Jonathan Norton

Lifelong Chicagoan. I love Chicago sports, video production, singing a cappella and my family..not necessarily in that order. Views=my own

[Ahmed Al-Khalidi @khalidi79397]

So let me get this straight.

77% of the territory pledged as the Jewish national home was carved off in 1921 to create an Arab emirate. Fine. That's history, and Israel has long since accepted the Jordan River as a border.

But here's the real question:

Why is it still illegal for a Jew to live there?

Jordan's nationality law is explicit. Law No. 6 of 1954, still in force, grants citizenship to "any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948." Read that again. The religious exclusion is written into the text. It is one of the few nationality statutes on earth with a clause aimed at a single religious group.

Land sale to Jews? Under a 1973 Jordanian law, the "Law for Preventing the Sale of Immovable Property to the Enemy," selling land to the "enemy" carries the death penalty and forfeiture of all property. The statute defines "enemy" as Israelis, but in practice it has been applied specifically to sales to Jews, not to Israeli Arabs. The Palestinian Authority inherited this law and enforces it to this day, sentencing land dealers to hard labor for life, with capital punishment still on the books.

So ask the people who chant about apartheid and ethnic cleansing:

Why is a state whose nationality law explicitly excludes Jews, and where selling land to Jews can cost you your life, considered the legitimate, "moderate Hashemite kingdom"?

Why is the one country in the region where Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouin all vote and sit in parliament the "apartheid state"?

Notice the pattern. When 77% of the land was made judenrein by British fiat and Hashemite decree, the world called it statesmanship. When Jews ask to live on the remaining 23%, the world calls it occupation.

A territory was emptied of Jews and kept empty of Jews for a century, and somehow the Jews are the ethnostate.

The map didn't just shrink the Jewish home by three-quarters. It established a principle:

Arab land can be Jew-free as a matter of law, and that this is normal.

Unremarkable.

Not worth a single UN resolution.

Ask why.

[Jonathan Greenblatt @JGreenblattADL]

An essential analysis by @davidfrum. For centuries, Jews were accused of horrific crimes to justify hatred and violence against them. Today, major media outlets like @nytimes amplify some of the most heinous and unforgivable accusations without evidence, opinion posing as fact. This is what a modern-day blood libel looks like: outrageous claims, bizarre allegations, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing... but the damage remains.
https://t.co/mnG4wxxr7V

[Pádraig הלנה 🇮🇪🇮🇱🎗️🟧 @PCJMcElligott]

The Klu Klux Klan used to march through black neighbourhoods in the 50s and 60s, seeking to intimidate black residents and assert white supremacy.

Now antisemites march through Jewish neighbourhoods, seeking to intimidate Jewish residents and assert anti-Jew supremacy.

It was racism then and it’s racism now.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

🇺🇸BREAKING: Someone placed a $920 million crude oil short at 3:40 AM.

70 minutes later Axios reported the US and Iran were close to a deal.

Oil dropped 12%.

The trade made $125 million in profit.

Minutes after that Iran launched the “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” and oil surged 8%.

$760 million placed before Trump’s last announcement.

$920 million placed before this one.

Every major announcement in this war has been front-run by someone who knew it was coming.

What kind of war is this?

This is more like a trading desk with an army.

Never stop connecting the dots.

[Simone Rodan-Benzaquen @srodan]

