Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦

Semi-perpetual motion machine. Obsesses about programming, history, aerospace, defence, random geekery.
Furthermore, I believe Russia needs to be de-Putinized.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

If you can spare a few shekels, https://t.co/dphoWpodmH would love to get them and help save lives in Ukraine.

[Evgen Vorobyov @vorobyov]

Our donors continue to send great medical supplies via Amazon Lists to our team member @oleksiyr7 (& his four-legged helper 🐶).

Oleksiy will send the supplies to 🇺🇦 — and then we'll bring them to the frontlines.

Our Amazon List:
https://t.co/1NRxoW2eLb

[Max 📟 @MaxNordau]

She’s so close to getting it.

And I suspect that she does get it, but it’s her job to lie.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@McFaul Wait, the UK fought "against the Falkland Islands"?

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@BallouxFrancois @AlanSimon360759 @StratCorpGlobal Surely you have a reliable source for that statement?

[Avichai Falach 𐤀𐤁𐤉𐤇𐤉 @avichaifalach]

סיכום קצר למזרח התיכון בשנתיים ומשו האחרונות

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@RashidaTlaib Worked pretty well for Germany and Japan.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@Telegraph And you're just a tube channeling IRGC propaganda...

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@andischeuermann @LizHurra There are Iranians on the ground whose relatives were slaughtered by the regime just now.

[Sarah Pochin MP @SarahForRuncorn]

Proving your identity is a legal requirement in the United Kingdom before you can vote.

You cannot prove your identity if your face is covered and cannot be matched to your photographic identification. Religious sensitivities must never override the law and certainly never the democratic process.

No one should be allowed into a polling station with their face covered.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@nkulw It's not "non-violent" to tear down a border wall and swarm neighboring villages. The only people shot were those trying to cross or carrying firearms, of which there were plenty.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@ChristineKayNow @MrTCHarris Israel literally has Arab ministers and judges.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@Backup2396 @jewandahalfmen @DrewPavlou Well, it started in the 7th century with the Islamic rampage through the middle east. Let's go there.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@AhmedRaza183555 @colwight @Texnolans The state founded by people actually living there, with about equal population size that would have been annihilated if an Arab state was to cover all the land. And let's not forget that the majority of the Arab population has immigrated to the region in the several decades prior

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

Iran: "Death to Israel!"
Israel: No.
Mehdi: Unfair!

[Max Klinger @MaxE2review]

I must have imagined the part where an Iranian proxy army invaded Israel during a ceasefire, murdered everyone they could find, took hostages to torture and kill, recorded the entire thing, then vowed to do it again repeatedly while the ayatollah called for Israel’s annihilation

[Shoshana🦁🌞🇸🇨🪬🇮🇷 @Shoshana51728]

In 1948 Robert F. Kennedy worked as a reporter for the Boston Post . In April of 1948 he travelled to Mandatory Palestine to file reports for the Post. Following are some excerpts from the articles he wrote:

📝"The British government, in its attitude towards the Jewish population in Palestine, has given ample credence to the suspicion that they are firmly against the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
When I was in Cairo shortly after the blowing up of the Jewish Agency [March 11, 1948] I talked to a man who held a high position in the Arab League. He had just returned from Palestine where he had, among other things, interviewed and arranged transportation to Trans-Jordan for the Arab responsible for that Jewish disaster. This Arab told him that after the explosion, upon reaching the British post which separated the Jewish section from a small neutral zone set up in the middle of Jerusalem, he was questioned by the British officers in charge. He quite freely admitted what he had done and was given immediate passage with the remark, “Nice going.”"

📝"Just before I arrived in Palestine there was the notorious story of the foundry outside of Tel Aviv. It was situated in a highly contested area and the British accused the Jews of using it as a sniper post for the Jaffa-Jerusalem road. One day the British moved in, stripping the Jews of all arms and ordered them to clear out within 10 minutes. The British had scarcely departed when a group of armed Arabs moved in, killing or wounding all the occupants. The British government was most abject in its apologies.
I came in contact personally, however, with evidence that demonstrated clearly the British bitterness toward the Jews. I have ridden in Jewish armored car convoys which the British have stopped to inspect for arms. As always, there were members of the Haganah aboard and they quickly broke down their small arms, passing the pieces among the occupants to conceal them so as to prevent confiscation. Satisfied that none existed, the convoy supposedly unarmed was allowed to pass into Arab territory. If the arms had been found and confiscated and the Arabs had attacked, there would have been but a remote chance of survival for any of the occupants. There have been many not as fortunate as we.
When I was in Tel Aviv the Jews informed the British government that 600 Iraqi troops were going to cross into Palestine from Trans-Jordan by the Allenby Bridge on a certain date and requested the British to take appropriate action to prevent this passage. The troops crossed unmolested. It is impossible for the British to patrol the whole Palestinian border to prevent illegal crossings but such flagrant violations should certainly have led to some sort of action.
Five weeks ago I saw several thousand non-Palestinian Arab troops in Palestine, including many of the famed British-trained and equipped Arab legionnaires of King Abdullah [of Trans-Jordan]. There were also soldiers from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Trans-Jordan, and they were all proudly pointed out to me by a spokesman of the Arab higher committee. He warned me against walking too extensively through Arab districts as most of the inhabitants there were now foreign troops. Every Arab to whom I talked spoke of thousands of soldiers massed in the “terrible triangle of Nablus-Tulkarem-Jenin” and of hundreds that were pouring in daily."

