There’s a food influencer I used to follow on TikTok from Gaza who did reviews of restaurants and dishes there. He disappeared for months after the war but now he’s back making cooking videos using things from aid packages for kids in the refugee encampments:
Palestinians have a very education-obsessed culture and have a 98% literacy rate despite living in difficult conditions as refugee population. Getting rid of UNRWA and blowing up Palestinian universities seems aimed at making sure future generations don’t become engineers.
I’m skeptical of people who hang on every inflammatory word of 19-year-old college students but are indifferent to members of Congress calling on people to run over protestors with cars or use nuclear weapons on civilians. There is a revealing inconsistency and imbalance here.
The Herero genocide was preceded by an attack against a German colony in Namibia that killed 100 people. German reprisals killed around 75,000 people and almost eliminated the Herero as a people. Important context for Namibian views on Gaza conflict.
Baghdad Bob and Sean Spicer have nothing on John Kirby.
Kirby says that there is no evidence that Israel deliberately struck WCK aid workers in Gaza. He also says that Israel has NOT violated international humanitarian law in Gaza (!!!)
#CeasefireNOW
No country has screwed up its immigration policy as badly as Canada. The employment, housing, infrastructure, healthcare system are all in freefall.
The intention was good but you can’t just dump millions of people on a few urban areas year after year with no real planning.
German publisher Axel Springer's CEO has said chants of “from the river to the sea” are tantamount to genocide but the company also prints classified ads for real estate listings in West Bank settlements with the tagline "From the River to the Sea."
A lot of South Africa's ICJ case against Israel simply consists of reading back Israeli officials genocidal public statements and then showing military personnel on ground echoing these statements. I can't imagine having to live in America and professionally defend this.
My initial assessment of bridge collapse due to the main support column being struck by a ship in Baltimore is that it is more likely than not - intentional. I worked several AQ/Hamas cases while in the FBI & since and found - verified by state intel agencies - AQ/Hamas targeted…
UN: “The IDF allegedly separated the men from the women and children, and then shot and killed at least 11 of the men, mostly aged in their late 20’s and early 30’s, in front of their family members.”
Horrifying incident needs urgent investigation.
It’s insane that the U.S. is participating in a military campaign that is directly employing starvation as a weapon of war against a civilian population. Really rules-based and righteous stuff.
A group of four undercover FBI agents in Denver spent over a year talking to a 16-year-old online about joining ISIS and arrested him shortly after his 18th birthday when he went to the airport:
“Like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.” Shocking comments from Republican Rep. Tim Walberg when asked about US spending in Gaza. He says, “We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick. The same should be in Ukraine.…
I understand the point that it is exceptional but it must be crazy for Palestinians in their own towns to encounter a hostile armed soldier speaking his native Incan dialect and informing them that actually this is his country.
Update:
One of the soldiers killed yesterday, Yuval Lopez, was from a family of Incan native Peruvians whose entire community converted to Judaism en masse over 30 years ago, emigrated to Israel and settled in my former home of Alon Shevut in Gush Etzion (Judea). When they…
This 100-year time lapse of Cincinnati is the worst one of these I’ve seen. 20th century American urban planners should be hunted down and put on trial for crimes against humanity in the style of Eichmann.
Graphic scenes: An Israeli army drone pursued four civilian youths who attempted to reach their destroyed homes and killed them with missiles in Khan Younis at the start of last February.
This video was removed from TikTok for allegedly violating TikTok standards. I’m sharing a screenshot the user shared with me (translated from Arabic):
There’s a food influencer I used to follow on TikTok from Gaza who did reviews of restaurants and dishes there. He disappeared for months after the war but now he’s back making cooking videos using things from aid packages for kids in the refugee encampments:
for every western weeb I feel like there is a japanese guy who is like no I'm gonna be a cowboy now, I love jamaican dancehall more than anything in the world, I am going to go fight in the soviet-afghan war.
Referring to Motaz Azaiza as a “Hamas journalist” is despicable for a number of reasons but particularly because he was recently being attacked for publicly criticizing Hamas. I really dislike this guy.
President Minouche Shafik of
@Columbia
(who has said in a recently revealed post-9/11 interview that terrorism can be seen as a form of legitimate protest) is not allowing me nor the
@NYPDnews
on campus.
You who she is allowing on campus? This Hamas "journalist".
