Franceen Harris

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Countries that expelled or forced out nearly their entire ancient Jewish populations after 1948:

🇮🇶Iraq
🇾🇪Yemen
🇱🇾Libya
🇸🇾Syria
🇪🇬Egypt
🇩🇿Algeria
🇹🇳Tunisia
🇲🇦Morocco
🇮🇷Iran (post-1979)

850,000 Jewish refugees. No dedicated UN agency.

The majority rebuilt their lives in Israel. Their descendants form the plurality of its population today.

The world forgot on purpose.

[Shaggy JTS 🇺🇸 @JtShaggy]

Never forget!! 🙏🙏🙏

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

Benjamin Netanyahu posted this on X today:

“As long as I am Prime Minister, there will not be a Palestinian state — not in Gaza, and not in Judea and Samaria. Period.”

Good.

[Sportsnet @Sportsnet]

THE BLUE JAYS TAKE DOWN THE YANKEES IN THE BRONX 🗣️

[Wolf 🐺 @PsyGuy007]

🕊️🇺🇸 Aujourd’hui cela fait 1 an jour pour jour qu’elle a été tuée. Cette femme a conquis le cœur du monde. Iryna Zarutska est morte de la façon la plus horrible.

Laissez un 👍 ❤️ si vous pensez toujours à elle.

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

One year ago today, Iryna Zarutska was murdered.

This image of Iryna, terrified and in tears, as she realizes what had just happened to her and that the next few moments will be her last, tears my soul apart.

In the midst of everything that’s going on, don’t forget about her.

[Harley Finkelstein @harleyf]

On Monday, Montreal city council votes on a motion to cut the city's ties with Israel. I am speaking up because this motion is dangerous for Montreal, and my reason has nothing to do with which side of that war you are on.

My family arrived in Montreal in 1956 as refugees. This city gave us safety, dignity and the chance to build. That promise has drawn generations of immigrants here from every corner of the world.

I am not going to debate a war on the other side of the world, and that is exactly the point. A municipal government has no jurisdiction over foreign policy. Cities do not end wars.

But a motion like this lands right here at home. Jewish Montrealers are less than one percent of this city and the number one target of hate crimes. Those are police statistics, not opinions. Our synagogues and schools have been targeted, and families I know are scared in a way I have never seen.

When city hall singles out one community's connection to a foreign conflict, it brings no peace anywhere. It brings fear here.

Montreal has real emergencies. Housing. Homelessness. Infrastructure. That is the job.

This city has been a safe haven for my family and so many others, and it must remain one for everyone. @SorayaMartinezF showed real leadership in June. Council should reject this motion on Monday.

[Yisrael official 🕎 @YisraelOfficial]

💙🤍💙

[Lior 🪬 @ChaiLife613]

COLONIZATION

Before you tell me to “Free Palestine,” I have a few questions.

Dear Americans, when are you freeing the United States and returning it to its Indigenous peoples?

Dear Canadians, when are you returning Canada to the First Nations?

Dear Australians, when are you giving Australia back to its Aboriginal peoples?

Dear New Zealanders, when are you returning New Zealand to the Māori?

Dear Spaniards, before lecturing Israel about colonialism, when are you giving up Ceuta and Melilla, your territories on the African continent?

Dear Turks, when are you freeing Northern Cyprus?

Dear Moroccans, when are you freeing Western Sahara?

Dear Russians, when are you leaving the Ukrainian territories you invaded?

Dear Chinese activists, when are we discussing Tibet?

Dear Indonesians, when are you freeing West Papua?

Dear British activists, when are you decolonizing Gibraltar, Bermuda, the Falkland Islands, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands?

Dear French activists, when are you freeing New Caledonia and French Polynesia?

Dear Americans, one more time, what about Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands?

Dear Danes, have the people of Greenland been asked what they want?

Dear Dutch activists, when are we discussing the remaining Dutch territories in the Caribbean?

Dear Chileans, when are you returning Indigenous lands in Patagonia?

Dear Argentinians, same question.

Dear Brazilians, when are the Indigenous nations of the Amazon receiving their ancestral lands back?

Dear Mexicans, when are you returning Mexico to its many Indigenous nations?

Dear Europeans, when are you returning the land, wealth, and cultural treasures your empires took from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East?

Oh, you are not?

