Alex Safian

COO of Foundation for Truth about Israel (FT Israel), after more than 30 years as CAMERA's Associate Director/Research Director. Columbia BS and Harvard PhD.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Mr. Mayor, your charges are sophomoric nonsense, a litany of false allegations typical of someone who gets his "information" from Al Jazeera or the fever swamps of anti-Semitic social media.

The best antidote to your rant are facts, so here's one: just last week the UN charged Hamas is stealing food aid and obstructing its distribution to Gaza civilians. Which Israel has been saying since just after Oct. 7.

Here's an excerpt from the NY Times article:

"The United Nations has accused armed forces affiliated with the Hamas-run government in Gaza of interfering with the delivery of food aid at a distribution site on Saturday.

Ramiz Alakbarov, the top U.N. humanitarian official in Jerusalem, denounced what he called the “obstruction of humanitarian operations” by the armed men.

He said they had forced their way into a food distribution center and entered a warehouse, which were operated by the U.N.’s World Food Program. The men had “endangered humanitarian personnel, intimidated workers delivering lifesaving food assistance and disrupted lifesaving humanitarian operations,” Mr. Alakbarov said. As a result, he said, the agency decided to suspend its work at the center.

'These incidents are not isolated. They are completely unacceptable and reflect an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction,' said Mr. Alakbarov."https://t.co/ruTDKIzbuk

Didn't you say that keeping food from civilians is a war crime? So will you now admit that Hamas is guilty of committing war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza?

Finally, though you might want the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu, I think even you understand that given their druthers they'd much rather arrest you. Perhaps they'll get that chance.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Excellent points by my former colleague Sean Durns that should not be forgotten

[FTIsrael @ftisrael_org]

In Israel, "a nation of a little more than 10 million, nearly every family knows someone who was murdered, held hostage, or is part of the longest military deployment in the nation’s beleaguered history.

For Israel, Oct. 7 has been a nightmare without end."

@SeanDurns in @dcexaminer

https://t.co/a2PeeW6xFT

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Gerald, you're being naive, trying to understand Israel through an American lens. For example in assessing the claim that Netanyahu was warned about the upcoming Oct 7 attack, you credit Haaretz with being a serious newspaper, and it does look like a serious newspaper. It even calls itself, unironically, the New York Times of Israel.

But I have studied Haaretz for many years and written about its many failings, and I can tell you it's not a serious newspaper. There have been some good journalists there, but there have also been many rank propagandists, starting with publisher Amos Schocken, and including reporters and editors like Amira Hass, Akiva Eldar and Aluf Benn.

Whatever problems you see at the New York Times, multiply by about 50 and you've got Haaretz.

Fundamentally it has a problem with Israeli sovereignty. As David Bar-Illan once joked, the only government Haaretz ever supported was the Palestine Mandate.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

I've proven multiple times that Mossadegh was not democratically elected, he was appointed by the Parliament and accepted by the Constitutional Monarch, the Shah. But you are immune to facts.

The next question is how did he conduct himself as PM? Again, as I have proven -- but you have ignored -- he violated the Constitution and dissolved the Parliament, taking up dictatorial powers, leading to the coup that overthrew him.

You don't have to trust me on this, listen to the Marxist-oriented Iranian professor Ervand Abrahamian, in his book Iran Between Two Revolutions, published by Princeton University Press [my comments in brackets, quotations from p 273 - 280]:

The blows against the civilian opposition were equally drastic. Mossadeq exacted from Parliament emergency powers for six months to decree any law he felt necessary for obtaining not only financial solvency, but also electoral, judicial, and educational reforms. At the end of six months, he successfully pressed Parliament to extend the emergency powers for another twelve months...

When the Senate objected to these reforms, the National Front denounced it as “an aristocratic club” that violated “the egalitarian spirit of the Constitutional Revolution,” and disbanded it by pushing through the Lower House a law that reduced the term of the Upper House from six years to two. Similarly, when the opposition in the Lower House plucked up enough courage to resist, the National Front deputies resigned en masse, reducing the assembly below its quorum, and, in effect, dissolving the Seventeenth Majles. To legitimize the dissolution, Mossadeq—supported by the Tudeh [Communist party] —called for a national referendum in July 1953 …

To ensure victory at the polls, positive and negative ballot boxes were placed in different places. As expected, Mossadeq received an overwhelming vote of confidence, winning over 2,043,300 of the 2,044,600 ballots cast throughout the country and 101,396 of
the 101,463 ballots cast in the capital.

