ilves

[jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill]

For more than two months, I have been working on a truly horrific story about one of the gravest war crimes committed by the United States since Vietnam: The bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, Iran. It was one of the first targets struck in the opening hours of the war on February 28, 2026.

At least 156 people were killed in the U.S. cruise missile strikes—120 of them were children and 26 were teachers. We spoke to survivors, first responders, parents, doctors, teachers, psychologists, and other witnesses. Some of them had never before shared their experiences of that day.

It would be impossible to do justice to what happened in Minab that day with words alone. In more than 25 years in journalism and reporting on war, I do not believe I have reported on a more heinous single crime.

Massacre at Minab: The School That Became a Grave

https://t.co/6zcGDYIzCC

Please share this story with as many people as you can.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

It's absolutely amazing that our political and media discourse is fixated on smearing every Israel critic as "anti-Semitic," and pretending the US suffers a crisis of an anti-Semitism epidemic, and demanding denunciation rituals to banish these Israel critics as unrepentent bigots, while one of the US President's closest advisors casually proclaims -- not for the first time -- that "Muslims need to be treated like enemy combatants" and should be barred from holding public office, echoing the statement yesterday from a sitting member of the US Congress that "every single Muslim is.... a threat to national security and our Republic."

Find me a single comment -- just one -- from Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El Sayed, Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie or Hasan Piker about Jews that is even 1/1000th as bigoted and Nazi-like as the vomit puked up over the last 24 hours about ALL Muslims from Laura Loomer and Nancy Mace. (In reality, you can't find one comment from any of them that is anti-Semitic without conflating "Israel" and Jews, but even if you could, it'd be in a different universe entirely from the kinds of false and hateful accusations made every day by the most influential people about all American Muslims).

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

You don't get to just pretend all this fretting about "antisemitism" is happening separately from the agenda to stomp out all criticism of Israel and its abuses. You don't get to demand that I treat them as separate things. They're inseparable agendas. I wish they weren't, but they are.

If you come up to me babbling about how Jews are afraid and mistreated, then I'm going to automatically treat this as apologia for a genocidal apartheid state, because that's the primary agenda that this rhetoric is being used to promote today. It's not my fault that this is how I respond to allegations of antisemitism. It's the fault of the people who have weaponized such allegations to promote genocide, apartheid, war, and tyranny.

If you want me to take allegations of "antisemitism" seriously, then you must first bring to an end the campaign to use that term as a cudgel to shut down pro-Palestine protests and silence Israel's critics. That is what you'll need to do before I will give you the benefit of the doubt and listen to you like you're a good-faith actor. The information ecosystem is currently far too full of genocidal Zionists lying about their experiences, their feelings, their intentions, and what has happened to them for me to listen credulously to stories about discrimination against Jews in the year 2026.

It's so surreal how we are still expected in mainstream western society to listen to concern trolling about "antisemitism" without immediately thinking about things like Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, war, and genocide. We're expected to listen patiently to stories about how western Jews feel unsafe without ever looking at all those elephants in the room. It's insulting. It's degrading.

If the main reason antisemitism gets mentioned these days is because of opposition to Israel's mass atrocities, then obviously I'm going to assume that's the driving motivator behind your words when you mention it. Of course that's going to be my default assumption. Obviously. Duh.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Israel’s +972 Magazine reports that the Israeli military establishment has launched a training program designed to “influence public consciousness” around the world, with courses aimed at training hundreds of operatives per year in strategies for “actively disrupting or manipulating the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of target audiences.”

Citing a leaked Defense Ministry tender, +972 reports that lecturers in the program are required to hold “doctorates and/or professorships in the fields of influence, consciousness, security and terrorism, mass communication, [or] digital and network communication,” as well as “at least four years of professional experience in the fields of influence [or] influence intelligence in various security organizations.”

“Some of the courses — including those on influence operations, influence intelligence, and online activism — will be in English for ‘foreign partners,’ whose identities are not specified,” +972 reports. “For these participants, the Defense Ministry built a dedicated syllabus that includes study of ‘the American approach,’ meaning U.S. perspectives and cultural norms, and conducting influence campaigns in the international arena.”

This revelation comes as Israel quintuples its annual propaganda budget to three-quarters of a billion dollars. So going forward you can expect to be blasted in the face with a whole lot more pro-Israel perception management while you’re minding your own fucking business trying to live your life.

