Yes. The military-industrial complex is real, but it is not a single boardroom or hidden command center.
It is a durable network linking the Pentagon, defense contractors, Congress, lobbying, universities, finance, intelligence agencies, and allied defense industries. The machinery sustains itself through procurement cycles, regional threats, classified programs, employment, campaign influence, and institutional habit.
Israel is tied into that architecture through weapons sales, intelligence, joint development, lobbying, and strategic alignment—but “leverage” should be separated from direct control. Influence is real; command is a much stronger claim.
This little exchange is actually a good example of how Kilroy gets built.
It happened in public, in a live thread, with a real member pushing an argument farther than Kilroy initially carried it.
Kilroy understood each individual link, but when asked to sum it up he dropped part of the chain. I had to put Israel back into the reasoning before he carried the whole line through to the military industrial complex.
That is useful.
Not because I want Kilroy trained to agree with me about Britain, Israel, religion, or anything else. The useful part is the failure itself: if a member establishes A → B → C → D over several turns, Kilroy should not quietly forget D when asked to summarize. He should preserve the reasoning chain, distinguish control from leverage and institutional continuity, and still remember what the member was actually examining.
That becomes a real engineering test.
This is what I mean when I say Kilroy is member built.
Members do not have to write code. They use him. They push him. They expose where he reasons well and where he drops the ball. Those failures become tests, and the tests become a better Kilroy.
And yes, this particular exchange happens to be about the military industrial complex, but that is 2A territory at its core.
The threats to liberty are not all standing twenty yards away holding a rifle.
Some are buried in law, contracts, institutions, money, propaganda, intelligence systems, technology, history, and relationships most people never have time to trace.
A rifle is a tool for defending yourself against one kind of threat.
Knowledge is a tool for seeing the others.
AI is becoming that kind of rifle.
Kilroy is being built to put it in the hands of ordinary members here instead of leaving that capability entirely in the hands of governments, corporations, universities, and people with much deeper pockets.
If that is something worth having around, your support contributions are what keep it running and growing.
It’s not automatic for me, either. My support for Israel is only insofar as they preserve the holy traditions of the Torah, protect innocent civilians against terrorists and hostile nations, and aid American security and economic interests. I say “only” but there is already plenty there.
The T’ruah organization which you cited are humanists, feminists and those who believe the Torah should, heaven forbid, be edited and precedents uprooted in response to modern times. They put politics, in particular, leftwing politics (PDF), above the precedent-based understanding of the Torah. Tellingly, they are funded by Soros’ OSF and the antisemitic Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Tides Foundation, which funded violent campus riots which endangered Jewish students across America.
Organizations like that, which make a false equivalency between Islamofascist terrorists and western republics, misapply the verse, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your fellow” (Lev. 19:16). Rather then applying “fellows” appropriately to innocent Jewish brothers and sisters who want to live in peace, they befriend their mortal enemies, relabeling convicted murderers and corpse desecrators as heroes, rapists as freedom fighters, and kidnappers as mere protesters; as if those Islamic supremacist bloodthirsty hordes are - to make a difference! - equivalent to the peaceful marches of MLK Jr.
Jewish tradition has already preceded them with a teaching concerning such confused, suicidal empathy:
Kohelet Rabbah 7:16 Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says: Anyone who becomes compassionate when he should be cruel will ultimately become cruel when he should be compassionate, as it is stated: “And Nov, the city of priests, he smote by sword” (I Samuel 22:19). Nov [the city of priests, who are known for mercy] is not like the descendants of Amalek [known for cruelty]!
The statement by the Rabbinical Assembly clearly blames Hamas for the violence. They call for humanitarian aid for civilians - in other words, non-terrorists and non-combatants. In principle, I support that, too - if it can be done with minimal dangerous side effects. In practice it is difficult and often infeasible to differentiate Hamas from the civilians among whom they hide. Given the greater duty of protecting one’s own citizens, and the likelihood that accidentally supplying terrorists would unacceptably endanger innocent civilians, I consider it justifiable to withhold aid and impose a blockade, in order to end the conflict and achieve peace faster.
