Northern Lad

Working dad, footy fan, political cynic, proud northerner. The truth will out.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@AndrewHWestern More important is who an beat the dismal failure of Labour.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@SamCKx @allenanalysis Done more to destroy the economy, increase youth unemployment and make a laughing stock of the country.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@AndrewHWestern Andrew, you are not that stupid. You should not embarrass yourself with such idiotic comments.

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says an internal investigation uncovered 59 allegations of sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment linked to its operations in eastern Chad.

The investigation was launched after Sudanese refugee women reported abuse by MSF staff. The findings led to 18 staff members being fired and permanently barred from working for the organization.

MSF said some allegations were substantiated and described the misconduct as a “serious breach” of its values. Survivors were offered medical, psychological, and legal support.

[John Spencer @SpencerGuard]

To be very clear: reality is very different from the rhetoric. The IDF takes extraordinary measures to mitigate civilian harm in Lebanon. In fact, as in Gaza, it employs more civilian harm mitigation measures than any military in past or current operations.

The IDF issues evacuation warnings through multiple channels including text messages, phone calls, voicemails, flyers, radio, television, and social media. It operates dedicated civilian harm mitigation cells, tracks civilian presence through drones, cell phone data, and other ISR capabilities, and uses rigorous targeting processes that include legal reviews and proportionality assessments for any planned strikes. Legal reviews at lowest tactical level, and with the ability (which happens often as well as command decisions not to strike based on all context) to override commander decisions, unlike any other military.

In southern Lebanon, these measures are particularly effective because civilians can move away from military objectives and active combat areas.

Even in Beirut, the IDF has repeatedly provided warnings identifying specific buildings that will be struck and when. The warnings have proven so reliable that Lebanese citizens and journalists have set up cameras in advance to record the strikes. When targeting Hezbollah senior leaders, command meetings, or other military objectives in densely populated areas such as Dahiyeh (the Hezbollah controlled neighborhood of Beirut), the IDF relies on precision-guided munitions, small diameter munition (warheads with less explosives), and other low collateral damage munitions, detailed intelligence, and other methods designed to limit collateral damage while achieving the legitimate military objective.

There is also no equivalency. Israel does not intentionally target civilians. Hezbollah is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization whose strategy includes deliberately attacking civilians. Hezbollah launches rockets, missiles, and drones at civilian communities in northern Israel (daily, despite any cease fires), targeting homes, schools, businesses, and civilian infrastructure.

One side conducts legal reviews, proportionality assessments, civilian warnings, and precision strikes against military objectives. The other is a international designated terrorist group that intentionally places military assets among civilians while deliberately targeting civilians.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Will Europe Save Hamas in Gaza? I recently met with a high-ranking European official from a country deeply involved in the Israel and Palestine file to discuss Gaza’s future and immediate options for relieving civilians trapped under Hamas’s grip. I presented a simple proposal: create safe zones across the "Yellow Line" into the Israel‑controlled green zone and support new, organized, secure, Hamas‑free communities where Gazans could finally begin rebuilding their lives. Whether the issue is humane living conditions, deradicalization, education, healthcare, or shielding civilians from both Hamas or Israeli strikes, the green zone is the only place where meaningful action is possible. Instead of engaging, the official launched into a long monologue about their country’s contributions to the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA, and other institutions, all while insisting on their own “humility” as a faraway European nation.

Then came the truly alarming part: a casual normalization of Hamas. The official proudly described how easy it had been to work with Hamas before October 7, praising the group for providing “excellent security” and being “easier to work with than others.” What they called pragmatism was, in reality, a twenty‑year pattern of enabling a violent terrorist organization responsible for immense civilian suffering.

When I explained that any Hamas‑free zones would require vetting at the Yellow Line to prevent weapons or operatives from entering, the official reacted with shock. “This vetting would violate international law,” they repeated, insisting that their country could not fund projects with any checks on who enters. I noted the absurdity: I had undergone extensive vetting just to enter their country, and even this building, yet they believed Hamas fighters should be able to walk into new civilian safe zones unimpeded. Their only response was vague appeals to “international law,” which, in their interpretation, seems to require allowing terrorists to hide among civilians.

The meeting ended on an even more surreal note. When the official asked what would happen to Hamas fighters left in the red zone, I said I didn’t care; they could fight the Israeli military on their own all they wanted once they no longer held two million civilians hostage. The official lamented that “this isn’t the old American West” and expressed concern for what would happen to Hamas without human shields. Disgust doesn’t begin to describe my feelings and reactions.