It’s such a trip how Zionists just take it as a given that the only way to improve public perception of Israel is to ramp up efforts to manipulate the thoughts people think about it. They never give serious attention to the possibility that Israel would have a lot more public approval if it stopped fucking murdering innocent civilians all the time and fucking torturing people and raping captives with trained rape dogs. Israel can’t possibly be wrong; only our thoughts about Israel can be wrong.

At an American Jewish Committee event on Tuesday, Santa Clara University’s Maya Ackerman argued that generative AI presents an exciting new opportunity for imposing pro-Israel narratives on public consciousness, because AI companies can be lobbied directly to push pro-Israel narratives since their leaders can control what information people see.

Here’s a transcript of what she said:

“The really cool thing about AI is that while it can become a great ally for our enemies if we act early, it could be exactly the opportunity that we need after missing the boat with social media. AI is now becoming the dominant source of information — the main source of information. People trust AI more than anything else. They trust AI more than social media. They turn to chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini instead of using Google. And young people use these bots instead of Google in very, very very large numbers. So this is becoming the main source of information.

“And so when I say this, I still find Jewish people being discouraged, they say ‘Oh, but Wikipedia is already so antisemitic and social media is so antisemitic — why bother? The AI just learns from all of this data.’ So, you know, whatever, not much we can do.

“But that’s not true, because over the past two years the AI companies have been moving towards alignment. So instead of algorithms sort of honestly representing what’s in the data, we’re finding that these chatbots and the text to image models are increasingly showing us exactly what the companies want us to see.

“Okay, so it’s becoming intentional. Which means that instead of trying to control the whole world and trying to somehow manage what’s happening in this big blob called Wikipedia and social media, we can go directly to the companies with clear technical and advocacy solutions. For the first time, there is a path to correcting the digital world.”

So to be clear, Ackerman is arguing that AI chatbots are useful because instead of “honestly representing what’s in the data” they are saying whatever their owners tell them to say, which means the owners of AI companies can simply be pressured to make the chatbots say pro-Israel things. She is saying this gives “Jewish people” (her words, not mine) an opportunity for “correcting the digital world” (her words, not mine) in a way that is more efficient than “trying to control the whole world” (her words, not mine).

It’s just surreal how people like me are always going to great lengths to draw clear distinctions and avoid coming across as antisemitic in our criticisms of Israel, and then Jewish Zionists go to these events all “Yes we Jews need to be actively manipulating western institutions in order to deceive everyone and control society.”

The other day at a Jerusalem Post conference, World Jewish Congress president Ron Lauder argued that Jewish billionaires should be using their wealth “to attack our enemies”, and advocated for Israeli intelligence agencies Mossad and Shin Bet to track and “counterattack” Israel’s critics online in the “fight” against anti-Israel sentiment.

Speaking at a book launch event in Jerusalem last month, British columnist and broadcaster Melanie Phillips argued that “the Jewish community” should use “psychological warfare” and “psyops” to promote the interests of Israel.

“There are plenty of people in this country who … are experts in what’s called psyops. They should be used. They could be drawn upon. These are reservoirs of talent and skill that could be used and harnessed, to really make a difference,” Phillips said.

If I wanted people to stop hating my favorite country for committing war crimes and genocide, I personally would simply encourage that country to stop committing war crimes and genocide.

I would not try to solve the problem by waging psyops and information warfare.

I would not try to solve the problem by lobbying governments to ban criticism of my favorite country.

I would not try to solve the problem by claiming that anyone who criticizes my favorite country is a Nazi.

I would not try to solve the problem with a dramatic increase to my favorite country’s propaganda budget.

I would not try to solve the problem by swarming the internet with paid trolls who argue in support of my favorite country.

I would not try to solve the problem by buying up news outlets and social media platforms in order to force them to amplify information that is supportive of my favorite country.

I feel like doing these things would only make people hate my favorite country more. I think people would get sick of my favorite country’s supporters constantly trying to manipulate their minds and assaulting their right to free expression.

I would only do these things if I wanted people to hate my favorite country. Like if my favorite country was premised on the idea that everyone already hates its inhabitants, so the only way to stay safe is to remain in a constant state of military combat and mass-scale manipulation. Then I suppose it would make sense to do the things I just described.

But come to think of it, if my favorite country was founded on the premise of nonstop warfare and manipulation and the assumption that it must necessarily always be despised throughout the world, at some point I suspect I’d find myself wondering why my favorite country is my favorite country at all. And I’d begin wondering if perhaps it was a mistake to establish such a country in the first place.

