DAY ONE IN ISRAEL
Did you know that Jews and non-Muslims aren’t allowed to visit the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which is the holiest place for Jews?
Apartheid, anyone?
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I want to thank all the amazing people helping me uncover Israel, especially the incredible @sharakango team. Thank you for being patient and answering all my questions. And a special thank you to all the people who have been inviting to lunch/dinner and to see Israel. I won't be able to accept all your offers, but I wish I could! L'chaim!
For 20 years in Yemen, I was told that Israel was my enemy—the most devilish country in the world.
That’s why I have decided to visit Israel for the first time next week.
It’s time for me to go there and see for myself. To listen, learn, and understand.
I want to meet ”the devil” with my own eyes.
I want to see for myself the supposed discrimination and hatred towards Arabs and Muslims in Israel that I keep hearing about. I want to speak to the country my culture taught me to hate.
It pains me to know that many friends and even family members will ex-communicate me for this. To them, believing that Israel has the right to exist, or even worse, visiting Israel, is some covert hatred towards Arabs and Muslims.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
I believe that Israel has the right to exist because of how we, Arabs, have treated our Jews for centuries.
Many people spread an ignorant and false narrative about Israel being "a white colonial state," when more than half of the people in Israel are non-white Jews.
Yemeni Jews, Iraqi Jews, Turkish Jews, Ethiopian Jews, etc.
The fact that every Arab Jew fled to Israel says more about us and our hostility towards our Jews than it says about them.
I wish that the Yemeni Jews stayed in Yemen.
But they didn't.
Because we failed them.
Because we hated, persecuted, tortured, and killed them for centuries. And that's why they ran away.
I look forward to visiting the Yemeni Jewish community in Israel.
I want to hear their stories about Yemen. How they feel about living in Israel, why they had to flee. How they feel about Yemen attacking Israel, their thoughts on Israel and the settlements.
I also feel an urge to apologize to them on behalf of Yemen.
Apologizing to them for having failed them...
The content that I will be making in Israel will look different from what I have been making.
I never thought I would be saying these words, but Israel... here I come.
A Few hours ago, the pseudo liberal @WebSummit conference kicked of in Lisbon, setting the stage for a gathering of fake digital optimism.
Its major shareholder and former CEO, Paddy Cosgrave (@paddycosgrave), and its current CEO, Katherine Maher (@krmaher), have dedicated the past week to the challenging task of censoring a video that we produced, which critiques their organization.
They used false copyright claims, submitted numerous DMCA threats on all platforms - doing all they can to prevent from our video from spreading and tell the truth about their brand.
As promised, today we're releasing a new version of our video.
We removed every piece of @WebSummit's promotional materials, and as they celebrate pseudo liberalism, we ask you to celebrate with us by sharing, commenting, and promoting our video globally 🌏
"you see, liberalism is about principles not death charts. You're not fighting for freedom by supporting genocide".
Thank you ❣️
#StandWithIsrael
The failure of @Harvard, @MIT and other universities to discipline protesters who violate their rules emboldens the protesters to more aggressive, disruptive and antisemitic actions. This has created a climate of fear that is not conducive to a university education.
The failure to discipline students who have bullied, assaulted or otherwise been abusive to Jewish students under the guise of free speech or a supposed requirement to wait for the completion of a police and FBI investigation is similarly absurd.
Imagine if a female student were sexually assaulted by five male Jewish students and it was captured on multiple videos.
Would @Harvard wait for the conclusion of an FBI and police investigation or would it suspend the students involved pending the outcome of the investigation?
Would @Harvard force the alleged victim to attend classes and live in a dorm with the accused until the investigation is complete?
The hypocrisy and double standard in how attacks on Jewish and Israeli students on campus are being handled by Harvard, MIT and other universities is self evident, and now we are beginning to see the consequences of the lack of enforcement of a universities’ own standards for student conduct and permitted speech.
The problem is only getting worse. I would not be surprised to see the white supremacists begin their campus protests shortly.
Dear Muslims,
I said ”The world is scared of us” and many of you called for my death.
I said ”The world is laughing at us” and many of you said I was going to ”burn in an eternal Hell” and that I am ”a CIA agent”.
I said ”The world is worried about us” and many of you said Allah and his soldiers will take care of me.
Do you believe that reflects a ”religion of peace”? When you talk, act, and behave like perpetrators of violence?