📝"When I was in Lebanon and asked a dean at the American University at Beirut if many students were leaving for the fight in Palestine he shrugged and said, “Not now – the quota has been oversubscribed.” When journeying by car from Jerusalem to Amman I passed many truckloads of armed Arabs and even then Jericho was alive with Arab troops. There is no question that it was taken over by the Arabs for an armed camp long before May 15.
Our government first decided that justice was on the Jewish side in their desire for a homeland, and then it reversed its decision temporarily. [Editor’s note: In March 1948 the State Department reversed its support for partition and called for a UN trusteeship.] Because of this action I believe we have burdened ourselves with a great responsibility in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world. We fail to live up to that responsibility if we knowingly support the British government who behind the skirts of their official position attempt to crush a cause with which they are not in accord. If the American people knew the true facts, I am certain a more honest and forthright policy would be substituted for the benefit of all."

📝"The die has long since been cast; the fight will take place. The Jews with their backs to the sea, fighting for their very homes, with 101 percent morale, will accept no compromise. On the other hand, the Arabs say:
“We shall bring Moslem brigades from Pakistan, we shall lead a religious crusade for all loyal followers of Mohammed, we shall crush forever the invader. Whether it takes three months, three years, or 30, we will carry on the fight. Palestine will be Arab. We shall accept no compromise.”
The Jews are bitter in disappointment. As one Jew said, “Britain let us down for 25 years but you bettered them in a week.” The feeling stops at disappointment and there is none of the hatred that exists for the British. They can understand us not wishing to send troops and so become entangled in a war that does not immediately concern us, but they plead only for the right to make this fight themselves. They want arms and frankly admit that if they cannot get them from us they will turn to the East. “What else can we do?” They are fighting for their very lives and must act accordingly."

📝"The City of Jerusalem has more Jews than Arabs but the immediate surrounding territory is predominately Arab. Through part of that hilly territory winds the narrow road that leads from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
It is by this road that the Jewish population within Jerusalem must be supplied, but it is fantastically easy for the Arabs to ambush a convoy as it crawls along the difficult pass. On my trip from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem I saw grim realities of the fact and while in Jerusalem the failure and destruction of another Jewish convoy made meat non-existent and lengthened food queues for other items.
The Arabs living in the old city of Jerusalem have kept the age-old habit of procuring their water from the individual cisterns that exist in almost every home. The Jews being more “educated” (an Arab told me that this was their trouble and now the Jews were going to really pay for it) had a central water system installed with pipes bringing fresh hot and cold water. Unfortunately for them, the reservoir is situated in the mountains and it and the whole pipeline are controlled by the Arabs. The British would not let them cut the water off until after May 15th but an Arab told me they would not even do it then. First they would poison it."

📝"Under the supposition that, at the finish of the [British] mandate, this was to be their national state, they went to work. They set up laboratories where world-famous scientists could study and analyze soils and crops. The combination of arduous labor and almost unlimited funds from the United States changed what was once arid desert into flourishing orange groves.
Soils had to be washed of salt, day after day, year after year, before crops could be planted. One can see this work going on in lesser or more advanced stages wherever there are Jewish settlements in Palestine.
From a small village of a few thousand inhabitants, Tel Aviv has grown into a most impressive modern metropolis of over 200,000. They have truly done much with what all agree was very little.
The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs, in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.
The Jews point out that they have always taken a passive part in the frequent revolutions that have racked the country, because of the understanding that they would eventually be set free from British mandateship. They wished to do nothing to impair this expected action.
During the second World War they sent numerous volunteer Jewish brigades which fought commendably with the British in Italy. In addition to that, many Palestinian Jews fought as volunteers with Allied troops throughout the world and still others were dropped by parachute into German-held territory as espionage agents. They were perhaps doing no more than their duty, but they did their duty well.
The Jews feel that promise after promise to them has been broken. They can quote freely, for example, from speech after speech of Labor Party leaders in the election campaign prior to the victory of the Labor Party in England, to attest to the fact that one need not even refer back to the controversial Balfour declaration to learn Britain’s attitude and promises toward a Jewish state, that was to be one of the first acts of the Labor government if it were put into power. The Jews, remembering this, have rather bitterly named the black bombed out [area] in the Ben Yehuda disaster, “Bevin square.” [An Arab car bomb in Jerusalem in February 1948 killed some 50 people.]"

https://t.co/gwMTQMzWPv

[Adin - عدین - עדין @AdinHaykin1]

Why can't Afghanistan and Pakistan just merge into one free democratic state?

