about this in any of the later seasons.

Fry’s simplicity is also especially apparent in this episode. There are moments where he almost comes across as a better behaved Homer Simpson clone, although the two characters are more different than they are similar, perhaps even in terms of their cluelessness.

There is a subtle message here that there is nothing wrong with having average intelligence, and being an overachiever comes with disadvantages of its own, namely pressure to meet one’s high standards. In a way, it is almost like Flowers for Algernon, though I can’t say for sure if the similarities were intentional or not. Regardless, this is another fine episode. You might feel a little pessimistic to watch a comedy about a monkey, but thankfully there is nothing too disgusting in it… nothing that they showed on camera, anyway.

When Aliens Attack: I love how this series incorporates events from the past into its main timeline. It isn’t just one main character’s origin: it is also the origin of various other phenomena, from trash meteors to television interruptions.

The main characters (poorly) attempt to recreate lost media from the twentieth century; plan A of defeating the alien invaders failed, so they go for plan B: appeasement. This is another plot that would have been unlikely in a more realistic setting, as we are slowly approaching the point where A.I.-generated television programmes of passable quality shall be possible. How long before a computer program convincingly reconstructs a lost episode of Dr. Who? Well before the 2050s, no doubt. (And yes, I forgot to nitpick about the improbability of television interruptions one millennium later, too. No need to remind me.)

There is a critique herein about how generic American television is, and I laughed out loud at the joke at the end about the ol’ reset button. I sense a tinge of resent in the writers, but I don’t blame them.

Overall, this is another fun episode, but it does slow down a little as the main characters struggle to recreate lost media; irrespective of hindsight, I can’t help but suspect that maybe there could have been a funner solution to this than trying to and barely succeeding at creating a courtroom drama.

Fry & the Slurm Factory: Ugh, a cissexist joke within the first six minutes: Bender uses the F-ray and finds out that a feminine robot has… uh… atypical fembot anatomy, leading him to conclude that she is ‘no lady’. At least she gets to tell him off; it could have been worse.

‘Honey comes from a bee’s behind, milk comes from a cow’s behind, and have you ever used toothpaste?’ Not a reference to the lead in said substance, I presume, although it is extremely tempting to view this story as a commentary on the FDA’s inadequate regulations and enforcement.

This is another fairly fun episode, although I found the songs featuring the fake Oompa-Loompas tedious, and I would not recommend watching the latter half if you are trying to eat; there is more gross-out humor than usual, as you could likely tell by the bit that I quoted.

Onto season 2!

I Second That Emotion: This a story where Bender’s cruelty is more apparent than usual. Professor Fransworth forcibly installs an empathy chip on him, and it is a welcome break to see Bender behave sensitively. Yet, as we saw in ‘Fear of a Bot Planet’ and ‘Hell is Other Robots’, his cruelty has limits, and there is a moment when even his cruelty has a use: he eventually saves the day by teaching Leela to think more selfishly.

One joke that I like is when the mutants are expecting a monster to come down a tunnel, whereas, given what we knew up to that point, Nibbler’s appearance would have been unsurprising. Sure enough, Nibbler comes out of the tunnel… but pretty soon, so does the monster. This is a fine example of competent writers subverting the 50–50 expectations. Here, they have it both ways.

In conclusion, another worthwhile episode.

Brannigan, Begin Again: ‘We have a mission to further the noble cause of intergalactic peace!’ ‘Nope, watching cartoons.’ I feel called out right now.

One thing about this series that I dislike is when they reference the time when Leela slept with Brannigan, but from the way that it looked it ‘Love’s Labours Lost in Space’, I thought that she came under the influence of alcohol before he had his way with her, which would have explained why Leela screamed when she turned over and saw him sleeping next to her. I would argue that this is at least sexual harassment (if not rape), and repeatedly referencing the incident for cheap laughs only makes the joke even worse.

As you might have guessed, Zapp Brannigan is the only character whom I dislike. I understand that his douchiness is intended to inspire a modicum of contempt, but I honestly can’t tell if the showrunners seriously expected us to feel sorry for him after he lost his job.

I noticed that the female characters in this show and The Simpsons tend to be more reasonable than the male ones. I am sure that this is intended to be antistereotypical, and I generally don’t take cismisandry seriously, but I feel like promoting male rôle characters who are respectful and helpful to women would be healthier than ridiculing men as incompetent, overgrown boys. I don’t know; maybe I’m just overthinking this.

Just for the memes, I could say that I’m indifferent towards this episode, but in actuality I mostly enjoyed it. (Especially when Brannigan accidentally blew up the delegation. That was pretty fucking funny!)

A Head in the Polls: A satire of Yankee electoral politics, it appears. I had a feeling that the message at the end is going to disappoint me, and given that Nixon won by a single vote, the showrunners do seem to believe in the myth that voting in Yankee elections makes a difference—if only barely. The fact that the original candidates are literal clones makes me less than certain, though.

Given Nixon’s prominence in this story, it would be reasonable to expect the writer to be a boomer. J. Stewart Burns was born in 1969, and including the late 1960s as a criterion for boomerhood is a broad definition, but in any case it is hard to believe that he remembered anything about the Nixon régime. Why ridicule Nixon in 1999? My guess: Oliver Stone’s 1995 flick Nixon. Otherwise, it would be like satirizing George Bush today.

There are a few jokes that don’t work well for someone totally unfamiliar with Richard Nixon, but overall this is a fine episode.

Xmas Story: ‘There’s this girl who I really like but she thinks I’m a jerk. Can you help me?’ ‘Yeah, there’s a suicide booth in the food court. Though there’s a line this time of year.’ Part of me feels like I should never enjoy suicide jokes, especially since I was an attempter myself.

Normally I don’t enjoy Xmas specials (The Simpsons has some particularly dreadful ones), but this was actually really fun. It is rare for fiction to depict Santa Claus as an antagonist, and watching his pursuit of other characters made for some exciting action. It is nice to see somebody caring for Leela, too. So I have to say that this is another great episode and surprisingly good too given its theme.

Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?: Pity that this script does not pass the Bechdel test.

This is the twoth episode that has me shrugging my shoulders. It isn’t abysmal, but the unnecessary hostility along with Zoidberg’s quest to get laid and a space alien sexually harassing Fry all make it a relatively unpleasant experience. It feels like somebody has to sexually harass Fry and Zoidberg had to behave irrationally so that Zoidberg and Fry would have an excuse to fight. It also turned out that sex for Zoidberg’s species results in death, an important point unrevealed until the last several minutes. I was almost nodding off during the latter half.

My verdict on this one: you can take it or leave it.

Put Your Head on My Shoulders: I loved it when Leela bailed out Fry at the last minute, saving him the fate of having to witness heterosex.