I do not claim to speak on behalf of Muslims, but I do speak on behalf of Muslims who risk losing their lives for choosing a peaceful Islam that you do not believe in.
I speak on behalf of myself when I was 12 years old in Muslim schools, when I wanted to learn about art and music, but instead was fed Islamic tales of wars and beheadings – stories no child should be listening to.
I speak on behalf of Raif Badawi, the brave Saudi Arabian writer who started a blog about freedom of speech, liberalism, and secularism in Saudi Arabia, and was flogged in jail for 10 years. Raif was released from jail last year, but he’s still imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, banned from traveling or expressing himself.
I speak on behalf of atheists, Christians, Jews, women, gays, non-Muslims, and peaceful Muslims who don't want to be a part of your destructive narrative.
To those saying I am ”a dirty ex-Muslim,” ”a kaffer,” ”a CIA agent, "a Mossad agent”, who say I know nothing about Islam, who call for my death:
Thank you for proving my point.
To those raising the Palestinian flag,
Where were you when ISIS was launched and beheaded tens of thousands of Arabs in Iraq, Libya, and Syria in the name of Islam? Why didn’t you take to the streets and raise their flags? Why didn’t you condemn the terror and call for a ”ceasefire”?
Where were you when Arab dictators and terrorists killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Syria and Libya? Why didn’t you take to the streets and raise their flags? Why didn’t you condemn the terror and call for a ”ceasefire”?
Where were you in the last decade when Saudi Arabia, backed by 8 Arab countries, killed 400,000 Yemenis, my own people? I didn’t see any of you take to the streets or raise the Yemeni flag. I did not see any of you condemning the terror and calling for a ”ceasefire” while Arab countries were slaughtering my own people.
This must lead to some self-reflection.
When millions of Arabs are slaughtered by other Arabs, you say nothing.
But when 7 thousand of Arabs are killed by Jews defending their right to exist, you revolt, you get angry, you storm the streets in the East and the West, you raise the Palestinian flag, you condemn the terror, you call for a ceasefire, you turn the world upside down.
Why is that?
Why were you so silent then but SO LOUD now?
Can it be that you are finally raising a flag and creating chaos because you only hate that the perpetrators are Jews?
Because you obviously don't care when millions of Arabs are killed by other Arabs.
Can it be that you storming the streets is just you venting out your hatred towards Jews? The same hatred we learned in our mosques and schools?
You speak of ”numbers and proportionality.” But by the rules of proportionality, you should not be raising Palestinian flags.
Unless, there is another agenda at play: Jew-hatred. Or as I would call it: Hatred.
Dear Muslims,
The world is scared of us. The world is laughing at us. The world is worried about us. And there are legitimate reasons for their worry that we cannot keep denying.
It is time for us to flush the word ”Islamophobia” down the toilet and start looking in the mirror and ask ourselves:
How did we get here?
How come the largest and most thriving terrorist organizations in the world are Muslim?
How come terrorists successfully use Islam to mobilize thousands of Muslims?
What is the problem with our leaders, our Imams, and our religion?
Why do we keep repeating these stone-age traditions that have failed us and continue to fail us?
The world has left us behind.
The ”kuffar” that Imams tell us to hate have traveled to the future while we are still stuck in the Middle Ages reading stories about Mohammed and his flying horse.
You are reading this with your phone, tablet, or computer, which was created by the ”kuffar.”
The same ”kuffar” that we hate so much have created medicine that cures diseases. Medicine that our religion’s crystal balls failed to bring about.
The ”kuffar” have moved forward and traveled to space. Meanwhile, we are stuck on Earth in the Middle Ages, going to our poisonous mosques every Friday, reciting the same chapters and the same stories of Mohammed.
Why haven’t all of these books and teachings led to any scientific, technological, or medical advancements?
1,400 years of us, stuck, debating: ”Which is the correct sect?” ”What is the correct interpretation?” ”Who is a real Muslim? And who is a kaffer?” ”How can we convince people to become Muslims?”
Why on Earth would anyone want to become Muslim today?
They are all scared of us.
They are all laughing at us.
They are all worried about us.
Delete Israel and the West from the world, and we would still be as ignorant as we are. We would still be stabbing each other.
Stop blaming them – and look at yourselves instead. The enemy is not out there. The enemy is within.
I am pro-Palestinian. Some might be surprised by this due to my recent advocacy on @X for Israel, but you shouldn’t be.
