Petra Boehm

Freie Journalistin beim örr. It's complicated.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

After the Green Party's "Zionism is Racism" vote, the Leader of Haringey Council, which is controlled by the Greens, wrote to various Synagogues in the borough to "reassure" them.

I want to show you Highgate Synagogue's reply. I believe it is worth reading in its entirety.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Putting terrorists and aggressors on the same moral plane as their victims and targets is repugnant. At best it whitewashes horrible crimes, at worst it feeds the culture of murder and martyrdom that Hamas espouses.

[Petra Boehm @PetraJBoehm]

@rumeliobserver Da die Zahlen sinken sollte man vielleicht anfangen, statt über Migration über Integration sprechen. Wie können wir helfen und was müssen wir einfordern, um erfolgreiche Teilhabe an unserer Gesellschaft zu ermöglichen. Sinkende Migartionszahlen allein reichen nicht.

[Mariam Lau @MariamLau1]

Manche verwechseln die AfD mit einer etwas ungehobelteren CDU. Ein Staatsamt werde sie disziplinieren. Eine gefährliche Naivität! Mein Leitartikel heute in @DIEZEIT

[Petra Boehm @PetraJBoehm]

@kamfinsa Mr Darcy

[Jamie Metzl @JamieMetzl]

The Gaza war has been a terrible tragedy, sparked by the unconscionable horror of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist massacre but rooted in a much longer conflict in which terrible mistakes have been made on all sides—including multiple credible pathways toward Palestinian statehood that Palestinian and Arab leaders tragically rejected.

After October 7, Israel had both the right and the responsibility to dismantle Hamas’s military infrastructure and avoid the urban-warfare trap Hamas had spent years constructing. Israel also made serious mistakes, including restrictions on humanitarian aid that worsened civilian suffering. Those decisions deserve scrutiny and criticism.

But Hamas bears enormous responsibility for the catastrophe it deliberately engineered. For years, it built hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath Gaza—an extraordinary underground infrastructure capable of providing extensive protection from bombardment. Hamas explicitly said those tunnels were for Gaza’s civilians, even though the tunnels were everywhere and could have been used to save thousands of lives.

That was not merely callous indifference. Hamas deliberately provoked a devastating war and then sought to turn the deaths of the people it governed into a strategic weapon. Yahya Sinwar’s own reported messages described Palestinian civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices” and calculated that mounting casualties would increase international pressure on Israel. Hamas kept its fighters underground while civilians remained exposed above, embedded military operations within densely populated areas, and exploited the resulting deaths to advance its political and military objectives.

The evidence points to the appalling conclusion that Hamas wanted enormous numbers of Gazan civilians to die because their deaths served its strategy. It embedded its terrorist infrastructure in civilian institutions and treated the people of Gaza as human sacrifices. This was horrific and unconscionable. Palestinians in Gaza are among Hamas’s greatest victims.

War is terrible and must be avoided to the fullest extent possible. But Hamas’s strategy was to force Israel into a painful and costly urban war in one of the most densely populated environments on earth, where Hamas had deliberately embedded much of its military infrastructure among civilians. Israel took extraordinary—and by many measures historically extensive and deeply costly in terms of Israeli casualties—precautions to reduce unnecessary civilian casualties, but even extraordinary precautions cannot prevent innocent people from being killed in a brutal urban war, particularly when the battlefield has been deliberately constructed to place civilians in harm’s way.

None of this diminishes the immense suffering in Gaza. Every innocent Palestinian and Israeli life lost is a tragedy. Israelis and Palestinians both deserve security, dignity, and a peaceful future.

But “genocide” is not a synonym for a horrific war with terrible civilian casualties. It is a specific legal charge requiring proof of an intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or substantial part, as such. the evidence clearly does not establish that Israel possessed such an intent, and the demographic record certainly does not establish genocide on its own.

What happened in Gaza was horrific enough without mischaracterizing it: a devastating war triggered by a monstrous terrorist attack, fought against an enemy that deliberately entrenched itself among civilians and viewed their deaths as strategically useful, with terrible mistakes and immense human suffering along the way.

Cynically calling this tragedy “genocide” does not bring us closer to truth, accountability, reconciliation, or peace. On the contrary, it serves the interests of the adversaries of peace, justice, and meaningful accountability for the many mistakes and terrible decisions that have been made on all sides of this conflict for the better part of a century.

[Petra Boehm @PetraJBoehm]

Man kann es nicht oft genug sagen.

[Gerald Knaus @rumeliobserver]

Siegmund & die AfD sind klar:

Sie wollen alle Hilfe an die Ukraine stoppen.

Sie zeigen auch damit wie gefährlich diese AfD für 🇩🇪 wäre. Wie enorm schädlich.

Gestern in Halle fragte ich:

Wie viel kostet 🇩🇪 militärische und zivile Hilfe für die Ukraine seit Putins grossem Angriff im Februar 2022 JEDEN Deutschen JEDEN Tag?

25 Cent?
80 Cent?
3 Euro?
10 Euro?

Was glauben Sie:

🧵

1/8

@GresselGustav @ClaudMajor @joerglau @robinalexander_ @annettedittert @MichaelBroecker @BachmannRudi @ronzheimer @RugeBoris

[Gerald Knaus @rumeliobserver]

Achtung @ben_brechtken

Manche (nicht Sie) verwenden diese Bilder hier für Falschinformation 👇

AfD Brandenburg verbreitet diese etwa hier über den Schengen-Raum.

