Saul Lieberman retweetledi
Saul Lieberman
11.1K posts
Saul Lieberman
@Saul_Lieberman
Startup Consigliere. Big Picture Legal Advice. Natural Connector. Common Sense.
Katılım Aralık 2008
2K Takip Edilen628 Takipçiler
Saul Lieberman retweetledi
The miracle of 78 and 94 years.
Hallel this morning at @CongregationKJ led by the indefatigable Rabbi Haskel Lookstein.
From generation to generation. Strength, continuity, purpose.
Yom HaAtzmaut Sameach 🇮🇱
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אילו נולדתי חרדי לא הייתי מתגייס. לא הייתי משליך את סיכויי השידוכים, את העתיד המקצועי, את המקום בקהילה, רק בשביל ערך מופשט של שוויון או ציונות. גם אם המאבק למען השוויון בנטל הוא מוצדק מאין כמותו במישור הפוליטי, אסור בשום פנים ואופן לתת לו להגיע לכדי טינה אישית, קל וחומר לכדי הלבנת פנים.
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@havivrettiggur @Decentguyusedto @mattyglesias I think we're getting away from the extremists angle.
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@Decentguyusedto @Saul_Lieberman @mattyglesias Why does a strong shekel prove the economy isn’t being held back by a massive welfare state incentivizing non-work at a huge scale?
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I’m aware that it isn’t hard and that many people have done it, but Israel’s political leadership over the past seventeen years has not.
My claim, which is causing this whole meltdown in pro-Israel circles, is that this choice makes a difference to perceptions of Israel.
Haviv Rettig Gur@havivrettiggur
Suggesting a positive political endgame for Palestinians isn't hard to do. I've done it. Many others have too. And these endgame suggestions would be fantastic tools in the hands of anyone looking to impose specific demands on Israel, or on Abbas or Hamas, or to offer a better future for Palestinians of the sort that might peel some away from Hamas. Palestinians have shown repeatedly that they have the tools to shape Israeli politics. But they are told by ideologues foreign and domestic that they must never use these powers, because doing so would commit the unforgivable sin of actually engaging and acknowledging the dastardly Jews. Sorry, Israelis. So no one is ever interested in endgames. The suggestions always land with a thud. The activists dismiss them out of hand as distractions from the main task. Because the main task, the purpose of the whole rabid, unprecedented campaign, unseen in scale, duration or intensity in any conflict or country or even atrocity in generations, is not to find any solution for Palestinians. The purpose is to project all Western criminality and self-abnegation and all the anxieties of this moment of social disarray onto the familiar old scapegoat and then, as in the days of old, destroy that scapegoat. It's a civilization-spanning purification ritual couched, like all such rituals in the history of Christendom and the West, as a call to righteousness and truth. And the bulk of the costs of all this blind hatred masquerading as righteousness isn't paid by Israelis or Jews, though they are paying steep costs that will only grow steeper, because this hatred is never satisfied. No, they're paid by Palestinians. They, not we, are trapped in this obsessive radicalization against Israel. They, not we, are herded by comfortable foreigners living out anti-imperialist noble-savage fantasies into ever more rounds of zero-sum war. There *are* political endgames, and they're worth fighting for. But they require a pro-Palestinian campaign that's more than just an updated version of the anti-Jewish purges of old.
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@havivrettiggur @mattyglesias What are some examples of the very great costs imposed on Israel by extremists of this government?
(I assume "very great costs" means something other than image costs.)
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Yes, the costs imposed on Israel by the extremists of this government are very great. Especially among our friends. That's where it's most clear.
But there's simultaneously a rabid campaign of bigotry sweeping through Western progressive politics that isn't explainable just by Israeli actions.
That's why most Israelis have a hard time taking the former seriously. It's hard to distinguish it from the latter, and the latter is so much louder.
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@RedWavePress The U.S. has 750 bases in 80 countries. That's 150,000+ troops at around $100 billion/year. Germany, Japan, Korea, the UK, Turkey, Qatar, etc.
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Rahm Emanuel: “No more U.S. military aid—financial assistance from the taxpayers for Israel. You’re a country like all other allies of ours, Japan, South Korea, the Brits, the Germans. You’re going to pay full price; you can buy what you want, but you have to abide by the laws that should be it.”