I am anti-terrorist, not anti-Palestinian. It is not inconsistent to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian. And my pro-Palestinian viewpoint is not a new one. My pro-Palestinian perspective began more than 30 years ago when I was introduced to the Palestinian community and their plight in the early 1990s.
I have invested millions in helping promote Palestinian economic development and peaceful coexistence. We would do a lot more if we could be confident that the funds would be used productively.
The crisis in Gaza is largely due to a failure of leadership. The Palestinians elected Hamas in 2006 after Israel withdrew and evicted 9,000 of its own citizens from their Gazan homes. Israel withdrew from Gaza for peace. It was a small scale test of a two-state solution.
Rather than building the Singapore of the Middle East over the last 18 years, Hamas diverted funding to build tunnels, rockets and munitions to wage terror and war in an effort to eliminate Israel and kill Jews.
Like the Israelis, the vast majority of Palestinians want peace. They want opportunities for employment so they can earn a living wage to support and educate their families so the next generation can build a better life.
They want peace, beauty, happiness, health and prosperity as we all do. All of that would have been possible with Gazan leadership which focused on economic development rather than terrorism. Israel and (most of) the world wanted the Gazan experiment to succeed.
Israel simply wanted peace. Israel built a fence and created checkpoints to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and other forms of terror. The Egyptians built a concrete wall at their border with Gaza for the same reasons. The need for a fence and checkpoints is made self-evident by the catastrophic impact on Israel when the fence was breached on Oct. 7th.
Hamas is in the business of terrorism. Hamas makes money with grift, corruption, and funding from Israel’s enemies who support Hamas to achieve their own anti-Israel objectives. Hamas and those that support it don’t care about the Palestinians. The Palestinians are simply a tool to implement their anti-Israel and/or anti-Jew objectives.
Like other businesses, Hamas has a corporate hierarchy where those at the top make thousands of times more than the ‘workers’ at the bottom. Hamas’ leaders have put aside hundreds of millions and even billions for themselves.
Hamas uses their ‘culture’ of terrorism, cash, and other incentives to motivate young, brainwashed —often from youth—, radicalised militants to implement death, torture and destruction. Their ‘success’ at terrorism attracts more funding, amplifies Israel’s response, and the cycle continues.
Hamas does not care about the Palestinian people. Hamas knew with certainty how Israel would respond to the torture, rape, beheading, and slaughter of Israeli women, children, seniors and infants on Oct. 7th.
Hamas’ plan was to hide out in their tunnels and headquarters built under major hospitals, limit evacuations so that Palestinian citizens are exposed to the inevitable Israeli military response, and then rally the world against Israel in a globally coordinated response as innocent civilians die.
Israel has no choice but to destroy Hamas. It cannot allow its survival, as Hamas’ existence remains an existential threat. If ISIS invaded our southern border, we would do the same. We would warn civilians to evacuate and then we would go in and destroy the terrorists. We wouldn’t cease fire until they were obliterated.
The whole situation is an incredible tragedy. While I have always hoped for a viable and peaceful two-state solution, the Gaza experiment has been an abject failure. Future efforts for statehood for the Palestinians must learn from this catastrophe.
As always, I welcome your input, critiques and rebuttal.
What did I get wrong?
Imagine getting a phone call from your son (15) as he screams that terrorists are shooting at his car.
Now imagine getting another phone call from your second son (23) who is stuck in a safe room as terrorists break into your home and are shooting at him.
This is what Erez Cohen experienced this week.
Thankfully both sons survived. One of them is injured but stable and recovering in the hospital.
EYEWITNESS: This is Yossi Landau Commander, Zaka South in Israel confirming how a pregnant lady was seen on the floor with her stomach wide open and an unborn baby connected to the cord stabbed with a knife, and mother shot in head. Hamas will deny it.
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As much as it’s hard to believe now with all the devastation around, the times following a recession might be the best to start a new venture. Here’s a bunch of the poster children of the previous cohort (via Larry Kim)
PS - Magisto was founded in 2010
#f…https://t.co/PTMWkDcI4O
We see it over and over in cities and countries that got high ‘viral dose’ because of many undetected cases or because of negligence to react. The criticality of a rapid defensive reaction is what makes the whole difference between cities, countries and people
Hey @Vimeo if it wasn't for your @VimeoStaff, specifically Julie at #SMMW20 I would not have added your tools to our company resources.
She was patient, professionally, and transparent.
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