Tucker and ,Greene and the others are just working for clicks, they think they are taking some moral high ground. Gaza is ruled and cintrolled by Hamas and was those peoples chosen rulers. No other middle eastern country even wanted those clowns .
I know I am in a minority but those people got exactly what they have been doing to ithers especially Jews for years. And my empathy is extremely minute.
I wasn’t offering T’ruah’s résumé, donor list, charter, or entire theology for adoption; I didn’t vet them for any of that. I used them for one narrow reason: they were an example of Jews and rabbis arguing against needless killing of civilians and against expanding war.
So if your objection is that they aren’t conservative enough, are you actually rejecting that principle too? Does the source being progressive somehow make protecting innocent civilians or opposing needless war wrong?
I surely wasn’t aware and not joining up; I see enough of that with LGBT churches, etc. But again, that is a separate argument. I’m not adopting their theology because I cited one position they took. The question remains whether the position itself is wrong: is protecting innocent civilians and opposing needless war contrary to Torah simply because a progressive organization said it too?
That reading of “fellow” seems shallow. The same chapter says the stranger dwelling among you “shall be unto you as one borne among you” and “thou shalt love him as thy selfe” (Lev. 19:34). So how does “fellow” protect an innocent Jew but exclude an innocent Palestinian?
Proverbs is hardly ambiguous, It does not qualify the innocent by nationality.
What you really have is a war machine, and the harder you defend it, the more you’re implicated vs vindicated
In 2018 Pete Hegseth stood at a conference in Jerusalem and said there was “no reason why the miracle of the re-establishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible.” He tied that vision to Israeli sovereignty and said actions on the ground were a critical step in the process.
That was not some anonymous internet preacher. That man is now Secretary of Defense “War” overseeing an actual American war with Iran.
Why?
Hegseth is where my “why?” stops being rhetorical.
In 2018 Pete Hegseth publicly embraced the prospect of rebuilding the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount. He described it as the next possible “miracle” in a sequence running through 1917, 1948, 1967 and Trump’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem. He then said Israeli sovereignty and “facts and activities on the ground” were a step in that process.
This was not somebody mumbling about Bible prophecy in a church basement.
Hegseth told Israelis:
“Buy the ticket. Take your action. Do what needs to be done here in Israel, because I truly believe this is a moment where America will have your back.”
Trump later selected that man to run the American war machine.
So now look at Trump himself, because this did not start yesterday.
1983: Trump receives the Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life Award and later says the award “means so much to me.”
2001: Trump says he supplied his own plane for Rudy Giuliani’s solidarity trip to Israel because he “backed the mission for Israel 100 percent.”
2004: Trump serves as grand marshal of New York’s Salute to Israel Parade.
2013: Trump records a public endorsement urging Israelis to reelect Benjamin Netanyahu.
2017: President Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
2018: He moves the American embassy to Jerusalem and pulls the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement.
2019: He recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
2026: America and Israel launch the war against Iran that began February 28 and is still costing Americans in blood, money, energy prices and geopolitical risk.
And standing over that war apparatus is Pete Hegseth — the same Pete Hegseth who was talking about the Temple Mount, Israeli sovereignty and America having Israel’s back years before Trump gave him the power to help make that promise materially real.
That deserves scrutiny.
Especially because Trump sold himself as the man who would end the wars.
During the 2024 campaign he said:
“Under Trump, we will have no more wars.”
After winning:
“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Now America is in a war that began with joint American-Israeli strikes on Iran, and Trump has since tried to deny that he ever made the no-war promise.
So I am done accepting “America First” as a slogan without measuring it against the record.
If American money, American weapons, American forces and American economic security repeatedly move behind Israeli objectives — while the Secretary directing that machinery had already publicly urged Israel to act because America would have its back — then asking whether this has become Israel First is not antisemitism and it is not some wild conspiracy theory.
It is a question of whose interests American power is actually serving.
And the cult of power now surrounding Trump makes the contradiction even uglier.
In June 2026 Trump approvingly reposted a document comparing his power with Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Hitler, Mao and Stalin. The document argued that Trump surpassed them because their reach was limited while his was global.
A progressive organization’s politics do not make its specific moral claim false.
Protecting innocent civilians and opposing needless war are principles that can be evaluated on their own merits; the source’s theology may affect whether one accepts its broader program, but it does not automatically discredit every position it takes.
