Free thought

Challenge yourself to know better and do better. Be kind and speak truthfully.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

BREAKING: The ICC has voted to dismiss Karim Khan.

The ICC prosecutor is facing rape/sexual abuse allegations from 2 women. The ICC decided in a secret vote today to remove him.

[Maarten Boudry @mboudry]

"This means that almost all Western media outlets have unflinchingly disseminated Hamas propaganda to their tens of millions of viewers, while disregarding Israeli figures almost entirely. The world’s journalists have taken the word of jihadi butchers above the evidence-based testimony of a friendly democracy and shared this narrative with the world.
It is no exaggeration to say that this comprises one of the gravest failures of journalistic scepticism in modern times. The uncomfortable truth is that we have been living through the most intense age of propaganda since Soviet times, made only more appalling by the fact that it has been spread voluntarily within supposedly free societies."
https://t.co/J3Lme482HL

[Amjad Taha أمجد طه @amjadt25]

The UAE does not tolerate terrorists; it deletes them from the equation.Iraq is now arresting members of the Islamic regime. Lebanon has normalized relations with Israel and is pushing Hezbollah out.Meanwhile, in the EU, the UK, and across the West, Muslim Brotherhood terrorists get upgraded to “activists,” the IRGC plays street politics, and antisemitism is treated like a fashionable opinion instead of a crime. That is not tolerance. That is political cowardice wearing a human-rights costume.

[Jamie Metzl @JamieMetzl]

I am a lifelong Democrat who served in the Clinton administration and as a United Nations Human Rights Officer in Cambodia.

As a New Yorker, let me say this loud and clear:

Zohran Mamdani is an extreme bigot who is cynically stoking hostility toward New York’s Jewish community for political gain.

His words and actions are aggressively inciting violence and will lead directly to unnecessary deaths.

[Pro America Politics @proamericapol]

By no means am I a scholar on the Middle East, but it seems like Israel gets attacked, and then they respond in defense, and then everyone likes to pretend Israel started it?

Is that accurate?

Because if Hezbollah is attacking Israel, they have the absolute right to respond.

If some terrorists attacked the United States, we would wipe them off the face of the Earth.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Will the Democratic Party Shift Course? Last night, I addressed a group of Democratic elected officials, philanthropists, voters, and activists in New York about Gaza, the broader Israel and Palestine conflict, and the troubling trends emerging inside the Democratic Party. I focused on the growing normalization of Hamas, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the wider “resistance” narrative, an ideology that has migrated from campuses into the streets and now into electoral politics. This shift has produced a new class of candidates eager to cater to these destructive sentiments. Even individuals who are not explicit Hamas supporters have adopted inflammatory language and absolutist postures that shut down debate and weaponize accusations instead of fostering democratic discourse.

I emphasized to the audience, including local, state, and national officials, that these views do not reflect the diversity of Palestinian experiences, particularly those inside the Gaza Strip. Worse, they actively undermine the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, who have suffered from the collapse of political life, the erosion of public freedoms, the absence of a viable peace process, and the empowerment of extremists. Allowing Hamas’s ideology and the rhetoric of its backers and apologists to masquerade as “pro‑Palestine” within the Democratic Party would harm the party, hurt Palestinians, and distract from the real needs of American constituents whose lives are shaped by far more than oversimplified foreign‑policy slogans.

Without hesitation, I made clear that the future of the Democratic Party cannot rest with DSA‑aligned candidates whose positions on Palestine, governance, and economic policy would be disastrous. Nor can it rest with influencers like Hasan Piker, the radical “left,” the misguided “progressives,” the clueless “liberals,” or the wave of prospective candidates in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and elsewhere who are building platforms on outrage rather than solutions, leveraging Gaza and the Palestinians for political and electoral gains.

