Otto Devar

Pro-#EU - Pro- #RejoinEU #FBPE
Against racism in all forms including antisemitism
Latecomer to Twitter / X -keeping my other social media politics-free.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

Now blocked by Yanis Varoufakis. Seems the guy is a bit thin-skinned and doesn't like to have his views challenged! Who'd have guessed?😅

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

What is it if not the old deeply-rooted virus of antisemitism?

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

The Jerusalem Pride Parade is underway today in Israel 🇮🇱🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Every year in our ancient capital, thousands march, both to celebrate and to demand full LGBTQ+ equality.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@PeterTatchell The question: is @PeterTatchell genuinely ignorant or is he ignoring facts to promote a preferred narrative? https://t.co/a2nZpFUWNw

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@PeterTatchell Why do you ignore the Oslo (plus) deals rejected by the Arab side, @PeterTatchell? "Genocide" is a foul lie & inversion of language dreamt up by Soviet advisors post '67 & gay marriage is recognised in Israel. - If you claim to be a decent person, get your basic facts right.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@PeterTatchell Why do you ignore the Oslo (plus) deals rejected by the Arab side, @PeterTatchell? "Genocide" is a foul lie & inversion of language dreamt up by Soviet advisors post '67 & gay marriage is recognised in Israel. - If you claim to be a decent person, get your basic facts right.

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

The difference is achingly simple:
Erstwhile anti-Zionists thought that a state for the Jews is unnecessary.
Current anti-Zionists think that the State of Israel must be wiped off the map.
As for the Bundists, their mostly ‘hereness’ ended in the Nazi death camps.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

Hey, @mikegalsworthy - Have you seen some of the #antisemitic-conspiracy responses to your FB post of 24 May? If so, why have you not called these out? Or are you OK with this material on your timeline? Not a good look for the chair of @euromove.
#antisemitism @antisemitism

[Ahmed Al-Khalidi @khalidi79397]

A genocide is happening in Gaza, they tell us. Then scroll your feed:

Comma Cafee, just opened in Gaza City. Espresso machines, plated desserts, dim lighting.

Vanilla Café. Upscale, glass facade.

Nova Restaurant in Khan Younis: sleek wood interior, beachfront seating. Named, apparently without irony, after the music festival where 364 Israelis were slaughtered on October 7.

O2 Restaurant. pizza, ice cream, milkshakes, TikTok food porn.

Open-air markets in Gaza City with apples, avocados, oranges, bananas.

Supermarkets stocked for Ramadan with imported goods.

A "Gaza Coffee" brand selling 100% Arabica premium beans, taking online orders, with five-star reviews dated this year.

Even Al Jazeera's writer concedes the cafes "were built with expensive materials, carefully painted, furnished with tables, sofas, and elegant chairs, with glass facades and shining lights."

Now hold that next to actual genocide.

Rwanda, 1994. 800,000 Tutsi murdered in 100 days. ~8,000 per day. Hutu radio read names of neighbors to be hacked apart by morning. No one opened a café.

Cambodia, 1975–79. Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh at gunpoint in 72 hours. Currency abolished. Markets abolished. Eyeglasses got you killed. Two million dead.

The Holocaust. Warsaw Ghetto: 92,000 dead of starvation and disease before the deportations even began. Auschwitz processed 6,000 people a day into smoke. There were no glass-facade espresso bars in Łódź in 1943.

Srebrenica, July 1995. 8,372 men and boys executed in days. No restaurants reopened. They were in mass graves.

Armenia, 1915. Death marches into the Syrian desert. No imported avocados.

The common thread of genocide is that the targeted population is not allowed to exist. Not in cafes, not in markets, not in their homes, not anywhere. The perpetrator's entire project is their absence.

Gaza in 2026, by every honest description, is something else: a brutal war zone, partially destroyed, with a population suffering real hardship and simultaneously a place where new businesses open, beachfront restaurants serve customers, and a post war economy is being written about in business pages. Both things are true.

