Hani Shimoni

Pro-Israel retweets + random thoughts/geology/humor/positivity, live from the Holy Land 🇮🇱. IG for life's (happy) play-by-play. 💙

[Hani Shimoni @nancyoyer]

Living my dream in the Holy Land. 🇮🇱

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Hi @ComicDaveSmith.

This is long. I'm sorry for that. It's a real answer, not some quote-mining or Twitter-y retort. I think you're honestly challenging my point. So I'm honestly responding.

Yes, Netanyahu brags that he alone prevented a Palestinian state - just as he once bragged he’d be the one to establish a Palestinian state. He also brags that his "propping up of Hamas" was a clever rightist ploy to prevent Palestinian unity. But he several times ran election campaigns on the explicit promise that he’d *topple* Hamas in Gaza.

So which Netanyahu should we believe?

The answer, alas, is neither. He has no specific policy. It’s political maneuvers all the way down.

But here's what we can know. The policy of containing and stabilizing Hamas in Gaza is older than Netanyahu. It began with Olmert. And it was pieced together over the years as much by leftists as by rightists.

Ironically, the same Ehud Barak you quoted here was Israel’s defense minister from 2009 to 2013, and was instrumental in putting this policy in place and developing the strategic thinking behind it. Before Barak thought Netanyahu was “propping up Hamas” to prevent a two-state peace, Barak was “containing Hamas” in the hope of enabling a *return* to a two-state peace. The policy itself was identical.

Barak is today arguing that Netanyahu may be pursuing the same policy, but with opposite intentions. That may be, but it's the same policy nonetheless. And alas, Barak is probably the only Israeli politician who’s less trusted by the public than the wily Netanyahu, because he’s exactly the same kind of dissembling chameleon.

And that’s the point. To understand Israel's containment policy, you can't start at the end, as though Israeli leaders have some unique gift to shape reality precisely to their liking and always intended this very outcome. To actually understand it, you have to put yourself in the Israeli government’s shoes back then.

If you’re the Israeli government in 2009 or 2014 or 2019, what options are available to you in Gaza?

Hamas is massively invested in building tunnels to make any future Israeli attack impossibly costly for Israel by forcing the IDF to go through the civilian population if it ever tries to get to Hamas. So war on any serious scale - the kind demanded by Netanyahu's far-right allies over the years - is off the table.

Hamas isn't appeasable, can't moderate and has no interest in any political process. That's a consensus view among Israelis for a simple reason: Its long history of terrorist assaults on civilians *specifically* *to* *stop* *peace* *efforts*. It bombed Jerusalem buses just before the 1996 election and successfully tilted the election away from the left by the narrowest margin in Israeli electoral history, all but freezing Oslo for three years. It drove the Second Intifada’s wave of 140 suicide bombings that crashed the Camp David process and shattered the Israeli left for a generation.

No serious Israeli thinks Hamas’s terrorism is about occupation. That's true even among Israelis who desperately want to end the occupation, and those who saw the first-intifada stone-throwing protestors as protesting occupation. Hamas, they understand, is different. The suicide bombings of Hamas were never about ending occupation, they were about the danger, as Hamas perceived it for two generations, that the peace process might succeed.

So what are your options as a government? War in Gaza with devastating civilian costs and untenable costs for Israel? Lifting the blockade and giving Hamas free access to ally regimes’ flow of funding and resources?

Or, as they finally decided, left-wing leaders and right-wing ones alike across 17 years of Israeli governments, would you pursue a containment policy that attempts to allow a Gazan economy to exist while minimizing Hamas’s capacity to prepare for never-ending war?

Or put another way, would you have prevented the Qatari money from entering? Would you have risked Gaza’s economy crashing, a humanitarian crisis, and the high probability that a collapsing Hamas regime, in its desperation, might trigger a great war?

No, Dave, Netanyahu’s attempt to paint his relatively moderate past as a sneaky, 13-year far-right plot is not the reality. It's a pretense meant to serve his present-day political troubles. That’s how nearly every Israeli, including in Likud, explains it.

Smotrich, for what it’s worth, was being completely honest. He believes every word in that quote.

One final comment: Be wary of quote-mining. You got these quotes from activists who spend their time sifting through texts to find what they need, often decontextualized and never the full picture.

If I did that to Palestinian leaders, I could prove to you that they're pretty much all Nazis. Literally.

No, they’re not Nazis. Nazism doesn’t explain their predicament, their opinions, their responses to the problems they face. But plenty of central Palestinian leaders and ideologues, particularly in Hamas but also in Fatah, have flirted with Nazi ideas over the years. The paper trail is long enough to convince a great many Israelis that there's a deep connection. It's still a misreading of Palestinian strategy and thinking.

Quote-mining isn’t a path to understanding. It’s a path to bias confirmation.

Sorry again for the length. I have more to say. Barak's actual critique of Netanyahu is more sophisticated and serious than the quote you brought. But that's for another time.

[Humans of Judaism @HumansOfJudaism]

On September 5-6, 1972, 11 Israelis were killed in an attack known as the Munich Massacre. During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, members of a Palestinian terrorist group stormed the Olympic Village, killing 2 members of the Israeli delegation, and taking 9 more hostage.

One of the athletes present that day was runner and racewalker Shaul Ladany who, along with 5 others, was able to escape from their apartment. Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1936, Ladany fled to Budapest with his family after their home was bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1941. His parents tried to hide him in a monastery, but they were captured and sent from the Budapest ghetto to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Ladany spent 6 months there before being rescued on a train to Switzerland.