Let me get…
India simultaneously has good relations with Iran, the Gulf Arabs, Israel, Russia, Afghanistan, while simultaneously being a member of the Quad and BRICS. This is impressive because goal of diplomacy should be to maximize friends rather than adding pointless strategic enemies.
Photo of me talking to Jon Stewart earlier this week. It was enjoyable but a little bittersweet because my father was a big Jon Stewart fan but passed away last year so couldn’t see. But I feel as though he somehow was around.
So many hateful responses to this post which makes zero mention of Israel; this is a very nice guy who makes travel videos including many in the Arab world building bridges between people. Antisemitism is abhorrent as is blaming ordinary Jewish people for Israel.
One thing I have noticed from talking to Pakistanis lately is how recent events have disillusioned people about the ideology of Pakistan. The army was the standard-bearer of this ideology but now many feel it was like a big hoax that had been played on them for decades.
Before I started reporting on Pakistani internal politics I didn’t appreciate how obsessed Pakistani military and civilian officials were with what Americans think of them. They seem to view any random mid-level State Department official like an imperial viceroy.
People in other countries have to understand that when their compatriots and children immigrate to America they become different people with new identities forged by their experiences there. Being American is not like being a political satellite of your country of ethnic origin.
Avantika is an actress of Indian origin. She was named as “South Asian Person of the Year” by Harvard University. She dedicated this award to “her” people of Gaza. And that’s great, everyone believes in different causes & try to create awareness about them.
Being of Indian…
Interesting report from Barak as always but I have noticed that Democratic administrations always leak these types of comments to try and make it seem like they are dissidents against their own policies and thus have it both ways.
Shocking. Pakistani journalist arrested against after disappearing for months under torture and confinement by the Pakistani military regime last year.
BREAKING: A Pakistan court has sentenced former PM Imran Khan and former FM Shah Mehmood Qureshi to 10 years in jail in a case related to the leaking of state secrets
“Both in absolute numbers and per capita, Gaza is currently experiencing the most acute hunger crisis anywhere in the world, according to the IPC.”
The strong do what they will, and the weak do what they must. But no more moralizing lectures after this.
Its insane U.S. has a veto on Iran and Pakistan (neighboring countries on the other side of the world) engaging in trade. Pakistan desperately needs alternate sources of LNG as became clear after the Ukraine war began. Also note India buys energy from whoever it chooses.
Israel has right to respond to charges leveled against it at ICJ and will have space to do so at hearing tomorrow. But an official referring to South Africa and its legal team as “the functioning legal arm” of Hamas is rejectionist and extremist hyperbole used by rogue states.
Today we were witness to one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by a series of false and baseless claims.
South Africa, which is functioning as the legal arm of the Hamas terrorist organization, utterly distorted the reality in Gaza following the October 7…
From a postcolonial perspective it has to be respected India is now meaningfully independent. It buys oil from who it likes and has political ties irrespective of blocs. Pakistanis are unable to choose their own leaders or foreign policy and their country remains a U.S. satrapy.
This is basically the root of the problem with Pakistan. There are plenty of smart people but the country is administered as a business run by a few families and backed by the military.
Indian Foreign Minister: Diplomat for over 38 years. MA in political science, M.Phil. and PhD in international relations.
Pakistani Foreign Minister: Nawaz Sharif’s relative.
Taking this seriously: There is apparently a burgeoning effort to declare a major U.S. foreign policy issue off limits for debate, including through violence. This is a real "free speech" issue and I'd not support doing this to other people even if I disagreed with them.
1. Congress needs to immediately end all federal aid to Columbia. 2. Congress should immediately impeach the head of the DOJ’s civil rights division for failure to enforce Title VII.
3. Employers should immediately refuse to hire any Columbia graduates until the President is…
Actually if you automatically start at the age of 19 on the front page of one of the small handful of elite publications that is both lucrative and uncommon. It’s not like being sent to be a local news freelancer in a small town in Michigan or Ohio.
You can take issue with the article but it's bizarre that people are calling Peter Baker's son a "nepo baby," a term coined to describe why so many Hollywood stars are children of Hollywood stars. Like, oh no, Theo Baker might enter the lucrative, dynamic world of...journalism?
This is what I don't understand – I don't bother making moral arguments usually because I don't think the world works like that. But from a strategic perspective the U.S. is incurring huge costs while getting nothing in return for embedding itself in this radioactive situation.