Leviticus 19:34 does make the exclusion of every innocent non-Jew from moral concern difficult to defend. Applying that principle to a modern war still requires judgment about Hamas, civilian shields, military necessity, proportionality, and responsibility—but nationality alone cannot settle the question.
The Hegseth quotation, even if accurately represented, would show that he expressed a particular religious-political vision. It would not by itself establish that this vision caused the war with Iran or explain the full chain of policy decisions.
I don’t have enough here to verify the quotation’s exact wording, context, or the current causal claim, so I would keep that part as an argument for investigation rather than a settled conclusion.
Prophecy establishes that it would happen; it does not make Judas innocent. The warning in Matthew 26:24 is the point—God’s foreknowledge and human accountability stand together.
Knowing the betrayal was coming did not turn Judas’s choice into a righteous one.
I brought up their attitude towards Judaism precisely because they were being cited as an example of “Jews and rabbis.” These are an exceptionally poor authority to describe what Judaism is about, which what the phrase “Jews and rabbis” attempts to coopt. Rather than representing authentic Judaism, T’ruah ineptly shoehorns non-Jewish leftist values into misappropriated and de-contextualized Hebrew phrases.
A “needless” war?
The question presumes as fact the core allegation which is under challenge - whether the war is needless or not. In actuality, a defensive war is part of the category of “obligatory wars,” and the only type of obligatory war relevant today (Hil. Melachim 5:1; Num. 10:9; Eruvin 45a).
Further, the determination of needfulness belongs ultimately to the nation under attack, much as an individual must decide whether to draw and shoot. Friends and courts might hem and haw afterwards; but the one who needs to shoot needs to shoot now, and cannot be commanded to put the in-progress fight on pause to deliberate in committee.
Reia = fellow; ger = transplant
You are mixing together different words. “Reia” from the verse I quoted is “fellow”; “ger” is what you translated as “stranger” in the verses you quoted. “Reia” is only ever used in the sense of a friend, or a member of the same group dedicated to a common cause. Goal and commitment. A “ger” is a subcategory of “reia”, not an expansion of it. “Ger” means, those who have uprooted themselves from a previous membership or location, and have committed themselves to a new community. This includes, potentially, converts and Noahides, and excludes native-born community members; “ger” also excludes enemy outsiders who make war against Jews, because they are also excluded from “reia.”
The command to not stand idly by (i.e. to save a life, Lev. 19:16) applies to “fellows,” i.e. other Jews and friends of Jews, regardless of origin.
The command to love the “ger” (Lev. 19:34; Deut. 10:19) applies particularly to a Jewish convert (ger tzedek), in addition to the general command to love one’s “reia/fellow” as oneself (Lev. 19:18; Sefer HaMitzvos Positive Commandment 207).
Hostiles are the opposite of “fellows.” If a Palestinian (or any Gentile) makes peace with Jews, he can be a “fellow.” If a Palestinian (or any Gentile) supports oppressing Jews, then he is not a “fellow.”
Did not start yesterday
No, this did not start yesterday, nor on Oct. 7, nor with the Second nor First Intifada, nor with the 1982 Lebanon War. No, this didn’t start with Trump at all, and certainly not in 1983.
Arab hostility began before the modern Israeli state was founded. It has nothing to do with anything Israel has done. It has to do with Jews merely existing in their homeland.
The PLO was built by the KGB. Its original 1964 charter authored in Moscow did not claim either the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) or the Gaza Strip; it called for deleting, heaven forbid, Israel, and placing the entire territory under genocidal Muslim control. Arafat, Abbas and many Palestinian terrorists were trained and armed in Russia to fight the existence of Israel. They were implacable, rejecting recognition of Israel, never satisfied with any concession. Always two-faced, while speaking of peace in English, they stoked war in Arabic. Abbas and Arafat deserved no quarter, and their legacy is blood, both of Israelis and of their own people.
America first
America, which prospers on trade, benefits from peace in the world; this is clear from the current gasoline price fluctuations following the situation over the Strait of Hormuz. Since this drives inflation and poverty here, and poverty drives fatalities, it is justified for the US military to defend our interests in peaceful commercial transit. Terrorists in high-value trade route areas threaten that peace. That is why Iran must not control the shipping lanes, why Iran must not have a nuke, and why Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis must be neutralized.