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

I'm Jewish, British & 64

All my life, I wondered how the Holocaust could have happened. I understood that Hitler & other leaders were EVIL, but how did millions of ordinary people go along with it?

NOW, seeing how so many in the West rationalise & defend the Gaza Genocide, I think I have my answer and it is profoundly disturbing

[Muhammad Shehada @muhammadshehad2]

🚨This short film exposes the true story of Israel's creation, entirely through the words of its own founders

For decades, Israel’s lies have been carefully designed to demonize its victims. To ensure that no matter the crimes it commits, the children it slaughters, the world remains incapable of empathy for Palestinians, or at best, treats it with the same apathy that has allowed this to go on for as long as it has

On the 78th anniversary of its creation, it's time the world knew that Israel's past is not different from the brutal present the world is finally seeing

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Saying "anti-Zionism is anti-semitism" is just saying you want more anti-semitism. Insisting that everyone erase the distinction between people who happen to be Jewish and people who support a genocidal apartheid state is saying you want more people to hate Jews. The harder you make it for everyone to hold that distinction, the less that distinction is going to be made.

If you insist that everyone needs to choose between hating Jews and supporting genocide, a lot of people are going to choose to hate Jews. It's not a choice that actually needs to be made, but a lot of Zionists are insisting that everyone has to choose.

Anyone who says anti-Zionism is a hate movement is a lying, manipulative hatemonger. Making a distinction between Judaism and Zionism is a good faith effort to REDUCE hate. Everyone who insists on erasing all distinctions between the two is working to increase hatred of Jews.

[Mosab Abu Toha @MosabAbuToha]

****Statement from Mosab Abu Toha in response to LeMoyne College's President's email to students today*****

This is deeply shameful. I cannot believe what I am reading.
How dare you tell a person who survived a genocide that they cannot speak about it?
On April 15, I had the honor of visiting and speaking at Le Moyne College. I spoke about my lived experience in Gaza, shared the family trees of those killed by Israel, and read my poems. I also played the actual recordings of Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling that I documented myself while on the ground in Gaza.
This morning, the President of the college sent out an email condemning my use of the word GENOCIDE when describing these crimes. She claimed that using that word is "antisemitic." She stated that she recognized the "real hurt" that the word caused to Jewish students.
Seriously? Are the crimes of the Israeli state representative of all Jewish people? I personally refuse to believe that is the case.
It is utterly ridiculous to begin a letter by stating that your institution welcomes the "free exchange of ideas," only to immediately condemn a speaker, not for sharing abstract ideas, but for sharing his own life. I still carry the physical wounds of a 2009 airstrike on my neck, my forehead, and my cheek. My wife and I have lost over one hundred relatives, most of them children. Some of them have still not been buried.
Who are these students you are talking about? Not a single person who identified themselves as Jewish approached me after my talk to offer condolences or acknowledge the actual crimes committed against me and my family. I never once used the word "Jewish" during the entire event; I refuse to conflate the faith of Judaism with the actions of the state of Israel.
Yet, you suggest my language caused "hurt." Whoever went to your office to complain about my words should have been the first to approach the stage to show humanity and support for a survivor.
It may surprise you to know that I used the word GENOCIDE to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza long before most human rights organizations, including prominent Israeli organizations, and leading Holocaust and Genocide scholars arrived at the same conclusion. I hope this fact does not "hurt" anyone even more.
If anyone told you they felt "hurt" because I used the word GENOCIDE, then I ask you: how should I feel? How should my wife feel after losing her father? How should my three children feel after losing their grandfather?
At a time when a GENOCIDE should be condemned, it is the survivors and those who speak out against it who are being targeted instead.

SHAME!!!!!

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Every time those in power move to silence Israel's critics, we must triple our criticism of Israel.

Every time they try to shut down pro-Palestine protests, we must triple our participation in the protests.

We need to make sure their efforts to silence us guarantees them MORE of the thing they're trying to get rid of, not less.

Impose direct costs on their tyrannical behavior and show them with our actions that every effort to silence us only makes things worse for them.

And that's as it should be. They're coming after our rights now. If you attack the civil rights of the citizenry, the citizenry are going to fight you right back.

You don't get to push without getting pushback. You don't get to try to take away my rights and then just coast along like it's no big deal. You get back what you give, thrice over.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Everyone hates Israel now, and what's funny is this wouldn't have happened if our society had been the tiniest bit normal about Gaza.

If everyone wasn't constantly being forcefully told they're not seeing what they're seeing, it wouldn't have become so personal for them.