Interesting.

Apparently, decolonization is incredibly simple, as long as the only country being dismantled is Israel.

Now, let me make something very clear.

I am not suggesting that modern countries should be emptied of their populations.

That would be absurd.

And that is precisely the point.

History is complicated. Borders are complicated. Almost every country on Earth was shaped by migration, war, conquest, empire, and displacement.

Yet only one people is constantly ordered to “go back” somewhere else, even though we returned to the land where our identity, language, faith, history, and civilization were born.

The Jewish people are not foreign tourists in Judea.

We did not name ourselves after this land.

This land was named after us.

Our kingdoms stood here.

Our language was born here.

Our holiest places are here.

Our history is buried beneath every road.

For two thousand years, Jews prayed toward Jerusalem, mourned Jerusalem, dreamed of Jerusalem, and ended their prayers with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

Then we finally returned to Jerusalem, and suddenly the descendants of empires began calling us colonizers.

The irony would be hilarious if it were not so dangerous.

You may criticize an Israeli government.

You may debate borders, policies, and the future of Palestinians.

But you do not get to erase thousands of years of Jewish history while standing on land shaped by your own country’s conquests.

You do not get to enjoy the outcome of your country’s history while demanding that the Jewish people dismantle theirs.

And you certainly do not get to lecture an Indigenous Middle Eastern people about returning to its ancestral homeland.

So before you shout “Free Palestine” at me, take a quick look at the history beneath your own feet.

Because if your solution to every historical injustice is to dismantle the country that exists there today, then please show us how it is done.

You first.

I’ll wait.
Reposted- author unknown

[Toronto Blue Jays @BlueJays]

NATHAN LUKES.

OUR CATCH OF THE SEASON!

[Maxime Bernier @MaximeBernier]

It’s time to ban face covering

I’ve been saying it for years: Canada has lost its mind on multiculturalism.

While European countries like France, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Bulgaria, Switzerland and, now, Portugal since last Tuesday, prohibit the wearing of the niqab and burqa in public spaces; our political class in Ottawa refuses even to discuss it.

Liberals and fake Conservatives are too afraid of being called “Islamophobic.” They care more about multiculturalism and virtue signalling than about Canadian values.

That ends with the People’s Party of Canada.

Both the burqa and the niqab are fundamentally not part of Canada’s cultural norms and have no place on our streets and citizenship ceremonies. 

It’s absurd to have someone swear an oath of citizenship while hiding their visual identity.

We have nothing to hide in Canada.

The PPC is committed to reversing the Islamization of Canada.

The dignity of women and girls must not be sacrificed on the altar of multiculturalism.

The PPC is the only national party willing to speak openly about the Islamist threat, fighting the ghettoization of Canada and promoting social integration. The establishment Parties won’t touch this issue.

Canada is not a country of parallel societies. We are one nation, with one set of values.

The People’s Party of Canada, it’s you. It’s all of us who love this country and refuse to let it slip away.

Thank you for refusing to give up on Canada,

We must get the PPC's message across regarding the ban on face covering in public spaces. Share this tweet, the more of us who stand together, the louder our voice becomes.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

Douglas Murray on Israel:

"What Israel has been up against is not just a people of death, but a cult of death which wishes to annihilate an entire race. And which after dealing with that race, has made very clear what it wants to do with Christians."

He's 100% correct..

[🇺🇸 Jake Hilton 🇮🇱 @TheDemSlayer]

