Andrew Tertes

OFFICAL PAGE: Andrew Tertes is an author of fiction and poetry. He is an explorer of identity, place, culture and spirit.

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

Can somebody ask @NYCMayor Zohran Mamdani why he isn’t plannning to arrest Pezeshkian, the president of the Islamic Republic, who is attending the same UN conference as Netanyahu in September?

Tens of thousands of Iranians murdered in two days.

The worst massacre of our time.

No speech?

No arrest?

No performance?

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Hey @ZohranMamdani, see the broken brakes. Citi Bikes are falling apart. Maybe fix the things that are actually putting New Yorkers’ lives at risk.

Oh busy trying to arrest Netanyahu? I have the names of the men in Iran executing children and some are headed to New York.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

I’m excited to share that in a week, on July 27, my short book Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages will be published in paperback and as an eBook. It traces Hamas’s rise in Gaza; its motivations, the ideology that shaped its rule, and the road to October 7; interwoven with my own experience growing up under its ascent. I reflect on key elements of Gaza’s recent history and Hamas’s assault on the Palestinian national project. While not a full memoir or exhaustive history, the book offers a clear, accessible overview for readers often misled about Gaza and the Islamist movement that dominates it.

The book’s argument is direct: Hamas has inflicted catastrophic harm on Palestinians, turning Gazans into hostages of a violent, rigid movement whose decisions led to the Strip’s devastation, all while accounting for Israeli policy choices that helped entrench Hamas and made dislodging it difficult. This short book is my case against the terror organization and against those who cast it as legitimate “resistance.” It is a call to promote Palestinian agency, accountability, and responsibility, even within the profound imbalance of power dynamics with Israel. Palestinians urgently need honest assessment and self‑reflection from a genuinely pro‑Palestine perspective to learn from past mistakes and chart a different path toward safety, prosperity, freedom, and well‑being.

You can pre‑order the paperback or eBook at the link, or use the ISBN (9781760646158) to order through Amazon: https://t.co/QnFlYuW6hN

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

In the middle of a war, the Islamic Republic still finds time to flog this young women for music.

Anita Papist, a young Iranian singer, has been sentenced to 74 lashes.

Her crime? Singing and uploading her video on Instagram.

The regime confiscated her passport. Blocked her phone. Now they want to silence her voice.

This is called gender apartheid. A total apartheid against women.

Be her voice

[Rawan Osman روان عثمان @RawaneOsmane]

I'm half-Syrian, half-Lebanese, and here's why I can't stand people like Greta Thunberg. She quit school to chase climate activism while millions of children in my region quit school because their families can't afford it. She skips university "for Palestine" while our youth can't afford tuition, transport, or a functioning country to build a future in. She's never had a job; our people can't find one. She travels around the world (on a bicycle, of course) and sails to Gaza on a whim; our people can't get a visa to leave the misery they were born into. She has the luxury of adopting foreign causes; we don't have the luxury of just one problem. Millions of us live abroad because that's the only way to build a sustainable life. She acts like suffering belongs to Palestinians alone, while everyone in the Middle East lives in hell too, and it's not because of capitalism or climate change. It's because of a destructive ideology that uses the Palestinian cause as its tool. And like Khamenei, like Sinwar, like Arafat before her, she wears the keffiyeh — the uniform of that ideology, not a symbol of peace.

Then there's the shirt: "Yalla Intifada." The First Intifada (1987–1993) began as a mostly grassroots uprising — strikes, boycotts, stone-throwing — and still killed roughly 1,100 Palestinians and 160 Israelis. The Second Intifada (2000–2005) was a different animal entirely: a sustained campaign of suicide bombings that ripped through Israeli buses, cafés, and markets, deliberately targeting civilians. It left close to 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead. "Intifada" doesn't mean "ceasefire." It doesn't mean "peace talks." It means uprising by force, and the second one was defined by terror attacks on ordinary people.

