Shira Gould

[Shira Gould @shigou98]

@Andy!! Long shot, but my best friend Olivia is getting married tonight, She is the biggest Bravo fan alive (her bachelorette was literally Bravo-themed). If you have five minutes to pop in and say "Mazel!" you would make her entire life. Shotski is on us 🍸Details in insta dms!

[ADL New York / New Jersey @ADL_NYNJ]

A mayor represents every New Yorker. Using City Hall resources to post a one-sided video about Israel’s founding — omitting the UN partition plan, the Arab rejection, the reasons that many Palestinians left, the many who stayed and the 850,000 Jewish refugeesforced to leave Arab lands  — isn’t commemoration. It’s propaganda. Releasing it right before Shabbat isn’t leadership. It’s provocation. Especially when Nakba Day “commemorations” in this city featured open support for US-designated terror organizations, veneration of their leaders, and calls for Israel’s destruction. New Yorkers deserve a mayor with the moral clarity to call that out.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

This deserves a serious answer, because I think Ihab is totally honest here.

A serious answer isn't short, but hopefully it's interesting. If you don't read it, you'll save yourself another interminable round of Israeli-Palestinian wrangling. Hopefully Ihab will read it.

This response is sad, Ihab, because you know what Hamas is, you know what it wants and what it's capable of, and you want Israelis to somehow pretend that none of the things you yourself know to be true are true.

Most of the complaints you list here go back to Hamas. Gaza's borders are closed because of Hamas. Gaza has borders with both Egypt and Israel and managed to go to war with both during Hamas's rule.

Israel doesn't "control" Gaza's electricity, it *provides* Gaza's electricity - because Hamas bent the entirety of the Gazan economy to build a tunnel system unprecedented in the history of war instead of a proper energy infrastructure.

Gaza has natural gas reserves, something that never for a moment suggested to Hamas that maybe it should stop seeking endless war for a few years to develop that energy source and develop Gaza economically.

It's depressing that Israel must provide Gaza with electricity, and not Gaza itself. But that part isn't Israel's fault. Gaza could have taken a very different path.

The population registry question is similarly a function of Hamas. Israel won't work with Hamas, mainly because it wants to murder all our children. But nothing prevented Hamas from running its own population registry and coordinating it for travel purposes with, for example, Jordan or Egypt.

Or, heck, from coordinating with the PA, which itself imposed sanctions on Gaza under Hamas rule. Even the PA.

Hamas's refusal to actually run and build Gaza is the main cause of half this list.

But there's a deeper problem with this answer. It doesn't actually address my point about the catastrophic effect of the Second Intifada and Second Lebanon War and other assorted violence from Hamas and its fellow travelers on the politics of ordinary Israelis.

You accuse me of a "comforting illusion" of Palestinian rejection (I'll respond to that in a sec), but here's your comforting illusion: "Yes, Palestinians have made mistakes, and leadership failures have cost dearly."

No, Ihab. The 140 suicide bombings of the Second Intifada weren't a "mistake" or a "leadership failure." It was the heart of it all, it was what Arafat always was. The bombings were popular, the discourse in the Palestinian street - discourse Palestinians expressed to my face on countless occasions and still say today in Arabic social media - was that the very fact that we were willing to withdraw for peace proved we weren't authentic inhabitants in the land and could be removed by violence.

You know that's how they talk in actual Palestine, away from the coddled Westernized elites we usually read on Twitter. But you pretend the Second Intifada was some aberration of a failed leadership, and that peace would be available if only the Israelis weren't assholes.

"Palestinians have never rejected a genuine peace deal. Even in 2008, Ehud Olmert himself admitted that the Palestinians never said “no.”"

They never said no to Olmert, perhaps, but they also never said yes, or provided their own map for Israel to consider. That kind of non-answer can reasonably be interpreted as refusal. Someone who isn't refusing generally provides a counter-offer.

No Palestinian leader ever provided that counteroffer, that Palestinian map, a specific delineation of the end of the conflict. No Palestinian leader ever had the courage to say, "this is the line, and after this line is drawn there are no more refugees, no demand to dismantle Israel or flood Israel with descendants or end Israel in any way. This is the end of war, and from now on we build new and better things."

That is not a thing any Palestinian leader has ever offered.

"And the story of 2000, endlessly recycled as proof of “rejectionism,” is far more complicated than Israel’s convenient myth — it wasn’t simply that Palestinians refused."

Of course it's complicated. Also, the Palestinians refused.

Arafat didn't just refuse Barak's specific suggestions (warning stations in the Jordan Valley or whathaveyou), he never offered a specific map for Barak to consider. It was always a tease waiting to be offered more.

That's rejection.

Pro-Palestinian scholars explain that his options were limited by Palestinian politics, pro-Israel ones that he never actually wanted peace. I don't know which is right, but it hardly matters. He couldn't accept anything being offered - and in Arabic explained that nothing he accepted would truly end the conflict in any case.