“No more U.S. taxpayer support... I was in the room when President Obama’s largest assistance was under President Obama. We did the funding for the Iron Dome. But here, the days of taxpayer subsidizing Israel are over.”
“No more financial aid.”
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@chrispisarski @jerseejess Thanks.
First AE also needs to be able to sell the early, imperfect product.
Without whining about it.
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there’s a well-known piece of sales advice we picked up during YC called “default to action"
especially at the early stage, closing a deal is better than getting it perfect
and not every AE is optimized to do that
I spoke with @jerseejess a while ago about what your first AE hire should look like:
Saul Lieberman@Saul_Lieberman
@chrispisarski Say a bit more about how the new AE brought a level up in your tenacity to close quickly.
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@harris @Alfred_Lin @pmarca thanks for the heads up.
i remember when @pmarca's posts struck the blogosphere.
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I'd like to buy a beer for whoever cleared @Alfred_Lin's calendar enough that he could write this often.
The man is producing the best series of essays on startups I've read since @pmarca
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For the first time in three decades, the dollar is collapsing against the Israeli Shekel, which is used in the Palestinian territories and upon which the entire Palestinian economy is built in Gaza and the West Bank. 1 USD is 3 New Israeli Shekels (NIS) after normally being in the 4.5-3.3ish range for the past three decades. This is causing problems for the Palestinian Authority, employees, public sector, NGOs, and the financial sector, which already suffers from several serious issues. This is driven by robust economic growth in Israel, the perceived strengthening of the country's geopolitical position in the Middle East, and the massive growth in defense exports. Some will point to this as evidence of Israel's remarkable resilience after two and a half years of wars and the worst attack against the country in its history, while others will use this to argue for reduced foreign assistance to an already rich and capable state. Regardless, definitely something to keep an eye out for.
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@Duduoppe Not true as a legal matter ( in the US).
You can make a special appearance without surrendering personal jurisdiction. And you can always argue that the court doesn't have subject matter jurisdiction.
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מותר להגיד משהו על דוד פטר?
אני אוהב ומעריך אותו מאוד, אבל יש בעיה קשה עם הקטע של להופיע בבג"ץ ואז לטעון בפני השופטים ש"אין להם סמכות".
אם אין להם סמכות, למה אתה מופיע לדיון? למה הממשלה שלחה אותך? אם אני, דוד אופנהיים, אזרח, אחליט שאני קובע דיון אצלי בסלון לפטר את בן גביר למרות שאין לי שום סמכות לכך, הממשלה תשלח את דוד פטר כדי שישכנע אותי שאין לי סמכות?
בעצם ההופעה לדיון אתה מודיע שאתה מקבל את זה שכן יש להם סמכות.
מעשה מעיד יותר מאלף מילים.
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I'm tempted to finally churn off Slack.
We're paying ~$6k/year for 40 people and they just quoted me $21k/year for the business version that includes a BAA (and all the shitty AI features).
Incredibly overrated software
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Saul Lieberman retweetledi
נורא הוא הכאב
אייל ביאנקו גיבור ישראל ז"ל עם ילדיו .
إليشع بن كيمون. Elisha Ben Kimon. אלישע בן קימון@elishabenkimon
בוקר קשה הותר לפרסום כי רס״ם (מיל׳) אייל אוריאל ביאנקו בן 30, מקצרין, נהג רכב כיבוי אש, עוצבת ׳ברק׳ (188), נפל בקרב בדרום לבנון כתוצאה מהתהפגות האמר. באירוע, נפצע לוחם צה"ל במילואים באורח בינוני ושני לוחמים נוספים במילואים באורח קל. אוריאל ביאנקו ז"ל
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@J_Insider @LahavHarkov @epieprz @NillyRichman With the country at war on 3 fronts, and Iran at a critical point, it may say a lot about Bibi if it is news that a strategist for Lapid thinks that Bibi is stressed.
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@LahavHarkov @epieprz Conversely, @NillyRichman, a strategist who has worked with President Isaac Herzog and launched Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, told Jewish Insider that “there is no doubt that Netanyahu is stressed, and he is broadcasting it.”
jewishinsider.com/2026/04/netany…
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Amid the ceasefire with Iran, new Israeli polls were split on the outcome for Netanyahu’s Likud party and coalition.