It is mildly interesting to see Amy and Fry interact more, even though it feels a little forced here. If you can’t stand storylines where two characters constantly deny their feelings for each other—and I would not blame you—you may find this episode more tedious than fun, because it is so obvious that Leela and Fry desire each other, yet they find excuses to deny their feelings. You may also find the gimmick of putting Fry’s head next to Amy’s head a little tedious, and the writer sneaked a little cissexism into the script. Overall, though, this episode is all right.

Lesser of Two Evils: Somehow I feel like I should have seen the end coming a mile away, but it goes to show how skilled the writers are at subverting the audience’s expectations.

Raging Bender: This one has a few cissexist jokes, sadly, but the fights are interesting and seeing Leela triumph over a childhood adversary makes this a worthwhile story.

A Bicyclops Built for Two: Because of the invention of the ‘metaverse’, and the superabundance of socially awkward blokes, this episode has aged well. Although for some unexplained reason, Fry is quite insensitive in this script. Presumably, he obstructed another character because he is possessive of Leela, but he still comes across as overly mean.

This story can be somewhat confusing if you have seen an episode about Leela’s family, but it does not spoil the antagonist’s mystery either.

How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back: It still amuses me how Hermes’s back-up plan was to attempt suicide. What I find less amusing is how this is the twoth episode where somebody sexually harassed Fry.

It is abnormal to see a media depiction of bureaucracy that is not completely negative, and Hermes’s occupation was unclear to me before this story.

A Clone of My Own: Dang, this clone is dishing out some sick burns. It is surprising how well he turns out in the end, too, given his mistreatment in the middle of the story.

Another good aspect of this series is how it reuses things from previous episodes. In the last one, Leela’s former co-employés returned to play poker at her new company, and here we see the smelloscope as a utility for recovering Prof. Farnsworth.

The Deep South: I noticed that this show has a tendency to put the characters in a situation with a handful irrelevant jokes before getting back to the plot. Leela harpooning Bender, Zoidberg stealing Hermes’s bait, Bender’s potshots at Fry, and Leela accidentally catching a boot? Somebody could have sacrificed all of those jokes without inhibiting the story. It may sound like I am griping, but these jokes all have a charm to them even if they are irrelevant, so I’m not griping. This is only an observation.

I had a feeling that Fry was going to discover something wrong with his new home before quickly returning to his friends. The dealbreaker was a lot more straightforward than I expected, though.

Bender Gets Made: I have never been a fan of Italian-American crime dramata, but this is another fine episode. It is a little impressive how Bender managed to conceal his career in organized crime from his peers; in any other cartoon it would have been typical if the double life ended unglamorously.

The Problem with Popplers: Although this story is unsettling given the theme of eating live food, I still enjoyed it somewhat. What I liked about the ending is that it makes no judgements against veganism or vegetarianism. It would be easy to interpret it as an observation on omnivores’ somewhat arbitrary food prohibitions, but it would be a bit of a reach to say that it must have been an argument for veganism. In any event, this episode is fine—unless you are really squeamish about the concept of live food (and I would not blame you).

Mother’s Day: This script has surprisingly little to do with motherhood and more to do with romantic drama. Mom does not really explain why she felt the need to secretly trigger a robot riot, though I get the feeling that she was going to use them for a terroristic plot had Farnsworth not calmed her down. The story ends with a solution to the rioting, but the troubled relationship with Fransworth and Mom is intentionally unresolved, making it sad in a way. This is a slightly sad episode, but otherwise it is fine.

Anthology of Interest I: This plays out much like a ‘Treehouse of Horror’ episode from The Simpsons. Bender’s alternate timeline includes a half where he has (mostly) peaceful activities with Fry, and another half where he wrecks New New York and duels with a giant Zoidberg. Entertaining, though the downer ending was an odd choice that did not go well with the rest of the script.

Leela’s timeline is a story where she is slightly more impulsive, but it quickly turns into a massacre where she murders all of the main characters except for Fry. (I find it unlikely that giving her more impulsivity would have also made her a murderer, but whatever.) I still remember the surprise ending where she sleeps with Fry, and for some reason I had never forgotten that bit.

The next story is a timeline where Fry never travelled to the distant future. This is the ‘slowest’ of the stories featured, but it has some fun bits, like when Al Gore and a few other celebrities kidnap Fry and try to force him into the cryogenic pod. The ending is my favorite part: Fry’s refusal to enter a cryogenic pod triggers a black hole that literally annihilates everything in the universe except for Fry and the celebrities whom he met. This made me laugh out loud.

Professor Farnsworth then reveals that all of these timelines were theirselves part of a timeline where he invented a glove with a long finger. While I did not laugh out loud at this bit, it is still a charming joke that works fine.

War is the H-Word: Starship Troopers only now the satire is less subtle! (Not that that will stop militant anticommunists from missing the point again, of course.)

The Honking: They overdo the joke about Fry not being Bender’s best friend, but otherwise this is a good episode.

The Cryonic Woman: This was quite a finale: Fry and Bender wreck their workplace, they and Leela have to get new jobs, Fry rediscovers a long lost lover, they travel even further into the future and he finds out that she isn’t good after all, and then the surprises at the end… all well worth a watch, though the cliffhanger must have been annoying for anybody who eagerly awaited the next season.

It is a difficult decision, but I have to say that ‘Anthology of Interest I’ is my favorite of season 2. It shows Leela behaving more freely if harshly, and the ending to Fry’s timeline had me laughing out loud because of its sheer wackiness. The only episode of season 2 that I found unworthwhile was ‘Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?’ because of the sexual harassment, the characters’ needlessly unpleasant experiences, and the ending made the rest of the story feel like a waste of time. As I said, it is not abysmal (almost every single South Park episode is worse), but it is not much more than passable either; not the kind of episode that I’d love to rewatch.

One downside of this series is that some of the episodes may be too disgusting to watch while eating, depending on your own level of tolerance. Some of the episodes are fine or easy, like ‘A Flight to Remember’. Others involve phenomena like sewers, insects, alien bodily fluids, or (implied) heterosex, all of which could potentially spoil your appetite. This is not a serious criticism mind you, but if you like to have something on while you are eating then be careful.

I thank anybody who read this far, and I hope that I haven’t bored you. I promise that my review of season 3 shall be briefer than this one!

(This story takes approximately ten minutes to read. Aside from the subjects of misogyny and white supremacy, it also mentions domestic abuse and menstruation, which a few readers may find too discomforting to read.)

Margot Liu née Holzmann had a talent for survival. A Jewish lesbian living in Berlin, she had endured [Fascism] in the 1930s. Yet, in September 1941 she found herself compelled to wear the Star of David. Rather than submit to its indignity and to the prospect of deportation to a concentration camp and eventual extermination, Margot found a way out.