But even this endless back and forth that Israelis and Palestinians have been doing for 30 years wasn't really my point.

My point was that my little brother stood in the Ben Yehudah Market in central Jerusalem and watched a suicide bomber blow up. My point is that a friend of mine died in another bombing - and 20-year-old me, fresh from voting for Barak and a Palestinian state, had no explanation for that Palestinian response. I was willing to fight half of Israel to build a Palestine, and Palestine's only message to me - no Palestinian leader has ever actually spoken to the Israeli people in any serious way - was that I and everyone I love should be lying dead in the street.

Fall back on your comforting narratives about Netanyahu's "schemes" for eternal occupation. Palestine's problem isn't the Israeli right, it's the collapse of the Israeli left, a collapse I witnessed, a collapsed that took place in my own heart and mind in 140 little increments of fire and blood, and then hundreds more little brutalities in the ensuing years.

Until the goal of Palestinians on the ground stops being our eradication, none of the world's love and sympathy, none of the blatant antisemitism that swings into action for you at each war, none of the rage and horror and anger and marches will matter.

No more comforting illusions. I accept that there's no peace without ending the military rule, without independence and freedom. Now where's the Palestinian political faction that can win Palestine over by accepting that I too deserve to be here?

[Ritchie Torres @RitchieTorres]

There’s a narrative that Israel should agree to a ceasefire that keeps Hamas in power and keeps the hostages in captivity because it is losing the international popularity contest.

Popularity abroad is overrated when it comes at the expense of security at home.

Golda Meir put it bluntly:
“Better to be alive with a bad image than to be dead and pitied.”

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

https://t.co/E6wF1kC90B

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has adopted a resolution calling for the immediate release of hostages and a temporary ceasefire for the month of Ramadan. #Israel has agreed to these terms, but the genocidal terrorist group #Hamas has rejected them again and again.

It's time for the UNSC to apply all possible pressure on Hamas to release all hostages. After that, the world must make clear that the only path to a permanent ceasefire is the end of Hamas' brutal reign in Gaza.

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

BDS deleted this from their website, but unfortunately for them, the internet never forgets:

https://t.co/oYZJkcsv99

(2/2)

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

According to the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions @bdsmovement, massacring and kidnapping Israeli women and children is "heroic." Shame on every organization, student government, church, and social movement that ever supported this vicious campaign of hate. (1/2)

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

This is how far too many @Harvard students have responded to the worst terrorist massacre of civilians Israelis have ever faced (and sadly, this reaction isn't limited to Harvard). Clearly, they still have a lot to learn about basic humanity and empathy.

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

ACTION ALERT: Stand up for #Jewish #students by urging the U.S. Department of Education to complete ongoing investigations into #campus #antisemitism. Learn more and take action here:

https://t.co/hwY6WUcFdU

[Michael Dickson @michaeldickson]

An Encouraging Example Can Show the Way Forward for Combating Campus Antisemitism
@shigou98 @Algemeiner ⁦@StandWithUs⁩ https://t.co/j4RhjXuDuS

[Jordyn @JordynTilchen]

Something you all know about me but that still bears repeating: I fucking LOVE the Iron Dome!!!

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Today is #HolocaustMemorialDay. So let’s take a 24-hour pause on reducing 6 million murdered Jews into a talking point and honor their spirits.

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

StandWithUs praises Snohomish County, Washington Councilman Nate Nehring and the other council members for voting (5-0) to adopt @TheIHRA Working Definition of #Antisemitism for County agencies on January 18, 2023.

https://t.co/oeAEDOJSZh

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

Westchester County, NY and Snohomish County, WA are the most recent entities to adopt the International #Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (@TheIHRA) working definition of #antisemitism, a crucial tool in the fight against anti-#Jewish bigotry.

#StandUpToHatred #BreakTheHate

[The Bachelor @BachelorABC]

Who do you give your first impression rose to for the next season of #TheBachelor? 🌹

Retweet this tweet for BROOKLYN! #BachelorVote

[Shira Gould @shigou98]

#bachelorvote
Christina

[Shakespeare & Co. Upper West Side @ShakeandCoUWS]

Meet Albus, a Malti-Poo who is almost 1 year old. Albus is the @ShakeandCoUWS Employee of the Day!
Albus has a tough time seeing with the hair in front of his eyes, but he can smell a book for you in now time!
Something tells me he will be getting a raise & a haircut, soon!

[Shira Gould @shigou98]

@jennafischer @AngelaKinsey Hey Office Ladies! Love the pod. Not sure if you heard this song already, but I think it would make Angela cry. Such a sweet song about how meaningful the office is to the singers https://t.co/K6KGZ0EWRK

[Shira Gould @shigou98]

as if losing our senior spring, commencement, AND having to graduate into a falling economy wasn't enough, @Spotify just emailed me saying that my student account is about to expire. #sad #ClassOf2020 #helpaclassout