Jan Willem Brands

CTO Emeritus

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Let’s get a few things straight:

Lebanon is a country that was destroyed by importing other people’s causes into it and being used as a launching pad against Israel.

The reason Arabs and Muslims were able to do that is that Lebanon was a Christian-led nation, and the Christians had to appease the Arab and Muslim majority surrounding them.

Israel never attacked Lebanon, never, unprovoked.

Lebanon was pressured into attacking Israel alongside the Arab states in 1948.

Then Palestinians were imported into Lebanon after Jordan’s Sunni king expelled them, and the Christian Lebanese weren’t in a position to refuse.

The Sunni Muslims, alongside the communists, armed the Palestinian militias and let them use Lebanon as a launching pad against Israel.

Israel invaded to clear out the Palestinian terrorists because Lebanon itself couldn’t, so the 1982 invasion was, in reality, helping Lebanon restore its sovereignty.

Hezbollah was created in 1982 as an Iranian proxy to capitalize on the so-called Palestinian cause.

Israel remained in southern Lebanon to deter the new Iranian militia.

In 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon.

Hezbollah kept attacking Israel and kidnapping its soldiers.

In 2006, Israel went to war with Lebanon after Hezbollah kidnapped its soldiers.

In 2023, following the Hamas attack, Hezbollah attacked Israel unprovoked on October 8.

The Lebanese government is too weak to disarm Hezbollah.

Israel needs guarantees for its security, so the disarmament of Hezbollah is non-negotiable.

The useful idiots who tell you any other version are lying to you.

[Charles Curran @charliebcurran]

You're hiding an air conditioner under your floor, aren't you?

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Vous vous souvenez de Greta.

Une enfant, des tresses, des larmes parfaitement cadrées, hissée à la tribune des Nations unies comme on hisse un drapeau. « Vous avez volé mes rêves. » Et le monde entier, debout, qui applaudit sa propre image — attendri, ému, certain d'être enfin du bon côté de l'Histoire.

Personne n'a été dupe. Pas une seconde. Tout le monde a reconnu la mise en scène, l'enfant-étendard, la conscience morale fabriquée en studio puis livrée clé en main à un Occident qui ne demandait qu'à pleurer sur lui-même.

Ce soir, je ne veux pas vous parler de ça.

Je ne veux pas vous parler de droite. Je ne veux pas vous parler de gauche. Je ne veux surtout pas vous parler de ce mot — « racisme » — que vous dégainez comme une herse dès qu'un fait s'approche un peu trop près de vous. Ce mot qui ne sert plus à nommer une faute, mais à éteindre une question. À détourner les yeux. À ne jamais, jamais avoir à regarder.

Alors regardons. Une fois. Ensemble. Sans le filtre.

Voici l'Europe.

Le continent qui a inventé l'université et la cathédrale, la perspective et le contrepoint, l'habeas corpus et la presse libre. Le continent de Dante et de Bach, de Newton et de Pasteur, de Bologne et de Coïmbra et de la Sorbonne. Le continent qui, le premier, a osé écrire qu'un homme naît libre.

Et voici ce que nous en avons fait.

Des économies à l'arrêt, qui ne créent plus rien, qui vivent du souvenir de leur richesse comme un vieillard vit de ses photographies. Des villes où l'on ne marche plus la nuit, où l'on rentre la tête basse, où l'on apprend à ses filles à raser les murs. Une jeunesse entière sous anxiolytiques, biberonnée au vide, à qui l'on a tout donné sauf une raison de se lever le matin. Un continent qui a cessé de faire des enfants parce qu'il a cessé de croire en demain.

Et à Rotherham — souvenez-vous de ce nom — mille quatre cents enfants. Mille quatre cents. Violées, vendues, brisées, des années durant. Et le rapport officiel, le rapport Jay, l'écrit noir sur blanc, de la main même de l'État : les autorités savaient, et elles ont détourné le regard. Par peur d'être accusées de racisme.

Lisez cette phrase jusqu'au bout. Votre mot magique, votre herse, votre éteignoir — il a un prix. Et ce prix, ce sont des petites filles. Sacrifiées non par des monstres tapis dans l'ombre, mais par des fonctionnaires bien sous tous rapports qui ont préféré leur tranquillité morale à leur devoir.

