Gregg Carlstrom
@glcarlstrom
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Middle East correspondent, @TheEconomist . Author, 'How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat From Within.'
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Joined April 2008
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You Brits thought you could make the most embarrassing political decision of the year. Boy, did we show you.
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Wild story: someone took out an enormous short position against Israeli stocks five days before the October 7th attack, orders of magnitude bigger than normal trading activity and big enough to have made billions of shekels when the market crashed.
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A few half-formed late-night thoughts. Israel's room for maneuver on a ground invasion has just shrunk dramatically. Not just because it has lost a good deal of international support, but because the region is now boiling. 🧵
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A lesson from the Spanish flu: there's no trade-off between public health and the economy. The cities that saw business rebound quickest after the pandemic were the ones that took the strictest measures to protect their residents.
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And finally, a thought for far too many people on here: you shouldn't celebrate anything in this fucking conflict. It always ends in tears.
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If you've never been to Gaza it's hard to grasp just how bleak it is. A whole generation now has grown up locked in a tiny enclave. They're coming of age in a place with no work, endless blackouts, barely any clean drinking water, and little prospect of getting out.
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Billions of dollars in military aid for decades and America still gets rebuffed on a request for some unused Kennedy-era air-defense kit because Israel is worried it might make Vladimir Putin mad
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A few thoughts on today, in no particular order. First, among Israelis: impossible to overstate the level of shock. The intelligence failure resembles 1973, but you almost have to go back to 1948 to find an analogue for the violence that played out in cities and towns. 🧵
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Israel told civilians to flee north Gaza, then bombed one of the only roads south: "The video, recorded along Salah Al-Deen road, shows bodies, including several young children, strewn along the road as black smoke rises from vehicles engulfed in flames."
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That works out to 70 grams (2oz) of food and 27ml (1oz) of water per person per day
The IDF is continuing to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
As of yesterday, 665 trucks have entered Gaza, with deliveries of vital humanitarian aid:
📍Over 3,000 tons of food
📍Over 1,720 tons of medical equipment
📍Over 600 tons of equipment for temporary…
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In a decisive blow against Israel, the Houthis struck a Norwegian-owned, Indian-crewed tanker ship that was carrying vegetable oil from Malaysia to Italy with a cruise missile
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In eight days this has gone from "obviously the Palestinians did it" to "dunno who did it" to "quite possible we did it but let's just forget about it"
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"In Riyadh, the Saudi ruler kept Blinken waiting several hours for a meeting presumed to happen in the evening but which the crown prince only showed up for the next morning."
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"Germany estimated that about 300,000 metric tons of methane entered the atmosphere as a result of the releases... roughly the same climate impact over a 20-year period as the annual emissions from about 5.48 million US cars."
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The state of Gaza's hospitals: Surgeries without anesthesia and with only mobile phones for light. Vinegar from the corner store as disinfectant. 5,000 patients in a hospital built for 700, some sleeping on the floor. No power, no clean water, little fuel.
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Also just to add a note of humility to what I've been writing for the past few days: I don't know what the fuck is going on, no one does, we're all trying to figure this out in real time. Covered this region for a decade and a half, cannot remember a time everyone was so confused
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This post, from an official spokesman for the Israeli government, is pure disinformation, and he knows it's disinformation, but he hasn't removed it >18 hours later. The embedded video is from a film shoot in Lebanon
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The guy telling Palestinians in Gaza not to leave their land presumably delivered those words from somewhere a short drive away from the Four Seasons in Doha
"The strategic strike against the Israeli occupation indicates that the liberation of our land is within reach, and the people of
#Gaza
are deeply rooted in their land and will not leave Gaza."
- leader of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh
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As ever with Fox, this kind of volte-face is very familiar to anyone who's watched state TV in an authoritarian country
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An analysis of satellite imagery suggests that, after less than two weeks of war, 11,000 buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged. "At least 92,000 people will have no home to return to when the fighting stops."
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Been tear-gassed in a lot of countries and I've never seen protesters douse the canisters like this. Well done, Hong Kong
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"Toxic." "Freaking evil." "I think he just wants to kill anybody he can." These are the comrades of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL prosecuted for war crimes and now feted by Trump, describing him in their own words.
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"The hunger war has started." A bag of flour goes for $120 in Gaza. There's a black market for sugar. Forget about eggs. Thousands of people pounce on aid trucks when they arrive; crowds ransacked a warehouse where food had piled up before distribution.
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The Israeli government thinking an African country might be a dumping ground for forcibly displaced people is just the darkest historical irony
“The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister-site Zman Yisrael reports that Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.”
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Lebanon's political class: couldn't be bothered to move the giant bomb out of Beirut or help repair the damage it caused, but finds the time to call me to complain about how they're covered in a foreign publication. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised but it's mind-boggling
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State of my flat in Beirut. And all the flats in my building, the hospital across the street, the whole area. Glass and debris still falling off buildings. Entire neighborhood just devastated.
