Simon Barnett @_SimonBarnett - Twitter Profile

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

almost 10 years ago

.@_SimonBarnett *POLL RESULTS*: Support for the Single Market. Thanks for participating!

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_SimonBarnett retweeted

Rawan Osman روان عثمان

@RawaneOsmane

13 days ago

“Free Palestine.” I grew up on those words. In Lebanon, most people around me wanted a free Palestine for a very practical reason — to send the Palestinian refugees back. The civil war that tore my country apart was ignited in no small part by the Palestinian armed factions who turned Lebanon into their launching pad. “Free Palestine” meant: free us from them. In Damascus, where my father’s family lived, the sentiment was different but equally self-serving. Palestine must be returned to the Arabs, its righteous owners. No one asked follow-up questions. No one was expected to. Palestine was central to Islam, most Arabs are Muslim, therefore supporting the Palestinian cause was reflexive. A non-brainer in the most literal sense — no brain engaged at all. Nobody stopped to point out that Palestine is not an Arabic word. Nobody found it strange that Jerusalem, the supposedly third holiest city in Islam, is not mentioned once in the Quran. Not once. Nor is Palestine. The entire theological and political architecture of this cause rests on a foundation that their own scripture doesn’t bother to acknowledge. What was actually happening was indoctrination. A systematic, generational rejection of Jewish sovereignty — and frankly, of any minority sovereignty. Jews, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis — the Arab world has been remarkably consistent in how it treats people who are different. We just don’t talk about that. Instead, in the West, we talk about Palestine. In the West, a civilization that has elevated human rights to its highest moral currency, the Palestinian cause has become the one exception to every rule. In the queue of human suffering, Palestinians cut the line every time. Homosexuals executed in Gaza and hanged from cranes in Iran? Palestine first. Women imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for campaigning for the right to drive — a right they were denied until 2018 — girls sold into marriage in Afghanistan, women erased from public life entirely under the Taliban? After Palestine. Political dissidents ground into dust in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, journalists disappeared in Libya, children starving in Yemen while their rulers wage proxy wars, entire populations hollowed out by hunger in Sudan? All of it waits. Christians ethnically cleansed from Iraq and Syria, the Arab world methodically emptied of every Jewish community it once held — a demographic erasure carried out across a century with surgical patience and near-total Western silence? Palestine is still first. So let’s end where we started. Free Palestine. Which Palestine, exactly? The Roman invention? The British administrative line? The British Mandate covered the entire territory of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. In 1921, 78% of that mandate was handed to the Hashemite family — a dynasty imported from Hijaz in present-day Saudi Arabia — and became the Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains to this day. A foreign royal family, on the majority of historic Palestine, ruling it as a monarchy. Nobody protests that. No flags, no chants, no encampments. The remaining 22% was designated for the Jews, became Israel, and is the only part that any pro-Palestinian activist has ever had a problem with. So when you say Free Palestine, you mean that 22%. You mean the Jews. And free it from whom? From a people with a three-thousand-year-old documented presence in that land, to restore the glory of a name coined by Roman colonizers, a name lifted from the Torah, a name that has no roots in Arabic, no mention in the Quran, and no history as a sovereign state? You are not chanting for liberation. You are chanting for colonialism — the Roman kind, repackaged for social media. Free Palestine is not a cause. It is a colonial term, coined by invaders, recycled by the indoctrinated. The least you can do is have the intelligence to understand it and the decency to reflect on your position. 📍#Israel

RawaneOsmane's tweet photo. “Free Palestine.”

I grew up on those words.

In Lebanon, most people around me wanted a free Palestine for a very practical reason — to send the Palestinian refugees back. The civil war that tore my country apart was ignited in no small part by the Palestinian armed factions who turned Lebanon into their launching pad. “Free Palestine” meant: free us from them.

In Damascus, where my father’s family lived, the sentiment was different but equally self-serving. Palestine must be returned to the Arabs, its righteous owners. No one asked follow-up questions. No one was expected to.

Palestine was central to Islam, most Arabs are Muslim, therefore supporting the Palestinian cause was reflexive. A non-brainer in the most literal sense — no brain engaged at all.

Nobody stopped to point out that Palestine is not an Arabic word. Nobody found it strange that Jerusalem, the supposedly third holiest city in Islam, is not mentioned once in the Quran. Not once. Nor is Palestine. The entire theological and political architecture of this cause rests on a foundation that their own scripture doesn’t bother to acknowledge.

What was actually happening was indoctrination. A systematic, generational rejection of Jewish sovereignty — and frankly, of any minority sovereignty. Jews, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis — the Arab world has been remarkably consistent in how it treats people who are different. We just don’t talk about that.