So while Greta claims to be protesting an alleged genocide, the slogan on her chest is a celebration of the exact kind of violence that killed thousands, most of them Palestinian. She isn't standing against death. She's wearing merchandise for it.

@GretaThunberg #Intifada #Israel

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Shocking ….After I went on CBS and exposed Khamenei's staged funeral, I received over 50,000 comments from the Islamic Republic's cyber army on my instagram.

I checked their profiles. These are not bots. These are real people threatening to kidnap me, butcher me, and paying a bounty for anyone who chops my head off.

These are the supporters of the “Supreme Leader” of the Islamic Republic who cry for the death of a dictator.

And what is the reason of their anger?

This regime spends millions on lobbyists to normalize the Islamic Republic in Western media. When one woman goes on mainstream media, right after their leader's death and speaks the truth, and echoes the voices of millions inside Iran, they lose their minds.

Because the truth terrifies them.

This is also how it works: first they harass you online. Then they send killers to your door. They did it to Iranian journalist Rohullh Zam. First aid threaten him on line, even some of the opposition join the Online attack against him, then they kidnapped him from France to Iran, then they hanged him.

The Islamic CBS Republic is proud of it’s act of terrorism and publicly talk about kidnapping and killing their opponents.

Yes, the Islamic Republic doesn't care if you're left or right. Republican or Democrat. They want to silence us all.

My answer to all the new death threats:

I will not bow to my killers.
I will not bow to my oppressors.
I will keep echoing the voice of millions of Iranians, against this terrorist regime, for as long as I breathe.
✌️💪

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

URGENT:
"I reached out to almost every newspaper inside Iran. No one will touch this story."

Zeinab Mousavi known as "Aban" is dying quietly in Vakilabad Prison, and Iran’s regime wants no one to know.

A barista arrested alongside her brother Hassan on February 24, 2025, Zeinab has been charged with moharebeh, "enmity against God", for protesting. The charge carries the death penalty.

Now, her health is collapsing. For several consecutive nights, she has been suffering seizures in her sleep. Her family and supporters are demanding her immediate emergency transfer for medical treatment outside the prison walls. That demand has been ignored.

The silence around her case is not accidental.

Sepideh Qolian, an Iranian activist who was herself just released from prison, tried to break it. She reached out to most major Iranian newspapers to speak about the deteriorating conditions of the December protesters from Mashhad. Not one was willing to publish it.

"I'm at my most helpless," Qolian wrote. "If I speak to foreign media, I'll be arrested again. The conditions of the December prisoners are very bad."

Iran has built a perfect trap: beat them inside, silence those who witness it, and punish anyone who speaks out.

Zeinab Mousavi may be executed for protesting. She may also die waiting for medical care she is being denied.

Her story is being buried in real time. We refuse to let that happen.

#FreeZeinabMousavi

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Two weeks ago, I spoke with a retired Democratic Party official who had recently met with former Vice President Kamala Harris and said she is weighing a 2028 run but hasn’t yet decided. Today’s reporting that she’s engaging New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and certain “pro‑Palestine” activists should surprise no one; this faction has gained real influence across blue districts at the local, state, and federal levels. What would be surprising, and politically costly for her and the Democratic Party in 2028, is treating the extreme, divisive, and harmful voices and groups within the “pro‑Palestine movement” as legitimate representatives of the Palestinian issue. Harris should remember how some of these same malicious networks treated her in 2024, contributing directly to her defeat.

She should also look at how California State Senator Scott Wiener is currently being treated: he bent to and kneeled before the mob, distanced himself from Israel and AIPAC, and labeled Gaza a genocide; yet, that’s not good enough to the violent mobster activists who continue to attack, harass, embarrass, and undermine him. The interests of the Palestinian people, especially Gazans, require serious U.S. policy thinking and actions, not the lunatic and extreme agendas of the activist “pro-Palestine movement” or the emerging Islamo‑socialist political class inside the Democratic Party.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

An investigation into the NHS' maternity and neonatal services found "explicit antisemitic attitudes" among staff.

