Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺

Threema-ID UH2TRDA3

[ד״ר עינת וילף Dr. Einat Wilf @EinatWilf]

“So do not dare propose that ‘Israel Never Truly Wanted Peace with Palestine’. If anything, we wanted it too much. So now, it is your turn to answer the question: When did you ever truly want peace with the one Jewish state?”
(my 10 min speech with English captions from the Oxford Union Debate):

[Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺 @sprima]

@EinatWilf @AkaLazarus Absolutely brilliant! 👏

[Jüdische Allgemeine @JuedischeOnline]

Die langjährige ARD-Autorin Rita Knobel-Ulrich übt scharfe Kritik an der ehemaligen Israel-Korrespondentin Sophie von der Tann und den Initiatoren des Katharina-Zell-Preises. Ein offener Brief. https://t.co/GUc1JRzIGI

[Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺 @sprima]

@thatsKAIZEN Brilliant! Thank you.

[Kaizen D. Asiedu @thatsKAIZEN]

Jason Arday shouldn’t be dead.

But he is dead - because he didn’t tell the truth.

And Cambridge University didn’t look for the truth - because he’s black.

And fellow black professors didn’t ask for the truth - because he is black.

Jason lied repeatedly.

And he told the exact lies that allow one to excel in the system that elite universities have adopted.

A system that factors in race, hardship, and lived experience under the banner of equity, instead of pure performance.

Nearly everyone in these institutions ignored Jason’s lies, to try and protect black people.

They called the people seeking the truth racists.

Of course there were some racists.

But the majority of people just wanted the truth.

Avoiding the truth didn’t help black people.

Double standards in academia aren’t helping black people.

They hurt the perception of black people who are truly the best, and would have held prestigious positions at elite schools, solely off the merits of their performance.

Double standards always backfire.

Even when well intentioned.

Even when intended to correct for past oppression.

Race-conscious hiring and admissions have created a situation where it is rational to wonder whether a black person has achieved their position because they were simply the best, or because they were good enough, and black.

This is not a racist thought.

It’s a rational thing to wonder when a system promotes people based on race.

It’s a thing I’ve wondered about myself, as someone who graduated from Harvard - which had race-conscious admissions.

No amount of insistence that it’s racist will make it racist.

It’s no more racist than it would be to wonder whether a white player got into the NBA off of just performance, if the NBA decided to focus on “fixing” the underrepresentation of white people.

This is the logical downside of race-conscious hiring and admissions.

You can think the downside is worth the upside.

But the downside remains.

Calling people with legitimate concerns racist didn’t protect black people.

It didn’t protect Jason.

It hurt black people who have earned their positions.

And it allowed a troubled man who built his career on lies to rise to a height so great that his fall from grace killed him.

We could have just had the truth.

Instead, we have a tragedy.

[Mahnwachen gegen Antisemitismus @ggantisemitism]

Daniel Brühl, Anna Thalbach und Sandra Hüller fordern Freiheit für den Massen-Mörder, der u.a. den griechisch-orthodoxen Mönch Tsibouktsakis Germanus (Jerusalem, 2001), Yoela Hen (Jerusalem, 2002) sowie Eli Dahan, Yosef Habi und Salim Barakat (Tel Aviv, 2002) ermordete.

[Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺 @sprima]

@elicalebon I’m all for merit and effort, but what about inherited wealth and meritocracy?

[Marten Visser @martenvisser]

Dit is een grafiek van de oorlogsslachtoffers in Gaza, op basis van Hamas-cijfers. Ga ervan uit dat alle vrouwen burgerslachtoffers zijn. Ga ervan uit dat er net zoveel mannelijke als vrouwelijke burgerslachtoffers zijn. Dan is de verhouding strijder-burger onder de slachtoffers 1:1,5.

De grootste database ter wereld over zulke situaties is van het Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Die geeft voor conflicten in grote stedelijke gebieden een gemiddelde van 1:2. Een groter percentage burgerslachtoffers dus dan in Gaza.

Dit zou voor altijd voldoende moeten zijn om beschuldigingen van genocide in Gaza van tafel te vegen. Uiteraard kun je erover discussiëren of het gerechtvaardigd is dat Israël tegen Hamas blijft vechten zolang die zich niet overgegeven heeft of ontwapend is. (Voor de duidelijkheid: ik vind het wel.) Maar dat is echt iets anders.

Maar de vrijwel exclusieve aandacht voor deze oorlog; de vrijwel exclusieve morele verontwaardiging over deze oorlog; en vooral het ter verantwoording roepen van niet-Israëlische joden overal ter wereld over deze oorlog: dat is zo diep onlogisch. Dat is antisemitisme.

Ik zie je bruine hemd.