Instead, in the West, we talk about Palestine.

In the West, a civilization that has elevated human rights to its highest moral currency, the Palestinian cause has become the one exception to every rule. In the queue of human suffering, Palestinians cut the line every time. Homosexuals executed in Gaza and hanged from cranes in Iran? Palestine first. Women imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for campaigning for the right to drive — a right they were denied until 2018 — girls sold into marriage in Afghanistan, women erased from public life entirely under the Taliban? After Palestine. Political dissidents ground into dust in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, journalists disappeared in Libya, children starving in Yemen while their rulers wage proxy wars, entire populations hollowed out by hunger in Sudan? All of it waits. Christians ethnically cleansed from Iraq and Syria, the Arab world methodically emptied of every Jewish community it once held — a demographic erasure carried out across a century with surgical patience and near-total Western silence?

Palestine is still first.

So let’s end where we started. Free Palestine. Which Palestine, exactly? The Roman invention? The British administrative line? The British Mandate covered the entire territory of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. In 1921, 78% of that mandate was handed to the Hashemite family — a dynasty imported from Hijaz in present-day Saudi Arabia — and became the Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains to this day. A foreign royal family, on the majority of historic Palestine, ruling it as a monarchy. Nobody protests that. No flags, no chants, no encampments. The remaining 22% was designated for the Jews, became Israel, and is the only part that any pro-Palestinian activist has ever had a problem with.

So when you say Free Palestine, you mean that 22%. You mean the Jews.

And free it from whom? From a people with a three-thousand-year-old documented presence in that land, to restore the glory of a name coined by Roman colonizers, a name lifted from the Torah, a name that has no roots in Arabic, no mention in the Quran, and no history as a sovereign state?

You are not chanting for liberation. You are chanting for colonialism — the Roman kind, repackaged for social media.

Free Palestine is not a cause. It is a colonial term, coined by invaders, recycled by the indoctrinated. The least you can do is have the intelligence to understand it and the decency to reflect on your position.

📍#Israel

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

13 days ago

@Anglian_Reed Nick (65) representing the "yoof" there. Not an ounce of self awareness.

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

13 days ago

@KirbyODonnell22 @MOSSADil And yet here you are making racist comments about Jews, proving it isn't. Imagine telling any other ethnicity that the racism that they experience is made up. It only makes sense in your head when Jews are the target, because you're a racist.

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Who to follow

Original campaign for 🇬🇧 to rejoin EFTA Now looking at things “in the round” & watching with mixed interest and alarm… 🇬🇧🇨🇭🇳🇴🇮🇸🇱🇮

Nutty Almond

@NuttyThePioneer

Christian | British |Husband Father | Veteran |

Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

16 days ago

@Kristinartz

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

17 days ago

@thinkdefence ?

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

18 days ago

https://t.co/TAEoPlQLHl

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

18 days ago

Why is no-one talking about the list to the right? "What angle should we use to tilt the logo?" "Oh, just pick a number." 🤷‍♂️

Farzad 🇺🇸 🇮🇷

@farzyness

23 days ago

Whoever designed this needs to be fired immediately:

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

18 days ago

@iheartmindy @farzyness So you're saying that I can use really old exploits to hack your phone? Thanks, that makes it sooo much easier!

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

18 days ago

https://t.co/tYZyMUxd50

Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

18 days ago

https://t.co/TAEoPlQLHl

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

18 days ago

Reviving the Spitfire for the drone age. A composite Type 433 could carry 4 underwing hardpoints for P1-SUN interceptors, a 7.62mm gun pod, compact C-UAS radar + ground relay, IR suppression/MAWS for SAM survivability. ~£1.16M — half the price of one Patriot PAC-3 missile.

Flyer @Flyer_Magazine

19 days ago

The Spitfire Type 433 is based on a WWII plan to make Spitfire fuselages from a composite material known as Gordon Aerolite. The full-scale concept will go on a tour of the UK this summer. Read more: https://t.co/YsxxDZ47Nc

Flyer_Magazine's tweet photo. The Spitfire Type 433 is based on a WWII plan to make Spitfire fuselages from a composite material known as Gordon Aerolite. The full-scale concept will go on a tour of the UK this summer.

Read more: https://t.co/YsxxDZ47Nc https://t.co/qfLapkNu5k

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Simon Barnett

@_SimonBarnett

18 days ago

@SEODESIGNTECH @BuzzPatterson You could have 3, plus the hardpoints and interceptor drones, for the cost of a single $3m PAC-3 Patriot air defence missile. Quantity has a quality all of it's own.

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