Rᴀᴡᴀɴ Abhari

🇵🇸 راجعين | your typical lib, that is, a liberationist | @QuincyInst

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

Mamdani’s father is a respected intellectual.

Emanuel’s father was a literal terrorist in the ranks of the Irgun militia that put bombs in fruit trucks and exploded them in busy markets to kill Palestinians. They threw hand grenades in crowded places. They butchered whole families and villages, most notoriously in the massacre of Deir Yasin that saw them burn people alive, cut babies out of the wombs and hack people to death.

THAT is the lineage that Rahm Emanuel is proud of. And when he says to the mayor that he is his father’s son, that’s a threat!

[Nick Cleveland-Stout @nick_clevelands]

Americans across the country are getting texts from so-called peace organizations that are actually part of an Israeli influence op

[Holly Otterbein @hollyotterbein]

"The decision by Barnes came amid reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about a 2025 state Democratic Party review into allegations that Barnes was taking advantage of his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women." https://t.co/pOYcFpZjif

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

⚡️ NEW: Drop Site News spoke with the parents of 22-year-old Mahmoud Al-Drimli, who identified him as the blindfolded Palestinian man in a viral photograph showing two female Israeli soldiers smiling as they pose beside him.

Mahmoud disappeared on November 2, 2024. His family said they had received no information about him until recognizing him in the image. Drop Site’s Mohamed Ahmed spoke in Gaza with his mother, Aida Al-Drimli, 50.

“The moment I saw the picture, my heart was at peace and I was happy. But at the same time, when I saw him in that state, my heart broke,” she said through tears.

Aida said her son disappeared while trying to return from southern Gaza to Gaza City, where his brother remained. Repeated appeals to the Red Cross and other institutions produced no information about whether he was alive, imprisoned, or killed, his family told Drop Site.

“These are the [Israelis] who claim to be ‘the world’s most moral army,’ yet they publish pictures like this,” Aida said. “My son has done nothing wrong. He simply longed to return to Gaza City.”

“Where are human rights in all of this?” she asked. “Not just my son, all the prisoners. All of them are experiencing horrors in prisons.”

🎥 Footage from Drop Site contributor Mohamed Ahmed

[Elizabeth Kim @lizkimtweets]

“If you wanna be tough on crime you better be tough on causes” is a succinct line I haven’t heard before

[Palestine Deep Dive @PDeepDive]

“If the Democratic Party wants any kind of future, it should move to be more pro-Palestine.”

Palestinian author Mohammed El-Kurd argues that the political cost of supporting Israel and its genocide in Gaza is growing in the US, and that Palestine has become an issue capable of deciding elections. He warns that electoral victories are nonetheless not enough: movements must continue to hold politicians accountable and refuse to let Gaza become a stepping stone for political careers.

British MP Jeremy Corbyn reflects on a parallel shift in the UK, where public engagement with Gaza transformed political consciousness in a way he had never witnessed before, with voters responding to a parliamentary vote on foreign policy unlike anything in his four decades as an MP.

@m7mdkurd | @jeremycorbyn | @HalaHanina | @AlnaouqA

[Alex Taliadoros @AlexCTaliadoros]

No, @DoorDash, you cannot “support the District’s right to self-govern” while telling Congress to gut the District’s right to self-govern.

Those positions *are* mutually exclusive.

Your lobbyists are absolutely blowing this.

[Astead @AsteadWH]

You can just do stuff. Trump has proven it. Zohran is too.

So imo — the establishments challenge right now isn’t just ideology. It’a that their default premise is so defensive. They’re always explaining what’s not possible

[Oliver Larkin for Congress @OliverALarkin]

You might be wondering how I got here.

My debate opponent, @JaredEMoskowitz, hid rather than defend sending billions overseas, empowering ICE, becoming the first Democrat to join the DOGE Caucus, and putting wealthy donors over FL-25.

So I debated his empty chair. It lost.

[Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy]

Zohran was dinged for being young & inexperienced, but the specific example he gives here about Giuliani's tax lien policy, drawing on his experience as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor, does so much to ground his argument and shore up his credibility.