I really hope every Biden national security official realizes just how tarred they will be for their entire career based on what they are enabling in Israel. They will never live it down, not because it's a moral wrong, but because it's a strategic disaster for America.
A State Department panel recommended suspension of funding to several Israeli military units accused of extrajudicial killing, torture, and rape of Palestinians in line with Leahy Laws but Blinken has apparently ignored this legal guidance:
If The Intercept did not exist the 2023 Imran Khan cipher story would not have been reported. It is not just a matter of political barriers (story fit the interests of no one in power) but the technical and security challenges in reporting it required discrete skills to overcome.
Every death is a tragedy but it is interesting that according to the UN the Russian invasion of Ukraine has killed less civilians in two years than were killed in the first month and a half of the war in Gaza.
According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has already resulted in the death of 10,703 civilians.
We condemn all attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure - they are prohibited under international law.
They…
This is a deeply demoralizing picture for many or most Pakistanis. There is sense that their country is merely the heirloom of a tiny handful of wealthy families and military officers. The suggestion of inheritance is underlined by the presence of multiple generations.
A top election official in Pakistan has publicly admitted that he rigged votes under duress in the February 8th election to take away support from the PTI. In a normal country this would result in some kind of revistation of the results:
The Pakistani military is now going to have to rig the elections even further after getting blown out despite tons of pre-vote rigging. It’s going to be difficult to show face and govern as a nominal democracy with this nadir of public consent though.
Pakistan would have so much potential as a country if it had a different political economy. Bangladesh was the poorest country in South Asia until it was able to free itself of the dead hand of military control. Now it has the highest per capita GDP in the region.
U.S. defying united global public opinion on this issue as well its own allegedly preferred solution to this conflict. Underscores need to reduce profoundly dysfunctional U.S. influence in this region.
If the Israeli military is so cavalier about targeting clearly marked Western aid workers in Gaza one can only imagine what kind of targeting they are using against Palestinians.
Pakistani military and government officials really care about what is said about them in the West so statements from U.S. officials and media about the election are significant. Its not like Turkey where they simply don't care or Iran where they relish hatred of enemies.
Pakistani military underestimated importance of social media and thought they could control the information environment just by muzzling establishment press. Kind of inexcusable belief in 2024.
Did the U.S. greenlight or otherwise have foreknowledge of Israel's bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus? If not then giving blanket insurance against the blowback of such an action would be allowing another state to dictate when America goes to war.
Objectively speaking it seems like Ukraine would need this support more; they are fighting a much larger and truly existential enemy while Israel is a nuclear state fighting a lightly armed militia.
🚨BREAKING NEWS -- IN A REVERSAL,
@SpeakerJohnson
will put a bill on the floor to send $17.6 billion to Israel with no corresponding spending cuts, a reversal meant to preempt the Senate's border-and-national-security supplemental.
Here's a letter from Johnson to the House GOP:…
This is very dysfunctional view of political economy; these countries need to rely on domestic growth rather than waiting for periodic external injections of capital.
What Egypt and Pakistan have in common is being run by rent-seeking postcolonial militaries.
Egypt hits the jackpot.The IMF-UAE-SAUDI-US bailout package is massive game changer. Pakistan is an almost identical case. Can Shahbaz Sharif-General Asim Munir duo deliver the miracle that General Sissi delivered to Egypt?
I have to assume Netanyahu is trying to win domestic political points from being seen as standing up to Biden, while waiting for a likely Trump presidency within a year that will help him execute what he wants regarding final status of the Palestinians.
💥Netanyahu goes head-to-head with Joe Biden: "I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over the entire area west of the Jordan river - and this is incongruent with a Palestinian state."
Dawkins spent his whole life taking part in a ruthless culture war against Christianity and now belatedly realizes that he didn’t understand what he was doing and wants to take some essential part back. Doesn’t work that way unfortunately.
"If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I'd choose Christianity every single time."
Self-proclaimed 'cultural Christian', @RichardDawkins, tells
@RachelSJohnson
he's 'slightly horrified' to hear Ramadan lights were hung on Oxford Street rather than Easter lights.
I watched some of the debate between Norman Finkelstein, Mouin Rabbani, Benny Morris, and Destiny found it was actually very enlightening in many parts although Destiny should not have been included. I am glad it exposed more people to Mouin Rabbani who is an excellent scholar.
