Shailen Shah

[Steven Var 🇺🇸🇪🇺🇭🇺 @Podrivel]

I didn’t see the attached essay at first, but as an International Relations academic, I’ll respond with some consideration (and otherwise respect for you and your work).

Your essay reads like theorist Morgenthau who espoused Classical Realism. It basically says politics is ultimately about power. Morality matters, but only after survival.

Israel’s situation, however, more closely resembles Mearsheimer’s Offensive Realist framework. Offensive Realism assumes:
- states cannot trust others,
- security is never guaranteed,
- survival requires maximizing relative power,
- opportunities to reshape the strategic environment should be exploited.

Under this lens Israel isn’t just focused on survival, but on expansion. We also see now that October 7th wasn’t simply a terrorist attack. There is strong evidence suggesting it was allowed to happen and meant to be the catalytic event that allowed Israel to pursue strategic objectives previously constrained politically.

Those include:
- removing or reducing the Hamas and Gaza problem
- invading Lebanon
- weakening Iran's regional network
- expanding regional deterrence through expanded wars involving the U.S.
- permanent territorial expansion
- reshaping the Middle East balance of power

Clausewitz famously wrote: War is the continuation of politics by other means.
Your essay can almost be summarized as saying: Ethics is the continuation of strategy by philosophical means.

Whether intentional or not, your essay functions less as an exploration of Israel's security dilemma than as a post hoc philosophical justification for a grand strategy that appears to have preceded October 7. It assumes Israel's overriding objective remains survival and cohabitation, whereas its actions increasingly suggest an offensive effort to establish regional hegemony.

My core issue with your essay is that the ethical framework you've constructed risks providing moral legitimacy to a strategy that extends well beyond self-defense - and one that has brought the region, and the world, to an increasingly perilous point.

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

The EU, US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia facilitated this and the entire ongoing genocide.

[Nicola Perugini @PeruginiNic]

Reuters is doing its best to frame the Israeli bombardment of one of the few remaining Palestinian medicine warehouses as something legally ambiguous. Obviously the argument they parrot is the Israeli military’s: that in Gaza, healthcare is a human shield for military activities.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

I have observed and studied legacy media reporting on Palestine for years. I have had the opportunity to analyse documented patterns of dehumanization that - nearly three years into a genocide - are beyond shocking.

[Redi Tlhabi @RediTlhabi]

People are allowed to care deeply about one human rights crisis without first issuing a press release on every other atrocity on Earth.

You can speak about the international human rights flashpoints that matter most to you. That doesn't mean you are indifferent to the rest. It means you're human.

When I raised my voice against gender-based violence, it didn't mean I didn't care about food insecurity. When I spoke out against corruption, it didn't mean I was indifferent to drug abuse. We all choose where we can make a meaningful contribution. No one has the capacity to be everywhere, every day, speaking about everything.

Yet somehow, Israel's most ardent defenders insist that unless you have an equal-opportunity outrage portfolio, your criticism of Israel's actions is invalid. It is an intellectually dishonest standard that they apply almost nowhere else. For many of us, Gaza is the defining moral test of our time.

Rwanda was that test in 1994. Humanity failed. Srebrenica was that test in 1995. Apartheid was that test for decades. Darfur was that test in 2003, and Sudan still demands our attention today. The persecution of the Rohingya has been another such test.
People did speak. People still do speak. The record exists for anyone prepared to look.

The accusation that "you only care about Gaza" is not a serious argument. It is whataboutism. It is a tactic designed to move the conversation away from Israel's conduct and onto the supposed inadequacies of its critics.

NO! NO!
We are entitled to judge Israel by its actions. We are entitled to listen when members of its own leadership make public statements about their genocidal intentions. We are entitled to condemn conduct we believe violates international law and basic human decency. We do not need permission to do so. Atleast I DON'T!

And let's stop pretending this is just another conflict. Few states command the level of international lobbying, diplomatic protection, information warfare, political pressure, and organised campaigns against critics that surround Israel. That extraordinary global footprint is one reason the scrutiny is extraordinary too.

So spare us the outrage about where our attention is directed. Our attention is right where it ought to be! And it will remain there for as long as Israel and its allies and supporters continue to unleash their GLOBAL bullying on us.