[Briahna Joy Gray @briebriejoy]

The @cmkshama Breaking Points interview just dropped and it's phenomenal. The contrast with her Zionist, corporatist opponent Adam Smith could not be more clear. And her explanation of why her strategy differs from Zohran Mamdani's is incredibly compelling.

https://t.co/zGvFZnDTXT

[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

The ICC now has only two paths before it: either it will demand that ICC states immediately take action individually and collectively to execute the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, issue the additional warrants for other senior Israeli perpetrators, add the additional charge of genocide, and act under Art. 70 to punish US/UK/Israeli actors that have obstructed justice, or the Court will fizzle out like a damp wick and cease to exist. Yes, it will take courage. But no other course will now salvage the Court’s legitimacy. The US-Israel Axis wants them to fall. Will the ICC stand and fight or walk silently to the gallows? There are no other choices. And it’s now or never.

[The 51st @51stnews]

In the year since WMATA rolled out its Better Bus initiative, about 7% fewer riders took the bus — on the heels of years of growth.

Buses, on average, are moving half a mile per hour slower.

No one is entirely sure why, @rachelweinerwp reports. https://t.co/wxsbpfOwya

[Nerdeen Kiswani @NerdeenKiswani]

Pop base actually cover news about Palestine better than most major media outlets, because not enough people are talking about this.

[National Women’s Soccer League @NWSL]

THAT'S AMORE 🇮🇹

Trinity Rodman skips it across and Sofia Cantore rockets it in!

[Tariq Kenney-Shawa @tksshawa]

My latest for @thenation: Mayor Mamdani is right to call Netanyahu a war criminal. But it’s time to shift focus from the spectacle of arresting one man to confronting the wider system behind him and dismantling NYC’s ties to Israel that fuel genocide. https://t.co/olEpn1tshs

[Quincy Institute @QuincyInst]

NEW RESEARCH

The Israeli government has spent more than $1 billion in direct expenditures on public diplomacy since the Hamas–led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, a dramatic escalation in such spending. This represents Israel’s new reliance on influence operations in the United States, funded directly by the country’s government and subject to American laws on foreign influence.

For most of the US–Israel relationship’s history, Israel garnered unrivaled influence in US politics through an informal lobby made up of American citizens and organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) as well as individual mega-donors. These organizations are not required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, because they are funded by Americans and nominally act independently of the Israeli government. This system gave Israel enormous influence without triggering the disclosure requirements for direct foreign lobbying.

The deep unpopularity of Israel’s post–Oct. 7 military offensives among the American public spurred Israel to reassess the scope and structure of its influence operations. The Israeli government subsequently reinvented its public relations strategy by hiring registered foreign agents directly so that it could control messaging, target specific demographics, and act with speed and precision. Since 2023, Israel has spent over $100 million on influence in the US under FARA.

The latest from @nick_clevelands uses FARA data, Israeli government procurement documents, and interviews with dozens of sources to trace the size and effects of this shift. Israel’s FARA spending is set to triple from 2024 to 2026, and the country is on track to become the single biggest FARA spender this year. Much of this work flows through the French firm Havas Media, which subcontracts with American firms that specialize in reaching the once most reliable sources of support that Israel is now losing: Evangelicals, conservatives, and young Americans.

The tactics are new in kind, not just scale: paying influencers directly, funding a mass texting
operation, and, the most novel of these new approaches, hiring firms like Clock Tower X to build networks of websites designed to shape how artificial intelligence chatbots characterize Israel.

This shift toward FARA–registrable engagement creates a new paper trail. But significant gaps in compliance and transparency remain: Organizations conducting clear lobbying activities have failed to register as lobbyists, some new firms working for Israel have openly flaunted transparency requirements, and paid influencers have not disclosed their financial relationships with the Israeli government.

Israel’s new tactics are transforming America’s influence landscape, but they have so far proved
insufficient to counter the erosion in public support that is being driven by Israel’s deeply unpopular policies. That said, Israeli influence operations have a commanding record of shaping American public opinion, and the infrastructure that Israel is now building is unlike anything previously deployed — it should not be underestimated.

Read the full story here: https://t.co/wz0AzCZJLf

[Sana Saeed @SanaSaeed]

I would like for us to stop inviting people complicit in justifying the slaughter of Palestinians as ‘rational’ people to have conversations with on any subject but especially on the one that involves them propagandizing for genocide.

[Adam Johnson @adamjohnsonCHI]

if you can't see this as a reputation-launder job for Blinken and Sullivan then I'm not sure what to tell you. Nothing has been more obvious––from the framing, the self-serving spin the Thwarted Humanitarian routine. Citations ep coming soon on this because its sophisticated work

[Alex Colston @enoughformethx]

I’m as heartened as anyone by Mamdani’s rhetoric, but setting the good rhetoric aside, the job is not finished; there are unexplored avenues that aren’t predicated on winning executive federal power.