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IN PRAISE OF FRANCESCA ALBANESE
There is a question that visits me in the small hours, when sleep will not come and the mind turns over old stones. The question is this: “What would I have done in the 1930s, on the morning after Kristallnacht?"
Not what I say I would have done. Not what I hope I would have done. But what would I actually have done—when the trains began to run, when the neighbours grew quiet, when the cost of decency became the loss of everything?
Most of us, I think, would have done little. Not from malice. From fear. From the soft, creeping conviction that someone else will speak, that the situation is complex, that we must be 'reasonable'. Lest we forget, the ordinary is the extraordinary's alibi. And how we have clung to that alibi! How we still cling to it!
And then, every once in a terrible while, someone appears who does not cling. Someone who steps forward when others step back. Someone who speaks the name of the thing when everyone else is busy naming something else.
Francesca Albanese is that someone.
She stands before the world—alone, unarmed, armed only with law and language and a rare courage—and she says what the centrists will not say, what the foreign ministries will not say, what the editorial boards will not say. She says: "This is a genocide. And we are watching it happen."
Do not tell me that is hyperbole. Do not tell me the term is contested. She has not used it lightly. She has used it as a physician arrives scientifically at a diagnosis—not to wound, but to warn. Not to inflame, but to name.
And for that, they have come for her. Oh, how they have come for her. Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her. Because the respectable cannot abide what she represents: a mirror held up to their complicity.
Let us, once again, travel back to the 1930s. Back to the few who stood up when the trains began to run laden with Jewish people.
There was Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. He defied his own government. He signed thousands of visas, by hand, for hours, until his fingers bled. He saved more lives than Schindler. And he died penniless, disgraced, erased.
There was a German officer in Warsaw named Wilm Hosenfeld. He hid a Jewish pianist in the rubble. He did not save thousands. He saved one. But that one—Władysław Szpilman—carried the memory. And memory is "the only haven from which we cannot be expelled."
There was Raoul Wallenberg. There were the villagers of Le Chambon. There were the anonymous, the quiet, the furious few who said: “Not on my watch.”
Francesca Albanese is their heir. Not because she carries a gun. Not because she hides refugees in her basement. But because she does something equally dangerous in a world that has perfected the art of not seeing. She sees. And she speaks.
She does not speak as a diplomat. Thank Goodness she doesn't! Diplomats have given us the language of "there are arguments on both sides" and "restraint" and "proportionality." Diplomatic language is the perfumed grave of moral clarity. No, she speaks as a jurist. As a human being. As a woman who has looked into the abyss and refused to call it a "complex geopolitical landscape".
Edna O'Brien once described a character who "had the recklessness of those who have already lost everything worth losing." Francesca Albanese has not lost everything. She has her dignity, her office, her voice, her family. But she has calculated the cost of speaking truth to power. And she has decided that that cost is infinitely less than the cost of silence.
What is that cost? Let us name it. She has been called antisemitic—she, who stands on the ground of international law forged in the ashes of Auschwitz and the fires of Nuremberg. She has been called a conspiracy theorist—she, who cites every source, every footnote, every UN resolution. She has been called naive—she, who understands better than most the machinery of realpolitik.
These accusations are not arguments. They are the spittle of the threatened. Because Francesca Albanese threatens something very precious to the powerful: the right to commit atrocity without being named.
Friends, the 1930s did not arrive with jackboots and pogroms on day one. They arrived in small increments. With "reasonable" restrictions. With "proportional" measures. With the silence of the respectable.
We tell ourselves that we would have been different. That we would have been Sousa Mendes. That we would have been Wallenberg. But most of us, I fear, would have been the neighbours who later said, "I didn't know."
Francesca Albanese knows. And she refuses to pretend otherwise.
So let us praise her. Not with statues or awards she does not seek. But with something harder: with our own refusal to look away. With our own voices, raised in places that are safe for us but dangerous for her. With our own bodies, if it comes to that.
