Donald Macleod

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

If you were to write this headline or article in a variety of US, UK, German or French media outlets, your career might be on the line and you’d probably be accused of antisemitism.

And yet the author of this piece is a former prime minister for Israel.
https://t.co/xUqPAHxsab

[Voice of Rabbis @voiceofrabbis]

For nearly 2,000 years, Jews remained Jews without sovereignty, an army, a flag, or political power.

What preserved us was not nationalism, but Torah.

Zionism introduced a different foundation.

It sought to redefine Jewish identity around nationhood, territory, language, and statehood, replacing a religious covenant with a national movement.

To accomplish this, it recast ancient Jewish concepts into political ones.

The Holy Land became a state project.

The longing for Redemption became a nationalist goal.

Jewish people-hood became a nationality.

The result is a profound confusion between Judaism and Zionism.

Today, Zionist who openly reject Torah observance still claim to speak in the name of all Jews.

Those who neither believe in nor live according to the Torah proudly call themselves "Jewish" representatives, while presenting a G-dless political movement as if it were Judaism itself.

And if you criticize their Ideology, you are accused of being an "antisemite."

But criticism of a G-dless political movement is not hatred of our religious people.

Judaism existed long before Zionism, and it will continue to exist independent of any political movement or state.

Source @authenttorahjew @TorahJudaism

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

I thought that if Israeli soldiers or settlers attacked Christian villages, the Christian world would unite in their millions in condemnation that their sacred sites were being burnt and erased.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

“My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage.

But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words.

But there does need to be a clear intent.

And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there.

A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here.

Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership.

Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.

And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

But reality cannot be denied.

So yes, it is a genocide.

And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

- Statement to Led By Donkeys, December 2024
- Photo: Parliament Square, London, 8.40am, 4th December 2024

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Today is Nakba Day. You cannot understand what lies at the heart of conflict in the Middle East unless you understand what happened to 85% of Palestinians in 1948. Here Eugene Rogan explains how hundreds of thousands of refugees ended up homeless in Gaza

[Jewish Voice @jewishvoicelive]

We never see Israel as a Jewish state.

We stand with the Palestinian people and support the Palestine state.

The day the State of Israel was founded is a dark day for the Jewish people and history.

There is no Zionism in Judaism.

Jews are not Zionists. Zionists are not Jews.

Jews Say No! To Genocide & Israeli Apartheid.

Free Palestine

[Donald Macleod @donjmacleod]

@netanyahu https://t.co/0qkkTTmNY5

[B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم @btselem]

“The torture of Palestinian detainees is part of a wider Israeli assault on Palestinian life. In Gaza, the genocide continues. In the West Bank, violence by the military and of settler militias is intensifying, displacing entire Palestinian communities families from their land. In detention facilities, Palestinians are systematically tortured. The pattern is the same throughout: escalating violence, the removal of restraints, and the normalization of a system that strips Palestinians of protection” writes Yuli Novak, executive director of B’Tselem, in an Op-ed for @guardian

Read the full article >> https://t.co/meHk2SurI3

[B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم @btselem]

“The torture of Palestinian detainees is part of a wider Israeli assault on Palestinian life. In Gaza, the genocide continues. In the West Bank, violence by the military and of settler militias is intensifying, displacing entire Palestinian communities families from their land. In detention facilities, Palestinians are systematically tortured. The pattern is the same throughout: escalating violence, the removal of restraints, and the normalization of a system that strips Palestinians of protection” writes Yuli Novak, executive director of B’Tselem, in an Op-ed for @guardian

Read the full article >> https://t.co/meHk2SurI3

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

This is a hard article to read, but I hope you'll do so. I've spent some time reporting on widespread rape and other sexual violence of Palestinian male and female prisoners by Israeli authorities, and the article is now published. The assault victims were warned not to give speak of what they endured -- they were sometimes told they would be killed or raped if they gave interviews -- but they found the courage to do so. One man described being raped three times in a single day in Israeli prison, the third time after he tried to protest. A young woman said the guards would come in at the beginning of each shift and strip her naked and abuse her. Another reported that she was shown photos of herself being raped and warned they would be released unless she cooperated with Israeli intelligence. Even three children who had been detained told me they had been sexually abused. Look, whatever our position on the Middle East, we should be able to agree on being anti-rape. Sexual assaults were horrific when Israeli women were targeted on Oct. 7, and they're equally horrific when Israeli authorities use them against Palestinians day after day after day. We should be able to find common ground in opposing rape. Here's a gift link to the article: https://t.co/aMMHId49OO

[sᥕᥱᥱ𝗍 𝗍һіᥒg❤️‍🔥(𝙰𝚜𝚒𝚊) @55SweetThing]

All he wanted was to turn off the tap…😂😅🤣

[Linda Mamoun @mamoun_linda]

Imagine seeing this op ed in any Western newspaper.

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

Swans have one off the coolest landing technique ever.. 😊

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

This seems relevant:

Remember when the police dragged in 87-year-old Holocaust Survivor Stephen Kapos to be questioned under caution because he was on a protest against Genocide and wished to lay flowers for the dead children of Gaza outside the BBC

[Jewish Voice @jewishvoicelive]

Israel is not a Jewish state

Jews are not a nationality

Judaism is an ancient religious collective.

Zionism is a nationalist movement created in 1896 by ppl who were pronounced atheists

They wanted to be called Jewish but without actually believing in Judaism

That's Zionism

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

We, the Lebanese and Palestinian, are the only people in history watching our genocide live, and we could get arrested or suspended for saying stop kill us, because it might hurt the feelings of the killers.

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

This is the greatest and bravest woman you will ever see in your life Dr. Amira from Gaza.

Under the siege of the hospital, in front of the snipers’ bullets, she ran forward without hesitation, pulled out the stranded patient, and saved his life.

This video will be remembered by generations to come…forever.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

There is a name for boarding a ship and abducting innocent civilians in international waters, @BBCWorld. Its not called 'interception'. The word is piracy.

[Jewish Voice @jewishvoicelive]

The Islamic Republic of Iran is never an enemy of the Jews. Thousands of Jews live in Iran. The greatest enemy of the Jews is Israel and Zionism.

The Zionist regime will one day surely disappear. The murderous, genocidal, perverse Israel is never a Jewish state.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Avi Shlaim, British-Israeli historian and Oxford Professor, joins @tweeter_anita & I to discuss his jaw-dropping archival discoveries, which have reshaped the history of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Uncovering The Secret Files of The Arab-Israeli Conflict
–Empire: World History – Apple Podcasts https://t.co/vXp3AIkCP8

[Alex Crawford @AlexCrawfordSky]

This is an astonishing condemnation of Israeli actions on the biggest international political platform with Pakistan calling Israel a ‘serial violator of the UN Charter and int law’.