Koorosh Banayan

Attorney, international legal consultant. Lover of wisdom, fairness, kindness and truth.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

More Iranians were slaughtered by the Islamic Republic in 72 hours, than total Palestinian civilians killed during a 2.5 year war.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

"My name is Yahya Mahamid. I'm an Israeli, I'm an Arab, I'm a Muslim, and I am a proud soldier of the Israeli Defense Forces. I grew up taught to hate, but I fell in love in Israel. I'm proud to be a Muslim Israeli soldier."

Yahya, you are a light in the darkness. ❤️

[Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC]

Well said @SecScottBessent

[Ahmed pak 🇵🇰 @Ahmedpak378456]

In 1974 Turkey invaded Cyprus and took possession of 37% of the country, gradually displacing 200,000 Greek Cypriots. There has since been an influx of Turkish settlers from the mainland, with as many as 500,000 Turks displacing the natives.

How many times have we heard people talking about illegal Turkish settlers/colonizers? Almost never. Most people don’t even know about it.

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

@grok is this true?

[Silver @SilverSypitzki]

Joodse ontheemding is de grootste Nakba
Media melden dat er in de gemeente Amsterdam grote behoefte bestaat aan onderwijs over de Nakba, ofwel de catastrofe van de Arabische nederlaag in 1948/49 in het Britse mandaatgebied Palestina. Ik deel die behoefte. Ik wil daarom enkele uitspraken van Arabische leiders uit die tijd onder de aandacht brengen.
Laten we beginnen met Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, de secretaris-generaal van de Arabische Liga. In de Egyptische krant Akhbar al-Yom zei hij op 11 oktober 1947, een maand voordat de VN hierover zou stemmen: „Ik hoop persoonlijk dat de Joden ons niet tot deze oorlog drijven, want dit zal een uitroeiingsoorlog en een bloedbad worden dat men zich zal herinneren zoals de Mongoolse slachtingen en de Kruistochten.”
Jordanië, het nieuwe Arabische koninkrijk in het grootste, oostelijke deel van het mandaatgebied, was al gesticht. Als Arabische leiders het delingsplan van de VN hadden aanvaard, waren er dus twee Arabische staten opgericht plus een Joods staatje op grond die door de Joden legaal was aangekocht onder de Ottomanen en Britten.
In december 1947, na de VN-stemming, uitte Azzam Pasha zich net zo vastbesloten als ervoor: „We zullen deze resolutie met alle middelen die we tot onze beschikking hebben weerstaan en bestrijden.”
Laten we ook even kijken naar Muhammad Hussein Heykal Pasha, de Egyptische vertegenwoordiger bij de VN, die op 24 november 1947 waarschuwde: „Als de Verenigde Naties besluiten een deel van Palestina af te snijden om een Joodse staat te vestigen, kan geen enkele kracht op aarde voorkomen dat er bloed vloeit. (...) Bovendien kan geen enkele kracht dit beperken tot de grenzen van Palestina zelf. (...) Joods bloed zal noodzakelijkerwijs elders in de Arabische wereld worden vergoten.”
’Lijn van vuur en bloed’
Jamal al-Husseini, vertegenwoordiger van het Arab Higher Committee, zei dat de delingsgrens in 1947 tussen Joden en Arabieren „niets anders dan een lijn van vuur en bloed” was.