At the same time, I spoke candidly about Israeli policy choices in Gaza and beyond, many of which have been deadly, counterproductive, and strategically incoherent. Tactical gains have not translated into a sustainable endgame, prolonging the crisis and deepening human suffering. I urged decisive action against violent settler extremism in the West Bank, which is enabled by elements of the Israeli government and must be confronted directly. It is entirely possible to criticize Israeli policies without denying Israeli humanity or indulging fantasies about dismantling the Jewish state – just as it is entirely possible to support Palestinians while rejecting Hamas, terrorism, decades of failed leadership, and a long list of destructive allies.

[Kosher Chutzpah @KosherChutzpah]

Palestinians want a right of return to pre-1948 homes. Surely they want it to be fair and equitable, right?

Well then, let's discuss the uncomfortable truth about equality that they never seem to want to discuss. The 850,000 Jews who were expelled or fled from Arab countries after 1948 should also be granted that identical right. That means full restitution of their homes, synagogues, businesses, and the $100 billion+ in seized assets across Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and elsewhere. They should be free to return, reclaim their properties, receive guarantees of security, and have the option to rent them out if they prefer to stay in Israel.

Sounds perfectly fair, doesn't it?

[Kosher @koshercockney]

No you’re right it didn’t start on October 7th.

Here’s a list of all massacres perpetrated by the Arabs against the Jews in the Middle East since 622 AD to present day.

“Palestine” is about trying to wipe out the Jews. Plain and simple.

Don’t forget to bookmark this.

[Neo @Realneo101]

Iranian-Jewish Doctor Drops Truth Bomb No Feminist Will Touch:

Dr. Sheila Nazarian:

"I studied Islam classes while I was at Columbia University, because I wanted to know what it says in the Quran that made my family have to escape Iran under gunfire, by border police.

I've read the Quran. I know what it says to do to Jews in the Quran, and no one can deny it to me because I studied it.

Shariah law is not compatible with the West.

Women are worth half as much. Women need their husband’s permission to travel outside the country or go anywhere. Women can be stoned. This is why my family got me out of Iran under the Islamic regime."

I couldn't agree more with her. Shariah law is simply not compatible with any non-Muslim country.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

This baby was only 8 months old when he was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists from his home, along with his brother and mother, and taken to an underground terror tunnel in Gaza.

They were all murdered in that dark tunnel, alone and afraid.

Never forget how this war started.

[Duncan Dee 🇮🇱🇺🇦 @duncandee]

My son graduated from his nephrology fellowship last night. A huge evening for him. A proud evening for our family.

In perhaps one of the most poetic moments for me, I found out that his mentor, one of the amazing and brilliant physicians who took the time and effort to train him is a nephrologist originally from Israel. An amazing physician who enthusiastically took my son under her wing to help him become the doctor he has grown into. A healer who will put his patients first. Always. A teacher who will train the next group of nephrologists.

So to wake up the morning after such a lovely evening and see a medical publication like the Lancet ostracize Israeli doctors hits close to home.

Israel is a medical powerhouse. A place of medical innovation that punches above its weight. When even physicians start to see their colleagues as "other" it is not just Israeli doctors or Israelis who suffer, it is patients around the world who will not benefit from their skills and knowledge. It is young doctors like my own son who learned to become a physician because a doctor who happens to be Israeli took the time, care and effort to mentor him.

What is the world coming to?

Have we lost our minds?

We cannot allow this to continue.

Israeli doctors are no more responsible for the actions and decisions of their government than an American, Chinese, French, Russian or Indian doctor is for theirs.

