Prof. Historian.I just started re-using T.Not here to advertise my work.Non Jewish but thx for the compliment. Expert on Islamic law&jurisprudence.Polyglot
@shadihamid 1/Not all populations are morally or politically analogous.Suffering, in and of itself, does not automatically ennoble a cause,especially if that suffering results from wars initiated in pursuit of genocidal aims. This is where so many Western commentators go off the rails.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the prevailing order hasn't exactly been great for Israel.
Why shouldn't European imperial borderlines be redrawn in some places in recognition of ethnic realities on the ground? Why does Somaliland have to pretend to be Somalia, when in every meaningful way on the ground it isn't and never really was?
Why do we all have to pretend there are no Kurds in the world, or that they don't deserve a place of their own under the sun where they aren't subject to the vicissitudes of, variously, Arab or Persian nationalism?
Why should Israel be keen on backing an Arab-run political order when most of the Arab world still struggles to acknowledge Jews have those very same rights, the ones they so casually deny to Somalilanders and Kurds?
Those aren't even rhetorical questions. I'm honestly wondering why Arabs think Israeli Jews should owe any allegiance to a regional order that hasn't stopped attacking them, in one ideological clothing or another, for six generations...
Somalilanders are kinda amazing. Read their story. And Kurds are a real and distinct and oft-abused people. Read their story too. And neither people's history permits us to pretend they will be safe as permanent minorities.
I have heart surgery coming up next week and now understand why I’ve been so physically exhausted and out-of-sorts these past few months. The docs tell me my condition is called “atrial functional tricuspid regurgitation” and that it is “mainly due to long standing atrial fibrillation… The tricuspid valve is leaking severely, causing a back pressure on all the internal organs and a high jugular venous pressure.” The procedure aims to get this old body back on the road again quickly and efficiently. It is VERY LOW RISK but of course I’m grateful for any good wishes sent my way. I’m in the midst of writing a new book, the best work I’ve ever done, and I’m not going to let this stop me! I said yes to the linked podcast now, rather than after my procedure, for reasons that I explain during the interview:
https://t.co/Bec8caT7a1
Many journalists were concerned, understandably, about the reported deaths of "journalists" in Gaza. It's striking how uninterested they are in the unraveling of many of those stories. We're all lucky to have @Aizenberg55 doing the work the press should be doing:
WSJ: Trump conveyed a message via Qatar that the strikes were a response to the Apache helicopter incident and were not intended to signal a wider conflict.
Peter Beinart, who apologized publicly for speaking in Tel Aviv and doesn't think the Jews should have a state, is lecturing Sam Harris about self-righteous certainty.
The irony: Beinart does in that piece exactly what Sam says they always do. He ignores the great big thing.
El director saliente del Mossad, David Barnea, en su evento de despedida: ״El cambio de régimen en Irán: un objetivo posible y alcanzable. Esta es una misión factible, y está claro que requerirá determinación, paciencia y compromiso con el objetivo.
Esta misión debe permanecer en la cima de nuestras prioridades.
We were walking around in a very posh area of SoCal. We saw tons of freedom veils from people that looked as though they were from Raqqa, Syria. It is always comforting to see such demographic shifts because the Noble Faith is all about personal liberties and freedoms. Get ready USA. You will find out soon what "Demography is Destiny" means.
Unpopular opinion: the French conquest of Algeria was entirely morally justified. Algeria was a criminal state that lived off robbing and enslaving Europeans and Americans. The war put an end to its massive slave trade and piracy operation. This is a good thing.
I agree with Yossi, the grizzled veteran of Israeli intelligence reportage.
The deeper story of the NYT article about Israeli spying -- citing an alleged report the NYT itself hasn't seen -- isn't the spying itself. There's no direct spying on America, because the costs of discovery would be enormous. But there's obviously a great deal of analysis and open-source intelligence work on America, just like there is in America's intelligence community on Israel. Because neither side is stupid, and to do otherwise would be incompetent.
No, the real story here isn't the claims in the article, but the leak itself. It's part of a spate of leaks, possibly but not yet certainly from the Vance orbit, that are trying to distance the administration from the perceived failure of the Iran war by dumping all the blame on Israel.
The simple fact that there's a scapegoat tells us that many in the administration think the war has failed.
@magattew Korea was brutally colonized by Japan for decades, then got annihilated during the Korean War, and was one of the very poorest countries on the planet.
Japan lost WW2 and was literally nuked twice with similarly grim economic conditions after the war. Many other such cases.