There is a claim that keeps circulating, presented as sophisticated analysis: antisemitic violence is caused by Israel’s actions. If Israel behaved differently, Jewish communities around the world would somehow be safer. This argument is not analysis. It is a moral inversion. And it collapses the moment you apply it consistently.
When China imprisons Uyghurs, does anyone warn Muslim communities in Paris to expect attacks? When Russia invaded Ukraine, did anyone tell Russian restaurants to brace for violence? No. Never. The causal chain between a government’s actions and violence against a diaspora is only ever constructed for Jews. Every other minority is extended the basic moral courtesy of being treated as individuals rather than proxies.
Now look at what the data actually shows. The SPCJ, which tracks antisemitic incidents in France in coordination with the Interior Ministry, has documented a consistent and damning pattern: it is antisemitic violence that inspires more antisemitic violence, not Israeli policy. After Mohamed Merah murdered Jewish children at point-blank range at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012, antisemitic acts surged by 200%. There was no Gaza operation. No Israeli military action. The massacre of Jews in France produced more attacks on Jews in France.
The same logic held after the Hypercacher attack in January 2015: antisemitic acts increased by nearly 300%. Massacres of Jews do not shock antisemites into restraint. They embolden them. They signal impunity. They normalize hatred. And everyone in a position of responsibility knows it.
Which brings us to October 7. From the day of the Hamas attack, antisemitic acts in France increased by over 1,000%. A daily average of approximately 25 antisemitic acts was recorded in the 30 days that followed, reaching nearly 40 on some days. In the three months after the attack, the number of antisemitic acts equaled those recorded over the previous three years combined.
And here is another detail that makes the “Israel causes antisemitism” argument impossible to sustain: the spike began on October 7 itself, the very day of the attack. Israel had not yet responded. Not a single soldier had entered Gaza. Interior Minister Darmanin sent an urgent message to prefects that same day asking them to immediately reinforce protection of Jewish community sites. Synagogues. Schools. Community centers. By October 10, 10,000 police officers had been deployed to protect 500 Jewish sites across the country.
Before any Israeli response existed, the French government already knew that Jewish communities needed protecting. Not because of what Israel was about to do. Because of what had just been done to Jews.
Antisemitic violence has one cause. Antisemitism.

[Hussain Abdul-Hussain @hahussain]

And this is why, to America, Israel is an asset ally, not a liability.

— An American pilot with 25 years of experience, a veteran of three wars and hundreds of combat sorties, spoke about Israeli military pilots. He published a post that quickly went viral:

“I’ve flown over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. I thought I had seen everything.
But when I saw what the Israeli Air Force is doing in Iran, I realized I’m still a student.
Precision. Logistics.
200 aircraft in one night.
500 targets.
1,500 kilometers.
No aerial refueling from American bases.
All the fuel from home.
All the weapons from home.
It’s like flying from Miami to New York, bombing targets along the way, and returning while 200 aircraft move simultaneously without a single collision.
To the Israeli pilots:
You are not just the best in the Middle East.
You are the best in the world.
And that’s the final word.” —

[Sarah Ironside 💙 @SarahIronside6]

Al Franken was forced to resign over a tasteless photo, while Tony Gonzales is being defended by the Speaker of the House after he was caught sexually harassing his staffer until she killed herself. Both parties are not the same.

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

Maher: So being Christian is an important part of being truly American?

Boebert: Absolutely

@JamesTalarico: As a Christian, I was taught that we're supposed to follow Jesus' two commandments — love God and love neighbor. There was no exception to that second commandment.

Love thy neighbor regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation.

In Texas, I'm constantly battling Christian nationalism — a bill that forces every public school teacher to put up a poster of the 10 Commandments, a bill that replaces school counselors with untrained chaplains, a bill that would have taught Christian Bible stories as historical fact to our youngest students. And I always speak up on behalf of my Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, agnostic, and atheist neighbors. Because we as Christians are called to love them as ourselves, and forcing my religion down their throats is not love.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

The history books quietly bypassed is that Barack Obama, during the most pressure-saturated nights of his presidency, would retreat alone to the Treaty Room on the second floor of the White House residence — not to strategize, not to take calls, but to handwrite personal letters to ten ordinary American citizens every single night, a practice he maintained with almost monastic devotion across all eight years, selecting the letters himself from the 40,000 that arrived daily at the White House, and his longtime correspondence director Fiona Reese confirmed that Obama would often weep privately while reading certain letters, folding them carefully before writing responses so personally detailed and emotionally present that recipients frequently described the experience of receiving them as the most significant moment of their lives, with one Ohio steelworker writing back to say that Obama's letter had physically stopped him from making a decision that would have permanently altered his family's future. What makes this practice almost unbearably moving is the detail that surfaced later — Obama never used a computer for these letters, always a black felt-tip pen, always legal yellow paper first as a draft, always rewritten onto White House stationery by hand a second time, because he believed, as he told historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in a rare private conversation later recounted in her 2018 work, that the physical act of pressing pen to paper forced a quality of attention that typing simply could not replicate, a philosophy rooted in his years as a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago from 1992 to 2004 where he developed the conviction that democracy only functions when its leaders remain genuinely, uncomfortably close to the specific gravity of individual human suffering rather than processing it from behind the insulating distance of institutions and screens."