Some sisterly advice from me to tou:

If Sudan matters to you, speak!
If Myanmar matters to you, speak!
If Congo matters to you, speak!
If Ukraine matters to you, speak!

But do not demand that the rest of us earn the right to speak about Gaza by first solving every injustice on the planet. That's a rubbish argument.

And it won't work.

[Zachary Foster @_ZachFoster]

The scholar Steven Pinker @sapinker has evolved into an airhead and a genocide aficionado. Let's dive in.

Steven accepts the counterfactual claim made in this substack that Palestinians are not humans, they are robots, programmed to "destroy Israel."

That is their only mode of living & being. No evidence is needed to make the point, nor is any provided in the piece. Quite literally 0 evidence for this argument in the piece.

In his tweet, Steven quotes an Israeli friend saying that "western pro-Palestinians" support suicide bombings, again, without a single shred of evidence.

Who are all the Western pro-Palestine people that believe that, Dr. Pinker? Can you or your friend even name one?

Or you do you just pull shit out of your ass, post it on twitter, and then lick your fingers to savor every last drop of your own shit?

Dr. Pinker's brain has been infected with one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer. it's called zionism.

This cancer has convinced Pinker that the destruction of an inanimate object known as Apartheid Israel is a hypothetical idea so dangerous that even thinking it is worse than 2 genocides, 1 apartheid state, multiple military occupations & wars of aggression.

Yet, as Dr. Pinker used to know (unclear if he still does), Apartheid Israel is an inanimate object and when an inanimate object is destroyed, 0 people die.

In fact, lots of people would be saved -- all the future victims of Israel's genocides, apartheid, occupations, and wars of aggression.

We haven't even addressed the main issue here, which is, what does Hamas actually want, and how absolutely disconnected is Pinker from the news cycle?

Does Pinker have idea that Hamas just agreed to a phased disarmament? All Israel has to do is do what it already agreed to in October 2025! lol

And, indeed, for more than two decades, Hamas's public statements, the op-eds published by Khaled Mashal, Ismail Haniyeh in places like @guardian, were effectively plagiarized from international legal treaties, UN resolutions and the "2-state solution" framework. https://t.co/VKObEvR1nr

Theyve been trying to push through a Palestinian state on the 67 lines for literally decades... while it's in Israel where you'll struggle to find even a single Jewish Israeli politician in a Zionist political party that would even say, rhetorically (forgot about action) they support a Palestinian State.

Steven thinks chicken shit is chicken salad, and visa versa.

Steven was a talented intellectual and writer. I used to be a big fan. He wrote some great books on how to write well, on linguistics ... when he retweeted me in 2016 it was a major life achievement.

But Zionism has lobotomized this guy. he will be remembered first and foremost for his love for genocide.

[Blunt @Shinamuller]

Professor Marandi said it straight. We are not Egypt. We are not Pakistan.
And he was right. Egypt fought Israel once and then settled under the American umbrella. Pakistan built its own nuclear deterrent under sanctions, a real achievement. Yet today both still feel the heavy hand of Western pressure.
Iran is different. This is a nation of nearly ninety million people, not some tiny isolated outpost. For half a century the most powerful empire on earth has tried to crush it with sanctions. And still Iran stands.
Look at the numbers. Iran graduates more than two hundred and thirty thousand engineers every single year. That is more than France and Germany combined. While the United States still has no universal health system, Iran built one that reaches almost its entire population, from the big cities to the smallest villages. Childhood vaccination rates sit near one hundred percent. Life expectancy matches countries far richer. They produce ninety-seven percent of their own medicines. They made their own COVID vaccines when the world tried to lock them out. Their engineers reverse-engineered German gas turbines and now ship them to Russia. They build more cars than Britain. They launch their own satellites. They rank among the top nations in nanotechnology and biotechnology. They created a national internet network so they would never be fully dependent on outside cables.
They have the knowledge, roughly eighty percent of what is needed, to build a nuclear bomb. Yet they choose not to. One reason is principle. They see it as a line that should not be crossed. Another is wisdom. If Iran crossed that line, every Gulf capital would demand the same. A country with near-universal literacy and hundreds of thousands of engineers could do it. They simply refuse.
This is not propaganda. This is what happens when a people decide to survive on their own terms. They took in millions of Afghan refugees when times were hard. They cut oil to apartheid South Africa and stood with Mandela. They sent weapons and trainers to the Bosnians when the world looked away.
The West has spent decades painting Iran as nothing but a threat. That story is incomplete. Iran is also a country that turned isolation into innovation, sanctions into self-reliance, and pressure into scientific progress.
If this planet is going to survive, we need more of that spirit. Not more wars. Not more endless suspicion. We need nations that compete in knowledge, in health, in human dignity, and in the quiet strength of standing on their own feet.
Iran is not perfect. No country is. But it has shown that a large nation under maximum pressure can still educate its people, heal its people, and build its own future. That is a lesson worth studying, not a story worth burying.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🔹Drop Site reporter Abdel Qader Sabbah: What happened to you?