I left convinced of something long suspected: Hamas’s twenty‑year rule was sustained not only by its own brutality but by an ecosystem of NGOs, donor nations, Western European governments, journalists, academics, activists, lawyers, and even self‑styled human‑rights defenders who normalized Hamas, treated it as a legitimate authority, or tolerated its abuses because their hostility toward Israel outweighed their concern for Gazans.

[Kasra Aarabi @KasraAarabi]

I told @BBCNews: The reality is, so long as the Islamic Republic regime exists in Iran, there will be no lasting peace or stability in the Middle East. The past 47 years have proven this. @BBCMaryam

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@bourscheid It is astonishing that with your extreme level of ignorance that manage to put one foot in front of the other without them both ending up in your mouth.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@HeidiBachram @adammaanit @TheGreenParty The Green Party have sunk lower than the scum of the earth. Traditional Green Party members must cry themselves to sleep at night over their takeover by Nazis and Marxists

[Mor Edge Insight @MorEdge_Insight]

The former President of the ICJ just destroyed the “Israel is committing genocide” lie.

Joan Donoghue (who presided over the South Africa v. Israel case) on Hardtalk:

“It didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible… The shorthand that often appears… isn’t what the court decided.”

The Court only said Palestinians have plausible rights to be protected from genocide. It made no finding that Israel was plausibly committing genocide.

Watch her say it herself. The media and activists have been misrepresenting this and lying for 18+ months.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

The United Nations and Hamas: A Toxic Relationship? A close friend of mine from Gaza City, tortured nearly to death by Hamas, a well‑known activist against the group, and someone I helped evacuate during the war, was featured in the UN Human Rights Council’s report documenting Hamas’s abuses against Palestinian civilians: executions, torture, beatings, the misuse of medical facilities, and the terrorizing of women and children.

When he met with the UN investigation team, one investigator was openly sympathetic to Hamas and the “resistance” narrative, signaling from the start that she doubted his testimony. He then spent five hours convincing the rest of the team that Hamas had, in fact, tortured him, despite extensive evidence of his injuries circulating on social media and a medical examination confirming blunt‑force trauma consistent with organized abuse, not random violence or Israeli bombardment. He even had to walk the investigators, including Ms. pro‑Hamas, through how his case fits into hundreds of others across Gaza, and how Hamas itself has filmed and publicly released its own executions, beatings, and torture to terrorize the population.

Imagine that: Hamas documenting its own crimes on video, and supposedly serious investigators refusing to believe what is right in front of them. Imagine a human rights inquiry that includes someone openly aligned with the very group under investigation. It forces a hard question: why are parts of the UN system so compromised when it comes to Hamas that they cannot think beyond Israel’s actions long enough to examine the crimes of Palestinian actors, crimes that are equally harmful, shameful, and deserving of condemnation? And why are some so eager to believe Palestinians when the accusation is against Israel, yet so reluctant when the accusation is against Hamas, even when the evidence is overwhelming?

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@AhadReports @Osint613 Cutting fighter jets by a third is not abandoning Europe, it is emphasising the very clear message that Europe HAS to pay its way.

If the UK defence debacle this week was another nail in the coffin, I would not be surprised.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@boredtweeple @SarahForRuncorn You are a moron, but we are all entitled to our opinions, but in your case they can't be taken seriously.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@Peston This is just lying bs from No. 10

[Hananya Naftali @HananyaNaftali]

Even the UN admits it now!

A new UN report documents Hamas publicly executing, torturing, and maiming Palestinians in Gaza: blindfolded men shot in public squares, beatings with metal pipes, deliberately broken bones, and public punishments designed to spread fear.

For years, many tried to portray Hamas as freedom fighters. The reality is much simpler: Hamas terrorizes Israelis and Palestinians alike.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@ZackPolanski The Palestinians do not suffer from apartheid, they practice it.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@masundah @lgdelothlorien @Osint613 Ludicrous thing to say. The PLO was started in 1964 when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and Gaza was under Egyptian control. So how did Israel take more than stipulated when actually large swathes of land had been illegally taken from them?

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@masundah @lgdelothlorien @Osint613 Israel stated ambition is to live in oeace in its own borders. Those borders at its recognised independence in 1948 included the west bank and Gaza. WB and Gaza were then invaded and illegally occupied in 1948 by Jordan and Egypt. Israel recovered them in 1967.

[Northern Lad @NorthernLad20]

@masundah @Osint613 This is complete nonesense. It is Hezbollah and Iran that want to destroy and occupy Israel not Israel that wants South Lebanon. They are only occupying it because they want Israelis to be able to live in peace in their own homes

[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.