[chris evans @notcapnamerica]

There really are two Americas 😐

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

🇺🇸 THE ULTIMATE AMERICAN REVENGE STORY 🇺🇸
​The script couldn't have written it better. In 1989, Arthur Liu fled China as a political refugee after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He came to America with nothing but a dream for a free life.
​Decades later, his daughter Alysa Liu became the face of Team USA.
​But the CCP didn’t forget. Before the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the FBI uncovered a "brazen" spying operation. The target? Alysa and her father. The Chinese government tried to:
​Stalk them on U.S. soil.
​Intimidate her into silence.
​Pressure her to turn her back on the country that gave her family refuge.
​The FBI had to give them 24/7 security just so she could compete. 🛡️
​She faced the intimidation. She refused to be a pawn. She walked away from the sport for two years to find her soul again—and then she came back with a vengeance.
​TODAY, THE STORY IS COMPLETE. In a flawless performance to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park,” Alysa Liu just did the impossible.
​🥇 OLYMPIC GOLD. 🥇 The first American woman to win individual gold in 24 years.
​She didn’t just skate for a medal. She skated for the freedom her father risked everything for. She didn’t just win for herself; she won for the flag that protected her family when the world felt small.
​This is what a Patriot looks like. 🇺🇸✨
​#AlysaLiu #TeamUSA #OlympicGold #MilanoCortina2026 #AmericanDream #FigureSkating #USA #Inspiration

[Jim Acosta @Acosta]

Dude

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

"This is happening not after the great shocks of a depression or a world war, not when the country was reeling from earth-shattering events...The rise of Trump came at a time of relative peace and prosperity. We have no excuse for having succumbed to the degree we already have."

[David Frum @davidfrum]

Don't say, "The most corrupt administration in American history." There is no comparison between Trump, on the one hand, and eg Grant, Harding, or Nixon on the other. Nixon's worst day in office was 100x better than Trump's best day. The relevant comparisons are to non-American presidents in authoritarian societies with unfree media. Trump's scale of stealing and bribe-taking has never been remotely paralleled in any democratic country ever before.

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

Say it, brother! ✊🏽

[Joe Kennedy III @joekennedy]

President John F. Kennedy believed that one day this country would live up to its promise of justice and equal rights for all. For those beliefs and for his sacrifice, Congress voted to make The Kennedy Center a living memorial to him, as a place built by the people for the people to celebrate what connects us. 

While this trespass on the People’s will is painful, President Kennedy would remind us that it is not buildings that define the greatness of a nation. It is the actions of its people and its leaders. 

So, do not be distracted from what this Administration is actually trying to erase: our connection, our community, and our commitment to the rights of all.

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

The only thing Alex Pretti had in his hands when the Icemen set on him was a cell phone camera.
Like thousands of others citizens of Minneapolis, he was there to record their actions.
We know this because others were recording, too. We have seen the video.
Had they not been there, all we would have are the lies the WH and DHS have told to justify a cold-blooded murder.
That's why Alex and the others have braved the cold and risk themselves to record.
And why the Icemen want to kill the cameras!

[Matt Lewis @mattklewis]

It’s wrong to carry a gun in public. Especially to a protest.

[Melanie Phillips @MelanieLatest]

A mass extermination is under way in Iran. Captured dissidents held in giant warehouses are being murdered in batches. If help really is on its way, as the build-up of US forces in the region may or may not suggest, it comes too late for the tens of thousands who have reportedly been murdered -- due to more than four decades of appeasement of the fanatical Iranian regime by the not-so civilised world, much of which continues to shrug this aside.

[Mayor Brandon Johnson @ChicagosMayor]

WATCH LIVE: Mayor Brandon Johnson attends the International Jazz Day announcement press conference. https://t.co/424eMYKofs