Big Tzimmes

I really don't like making a big deal out of things, but.

[Warren Kinsella @kinsellawarren]

Again, again, again. So sick of this shit.

[Not a Good Jewish Girl✡️ @estherzelda0514]

I agree with every word Sam Harris says here about Israel, and I'll go further. The preoccupation with this country is antisemitism. There is no other explanation for how that, of all the world's many brutal dictatorships and ongoing famines, all of Europe and the Middle East is obsessed with this tiny scrap of land and what the people that rule it defensively and democratically, in a sea of aggressive tyrants, are doing. Any country subjected to such unrelenting scrutiny by those already predisposed to be suspicious of it would come out looking evil, and that's before the lying and semantic games.

If you believe that no criticism of Israel can be antisemitic, and that the antisemitic Arab world is not interested in destroying it, with the applause of most of antisemitic Europe, I'm sorry, but you live in an alternate reality and we have nothing to discuss.

[Dr. Brian L. Cox @BrianCox_RLTW]

More feckless foreign policy from a cohort of predominantly progressive gov'ts captured by Islamist political pressure & clueless on international law.

This joint statement makes a joke of these gov'ts for:

- Calling on @Israel "to respect Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to stop its military escalation" without acknowledging current operations were initiated in response to an impending invasion of 🇮🇱 by Hezbollah from 🇱🇧 in retaliation for the death of Ayatollah Khamenei in 🇮🇷 (screenshot). What these - and every - governments should do instead of blaming 🇮🇱 is pressure HEZBOLLAH to respect BOTH 🇮🇱 AND 🇱🇧 "sovereignty and territorial integrity and to stop its military escalation."

- Demanding "all parties must respect international law" without recognizing Israel's inherent right of self-defense PURSUANT to international law in response to an imminent attack by HEZBOLLAH from Lebanon's territory.

- Claiming to "support the efforts of the Lebanese government to extend its authority throughout the country in line with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701" & demanding that "Hezbollah must cease its attacks on Israel" without acknowledging Israel IS supporting this UNSCR that was adopted 20 YEARS AGO by attriting #Hezbollah military capabilities through force of arms. Israel is now required to do so because Lebanon has repeatedly proven unwilling or unable "to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon" as UNSCR 1701 (2006) calls for.

These predominantly progressive governments of mostly middle power countries routinely find it politically expedient to blame Israel in diplomatic messaging by misrepresenting international law while calling on "all parties to exercise maximum restraint" & to refrain "from actions that could lead to further escalation."

This feckless policy approach supports the strategic objectives of terrorists - and their backers in Iran - because nonstate armed groups are, unlike actual states, largely impervious to strongly worded diplomatic demands. Meanwhile, the State of Israel cannot rely on diplomatic pressure alone in pursuit of the "right to live in peace, security and dignity, free from the threat of renewed conflict."

Enough fairytale foreign policy. Opposition parties in Western countries must take the initiative & learn - with precision - how international law is routinely misrepresented by liberal governments as an expedient excuse to blame Israel while appeasing their own progressive & Islamist political bases.

Only then can opposition parties counter this common approach to (geo)political messaging & adequately hold liberal governments to account so constituents can do the same in response where it counts .... at the ballot box. In case of doubt, simply look to newly appointed Prime Minister Janez Jansa (@JJansaSDS) in 🇸🇮 for proof of concept.

#EnoughIsEnough #BlameHezbollah #legaldisinformation

[Julia Hartley-Brewer @JuliaHB1]

NHS staff should be banned from wearing pro-Palestinian badges, report recommends.

Good. About time. When did ANYONE think it was acceptable for NHS staff to wear ANY political insignia while at work? While we're at it, can we ban rainbow lanyards too? https://t.co/romwTCuxWB

[Big Tzimmes @tepermanle]

@Shravaka_Lisa @Hansardish @MarkJCarney The deaths of Gazan noncombatants who Hamas has intentionally put in harm's way as a core element of its "military strategy" despite the IDF's considerable efforts to reduce harm to civilians is not "genocide". That's Hamas committing war crimes against its own people. 1/2

[Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger]

Russia just told on itself this week, and almost nobody noticed.