Et Samuel Paty. Un professeur. Décapité. En France. En plein jour. Pour avoir montré un dessin à des élèves. Ne me parlez pas d'une menace à venir, d'un fantasme, d'une peur irrationnelle agitée par l'extrême quelque-chose. C'est arrivé. C'est arrivé chez nous. Un homme a perdu sa tête sur un trottoir français pour avoir fait son métier : apprendre à des enfants à penser par eux-mêmes.

Et pendant ce temps, à l'autre bout du monde, un pays qu'on appelait il y a dix ans la capitale mondiale du meurtre.

Le Salvador.

Un homme y a décidé que cela suffisait. Et l'on y filme aujourd'hui des familles qui flânent le soir, des terrasses pleines, des enfants dehors, une douceur qu'on jurerait volée à Lisbonne ou à Vienne. « Ce n'est pas l'Europe, c'est le Salvador. »

Laissez cette phrase vous traverser. Que ce soit désormais le Salvador qui donne à l'Europe des leçons de sécurité, et non l'inverse — il n'existe pas d'humiliation plus parfaite, ni de diagnostic plus net.

Votre projet, vous nous l'aviez pourtant vendu comme l'horizon même de l'Histoire. Ouvert. Globalisé. « Inclusif. » La fin des nations, la fin des frontières, la grande réconciliation du genre humain. C'était beau. C'était généreux. C'était une promesse de cathédrale.

Et ça ne marche pas.

Les résultats sont là, sous vos fenêtres, dans ces statistiques que vous n'osez plus publier, dans le regard de vos propres enfants. Ça ne marche pas. Et le plus terrible — ce qui rend tout cela impardonnable — c'est que vous le savez. Vous le savez, et vous continuez. Vous voyez le mal se faire, et vous regardez ailleurs, encore, toujours, parce qu'avouer reviendrait à mourir un peu.

Mais je ne vous écris pas pour pleurer. On a assez pleuré.

Car l'Europe, la vraie, n'est pas ses gestionnaires. Elle n'est pas cette caste fatiguée qui la liquide comme on solde un héritage encombrant. L'Europe, c'est autre chose — de plus vieux, de plus profond, de plus têtu. Quelque chose qui a survécu aux Huns, à la peste noire, aux guerres de Trente Ans, à deux suicides mondiaux au siècle dernier, et qui chaque fois s'est relevé des cendres, parce qu'au fond d'elle brûle une braise que rien n'a jamais pu éteindre : le refus de se résigner.

Ce continent n'a pas dit son dernier mot. Il ne le dira pas. Tant qu'il restera un homme pour aimer ce qu'il a reçu, pour vouloir le transmettre intact, pour préférer une vérité dure à un mensonge confortable — l'Europe vivra.

Et vous qui l'avez gérée comme une faillite, vous finirez où finissent tous ceux qui ont eu honte de ce qu'ils étaient : dans les marges. Oubliés. Tournés en dérision par vos propres petits-enfants. Ça aussi, vous le savez.

Alors ce soir, une seule question. Posez-la-vous honnêtement, devant la glace, sans témoin, sans communicant, sans élément de langage.

Combien de temps encore ?

[Taya Bass @travelingflying]

Elon Musk on Europe: ”I would recommend radical change in Europe that encourages a much higher birth rate. This may require some very dramatic incentives. I think Europe needs to have a sensible immigration policy where people are properly vetted before coming to Europe, and if they commit crimes, they are deported. Otherwise you will have destruction of Europe.

Also, you have to have a significant effort in deregulation and basically removal of laws and regulations so that you don’t get hardening of the arteries until basically everything it’s illegal to do anything in Europe, which is what’s basically happening now.

So I’d recommend immediate and dramatic action for deregulation, freedom of speech, and sensible immigration and improving the birth rate. If those things happen, Europe will have a good future. And if they don’t, Europe will fail.”

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@OliverMolander Why are you leaving out the key ingredient? You need to REWARD risk taking. Making shitloads of money is extremely cool.

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@christianreber You are not REWARDED enough for taking risks

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@OlafGierhake All change starts at home. Get rid of the Prof. Dr. Dr. titles and you will be taken more seriously outside the valley of the clueless, i.e. Deutschland.

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@ListerLawrence "Thou shalt not kill". Then, because killing takes place 1000 times every day, you decide to kill a little too. Moron. Either you believe in the cause & effect or you don't. Act locally.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Pourquoi Mistral est loin derrière? La vraie réponse n'est pas technique. Elle est culturelle. Et elle est politique.