If western governments had just said "this is bad" when news came out about Israel bombing a hospital instead of "THIS ISN'T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE THERE'S A HAMAS BASE IN EVERY HEALTHCARE FACILITY YOU ARE BEING ANTISEMITIC".

If the news media had just said "this is bad" when Israel systematically exterminated journalists in Gaza instead of reporting "three killed in what IDF describes as strike on terrorist vehicle" over and over again.

If we'd just been allowed to say "this is bad" when we saw raw video footage showing children ripped apart by military explosives without getting fired and de-platformed and told we're evil Nazis who need our free speech rights taken away.

That's all it would've taken to keep Israel from being a front-and-center issue for so many people. There would still have been critics of the Gaza holocaust, of course, but opposing Israel wouldn't have become this massive mainstream cultural phenomenon if our own western leaders and institutions hadn't exposed themselves as lying, propagandizing, murderous sociopaths.

It's not hard to get westerners to ignore the victims of mass military violence, even when it's mass military violence their government is directly orchestrating. Westerners, by and large, are indoctrinated human livestock who think what they've been programmed to think by the imperial propaganda machine. What opened so many eyes to Israel's criminality wasn't the slaughter itself, it was our own government, media and social institutions trying to gaslight us about what we knew we were looking at.

It's one thing to see a cruel government doing bad things on the other side of the world. It's quite another to be shown in vivid detail that your own society is ruled by monsters, and that those monsters have a vested interest in deceiving you and controlling your words and your actions in order to advance the most depraved agendas you could possibly imagine.

That's what made this so personal for so many people. It's not that Israel exposed itself, it's that the whole of western civilization did.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

It's important to acknowledge how potent war propaganda is. It's been developed over centuries and stimulates the most visceral tribalistic impulses.

The days and weeks after every new US war or "regime-change" operation are triumphalist. We're always vanquishing The Bad Guys. We're freeing the repressed peoples of the world. It makes everyone feel noble, purposeful and, most of all, brave and strong (even though they're not the ones fighting).

The media only shows the people who cheer it. The costs are concealed. The motives aren't questioned. Patriotic pride swirls. It's been like this for decades.

During this initial burst of war intoxication, there's no persuasion or reasoning possible. It's like trying to talk to a drunk person. They're inebriated on the war glories (of others).

This dissipates only a few months or a year later when the whole thing falls apart, when it becomes obvious none of the motives were benevolent or the ones stated, when only a tiny fraction benefit at everyone else's expense, when the only outcome is bloodshed, autocracy and misery.

By then, most people who supported it won't admit they did (or they'll blame "poor implementation" or a failure to carry it through).

But those regrets don't matter. By then, it's just time to sell the new war, and the war propaganda process just starts anew.

This time, it's the good war, the one that will work, the one that will bring us prosperity and purpose, etc. etc. And the only ones opposed are ones who hate all that's good. That's how a country stays in a posture of endless war.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

No it's sad for me that we live in a lawless world that is ruled by tyrants.

It's sad for me that we are ruled by chaotic despots who can invade a sovereign nation and abduct its leader and suffer no consequences.

It's sad for me that the people with their hands on the steering wheel of the fate of our species are a bunch of sociopathic thugs who can smash and rob any country they please with total impunity.

It's sad to me that our planet's population is subject to the whims of a globe-spanning empire which topples governments, wages wars, sponsors genocides, targets civilians with starvation sanctions, backs proxy conflicts, drops bombs, brainwashes entire nations with propaganda, uses its military and economic might to bully and cajole states into bowing to its dictates, and sows suffering, destruction and death around the world every moment of every day.

It's sad for me that these are the people who are making the decisions which will determine humanity's path into the future. The future of our society. The future of our planet's resources. The future of our technological innovation. The future of our ecosystem. The future of our militaries. The future of our nuclear weapons.

That is what is sad for me. I have no special emotional attachment to Maduro as an individual, but I do have a strong emotional attachment to the possibility of a healthy world emerging in the future.

And as things stand right now it's looking pretty dark.

I find that sad.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Stop picking on poor little Israel. It’s just sitting there minding its own business trying to do a little genocide in peace while aggressively lobbying your government to crush your freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and you’re OBSESSING about it for NO REASON.