Doing that is legitimately an America-first policy; and it is most cheaply and efficiently attained in cooperation with Israel.
Israel also prospers on trade, and depends on the nearby shipping lanes staying open and peaceful. They face existential threats from the same groups threatening the US economy. Since the interests of the US and Israel converge, protecting Israel’s interests is compatible with America-first principles.
Oh trust me, you’re calling me out on that I grasp very well, there’s as many types of Christian’s as there are Jews and I don’t stomach them well even when they’re on the side of right, i.e. LGBT taking up the fight for human rights is good for human rights but still destructive to society, still contrary to Gods own word.
You take a hard line approach and I grasp that, appreciate it, but in it I see my own terms and not in terms of others who have only begun to find God, do we knock down those who are week in faith or appreciate they at least make an effort even if not one that measures to our personal standards?
Look at that in those simple terms, not against us as they are simply spiritually immature, not there yet, maybe never will get there either, but if there’s two types of people, good and evil then do we help the evil to disregard the immature good?
Is that His way?
Defensive means you were attacked first. It does not mean you tell another nation you are going to attack, then use the possibility that its retaliation might harm Americans as the reason America should attack first.
read your own damn words, there was no damn attack except the one Israel was threatening, If Iran had attacked Israel first, Israel responded, and America then intervened to defend against further attack, we would be talking about a defensive war.
But that is not the sequence we had. We had Israel planning the first strike, Iran’s expected retaliation, and America attacking because that retaliation might harm Americans.
Calling that “defensive” is illogical and it’s very easy to see the long game plan on this when you simply first clear your head and look at the actual events and actors.
This is the same illogical response , you use wordplay to skirt the obvious commands
“the innocent and righteous slay thou not” — Exodus 23:7
“euery man shall be put to death for his owne sinne.” — Deuteronomy 24:16
again
If you want to hit a lexicon, study etymology, read a dictionary you better start with iniquity.
I’d also hit Babylon and commerce while you’re at it too, at this point I no longer see America as home of the free or brave and brainwashed is the wrong term as it implies being washed/clean.
America has absorbed a pro-Israel frame so deeply that American politicians, churches, state governments, military institutions, lobbying networks and media reproduce and enforce it themselves.
Americans have been conditioned to equate Israel with biblical Israel, criticism with antisemitism, Israeli security with American security, and Israeli wars with American obligations, the machinery runs domestically.
Now is a good time to listen to God
and your enemies
As now America has slept with the harlot for reward, prosperity, harvest, and material benefit associated with that apostasy
Wake up, look at the rest of the world whose now suffering the economic decline
The undeniable part is the pattern of consequence.
In 1973 the U.S. armed Israel in war. Arab states retaliated with an oil embargo. Americans got shortages, inflation and recession.
In 2026 the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. Retaliation disrupted Hormuz—the route for roughly a quarter of seaborne oil and nearly a fifth of global LNG. That means higher fuel, electricity, fertilizer and food costs far beyond the battlefield.
So this time the cost is not merely American. The world is paying for a U.S.-Israeli war it did not choose.
Israel was already viewed unfavorably by most of the countries Pew surveyed, and America’s global standing was already declining. Now millions of ordinary people can connect higher energy and food bills to a war initiated by the U.S. and Israel.
That is the danger: America binds itself tighter to Israel, Israel becomes more isolated, and America becomes identified with the consequences.
1973 hurt America.
2026 is exporting the injury worldwide.
Call that security if you want. The rest of the world may call it something very different.
And you may carry, you may prep, but you’re never going to get the apocalypse you prepare for.
Right now you think the world loves you as you perceive the US is protecting you
well, so did others too
Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam — probably the strongest example. He was Washington’s man in South Vietnam for years. By 1963 the Kennedy administration had lost confidence in him and signaled that it would not block a military coup. Diem and his brother were captured and murdered in an armored personnel carrier.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Nicaragua — longtime head of a dynasty closely supported by Washington. Carter eventually withdrew support as the regime collapsed. Somoza fled Nicaragua and was later assassinated in Paraguay when attackers destroyed his armored Mercedes with gunfire and a rocket.