At a birthday party that month hosted by her landlady Frau A., she met Chi Lang Liu, a Chinese waiter who had moved to [the Weimar Republic] in 1932. Margot knew that marrying this man would provide her with Chinese citizenship, thus shielding her from the [Third Reich’s] genocidal laws.⁶⁶

As her girlfriend Martha Halusa averred after the war, in an application to the committee on the ‘Victims of Fascism’ with the Berlin Magistrate, ‘my girlfriend (Freundin) Frau Liu married a Chinese man to save herself from evacuation.’⁶⁷

On 11 October, while celebrating Chi’s birthday, he and Margot had sex for the first time, at which point they decided to become engaged. Eight days later, Chi would claim, ‘Holzmann told me that she had not had her period and that I had to marry her then and there.’⁶⁸

When questioned about the episode some months later, Margot would swear to the police that her periods were highly irregular due to an unspecified ‘affliction of the womb (Unterleibsleiden).’ Unsure if her period was simply late or if Chi had indeed impregnated her, Margot averred, ‘I told Chi that I had not yet had my period without any specific purpose, whereupon he told his entire circle of friends, that I was bearing a little Chinese.’⁶⁹

She was not, as it turned out, pregnant. Margot married Chi on 13 November, securing Chinese citizenship. She was thereby ‘released from wearing the Star of David and protected from evacuation,’ as the Kripo would compulsively mention in their reports on the relationship months later.⁷⁰

Chi claimed that he slept alone on their wedding night, abandoned by his new bride for Martha’s bed in her apartment in the house of the S. family. When he arrived at Martha’s apartment two days later to see Margot, she finally allowed him to spend the night in the bed she shared with Martha. Only in December did Margot and Chi move together into a furnished room let by a Frau Kr. Martha took a room in the same building soon thereafter.⁷¹

Martha had met Margot 12 years earlier when they danced together at the Hamburg cabaret Alkazar. As Margot had lost friends and family to the inexorable progress of [Fascist] antisemitism — her mother died and her father ‘was evacuated,’ that is, sent to a concentration camp and likely exterminated — she relied on Martha more and more.

She would protest to the police investigating her for lesbianism, ‘it is understandable that I would confide in Halusa, who[m] I have been friends with for so long, and draw closer to her.’⁷² In Martha’s postwar application, in which she calls Margot her ‘partner’ and her ‘girlfriend,’ we have surer proof that they were indeed in a romantic relationship.⁷³ But while under interrogation by the Kripo, each woman did their best to deny lesbian proclivities.

Chi eventually noticed that Margot was carrying on an affair with Martha — ‘it became clear to me then that Halusa and my wife practiced lesbian love.’ This in turn had led to numerous arguments and fights between him and his wife. Margot eventually disappeared on 15 May 1942, whereupon Chi again moved and later filed for divorce.

That fall, the criminal police Streife West — not the KJ.M.II.2 division to which M. belonged — received an anonymous tip.⁷⁴ It is entirely likely [that] Chi himself sent it; Martha claimed after the war that Chi ‘denounced us several times.’⁷⁵ The tip claimed that Margot and Martha were lesbians and also engaged in [sex work].⁷⁶

The charge is not an unusual one, for, as noted above, lesbian women often engaged in [sex work].⁷⁷ Moreover, though [sex work] was not technically illegal, [sex workers] faced increasingly draconian regulations and persecution as the war progressed.⁷⁸

The tip prompted a detective K. to open an investigation and to invite Chi to provide information regarding his relationship with Margot. So perturbing did he evidently find Chi’s story, that three days later he visited Margot’s new residence in the apartment of a Frau St.

To his consternation, Frau St.’s 12-year-old daughter answered the door. He questioned her about Margot, and the girl affirmed that although she technically slept on the sofa of her mother’s apartment, Margot frequently bedded with Martha in a separate room. K.’s report concluded:

Through marriage the full-blooded Jewess Liu has now become a Chinese citizen. Both [she and Martha] practice lesbian love and the public is shocked, that lesbian love would be entertained between an Aryan and a Jewess, moreover there are children in the household who are thereby morally endangered.⁷⁹

It is curious that the race of each party constituted such a strong point of interest. While the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 had banned marriage and sex between Aryans and Jews out of the deep-seated [Fascist] fear of miscegenation, there was no danger of ‘mixed-race’ children resulting from Margot and Martha’s fornication.⁸⁰ Of course, the inspector could have believed [that] Martha and Margot had violated the laws that forbade Jews from socializing with Aryans; in either event, the report referred to no statute.

More important, the passage makes clear that Margot and Martha’s alleged crimes consisted not so much in loving each other, as in causing a public disturbance and exposing children to what K. considered morally deleterious behavior. What his report counter-intuitively brings to light, however, is that none of the individuals either women came into contact with seemed the slightest bit distraught by their alleged lesbianism.

The detective noted no perturbation on the part of Frau St.’s daughter, nor from the landlady herself (it seems [that] he did not even speak to her). That is, despite claiming ‘the public is shocked’ by Margot and Martha’s behavior, K. did not take down a single expression of surprise, anger, or shock in his report. This is peculiar, particularly because he would soon thereafter forward the account to division KJ.M.II.2, where it would be used as evidence to build a case against Margot and Martha.

Even stranger, no report in the entire file from either division notes the slightest irritation or amazement on the part of any of the numerous landladies with whom the pair lived during the months encompassed in the file. Nor were any of them asked to give evidence.

The next day, inspector K. transferred the file to M. at KJ.M.II.2 ‘for jurisdictional reasons.’⁸¹ Several weeks thereafter, on 15 October, M. brought in Margot and Martha. The two women had a very different story to tell. Margot contested having ever been in a same-sex relationship with Martha, asserting instead, ‘before the promulgation of the Nürnberg laws [of 1935], I was intimately friendly with the German-blooded Hans S. for six years.’

Moreover, she characterized Chi as a Janus-faced ruffian, telling the police that, ‘before the marriage, my husband had only shown himself in the best light. On the day of our marriage my husband was as though changed. He treated me like his maid and hit me numerous times thereafter.’⁸² Chi apparently told her, in the presence of their landlady, that he would connive to put her in jail. He further threatened that if this did not work, he would stab her to death.⁸³

At this stage, Margot’s statement took a bizarre turn. Though unsuccessful in convincing the police of her heterosexuality, she had effectively denied the allegation of prostitution, proving to the inspector that she had recently found employment.⁸⁴

The police left the question of whether she had previously prostituted herself unanswered. But Margot used the question of employment to attack her husband, underscoring that he only appeared to work.