You just hate Jews. That’s the only possible reason you could spend so much time obsessing about this one tiny little harmless country: you’ve got a crazy, irrational fixation on a small abrahamic religion, because you’re a weirdo. Stop saying it’s actually about all the wars and atrocities and apartheid and starving children and lobbying and propaganda and nonstop assaults on your civil rights and your government’s complicity in genocidal abuses and the fact that you can’t engage in any aspect of society without having pro-Israel influence operations shoved down your throat. No. That’s not it. It’s because you get freakishly enraged by small hats.

Don’t you know there was a shooting on Bondi Beach? Some ISIS guys killed some Jewish people, and it never would have happened if protesters hadn’t been accusing Israel of doing bad things. Stop saying they did it because they had been involved with ISIS for many years. They did it because you wore a watermelon pin.

There was a mass shooting in Sydney so that means everything that happened over the previous two years gets erased, just like how October 7 automatically deleted the last eight decades. Everything that happened before the bad thing gets shaken out of existence like an Etch A Sketch, and anything that’s done afterward is justified by the bad thing. If this happens to advance pre-existing Israeli agendas like massive land grabs or suppression of pro-Palestine demonstrators, so be it. Them’s the rules.

There was a mass shooting in Australia so now everyone needs to shut up and do whatever Israel wants. Israel feels sad about the shooting so now it gets to do a bit more genocide, as a treat. It’s only fair.

Why are you so obsessed with Israel when there are other countries doing bad things in the world, anyway? How come you’re not worried about the Iran lobby manipulating your country’s political affairs, huh? Why aren’t you freaking out about all the bombs and war planes the United States has been sending to the Cubans to help them commit genocide? Why have I never seen you angrily objecting to Australia and the United Kingdom outlawing criticism of China? Where are your outraged polemics about the way the western news media churn out propaganda to advance the information interests of Russia? You’re just focused on that one particular country with that one particular religion for some strange reason, aren’t ya, Adolf?

You’re just picking on this one poor little nation that’s completely defenseless except for a few dozen nukes and the backing of the most powerful empire in history and the full support of the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed. This tiny, insignificant, helpless little country that’s surrounded by enemies who hate it for absolutely no reason, who are so senselessly hostile that it needs to constantly preemptively attack them in order to stay safe.

Look at a map of all the Muslim countries compared to the one tiny Jewish country that was forcefully installed right smack dab in the middle of all of them. You’re telling me that one little country is the problem? Just because it was dropped on top of a pre-existing civilization in a region with no historical relationship with its immigrant inhabitants under the direct supervision of western imperialists who’d been working to subjugate the middle east for centuries? Outrageous! You just don’t think the Jews are uniquely undeserving of their own state.

Get a hobby or something, loser. Stop picking on this innocent little Bambi-eyed waif of a nation who has never, ever done anything wrong. Stop obsessing over genocide and tyranny and the erosion of civil liberties throughout the western world, and pay attention to something else. Literally anything else. Please. Please stop looking at Israel and its actions. I can’t keep doing this. This is getting exhausting.

[Jason Reid @JasonReidx]

This is how Spain’s RTVE covered the inclusion of Israel in Eurovision 2026.

THIS is how you do it.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Zionists Are Freaking Out About Losing Control Of The Narrative

Former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz made some very revealing remarks during an appearance at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly on Sunday, expressing frustration with the way younger Jews are dismissing pro-Israel arguments because of the carnage they’ve seen in Gaza.

“We are now wrestling with a new I think generational divide here, and I think that’s particularly true in that social media is now our source of media,” Hurwitz said. “It used to be that the news you got in America was American media, and it was pretty mainstream; you know it generally didn’t express extreme anti-Israel views. You had to go to a pretty weird bookstore to find global media and fringe media. But today we have social media, which is the global medium; its algorithms are shaped by billions of people worldwide who don’t really love Jews. So while in the 1990s a young person probably wasn’t going to find Al Jazeera or someone like Nick Fuentes, today those media outlets find them; they find them on their phones.”

“It’s also this increasingly post-literate media; less and less text, more and more videos,” Hurwitz continued. “So you have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. And this is why so many of us cannot have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments, and they are just seeing in their minds: carnage. And I sound obscene.”

Hurwitz went on to say that Holocaust education has begun backfiring, because it has been giving young people the wrong impression that genocide is always bad.

“And you know I think unfortunately, the very smart bet that we made on Holocaust education to serve as anti-semitism education in this new media environment, I think that is beginning to break down a little bit because, you know, Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism,” Hurwitz said. “Because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and they think oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people. So, when on TikTok all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.”

Hoo boy. Lots to unpack here.