🔸Palestinian woman in Gaza, Umm Yahya Hassouna: What happened was, we were asleep. We heard someone knocking on the tents, shouting, “Get out! Get out!”

There were children sleeping. I woke them up. As soon as they woke up, we ran out. We ran out barefoot, with nothing except the clothes we were wearing.

We kept running through the streets looking for somewhere safe. We kept going until we reached down past the Abu Samra roundabout.

A little while after, we heard the explosion. We heard people saying, “We want to go back. It’s over.”

We returned, thinking maybe nothing had happened to the tents. Then we saw this. We were completely shocked.

Even the bread was ruined. We found the bread thrown on the ground, spoiled. We haven’t eaten, we haven’t had breakfast, we haven’t had anything, not until now.

🔹Abdel Qader Sabbah: What are you digging for?

🔸Umm Yahya Hassouna: I’m digging, hoping we’ll find a mattress, or something for the children to eat. But there’s nothing. I can’t find anything.

We have been digging for more than five hours. But there’s nothing. Maybe we’ll find something to eat, a mattress, anything for the young children. Or we’ll find something to eat.

Nothing. So far, we haven’t found anything. We’ve been digging for nothing.

🔹Abdel Qader Sabbah: What is your fate now?

🔸Umm Yahya Hassouna: Our fate? We don’t know. Destruction. Our fate won’t be good.

There are 12 of us here. No food or water. Even the bread we had is spoiled. No canned goods or anything else.

We’re searching for food, water, a mattress. There’s nothing. All we can hope is that someone helps us. That the countries outside will see us and have compassion.

🔹Abdel Qader Sabbah: You are living next to a hospital, and this hospital was targeted.

🔸Umm Yahya Hassouna: Many times. But this was the worst time. This time it destroyed all the tents.

We have nothing to feed our children. We haven’t had breakfast since morning. We’re just sitting here digging. We haven’t had breakfast, lunch, or anything.

Our children are barefoot in the street, and we’re looking for shirts to put on them. There is nothing.

We keep searching, hoping we’ll find something for ourselves. But nothing turns up. We are digging in mud.

[Zachary Foster @_ZachFoster]

Apartheid Israel is deliberately inflicting on Palestinians conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

Israeli forces routinely claim they are “thwarting a ramming attack” when they open fire on Palestinian vehicles, like they did in Beita, south of Nablus, in the illegally occupied West Bank on Thursday evening.

Video of the incident shows the car moving at a distance from the soldiers and not posing any immediate threat when Israeli soldiers spring into the street and open fire, critically wounding a 59-year-old man.

Ambulance crews treated a man who was shot in the neck with live ammunition after Israeli forces fired at his car, Amid Ahmad, director of the Palestine Red Crescent’s emergency center in Nablus confirmed to Wafa. The man was hospitalized for his wounds.

[Propaganda & co @propandco]

The Jewish state with its Jewish soldiers are murdering Palestinian babies and they do it with the political and financial support of majority of the worlds Jews

They raise Jewish money and recruit Jewish terrorists from their Jewish temples and are carving Jewish symbols onto the foreheads of the Palestinians they torture to death

Forgive me if I don’t really give a shit about ‘antisemitism’ 🤷🏽‍♂️

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇮🇱🇺🇸 Netanyahu got caught on tape working to kill his own war crimes warrant

The New York Times reviewed recorded calls from October 2024 where Netanyahu and the late Senator Lindsey Graham cooked up a plan to stall the ICC arrest warrant closing in on him.