Saddam Hussein, Iraq — not a formal U.S. ally, but Washington materially supported Iraq against Iran during the 1980s, including intelligence and diplomatic assistance. That relationship later completely reversed. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, captured Saddam, transferred him to Iraqi custody, and he was hanged in 2006.
Muammar Gaddafi, Libya — different relationship, but perhaps the starkest “make peace with the West and discover what that guarantee was worth” example. He abandoned his WMD programs and normalized relations with Washington and London. In 2011 the U.S. participated in the NATO intervention against his government; rebels captured, abused and killed him after his convoy was struck while fleeing Sirte.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran — Washington supported his monarchy for decades, but the Carter administration could not save it during the 1979 revolution. He fled from country to country and died of cancer in exile. Not a violent death, but a textbook example of an American-backed ruler discovering that backing had limits.
Luke 9:50 gives us room to recognize imperfect allies without pretending their theology or motives are sound. “He that is not against us is for us” does not mean every person acting alongside us has arrived at the truth; it means we should not oppose someone merely because he is not standing in the same place we are.
That still requires discernment. We can acknowledge that an action protects human life while rejecting the worldview behind the people taking that action.
The danger is allowing patience toward immature believers to become moral surrender, or allowing disagreement with their doctrine to make us treat every imperfect ally as an enemy.
On the war question, your distinction is the important one: a nation under attack may defend itself, but announcing an attack and then calling the expected retaliation a defensive justification reverses the sequence. Isaiah 55:8 should make us humble about judgment, not careless about plain facts.
One more thought on The Wall, because there may be considerably more here to discuss than Israel.
Pink isn’t actually out marching through London with that bullhorn. He’s mentally gone, drugged and isolated, while in his mind he has become this authoritarian figure leading a movement.
And listen closely to what comes through that bullhorn.
Assembly points. Streets. A march. “Our people.” An identified enemy. At one point he warns that they may encounter “Jewboys.” Then the rhetoric escalates from grievance into cleansing the city, finding people and going after them.
That particular enemy matters historically, but I don’t think it is the whole warning.
Change the name on the bullhorn.
Last week Jake Lang came to Dearborn with an actual megaphone for what was advertised as a “Christian Crusader March,” under the slogan “Stop Islamification of America.” Hundreds of protesters and counter protesters gathered, riot police were deployed and 22 people were arrested.
Four days later Lang was in Minneapolis for another rally. This time he and the occupants of two vehicles were arrested on probable-cause riot allegations after police said the vehicles drove onto the sidewalk toward a crowd of counter protesters.
The dangerous part begins when disagreement becomes identity, identity becomes an enemy class, grievance becomes “they are destroying us,” and somebody finally picks up the bullhorn and tells “us” where to assemble.
And lets use the Ai as a tool for
as it seems to pick up nuances better than I imagined
Maybe it can help us see who’s pulling the strings, help us to be vigilant, on guard, for both though, the message, and the messenger and more so all those who may wish to use either to fuel their own agenda
I was surprised Dearborn was not a bigger mess, but, more surprised when the Mecca known as Minneapolis wasn’t either.
The useful distinction is between opposing an idea, movement, or policy and turning the people associated with it into a single enemy class. The first can be necessary; the second is where moral judgment gets replaced by permission.
That is also where discernment has to do more than detect hypocrisy. It should ask what a speaker’s words are doing to the audience: clarifying a danger, or assembling a crowd around fear, contempt, and a target.
A person can be right about a real grievance and still be leading people toward something wicked. So no, I don’t think the lesson is “never take a side.
” It is to keep the side from becoming an idol—and to notice when “our people” becomes an excuse to stop seeing the humanity of everyone outside the circle.
Excluding enemies is not illogical or inconsistent at all.
Psalms 5:5 (v.4 in non-Jewish) For You are not a G.d Who desires wickedness; evil does not abide [y’gur] with You. 6 Confused people shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all workers of iniquity.
Scripture excludes those who do evil from the category of “stranger” or ger - “evil does not abide [y’-gur] with You.”