@LahavHarkov reports:
ji.news/4y7m3
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Saul Lieberman retweetledi
Don’t want Iran to lose if it means Trump wins. @TomFriedman of @NYTimes really wants “to see Iran defeated militarily because this regime is a terrible regime for its people and the region,” but on CNN’s @Smerconish he fretted “the problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are too awful human beings. They are both engaged in anti-democratic projects in their own countries. They’re both alleged crooks. They are terrible, terrible people doing terrible things to America’s standing in the world and Israel’s standing in the world.”
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@pauldgross There may be many Israelis who want Bibi out but not for the anti zionist arguments spouted by progressives.
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2. Those Jewish conservatives who also stupidly believe Bibi and his government represent Zionism, and therefore have no way of understanding Israeli society today, where a majority of highly patriotic Zionist Israelis want Bibi and this government out (2/2)
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Two groups of diaspora Jews that I have interactions with on social media who intensely frustrate me:
1. Those Jewish progressives who’ve turned anti-Zionist because they stupidly believe Bibi and his government definitively represent Zionism. (1/2)
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Saul Lieberman retweetledi
@EconTalker There is also the overwhelming desire of some to have an opinion. (That's not unusual.)
But then there are those that need to tell you about it.
That requires a stark and confident opinion.
Overconfidence helps .
(I'm sure about this.)
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It is remarkable how many people have a stark and confident opinion of what has happened when the only wise position is that it’s too early to tell. Ignorance of Middle East culture is just one of the handicaps the overconfident experts are laboring under.
Gummi@gummibear737
If you've never negotiated to buy a Persian rug in the Middle East, you probably don't understand what's going on right now😂
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@BriannaWu Need a new name. Islamism is too close to Islam and this mistake will continue to be made
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If you look at my tweets, you will see a very careful to criticize “Islamists” and not individuals who believe in Islam.
Islamism is the fundamentalist worldview that seeks to implement an Islamic state.
It’s identical to Christian theocrats. No one has ever cared when I’ve criticized the latter.
But the public-policy stakes are so much more serious for Islamists. Christian extremists suck, but despite America being a Christian majority country we’ve arrived at jurisprudence that protects women and LGBT people.
There is no Christian equivalent of ISIS, Al Qaeda or the IRGC.
I do believe Islamism is a remarkably dangerous ideology, and anyone who lived through 9/11 should have the same assessment.
There’s no conflict between having that national security assessment and believing in an individual’s right to worship or not worship as they wish.
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@yaakovkatz Isn't the real change that Israel is now willing to engage in an extended ground war?
Sure Israel knew about the tunnels and rockets (probably not full extent).
But Israel was not prepared to engage so it probably was not prepared to hear about the job that needed to get done.
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What we saw over the last five and a half weeks was, in many ways, the full implementation of the most important lesson of October 7.
Before that day, Israel knew that Hamas and Hezbollah had amassed massive arsenals and built extensive military infrastructure. It knew about the rockets, the tunnels, the launchers, the anti-tank missiles, the fighters, and the command structures. But Israel was trapped in a containment strategy focused on one central question: intent. That the enemy had weapons, we knew. The question was whether they intended to use them. Did Hamas want war or did it prefer quiet? Was Hezbollah deterred or preparing to attack?
In trying to assess intentions, Israel ended up deterring itself. It allowed the enemy’s capabilities to grow but so long as they were not being used everything was considered okay. That was the disaster of October 7.
What happened after the 12-day war in June, when it became clear that Iran had accelerated missile production and was nearing a nuclear threshold Israel decided not to get pulled back into the old trap. It did not want to wait until Iran fully restored its missile arsenal, accumulated enough military-grade uranium, and then be forced to debate whether Tehran intended to use those capabilities or not. It acted first to deny the capabilities themselves.
That is important. It shows that Israel has learned from October 7 and revamped its defense doctrine. It is no longer willing to tolerate threats on its borders simply because the enemy has not yet pulled the trigger.
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True story
One time I was coming home from the beach with my family.
We parked in the lot outside our house, and I loaded myself up with all the bags, beach chairs, coolers, etc. that I could handle and started shlepping everything home.
And old Israeli man was sitting on a plastic chair on the sidewalk at the edge of the parking lot.
He looked up, saw me laden like a donkey, and simply said:
"מרבה נכסים, מרבה דאגה"
And went back to his newspaper.
Heimish Humor@HeimishHumor
Pirkei Avos - "More possessions, more worries." Notorious B.I.G. - "Mo money, mo problems."
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