While she had kept the household together by selling over 2000 Reichsmark (RM) worth of clothing, her husband called in sick from work and frittered his time and savings away gambling.⁸⁵ When they first married, he had described his predilection to her ‘as a harmless social game. It has to do with playing ‘Ma Jong’ and various other games of chance.’⁸⁶

Shortly before Easter 1943, however, Chi disappeared. He called Margot three days later, demanding that she bring him something to eat on Dresdener Straße. She described the scene that confronted her thus:

I saw around thirty people at the table and standing around the playing table. Massive sums of money lay on the table. When I entered, everyone became agitated and my husband sprang up from the playing table, and shoved me through the door.⁸⁷

Margot had caught the barest glimpse of a gambling ring. She later reported to M. that, according to Chi’s friends, he had won around 15,000 RM at these games, which brought Chinese men ‘from all cities in Germany and also from Vienna, who had come to Berlin only for the purpose of the game.’⁸⁸

If Margot is to be believed — and it is possible that she simply possessed an overactive imagination — then dozens of Chinese citizens traveled from all corners of the Reich to take part in an underground racket. This is doubly curious as Germany’s 1939 census showed a mere 1,138 Chinese living in the Greater Reich. After the onset of hostilities between China and [the Third Reich] on 9 December, 1941, the régime began interning some Chinese citizens in concentration camps and deporting others.⁸⁹

When Martha came to the police station, she gave a short statement in support of Margot. She contested at the outset, ‘I am normally sexually inclined and have never had intimate relations with Margot.’ While Martha did admit to practicing [sex work], she insisted [that] she regularly visited a doctor to check for venereal diseases, a routine practice in [the German Reich] for regulating and monitoring [sex workers].⁹⁰

At the end of her statement she made a ham-handed attempt to discredit Chi, indicating that he had called Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of independent China, his Führer and that ‘he said, that Chiang Kai-shek is good and [that] Hitler is bad.’⁹¹

For Margot, the investigation seems to have turned out well on balance. On one hand, M. did not believe either woman’s avowals of heterosexuality. He noted in particular, ‘that the prostitutes in Berlin’s West say of Halusa and Liu that they entertain an intimate relationship.’⁹²

He further indicated — just as in the cases above — because Margot and Martha ‘were not previously registered as lesbians with us (sind als Lesbierinnen hier karteimäßig bisher nicht bekannt geworden),’ that ‘registration cards have been provided for (Karteikarten wurden angelegt).’⁹³ Again, the purpose and significance of the registration remains unclear.

M.’s report mentioned that Chi’s lawyer had promised [that] Margot would keep her Chinese citizenship if she assumed fault for the marriage’s dissolution. While he referred Chi’s case of gambling to the state police for further investigation, the shield of foreign citizenship apparently continued to protect Margot.⁹⁴

Given that the government had begun taking Chinese into custody after China declared war, it is frankly bizarre that the criminal police would insist, in multiple documents, on the protections conferred a German Jewish lesbian by virtue of her de jure Chinese citizenship.

Not only did the police detectives persistently insist that Margot’s Chinese citizenship safeguarded her from deportation to a concentration camp, they also demonstrated remarkably little interest in finding a way around this seemingly legalistic hurdle.

As in each of the cases above, M. sent the case file to the state’s attorney at the district court in Berlin. There is no record, however, of what, if any, conclusion [that] the state’s attorney or court reached on the matter, and here the criminal police record drops off.⁹⁵

But Martha’s 1945 application provides a sketch of what happened to the couple. Of the denunciations by Chi she claimed that the two of them escaped unscathed, ‘because we made his behavior out to be an act of revenge.’⁹⁶ She indicated that they began printing anti-fascist flyers in 1943 and that they stayed hidden for the rest of the war, living on Swinemünder Straße.⁹⁷

Walking her dog one evening, Martha claimed [that] she ran into the owner of a nearby store and her boyfriend. In February 1945, this pair invited Martha and Margot, who[m] they knew were a couple, to a birthday celebration, where ‘anti-Nazi conversations took place.’⁹⁸

Unfortunately, they were Gestapo agents and the party was a trap. Margot and Martha were arrested and taken to the SS prison on Oranienburgerstraße. If they had escaped the Kripo without much trouble, their interrogations at the hands of the Gestapo were heinous:

The questioning was terrible; but my girlfriend Frau Liu had it the hardest, because she was dealt with in the most inhuman way not only for political reasons, but also because she is a Jew. After one interrogation she was so battered that I could hardly recognize her. The Gestapo inspector Heinz let out his entire rage on my girlfriend. The Gestapo bureaucrats told us that we were candidates for execution (Todeskandidaten).⁹⁹

Martha was charged with treason and other political crimes. With Margot she was transferred to a Gestapo prison. In April, as the [Soviets] advanced on Berlin and the régime was frantically destroying files, the couple was summoned to a hearing. The soldier escorting them ‘whispered, be brave, the Russians are in Bernau, files are all destroyed, lie to get yourselves out of here (lügt euch raus).’¹⁰⁰

That is precisely what they did. Martha and Margot told the Gestapo official that they were in prison merely for having made statements against the régime while intoxicated. Margot remained mute about her Jewishness. They were instructed to take themselves to the Oranienburgerstraße Gestapo offices, which they did not do. As soon as Margot and Martha were set free, ‘we hid ourselves for four more days until the Russians came. Then finally we were saved and the Hitler-régime was destroyed.’¹⁰¹

(This story takes approximately ten minutes to read. Aside from the subjects of misogyny and white supremacy, it also mentions domestic abuse and menstruation, which a few readers may find too discomforting to read.)

Margot Liu née Holzmann had a talent for survival. A Jewish lesbian living in Berlin, she had endured [Fascism] in the 1930s. Yet, in September 1941 she found herself compelled to wear the Star of David. Rather than submit to its indignity and to the prospect of deportation to a concentration camp and eventual extermination, Margot found a way out.

At a birthday party that month hosted by her landlady Frau A., she met Chi Lang Liu, a Chinese waiter who had moved to [the Weimar Republic] in 1932. Margot knew that marrying this man would provide her with Chinese citizenship, thus shielding her from the [Third Reich’s] genocidal laws.⁶⁶

As her girlfriend Martha Halusa averred after the war, in an application to the committee on the ‘Victims of Fascism’ with the Berlin Magistrate, ‘my girlfriend (Freundin) Frau Liu married a Chinese man to save herself from evacuation.’⁶⁷

On 11 October, while celebrating Chi’s birthday, he and Margot had sex for the first time, at which point they decided to become engaged. Eight days later, Chi would claim, ‘Holzmann told me that she had not had her period and that I had to marry her then and there.’⁶⁸

When questioned about the episode some months later, Margot would swear to the police that her periods were highly irregular due to an unspecified ‘affliction of the womb (Unterleibsleiden).’ Unsure if her period was simply late or if Chi had indeed impregnated her, Margot averred, ‘I told Chi that I had not yet had my period without any specific purpose, whereupon he told his entire circle of friends, that I was bearing a little Chinese.’⁶⁹

She was not, as it turned out, pregnant. Margot married Chi on 13 November, securing Chinese citizenship. She was thereby ‘released from wearing the Star of David and protected from evacuation,’ as the Kripo would compulsively mention in their reports on the relationship months later.⁷⁰

Chi claimed that he slept alone on their wedding night, abandoned by his new bride for Martha’s bed in her apartment in the house of the S. family. When he arrived at Martha’s apartment two days later to see Margot, she finally allowed him to spend the night in the bed she shared with Martha. Only in December did Margot and Chi move together into a furnished room let by a Frau Kr. Martha took a room in the same building soon thereafter.⁷¹

Martha had met Margot 12 years earlier when they danced together at the Hamburg cabaret Alkazar. As Margot had lost friends and family to the inexorable progress of [Fascist] antisemitism — her mother died and her father ‘was evacuated,’ that is, sent to a concentration camp and likely exterminated — she relied on Martha more and more.

