After two weird days as one of the few journalists inside the Four Seasons in Bahrain, I was left speechless by the Davos-esque Conflab on Palestinian Prosperousness, or “economic workshop,” hosted by Jared Kushner & co. Where do I begin? A thread.
A widening property-fraud investigation into a $4 billion luxury resort linked to Jared Kushner has led Albanian authorities to freeze developer assets, compounding pressure from public protests and international critics.
https://t.co/RaNtKbqCdg
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Trump lit into Netanyahu over the Lebanon bombing:
“You're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this."
@BarakRavid & I
https://t.co/b1lEZEmN6p
I tell @nytimes Hezbollah is monopolizing the political voice of the Shia and is packaging criticism of the militia in sectarian terms, making it difficult for the Lebanese state to confront it even after ruling that its military actions are illegal.
https://t.co/THyGEzk386
We are not in medieval Europe where only a few monks knew how to read and write - history is literally written by everyone now
Algorithms and bots aside, the sheer amount of organic content bearing witness to what happened in Gaza will have historians wonder how so few were thinking they could distort the truth
Gulf states: More than 1,000 arrested in sweeping war-related crackdown on expression including for sharing online content or expressing views related to the US-Israeli war with Iran and Iran’s attacks on the Gulf.
In Kuwait and Bahrain, authorities have also stripped citizens of their nationality, including in reprisal for expression.
https://t.co/XGUv5CmMWP
“The whole situation is completely unacceptable,” Jo Floto, the BBC’s Middle East bureau chief, told me. “We all know why we’re not allowed into Gaza: it’s because the impact of our reporting would be so much greater.”
via the great @gerryshih: https://t.co/K2QlFYK2Lq
Israel cracking down on foreign media reporting of its harsh practices in the occupied West Bank, with police recommending bans against foreign journalists whose coverage they determine is harmful to the country’s standing @benlynfield
https://t.co/jlT9cyZKtn
The UN adds Israel and Russia to a blacklist of countries engaged in sexual violence, after documenting “patterns of sexual violence” by Israelis against Palestinians, citing assaults on 14 men, seven women, nine boys and one girl from Gaza and the West Bank. Israel said it would cut off ties with the UN Secretary General; seems to me it would make more sense to investigate and allow Red Cross visits. https://t.co/9wSkaVsvfx
Tucker Carlson interviews a British doctor who worked in Gaza.
"Four young teenage boys were brought in, all of whom who'd been shot in the testicles."
"Everything that Tony Blair says about AI is not true!"
The former PM has said everyone needs to embrace AI, but @_KarenHao says it's a political project trying to strip agency from everyone, everywhere.
@lewis_goodall
One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world - the ancient city of Tyre - designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its incredible historical sites. This is what it looks like today following multiple Israeli airstrikes.
Netanyahu orders Israeli army to seize 70% of Gaza. This would mean that the 2.2 million Palestinians who have survived the war would be crammed into less than a third of their original territory. “It is the single most overcrowded place on earth.” https://t.co/si20C54yeg
Lot to race through in BBC interview and understand Blair's instinct to be active on Gaza, but shame Blair as an executive member of the Board of Peace was not asked about this glaring lack of transparency as revealed in the FT. Hard to see this purely as a story of interest to chartered accountants.
"The official fund for Donald Trump’s Board of Peace is empty and the organisation is stuck in a legal and political limbo that has held up projects to rebuild Gaza. The US president described the board, which solicited $
1bn “lifetime membership” fees from world leaders, as one of the “most consequential” international organisations created. Member states pledged $7bn for the board’s Gaza “relief package”, and Trump promised a further $10bn in US funding. But four months after its establishment, the board’s financial fund set up by the World Bank has received no money from donors, according to four people familiar with the matter. “Zero dollars have been deposited,” one said. Rather than use the fund administered by the World Bank, and endorsed by the UN, the board has received donations directly via its JPMorgan account, the board’s spokesperson and another person familiar with the arrangements said. While the World Bank must report on the financial position of the Gaza fund to contributors and board members, no independent transparency requirements are in place for the JPMorgan account. A Board of Peace official told the FT that “a number of options were established to receive funding” including the World Bank mechanism and that “at this point, contributors have opted to use other options”.
Two months before @NickKristof's column ran , the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture wrote to the Israeli gov't asking for investigations into sexual assault of Palestinian detainees, including with dogs. She got no response. https://t.co/TjWaIuMbg5
Sumud flotilla activists -- who come from Europe, the US and elsewhere -- have released a statement that Israeli authorities subjected them to abuse, sexual violence and in multiple cases, rape. This hasn't been confirmed. https://t.co/RyvDxDmvNV
Video (with English subtitles) of Israeli racist minister Itamar Ben Gvir at an Israeli facitility where the activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla were being held, doing his best to humiliate them.