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This via
@NBCNews
is a jaw-dropping quote. From bear hug to cover your ass: just in case this turns out to be a long and devastating war with no coherent plan for what comes next, at least we'll be able to say we offered some milquetoast criticism
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"Attempting to prosecute crimes might encourage the perpetrator to commit further crimes" is certainly a novel legal defense
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The White House having to basically plead for weeks with one of its largest recipients of military aid to get a shipment of flour delivered to Gaza is a real "who's the fucking superpower here" moment
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Everyone in the region is joining the condemnation. Here is the UAE, for example, Israel's most reliable partner in the Arab world over the past few years, explicitly blaming Israel for the attack on Ahli hospital and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
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Listen, details matter and it's irresponsible that some journalists ran the "beheaded babies" story without substantive proof. But there are a lot of people on here acting like there's some moral distinction between murdering and beheading kids versus just murdering them
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"He was buried for five hours under the wreckage, unable to reach his wife and five children. 'I was listening to their voices beneath the rubble. I heard Dana and Zain calling Dad! Dad! before their voices faded and then I realized they had died.'"
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Issam Abdallah, the Reuters journalist killed yesterday by Israeli shelling: "[His] last post on Instagram was a tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist who was shot and killed last year by the Israeli military."
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A far-right Israeli minister suggested nuking millions of people in Gaza. Netanyahu said he "suspended" the minister. But he doesn't actually have the power to do that. Sure enough, hours later, the minister took part in a government vote.
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"I was waiting in line to buy bread when suddenly and without any prior warning seven to eight missiles fell... there were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place. It felt like the end of the world."
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This has been official Israeli policy for many years, it's just not often stated so bluntly by officials (in English). Instead of pushing them endlessly to endorse a two-state solution, ask them to describe the one-state outcome they support
BREAKING: Israeli ambassador
@TzipiHotovely
rejects the idea of a two-state solution
"The answer is absolutely no", she says.
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
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Once home to >1m people, north Gaza is now a desolate wasteland. The Israeli army controls a depopulated region that is uninhabitable for years to come. And in the south, swollen to twice its pre-war population, a dire humanitarian crisis is getting worse.
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Gaza's health system is being destroyed at its roots: traumatized doctors, wrecked ambulances and ruined hospitals. Even if the war ended today, studies estimate that thousands more Palestinians would die in the next six months for lack of medical care.
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"A senior Israeli military intelligence officer dismissed a detailed warning predicting Hamas's raid of October 7, calling it an 'imaginary scenario'... soldiers also warned their analysis of several videos showed Hamas was rehearsing taking hostages."
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A few thoughts after a long night. First, I think there's a strong case that Iran's reprisal was a strategic error. For months Israel was increasingly isolated, America looked feckless and Iran was projecting power through proxies whilst preserving detente with Arab states. 🧵
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This is a volatile moment in the Gulf. To publish a story blaming Iran for the damaged tankers, based on one anonymous "official" who offers no hard evidence, is irresponsible.
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A small request as the East Coast wakes up: Can we please not make the possible killing of Baghdadi, a man responsible for countless thousands dead and the immiseration of millions, into a psychodrama about American politics and Trump?
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Lindsey Graham, 2018: "I’m not going back to Saudi Arabia as long as this guy is in charge... I'm gonna sanction the hell out of Saudi Arabia."
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This person is a member of the Senate intelligence committee. And her initial reaction to a well-publicized mob incited by the president of the United States was "it must be the Iranians"
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Grotesque stunt that dishonors the memories of the 6m Jews killed in the Holocaust, and which makes absolutely no sense to boot, coming from the envoy of a modern state with an advanced military
Israeli UN ambassador
@giladerdan1
wears Nazi-era sign for jews - "Yellow Star" - at UNSC.
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The incoming chairman of a Knesset committee that deals with the occupied West Bank is a far-right extremist who was suspected of arson at a mosque, investigated by the Shin Bet and "filmed pushing and kicking the head of a Palestinian village council".
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There is a bizarre analytical tendency to forget that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is decades old and rooted in real grievances. Or maybe not bizarre: it serves a political purpose to ignore that and blame everything on geopolitics ("Iran wants to sabotage normalization").
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Trying to decide if gifting an electric car to the ruler of a petrostate is a very sly form of trolling
Erdogan gifts Turkey’s first domestically produced electric car 'Togg' to Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
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The White House was already concerned that Israel was embarking on a long, ruinous war without an exit strategy, and that it risked dragging the region into a broader conflict. Both of those concerns have no doubt been amplified over the past few hours.
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Balanced against all of this is an Israeli public primed for a major war and an Israeli leadership that will not want to appear weak. But the political window for a ground offensive was already shrinking after repeated delays, and the geopolitical calculus has just changed a lot.