1. Ceuta und Melilla haben ein Sonderregime mit doppelter Außengrenzkontrolle: einmal bei der Einreise aus Marokko, einmal bei der Weiterreise auf das spanische Festland.

Wer den Zaun von Ceuta überklettert, steht nicht in der europäischen Reisefreiheit, sondern vor einer weiteren Grenzkontrolle.

Selbst das ETIAS wird beim Verlassen der Exklaven geprüft.

https://t.co/3Bk8UNjAsY.

https://t.co/eQFpdg5f4T.

[Jochen Bittner @JochenBittner]

Ein Beispiel, wie menschlich anständig Politik sein kann, bei aller notwendig robusten Debatte.
Der letzte Parlamentsaustausch zwischen der Oppositionsführerin Kemi Badenoch und dem scheidenden Premier Keir Starmer.

[JuliaUndSo @JuliaUndSo_]

42°C am Sonntag in Berlin.
Wie praktisch, dass letztes Jahr der Gendarmenmarkt zu einer schattenfreien Steinwüste umgebaut wurde.

Letztes Jahr hatten wir am 02.07. knapp 38°C Lufttemperatur. Auf dem Gendarmenmarkt wurden 43,5°C gemessen.
Diesen Sonntag, bei einer Lufttemperatur

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

https://t.co/yjHT8jvxKJ

[David French @DavidAFrench]

This is perfection.

[Gary Shteyngart @Shteyngart]

If only I could go back to reading books. But my tweets are so important to humanity.

[Dimko Zhluktenko 🇺🇦⚔️ @dim0kq]

Just a journey of Ukrainian field in the East of Ukraine, captured from satellite.

Barraged by artillery, drones, and all the chemicals daily. I feel you

[Michael Warburton @For_Film_Fans]

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.

KURT VONNEGUT (who left us 19yrs ago today) was the only one to respond.

His reply was a doozy.

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

This piece is interesting. I also think it's deeply flawed. One thing I've noticed, and h/t to @arijoe19 for articulating it so well, is that computer code is a really structured language, and software is a defined problem space with a lot of defined patterns, so software people tend to think everything is a pattern and AI being really good at their job makes them overestimate how well it can do everything else.

The truth is there is a lot more disorder, unpredictability, and humanness in so much of our lives — and our work — that I don't think AI applications will always (or even often?) be able to account for.

Matt, for instance, lists journalism as a job in trouble thanks to AI (not that our industry needs more trouble). And it's true that AI can read documents fast and do incredible research and even write clean copy and edit -- it will probably eliminate or reduce the need for some jobs!

But you know what it can't do? It can't work a source over for years on end. It can't / doesn't / won't bear witness to live events. It reminds me of the famous Good Will Hunting scene, where Robin Williams is chastising Matt Damon about being such a smart ass but not being able to describe what the Sistine Chapel smells like. Damon is the AI.

I say this as someone who has experimented a ton with the latest versions of ChatGPT Matt is writing about here. I can feed it limitless writing of mine from my archives and then have it write a take about a new current events story; I've tried, actually, because if it were good it would save me hours of work every day. But it is *always* useless. Not sometimes; always.

Why? Because the AI still can't predict when certain emotional elements of a story drive me away from a previously held position; because it doesn't know what happened to me that week, or what stories I've read about the topic at hand, or an experience my grandmother had that my family always talked about that informs my view on, say, antisemitism or Israel. It just predicts where I'd land on an issue based on what I've written before, which is actually not a great way to understand humans who are always moving in new and different directions.

It just doesn't know. People think humans are finite numbers of neurons and processes and thoughts and learning but I think that is wrong — we are all constantly changing every day, every second, thanks to new inputs and new experiences.

So yes, I buy that AI will be able to read documents better than your typical lawyer. But can it build a relationship with a client? Or look at a jury and guess what argument might move them to "guilty"? Or know when to cross the lines with a judge or when to step back? I don't really think so. And those limits, to me, are so under-discussed in this dialogue that it kind of discredits everything else.

[UNITED24 Media @United24media]

Russia has killed over 650 Ukrainian athletes and destroyed at least 15 Olympic training bases.

🧵 1/12 ⬇️

[Senator Thom Tillis @SenThomTillis]

This response to our own allies for sending a small number of troops to Greenland for training is bad for America, bad for American businesses, and bad for America's allies. It's great for Putin, Xi and other adversaries who want to see NATO divided. The fact that a small handful of "advisors" are actively pushing for coercive action to seize territory of an ally is beyond stupid. It hurts the legacy of President Trump and undercuts all the work he has done to strengthen the NATO alliance over the years.

[Sen. Lisa Murkowski @lisamurkowski]

These tariffs are unnecessary, punitive, and a profound mistake. They will push our core European allies further away while doing nothing to advance U.S. national security.

We are already seeing the consequences of these measures in real time: our NATO allies are being forced to divert attention and resources to Greenland, a dynamic that plays directly into Putin’s hands by threatening the stability of the strongest coalition of democracies the world has ever seen.

Congress must work together to reassert our Constitutional authority over tariffs so that they are not weaponized in ways that harm our alliances and undermine American leadership.

https://t.co/0kZq9aXmk1

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Trump is raising tariffs on 8 NATO allies because they rightly support Denmark's sovereignty in Greenland.

Destroying our closest alliances to take Greenland — which Denmark lets us use freely already — is insane. Congress must say NO.