Dan hebben we Fadel al-Jamali, de Iraakse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken op 28 november 1947: „Niet alleen een opstand van de Arabieren van Palestina is te verwachten, maar ook de massa’s in de Arabische wereld kunnen niet worden tegengehouden.”
Shukri al-Quwatli, de president van Syrië, moeten we ook even laten praten: „We zullen het zionisme uitroeien.”
Grootmoefti van Jeruzalem
De beruchte en invloedrijke Jodenhater Haj Amin al-Husseini was ik bijna vergeten. Hij was de grootmoefti van Jeruzalem, een titel die door de Britten was geschonken, en een boezemvriend van A. Hitler. In 1946 was hij gevlucht uit Frankrijk. Hij kreeg politiek asiel in Egypte. Vanzelfsprekend riep hij op tot moord op de Joden.
Hij had de ’Endlösung’ ook in Palestina willen uitvoeren, maar de nederlaag van de nazi’s was net te vroeg gekomen. Ofwel: nederlaag op nederlaag, dat waren nog eens Nakba-tijden. In een kranteninterview van 21 maart 1948 zette al-Husseini zijn plannen uiteen: „De Arabieren waren niet alleen van plan de deling te voorkomen, maar zouden doorvechten tot de zionisten waren uitgeroeid en heel Palestina een zuiver Arabische staat zou zijn.”
Het Arab Higher Committee, dat door hem werd geleid, riep op tot verzet opdat naast Jordanië in heel Palestina een tweede Arabische natie kon komen. De Joden – zeshonderdduizend in totaal, onder wie veel overlevenden van de Sjoa – hadden geen recht op een eigen Joodse staat. Wat dachten die Joden wel?
En toen?
Na de stemming in de VN op 29 november 1947 brak in het westerse deel van het Britse mandaatgebied een burgeroorlog uit. Bijna een half jaar later, op 15 mei 1948, na de onafhankelijkheidsverklaring door David ben Gurion, vielen vijf Arabische legers het één dag oude Israël aan. In de periode die daarop volgde, vluchtten Arabieren uit de gebieden waar de Joden hun staat hadden gevestigd, en ontvluchtten de Joden de Arabische landen waar zij vaker oudere wortels hadden dan de moslimmeerderheid.
Alle groepen lieten alles achter. De Joodse ontheemding was een grotere Nakba dan die van de Arabieren, maar deze telt niet als Nakba omdat de Joden onderdak vonden in het straatarme Israël, waardoor Israël nu een bevolking heeft die in meerderheid de ervaring van vele eeuwen in de Levant in de botten draagt. Etnostaat? Apartheid? Onzin. Israël is een Midden-Oosters multiculti-land, inclusief religieuze gektes, maar ook met Prides.
Miezerige kampen
De ontheemde Arabieren werden in miezerige kampen in de buurlanden ondergebracht, en moesten daar wachten tot zij konden terugkeren. Maar dat lukte niet, ook al proberen zij en hun Arabische broeders dat al sinds 1948.
En nu, in 2026? Acht miljoen Joden zijn sterker dan honderden miljoenen Arabieren – dat ervaren de Arabieren en ook moslims in Marokko en Turkije als een Nakba. Er bestaat dus een hele reeks Nakba’s. Mochten de gemeenteraad en wethouders van Amsterdam daarop prijs stellen, dan kom ik hierover graag wat vertellen. Een boeketje of een flesje wijn als dank wordt op prijs gesteld. Mijn telefoon is opgeladen.