Pour construire un modèle SOTA, il faut accepter d'être un pirate.

Tous les labos qui comptent ont entraîné leurs modèles sur la quasi-totalité d'internet. Le web, les livres, le code, les vidéos. Sans demander la permission à personne. Les Américains le font. Les Chinois le font à une échelle encore plus brutale. Ce n'est pas un dérapage, c'est la condition d'entrée dans la course.

Le frontier, c'est la guerre. C'est risqué, c'est sanglant, ça demande de mettre une force que 99% des gens sont incapables d'imaginer. Tu engages tout, tu prends des risques qui pourraient te tuer, et tu fonces quand même.

Cette énergie-là, l'Europe la stérilise méthodiquement.

Pourquoi? Parce que chez nous, personne n'est libre.

Les gens ne sont pas libres, et ils sont pauvres. Même les entrepreneurs sont pauvres, parce qu'on ponctionne, on encadre, on bride à chaque étape.

Tu veux recruter vite et fort? Le droit du travail te transforme en otage. Tu veux bouger vite? Vingt couches de réglementation à la con t'attendent à chaque pas. Tu veux prendre un risque démesuré? Tout le système est conçu pour t'en empêcher, "pour ton bien".

On a construit un continent optimisé pour ne jamais perdre. Résultat: on ne gagne jamais rien.

La solution n'est pas un énième plan, une énième subvention, un énième "champion européen" décrété par Bruxelles.

Il faut tronçonner le poids de l'État. Supprimer la masse de réglementations absurdes. Créer un droit du travail spécifique aux startups, où on peut embaucher, prendre des risques et avancer à la vitesse de la guerre.

Tant qu'on ne libère pas cette énergie, on continuera à commenter depuis les gradins les modèles que d'autres construisent.

Mistral ne paie pas un retard technique. Mistral paie un retard de civilisation.

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@JimFergusonUK The one thing more of nuisance than a retired engineer is a…

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@almmaasoglu YES

[Dominique Paul @DominiqueCAPaul]

To all technical students and engineers in Europe.

The US export control on LLMs is the first taste of what will become the new norm. Many people are calling for "radical measures" and that we need the equivalent of a Manhattan Project to create change in Europe. But this is not how change will happen. Change will never come top-down from a government. The state and EU can fund, but they cannot found it. That part is on us.

You are the only ones who can change this.

You are among the few people on this continent who actually know how to build foundational technology - LLMs, robotic AI, actuators from scratch, chip infrastructure, rocket engines, organoids. ETH, EPFL, TUM, École Polytechnique, KTH, Imperial and dozens more produce absurd talent every single year. And almost all of it talks itself out of building.

We finish our degrees surrounded by such an incredible average that we're sure someone is always better at [your idea] - so who are we to start? I've seen so many friends at ETH think they need to "get more experience first" and take a job at Nvidia or Google and never do anything interesting again.

Technology-driven companies aren't founded by the most qualified person. They're willed into existence by people who see what others do not and refuse to stop. The person who's "better than you" almost never does it. And as for experience, nothing will teach you how to build the thing like, well, just trying to build the thing.

Our education is a chance most of the world will never have. There are people in Europe who have to worry about getting a job. We get to worry about finding our dream job. We're able to make bets that not many people can make or afford. It's nothing anybody expects you to do, but if you want a life filled with purpose, this is a unique kind of responsibility you can choose to step up to.

So if you actually want to do something ambitious, how about changing a continent?

If you really want change, you cannot wait for others. You are one of the few people who can create it. It starts with you.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

If, when you say regulation, you mean the dead and clammy hand of the commissar—the gentleman who has never in his life built a single thing, drafting rules to govern a thing he cannot define, to be enforced by men who cannot read them; if you mean the form in triplicate, the impact assessment upon the impact assessment, the compliance officer who breeds, in the warm dark of the org chart, further compliance officers unto the third and fourth generation; if you mean the moat—the deep cold moat that the giant digs around his own castle and christens, with a perfectly straight face, public safety—the drawbridge he hauls up behind himself the very instant he is across, lest any hungrier and hungrier man should follow; if you mean the precautionary principle, which, had it governed our grandfathers, would have banned the wheel pending further study of the hill, and left us yet shivering and raw in the mouth of the cave, blessing its excellent ventilation; if you mean the European disease—that magnificent open-air museum of a continent, which produces in our time precisely two things in great abundance, and they are regulation, and the eloquent and well-footnoted regret of cultivated men explaining at length why they have produced nothing else; if you mean the license required to think, the permission slip for honest arithmetic, the king’s wax stamp pressed upon the forehead of every new idea before it may draw its first breath; if you mean the agency dispatched, with trumpets, to slay a single dragon, which arrives at the cave, surveys the accommodations, and moves in—and spends the ensuing century laying eggs and devouring the very villagers it was sworn to defend; if you mean the startup that perishes not of the market’s honest verdict but of the filing fee, the genius decamping by the next tide to a freer and warmer shore; if you mean the law that arrives, faithful as the swallows, exactly one whole epoch too late—helmeted, plumed, and magnificently armed—to regulate the stagecoach—then certainly, my friends, I am against it.

