Roxanne

international law // public policy

[Michael T. Lester @MichaelTLester]

My post on Sazan Island went viral yesterday because the verifiable facts are shocking.

Here's what I left out: Sazan is just one piece of a much bigger operation.

Jared Kushner started Affinity Partners in July 2021. One day after leaving the White House.

Within weeks, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund wired him $2 billion. Senior Saudi officials objected. Mohammed bin Salman overruled them.

By the end of 2024, Affinity was managing $4.8 billion, almost entirely from foreign governments. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE. Today that number is $6.16 billion. 99% from foreign nationals.

The fee structure, disclosed to the Senate Finance Committee under investigation: Kushner charges the Saudis 1.25% annually on $2 billion in committed capital. Other investors pay closer to 2%. The Senate's own investigators called this "unusually high" for a firm with Kushner's experience level, or more correctly, complete lack of experience. As of mid-2024, Affinity had generated zero return on investment and had not distributed a penny of earnings back to any client.

He's charging governments tens of millions a year to have their money sit in a bank account.

In late 2024, Senator Wyden referred Kushner to the Department of Justice for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The same law that put Paul Manafort in prison.

Now Kushner is back in government. Trump's "Special Envoy for Peace." Negotiating with Iran. Negotiating with Russia. Negotiating ceasefire terms in Gaza. On behalf of the United States. Not chosen by Americans. No experience running an investment firm. No training or experience in international relations. His sole credential is that he married the president's daughter. All while managing $6 billion from the governments he is negotiating with.

Before Trump's second term started, Kushner publicly promised he would not raise additional capital while serving. The New York Times then reported he was actively soliciting $5 billion more from foreign governments. His lawyers confirmed the conversations. They said he "does not intend" to take it.

He said the same thing before he took it the first time.

The Senate Finance Committee and the House Oversight Committee are both demanding answers. They've asked for every communication between Kushner and foreign governments. They've asked Affinity to preserve all documents. Any destruction of records, they said in writing, will be treated as obstruction.

Now look at the ownership chart below. It was produced as part of a corporate investigation published June 3rd titled "Exporting the Abraham Accords: The Hidden Network Converging on Albania's Shoreline." My follower @SlavicWoman777 flagged it in my replies.

Five unnamed Albanian shareholders. 24% combined stake. Structured deliberately just below the 25% threshold that would require public disclosure under Dutch law.

That is someone trying to hide who is behind the money.

This is what corruption looks like when it's wearing a suit and has a law firm on retainer.

What do you call it when your government's negotiator is on the payroll of the governments he's negotiating with?

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

He was raped to death

[☀️👀 @zei_squirrel]

Tim Walz is a fanatical deranged fully owned Israel lobby plaything, exactly like Kamala Harris, and Shapiro, and all the other Democrats. There is no difference in policy that is going happen with these fucking freaks in charge. They're identical to Genocide Joe. Anyone who says otherwise with bullshit coconut memes is lying to you.

They are liars, intentionally lying to you, and pretending like there will be any difference. There will be no difference. Both will keep supporting the genocide of Palestinians because they're owned by the Israel lobby like John Mearsheimer just recently reiterated. As he says, without the US, Israel is nothing. It is beset with crises and on the verge of collapse, but the US keeps bailing it out with endless weapons, funding, and their own military moving in to protect this rape-torture death-cult masquerading as a society.

They will allow Israel to do whatever it wants, because it is Israel Uber Alles for these genocidal Zionist scum.

The only thing that has a possibility of changing it is when Palestinians, Arab and Muslim Americans and all those who oppose the genocide in states like Michigan say explicitly that they will not vote for Genocidal Zionist Queen Kamala Harris and Tim Walz unless they right now, at this very moment, make a policy change. Not bullshit abstract rhetoric and promises, right now. Now.