The Nice Attack = Muslim
The Paris Attacks = Muslims
The Shoe Bomber = Muslim
The Orlando attack = Muslim
The Beltway Snipers = Muslims
The Fort Hood Shooter = Muslim
The Underwear Bomber = Muslim
The Westminster Attack = Muslim
The 2005 Bali Bombings = Muslims
The murder of Lee Rigby = Muslims
The U.S.S. Cole Bombers = Muslims
The London Bridge Attack = Muslims
The Madrid Train Bombers = Muslims
The Charlie Hebdo Attacks = Muslims
The San Bernardino Attacks = Muslims
The Surabaya bombings = Muslims
The Minnesota Mall stabbings = Muslim
The 7/7 bombers = Muslims
The Moscow Theatre Attackers = Muslims
The Boston Marathon Bombers = Muslims
The Ankara Airport Attack = Muslims
The Manchester Arena bombing = Muslim
The Pan-Am #103 Bombers = Muslims
The Iranian Embassy Takeover = Muslims
The Air France Hijackers = Muslims
The 2002 Bali Nightclub = Muslims
The Batta Meena Attacks = Muslims
The Beirut Embassy bombers = Muslims
The Libyan U.S. Embassy Attack = Muslims
The Yazidi Massacre of 2014 = Muslims
The Beheading of French priest = Muslims
The Buenos Aires bombers = Muslims
The Israeli Olympic Team = Muslims
The Kenyan U.S Embassy = Muslims
The Khobar Towers Bombers = Muslims
The Beirut Marine bombers = Muslims
The Besian School Attackers = Muslims
The First WTC bombers = Muslims
The Beheading of Daniel Pearl = Muslims
The Achille Lauro Hijackers = Muslims
The Bombay Attackers = Muslims
The 9/11 hijackers = Muslims
The Sydney Bondi beach = Muslims

Was this Islam…

… or was this radical jihadist fundamentalist extremist terrorist Islamismismismismism?

[Colin Spencer @ColinSpenc4257]

Thought of The Day.

[Matthew Feinberg @thewebbie]

The Missing 19 Years

The strangest part of the “Israel prevented a Palestinian state” argument is that it comes with a 19-year loading screen nobody wants to discuss.

From 1948 to 1967, Egypt controlled Gaza. Jordan controlled the West Bank and East Jerusalem, formally annexing the West Bank in 1950.

Israel controlled neither territory.

No Israeli settlements.
No Israeli checkpoints.
No Israeli military administration.

These were the territories we are now told were desperately waiting to become the Palestinian state Israel refused to allow.

Except Israel was not there.

And no Palestinian state emerged.

There was an attempt to create an All-Palestine Government in Gaza in 1948, under Egyptian auspices. It was moved to Cairo within months and never became an independent sovereign state. Jordan went in the opposite direction, annexing the West Bank and extending Jordanian citizenship to its Palestinian population.

That history matters because it reveals something much more complicated than the modern story of “Palestinians wanted a state and Israel prevented them from having one.”

For 19 years, Arab governments controlled the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Creating an independent Palestinian state in those territories somehow never became the great moral emergency we are told it always was.

Then something even more revealing happened.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964. Not 1967. 1964.

Three years before Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza.

And the original Palestinian National Charter did something rather extraordinary. It declared the establishment of Israel null and void while explicitly disclaiming PLO territorial sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza, which were still controlled by Jordan and Egypt.

The organization created to “liberate Palestine” was founded while Israel did not control the West Bank or Gaza, and its charter was aimed at undoing Israel while specifically not claiming sovereignty over those territories.

That is a fairly inconvenient detail if your entire understanding of the conflict begins with “occupation” in 1967.

Apparently the liberation problem was not primarily that Palestinians lacked sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza.

The problem was that Jews had sovereignty next door.

Then came 1967.

Israel survived another war and took control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Suddenly the territories that had spent 19 years under Arab rule without becoming an independent Palestinian state became the center of an international crusade for Palestinian self-determination.

Mazel Tov! Very moving. Remarkable timing.

There had been no comparable international movement demanding that Egypt “Free Gaza” or that Jordan surrender the West Bank for an independent Palestinian state. Once Jews controlled those territories, however, Palestinian sovereignty acquired an urgency it somehow never possessed under Arab rule.

Funny how that works.

This does not mean Palestinian identity did not exist. It means the neat historical story we are constantly sold is backwards.

The conflict was never simply about Palestinians wanting sovereignty and Israel refusing to give it to them.

For much of the Arab world and the Palestinian national movement, the struggle was also about preventing or reversing Jewish sovereignty.

That distinction changes the entire conversation.

Because “Palestinians should have a state” and “Jews should not have a state” are not the same proposition.

The first is an argument about Palestinian self-determination.

The second is an argument against Jewish self-determination.

And for decades, the two have been conveniently packaged together as though nobody should notice the difference.

Pretending the Arab world spent 1948 to 1967 patiently waiting to construct Palestine until Israel arrived and ruined everything is not history.

It is fan fiction with footnotes.

Jordan had the West Bank. No independent Palestinian state.

Egypt had Gaza. No independent Palestinian state.