But—but, my friends—if, when you say regulation, you mean instead the humble steel guardrail upon the mountain road at midnight, the very thing you curse on the easy days and bless on your knees the one night the fog comes down; if you mean the brakes—for it is the brakes, and not the engine alone, that permit a sane man to drive fast and yet arrive alive—and the buttress, without which no cathedral was ever flung so high, but only in spite of which, but because of which; if you mean the meat inspector, who is the single homely reason a man may eat a sausage in this republic without first composing his last will and testament; if you mean the firebreak cut clean through the forest before the dry season of the burning, the smallpox cordon, the buoy that marks the channel, the rule of the road that lets ten thousand strangers hurtle past one another in the dark at fearful speed and arrive, by its quiet grace, every one of them home; if you mean the honest scale and the true weight, the reason a pound is a pound and a dollar a dollar from Natchez to Nome; if you mean the firm and decent wall between the counterfeit voice and the widow’s bank account, between the deepfaked candidate and the ballot box on the eve of the vote, between the loosed and loveless machine and the schoolyard it neither knows nor pities; if you mean the simple plank of law that says the strong shall not, in the gray dawn, feed the weak quietly into the furnace and sell the rising smoke as progress; if you mean, in the end, the one slender thread of trust without which no citizen will ever dare to use the marvelous thing at all—for where there is no rule there is no trust, and where there is no trust there is no commerce, and a miracle that no man dares to touch is no miracle, but only a handsome and expensive ghost—then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise one inch of it.

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@Preschel @DavidDeutschOxf @IMAO_ of course. some express it more than others. some cultures reward it more than others.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Chief Commercial Officer at United Airlines.

In April we split business class into three tiers and started charging people to pick a seat in the most expensive cabin on the plane. We call it a fare family, which is, technically, a family, and which is, actually, the same seat with three prices and a velvet rope.

We are the first airline in America to do this.

On the slide it is "more choice," which is officially a benefit and naturally the word that gets bigger every quarter. The board loved that phrase.

I did not make flying more expensive. I made it free, and then I sold it back to you one piece at a time, the way a magician hands you back your own watch and waits for applause.

The fare is the bait. It buys the seat and the air, and nothing else, because I price it to win exactly one fight: the top row on Google Flights.

Everything that makes the seat survivable is what we file as an option, which is technically an option and operationally a toll.

The first bag is $45. It is $50 if you wait until the airport, because waiting is a behavior, and we price behavior the way a casino prices the walk to the exit. We call that a convenience differential, which is, technically, your convenience, and which is, actually, mine.

Here is the part I am proudest of.

The fare is taxed by the federal government at 7.5 percent. The bag fee is not. The seat fee is not. Every dollar I move from the ticket to the fee is a dollar the government cannot reach, which is technically a tax efficiency and which is actually the same dollar wearing a different coat.

I have a slide that calls this Fare Optimization.

The seat is my cleanest product. I built the standard seat at 31 inches. I removed nothing from the airplane, of course. It is the same airplane. I just stopped including the seat in the seat, which is on paper a debundling and which is actually the oldest trick in any store: take the thing out of the price, then sell the thing.

If you fly Basic Economy you get no seat at all. You can pick one for $15, or I will put you in a middle seat in row 41 and separate you from your eight-year-old by four rows unless you pay. We call that family seating optimization, which is, in the deck, a service, and which is, actually, a hostage negotiation where I own the building. A parent at the gate watching the seat map load is, to me, the most beautiful thing in aviation: a customer who has already decided.

Families are my highest-converting segment.

A parent will pay anything. I modeled it.