At a Federation Council meeting, Deputy Justice Minister Oleg Sviridenko admitted that only 4% of the people and groups Russia designated as "foreign agents" in 2025 actually receive any foreign funding.

Before 2022, foreign money was a requirement for the label. His point, said out loud, was that money is no longer what they look for — because, in his words, it "isn't even needed anymore. There are other forms now."

That's a huge admission right there.

The state that spent a century perfecting political subversion is telling you, on the record, that funding is the least interesting part of the equation.

Now look at the conversation this past week. Candace Owens is in St. Petersburg right now, speaking on a panel at Putin's flagship economic forum, beside officials who sit under U.S. sanctions. And the question I keep seeing is some version of "how much is Russia paying her?"

I don't think Russia is paying her anything.

Same with Tucker and the endless speculation over how much Qatar or Iran is supposedly wiring him. I don't think there's a check.

And even if there were, you'd never find it — shell layers, cash, a relative's account, an "honorarium" for a speech, a consulting deal booked in a third country. If your case depends on producing a wire transfer, you've already lost it.

But the deeper mistake is the premise that influence runs on money. It doesn't.

The intelligence world has known this for decades, and it has a name for it: MICE.

🔸️Money
🔸️Ideology
🔸️Coercion
🔸️Ego

Money is one lever of four, and arguably the weakest. Yet our entire legal conversation behaves as if it's the only one on the list.

Ideology is the one we mistake for innocence — the sincere believer who pushes a foreign line because he holds it. We call him a "useful idiot," as if sincerity were a defense rather than the most valuable trait an asset can have.

Coercion is the one you can't see — leverage someone abroad quietly holds and never has to mention.

And Ego is the most underrated of all, because the targets already have money. What a state can hand them for free is the feeling of mattering. A seat at a table they'd never otherwise reach, proximity to power, the sense of being a serious geopolitical figure rather than a podcaster. People have burned down their lives for that.

This is why the binary everyone reaches for (money or ideology) is useless.

Because structurally, we only see the M.

FARA asks one question — did foreign money touch you, and were you acting at the direction of a foreign principal.

Prosecutors hunt for the payment because the payment is provable. So the people most openly advancing a foreign agenda, the ones running on ego or ideology, sit cleanly outside the law.

They're untouchable precisely because they're unpaid. The professionals — Russia, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, China — worked this out long ago.

The cleanest asset has no financial tie at all. No paper trail, no defector risk, nothing to subpoena.

We need to stop asking how much people are being paid. It's the wrong question, built to be unanswerable.

Rather, ask the question Sviridenko handed us for free: what does this person get out of the relationship that they couldn't get anywhere else?

Answer that, and the rest is surprisingly simple.

[Big Tzimmes @tepermanle]

@Shravaka_Lisa @Hansardish @MarkJCarney 2/2 who recently told Mehdi Hassan that he didn't charge Netanyahu and Gallant with genocide because he didn't have sufficient evidence to do so.

[Big Tzimmes @tepermanle]

@Shravaka_Lisa @Hansardish @MarkJCarney What's unfortunate is the number of ill informed or simply dishonest people who think they are in a better position to determine a case of genocide than the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan 1/2

[Hansard (Paraphrased) @Hansardish]

What you have to appreciate is that @MarkJCarney intends to solve antisemitism by driving the Jews out of Canada.

#cdnpoli

[Big Tzimmes @tepermanle]

@ChristoRixman @havivrettiggur Hasan Piker has been open in his support for Hamas, which is proscribed in Britain as a terrorist organization. Uncle Cenk has been shouting that 94% of the US government is controlled by Israel, an antisemitic trope. Britain is not the US and has enough home grown antisemites.

[Rupa Subramanya @rupasubramanya]

Carney has unveiled a new council to combat antisemitism in Canada. The lineup includes a former Liberal minister who is a Muslim, a DEI executive who is also Muslim, a progressive lawyer interested in social justice issues who represented pro-Palestinian encampment activists, an LGBT activist, and an Olympic speed skater.

Only one member is Jewish: Senator Marc Gold, has a long public record in Jewish communal and pro-Israel advocacy.

