Nancy's Notes

Today, as I write this, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are meeting at the White House. The headlines haven’t landed yet, but I think we all know how the press release will read: they had a “productive conversation,” “mutual respect was reaffirmed,” and Trump will likely describe Netanyahu as “a very strong leader,” maybe even “a terrific guy.”

But while those statements are being polished, I’ve been sitting with something more complex, and frankly, more honest, than anything that’s likely to come out of that meeting. I hesitate sometimes to write about Israel. And maybe that’s the right instinct, to pause before speaking about something so layered, so painful, and so steeped in history that I can’t possibly claim to understand it the way others do. Especially not from the perspective of Jewish people, for whom this land, this history, this trauma, and this hope are not theoretical but deeply lived.

But something New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said recently at the Aspen Ideas Festival struck such a chord with me that I’ve been turning it over in my head ever since. And I guess this is less a post than a bookmark of that moment, one I don’t want to lose.

Friedman said that to understand the Middle East, and Israel in particular, you have to hold three truths in your head at the same time. And yes, he acknowledged, that’s not something we’re very good at, especially in the polarized world of North American discourse (campuses and Twitter/X alike). But here they are:

1. Israel is an extraordinary place. What the Israeli people have built in just 75 years, out of exile, out of ashes, through wars and waves of immigration, is nothing short of astonishing. A technological, agricultural, and military powerhouse. An improbable success story.
2. Israel is doing really bad things right now. Especially in Gaza, and in the West Bank. And it’s not new. The occupation, the dispossession, the deaths of civilians , these are not myths or propaganda. They are real, and they are wrong.
3. Israel lives in a crazy neighbourhood. One where it’s surrounded by failed or barely functioning states, some of which are under the grip of Iran, an authoritarian regime exporting chaos. Israel’s security dilemmas are real, and existential.

And that’s what grabbed me: the idea that more than one thing can be true at the same time. That Israel can be both remarkable and responsible for grave injustices. That it can be both a beacon and a danger to its own future. That people inside and outside the region can love it and criticize it, sometimes in the same breath.

This framework helped me as someone outside the faith, the culture, and the history, a gentile trying to make sense of something I can’t fully feel. I can’t understand what it means to carry generational trauma like the Holocaust, or to see a homeland as both sanctuary and struggle. So I offer this with all humility. If any Jewish readers find my agreement with Friedman too simplistic or misapplied, I understand. But I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to listen.

What also struck me, and this is something Friedman emphasized, is the deeply uncomfortable truth about Benjamin Netanyahu. According to Friedman, Netanyahu is a man who just presided over a monumental military victory, not just against Hamas, but symbolically against Iran and its network of influence over Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. And yet, at the same time, Netanyahu is continuing a campaign of destruction in Gaza well beyond the defeat of Hamas, at great humanitarian cost. And at the same time again, he’s pushing forward a domestic judicial overhaul that would weaken Israel’s Supreme Court and, potentially, set the stage for annexing the West Bank.

It’s not just that these things are happening at once, it’s that they are deeply contradictory. And Friedman made a powerful point: the very people who delivered this military success, the elite pilots, the cyber warriors, the scientists and tech minds of Israel’s defense, are often the same people who spent the entire nine months before the Hamas war protesting Netanyahu’s attempts to undermine democracy. These are people who love their country deeply and are willing to defend it with everything they have, but who are also terrified of the direction Netanyahu is dragging it.

That contrast, between military heroism and political despair — has stayed with me. It reminds me again that complexity isn’t a flaw in the conversation. It’s the core of it.

It’s not lost on me that I’m writing this on a day when the headlines aren’t screaming. There’s no new airstrike footage flooding the news cycle at this moment. And yet, like you, I know that every day is escalated in some way. Still, maybe quieter days are when we should be thinking hardest, not in reaction, but in reflection.

This might not be a post that travels far. It’s not spicy, not viral, not packed with certainty. But it’s honest. And it’s grounded in something that I think we need more of: the ability, and the courage, to hold conflicting truths without rushing to flatten them into just one.

So yes, I’ll keep thinking about this.

And maybe that’s the point.