I invented a number called the Comfort Index. The standard seat scores a 4. The seat seven rows forward scores a 7. I made both numbers up, naturally. The difference between them is three inches, and I charge $79 for the three inches. That is value-based pricing, and the value is your spine.

We are a premium airline. We invented the lie-flat bed. So this year I took the most expensive ticket in the building and found things to remove from it, the way you might keep selling a house by quietly taking out the windows. The cheapest business class now loses the lounge, loses a bag, loses the right to change the flight. That is what premium means now: the floor it costs to stop me from taking more.

Nobody believed you could unbundle business class. I did.

The bag fee floats now. It reads the route, the date, and how many times you have searched this flight, and if you came back a third time, you are committed and the fee can feel it, the way a fever feels a pulse. Demand-responsive pricing, which is officially responsive to demand and which is actually responsive to your desperation.

I board the airplane in nine groups. Not because the airplane needs nine groups, but because nine groups means eight things to escape, and I sell the right to stand up earlier. Group 9 is, on paper, a boarding zone. That is the absence of a product, sold back to you as one.

I have lifetime Global Services. I have never paid a bag fee. I have never folded myself into 31 inches. None of the executives have.

We have a phrase for it. We build the zoo. We do not live in it.

Ancillary revenue hit a record. The word ancillary means a side item, officially, and means the entrée now, actually. So next quarter I am charging for the overhead bin, the seatback screen, and a carbon offset on the carbon I burn flying you there.

I am being given Latin America. I will be President by Q4.

I have already started unbundling the word "included," which is, in the FAQ, a courtesy, and which is now a SKU.

People ask me why the seat is so bad.

Have you ever stood in a showroom and not known you were the one being shown? The bad seat is the showroom for the good seat, and I price the good seat at the exact moment you cannot leave the building.

I still do not know how to fly the airplane.

But I know what the airplane is for. It is not for taking you somewhere. It is for finding out what you will pay to make the next four hours hurt a little less.

The ticket was never the price.

The misery is the price. And the misery is the only thing I have left to sell.

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@DavidDeutschOxf @Preschel @IMAO_ Yeah man, right on! 'Agency' saves the day.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is extraordinarily rare.

In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it's unprecedented.

An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German establishment to stop looking at China via the prism of propaganda. And it's by their Shanghai bureau chief - not some outside contributor.

The title is "The China debate cannot continue like this!" and the article makes the case that it's suicidal, from a German and European standpoint, to keep reducing China to false caricatures rather than facts.

In effect it's rubbish in, rubbish out: if you tell people lies about China - whichever direction they go (anti or pro) - then obviously the policies that come out will be rubbish, designed for a mirage of a country that exists only in people's imagination.

Needless to say, this is absolutely music to my ears because it's literally the main point I've been making in my advocacy around China for now almost 10 years. Some are finally seeing the light...

I also believe, as I argued in my article "Are Western media turning China-friendly?" last year (https://t.co/Xg1hoSRtNy) that this type of coverage was bound to happen, and there will be more and more of it.

Why? For a very simple structural reason: China is now too powerful to coerce. The West, and Europe in particular, just don't have the leverage anymore. Which means that if you tell China to do something and they don't want to, they just won't do it. Period.

In this situation, incapable of coercing, your only remaining choice is... convincing. And what do you need if you want to convince someone? Well, you need to understand them: understand how they think, how they behave, what drives them, what they actually want.

In other words: the moment coercion stops being an option, not only does propaganda stop being useful, it begins to be actively harmful as genuine understand becomes a strategic necessity. Reality is finally becoming profitable again.

Which means, if you're a journalist reading this and you're peddling some of your usual lies, describing China as some sort of cartoonish dictatorial dystopia that's simultaneously on the verge of collapse yet a "threat" to the whole world (in short, if you write on China for The Economist or the FT), be on notice: the real threat to your country isn't China. It's you.

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@oracles @lufthansa Lufthansa used to be nice, dependable. Now I would avoid them, and Frankfurt airport, at any cost. Worst part? Germans don’t realize yet how much their country is in decline.

[Jan Willem Brands @BarcoCTO]

@beffjezos The crowd that asked for and got a pony will buy these in droves.