A brave woman, who was injured while demonstrating outside a US nuclear military base in 1982, the infamous Greenham Common, had told me that "the heart is a hunter for what it cannot have." But I say the heart is a hunter for what it will not lose. And what we will not lose is the memory of those who stood up when standing up cost everything.
Francesca Albanese is standing up now. In our time. In our name. Under our indifferent sky.
Let us stand with her.
Not tomorrow. Not when it is safe. Now.
[Extract from a speech in Athens on Sunday 3rd May 2026]
![yanisvaroufakis's tweet photo. IN PRAISE OF FRANCESCA ALBANESE
There is a question that visits me in the small hours, when sleep will not come and the mind turns over old stones. The question is this: “What would I have done in the 1930s, on the morning after Kristallnacht?"
Not what I say I would have done. Not what I hope I would have done. But what would I actually have done—when the trains began to run, when the neighbours grew quiet, when the cost of decency became the loss of everything?
Most of us, I think, would have done little. Not from malice. From fear. From the soft, creeping conviction that someone else will speak, that the situation is complex, that we must be 'reasonable'. Lest we forget, the ordinary is the extraordinary's alibi. And how we have clung to that alibi! How we still cling to it!
And then, every once in a terrible while, someone appears who does not cling. Someone who steps forward when others step back. Someone who speaks the name of the thing when everyone else is busy naming something else.
Francesca Albanese is that someone.
She stands before the world—alone, unarmed, armed only with law and language and a rare courage—and she says what the centrists will not say, what the foreign ministries will not say, what the editorial boards will not say. She says: "This is a genocide. And we are watching it happen."
Do not tell me that is hyperbole. Do not tell me the term is contested. She has not used it lightly. She has used it as a physician arrives scientifically at a diagnosis—not to wound, but to warn. Not to inflame, but to name.
And for that, they have come for her. Oh, how they have come for her. Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her. Because the respectable cannot abide what she represents: a mirror held up to their complicity.
Let us, once again, travel back to the 1930s. Back to the few who stood up when the trains began to run laden with Jewish people.
There was Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. He defied his own government. He signed thousands of visas, by hand, for hours, until his fingers bled. He saved more lives than Schindler. And he died penniless, disgraced, erased.
There was a German officer in Warsaw named Wilm Hosenfeld. He hid a Jewish pianist in the rubble. He did not save thousands. He saved one. But that one—Władysław Szpilman—carried the memory. And memory is "the only haven from which we cannot be expelled."
There was Raoul Wallenberg. There were the villagers of Le Chambon. There were the anonymous, the quiet, the furious few who said: “Not on my watch.”
Francesca Albanese is their heir. Not because she carries a gun. Not because she hides refugees in her basement. But because she does something equally dangerous in a world that has perfected the art of not seeing. She sees. And she speaks.
She does not speak as a diplomat. Thank Goodness she doesn't! Diplomats have given us the language of "there are arguments on both sides" and "restraint" and "proportionality." Diplomatic language is the perfumed grave of moral clarity. No, she speaks as a jurist. As a human being. As a woman who has looked into the abyss and refused to call it a "complex geopolitical landscape".
Edna O'Brien once described a character who "had the recklessness of those who have already lost everything worth losing." Francesca Albanese has not lost everything. She has her dignity, her office, her voice, her family. But she has calculated the cost of speaking truth to power. And she has decided that that cost is infinitely less than the cost of silence.
What is that cost? Let us name it. She has been called antisemitic—she, who stands on the ground of international law forged in the ashes of Auschwitz and the fires of Nuremberg. She has been called a conspiracy theorist—she, who cites every source, every footnote, every UN resolution. She has been called naive—she, who understands better than most the machinery of realpolitik.
These accusations are not arguments. They are the spittle of the threatened. Because Francesca Albanese threatens something very precious to the powerful: the right to commit atrocity without being named.
Friends, the 1930s did not arrive with jackboots and pogroms on day one. They arrived in small increments. With "reasonable" restrictions. With "proportional" measures. With the silence of the respectable.
We tell ourselves that we would have been different. That we would have been Sousa Mendes. That we would have been Wallenberg. But most of us, I fear, would have been the neighbours who later said, "I didn't know."