On July 5th, 2025, as much of Texas woke to what should have been a hot and quiet long weekend, everything changed in a matter of hours. Flash flooding, violent, fast, and utterly unforgiving, tore through parts of Central and East Texas. Bridges collapsed. Homes were swept from foundations. At the time of writing, the death toll stands at 70. Dozens are missing. And I can’t stop thinking about the sky.

Let me explain. I was raised in a family business where aviation wasn’t just a profession, it was a way of life. And in aviation, especially before Foreflight and real-time radar apps, weather wasn’t a side topic. It was the topic. My father talked about pressure systems over breakfast. We learned to read clouds before we could parallel park. When your safety and livelihood depend on the weather, you don’t take it lightly.

Even now, decades later, I check five weather apps, scan radar, read METARs and TAFs, and still go outside to squint at the sky, just to be sure and that’s just to do gardening. Some people think I’m overdoing it. I think I’m paying attention.

That brings me back to Texas. The storms that hit on July 5th weren’t a surprise to forecasters. Some parts of the state received flash flood watches the evening before. Others got warnings the morning of. But here’s the thing, “a warning” is only useful if it comes in time, if people understand what it means, and if systems are in place to act on it. In Texas, in some places, the water rose in minutes. Hardened ground from drought couldn’t absorb a drop, so the rain just ran, taking everything in its path.

Did people get warned? Some did. But too many didn’t get enough notice, or didn’t trust the alerts. And here’s where it gets political, whether we want it to or not.

The U.S. National Weather Service has been under strain for years. Budget cuts, staff shortages, and now even a further reduction in weather balloon launches. Those cuts, furthered through DOGE have eroded the capacity to give the kind of hyper-local, real-time data that saves lives. A weather balloon costs about $300. They were among the “non-essential” items cut and those losses haven’t been reversed.

I don’t mean to be flippant, but how many weather balloons could you launch for the cost of one political parade or a golf weekend? What value do we place on knowing what the atmosphere is doing before it unleashes itself on us?

And I know people get tired of alerts. I do too. We get them constantly now, severe thunderstorms, tornado watches, snow squalls, extreme heat. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes the radar looks worse than what reaches the ground. But here’s what I know from aviation: when something’s uncertain and potentially lethal, you plan for the worst and hope for the best.

I will always prefer a false alarm to a missed warning. Always.

We are lucky in Canada. Not perfect, but lucky. We still have meteorologists with funding, tools, and a weather service that issues alerts proactively. Sometimes they seem premature, or overblown. But when I see a red banner across my screen, I don’t roll my eyes. I lean in.

Because I can still hear my dad muttering about “unstable air” as he watched the cloud bases lower. I can still feel the hum of tension before a storm when a decision was made to cancel a flight, not because the radar was dramatic, but because something didn’t feel right. I learned that you don’t ignore risk just because it’s inconvenient.

And as I looked at footage from Texas, roads turned into rivers, families clinging to rooftops, I couldn’t help but think: how much of this was preventable? Not the rain itself. But the death. The destruction. The disbelief.

We are in an age where weather is going to come at us faster, harder, and more unpredictably than we’re used to. And let’s be clear: climate change is not up for debate. It is real, it is here, and it is accelerating the frequency and severity of these events. This isn’t just “bad luck” or “Texas weather.” It’s what happens when a destabilized climate system collides with underfunded public infrastructure. Floods, fires, droughts, and storms, these aren’t isolated events anymore. They’re the new normal.

And so, we have a choice: to invest in knowledge, in alerts, in public systems that keep us aware and alive, or to spend money on things that look good on television but do nothing when the skies open.

As for Canada, we’ve had our share of wildfire seasons that stretched the limits of provincial response. The need for a coordinated national fire strategy, and yes, that applies to the U.S. too, is urgent. But I’ll leave that for another post.

For now, I’ll keep doing what I’ve always done. I’ll look at the increasingly detailed radar available to all of us. I’ll read METAR reports when someone in the family is flying. I’ll check multiple weather apps and still look out the window, because the sky is still the best indicator I know.

And I’ll never apologize for checking it one more time.