Publications like The Lancet cannot allow themselves to become vehicles of antisemitism. Please. Stop. Before it is too late.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

1/5
An open letter to @TheLancet from an Iranian-Jewish cardiologist.
Today, one of the world's most prestigious medical journals published a campaign to suspend the Israeli Medical Association from the World Medical Association — the body founded after WWII to ensure physicians would never again be weaponized by political ideology.
I'm a cardiologist. I'm an Iranian Jew who grew up under a regime where medicine was subjugated to the state.
What The Lancet just did is a disgrace to my profession.
Here's what they published — and what they deliberately left out.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

2/5
What The Lancet didn't mention:
The World Medical Association itself opposes this suspension. The WMA stated explicitly that suspending members because of their governments' actions would undermine its ability to promote medical ethics globally.
The Israeli Medical Association has advocated for humanitarian aid into Gaza, demanded protections for hospitals, and called these accusations "false or contested claims presented as facts." The IMA is a professional medical body — not a branch of the Israeli government.
Hamas systematically used hospitals as military infrastructure — tunnel entrances, command centers, weapons storage. Extensively documented. One of the gravest violations of medical neutrality that exists.
The Lancet's campaign says nothing about it.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

3/5
What the boycott would actually destroy:
PillCam — revolutionized GI diagnosis. Developed in Israel.
ReWalk — robotic exoskeletons for paralyzed patients. Developed in Israel.
Breakthrough AI diagnostics for cardiac imaging and cancer detection used in hospitals on every continent.
Israel has among the highest per-capita rates of medical innovation on earth. These technologies save lives in London, Johannesburg, São Paulo, and New York.
Suspending the IMA doesn't punish a government. It severs research collaborations and training partnerships. The patients who lose aren't Israeli. They're everyone.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

4/5
Now the question The Lancet doesn't want to answer.
Where is the petition against the medical associations of Iran? Syria? North Korea? China? Russia?
I was born in Iran. The regime has executed physicians. Imprisoned doctors for treating protesters. Denied healthcare to political prisoners as policy.
No petition. No Lancet article. No campaign.
117 nations belong to the WMA. When the standard is applied to one country and one country only — the world's single Jewish state — the word for that is not "medical ethics."
I grew up inside a regime that weaponized medicine. I know exactly what the politicization of the profession looks like. This is it.

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

5/5
The WMA Congress meets in Rotterdam this October to consider this petition.
The right response is simple: reject it. Unanimously.
Medicine must heal, not divide. Medical associations should be judged by standards of medical ethics — applied equally to all 117 members, based on evidence, not political pressure campaigns.
The moment we expel medical bodies based on political litmus tests is the moment we destroy the neutrality that makes global medicine possible.
Defend the IMA. Defend medical neutrality. Defend the principle that a physician's allegiance is to the patient — not to the mob.
The Lancet should be ashamed. And every physician who values science over activism should say so — loudly — before October.

[Mor Edge Insight @MorEdge_Insight]

Even Arab leaders admit it.

Everyone is sharing the Bill Clinton clip where he describes how Yasser Arafat rejected a generous peace offer at Camp David that would have given the Palestinians a state on 96 percent of the West Bank, land swaps, and a capital in East Jerusalem. Clinton says Arafat lied to him and that the Palestinian leadership never actually wanted a two-state solution. They wanted to destroy Israel. It’s a video often shared by people like @VividProwess, and it’s an important one for people to see.

Of course, critics immediately dismiss it. They claim Clinton is biased or he’s pro-Israel. They’ll tell you that you cannot trust the American perspective.

Ok, so let us set that aside.

Now watch this.

In this powerful interview, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a major Arab leader who was directly involved in negotiations, says exactly the same thing from the Arab side. He talks about the Mena House Conference in Cairo as well as the Camp David negotiations of 1978. All failed because of the Palestinians repeatedly rejecting any offer. The Oslo accords were signed but because Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were not involved, they derailed the accords and any chance for peace by initiating 4 years of terrorist suicide attacks in Israel. Then came the second Camp David negotiations in 2000 which Arafat agreed to, then rejected and instead initiated the Second Intifada.

Mubarak explains how the Palestinians refused to even participate in the Mena House conference of 1977. He describes repeated opportunities they were given, including a detailed document that called for Israeli withdrawal from the Samaria, Judea and Gaza, security arrangements during a transitional period, and other major concessions. The Israelis were willing to negotiate on difficult issues like who would control security. The Palestinians, according to Mubarak, kept saying no and wasting chance after chance.