[He was more popular than Putin or Stalin! His opponents totaled only 67 people in Tehran, and only 1300 in the entire country. You're right, he was immensely popular, only the CIA could have removed him -- LOL. Now continuing with Professor Abrahamian.]

By mid-August 1953, therefore, Mossadeq appeared to be in full control. He had packed his supporters into the cabinet and the bureaucracy. He had stripped the court of military, financial, and political influence, reduced the monarch to a ceremonial figure head, and thereby won the constitutional struggle against the shah that Qavam had lost. Moreover, he had routed the aristocratic opposition, dissolving Parliament, decreeing land reform, and appealing directly to the electorate. Furthermore, he had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, taken over the Soviet-administered Caspian fisheries, and thus implemented his policy of “negative equilibrium.” Iran, like many other Asian countries, appeared to be taking the road of republicanism, neutralism, and middle-class radicalism. Not since 1925 had so much power been concentrated in the office of the prime minister and so little in the hands of the shah.

Mossadeq’s strength, however, proved to be illusory. For while winning new victories, Mossadeq was losing old allies. While promising extensive social reforms, he was caught between dwindling oil revenues, increasing unemployment, and escalating consumer prices. And while celebrating the referendum, he was already endangered—unbeknownst to him—by a group of army officers who a week later abruptly overthrew him and reestablished royal power. The easy success of this coup can be explained by two factors: the widening gap between the traditional and middle classes within the National Front; and the increasing alienation of the whole officer corps from the civilian administration. [Notice he doesn't say support from the CIA] The National Front, despite internal differences, remained outwardly united so long as Britain and the shah seemed menacingly dangerous. Moreover, until Siyeh-i Tir Mossadeq did his very best to please the traditional as well as the modern wing of the nationalist movement ...

The conflict between the traditional and modern wings of the National Front reached a climax when Mossadeq asked Parliament for twelve-month extension to his emergency powers. Opposing the request, many of the clerical deputies left the National Front and
formed their own Islamic Caucus (Fraksiun-i Islam). Kashani denounced the emergency powers as “dictatorial”; informed foreign journalists that “true democracy in Iran needs a faithful implementation of the shari'a; and told Behbehani, the royalist ayatallah, that Mossadeq’s “leftist advisers were endangering national security.” Qonatabadi claimed that the ministers of justice and education were replacing good Muslim employees with “Kremlin-controlled atheists”; that he had always suspected the Iran party because of that party’s alliance with the Tudeh in 1946; and that the “government’s dictatorial methods were transforming Iran into a vast prison.” Another clerical deputy suddenly discovered that Mossadeq’s doctoral dissertation, written thirty-five years earlier in Switzerland, contained strong secular and anticlerical views.
…

Thus by August 1953, the underlying contradictions between the traditional and the modern middle class were out in the open. Mossadeq, by siding with the latter, had lost the support of the three groups representing the bazaar—the Society of Muslim Warriors, the Toilers’ party, and the Feda’iyan-i Islam—but retained the allegiance of the three organizations representing the intelligentsia—the Iran party, the National party, and the Third Force—as well as radical advisors such as Fatemi, Shayegan, and Razavi. In short, the National Front had been transformed from the movement of the two middle classes into that of the modern middle class only. Mossadeq, the man who saw himself as the living tradition of the constitutional movement, had been forced by history to repeat the experience of the Constitutional Revolution. While Mossadeq was losing his traditional supporters, disgruntled royalist officers were secretly planning a military coup d’etat. Meeting regularly at the Officers’ Club in Tehran, a group of military commanders retired by Mossadeq after Siyeh-i Tir decided to form a secret Committee To Save the Fatherland (Komiteh-i Najat-i Vatan). The committee’s charter declared that it was the patriotic duty of the officers to fight for the monarchy and the armed forces, combat extremism, and save the country from social dissolution...

[Was there CIA help for the officers? Yes, but the CIA-supported coup attempt failed miserably. The officers then tried again and succeeded.]

Colonel Nasiri of the Imperial Guards arrived at the premier’s doorstep with a royal decree replacing Mossadeq with Zahedi as premier. The attempt, however, was a complete fiasco, for the pro-Mossadeq chief of the army, tipped off by the Tudeh military network, surrounded Nasiri and his Imperial Guards as they approached the premier’s residence. The following day the shah fled to Bagdad, the National Front set up a committee to decide the fate of the monarchy, and the Tudeh crowds poured into the streets, destroying royalist statues. In some provincial towns, such as Rasht and Enzeli, the Tudeh took over the municipal buildings. The next morning, Mossadeq, after a fateful interview with the American ambassador, who promised aid if law and order was reestablished, instructed the army to clear the streets of all demonstrators. Ironically, Mossadeq was trying to use the military, his past enemy, to crush the crowd, his main bulwark. Not surprisingly, the military used this opportunity to strike against Mossadeq. On August 19, while the Tudeh was taken aback by Mossadeq’s blow against them, Zahedi, commanding thirty-five Sherman tanks, surrounded the premier’s residence, and after a nine-hour battle captured Mossadeq ...

As the shah returned home, the armed forces proceeded to dismantle the National Front as well as the Tudeh. They arrested Mossadeq, Razavi, Shayegan, and, after a three-month search, Fatemi, who had taken shelter in the Tudeh underground. They also arrested eight high-ranking officers who had supported Mossadeq;

**** end of quotations from Abrahamian's book ****

IOW, the coup against Mossadegh had wide support from all sectors of society that he had alienated -- conservative Ayatollahs, the majority of the officer corps, the middle class Bazaaris, etc.

However, I must admit that you do have kind of a point, there was US help for a coup in Iran that definitely harmed Iran and killed massive numbers of people around the world. But it's not one that you or your "sources" would cite, and that is the help that the US gave to the Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow our ally the Shah.

During the height of the demonstrations against the Shah in 1979 President Carter sent General Robert Huyser to "encourage" the Iranian military to accept the "inevitable" end of the Shah's regime, and that is exactly what happened.

Carter's close friend, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, referred to the Ayatollah as a "saint," and he and Carter as religious men thought they could find a common language with the Ayatollah and the theocrats around him.

And we know what happened, including the Iran-Iraq War after Khomeini dismantled the Iranian army. Never would have happened had we instead encouraged the army and the Shah to stand firm.

I hope my effort to educate you about Iran has some slight impact, but I'm not betting on it. Instead you'll probably keep appealing to Grok or Gemini or Claude or some other "artificial intelligence" (ie curated web searches conducted by next-word prediction machines in which you place infinite trust).

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

@batikhgaishmasr @AhernHerbe8277 @jkenney Without Israeli intelligence helping MI5, I think some followers of another religion will take care of that.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

@identitykrysis @jkenney Then why only 6 seats for Otzma Yehudit in a 120 seat Parliament? I know, math is hard.

And if the opposition wins the elections in October, I suppose you'll still claim that Ben Gvir is Israel. SMH

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

The Jews are the indigenous people, while the Arabs are from ... wait for it, Arabia. Once Mohammed unified the Arab tribes under Islam they had a great run of conquests, Islamizing and Arabizing many countries, including ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq), Lebanon, the land of Israel, etc. Even Persia was conquered, but they kept their language, if not their alphabet.

BTW, the Islamic Republic has done such a great job discrediting Islam that when the Mullahs fall, Iran might become the first secular country in the Middle East.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

First a long answer, then a short answer. Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a relatively low threshold (currently 3.25% ) and a single national constituency, unlike Canada which has regional representation and a FPTP system in the ridings.

As a result many small parties get into the 120 seat Israeli Parliament, and in all its history Israel has never had a majority government. In the old days the Labor party was big enough to pick its coalition partners.

Now the Labor party is essentially defunct, and the last time the Likud party won as many as 40 seats was 1988, with 61 needed to form a government.

So the larger parties have to put together unstable coalitions, and in Likud's case recently that has meant Ben Gvir.

One big reason Ben Gvir gets support is Naftali Bennett, who in the 2021 elections promised to be part of a strong right wing government, and then betrayed his voters by agreeing to form a left wing government if he were made Prime Minister, despite his right-wing religious leaning Yamina party winning only 7 seats.

That government fell in about a year, and Netanyahu returned as PM. Bennett's Yamina party got demolished and has ceased to exist, and many of his voters moved to Ben Gvir, confident that he would at least not betray them.

That's the long answer. The short answer is that, in polite terms, Ben Gvir is a rabble-rouser, and there have been enough voters in Israel to elect him.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Actually, no, "Irish," your Jew-hatred is showing. Argentina got their Skyhawks directly from the US, and got none from Israel, though they did get spare parts for the Skyhawk from Israel.

Of course, the most deadly fighters the Argentines had were French Super Etendards, armed with the Exocet missile, which were responsible for sinking the HMS Sheffield destroyer and the SS Atlantic Conveyor.

So the aircraft Argentina used so effectively against the British came directly from the US and France, which also supplied the Exocet.

So you'll have to gin up some new anti-Israel propaganda.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

@Wurmserscribit Well you're right about the Persian origin of algebra, but remember Arabic numerals, you can't take that away from them.

Oh wait, ...

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Whoever that idiot is should be asked to define catenary, and then provide the formula for it.

Maybe Tucker has been punking us all this time and it's all just performance art. Like a years-long Sokal hoax.

Maybe in a few months he'll admit he was kidding and it was all an experiment to see how many people would actually take him seriously.

Maybe not, though, in which case he's seriously retarded.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

It's amazing that some people in this thread just say "apartheid, apartheid" while Khaled, an Israeli Arab who knows the situation much better than they do, says it's not.

In fact Khaled, whom I'm proud to call a friend, and many other Israeli Arabs know very well they have a much better and more secure life in Israel than they would in any Arab country, and they're not afraid to say it.

And BTW, for those who say why don't you call Khaled a Palestinian, it's because many Israeli Arabs don't want to be called Palestinian.

Despite the problems in Israel, they're proud to be Israeli. To cite one example of why, one of the people taken hostage by Hamas on Oct 7 was an Israeli Arab named Qiad Farhan Alkadi. When the Israelis found out where Alkadi was being held, they staged a rescue mission and got him out. After 326 days of captivity he returned home to his 11 children.

So in the "apartheid state" of Israel, Israeli Jewish soldiers risk their lives to rescue an Israeli Arab. Jews and Arabs in Israel are justly proud of that, no matter what deluded idiots say about their country.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Yes, at the critical moment President Carter sent General Robert Huyser to "encourage" the Iranian military to accept the "inevitable" end of the Shah's regime.

And Carter's close friend and UN Ambassador Andrew Young referred to the Ayatollah as a "saint."

Carter and Young, as religious men, thought they could find a common language with the Ayatollah and the theocrats around him.

Talk about a poor assessment.

Would be interesting to know what the CIA was telling Carter on that score.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

You claim that:

"All dimensions in the limit of c can be made invariant under Lorentz transformations."

What is this supposed to mean? You don't accept length contraction of moving bodies, or of changes in lifetimes of moving unstable particles? You do realize that such lifetime changes are confirmed innumerable times every day in accelerator labs?

You earlier claimed -- in effect -- that Maxwell's equations are invariant under Galilean transformation, which is easily shown to be false. So please explain how that is supposed to work. Derive it in equations and show me.

In short, I have no idea what you are talking about, because you have no idea what you are talking about.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

@AynReagan I strongly disagree with Irit's take on Vance, but I know her and your criticism is unfair. She's as pro-Israel as anyone could be, and she's no sycophant.

BTW, I disagree just as strongly with Ron Dermer's take, which I think he said as CYA.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

He wasn't in the Israeli army, he volunteered to help out as a foreign civilian on a military base. The program is called Sar El, and volunteers usually spend a few weeks in IDF workshops doing logistics or maintenance work, like cleaning up moving things around, etc.

Mast specifically packed medical kits and moved boxes.

And BTW, he's a Christian, not a Jew.

So what are your objections now?

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

No -- Maxwell's equations are not invariant under a Gallillean transformation, directly contradicting the magnet example in the post. However, Maxwell's equations are invariant under the Lorentz transformation. Lorentz came up with the correct transformation first, but didn't fully understand them -- Einstein understood that the Lorentz transformation was generally valid, not just as applied to Maxwell's equations.

So Einstein was right -- in fact until the post General Relativity era he was right about pretty much everything. However, his objections to Quantum Mechanics were wrong, and his attempts through the end of his life to come up with a unified field theory were a waste of time.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

@kylieoralobell I appreciate what you are going through to convert, but I've always preferred David Ben-Gurion's definition of who is a Jew:

Anyone crazy enough to want to be a Jew, is a Jew.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

In other words, you have no answer. Remember, you deemed as reliable and quoted from a source who told a nonsense story about our overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran, and that therefore we are responsible for all the bad things that happened in Iran since then.

I explained what actually happened in Iran-- with easily documented facts -- and you have no response at all. Maybe you should stop posting or reading social media for a while and and start actually reading reliable sources. And I don't mean grok or any other AI !!!!

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Some in this thread dispute that the Palestinians have rejected all peace offers, and as an example cite former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami as saying that were he a Palestinian he would have turned down the Camp David offer in 2000.

But Ben-Ami actually viewed the Clinton Parameters as an "optimal peace deal," not something he would have rejected as a Palestinian. In his book Scars of Wars, Wounds of Peace (based on his diary) Ben-Ami wrote (emphasis added):

Admittedly, however, Camp David might not have been the deal the Palestinians could have accepted. The real lost opportunities came later on. The negotiations continued after Camp David. More than fifty meetings between the parties and the American mediators, both in Israel and in the United States, took place throughout the summer and autumn of 2000. This was a sequence of round tables that culminated on 23 -December in a meeting in the Cabinet room adjacent to the Oval Office, where President Clinton presented to an Israeli delegation presided over by this author and a Palestinian team headed by Yasser Abd-Rabbo his final parameters for a peace treaty between the parties. The parameters were not the arbitrary and sudden whim of a lame-duck president. They represented a brilliantly devised point of equilibrium between the positions of the parties as they stood at that particular moment in the negotiations. (p 270)

Ben-Ami continued, quoting the Saudi Ambassador that it was a "crime" to have rejected the Clinton Parameters:

… the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah … was said to be shocked that Arafat had wasted such an opportunity and that he had lied about the President’s offer on Jerusalem. Arafat’s rejection of the peace parameters was a ‘crime’ not only against the Palestinians but against the entire region, concluded the Saudi ambassador in a long interview published in the New Yorker on 24 Match 2002. (p 273)

And in his later book Prophets Without Honor (2022) Ben-Ami wrote:

[Arafat …] was responsible for missing the optimal peace deal once it was offered. (p 26)

So, to repeat, for those who distort Ben-Ami, he actually considered the Clinton offer an optimal peace deal, not something he would have rejected as a Palestinian.

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

The Palestinians continually refuse peace offers -- as Bill Clinton said regarding his efforts as President, and as Hillary Clinton said about her efforts as Sec. of State -- and yet you blame Israel for not having a horizon, for the lack of a Palestinian state, etc.

IOW, you are victim blaming. Perhaps you should read Dr. Kenneth Levin's The Oslo Syndrome:
https://t.co/YrReX7H8Ts

[Alex Safian @alexsafian]

Actually, you're completely wrong about Ben-Ami's position -- he viewed the Clinton Parameters as an "optimal peace deal," not something he would have rejected as a Palestinian. In his book Scars of Wars, Wounds of Peace (based on his diary) Ben-Ami wrote (emphasis added):

Admittedly, however, Camp David might not have been the deal the Palestinians could have accepted. The real lost opportunities came later on. The negotiations continued after Camp David. More than fifty meetings between the parties and the American mediators, both in Israel and in the United States, took place throughout the summer and autumn of 2000. This was a sequence of round tables that culminated on 23 -December in a meeting in the Cabinet room adjacent to the Oval Office, where President Clinton presented to an Israeli delegation presided over by this author and a Palestinian team headed by Yasser Abd-Rabbo his final parameters for a peace treaty between the parties. The parameters were not the arbitrary and sudden whim of a lame-duck president. They represented a brilliantly devised point of equilibrium between the positions of the parties as they stood at that particular moment in the negotiations. (p 270)

Ben-Ami continued, quoting the Saudi Ambassador that it was a "crime" to have rejected the Clinton Parameters:

… the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah … was said to be shocked that Arafat had wasted such an opportunity and that he had lied about the President’s offer on Jerusalem. Arafat’s rejection of the peace parameters was a ‘crime’ not only against the Palestinians but against the entire region, concluded the Saudi ambassador in a long interview published in the New Yorker on 24 Match 2002. (p 273)

And in his later book Prophets Without Honor (2022) Ben-Ami wrote:

[Arafat …] was responsible for missing the optimal peace deal once it was offered. (p 26)

So, to repeat, Ben-Ami considers the Clinton offer an optimal peace deal, not something he would have rejected as a Palestinian.

So he contradicts what you claim, and supports the claims of the people you are cursing at. You can think what you want, and curse all you want, but if you care so much about these issues at least try to stick to actual facts.