He immigrated to Israel in 1948 and went on to become a world champion, world record holder, two-time Olympian, and a renowned professor of industrial engineering. Today, Ladany is still an active racer, participating in marathons and completed the Maccabiah Fun Run last summer. The 87 year old visits the graves of his Israeli teammates in Tel Aviv every year on September 6th.

May the memories of the 11 Israelis killed in the Munich Massacre - David Berger, Ze’ev Friedman, Yossef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yossef Romano, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Yakov Springer, Moshe Weinberg - forever be a blessing.
Contributor: @Jggoltz

[Avi Kaner ابراهيم אבי @AviKaner]

Hamas Muslim Brotherhood is paying people to riot at the border. Why? To deflect attention from the social unrest and Hamas’ violent supression of Gaza protestors. 19,000 Gazans applied for Turkish 🇹🇷 visas in one week alone, with 83,000 on list waiting to leave.

[Hussain Abdul-Hussain @hahussain]

So what? It is only normal that each nation puts its interests first. For each of these Arab countries, Saudi, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, peace with Israel pays off big in terms of expanding bilateral trade, tourism, transfer of knowledge. Why does any Saudi, Iraqi or Lebanese have to put Palestinian interests ahead of their own? Palestinians not yet done destroying one Arab country after another with their lame real estate problem? Your grandpa's house was taken away? So what? My family on both sides lost houses, real estate, life savings, migrated, live in exile, lost friends to assassinations in Iraq and Lebanon. We picked up the pieces and moved on. Do Arabs have to wait until Palestinians figure out how to get Fatah and Hamas talk to one another? Grow up already and stop your century old whining.
#SaudiFirst #LebanonFirst #IraqFirst #ArabIsraelPeace #PalestineIsNotMyCause

[Cedars @10452km2]

@hahussain The Palestinian government does not want peace. Peace = the flow of money becomes very restricted and they will be forced to provide for their own ppl. Right now they enjoy all the free money they get from supporting countries. The PA gov is corrupt, they don't want any peace.

[Ettie @e_t_t_i_e]

@hahussain I have thought this 100 times and could not have said it better myself.

[Jonathan Schanzer @JSchanzer]

Evergreeeeeen tweeeeet https://t.co/cARjobdsTd

[Regavim @RegavimEng]

And now for what really happened:

Palestinian-Arabs illegally dug a well & stole water. Israel's Civil Administration blocked it.

Even if the land belongs to the Arabs, there are comprehensive water treaties, within the Oslo framework, a Joint Water Committee. 1/2

[Avi Mayer אבי מאיר @AviMayer]

Happy eating, Israel.

[Hani Shimoni @nancyoyer]

@Israelkicksass @Lyndagee49 May his memory be a blessing

[CAMERA UK @CAMERAorgUK]

Your capacity to erase Palestinian agency from the equation explains how you can reduce a long, intractable conflict to one that's about race - ignoring that 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab/Palestinian. For once, Peter, acknowledge the rebuffed Israeli peace offers, the horrific violence of the 2nd intifada, Hamas's rise AFTER Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the culture of Palestinian incitement and antisemitism. Then, let's have a discussion about how to achieve peace.

[Hani Shimoni @nancyoyer]

@skjask Hazel

[Hani Shimoni @nancyoyer]

Ha ha ha ha EXACTLY! Perfect.

[Hillel Neuer @HillelNeuer]

🇦🇪🇮🇱 Peace between United Arab Emirates & Israel.
🇧🇭🇮🇱 Peace between Bahrain & Israel.
🇸🇩🇮🇱 Peace between Sudan & Israel.
⬇️⬇️ Quotes that didn't age well.

[Hani Shimoni @nancyoyer]

Ha ha ha ha PERFECT! This is awesome.

[Avi Kaner ابراهيم אבי @AviKaner]

Only 12% of Ilhan Omar's @IlhanMN campaign donations come from Minnesota. Over 87% come from outside interests that have zero connection to Minnesota. Some people did something - they gave her Benjamins.

[Liberborn @liberborn]

Hi @Honda! I'm Ukrainian civilian, father of 5 kids. Yesterday we were attacked by Russian rocket in the middle of the night in Lviv. And we just lost our belowed Honda Pilot called Khropsia (a character of Mumintrollen). 1/2

[We Believe Alliance @WeBelieveA]

Later this month we are holding an event with @CAMERAorgUK's own Adam Levick, on what you can do to promote accurate reporting about Israel.

Misinformation is everywhere online and we must all take steps to limit the spread of false claims

Sign up here
https://t.co/6yai8k287p

[Lakota Man @LakotaMan1]

Two-Spirit (gay and lesbian and trans) people have been living here in North America for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the white man. They even predate Christianity. Therefore, they have more right to be here than colonizing Christian immigrants. (And their descendants.) Agree? 🪶🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[Did cleansing Gaza of Jews in 2005 bring peace? @BMcbag]

@afagerbakke In Egypt, where Jews had lived for literally THOUSANDS of Years - even before Islam began and Mohammed was born, the Jews were told they had "1 hour and 1 suitcase" to leave their homes & businesses or be SHOT.
Where is the outcry for their losses??

[cbrisk צביה @cbrisk1]

@afagerbakke 🇮🇱🥰👇 @StandWithUs