Seems like expertise in antisemitism was considered optional. If the goal was to reassure Jewish Canadians, this is a bizarre way to go about it.

https://t.co/SdnrHYuFVZ

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

This is a lie.

I mean, it's Glenn, so of course it's a lie.

The UK government hates this Israeli government, and in fact has also banned members of this Israeli government from entering the UK.

It also just banned speakers who were meant to speak at Tommy Robinson's rally from entering the country.

This isn't about Israel. This is a British government that has become awfully trigger-happy with its "do not enter" powers. It's getting to the point where anyone controversial is persona non grata.

That's Britain's right, I suppose, though it's a bad policy and a slippery slope and all the rest.

But it's not about Israel.

Unless literally everything everywhere is always and forever about Israel.

In which case yes, it's about Israel.

[The Greasy Walrus of Monte Cristo @Beaf333]

I noticed that @bnaibrithcanada @CIJAinfo and @CanadianFSWC have not yet issued any public statements about Prime Minister Carney’s announcement about antisemitism.

I can hardly criticize them for staying stony silent.

If I headed one of the leading national Jewish advocacy groups and witnessed the Prime Minister appoint Omar Alghabra (hanging out at right with a guy — Firas Al-Najim — who pickets synagogues and Jewish old folks homes) to a council tasked with confronting antisemitism, I too would be at a loss for words.

[John Aziz @aziz0nomics]

This is like asking if there is gonna be an Irish majority or a French majority in the UK.

[Tar Deux @ArcaneAce]

@HenryFitzempre @HillelNeuer No he wants the Oxford Union to stop being hypocritical.

[Ahmed Al-Khalidi @khalidi79397]

So let me get this straight.

77% of the territory pledged as the Jewish national home was carved off in 1921 to create an Arab emirate. Fine. That's history, and Israel has long since accepted the Jordan River as a border.

But here's the real question:

Why is it still illegal for a Jew to live there?

Jordan's nationality law is explicit. Law No. 6 of 1954, still in force, grants citizenship to "any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948." Read that again. The religious exclusion is written into the text. It is one of the few nationality statutes on earth with a clause aimed at a single religious group.

Land sale to Jews? Under a 1973 Jordanian law, the "Law for Preventing the Sale of Immovable Property to the Enemy," selling land to the "enemy" carries the death penalty and forfeiture of all property. The statute defines "enemy" as Israelis, but in practice it has been applied specifically to sales to Jews, not to Israeli Arabs. The Palestinian Authority inherited this law and enforces it to this day, sentencing land dealers to hard labor for life, with capital punishment still on the books.

So ask the people who chant about apartheid and ethnic cleansing:

Why is a state whose nationality law explicitly excludes Jews, and where selling land to Jews can cost you your life, considered the legitimate, "moderate Hashemite kingdom"?

Why is the one country in the region where Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Bedouin all vote and sit in parliament the "apartheid state"?

Notice the pattern. When 77% of the land was made judenrein by British fiat and Hashemite decree, the world called it statesmanship. When Jews ask to live on the remaining 23%, the world calls it occupation.

A territory was emptied of Jews and kept empty of Jews for a century, and somehow the Jews are the ethnostate.

The map didn't just shrink the Jewish home by three-quarters. It established a principle:

Arab land can be Jew-free as a matter of law, and that this is normal.

Unremarkable.

Not worth a single UN resolution.

Ask why.

[Ihab Hassan @IhabHassane]

Something is deeply shocking me, some people who call themselves “human rights activists” speak endlessly about Palestinian rights, yet won’t utter a single word about Hamas’s brutality against Palestinians. Not just silence, they actively cover for it.

Spare us the hypocrisy.

[Not a Good Jewish Girl✡️ @estherzelda0514]

@EFischberger If 9 allegations of rape is enough for Israel to be on a list, how about the 384 that UN personnel were accused of?

[Defy The Lie @DefyTL]

@EFischberger @NewSamawal Not only this but the UN official who recommended the designation admitted live during a press conference that she never read or reviewed any reports or evidence that the designation was based on:

[Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger]

Next, the report lists specific facilities where violations allegedly occurred.

Among them is "an unidentified base."

They're claiming to have verified cases at a location they cannot name..... How exactly, then, is that verified?