The move was to weaponize sexual misconduct allegations against ICC prosecutor Karim Khan. Netanyahu called it "the great cloud" that could justify pausing everything, telling Graham the stain "has to be removed" and pushing him to get senators to send a letter.

On a second call that day Graham said "we got them both," meaning Democrats Blumenthal and Cardin were on board, then joked, "pay me for all this."

The letter went out November 1. It didn't work, and the ICC issued the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant three weeks later.

The twist is that Khan was actually forced out as prosecutor last week over those same allegations, so the cloud they wanted finally did the job, just a year too late.

Source: NYT / Daniyal

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

Another day of seeing children in Gaza bloodied, maimed, and traumatized by Israeli attacks.

Another day of genocide against Palestinians.

Another day with barely any media attention.

Another day without any action by world “leaders” to stop it.

1,027 days.

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

I am writing these words to you from inside Gaza City, and I say this with complete honesty: the situation has become extremely dangerous, perhaps worse than ever before.

Temperatures continue to rise, and the tents have turned into real ovens. More than 170,000 tents across Gaza City are sheltering thousands of families in conditions that are impossible to describe. Inside these tents, temperatures exceed 50°C (122°F). There is no electricity, no fans, no air conditioning, and none of the basic necessities needed to survive.

The tents are packed tightly together, with almost no space between them. Many families are forced to leave their tents and sit in the streets because remaining inside has become unbearable.

Water is desperately scarce, and the extreme heat is making thirst even more severe. And this is only the beginning of summer. Every day, I see the effects of the intense heat on children’s bodies heat rashes, exhaustion, and suffering while insects emerging from the ground make life even harder.

The coming days could be even more devastating if these conditions continue. The tents are no longer places of shelter; they have become another source of danger.

Please don’t let these families be forgotten. Speak about them. Write about them. Share their stories with others. Keep their voices alive and let the world know what is happening. Behind every tent is a family struggling to survive.

They need to be seen, they need to be heard, and they need your solidarity.

[Andrea 🇮🇹🇪🇺🤝🏻🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸 @ClassicalSocdem]

“My grandpas killed 6 million Jews, so now all Palestinians must suffer for it”

Germans never, ever apologised for the Holocaust, they just shifted the blame on Palestinians

[George Galloway @georgegalloway]

We will enable fascism because we used to be fascists! That’s what he’s saying here!

[Dr Rahmeh Aladwan @doctor_rahmeh]

'The jews bombed us… They all died. No one survived'

The words of Sham Al-Harazin. 7 years old. After her fourth injury from an IOF attack on Gaza.

Sham has lost 10 members of her family. Her mother remains disabled due to a previous injury.
https://t.co/qPM2pXC4Ox

[Zachary Foster @_ZachFoster]

To summarize the Israeli terrorist attack:

Sheikh Farouk defended himself by disarming & neutralizing an Israeli terrorist attacking him.

Israeli security forces later executed Sheikh Farouk while he was unarmed.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

💢 NEW: Israeli soldiers forced two US citizens from their home in Turmus Ayya, in the occupied West Bank, so troops could use it as a lookout position, their son, Dr. Said Shukri, told Drop Site News.

The home belongs to his father, Dr. Hassan Said Shukri, a neurologist based in Syracuse, New York.

Shukri said soldiers carrying M16s pointed a gun at his 61-year-old mother and gave his parents one hour to pack. When he could not reach his father for two hours, he contacted the US Embassy. He said the embassy told him there was nothing it could do and refused to contact the Israeli military.

His parents have since returned after the soldiers abruptly left. “It is only because of the public pressure that they were able to return to their home,” Shukri said.

He said soldiers had occupied the neighboring family’s home for four days before moving directly into his parents’ house.

Shukri shared video with Drop Site showing his father back inside the home, raising an American flag. The video is attached below. Journalist Jasper Nathaniel also published an interview with Dr. Hassan Said Shukri while Israeli forces were occupying the property.