Francesca Albanese knows. And she refuses to pretend otherwise.
So let us praise her. Not with statues or awards she does not seek. But with something harder: with our own refusal to look away. With our own voices, raised in places that are safe for us but dangerous for her. With our own bodies, if it comes to that.
A brave woman, who was injured while demonstrating outside a US nuclear military base in 1982, the infamous Greenham Common, had told me that "the heart is a hunter for what it cannot have." But I say the heart is a hunter for what it will not lose. And what we will not lose is the memory of those who stood up when standing up cost everything.
Francesca Albanese is standing up now. In our time. In our name. Under our indifferent sky.
Let us stand with her.
Not tomorrow. Not when it is safe. Now.
[Extract from a speech in Athens on Sunday 3rd May 2026]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HHsnlr9WIAEr4Cw.jpg)
Comedian Bassem Youssef has used satire to prove Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli spy, not Russian, citing publicly documented facts that contradict questionable claims portraying him as a Russian asset.
Youssef made the remarks in an exchange while Epstein’s former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, was present on the panel.
During the segment, Youssef listed Epstein’s publicly reported political, legal, and personal associations, including his close relationship with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, hosting Barak at his properties, travelling to Israel after being charged with sex crimes, and being photographed wearing Israeli military insignia.
He also cited Epstein’s funding by pro-Israel donors, donations to pro-Israel student groups, management of pro-Israel philanthropy linked to the Wexner network, financial ties to the Rothschild circle, support for Israeli settlement-related projects, involvement in Israeli diplomatic efforts, and contacts with individuals described as former Israeli intelligence officers, including Ari Ben-Menashe.
Youssef concluded the list sarcastically by stating that, based on the logic being promoted, Epstein must therefore have been “a Russian spy.”
Critics say that in recent days, Israeli intelligence-affiliated commentators, news networks, and officials have pushed the claim that Epstein was a Russian asset as part of a damage control effort following renewed public scrutiny of Epstein’s network and associations.
@ShikmaBressler @piersmorgan Yes yes… the vast majority of Israelis have been protesting nonstop to end the genocide for the past 20+ months, and stopping the radicals from preventing food trucks going in…. (I’m sarcastic in case that’s not clear). Gaza’s blood is on your hands, the vast majority.
Now we’re supposed to feel bad for two genocide cheerleaders after watching these colonizer baby killers slaughter people by the hundreds every day for two years. I’ve seen the inside of too many children’s skulls to give a crap about the human garbage who get off on mass murder. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a false flag to focus on manufactured antisemitism instead of the actual holocaust being committed by Jewish supremacists
Who to follow
Samer AbdelJaber
@SamerWFP
Humanitarian. @WFP Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa & Eastern Europe (MENAEE)
Blank
@Blank011001
Very little impulse contol, I'm probably going to keep replying until you stop.
Cifu_405
@Cifu_405
Highly entropic Architect, Artist, Art-director.
@mthd_405
Finished at the Harris rally protest, walking beside thousands of Harris voters. Walked in front of two people - an art teacher and a guy who runs a kids non-profit - talking about how people shouldn’t be protesting her and wait for her to win the election to protest otherwise they’ll lose the right to protest.
Dem bot rot is not just online.
When all is said and done, if you don't stand up for them, if you don't demand strongly and loudly that all US weapons to Israel should be stopped now, if you vote for the VP of the administration that continues to fuel this genocide - you are complicit. God help you.
حاولت جاهدًا قبل ولادة (عليّ) توفير علبة من حليب المواليد فلم أجد، فقلت لعل المستشفى يوم الولادة توفر له علبة حليب، بعد ولادته أرادت أمه أن تُرضعه، فلم ينزل شيء من الحليب بسبب سوء تغذية الأم، ذهبتُ إلى قسم الحضانة فلم أجد شيئًا، ذهبتُ إلى كل مكان في المستشفى فلم أجد حليبًا، بعد سبع ساعات أعطتني إحدى النساء حقنة فيها قليل من الحليب، نحن في الشمال محاصرون.