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

@GadSaad As it should be.

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

This is what @grok had to say about this: Verification of the post
The X post (a retweet by @MaxNordau) shares an interview with Ambassador Alan Baker, a former Israeli legal adviser who participated in negotiating and drafting the Oslo Accords (1993 Declaration of Principles and 1995 Interim Agreement/Olso II). Baker’s key points in the interview align exactly with the summary. @i
Key claims checked against facts
• No mention or promise of a Palestinian state: Correct. The Oslo Accords texts focus on an interim self-government arrangement (Palestinian Authority/Council) for a transitional period (up to 5 years), leading to permanent-status negotiations on core issues. They do not create or guarantee an independent Palestinian state. The aim is a “permanent settlement based on UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338,” with issues like borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, and security deferred to final talks. https://t.co/1j09JzYm4y
• Settlements left for final-status talks: Correct. Oslo explicitly defers settlements (along with Jerusalem, borders, etc.) to permanent-status negotiations. No side was prohibited from changing facts on the ground in a way that prejudged the outcome, though both committed against unilateral actions altering the status. https://t.co/1j09JzYm4y
• Framework remains legally binding: Baker (and Israel) argue yes—the interim arrangements, divisions of authority, and mutual obligations still apply until superseded by a final agreement. Palestinians’ unilateral moves (e.g., international recognitions or statehood bids outside negotiations) are seen as breaches. https://t.co/SaufYcfSyT
• Areas A, B, C and misunderstandings: Accurate. Oslo II divided the West Bank into:
• Area A (~18%): Full Palestinian civil + security control (major cities).
• Area B (~22%): Palestinian civil control, joint/Israeli security.
• Area C (~60%): Full Israeli civil + security control (includes most settlements, strategic areas).
These were meant to be temporary, with further redeployments negotiated. Baker and others note widespread oversimplification of these as fixed or as “occupied Palestinian territory” in full. https://t.co/vQrN61xj07
Baker has repeatedly stated these views in interviews, articles, and legal analyses (e.g., via the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs). Critics (including many Palestinians and some Israelis) argue Oslo implicitly aimed at statehood and that Israeli settlement expansion undermined it, but the textual facts support the “no explicit promise” point. https://t.co/9DxNWe26r3
The summary captures the post’s content without distortion. Baker’s perspective is partisan (pro-Israel legal view), but it is grounded in the accords’ language and his direct role.

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

Lord Ian Austin

[Nicole Lampert @nicolelampert]

Excellent from @LordIanAustin on yet ANOTHER debate on the evils of Israel:

As he says: ‘Over the last few years, Parliament has discussed Israel more than any other issue, not just any international issue, more than any domestic issue: more than the economy, unemployment, crime, the NHS.
‘The public out there look at Parliament and think this is utterly mad, utterly, utterly mad.’

Lord Ian blames Parliament for helping fuel antisemitism adding:

‘Does Parliament not understand that singling out the world's only Jewish state, holding its standards not applied to anywhere else, falsely accusing Israel of committing these terrible crimes? ‘This is bound to drive hostility towards people who are identified with Israel, which is the vast majority of the Jewish community, and I have to say this is why I believe Parliament is playing a large role in driving the explosion of anti-Semitism that we've seen on the streets of Britain.’

[Yossi BenYakar @YossiBenYakar]

"If Trump somehow gets Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran all to fall, he should get a Nobel Peace Prize." Do you agree?

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

Interesting point of view…

[Ahmed Al-Khalidi @khalidi79397]

Colonialism is bad, right?

Wrong.

The Aztec Empire ran sacrifice at industrial scale. Excavations of the Huey Tzompantli, the skull rack next to the Templo Mayor, have uncovered hundreds of skulls of men, women, and children. Spanish eyewitnesses described tens of thousands. The Aztecs fought "Flower Wars" whose purpose was capturing live victims for the altar. Hearts were cut out of living people. Subject peoples hated Aztec rule so much that Tlaxcalans made up most of Cortes's army. The conquest was largely an indigenous uprising against an indigenous empire. The sacrifices ended under Spanish rule.

India: burning a widow alive on her husband's funeral pyre. British records from Bengal alone documented thousands of cases between 1815 and 1828. The British, with Indian reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, banned it in 1829. When priests told General Napier it was sacred custom, he answered: my nation also has a custom, we hang men who burn women alive. You follow yours, we will follow ours.

India: Thuggee cults murdered travelers by the tens of thousands over centuries as offerings to Kali. It was a hereditary profession. William Sleeman's campaign in the 1830s wiped it out.

Slavery was a universal indigenous institution. Dahomey and Ashanti were built on slave raiding and sold captives for a thousand years to Arab traders before any European ship arrived. Pacific Northwest tribes held up to a quarter of some village populations as slaves and killed them ceremonially at potlatches. The Comanche ran a captive-raiding economy across the Southwest. What colonizers introduced after 1807 was the first attempt in history to abolish slavery globally. The Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron spent fifty years hunting slave ships and freed about 150,000 Africans. African kings protested. The King of Bonny complained that abolition was destroying a trade ordained by his gods and priests.