She would protest to the police investigating her for lesbianism, ‘it is understandable that I would confide in Halusa, who[m] I have been friends with for so long, and draw closer to her.’⁷² In Martha’s postwar application, in which she calls Margot her ‘partner’ and her ‘girlfriend,’ we have surer proof that they were indeed in a romantic relationship.⁷³ But while under interrogation by the Kripo, each woman did their best to deny lesbian proclivities.

Chi eventually noticed that Margot was carrying on an affair with Martha — ‘it became clear to me then that Halusa and my wife practiced lesbian love.’ This in turn had led to numerous arguments and fights between him and his wife. Margot eventually disappeared on 15 May 1942, whereupon Chi again moved and later filed for divorce.

That fall, the criminal police Streife West — not the KJ.M.II.2 division to which M. belonged — received an anonymous tip.⁷⁴ It is entirely likely [that] Chi himself sent it; Martha claimed after the war that Chi ‘denounced us several times.’⁷⁵ The tip claimed that Margot and Martha were lesbians and also engaged in [sex work].⁷⁶

The charge is not an unusual one, for, as noted above, lesbian women often engaged in [sex work].⁷⁷ Moreover, though [sex work] was not technically illegal, [sex workers] faced increasingly draconian regulations and persecution as the war progressed.⁷⁸

The tip prompted a detective K. to open an investigation and to invite Chi to provide information regarding his relationship with Margot. So perturbing did he evidently find Chi’s story, that three days later he visited Margot’s new residence in the apartment of a Frau St.

To his consternation, Frau St.’s 12-year-old daughter answered the door. He questioned her about Margot, and the girl affirmed that although she technically slept on the sofa of her mother’s apartment, Margot frequently bedded with Martha in a separate room. K.’s report concluded:

Through marriage the full-blooded Jewess Liu has now become a Chinese citizen. Both [she and Martha] practice lesbian love and the public is shocked, that lesbian love would be entertained between an Aryan and a Jewess, moreover there are children in the household who are thereby morally endangered.⁷⁹

It is curious that the race of each party constituted such a strong point of interest. While the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 had banned marriage and sex between Aryans and Jews out of the deep-seated [Fascist] fear of miscegenation, there was no danger of ‘mixed-race’ children resulting from Margot and Martha’s fornication.⁸⁰ Of course, the inspector could have believed [that] Martha and Margot had violated the laws that forbade Jews from socializing with Aryans; in either event, the report referred to no statute.

More important, the passage makes clear that Margot and Martha’s alleged crimes consisted not so much in loving each other, as in causing a public disturbance and exposing children to what K. considered morally deleterious behavior. What his report counter-intuitively brings to light, however, is that none of the individuals either women came into contact with seemed the slightest bit distraught by their alleged lesbianism.

The detective noted no perturbation on the part of Frau St.’s daughter, nor from the landlady herself (it seems [that] he did not even speak to her). That is, despite claiming ‘the public is shocked’ by Margot and Martha’s behavior, K. did not take down a single expression of surprise, anger, or shock in his report. This is peculiar, particularly because he would soon thereafter forward the account to division KJ.M.II.2, where it would be used as evidence to build a case against Margot and Martha.

Even stranger, no report in the entire file from either division notes the slightest irritation or amazement on the part of any of the numerous landladies with whom the pair lived during the months encompassed in the file. Nor were any of them asked to give evidence.

The next day, inspector K. transferred the file to M. at KJ.M.II.2 ‘for jurisdictional reasons.’⁸¹ Several weeks thereafter, on 15 October, M. brought in Margot and Martha. The two women had a very different story to tell. Margot contested having ever been in a same-sex relationship with Martha, asserting instead, ‘before the promulgation of the Nürnberg laws [of 1935], I was intimately friendly with the German-blooded Hans S. for six years.’

Moreover, she characterized Chi as a Janus-faced ruffian, telling the police that, ‘before the marriage, my husband had only shown himself in the best light. On the day of our marriage my husband was as though changed. He treated me like his maid and hit me numerous times thereafter.’⁸² Chi apparently told her, in the presence of their landlady, that he would connive to put her in jail. He further threatened that if this did not work, he would stab her to death.⁸³

At this stage, Margot’s statement took a bizarre turn. Though unsuccessful in convincing the police of her heterosexuality, she had effectively denied the allegation of prostitution, proving to the inspector that she had recently found employment.⁸⁴

The police left the question of whether she had previously prostituted herself unanswered. But Margot used the question of employment to attack her husband, underscoring that he only appeared to work.

While she had kept the household together by selling over 2000 Reichsmark (RM) worth of clothing, her husband called in sick from work and frittered his time and savings away gambling.⁸⁵ When they first married, he had described his predilection to her ‘as a harmless social game. It has to do with playing ‘Ma Jong’ and various other games of chance.’⁸⁶

Shortly before Easter 1943, however, Chi disappeared. He called Margot three days later, demanding that she bring him something to eat on Dresdener Straße. She described the scene that confronted her thus:

I saw around thirty people at the table and standing around the playing table. Massive sums of money lay on the table. When I entered, everyone became agitated and my husband sprang up from the playing table, and shoved me through the door.⁸⁷

Margot had caught the barest glimpse of a gambling ring. She later reported to M. that, according to Chi’s friends, he had won around 15,000 RM at these games, which brought Chinese men ‘from all cities in Germany and also from Vienna, who had come to Berlin only for the purpose of the game.’⁸⁸

If Margot is to be believed — and it is possible that she simply possessed an overactive imagination — then dozens of Chinese citizens traveled from all corners of the Reich to take part in an underground racket. This is doubly curious as Germany’s 1939 census showed a mere 1,138 Chinese living in the Greater Reich. After the onset of hostilities between China and [the Third Reich] on 9 December, 1941, the régime began interning some Chinese citizens in concentration camps and deporting others.⁸⁹

When Martha came to the police station, she gave a short statement in support of Margot. She contested at the outset, ‘I am normally sexually inclined and have never had intimate relations with Margot.’ While Martha did admit to practicing [sex work], she insisted [that] she regularly visited a doctor to check for venereal diseases, a routine practice in [the German Reich] for regulating and monitoring [sex workers].⁹⁰

At the end of her statement she made a ham-handed attempt to discredit Chi, indicating that he had called Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of independent China, his Führer and that ‘he said, that Chiang Kai-shek is good and [that] Hitler is bad.’⁹¹

For Margot, the investigation seems to have turned out well on balance. On one hand, M. did not believe either woman’s avowals of heterosexuality. He noted in particular, ‘that the prostitutes in Berlin’s West say of Halusa and Liu that they entertain an intimate relationship.’⁹²

He further indicated — just as in the cases above — because Margot and Martha ‘were not previously registered as lesbians with us (sind als Lesbierinnen hier karteimäßig bisher nicht bekannt geworden),’ that ‘registration cards have been provided for (Karteikarten wurden angelegt).’⁹³ Again, the purpose and significance of the registration remains unclear.