That is what war looks like. Lebanon 2006. Mosul 2017. Mariupol 2022. Aleppo 2016. Civilians die and life adapts around the destruction.

It is not what genocide looks like.

So why the word?

Because "genocide" is the most powerful word in the post-WWII moral vocabulary. It triggers automatic legal obligations, suspends normal debate, and short-circuits proportionality analysis. Apply it successfully and your adversary loses the right to defend itself before the argument even begins. That is exactly why it is being deployed by a side that started a war on October 7, took hostages, embedded itself in hospitals and schools, and now needs the West to force a ceasefire it could not win on the battlefield.

It is asymmetric warfare with a thesaurus. The rockets failed. The tunnels failed. The word might not.

Coffee in Gaza doesn't prove there is no suffering. It proves there is no genocide. Those are not the same claim and the people conflating them are counting on you not to notice.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@zarahsultana One advantage of an early general election will be that voters in #CoventrySouth will actually get a say in whether they want #ZarahSultana as their MP now that she's changed parties. Perhaps her "seat squatting" will finally come to an end.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@PeterStefanovi2 Yeah, right. So nothing to do with personal ambition then, @wesstreeting? Most @UKLabour supporters don't want to see #KeirStarmer's govt disrupted & most of the wider electorate don't want an unelected PM foisted on them. #bbcpm

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@HeidiBachram Hope the owners of #BlackSheepCoffee consider taking civil legal action against the individuals seeking to disrupt their business.

[Tali Goldsheft @TaliGoldsheft]

Because I care about treating people humanely—and because I’m a proud Zionist—this is the final straw.

Fire Ben-Gvir.

If you agree, share this please.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@RichardBurgon Surprised you still have the @UKLabour whip, @RichardBurgon. This has zero to do with your constituency & all to do with misusing yr platform to further anti-Israel campaigning. I'm sure the Greens would welcome you, but many Labour members wouldn't even deliver a leaflet for you

[Ben Kentish @BenKentish]

The most pointless sort of populism. All of the major issues she could ask the Prime Minister about and she thinks the big problem is MPs having a pint.

[John Petrie #European @Petrie_JohnC]

Private Eye gets this spot on - sad to lose Kuenssberg and Mason 😂

[Michael Pope @OyVeyPope]

I never wanted to become political online.

I’m a British, Irish and Israeli Jew. I married a Christian woman, built a life in Wales, and just wanted to quietly raise my family.

But watching antisemitism become normalised, Jewish children targeted, memorials needing police protection and extremists openly intimidating Jews in British streets has changed something in me.

Too many decent people stayed silent while hatred was rebranded as “activism”.

I won’t anymore.

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@LBC To be clear, the key point here is not whether you are pro-Brexit or not, it's about how callers are treated even if they disagree with the host. Using the advantage of the studio mic & the mute button to humiliate callers is not an acceptable form of "entertainment". #lbc @lbc

[Otto Devar @OttoDevar]

@LBC Most agree that #Brexit was idiotic, but that's no justification for unkindness packaged as entertainment, which some might suggest was James O'Brien's stock in trade. Judging from SM posts, many listeners have switched off #LBC, even former fans b/c of this. @lbc

[Amanda Craig @AmandaPCraig]

Don’t look away. @camillalong is right.

[LBC @LBC]

‘You have done a better job than any cabinet minister of telling us the story of Keir Starmer’s successes.’

As Wes Streeting resigns, Caller Martin reminds @TomSwarbrick1 of what the PM has delivered.

[Lin Mei @linmeitalks]

I have no issues with Zack Polanski at 45 living in a 5 person house share, or never having a substantial career or business - that’s fine, but when you want to run the 5th largest economy in the world it’s a NO NO….

… and for those saying he represents what people are going through - no he does not. There are many people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who are 45, from London who run business, bought properties, understand economics and have successful careers, so let’s stop this nonsense.

He could have absolutely done better in life. I want someone brokering trade deals who the country can look up to…. Who screams success and growth, not a sketchy boob hypnotist/part time carer living like a student.

He’s an absolute joke man when we are discussing running this country.