This New York Times article is mind-blowing and illustrates the insane extent to which America has escaped reality.
They literally blame China - of all countries - for the Middle East crisis, writing that "the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East shows how ineffectual Mr. Xi’s promotion of peace and tranquillity has been, and it’s coming back to bite China."
When everyone who lives in the real world understands that the root of the current issue is OBVIOUSLY Israel's decades-long occupation and progressive annexation of Palestinian land, with full US backing. And the detonator of the crisis was the Biden administration's efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia by sidestepping the Palestinian issue. The Palestinians were effectively put in a position where - in the words of Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet - they felt "alone and abandoned" and as a result "chose the Samson option" because "they felt that they had nothing to lose and this was the only way for them to show to the world 'you will not be able to create stability in this region if you will bypass Palestinians.'"
China did undertake its own normalization efforts - between Iran and Saudi Arabia - and this occurred without a hitch, entirely peacefully, and has held since. So much so that both countries just joined the BRICS together. So the fact is: China did improve peace and stability in the region substantially - reconciling the two historic enemies of the region was no mean feat - whilst America managed to trigger YET ANOTHER major war in the Middle East, creating untold human suffering and dramatic region-wide repercussions as we can see with Yemen. The contrast between both countries' respective impact on the region just couldn't be starker.
The article also makes the laughable claim that China should share America's "burden" (some significant "white man's burden" vibes overall in this article...) of keeping the Red Sea route open by fighting Ansar Allah (the Houthis). This is a complete misunderstanding of the situation, and of China. Almost no-one joined America in this effort - and especially not countries in the region - because everyone understands that what Ansar Allah is doing is a legitimate effort to put pressure on Israel to stop its assault on Gaza. Why on earth would China - who fully and openly agrees that Israel does need to stop its assault, and that Ansar Allah is imposing the blockade for that very purpose - side with America and thereby completely undermine its own diplomatic line?
The article's author claims that China should do so because "a prolonged regional crisis could heighten pressure on the Communist Party at home" but that betrays a complete misunderstanding of the Chinese public: the Chinese government would face enormous backlash if it suddenly decided to side with American imperialism for a military crusade in what would in effect be an action against the Palestinian cause, which is massively supported by the Chinese public. Especially: why do that when Chinese ships are actually NOT affected by the blockade, and thereby have been served a competitive advantage on a silver platter? It makes just about zero sense.
Lastly, cherry on this big cake of delusion that is this article, the author claims that "China’s seeming indifference to the Red Sea crisis reinforces the United States’ role as the world’s predominant power". The cringe is almost painful... The truth is that the Red Sea crisis, and the war on Gaza, is yet another immense blow to America's standing in the world and effectively relegates them to pariah status alongside Israel. Just look at the votes in the UN, or look who actually wanted to join "operation prosperity guardian" in the Red Sea: almost no-one is on America's side anymore, except maybe a handful of historic vassal states who can't do otherwise (and have joined mostly symbolically, without meaningful military participation).
And it's failing, big time: far from being "deterred" as was the stated purpose of the operation, Ansar Allah is actually stepping up its attacks. So far from showcasing America as "the world’s predominant power", it just showcases its weakness and the fact it's become utterly incapable of achieving just about anything, at home or abroad. The message this sends to the world is therefore that we've firmly entered a new phase, a multipolar world, where the US is but one power among many. And I'm afraid that the overwhelming perception - reinforced by these tragic events - is that America's influence on the world is very much for the worse, and therefore should be reduced.
This is the article, by the way, in case you want to have a good laugh: https://t.co/b3b7hAMCk5
Also, does anyone think Trump, who moved the embassy to Jerusalem & has an Israeli settlement named after him, would be anything other than pro this Israeli assault on Gaza? Egging it on? He's already pledged to ban refugees from Gaza & deport pro-Palestinian foreign students.
This is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary interviews of a former senior US government official on Gaza.