Don't buy the bullshit about "well she's just VP now, she has no power but she and Walz get in they will suddenly become epic and based and stop the genocide, just vote for them!" She is the head of the Democratic Party as the nominee she can force Genocide Joe to take a position if she wants to rescue her Presidential campaign and announce her own explicit policy of stopping funding, arms and diplomatic and military protection to the Israeli rape-cult. If she chooses not to, it means she is fine with losing and sticking with the Israel lobby.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

I urge UN Member States to take action against Israel's abhorrent #crimes against Palestinians abducted and detained since October 7, and for the #ICC to conduct a prompt investigation.

Holding human beings in cages, stripped naked, denied their basic rights—including healthcare, food, and sleep—while subjected to electrocution, cigarette burns, waterboarding, dog attacks, sexual violence, rape, and other forms of #torture constitutes heinous international crimes.

#SdeTeiman
#NoMoreTorture

[Pelham @Resist_05]

In 1948 Albert Einstein along with 28 other prominent Jewish leaders wrote a letter to the New York Times…

It stated that the Israeli political party resembled the Nazi Party in its ideology and methods.

Einstein went on to say that he opposed the state of Israel and it was against the religion of Judaism

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

Israel's typical response to Palestinian killings will also be applied to the deaths of the @WCKitchen employees:

✅It wasn't us
✅We're investigating
✅Apparently it was us, but an accident
✅So what? Other countries are doing worse! It's anti-Semitic to single us out!

[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

You turn your head at your own peril. The cruelty, the inhumanity, the unmitigated evil of the
Israeli regime, its dangerous ideology, its genocidal soldiers & settlers threaten not only the region. Alone, they are an aberration. With western backing, they are a path to WWIII.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

UNRWA is separate from the UN’s main refugee agency, the UNHCR, and deals only with Palestinian refugees.

Although Israel does not want you to know it, the reason for there being two UN refugee agencies is because Israel and its western backers insisted on the division back in 1948.

Why? Because Israel was afraid of the Palestinians falling under the responsibility of the UNHCR’s forerunner, the International Refugee Organisation. The IRO was established in the immediate wake of the Second World War in large part to cope with the millions of European Jews fleeing Nazi atrocities.

Israel did not want the two cases treated as comparable, because it was pushing hard for Jewish refugees to be settled on lands from which it had just expelled Palestinians. Part of the IRO’s mission was to seek the repatriation of European Jews. Israel was worried that very principle might be used both to deny it the Jews it wanted to colonise Palestinian land and to force it to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes.

So in a real sense, UNRWA is Israel’s creature: it was set up to keep the Palestinians a case apart, an anomaly...

Israel’s efforts to get rid of UNRWA are not new. They date back many years. For a number of reasons, the UN refugee agency is a thorn in Israel’s side – and all the more so in Gaza.

Not least, it has provided a lifeline to Palestinians there, keeping them fed and cared for, and providing jobs to many thousands of local people in a place where unemployment rates are among the highest in the world.

It has invested in infrastructure like hospitals and schools that make life in Gaza more bearable, when Israel’s goal has long been to make the enclave uninhabitable.

UNRWA’s well-run schools, staffed by local Palestinians, teach the children their own history, about where their grandparents once lived, and of Israel’s campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing against them. That runs directly counter to the infamous Zionist slogan about the Palestinians’ identity-less future: “The old will die and the young forget.”

But UNRWA’s role is bigger than that. Uniquely, it is the sole agency unifying Palestinians wherever they live, even when they are separated by national borders and Israel’s fragmentation of the territory it controls.

UNRWA brings Palestinians together even when their own political leaders have been manipulated into endless factionalism by Israel’s divide and rule policies: Hamas is nominally in charge in Gaza, while Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah pretends to run the West Bank.

In addition, UNRWA keeps alive the moral case for a Palestinian right of return – a principle recognised in international law but long ago abandoned by western states.

Even before October 7, UNRWA had become an obstable that needed removing if Israel was ever to ethnically cleanse Gaza. That is why Israel has repeatedly lobbied to stop the biggest donors, especially the US, funding UNRWA.