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Nothing says "we're taking this seriously" like talking about a war that has killed ~30,000 people with an ice-cream cone halfway to your mouth
President Biden said he hopes a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas can take effect by early next week.
Biden commented on the negotiations in New York after taping an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”
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From the MbS visit to Ankara yesterday, a picture worth a thousand words (📷: Saudi Press Agency)
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"Fifteen years have passed since Netanyahu promised to topple the Hamas government. In those years he's managed to successfully topple Israeli society, military deterrence and orderly governance—and Hamas became a trained army."
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Very detailed
@972mag
investigation of Israel's targeting practices in Gaza: a far more permissive attitude toward both civilian casualties and strikes on non-military targets. The whole thing is worth a read but I'll highlight a couple of key points.
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Third: not only will today's events put talk of normalization on hold, they should also put to rest the discredited idea that Israeli-Arab normalization would magically make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict go away.
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Someone at the State Department copy-pastes this statement every month or two and that is the extent of American policy on the subject
.
@statedeptspox
We have made quite clear to the Government of Israel that we are very concerned about settler violence in the West Bank. And we have sent a very clear message to them that it’s unacceptable, it needs to stop, & those responsible for it need to be held accountable
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It's that wonderful time of year when Arab leaders get together to catch up on sleep at the Arab League summit.
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Netanyahu: we will control everything from the river to the sea indefinitely
Biden: aww shucks, Bibi didn't mean he's opposed to creating a Palestinian state, I'm sure we can work something out
Netanyahu: no, seriously, there will be no Palestinian state
לא אתפשר על שליטה ביטחונית ישראלית מלאה על כל השטח ממערב לירדן - וזה מנוגד למדינה פלסטינית.
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Sisi called for pro-Palestine protests in Egypt today and a crowd of Egyptians wound up going to Tahrir Square (which was not a state-sanctioned protest location) and chanting, among other things, the old Arab Spring refrain of "bread, freedom, social justice"
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We've seen protests in the West Bank against Abbas (who is historically unpopular to begin with), protests in Jordan, crowds gathering outside the American embassy in Lebanon. And the risk of Iranian-backed groups opening other fronts has probably risen markedly.
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There is talk in Washington and the region about trying to pay off Egypt, which is facing a debt crisis, to host Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza. The precedent would be the debt relief that Hosni Mubarak received in 1991 for joining the Gulf war.
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Spare a thought for the Biden campaign staffer now tasked with securing an endorsement from Ayman al-Zawahiri's nephew
Osama bin Laden's niece says only Trump can prevent another 9/11
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If you don't know much about Israel/Palestine you really can just sit this one out, rather than writing pieces about how Gaza could be a viable sovereign state with a tourism-based economy
So far I've resisted the urge to write anything about Israel/Palestine, but the current war prompted me to bite the bullet and say what I think should happen.
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Totally normal stuff from America's top diplomat on one of his final trips abroad
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The charming folks at Israel's NSO Group were asked by a number of mostly authoritarian governments, among them Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to spy on the phones of more than 180 journalists around the world (myself included).
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Notice a pattern? Turkey has tossed out a batch of Chinese-made coronavirus tests because of "inaccurate results." Spain withdrew 9,000 Chinese kits because they had just 30% accuracy. The Czech Republic found that 80% of its kits from China were faulty.
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Egypt could probably resolve this Suez Canal thing in a few minutes by calling in a team of those guys who park cars on Cairo streets with nanoscale distances between the bumpers
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You know what would be helpful right now? If the Pentagon had a way for named officials to present evidence, on the record, and take questions from reporters. They could call it a "press briefing."
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I will buy dinner for any journalist who asks him to name the books
Kushner tells Sky News Arabia he has read 25 books on the Israel-Palestine conflict
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That gets at a second point: why Hamas did this. The backdrop to today is not just the miserable conditions in Gaza, it's also a looming succession struggle in the West Bank, the historic unpopularity of Mahmoud Abbas and the possible collapse of the PA.
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They have nowhere to go
BREAKING: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Palestinian civilians in Gaza to “leave now” because the Israeli military is going to “turn all Hamas hiding places into rubble”
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Netanyahu saying he opposes the PA's return to Gaza is the same thing he's done for many years: trying to undermine the PA because dealing with it might require diplomatic concessions. Can't be serious discussion of post-war plans while he's still in power
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This is an excellent answer grounded in a foundational bit of civics that often gets lost and ignored in American political discourse
.
@SenTomCotton
: "Why haven't you resigned?"
Gen. Milley: "It would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to just resign because my advice is not taken." He also says, "My dad didn't get a choice to resign at Iwo Jima."
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It'll take a few days to know the scale of Israel's response. Netanyahu has historically been cautious about using military force. But he's now surrounded by a coterie of incompetent ideologues, and public opinion will probably be in favor of a dramatic change to the status quo.