One Jewish person reported that they were told “Jewish people are sneaky," and many laboring women actively hide their Jewish identity because they are afraid of mistreatment.

I shouldn't need to say this, but I will. A woman in the middle of giving birth should not be worried that her midwife will find out she's Jewish and make her and her baby suffer.

And this isn't paranoia. It's not just hateful words. Look up the latest report on the NHS' maternity care; it outlines a "lack of a consistent standard of care." Some women are getting better treatment than others.

Combine that with the antisemitism, and it's not hard to figure out why Jewish women in the UK are scared.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Get a load of Hamas’s fascistic religious clerics, Imams, and Jihadi criminals in Gaza’s mosques: a demonic preacher brought a Glock handgun to a mosque and gave a deranged sermon talking about “one bullet in the head and straight to hell,” to describe the virtue of killing infidels, and insisting that there is “no greater form of worship than to spill the blood of nonbelievers and infidels.” This is a tiny snapshot of the criminal machinery that has held Gaza hostage for nearly two decades: a religious SS‑style apparatus that has victimized Palestinians, hollowed out Islam, corroded social values, crushed dissent, eliminated opposition, and imposed a reign of terror that turned Gazans against one another. What this Hamas‑ISIS preacher doesn’t grasp is that his ideology now has millions of admirers in the West; on college campuses, across social media, in activist circles, and even among a handful of members of Congress.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

After years of being banned from entering a stadium in my own country, for no crime other than being a woman, this is how I walked in.

This was the World Cup FIFA 2026 between England and Panama but for me, it was beyond that.

You have to be a woman from Iran or Afghanistan to truly understand this emotion.

For whom this simple act, walking into a stadium, moving with joy, showing my hair, sitting next to men, was not just forbidden. I was beaten for it. Imprisoned for it. Humiliated for it. Exiled for it. And even in exile, I became a target for multiple assassination plots.

And now people lecture me: "Don't politicize football."

I have a question: which part of my body hasn't already been politicized by the Islamic Republic? My hair? My voice? My seat in a stadium?

They turned our entire existence into a political battlefield. Every inch of a woman was a crime scene under their law.

And now I'm supposed to just sit back, eat a hot dog, and enjoy the game?

I did enjoy the game. England won. But walking through those gates, that was the real victory.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Dear U.S., UN, Western, and humanitarian officials and leaders: Please visit the Al‑Ahli Hospital in Gaza City and see the situation firsthand. Hamas’s intelligence operatives, internal security, and al‑Qassam fighters are using parts of the complex to interrogate and torture anyone they suspect of supporting the upcoming June 26 anti‑Hamas protests. Medical facilities in Gaza are not meant to be sanctuaries for Hamas. They are provided with necessary supplies and equipment, funded with Western taxpayer dollars, to treat civilians, not to provide cover for an Islamist organization that the international community designates as a terrorist group. Get them out of the hospital. Stop allowing a place meant for healing to be turned into a site of fear and abuse.
@UNRWA @UNReliefChief @UNICEF @uninvhrc @UNICEFinArabic @WHO @UNOCHA @ICRC_ilot @ICRC_ar @ICRC @RESCUEorg @amnestyusa @amnesty @UNHumanRights @UNDP @USUN @UN_News_Centre @antonioguterres @MSF @UN_HRC @MSF_USA @msf_arabic @UNICEFinArabic @UNarabic @OCHAFunds @UNHCR_Arabic @Refugees @UNGeneva @UNESCOarabic @UNNewsArabic @Oxfam @OxfamAmerica @oxfamgb @usembassyjlm @USEmbassyJLMPal @RapidResponse47 @PressSec @SecRubio @CENTCOM

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

The United Nations and Hamas: A Toxic Relationship? A close friend of mine from Gaza City, tortured nearly to death by Hamas, a well‑known activist against the group, and someone I helped evacuate during the war, was featured in the UN Human Rights Council’s report documenting Hamas’s abuses against Palestinian civilians: executions, torture, beatings, the misuse of medical facilities, and the terrorizing of women and children.