He speaks with clear frustration about how for decades the Palestinian side has rejected peace initiatives and realistic compromises.

The video further shows footage from the PLO representative in 1977, as well as old footage of Egyptian president Sadat who was involved in the Mena House and first Camp David negotiations of 1978.

This perhaps is far more impactful than Clinton’s account because it is not a Western or Israeli voice. It is prominent Arab leaders who lived the negotiations, who represented the broader Arab world, and who had zero incentive to defend Israel.

When leaders from both sides of the table describe the same pattern of Palestinian rejectionism and violence, it becomes much harder to dismiss as bias.

The pattern is clear across decades and across different voices… generous offers, repeated refusals, and continued demands for everything while giving nothing in return.

This is not ancient history. It is the core reason the conflict continues today.

If you value the truth, please share.

[Insurrection Barbie @DefiyantlyFree]

WHAT WE GIVE ISRAEL

The standard US military aid package is $3.8 billion per year $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing plus $500 million for joint missile defense programs. Israel must spend most of this on US-made products and services, and by 2028 essentially all of it must be spent in America.

WHAT ISRAEL GIVES BACK

1. F-35 R&D Savings: 55 billion
Israel resolved multiple technical issues during the F-35’s early development, reducing US R&D costs by an estimated $55 billion and accelerating deployment timelines.  The total F-35 program cost was $55 billion in R&D Israel’s combat testing effectively saved the US from having to discover and fix those problems on their own dime.

2. Intelligence Value: equivalent to 5 CIAs (75 billion/year)

General George Keegan, former Chief of US Air Force Intelligence, stated that Israel’s intel value equals “5 CIAs” providing a 400% return on investment on the $3.8 billion aid package. One CIA budget runs approximately $15 billion.  Five times that equals roughly $75 billion worth of intelligence annually for $3.8 billion in aid.

3. Strategic Base Value: $15–20 billion/year

As stated by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and General Alexander Haig, Israel is the largest US aircraft carrier that does not require US military personnel on board, cannot be sunk, and is deployed in a critical region sparing the US the need to manufacture, deploy, and maintain real aircraft carriers with ground divisions, which would cost the US $15–20 billion annually. 

4. F-35 Export Multiplier: $40 billion in sales, $173 billion backlog
Israel’s battle-tested performance and upgrades to the F-35 contribute to $40 billion in US exports and a $173 billion backlog for US industry.  Israel essentially serves as the world’s most credible advertisement for American weapons.

5. Jobs and Economic Output: 255,000 jobs, $72 billion annually
The F-35 economic engine alone supports 290,000 US employees and $72 billion in annual economic output.  Israeli stakeholders hold contracts with over 1,000 American companies across 48 states, DC, and Puerto Rico.

Why do people need to lie about this?

Because they have nefarious reasons.

There’s no other reason to lie about this stuff.

[Team Ossoff @TeamOssoff]

Ossoff: Last September, the President of Kazakhstan calls Donald Trump and says he wants to grant tungsten mining rights to an American company. And the very next month, Eric and Don Jr. get a stake in the American company pursuing the mining deal.

Six days later, six days after Prince Eric and Prince Don get their stake, Kazakhstan announces this company will get, “The largest known undeveloped tungsten resource in the world.” A few more weeks go by, and then the U.S. government, run by their father, sets aside 1.6 billion of your tax dollars to fund and finance their mining project. In Kazakhstan.

All this while you pay more for gas, for groceries, for health care, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

[The Free Press @TheFP]

Nearly eight decades after his father was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, Santa Clara County DA Jeff Rosen has been yanked from a high-profile case for being anti-antisemitism, writes Peter Savodnik. https://t.co/BnpMMLNt3S