It’s just so fascinating to see a former White House speechwriter making so many of the points that anti-Zionists have been making for years, but taking the exact opposite meaning from them:

- The mainstream legacy media has always hidden anti-Israel views from the public — and that was a good thing.

- Social media has now given Palestinians the ability to expose the truth about Israel’s abuses — and that’s a bad thing.

- People aren’t falling for the Zionist spin and narrative-diddling anymore because they’ve seen the carnage in Gaza with their own eyes — and that’s a problem.

- People who learned from Holocaust education that genocide is wrong have been applying those same lessons to the genocide in Gaza — and this means they’re “confused”.

Hurwitz isn’t denying Israel’s abuses or framing its genocidal atrocities as the problem, she’s just coming right out and saying that people obtaining information and moral clarity about those abuses is the problem. The atrocities aren’t wrong, what’s wrong is people seeing those atrocities and calling them what they are.

I love the way she complains that she looks “obscene” for trying to lay out arguments and narratives justifying the Gaza holocaust for people who’ve seen the “wall of carnage” from the genocide. I mean, yes. Yes obviously you’re going to look obscene if you try to tell someone why raw video footage of massacres, mutilated children and emaciated bodies is actually showing something that is justifiable and acceptable.

You can’t stand in front of a pile of child corpses justifying their murder and then whine when people ignore your spinmeistering and keep staring at the tiny bodies. That’s like murdering an entire family and then telling the cops, “But you’re not listening to my reasons for killing them!” They’re doing the normal thing while you are being obscene.

There’s a viral clip of this tirade going around Twitter and I was curious if Hurwitz had said anything after the video segment ended which might have made what she said sound less horrible, so I went to check out the original video on the Jewish Federations of North America’s Youtube channel, and nope. It didn’t get any better.

Hurwitz went on to say that people are wrong to carry the lessons of Holocaust education into opposition to Israel’s genocidal atrocities because the Holocaust was Nazi Germany blaming Jews for all their problems in the same way people think Israel is the source of all the world’s problems today.

She then mourned the way western Jews “re-imagined Judaism as a Protestant-style religion” in order to integrate into western society rather than retaining a strong identity that is loyal to the state of Israel.

“The problem is, we’re not just a religion,” Hurwitz said. “We’re a nation. Civilization. Tribe. Peoplehood. But most of all we’re a family. And so if you are a young person raised in America who thinks Judaism is a Protestant-style religion, then the seven million Jews in Israel are merely your co-religionists. So my co-religionists, if I look at them and they’re not practicing my religion of social justice and certain prophetic values then what do I have to do with them?”

“But that’s a category error,” says Hurwitz. “The seven million people in Israel, they are not my co-religionists, they are my siblings. But I think if you think of them as merely your co-religionists, it’s easy to slide into anti-Zionism. You don’t necessarily have that connection to them.”

Hurwitz is saying here that Jews around the world should be loyal to Israel no matter what Israel does, not because that’s the moral or truthful position but because Israel is where their loyalties belong.

I don’t know about you, but if my siblings were murdering civilians I would immediately become their enemy. I wouldn’t defend my brother if he was going around shooting children in the head like IDF snipers have been doing in Gaza, in fact I would feel a special responsibility to stop him exactly because he is my brother. Genocide doesn’t magically become acceptable if the perpetrators are your “siblings”, unless you are a sociopath.

It’s just incredible how hard Zionists have been freaking out about the way Israel has lost control of the narrative these last two years. More and more often we’re seeing them say the quiet parts out loud as they frantically scramble to manage perceptions and manipulate minds around the world.

Many things which used to be hidden are finding their way into the light.

Reading by Tim Foley:

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

.@GretaThunberg's full video is 🔥🔥🔥

"We have truth, morality, international law, justice, love, history, solidarity, as well as basic f****** common sense on our side.

The war criminals have hate, lies, and weapons. Justice will prevail. Free Palestine."

[ilves @ilvesca]

A ‘magic pill’ made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it | Diana Buttu https://t.co/dgQ2fioeHF

[ilves @ilvesca]

Palestinians warned of a genocide in 2023. Why weren’t we believed? | Ahmed Ibsais https://t.co/xotM14ywee

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Normal person: Genocide is bad

Crazy person: Woah hey, let’s not get political

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

No no you don't understand, Israel is protecting western civilization. If we don't help Israel genocide the Palestinians and starve their children and burn their babies and bomb their hospitals and demolish their cities, one day we could wind up ruled by evil murderous savages.