When he met with the UN investigation team, one investigator was openly sympathetic to Hamas and the “resistance” narrative, signaling from the start that she doubted his testimony. He then spent five hours convincing the rest of the team that Hamas had, in fact, tortured him, despite extensive evidence of his injuries circulating on social media and a medical examination confirming blunt‑force trauma consistent with organized abuse, not random violence or Israeli bombardment. He even had to walk the investigators, including Ms. pro‑Hamas, through how his case fits into hundreds of others across Gaza, and how Hamas itself has filmed and publicly released its own executions, beatings, and torture to terrorize the population.

Imagine that: Hamas documenting its own crimes on video, and supposedly serious investigators refusing to believe what is right in front of them. Imagine a human rights inquiry that includes someone openly aligned with the very group under investigation. It forces a hard question: why are parts of the UN system so compromised when it comes to Hamas that they cannot think beyond Israel’s actions long enough to examine the crimes of Palestinian actors, crimes that are equally harmful, shameful, and deserving of condemnation? And why are some so eager to believe Palestinians when the accusation is against Israel, yet so reluctant when the accusation is against Hamas, even when the evidence is overwhelming?

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Today, women in Afghanistan are being shot in the streets simply for anting an education, wanting a job. Wanting to work and wanting to walk outside without a man's permission.

Taliban security forces killed one person and several wounded. Dozens arrested including women and girls.

It started last Friday, when Taliban imams announced from mosque loudspeakers that women were forbidden from leaving their homes without full hijab, including face cover.

Morality police flooded Herat's streets, markets, and shopping centers, batons in hand, arresting women for their clothing.

Just one day after some men in the West rolled out the red carpet for the Taliban, normalizing them, legitimizing them, shaking their hands, you can see how savagely women being shot and beaten up in the streets.

[Luai Ahmed @JustLuai]

In honor of Pride month, here’s a list of countries in the Middle East that recognize same sex marriage:

1. Israel

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Does Norway support terror? Walking through downtown Oslo, I came across a disturbing mural – apparently sponsored by the Oslo National Academy of Arts, a publicly funded institution – glorifying the iconography of violent extremism. The display featured Hamas’s inverted red triangle, a rifle, a keffiyeh, and the image of a Lufthansa civilian aircraft placed in front of a Marxist militant from the PFLP, a group responsible for multiple plane hijackings. Behind it all: smoke plumes meant to evoke an Israeli airstrike on Gaza. This was not “solidarity.” It was a celebration of terror against civilians, presented as if it were synonymous with the Palestinian cause. It is a perfect snapshot of what has gone wrong in parts of Western Europe: the normalization, and even celebration, of grotesque symbols that collapse Palestinian identity into plane hijackings, rifles, and failed communist militant fantasies from the 1970s and the contemporary Islamist disasters from the present.

Who benefits from repeatedly associating Palestinians with plane hijackings, AK‑47s, and washed‑up extremists? Why would a major Norwegian arts institution choose to elevate these images when countless Palestinian humanitarians, thinkers, and community leaders embody a far more compelling vision of dignity, freedom, and a future beyond blood merchants who have sold “armed resistance” as a path to liberation? Instead of recycling sick, dehumanizing symbols that reinforce the stereotype of Palestinians as terrorists, imagine highlighting the humanity of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond; their love of life, their desire for peace, opportunity, and relief from decades of failed “resistance” narratives that Western radicals and diaspora Arab and Palestinian voices refuse to let go of.

Oslo is saturated with “pro‑Palestine” stickers, flyers, and signs. But if “solidarity” manifests as the glorification of terror and the reduction of Palestinians to violent caricatures, then this support does more harm than good. In that case, Norway’s sympathy is not solidarity at all; it is a disservice to the very people it claims to champion.