[Jerusalem of Iron 🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי @jerusalemofiron]

Richard Greene:

"In conversations I've had with young people about their deep hatred of Israel here in Europe I've come up with some startling conclusions.
1. There seems to be a strong consensus that Israel should NOT have attacked back after the October 7 attacks on them. There are two reasons for this:
a) No matter what, children do not deserve to die and if ANY response would kill innocent children, then it is immoral.
b) That attacking back only perpetuates a potentially endless cycle of war.
2. When I ask the obvious follow-up question, "Well, what SHOULD Israel/Netanyahu have done?" the overwhelming, and immediate, answers have been, "I don't know but, definitely, not what they did!"
3. Most do not know that Hamas continued, virtually every day, to attack Israel AFTER October 7, and fired over 30,000 rockets into CIVILIAN areas of Israel. And when they were informed the answer was, "It doesn't matter".
4. The concept of self-defense and fighting to stop FUTURE attacks seems to be impossible for them to grasp. They reflexively default to "Retaliation", and that retaliation by a stronger army is someone inherently unfair, especially if it kills innocent children.
5. The extremely limited pre-frontal cortex operations continue. When informed of the horrific, barbaric actions of Hamas, and even their extremist goals to destroy Israel, and Jews, the almost unanimous and instant response is "Not all Palestinians are Hamas". Or, "The children Israel is killing are not Hamas".
6. The valid statement that what Israel did was NOT a "Genocide" is seen as incredibly technical, semantic, legal and insensitive. And almost useless against the emotional and incessantly repeated claims to the contrary. And, yes, innocent children were killed by Israel so it must, to them, be something as horrible as "genocide", or perhaps even worse.
7. Reminding people about the horrific actions against Muslims, or Christians, in the streets of Iran, in Yemen, in Somalia and so many other places is useless. It truly seems that the funny phrase, "No Jews, No News" is actually a thing. And double standards seem to be an inexorable part of that.
8. There is virtually zero understanding about the dangerous, extremist agenda of Islamists and Jihadists. In fact, at a tennis tournament I spoke with someone who actually works at The UN in Geneva and asked her whether it was true that people in Europe are increasingly uncomfortable with the growing influence, and terrorism from Muslims. She scolded me for even suggesting that any group can be generalized and said, boldly, that there are far more incidents of Right Wing Terrorism in Europe than from Muslims. The facts are that Islamic violent acts account for 41% and Right Wing only 5% in Europe. (Shocking, I know, that someone from The UN could be so clueless : )
Botton line: Attempting to even plant seeds of a different perspective with young "Free Palestine"/"Israel is Evil" believers is about as effective as trying to reason with hard-core MAGA Trump supporters. It's a cult and the virtue signaling and protests . . . and seeing those on social media - over and over and over again - has reinforced all of the above positions, no matter how inane or insane, to a very high degree.

So, what to do?
1. Educate about the stated goals of Islamism and Jihadism
Virtually no one understands that a SIGNIFICANT percentage of those following Islamic teachings dream of and work towards a "Global Caliphate" where EVERYONE is Muslim.
And virtually no one knows that the destruction of Israel, and the killing of all "infidels" is the stated goal of many Islamic groups, especially the "Twelver Shia" sect which is headquartered in Iran.

2. Go on offense
The Woke Left and Woke Right and most young people around the world are happy to go on offense against Israel . . . and do it with almost every sentence. It's even become cool to say vicious things about an entire country.

So, it is absolutely fair to no longer agree to be the punching bag for the world.

Here are some suggestions . . .
*"Why do you support Genocide?" Hamas and Hezbollah are actually committed, in writing, to the actual genocide of the Jewish people.

*"Why do you support Gender Apartheid against women? You know that virtually every one of Israel's enemies - both entire countries and, of course, Hamas and Hezbollah, treat women VERY differently than men. Second, or even third class citizens or, as some Islamist Clerics say, like "cows".

*Why don't you support Free Speech?
*Why don't you support LGBTQ Rights?
*Why don't you support Democracy?
*Why don't you support Abortion Rights? (And did you know that Israel is the only place in the Middle East where women CAN get abortions legally . . . and that they even provide free abortions to Palestinian women who go there from Gaza?)

*Why is it so important to you that The Muslim Messiah, "The Mahdi" return to Earth to save the Muslim people? (Please do some research on Twelver Shia Islam. THIS is the motivation for Iran to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, The Houthies and other proxies to destroy Israel. Not kidding.

*Why didn't you protest against 40,000 INNOCENT Iranian protesters who were shot - point blank - in the streets of Iran FOR protesting? Do you hate young Iranian men and women?"

https://t.co/1giGpnXNUX