The Dahomey kingdom's "Annual Customs" beheaded hundreds of captives and slaves every year to honor dead kings. Documented by European visitors for two centuries. It ended when France conquered Dahomey in 1894.

Sailors called Fiji the Cannibal Isles. Chief Ratu Udre Udre kept a stone for every victim he ate. His pile holds nearly 900. Shipwrecked sailors were killed and eaten. Within a generation of missionaries and British administration after 1874, the practice was gone.

Nigeria: In parts of Igboland, newborn twins were left in the bush to die and their mothers ostracized or killed. Missionary Mary Slessor spent decades in Calabar rescuing abandoned infants until the practice collapsed.

Indigenous genocide of indigenous people. In 1835, two Maori tribes invaded the Chatham Islands and slaughtered the Moriori, whose own law forbade them to fight back. They killed, enslaved, and ate them. The Moriori population fell from about 2,000 to barely 100. No European did this. British colonial law ended it.

Add headhunting in Borneo, the Philippines, and Nagaland. Female infanticide in India and Polynesia. Foot binding in China, dismantled partly by missionary campaigns. Every one of these ended under pressure from the colonial powers we are taught to treat as history's unique villains.

Colonialism was not charity. The Belgian Congo was a horror, conquest was for profit, and rule was without consent. But the ledger has two sides and one has been erased. Pre-colonial societies practiced slavery, human sacrifice, widow burning, infanticide, and genocide, because cruelty is not a European invention. The first civilization that tried to abolish these practices worldwide is the one you were taught to be ashamed of.

If "indigenous" means innocent and "colonizer" means guilty by definition, that is not history.

[Michael Oren @DrMichaelOren]

Israel’s going to say, most likely, if the United States reaches an agreement with Iran, that agreement cannot tie Israel’s hands, and Israel’s going to have to continue to do what it needs to do to defend itself.

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

Because since its re-establishment Israel has faced existential threats from literally every direction. No other nation has had to endure the constant threat and violence for now 80 years. And they’ve never used or even threatend its use. Nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort; placing them in the hands of ideologues or terrorist regimes carries enourmous risks, not just locally but globally. The Iranian’s are now blackmailing the world without nukes, just imagine how they will be with nuclear cover.

[Hussain Abdul-Hussain @hahussain]

Israel always explains its tactics, rarely its strategy, which sometimes it should.

Razing down houses and villages in south Lebanon is NOT collective punishment for the Shia base of Hezbollah.

It is because Israel is not occupying Lebanese territory, only depopulating and controlling it with firepower. Many of these houses are either entry and exit points for Hezbollah military tunnels, or themselves storage depots for rocket launchers, weapons and fighters.

Instead of losing soldiers by going through villages house-to-house, many of which could be booby trapped or still housing Hezbollah fighters, Israel is treating these buildings as enemy military facilities and razing them down. When Israel is certain that the buildings are Hezbollah free, like in Christian villages, the houses are neither depopulated nor destroyed.

See, this is how the policy makes sense. If you didn't know that, you'd think Israel was practicing collective revenge, which it is not.

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

@jeremycorbyn Your eternal hatred of the only Jewish state and the Jewish people is unconscionable.

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

@ForecasterEnten @JoshKraushaar I can’t wrap my head around this: if she is more liked than Pratt and Bass, how is she, or was she third in the votes?

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

https://t.co/m0bHOa5NZB

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

@marklevinshow What they do is called projection. They project all their own thoughts, feelings and evil onto other people.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Thoughts?

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

My favorite thing to do when visiting other countries is to run from missile attacks targeted at civilians. Which is a war crime.

Wouldn’t it be great if anyone in the world cared about Israeli civilians?

[Koorosh Banayan @cymasonb]

Woke mind virus → Cancel Culture → #MeToo → BLM → ‘Fight Islamophobia’ → campus mobs chanting for Jewish death.
The tolerance pyramid was always a guillotine. How many ‘protected’ groups does it take before people admit the whole oppressor/oppressed script was poison?