[Jan Feddersen @JafJan]

Akkurat und historisch auch im Hinblick die deutschen Vertriebenen informiert, danke @Klimeniouk: Replik auf "taz"-Autor Mohamed Ibrahim, der Deutsche und Israelis als Schuldige ausmacht und Geschichte klittert https://t.co/n2M1nHv51f

[TBC @TBC_on_X]

Do you suffer from Israel Derangement Syndrome??

[Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺 @sprima]

Claudius Seidl! In der SZ erscheinen doch noch gute Texte.

https://t.co/ZrYXY7W4P5

[Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺 @sprima]

Don’t play the game.

[Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺 @sprima]

Just blame the Jews…

[Markus Springer 🇮🇱🇺🇦🇪🇺 @sprima]

@JonaSalKupper 😂👍

[Ahmad Mansour @AhmadMansour__]

Sie nennen sich Antifaschisten.

Sie wollten anders sein als ihre Großeltern. Sie haben aus der Geschichte gelernt, sagen sie – und tragen es vor sich her wie einen Orden.

Und dann verbrennen sie einen Davidstern. Nicht 1938. Heute. In Deutschland. Auf offener Straße.

Sie glauben, sie bekämpfen den Faschismus. In Wahrheit tun sie das, was ihre Großväter stolz gemacht hätte.

[Bayern & Germany @iMiaSanMia]

UEFA says its members will boycott FIFA competitions if Infantino goes ahead with his proposal to sell off a stake in the World Cup

[Frédéric Schwilden @totalreporter]

Kann Deutschlands führender Historiker Tilo Jung vielleicht nochmal erklären, dass RAF, Mao und Paul Pot auch rechts waren?

[Stan Collymore @StanCollymore]

Cape Verde was a great story. Truly great. But 2 weeks after, football doesn't give a fuck, less so after 1, 2 or 4 years.

If Mauritius, Mozambique, Mali do the same, great, but for 99% of fans, 99% of the time, across the world, nobody cares.

If France, Italy, Germany, England, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal boycott a World Cup, it's automatically invalid. It's just the truth.

Likewise, a club World Cup without any of Europe's top 25 clubs is invalid. Nobody is watching Inter Miami v Boca Juniors except in markets that simply don't generate revenue or global interest.

UEFA should immediately take over global law making ( UEFA replace FIFA 4 votes in a new IFAB with the 4 home nations continuing holding the other 4 votes).

Europe has paid football's bills for 150 years. It does not need to vote for a man in an island of 100,000 to hold the game to random because FIFA are giving him 20 mil.

I'm half English, half Barbadian. One has paid its football dues, the other hasn't, so the other cannot and must not hold the balance of power.

When two thirds of football nations fill their stadiums, support grassroots football, create a pyramid, have women's teams, find kids, then their vote is equal to a European powerhouse.

Not a day before.

Time for UEFA to secede from FIFA

FIFA needs UEFA. UEFA doesn't need FIFA.

[Boy George @BoyGeorge]

#Shalom

[Herod Priovolos @herodpriovolos]

Dear Christopher Nolan,
My name is Herod Priovolos and I want to tell you what #TheOdyssey truly means to me and to generations of Greeks who grew up with Homer’s story.
Homer did not sing of Odysseus simply to entertain us with ships, storms, gods and monsters. He told the story because he understood what war, time, distance and loss can do to the human soul.
Odysseus leaves Ithaca as a king, a husband and a father. He returns twenty years later alone, exhausted and disguised as a beggar, carrying the memory of every companion who never made it home.
The monsters are not merely creatures created for spectacle.
The Cyclops is power without justice. The Sirens are the beautiful voices that tempt a person to abandon their purpose. Circe represents the danger of losing our humanity. Calypso offers Odysseus immortality, but even eternal life becomes a prison when the price is forgetting his wife, his son, his homeland and his own identity.
And Ithaca is not merely an island.
Ithaca is the place that remembers you when the world no longer recognizes your face. It is the home that remains alive inside you after everything else has been taken away. It is Penelope growing older while she waits. It is Telemachus becoming a man without his father. It is Argos surviving long enough to recognize his master one final time.
Odysseus is not great simply because he defeats monsters. He is great because he is proud, frightened, wounded, clever, imperfect and deeply human. He loses his companions, his youth, his name and twenty years of his life, yet he refuses to forget who he is.
When he finally returns, Penelope does not recognize him through strength, glory or appearance. She tests him. Odysseus proves his identity by remembering the bed they built together around the roots of a living olive tree.
That is the heart of The Odyssey.
Not the battles.
Not the ships.
Not the monsters.
Two people standing before each other after twenty years, asking whether love, memory and identity can survive everything time has done to them.
That is why this poem has survived for almost 3,000 years. Every human being is trying to return to something: a home, a person, a lost part of themselves, or the life they had before the world changed them.
So use Homer’s seas, gods, heroes and monsters. But please understand what you are touching.
The Odyssey was never truly about how far a man could travel.
It was about how much the world could take from him before he stopped being himself, and whether, after losing almost everything, he could still find his way home.