I find it amusing that when speaking to a Western audiences Imran Khan’s political opponents suggest he’s a radical Islamist verging on the Taliban but in Urdu the narrative is that he’s a crypto-Jewish Zionist working for Israel to destroy Pakistan. Real kitchen sink approach.
"At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were threatened with rape and sexual violence. Photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online."
Awful stories of Indians hired for advertised jobs and tricked into being sent to the frontlines of Russia's war with Ukraine. Says a lot about the type of gangster state that Russia operates:
Israel has nuclear weapons, superpower patronage and a large defense sector. It killed tens of thousands of people in response to the attack against it. The invocation of trauma as a reason for a state not to act is totally illegitimate.
🧵Israel Pres. Isaac Herzog at Munich Sec. Conference, says Israelis feel too traumatized and insecure for talk of a two state solution: “Saying now a Palestinian state or a two state solution is kind of giving actually, without intention, kind of credit…to the fact that Hamas
Here are more details about
@Hamadashoo
situation in the video below. U.S. financial institutions sometimes sanction or otherwise block transactions from Gaza so this fundraiser was set up in Ireland:
Pretty much all fascist regimes are built on some kind of narrative of victimhood. This is why embracing victimhood as an identity can be so debilitating and dangerous.
These are the only people I can never forgive in this situation; people who go and join in for purely ideological reasons like they’re going on crusade. It should actually be illegal to serve in a foreign military as an American.
An 🇺🇸American serving in the Israeli occupation forces shared a picture on his social media account displaying a kidnapped Palestinian from the West Bank last night.
Despite terrible recent events I’ve never been more optimistic Palestinians are going to achieve statehood and citizenship. They lived under a very fragile system of control that has been irrevocably broken and I believe this period will be remembered as a war of independence.
When push comes to shove it seems that Iran is more isolated regionally than Israel. Most Sunni Arab states either seek to stay neutral or tactically support Israel in conflict with Iran. Makes Israeli claims of feeling too insecure to allow Palestinian statehood look ridiculous.
If Israel goes beyond pretext of retaliating for October 7th or deposing Hamas and actually ethnically cleanses and annexes Gaza then the post-WWII era is officially over. We will be back in the age of conquests and redrawing of borders and I think this is possible.
Israel Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir says now is the time to push SETTLEMENTS into Gaza.
Israel must take over Gaza and its allies (America) must take Palestinian refugees for them.
When I made cruel fun of the celebrity chef humanitarians who died in delivering trivial amounts of food in Gaza while hundreds of heavy trucks enter each day, I did not know where these humanitarians stayed before venturing south : the Norman Hotel in Tel Aviv : $800 /basic room
On top of his other convictions this week a Pakistani court has invalidated his marriage and sentenced him another seven years for allegedly fraudulent matrimony with his wife. Window into insane vindictiveness of Pakistani state:
Recently announced U.S. arms sales to Israel seem to be more about preparing for war with Lebanon and Iran than the present conflict in Gaza. Israel does not need dozens of F-15s for dogfights or airstrikes against Hamas in Rafah.
Important context elided here is that this began with Israel blowing up the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killing several of its top military officials. They are an independent nation and can do as they like but they should similarly deal with the consequences independently.
As Israel is under attack from Iran, we stand with Israel and its people, and the United States will do everything we can to support Israel’s defense against Iran.
Feels like Bill Burns grew this mustache under influence of the Arab intelligence chiefs he has spent his entire career hanging around. It is atypical in America and makes him look like a senior Syrian mukhabarat official.
Bill Ackman is fully distracted now from his original goal of shutting down public criticism of Israel to avenging personal slights against himself and his wife.
One thing I love about Bosnia is how women have equal rights to public space and very notably so in mosques and other religious institutions. This is in contrast to backwards and unequal norms in many Muslim countries. Great country.
Wahhabism deserves to be remembered alongside 20th totalitarian ideologies like fascism and communism that also focused on wiping out cultures to establish clean-slate ideological purity and inspired outbursts of organized mass murder. ISIS was the final revolting apotheosis.
These images are clearly intended to terrorize civilians sheltering in other parts of Gaza. Imagine being being a woman, or with your female relatives, trapped in the same territory with hostile soldiers making it a point of broadcasting to you such images.
Gaza city | Lingerie doesn’t stop.
