Tony Karon

Pessimist of the intellect, optimist of the will. Editorial lead at AJ+. Views are my own, not those of my employer. RT ≠ endorsement

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

Israel's occupation of the West Bank, settlers and soldiers, is entirely illegal. Will the world stand by and watch another massacre? Probably. Because the world is ruled by self-serving elites who rely on force, not legitimacy or law https://t.co/WdWq3RpaAW

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@NesrineMalik UN signed its suicide note when Security Council formally handed control of Gaza to Trump’s Board of Peace consortium. Big power consensus has reduced UN to an empty shell. How long before its NYC HQ building is claimed by Trump as reward for decades of US funding?

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

I’m grateful to live in a time when Jewish parents can kleib nahas from their children going to the West Bank to defend an olive harvest from Nazis in yarmulkes and the criminal apartheid state that deploys and protects these Nazis. Shkoyach, my friends, you know who you are!

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@im_PULSE Dude, Mandela was designated a "terrorist" by the United States until 2008, 14 years after his election as President in South Africa's first democratic election...

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

Pretending this is an issue -- to distract voters from the real issues at stake in the election -- is what they did to Mamdani (but failed), trying to force the NYC affordability candidate with social-democratic solutions to instead discuss only apartheid/genocide in Palestine

[Shadi Hamid @shadihamid]

It's such a silly question. Abdul El-Sayed shouldn't have to dignify it with a response but that's where we are in our discourse. A multi-day fabricated controversy from Republicans to vilify Muslims in public life by accusing them of dual loyalty and foreign allegiances.

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

Halloween comes early to NYC? But really, the "Board of Peace" Gaza mandate showed that the US has irreversibly trashed the UN and everything it stood for /UAE official emerges as late contender to lead UN https://t.co/qQ87w0IKBy

[Priyamvada Gopal © @PriyamvadaGopal]

No, Sacha. He's a racist caricature, & you're a racist minstrel.

Oh, and you're also a Zionist.

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

Board of Peace vibes...

[Pippa Green @green_pippa]

“Every night I hear cracking sounds..”

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@mehdirhasan Dude, cable TV news is not journalism; it’s an entertainment medium

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@MouinRabbani Nazis get a pass when they’re wearing yarmulkes, it seems

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@HeerJeet White liberalism

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@tarapoconnor I thought it was Athens First. Or Mission Civilatrise. Or the Incredible Whiteness of Being. Or summat…

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@RediTlhabi Obama is a self-serving enabler of the apartheid genocidal regime and always has been. “Moral high ground”?! From the Wall Street president, puhleeze. Anyone notice all the moral stands he’s taken since leaving office? Utterly useless Davos man…

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@mehdirhasan Israeli philosopher Y. Liebowitz warned in '89 that the settler spirit is "Judeo-Nazi", and would consume Israel. Decades of Western guarantees of Israeli impunity has mainstreamed it - perhaps because Israel is the last, brutal hurrah of Western colonialism

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@KarimMakdisi Actually, I'd say that UNSC resolution was the UN's suicide note. The UN will be remembered as a 20th century institution stripped of its raison d'etre by the 21st century United States, whose lawless imperial unilateralism faces no meaningful challenge

[jasper nathaniel @infinite_jaz]

With a shepherding community, Khirbet al-Marajim. These people don’t have much, but he had a horse. Settlers stole it.

[Sam Haselby @samhaselby]

Correct me if I am wrong, but from a distance it seems the main stakes of the Israeli election is if Eisenkot can prevail it will help liberal zi*nists in US legacy media continue to play make-believe about what it is they support.

[Tony Karon @TonyKaron]

@glcarlstrom Exactly. There’s no journalism to be done there

[Vali Nasr @vali_nasr]

Why does Iran remain defiant in the face of severe economic pressure and threat of renewed war? In our new piece in @ForeignAffairs Narges Bajoghli and I examine what is being missed in how Iran sees the state of play

There is no doubt that Washington has dealt significant damage to Iran. But the Islamic Republic does not believe it is unraveling. In fact, Tehran thinks that it will defeat the United States—and it isn’t hard to see why. The Iranian government did not merely survive the U.S.-Israeli bombardment. It retaliated ferociously, damaging American military bases and obstructing the Strait of Hormuz. Its people are paying a hefty economic price thanks to damage caused by the war and Washington’s cutoffs, but much of the population has rallied around the flag and seems to accept that hardship is necessary if Iran is to defend itself. As a result, Tehran has been emboldened. Its officials may not see eye to eye on each tactic. But they share the same ambitions: evicting U.S. forces from the Persian Gulf, forcing Washington to remove all its sanctions, and getting the United States to accept that Iran is a great power.

This agenda might sound overly audacious, given that Iran has been materially weakened. But the Islamic Republic thinks its aims are within reach. It believes its military can drive U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf by continuing to strike American bases directly and by getting Arab countries to push the United States to leave. It thinks that by wreaking havoc on energy markets, it can force Washington to lift economic restrictions, as well. Tehran’s theory of victory, in other words, is that it can hold out and inflict enough pain that the United States will end its containment of Iran.

But strategically, the conflict has been disastrous. U.S. officials believed that punishing aerial bombardments and sweeping efforts to degrade the Iranian economy would bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. They didn’t. Washington hoped that assassinating Khamenei would prompt a mass antigovernment uprising. That scheme also failed. Instead, Khamenei’s death brought out the Islamic Republic’s ardent supporters. They marched every night in the country’s main cities and were eventually joined by Iranians of other political hues, who rallied in support of their homeland. When the war started, Turkey planned to accommodate 70,000 Iranian refugees. But few people fled. In fact, as the war progressed, many Iranians living abroad returned home, including long-exiled cultural figures, journalists, and politicians, such as the singers Mohsen Namjoo and Bijan Mortazavi.

This surge in nationalism is not an endorsement of the Islamic Republic. Many Iranians remain deeply unhappy with the country’s leadership. But the anger at their government has been subsumed by their anger at Washington. Previously, most Iranians were skeptical of the Islamic Republic’s claim that the United States was bent on their country’s destruction and in fact hoped Tehran would seek better relations with Washington. But the bombings of Iranian cities and U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to annihilate the country’s civilization (saying, for example, that he might “blow the entire nation up” and drive it “into hell with no chance of survival”) have changed attitudes. Iranians across the political spectrum now do think that the United States wants to obliterate their country—or at least make it capitulate to every American demand.
https://t.co/gJW95jYhQB

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty