Ben Ross

I love design, technology, health science, cycling, skiing and anything in water. Startup founder & entrepreneur.

[Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @DrewPavlou]

Under the new Australian government hate speech laws, you could theoretically mutter something negative about Islam to yourself in your own home and be sent to prison for 5 years as a result

The legislation clearly states that NOBODY actually has to feel intimidation and fear based on your actions or comments - it’s enough that a HYPOTHETICAL reasonable person would feel intimidation and fear if they hypothetically heard the comment

[Tahmineh Dehbozorgi @DeTahmineh]

The Western liberal media is ignoring the Iranian uprising because explaining it would force an admission it is desperate to avoid: the Iranian people are rebelling against Islam itself, and that fact shatters the moral framework through which these institutions understand the world.

Ideally, to cover an uprising is not just to show crowds and slogans. It requires answering a basic question: why are people risking death? In Iran, the answer is simple and unavoidable. The people are rising up because the Islamic Republic of Iran has spent decades suffocating every aspect of life—speech, work, family, art, women, and economic survival—under a clerical system that treats liberty as a crime. There is no way to tell that story without confronting the nature of the regime.

Western media refuses to do so because it has fundamentally misunderstood Islam. Or worse, it has chosen not to understand it.

Islam, in Western progressive discourse, has been racialized. It is treated not as a belief system or a political ideology, but as a stand-in for race or ethnicity. Criticizing Islam is framed as an attack on “brown people,” Arabs, or “the Middle East,” as if Islam were a skin color rather than a doctrine.

This confusion is rooted in historical illiteracy. Western liberal media routinely collapses entire civilizations into a single stereotype: “all Middle Easterners are Arabs,” “all Arabs are Muslim,” and “all Muslims are a monolithic, oppressed identity group by white European colonizers.” Iranians disappear entirely in this framework. Their language, history, and culture—Persian, not Arab; ancient, not colonial; distinct, not interchangeable—are erased.

By treating Islam as a racial identity rather than an ideology, Western media strips millions of people of their ability to reject it. Iranian protesters become unintelligible. Their rebellion cannot be processed without breaking the rule that Islam must not be criticized. So instead of listening to Iranians, the media speaks over them—or ignores them entirely.

There is another reason the Iranian uprising is so threatening to Western media is economic issues.

As you know, Iran is not only a religious dictatorship. It is a centrally controlled, state-dominated economy where markets are strangled, private enterprise is criminalized or co-opted, and economic survival depends on proximity to political power. Decades of price controls, subsidies, nationalization, and bureaucratic micromanagement have obliterated the middle class and entrenched corruption as the only functional system. The result is not equality or justice. It is poverty, stagnation, and dependence on government’s dark void of empty promises.

Covering Iran honestly would require acknowledging that these policies are harmful. They have been tried. They have failed. Catastrophically.

This is deeply inconvenient for Western media institutions that routinely promote expansive state control, centralized economic planning, and technocratic governance as morally enlightened alternatives to liberal capitalism. Iran demonstrates where such systems lead when insulated from accountability and enforced by ideology. It shows that when the state controls livelihoods, non-conformity becomes existentially dangerous. That lesson cannot be acknowledged without undermining the moral authority of those who advocate similar ideas in softer language.

Western liberal media prefers not to hear this. Acknowledging it would require abandoning the lazy moral categories that dominate modern discourse: oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized, white and non-white. Iranian protesters do not fit. They show that authoritarianism is not a Western invention imposed from outside, but something many societies are actively trying to escape.

That is what terrifies Western liberal media. And that is why the Iranian people are being ignored.

So the silence continues.

[Gina @ginnydmm]

I always say Israel is losing the PR war, but have a read at this...…….

Mitch Schneider

October 10 at 12:09 PM

“I keep hearing that Israel "lost the PR war."
And you know what? Fine. Sure. Whatever.
The world thinks we're monsters. The UN passed over 30 resolutions condemning us. College campuses exploded with protests. "Genocide" trended on Twitter for 700 days straight.

We lost the PR war. Congratulations to everyone who won it.

Now let me tell you what we won instead.
Two years ago, my country was surrounded. Hezbollah had 150,000 rockets aimed at us from the north. Hamas controlled Gaza with an army in tunnels beneath it. Iran was months from a nuclear weapon. The Houthis were firing missiles at our ships. Assad's Syria was an Iranian highway. Iraqi militias were itching for war.

We called it the "ring of fire." Iran spent 40 years building it.

Billions of dollars. Endless weapons. Thousands of fighters. All of it designed for one purpose: to destroy Israel in a coordinated attack.
October 7th was supposed to be the beginning. Hamas attacks from the south, Hezbollah from the north, militias from the east, Houthis from the sea. The final war.

You know what happened instead?
Israel dismantled the entire thing. Piece by piece. Threat by threat.
Not in some distant future. Not "eventually." In two years.

Nasrallah spent 32 years building Hezbollah into the most powerful non-state military in the world. Israel killed him in his bunker and took out his entire command structure in weeks.
Hezbollah isn't weakened. It's finished.

Iran built a nuclear program for decades. Israel set it back years. Killed their top scientists. Destroyed their facilities. Made the regime so weak that its own people are revolting.

Assad survived a civil war, Russian intervention, and American strikes. He couldn't survive losing his Iranian backers. His regime collapsed. The land bridge is gone.

The Houthis thought they could close the Red Sea. Israel crippled their long-range capabilities and neutralized the threat.

Hamas? Sinwar died in rubble clutching a stick. Haniyeh was eliminated in Tehran. Deif is gone. The tunnels are destroyed. And this week, Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and the release of all hostages.

Read that again. The terrorist organization that started this war by massacring 1,200 people just agreed to release every hostage and accept a ceasefire on Israel's terms.

So yeah. We lost the PR war. I'll take that loss.
Because here's what we gained:

My kids don't have to run to bomb shelters anymore. The north is being rebuilt. Hezbollah's rockets are gone. Iran's nuclear threat has been pushed back years. The tunnels under Gaza are rubble. The "ring of fire" is extinguished.

And now? The hostages are coming home. There's a ceasefire. The fighting can finally end.
Two years ago, we were facing an existential threat. Today, we're the dominant power in the Middle East.

Here's the thing about the "PR war" - it's a luxury. It's what people with security worry about. It's optics. It's perception. It's whether someone with a blue checkmark likes you.

Israel doesn't have that luxury. We never did.
When people scream "genocide," we're preventing one. When they cry "disproportionate," we're stopping rockets. When they demand "ceasefire," we're rescuing hostages.

While the world was busy judging us, we were busy surviving.

And not just surviving. Winning. Fundamentally, decisively, historically winning.

Iran's 40-year plan to surround and destroy Israel? Over. The axis of resistance? Shattered. The greatest coordinated threat in our history? Defeated.

So let me ask you something:
Would you rather win the PR war and lose your country? Or lose the PR war and secure your existence for the next 50 years?
Because that's the actual choice.
And Israel made it. Again.
The world can have its hashtags. We'll take our sovereignty.
They can have their protests. We'll take our security.

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

This is for Kfir and Ariel Bibas.

They were ten months and four years old.

They were murdered for being Jewish.

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

This is for Kfir and Ariel.

Share this 🟧 in support of the Bibas family.

May their memory be a blessing.

[Mark Suster @msuster]

Wholeheartedly endorse this message. Can’t say this loudly enough.

[Eitan Chitayat @EitanChitayat]

Those who know will share

[Nick Splitter @nicksplitter]

Hey @abcnews, a message from the Jewish community.

Neither Sarah Schwartz nor the self-titled 'Jewish Council of Australia' represent us. They do not represent the majority of Jews in this country.

Stop using her and them as the yardstick of what Australian Jews see, think, feel or want.

Stop using them at all.

[PROFESSOR RODGERS SPEAKS FOR THE HARD WORKING AUST @HelpRodger]

Australians shocked to see a young Albanese at a pro Hamas rally giving a hateful anti Jew speech. No wonder we have,
caravans filled with explosives.
Fire bombings.
Vile Jew hating graffiti.
Violent Muslim protests chanting gas the Jews.
A weak insipid Anthony Albanese has destroyed Australia. Let Dutton put Australia back on track.

[James Paterson @SenPaterson]

Media reports today that the neither the national security of committee of cabinet nor even the Prime Minister were briefed on the Dural terrorism incident are shocking. Anthony Albanese must explain today why Chris Minns knew and he did not.

[Australian Jewish Association @AustralianJA]

JOSH FRYDENBERG ON ANTISEMITISM ON ABC 7:30 REPORT

This is an OUTSTANDING performance by Josh Frydenberg.

Every Australian should see this - so please do your part and SHARE.

[James Paterson @SenPaterson]

It is clear we have a campaign of terror targeting Australia’s Jewish community.

Every law enforcement and intelligence resource must be deployed to combat it.

This will continue until the terrorists responsible are arrested, convicted and jailed.

[Paul Bassat @PaulBassat]

Right now there is a serious anti semitic incident in Australia on a daily basis.
Life for Jews in Australia is subtly and not so subtly different to life for other Australians.
Our schools are protected by armed guards and barbed wire, when any Jewish community org holds an event it withholds the address until a few hours before the event and the event is manned by volunteer security guards, Jews have been doxxed and subject to vile harassment for being Jewish, community members are in a state of siege and fear.
We are a community of 120,000 that was largely established from the ashes of the Holocaust 80 years ago. That includes my family; my mum survived the Holocaust and arrived in Australia with the tiny remnants of a large extended family in the late 1940’s.
We have given a lot to Australia as a community and received much in return. Our contribution includes two heads of State, a High Court Chief Justice, Australia’s greatest soldier and a Federal Treasurer as well as many others who have transformed the country in the arts, law, business and the community sector.
Social cohesion in Australia is at an all time low and a tiny community making up 0.5% of the Australian population is in the firing line.
It is completely legitimate to hold varying views on the war that has taken place between Israel and Hamas and the other Iranian proxies.
It is not legitimate to glorify savage attacks on civilians and it’s certainly not legitimate to take the hatreds from the Middle East and create a climate of fear for the Jewish community in Australia.
There have been some remarkable displays of support for the Jewish community from a wide cross section of Australians.
To those who have sat on the sidelines to date we need your solidarity and explicit support.
These actions by anti semites are not acceptable in Australia.
And to those who are going to reply with “what about the people of Gaza”, my heart breaks for innocent civilians that have suffered in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

This is October 7th.

Palestinian terrorists threw a grenade into the bomb shelter where a Jewish woman was hiding. They entered, dragged her outside, shot her in the head, and smashed her head open with his rifle.

Don't you dare forget why Israel is at war.

[Stu Smith @thestustustudio]

Yesterday at the University of Notre Dame, @GovRonDeSantis discussed why college campuses in Florida were not plagued with student encampments.

"If any of our universities turned into Columbia, the university president would lose their job the next day. It would be done. We would not ever tolerate the inmates running the asylum."

DeSantis spends a few minutes examining the claim that Palestine is "occupied" to expose how pro-Palestine clichés "betray their ignorance."

"If you find yourself out there saying somehow 'end occupation,' I would just like to know when there was some type of Palestinian [state]. I think it's all people that don't know their history. I think it's kind of like the Left Wing Cause Du Jour."

[Open Source Intel @Osint613]

Bill Clinton On the Palestinians:

“And the only time Yasser Arafat didn't tell me the truth was when he promised me he was gonna accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was. So they would have the effect of the same land of all the West Bank. They would have a capital in East Jerusalem.

I can hardly talk about this…. And they would have equal access all day every day to the security towers that Israel maintained all through the West Bank up to the Golan Heights.

All this was offered, including, I will say it again, a capital in East Jerusalem and 2 of the 4 quadrants of the old city of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and his cabinet. And they said no.

And I think part of it is that Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable.

Well, I got news for them, they were there first before there was their faith existed.

They were there. In the time of King David, in the southern most tribes, Hadjardia and Samaria.”

[Daniel @VoteLewko]

This is so sad. Melbourne has broken @brunswickwine completely.

[Eitan Chitayat @EitanChitayat]

So @Erin_Molan is a new friend of mine. But she’s a friend to the Jewish People. Even more than that, she’s a friend to humanity.

So proud of you Erin and grateful for your voice.

I encourage everyone to share this and follow her.

Gratitude.

[Ben Ross @benross50]

@MenachemV Yes. 10km. Getting back into the groove. Looking forward to 21 next year.