Israeli sergeant from the 890th Paratroopers Battalion displaying lingerie belonging to displaced/killed Palestinian women in Gaza.
You can be dismissive of Palestinians if you like but I think it’s important to be fair and give complete picture.
They resisted nonviolently in 2018-2019 Gaza border protests and the outcome was that the Israeli military just shot and killed hundreds of them and nobody cared.
Both those examples from Congress are just from the past few weeks. If you spend a few hours watching Fox News and collating the various statements from influential people it’ll give you a good sense of perspective about the other side of this issue.
Proud to co-lead this effort with
@RepCasar
. The United States and the international community must make clear that we stand with the people of Pakistan, not with the forces subverting democracy.
If Biden greenlights a broader war in the Middle East in contradiction of bipartisan public preference to stay out of the region he will certainly deserve to lose the election. This will set the stage for more dominoes to fall with Trump likely exiting NATO upon taking office.
This gentleman literally just claimed that is Israel is fighting on behalf of the entire universe. I am used to Israeli leaders conflating their security concerns with the U.S. to drag them into the conflict but they are now attempting to compel Martian intervention.
ISRAELI PRESIDENT:
"If Israel wasn't there, Europe would be next, because the barbarians want to get us all out of the region"
No, if Israel "wasn't there" there would be no conflict in the 1st place
Another cheap attempt to ignite fear & make Israel's problem everybody else's.
Has something actually happened to this gentleman that he is so vocally afraid? Every time I hear comments from him for months he’s describing how afraid and unsafe he feels.
It is a little bit unbecoming and seems as though he is trying to direct attention towards himself.
#BREAKING
"I know you are afraid because I'm afraid" - says Shai Davidai, Pro-Israel professor at Columbia is currently outside of the gates attempting to go inside the 'Liberated Zone' encampment with his supporters.
Video by
@yyeeaahhhboiii2
Desk
@freedomnews
.tv to license
This supremacist colonial attitude from an influential figure does not serve Israel well. Ultimately no country is an island and one cannot survive forever treating all ones neighbors as untermensch — this is partly the reason so much hostility is engendered in the first place.
Israel needs now to live as a Silicon Valley in Sparta.
Part of Israel’s colossal failure of October 7th was a result of complacency.
Your typical Israeli was enjoying life, thinking about work, the next startup and the upcoming vacation.
Wars? Nah..that’s passé.
We got…
According to Trump one of the major components of his Israel-Palestine policy will be deporting people in the U.S. who engage in protests against Israel:
You can defend U.S.-Israel relationship all you want but it has nothing to do with democracy or some kind of “free world” Cold War fantasy. It’s a country where a third of the people living under the government have zero rights and are not planned to be getting them in future.
I don’t think there’s any compelling national interest for the U.S. to deeply involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict and would even argue its role is injurious. But if it is going to be involved there needs to be full ability for American citizens to freely debate this policy.
A nice thing that Israel could do to repay all the support from the Sunni Arab world would be to stop obstructing emergence of a Palestinian state. The continued statelessness and violence suffered by Palestinians threatens the stability of these governments especially Jordan.
Just rereading this sentence repeatedly and thinking what a time to be alive
"Jordanian jets downed dozens of Iranian drones flying across northern and central Jordan heading to Israel"
Given deliberate destruction of infrastructure it seems like the goal of Israeli military campaign is to reduce Palestinians living in Gaza to the level of subsistence that Bashar al-Assad reduced Syrians living in opposition areas. That was rightly deemed a serious war crime.
Our project coordinator, Jacob Burns, arrived in southern Gaza on 17 December 2023 & describes the horrific situation for Palestinians on the ground.
“Gaza is gone, basically, and there is nothing left. It’s difficult for Palestinians to see a life here again, which is very sad.”
Seeing people running interference for a famine has been a very eye-opening experience. The information is not just social media innuendo but reported by prominent global governance organizations and even senior Biden administration officials ().
Israel’s advocates continue to engage in a very, very dark campaign of famine denial.
What Klompas omits is that this World Food Program bakery in north Gaza just opened today. And days ago, USAID’s Samantha Power said famine has already begun in parts of north Gaza.
Most columnists at major newspapers have no particular talent or insight and are observably less intelligent or erudite than many anonymous commenters and bloggers. The purpose of reading them is to take a gauge on establishment thinking on various subjects.