Back in 2018, for example, the refugee agency was plunged into an existential crisis when President Donald Trump acquiesced to Israeli pressure and cut all its funding. Even after the decision was reversed, the agency has been limping along financially.

You can read more from my latest article In waging war on the UN refugee agency, the West is openly siding with Israeli genocide here:
https://t.co/31iUb2ZLUd

[Omar Shahabudin McDoom @omarmcdoom]

As a genocide scholar, I have tried to understand the arguments I have read for why Israel’s conduct in Gaza does not constitute genocide. I struggle. The counter-arguments are not difficult. Here are 8 arguments I've heard and what I think in response. 1/n

[Roxanne @roxannesamaha]

@POTUS you have exceeded the level of delusional.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

In Gaza, Palestinian children are given sedatives to alleviate their pain while dying -as they cannot be treated. 80days of heavy Israeli bombing have devastated the health system.

This level of horror is unmatched in our lifetime.

#CeasefireNOW.

[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

We are witnessing a #genocide by an #apartheid regime in #Palestine. Western governments are complicit. International institutions are inactive. It’s up to us- people, movements, unions, churches,synagogues,mosques, students- you.Join @BDSmovement now. #EndApartheid #EndGenocide

[Dilly Hussain @DillyHussain88]

WHY DO PALESTINIANS AND MUSLIMS CRITICISE AND DISTRUST THE UAE?🇦🇪

A brother recently asked (publicly) why Muslims attack the UAE over Palestine when they provide millions of dollars in aid and help Palestinian orphans etc.

My response was that the UAE is spearheading efforts in normalising diplomatic and economic relations between GCC states and Israel.

Sending millions of dollars of aid to Gaza and helping Palestinian orphans doesn’t negate the betrayal of supporting the Israeli occupier that is creating the orphans in the first place.

In June 2020, the Palestinian Authority rejected aid from the UAE:

https://t.co/MuFNHaHApX

In August 2020, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem issued a fatwa banning Emiratis from visiting Al Aqsa due to the UAE’s normalisation with Israel:

https://t.co/43xveRmsSV

In 2021, the UAE was exposed for buying Palestinian land and properties to sell to Israel:

https://t.co/XevfrcFO6u

Palestinians have widely condemned and rejected the UAE since 2020, you will rarely hear them praise the UAE like they do with Qatar, Turkey or Jordan:

https://t.co/n6L1DLmh7k

https://t.co/glSLJTukvL

https://t.co/qFphhDUnOL

I haven’t included the UAE’s direct involvement in the death and destruction in Libya, Sudan and Yemen, or its track record in funding Islamophobic think-tanks across Europe — none of which the UAE has denied or rejected.

Lastly, living a comfortable expat life isn’t a rebuttal or a counter to the above, because the UAE providing a stable life to its citizens and expats has nothing to do with its foreign policy.

[Roxanne @roxannesamaha]

@antonioguterres thank you 🙏🏽

[Roxanne @roxannesamaha]

@JoeBiden what is appalling is you thinking this will garner you the sympathy and support of American Muslims. it wont work. your support for the ongoing genocide is what is appalling. how about you focus on fixing your own reputation instead of focusing on others. pathetic

[Christiane Amanpour @amanpour]

U.S. policymakers "don't have the guts and the moral courage" to stand up to the Israeli govt, says top Middle East watcher @FawazGerges. “I really have no trust in American foreign policy anymore,” he tells me.

[Mirjana Spoljaric (Archive) @ICRCPresident]

My message from Gaza today:

[Roxanne @roxannesamaha]

@vonderleyen how about you call for a fucking ceasefire. never again is now ?? hypocrite.

[Roxanne @roxannesamaha]

@miakhalifa you are such a queen

[Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 @jacksonhinkle]

🇮🇱🇸🇾 Remember when Israel BOMBED Syria's Aleppo airport directly after the MASSIVE earthquake in March 2023 killed 2,000+ Syrians?

Israel's war crimes this week are nothing new.

They just don't want you to know the truth.