This is Chas Freeman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Key points in the video:
- He agrees that many of the victims of Oct 7th were killed by the Israeli army in the form of "undisciplined fire by helicopters with hellfire missiles or by tanks with incendiary rounds directed at buildings". In the case of the victims of the music festival he even says they "were largely killed, it appears, by hellfire missiles and by other undisciplined fire by Israeli forces". To him this "disgrace in military terms" stems from a "lack of discipline and training necessary to respond" but also from the IDF's "Hannibal directive", which "says that rather than get into bargaining over hostage exchange you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors."
- He says that with Oct 7th "Hamas had 2 objectives": 1) "Put the Palestinian self-determination issue back on the global agenda", something he says they've "succeeded" in doing since they're is "widespread recognition outside Israel that only self-determination for Palestine in the form of a 2-state solution can provide security to Israel". He says that even in "the US, which has a larger Jewish population than Israel, many Jews have come to realize that this is the case. Younger Jews in particular in the U.S. are very disillusioned with Zionism and don't want to suffer contagion from it in the form of antisemitism, which is actually growing now as a result of Israeli actions".
2) "Give Hamas enormous popularity among Palestinians because they are seen as having stood up, as having been willing to accept death rather than captivity". He refers to Norman Finkelstein's "analogy of slave revolts in the U.S." and particularly the "1831 revolt by Nat Turner, a well-educated very intelligent enslaved African who led a slave revolt in Southern Virginia which had as its objective the murder of every white person they encountered." He says it "raises a moral question: 'Is the violence of the slave-owner morally the same as the violence of the slave trying to end that violence?'. The same moral question arises with Israeli oppression of Palestinians versus Palestinian resistance to oppression."
- All in all he concludes that much like the violence against African-Americans that followed slave revolts in the 19th century, the Israeli vengeance against Palestinians "won't be remembered fondly by anyone in the future". In fact he goes as far as saying that "when people think of Israel in the past they thought of it as a refuge for the victims of the Holocaust... now they will think of it as the home of perpetrators of genocide. When they think of Israel, they will think of burned buildings and dead babies. This is an image problem of a fundamental nature and from the point of view of Israel it strips Israel of its protection by charges of antisemitism against anyone who is critical of Israel because to be critical of people who are carrying out genocide cannot be antisemitism, it cannot be considered immoral. Antisemitism is a despicable attitude but to oppose genocide by Israel is not."
Dear @POTUS, I hope by now this letter has made it to your desk. It is soundly and thoughtfully written. There is a growing credibility gap between this administration’s stated core values vs actions, having a depressive effect on organizing and support around the upcoming election. It is the hope of so many here and around the world that you reconsider your unwavering military assistance for what is no longer a war, but an illegal and atrocious action exacted on innocent people. It is corrosive for any chance of lasting peace in the region. Your administration is filled with the best of the best. These resignations should give you pause. You are right. Democracy is indeed at stake.
So I am going to try to answer this here in the following thread, follow along if you are interested to know more.
What it’s like to be a deaf Palestinian under Israel’s bombs in Gaza:
There is no way the Israel PR department can be this bad.
1. A calendar with the days of the week spelled out is mistaken for a Hamas terror cell names list.
2. A poorly translated rape orders list (written like a 101 classical Arabic primer for beginners)
3. An Israeli woman pretending to be a Gaza Doctor in Al Shifa hospital being bombed by Hamas. The accent was atrocious-- like they were not even pretending.
4. A pristine Mein Kemph with neat highlights pulled from the rubbles of a home. Like, seriously, put a bit of dust.
6. Soldiers giving water to the Gazans who were forcibly moved to the south and had to walk miles pulling kids, and babies, disabled relatives, and elders. When the same cameras documented the shooting and the harassment of other soldiers a few moments before.
My daughter asks if we are going home ever. I tell her yes i night be lying. She said if they bombed our house we will rebuild another exactly like it right mama? #gaza
putting this video on the tl make sure you dont forget who we are fighting for. they arent just numbers or names. they are people with lives and dreams and they deserve to live in a liberated palestine
Israel Warns Gaza Still Harboring Hundreds Of Doctors https://t.co/71wBBgAiQ9
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