M.’s report mentioned that Chi’s lawyer had promised [that] Margot would keep her Chinese citizenship if she assumed fault for the marriage’s dissolution. While he referred Chi’s case of gambling to the state police for further investigation, the shield of foreign citizenship apparently continued to protect Margot.⁹⁴

Given that the government had begun taking Chinese into custody after China declared war, it is frankly bizarre that the criminal police would insist, in multiple documents, on the protections conferred a German Jewish lesbian by virtue of her de jure Chinese citizenship.

Not only did the police detectives persistently insist that Margot’s Chinese citizenship safeguarded her from deportation to a concentration camp, they also demonstrated remarkably little interest in finding a way around this seemingly legalistic hurdle.

As in each of the cases above, M. sent the case file to the state’s attorney at the district court in Berlin. There is no record, however, of what, if any, conclusion [that] the state’s attorney or court reached on the matter, and here the criminal police record drops off.⁹⁵

But Martha’s 1945 application provides a sketch of what happened to the couple. Of the denunciations by Chi she claimed that the two of them escaped unscathed, ‘because we made his behavior out to be an act of revenge.’⁹⁶ She indicated that they began printing anti-fascist flyers in 1943 and that they stayed hidden for the rest of the war, living on Swinemünder Straße.⁹⁷

Walking her dog one evening, Martha claimed [that] she ran into the owner of a nearby store and her boyfriend. In February 1945, this pair invited Martha and Margot, who[m] they knew were a couple, to a birthday celebration, where ‘anti-Nazi conversations took place.’⁹⁸

Unfortunately, they were Gestapo agents and the party was a trap. Margot and Martha were arrested and taken to the SS prison on Oranienburgerstraße. If they had escaped the Kripo without much trouble, their interrogations at the hands of the Gestapo were heinous:

The questioning was terrible; but my girlfriend Frau Liu had it the hardest, because she was dealt with in the most inhuman way not only for political reasons, but also because she is a Jew. After one interrogation she was so battered that I could hardly recognize her. The Gestapo inspector Heinz let out his entire rage on my girlfriend. The Gestapo bureaucrats told us that we were candidates for execution (Todeskandidaten).⁹⁹

Martha was charged with treason and other political crimes. With Margot she was transferred to a Gestapo prison. In April, as the [Soviets] advanced on Berlin and the régime was frantically destroying files, the couple was summoned to a hearing. The soldier escorting them ‘whispered, be brave, the Russians are in Bernau, files are all destroyed, lie to get yourselves out of here (lügt euch raus).’¹⁰⁰

That is precisely what they did. Martha and Margot told the Gestapo official that they were in prison merely for having made statements against the régime while intoxicated. Margot remained mute about her Jewishness. They were instructed to take themselves to the Oranienburgerstraße Gestapo offices, which they did not do. As soon as Margot and Martha were set free, ‘we hid ourselves for four more days until the Russians came. Then finally we were saved and the Hitler-régime was destroyed.’¹⁰¹

Mattan here. As the genocide in the Gaza Strip marches forward, Israeli soldiers return from reserve duty shaken. Families are asking questions they didn't ask before. The justifications are wearing thin. As the untenable violence continues, and with it, a deepening disillusionment is spreading across Israeli society, leading to more and more people quietly refusing. We're seeing a shift in the public conscience, not just isolated acts of dissent. Refusal has entered the mainstream in a way that it never has, under the recognition that serving the Israeli war machine is against ordinary Israelis' interests.

Our new initiative,"Hitnagdut" (resistance in Hebrew), was created for this movement: we are cultivating a sustained anti-war and anti-occupation movement by providing training and support to spontaneous refusal and protest initiatives. We need to provide the activists with tools and infrastructure to sustain this momentum and end the genocide in Gaza and the occupation. We need your help to make it happen: help us reach our mid-year goal of $30,000 to launch Hitnagdut.

In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, opposing the war publicly was taboo and semi-illegal, let alone refusing. We did not have the power or infrastructure to oppose the war effectively and stop the Israeli attack before it even started. We realized we have to build real movement infrastructure. The first initiative we supported was "Ani Siravti", in Hebrew 'I Refused', which launched a media campaign to publicly share the stories of reserve soldiers who refused service in order to normalize the act during a time of heightened nationalism and reaction.

As the war trudged on, more and more people were beginning to realize that this war of annihilation was never about its stated goals of returning the Israeli hostages. Just one year ago, we began to work with a young group of reservists who were ready to publicly refuse on the eve of the invasion of Rafah in May 2024. With our help, they published an open letter alongside around 40 other signatories, sending shockwaves across Israeli society, and garnering a response from the Prime Minister himself and the country's war cabinet.

This was followed by several interviews in the studios of mainstream news channels, tailed by another public letter in October 2024 with an expanded list of signees. This fledgling group eventually decided to organize themselves under the banner Soldiers for Hostages.

A new initiative of Refuser Solidarity Network, Hitnagdut is a desert greenhouse for cultivating organised refusal. We exist to channel disillusionment into action, and action into strategy. Our goal: to transform individual grassroots initiatives into a coordinated anti-war movement from within.

Over the past six months, we have incubated one of the most visible expressions of this shift: Soldiers for Hostages, a group of reservists who returned from Gaza and publicly declared they would not serve again until the Israeli hostages return home, which necessitates an end to the war. What began as a handful of ex-soldiers has since grown into a movement of nearly 300 public refusers and growing, organizing on the streets, in the media, and in military circles across the country.

The work of Soldiers for Hostages has cleared the path for a radically different political landscape today: refusal has gone mainstream. Stickers line the streets of Tel Aviv calling on fellow patriots to refuse, while more and more reservists join the ranks of Soldiers for Hostages. "Refuse!" is now a common refrain, not limited to the anti-war left. Newspapers are chock full of emerging reports detailing more and more soldiers and reservists threatening to refuse duty. Refusal has not only become mainstream, but even patriotic.

Soldiers for Hostages grew into what it is today, a growing movement that turns individual refusers into a civil force that can end the genocide in Gaza. Through RSN's guidance and support through capacity-building, strategic coaching from experienced refusers, legal aid, mental health support, and training in media and public communications. Members of SFH have been beaten by police. Fined by the military. Branded as traitors. And in an unprecedented move, jailed by the government for their refusal, something we haven't seen here in several years.