The PLO appeared in 1964 and directed its liberation project toward the territory where the Jewish state already existed, while disclaiming sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza.

Then Israel took those territories in 1967, and suddenly the world discovered an almost theological devotion to Palestinian sovereignty there.

Baruch Hashem for timing.

Because geography was never the entire issue.

Jewish sovereignty was.

And somehow, after 3,000 years of Jewish history, exile, return, prayer, archaeology, language, memory, and blood, the Jewish people are still expected to stand before the world and justify why we are entitled to exist as a sovereign people in our ancestral homeland.

No.

We are not guests in our own story.

We are not squatters in our ancestral home.

And we are not going to apologize because Palestinian statehood became infinitely more urgent to the world once it could be wielded against Jewish statehood.

[Music over time🎻 @Peal8888]

💝“No one but Tom Jones will ever own this song.”💝

I used to think that was just the kind of line people throw around when they’re being dramatic. Then I watched this black-and-white performance from 1967, and the sentence suddenly made sense in a way that felt almost physical.

Tom Jones stands alone on a bare stage. Black suit, white shirt, black tie. No elaborate lighting, no dancers, no visual distractions. Just a man, a microphone, and a song. From the first phrase, something shifts. The performance doesn’t feel like a presentation. It feels like a confession that happens to be happening in public.

The song itself has a quiet history. Lonnie Donegan wrote it in 1962, drawing from an old Depression-era folk tune that people used to sing in Welsh pubs. Lonnie once told Tom, “I’ve got this song — you’d sing the pants off it.” Tom recorded it in 1967 and turned it into a hit. Years later he still called it one of his favorites. In 2019, on The Voice UK, he found himself sitting next to Peter Donegan, Lonnie’s son. The two of them sang the song together. The moment was quiet, but it carried weight. It felt less like a television performance and more like a private conversation that happened to be recorded.

What stays with me, though, isn’t the backstory. It’s the way Tom Jones inhabits the song.

His voice has a thickness and weight that modern production often tries to smooth away. When he moves into the higher phrases, he doesn’t thin the sound out. He keeps the full body of his chest voice, so the emotion never loses its physical presence. The breath support is steady, almost invisible. The placement is forward and clear. Even through the limitations of an old black-and-white broadcast, the voice cuts through cleanly. You can hear the control, but you never feel the effort.

The real difference, though, is in how he treats the emotion. Lines like “I just broke down and cried” and “Please don’t make me fall in love again” are not pushed for theatrical effect. He doesn’t climb into them. He lets them sit. There is restraint in the delivery, a kind of held tension that makes the pain feel lived-in rather than performed. It’s the difference between describing heartbreak and remembering it.

I’ve heard other strong versions of this song. Some are technically cleaner. Some are more polished. None of them create the same sensation that the singer is not interpreting the lyric so much as recognizing it. That recognition is what makes the performance feel owned. It’s not about vocal superiority. It’s about the rare moment when a song and a voice seem to have been waiting for each other.

A lot of people, the first time they encounter this clip, simply go quiet. They don’t always reach for big adjectives. Sometimes they just say it feels real. Or that it gave them chills. Or that they had to stop what they were doing. Those reactions say more than praise usually does. They suggest the song has stopped being a piece of entertainment and has become a private space the listener is temporarily allowed to enter.

Plenty of singers can deliver a powerful performance. Very few make you feel that if the song had never existed before, it would have needed to be written specifically for them. Tom Jones belongs to that small group. He doesn’t announce ownership. He doesn’t need to. The second he begins to sing, the distance between the performer and the material collapses.

Nearly sixty years have passed since that night in 1967. Recording technology has advanced beyond recognition. Staging has become more elaborate. The way we consume music has changed completely. And still, when this particular performance appears on a screen, the same quiet recognition returns. Something in the voice, in the restraint, in the way the emotion is held rather than displayed, continues to feel singular.

[Toronto Blue Jays @BlueJays]

It’ll always be Joey Bats and EE 🐐🐐

[Toronto Blue Jays @BlueJays]

Good morning to everyone but especially Kaz!

和真、おはよう！

[Emily Juniper 🇺🇸🇦🇺 𝕩 @emilyjuniper_]

The worst mistake Western society ever made was letting Muslims build mosques on Western soil.