[𝔼𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕠𝕥 𝕄𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕟 @ElliotMalin]

Had a fascinating experience today. I'm currently at a conference for Holocaust and genocide centers, experts, and educators.

The first speaker (a tenured historian PhD on Jewish studies at a prominent university) made a comparison of Kristallnacht to the West Bank and settler violence. Which was an interesting comparison that I (and apparently the entire room who was appalled at this) think is a false equivalence since Kristallnacht was the government planned pogrom of Jews throughout Germany between November 9-10, 1938.

Now, I think the speaker can make a reasonable case for discussing the violence in the West Bank and speaking against it. Just don't think it's comparable to a state planned pogrom of an entire people.

So, a woman gets up to confront him, and he dismisses her. I then get up because I think that was a bit misogynistic and inappropriate, like his comments, which he then made a comment about genocide.

I asked him, since he also billed himself as an expert on genocide, to explain to us what genocide is and how intent works. He told me that his evidence was the "experts" who agreed that it is genocide. I then responded that this wasn't an answer (he then told me to not interrupt him because that is a sign of a losing argument, this is important for later), and asked him to tell us how intent, dolus specialis, for genocide works. He refused.

After the talk we continued our conversation in the hall. I pressed him on explaining what genocidal intent is, how it's inferred and how it works. He refused. I asked him what the test is to infer genocidal intent. He told me he didn't know (it's the only reasonable inference test). So I explained it to him.

He then told me that the Convention was not what Lemkin wanted. I agreed that it narrowed from what Lemkin wanted, but it narrowed in the sense of protected groups and not the dolus specialis intent standard. I offered to show him what Lemkin actually said to the U.S. Senate about this when he argued for the ratification of the Genocide Convention in 1950. (He did not want to hear it, but it was in my bag with me.)

I asked him what "in part" means in terms of genocide. He refused to answer that. I explained it to him to require substantiality to threaten the very existence of the group, and we discussed not just the Holocaust, but Rwanda and Srebrenica. His response to this was that by my requirements (the law's requirements), the Holocaust would not be genocide. I pointed out to him that the substantiality element is easy to prove there being that the Jewish population has not recovered.

He then said there was no plan of action for the Holocaust so the requirements I laid out could not be met. I then promptly told him that the Wannsee Conference happened, and that's where we can find the conscious planning of the genocidal actus reus.

He then started to interrupt me, so I politely told him that this is a strategy of someone losing a debate, per his own words. I then also pointed out that he was operating under multiple logical fallacies and not the actual elements of the crime of genocide. From appeals to authority (citing historians and not legal experts or scholars), to false equivalences (Kristallnacht), to circular reasoning (saying that it must be so because of the death toll without assessing the actual requirements of intent or substantiality).

Next, I asked him as a point of understanding his position, how many people had been killed in Gaza. He told me over 100,000 people. I told him that the Hamas-run Ministry of Health has recorded just over 71,400 people who have lost their lives, but that's still not a small amount of people. He then told me that it had to be over 100,000. Which I disputed by pointing out that the information provided by them would account for 9,500 missing persons at the start of the ceasefire, so it is likely around 77,000 - still a lot of death. Then I asked him what percent of the population had been killed, which was an eye opening experience here, because he said 10%+.

The issue here is that while 71,400 is a lot of raw deaths, it is not 10% of Gaza's pre-war population. It's 3.2% of Gaza's pre-war population. Which is not comparable to the Holocaust (~66% of Europe's Jews were murdered), Rwanda (~80% of the Tutsi were murdered), or Srebrenica (~20-30% of the Bosnian Muslims of the enclave were murdered).

He then discussed how Israel "bombed and destroyed all of the hospitals in Gaza and that's clear evidence of intent." Which I responded with "I actually happen to have the Geneva Conventions with me in my bag, would you like to read GCIV 19?" He then told me no, and that it's all a lie that Hamas has such systemic tunnel infrastructure, has weaponized hospitals and infrastructure, etc.

Which I told him that's not only false, but morally unconscionable since it negates any agency for Hamas and the atrocities they've committed against the Palestinian people.

So, I then asked him again, to explain to me, since he describes himself as an expert on genocide, how this matches with the Krstić decision, or Bosnia v. Serbia, or any facet of the law as required by not just Lemkin, but the Genocide Convention.

He then ended the conversation by saying that he doesn't actually care about it being genocide or not and refused to answer the question.

A tenured professor of history, who says they are an expert on genocide, who was not an expert on genocide and thought they could make a determination of law that they were not qualified to make.

Fascinating experience.

Oh, and I was applauded by the room of attendees - experts on Holocaust and genocide. After all of this most came up and thanked me for pushing back against the nonsense.

Sorry for the long rant here, but it was a crazy experience from a historian who started the conversation as an "expert" only to be shown that they had no idea what they were discussing or talking about when it came to genocide.

[Joo @JoosyJew]

It’s only the 10th day of 2026 and we already have a strong competitor for ‘Man of the Year’

Absolute GOAT.

[Vladi 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @ClockworkVK]

@BBCBreaking You did not seriously publish this...