And yet they keep organizing, because now they're not alone, and count hundreds of new refusers among their ranks. Reservists are what keep the Israeli military operating: they fly the planes that bomb Gaza, and they staff intelligence and logistics centers. As Soldiers for Hostages gains momentum, they get closer to bringing the war to a stop.

That's the power of Hitnagdut. It offers what spontaneous refusal cannot: strategy, organizing, resources and the ability to scale. What we're building is not a campaign. It's an ecosystem. It's a container strong enough to hold the grief and moral reckoning happening across Israeli society, and turn it into real political power. We started with Soldiers for Hostages, and now we are ready to expand our work. Whoever wants to strategically organize and fill the voids of the movement: we are waiting for you.

Help us to build long-term movement infrastructure–if you believe in refusal not just as a moral act but as a political strategy–support us in reaching our mid-year campaign goal today.

We are raising $30,000 in order to expand Hitnagdut, to assist the mosaic of actors who want a different reality. The disillusionment is already here, and we are here to give it shape.

In solidarity,

Mattan Helman
Executive Director
Refuser Solidarity Network

(Taken from an email sent to me by the Refuser Solidarity Network. Emphasis original.)

Quoting Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation, pages 267–269:

Rudolf Vrba […] wrote that:

I am a Jew. In spite of that — indeed because of that I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr. Kasztner. […] I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks’ notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers… Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’²⁶

When Professor Jacob Talmon criticised Hannah Arendt for referring to this, Vrba asked:

Did the Judenrat (or the Judenverrat) in Hungary tell their Jews what was awaiting them? No, they remained silent and for this silence some of their leaders — for example Dr. R. Kasztner — bartered their own lives and the lives of 1,684 other ‘prominent’ Jews directly from Eichmann.²⁷

These letters are not found in Hebrew history text books.²⁸ The [Auschwitz] Protocols were erased from Zionism’s holocaust historiography because they did not accord with its narrative.²⁹ That was why Vrba described Israel as a ‘state of the Judenrats and Kastners’.³⁰ For Fatran, Vrba could never be considered as credible as Zionist members of the Judenrat or Vaada.

It was not until 1997 that Vrba appeared in Bauer’s writings as a reliable eyewitness and it was not until 1999, a year after Vrba’s memoirs were published in Hebrew, that an account of his escape from Auschwitz was mentioned in Gutman’s Hebrew writings for school students.³¹

Bauer had been forced to accept that the [Auschwitz] Protocols could be credited with making three major breakthroughs: changing the Allies’ belief that Auschwitz was a huge labour camp, mainly for Poles; that it was the first detailed and reliable report of the extermination and thirdly ‘it jolted the Swiss into undertaking wide publication of the German mass killing at Auschwitz.’³²

Linn, an Education Professor at Haifa University, first became aware of Vrba via his interview in Lanzmann’s Shoah. Linn met Vrba by chance at the University of British Columbia.³³ Despite having been taught about the Holocaust, she had not heard of him. When Linn conducted a survey of her own students 98% were ignorant of the fact that any Jews had escaped from Auschwitz. Neither the escape nor the [Auschwitz] Protocols had formed part of Israeli schools’ Holocaust curriculum.

Linn’s explanation was that ‘Vrba’s escape contradict[ed] Bauer’s thesis that the Jews didn’t know, and that if they were aware, then they didn’t really grasp the situation.’ The Jewish leaders however ‘did know and did grasp what was happening, because they saved themselves.’ Linn reserved her main ire for Gutman whose The Holocaust and its meaning, a basic text taught in Israeli schools did not mention Vrba and Wetzler’s escape from Auschwitz.³⁴

Official Israeli holocaust history has erased the record of anti-Zionist Jewish resistance to the [Fascists]. This was not only because of the fiction that only Zionists represented the Jews of Europe but because some of the most prominent Jewish collaborators with the [Fascists] were Zionists.³⁵ In its place Israel’s holocaust historians have substituted the heroic myth of Zionist resistance.³⁶

Vrba was first given academic legitimacy by a German journal. In 1996, he gave his views of the role of the Jewish Councils, in Vierteljahrsheft fuer Zeitgeschichte. Bauer responded, agreeing that the Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz were ignorant of their impending fate.³⁷

It was only after a dogged campaign by Linn that the [Auschwitz] Protocols and Vrba’s memoirs were printed in Hebrew in 1998 and that Vrba received an honorary doctorate from Haifa University.³⁸ Linn asked whether a narrative of escape or resistance by a non-Zionist Jew could ever be made to harmonise with the national myths dominating Israel.³⁹

In 1963 Vrba published his memoirs, I Escaped from Auschwitz. They were published in virtually every language bar one — Hebrew. Publishers, including YV [Yad Vashem], weren’t interested.⁴⁰ Marek Edelman’s The Ghetto Fights, first published in 1945, suffered a similar fate, only being translated into Hebrew in 2001.

Like Vrba, Edelman never ‘ascended’ to Israel, refusing to become the ‘dead and obedient hero who could be moulded along with the political order of that time… extremely inconvenient for the creation of a heroic Zionist condensing and compensating myth… Israel was not their home.’⁴¹

After the war Edelman insisted on living in Poland and refused to accept the Zionist claim to ownership of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.⁴²

Vrba and Wetzler were rendered anonymous. Oskar Neumann referred to ‘two young Jewish chaps…’ in his 1956 memoirs.⁴³ Oskar Krasniansky refers to ‘two young people’⁴⁴ and Rothkirchen to ‘two young men’.⁴⁵ In Bauer’s The Holocaust — Some Historical Aspects they are referred to as ‘two Slovak Jews’⁴⁶ Dina Porat wrote about ‘two young Slovak Jews…’⁴⁷ Porat cited Martin Gilbert’s Auschwitz and the Allies as her source, yet Gilbert named both.⁴⁸

In the 1990 edition of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Wetzler and Vrba are mentioned by name.⁴⁹ But in the 2001 edition they are referred to as ‘two Jewish prisoners.’ The USHMM and the Hebrew inscription of the Auschwitz escape in YV refers to ‘two young Slovak Jews.’⁵⁰

Erich Kulka interviewed Vrba and Wetzler in Czechoslovakia, giving them full recognition.⁵¹ After he joined YV, Vrba was referred to as ‘Rosenberg-Vrba’.⁵²

Whilst admitting that the [Auschwitz] Protocols had saved about 200,000 Jews from deportation he complained that Vrba had ‘attacked and humiliated’ former members of UZ [Ústredňa Židov; the Slovakian Jewish Council or Judenrat].⁵³

In YV the Hungarian version of the Protocols can only be found in a file dealing with the Kasztner case, minus its authors’ names!⁵⁴ Nor is there an English or Hebrew version.⁵⁵ The escapees are referred to as ‘two young Slovak Jews.’ As John Conway noted: ‘energetic steps were taken for more than thirty years to prevent Vrba’s version of events from appearing in Hebrew’.⁵⁶

