Wounded by an Ambivalent Non-Angel

He got a wound as he was blessed
because he said: “I can!”
but never, limping, ever guessed
the name of Angel-Man.

Extraordinary, what he found,
his senses finely tuned,
one ear kept closely to the ground,
transfigured by a wound,

that has a strange equivalence
to one caused by a Donald,
non-angel sans ambivalence
to Israel, gid-hanashe gonadled….

while Jacob was not cursed by blame
in a wrestling match whose fate
inspired Jacob’s second name,
still Israel, Jewish state.

In “U.S. Credibility Returns to the Middle East,” WSJ. 6/24/25, Karen Elliott House writes:

President Trump’s dramatic weekend strike may or may not have obliterated Iran’s nuclear potential, but it has restored U.S. deterrence and credibility. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of a theocracy that held the Mideast in a grip of terror for nearly half a century, is cowering in an underground bunker. He fears even to use a cellphone lest Israel’s superior intelligence and air power combine to eliminate him along with his nation’s nuclear ambitions.

While Israel obviously is the big winner from the war it launched against Iran just over a week ago, Saudi Arabia stands to emerge as the other major regional beneficiary. Gone is Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which encircled the region and tormented Saudi Arabia. Of all the regimes in the Middle East, only Israel, the “little Satan,” and Saudi Arabia, the “small and puny Satan,” were earmarked for elimination. Iran coveted not only Saudi Arabia’s oil but, more important, its guardianship of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina.

The context of the second verse is Jacob’s struggle with the angel, who changed his name to Israel and, at the same time, caused him to limp, injuring what Gen. 32:33 calls gid hanasheh. This is traditionally interpreted as the sciatic nerve, but I claim in my book Legal Friction it is the male member. This in turn reminds me of Donald Trump’s ambiguous and ambivalent behavior to Israel, by demanding a ceasefire to end the war between Israel and Iran.