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Pompeo is a good example of someone from this administration whose conduct should render him ineligible for any future job in government
Pompeo just now: “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration."
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Brutal story. A family of four in Gaza went to stay with their daughter on Mughrabi Street, thinking her home was safer. They hadn't even unloaded the taxi when Israeli drones fired missiles at the street. The parents were killed; so was the driver.
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The pained, confused looks from the anchors are amazing, and should be familiar to anyone who's watched a state TV segment go off-script in an authoritarian country
Lindsey Graham calls in to Fox & Friends & calls Trump's decision to abandon the Kurds "impulsive."
"I hope I'm making myself clear how shortsighted & irresponsible this decision is in my view," he says. "This to me is just unnerving to its core."
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"Qatar was not surreptitiously funneling illicit funds to Gaza. It did what Israel asked and Israel condoned. This may be uncomfortable for some to admit, but those are the facts. Israel encouraged Qatar to funnel money to Gaza because it served a policy."
Netanyahu wants to make Qatar the fall guy for October 7 massacre. Don't let him
***
www.haaretz.com
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French diplomats have spent the past two weeks saying they disagree with America's Gaza policy. Apparently what they meant was that America's Gaza policy was insufficiently bonkers
JERUSALEM, Oct 24 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron proposed on Tuesday that an international coalition fighting against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria be widened to include the fight against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
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Next time someone in DC proposes an ambitious effort to reshape some far-off corner of the world, please remind them that we're apparently incapable of designing an app to tally up a few thousand votes in Iowa gymnasiums
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Quick 🧵 on this
@WSJ
piece, which reports claims from Hamas and Hizballah that Iran "helped plan Hamas's Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light." Those claims are being used to support a narrative that is thus far unsubstantiated.
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This is surely the biggest miscalculation in British politics since the previous biggest miscalculation in British politics 11 months ago.
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Man, who could have predicted that giving 100 days of ironclad support to an Israeli prime minister who has spent decades telling Democratic presidents to go fuck themselves might end with that prime minister "rejecting most of [your] recent requests"
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Airdropping aid to Gaza would be an absurd and embarrassing gimmick from an impotent administration that persistently refuses to enforce its own laws around military aid and utilize its considerable leverage over Israel. Just a profound policy failure
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"We didn't shoot the starving people, they trampled each other because of the desperation and anarchy in a region we ostensibly control" is not really the defense Israel thinks it is
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Boggles the mind that every single person involved in the post-9/11 fiasco has not gone into seclusion, made a public apology, committed seppuku, something, anything. There's more accountability for a McDonald's franchisee than the foreign policy/national security establishment
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On Tuesday, Biden said Israel was carrying out "indiscriminate bombing" in Gaza. On Wednesday, administration officials told CNN Biden has "no plans to shift its position and draw any red lines around the transfer of weapons and munitions to Israel."
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Almost nothing has made me laugh over the past nine days but I did get a chuckle out of the Four Seasons tweeting to inform me that Ismail Haniyeh is not, in fact, a guest of the hotel
@glcarlstrom
We can confirm that Ismail Haniyeh is not living at or staying at Four Seasons Hotel Doha.
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If you want today in a tweet: The American president, now facing an impeachment trial, unveiled a proposal from his unqualified son-in-law to let Israel's caretaker government, led by an indicted prime minister, start annexing large tracts of occupied land.
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"We forgot the Palestinians exist" is... quite a correction
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He can't even do regime change right in America
Bolton says he won’t vote Trump, won’t back Biden either: ABC
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In the past 24 hours a lot of people on here have both tweeted admiringly about how the Israeli army misled foreign journalists about a Gaza ground offensive, and accepted at face value an unsubstantiated claim from the Israeli army that the AP was sharing a building with Hamas
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Launching drones that fly at <200km/h from ~1,000km away is about the most telegraphed attack you could conceive of (though one assumes there might be missiles fired later as well)
BREAKING: Iran launches attack against Israel using dozens of drones, four U.S. and Israeli officials told me
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"Erik Prince is back in Iraq with Chinese funding, does security for Belt and Road Initiative projects, and also has an office in the UAE" is a tidy preview of the coming dystopia that is the 21st century
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"I've never seen Gaza in such ruins. Stories of death and destruction are everywhere, in every neighborhood. Children left without parents. Ruined families. I doubt that a temporary cease-fire will be of any help."
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You can be a near-absolutist on free speech but recognize that there is a compelling case (with legal precedent) for booting Trump off this platform, and you can be deeply uncomfortable with the power of tech companies but recognize that this isn't a First Amendment question
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Netanyahu just gave what was billed as a major prime-time address about the war in Gaza and which basically boiled down to "we will proceed with the ground offensive, one day, inshallah". Absolute dysfunction in the Israeli government at the moment
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