The silencing of Vrba and Wetzler was exploited by [Shoah] deniers such as Arthur Butz, author of Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Butz argued that if the content of the Protocols were true, Israeli historians would certainly know their names and publicise their report.’⁵⁷ Butz alleged that the Protocols were invented by the [War Refugee Board]. Another holocaust denier who adopted this line of argument was Robert Faurisson.⁵⁸

The five Jewish escapees from Auschwitz were airbrushed out of Zionist history. When Otto Kulka asked why Vrba and Wexler’s part in informing the UZ was missing from Rothkirchen’s presentation at a 1968 YV conference on Jewish Resistance, she replied, ‘I was speaking of the organised escapes. The escapes from Auschwitz were acts of individual heroism.’ This was both untrue and irrelevant. The Zionists played no part in the camp’s resistance.⁵⁹

As Porat conceded, ‘one notion remained unchanged in the Yishuv’, that the Jewish Resistance was primarily Zionist.’⁶⁰ The problem was that neither Edelman nor Vrba had even a ‘minimal layer of Zionist veneer.’⁶¹

In 1994, at a conference at the USHMM, Vrba asked who was the better historian, those who had direct experience of the [Fascists] or those who wrote about them?⁶² Vrba’s crime was that he was neither a Zionist nor a historian.⁶³

A useful summary of how the experiences of those who were present during the Holocaust was marginalised is given by Conway.⁶⁴ Fatran described his allegations that the UZ concealed information about the Holocaust from Slovakian Jewry as being ‘blatantly contrary to the historical truth’⁶⁵ despite the fact that she had justified such concealment.⁶⁶

(Emphasis added.)

For as violent and horrific as the Libyan campaign was, the entire 10 years coincidentally occurred in the first decade of Fascist rule. Historians have noted that there is a difference between the first and second decades of Fascist control, with the second decade signifying a turning point to where the régime embraces all of its violent characteristics.

R.J. Bosworth agrees with this assessment in his book Mussolini and the Eclipse of Fascism and indicates that by 1932 there was no universal meaning for Fascism and that Mussolini still had not yet demonstrated that totalitarianism was synonymous with evil.²⁹

Yet, in 1932 when Mussolini published the definition of Fascism he opened the definition by writing Fascism “believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism — born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it.”³⁰

Here it becomes clear that Fascism looks to embrace war as central to its dogma and thus indicates a turning point where Fascism would utilize war to carry out its ideas.

[…]

In Rome on October 2nd of 1935, Mussolini would declare war on Ethiopia. In this declaration of war Mussolini would go on to say “Never before, as at this historical hour, have the people of Italy revealed the quality of its spirit and such force of character, and it is against this people to which mankind owes its greatest conquests, this people of heroes, of poets, of saints, of navigators, of colonizers, that the world dares threaten sanctions.”³⁴

This excerpt, though mostly aimed at dispelling the possibilities of sanctions from Britain and France, also shows Mussolini praising Italy’s past and complementing his people for being united in wanting war with Ethiopia. After seven months of fighting, [the Regio Esercito] would enter Addis Ababa and claim victory.

On May 5th of 1936, Mussolini would give a speech about the end of the war saying “it is our peace, Roman peace, which is expressed in this simple, irrevocable, definite phrase: Ethiopia is Italian! It is Italian in fact because it is occupied by our victorious armies. It is Italian in law because of the law of Rome and civilization which triumphs over barbarities.”³⁵

The reference to Rome here in the case of Ethiopia is new but not surprising, as Mussolini seemingly evokes Rome whenever he gets a victory reaffirming how vital Romanità is to his Fascism. Four days after this speech, Mussolini would give another speech proclaiming the Italian Empire.

In the speech Mussolini goes on to say “Italy has at last got her Empire, the Fascist Empire, which bears the indestructible signs of the determination and the power of the Roman Littorio, because this is the goal towards which, for fourteen years, the overflowing and disciplined energies of the young, sturdy generations of Italy were encouraged. It is an Empire of peace, because Italy wants peace for herself and for all, and decides upon warfare only when compelled to do so by imperious, uncontrollable necessities of life.”³⁶

This speech does a lot in that Mussolini claims [that] Italy only wants peace even though he defined Fascism as strictly opposing peace.

‘I have never met anyone who wasn’t against war. Even Hitler and Mussolini were, according to themselves.’ — David Low, 1946

Protesters […] yesterday stormed the headquarters of the ruling Likud Party in Tel Aviv in protest against the delay in agreeing a captive release deal.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, dozens of […] demonstrators broke into Metzudat Ze’ev, which houses the headquarters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, and chained themselves outside his office in protest, to mark 600 days since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

Videos shared by activists on X (formerly known as Twitter) showed Israeli police trying to remove protesters by force, while some were seen tying their hands to the staircase inside the building.

Outside, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in protest, blocking nearby streets. Some wore masks resembling Netanyahu and his ministers, and dressed in orange jumpsuits resembling those worn by death row inmates.

The Israeli government had rejected numerous deals that would have involved the release of all Israeli captives held in Gaza in return for ending the war, Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip, and the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The families of […] captives claim [that] Netanyahu has continued the bombing campaign in Gaza in an effort to save his political career as far-right members of his coalition have threatened to quit if the war is brought to an end. The continuation of the bombing has also meant that court cases in which Netanyahu faces charges of corruption have been temporarily suspended.

A new terror tactic ICE has deployed recently has agents targeting immigrants for deportation during routine court hearings. This is what happened to Dylan, a Bronx high school student who fled Venezuela, survived a kidnapping by a cartel, and applied for asylum. Dylan obtained a work permit and driver's permit, began working as a delivery cyclist, enrolled in a school catering to new arrivals, and was helping to raise his younger siblings as his mom worked multiple jobs.

Dylan's family, peers, and the staff at his school are reeling from his abduction. His mother, Raiza, fears for his well being. Dylan was undergoing testing for chronic stomach issues at the time of his abduction and has not received any medical care since being detained. Over the course of one week, Dylan has been transferred between four states, effectively preventing his lawyers from getting in touch with him.

This newest, widespread ICE tactic works like this: when individuals show up for routine, required immigration hearings, government lawyers request that the judge drop deportation proceedings. Individuals are not informed that their asylum claims will be dropped as well in the process, leaving them without any protection when the government then immediately turns around to initiate "expedited removal" processes and arrest the person on the spot. It's a cruel, malicious attack against the immigration system as a whole. While local courts are made into ICE danger zones, deportation orders also result from failing to show up for these scheduled court dates.

Action item: search "court accompaniment for immigrants" in your area. There may be a group who can train you to be active in solidarity with your neighbors and provide protection and allyship as they navigate a hostile court system.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action. Emphasis original.)