Remember when we learned that our wealthiest and most powerful people were connected to a guy who ran a literal child sex trafficking ring? And then that guy died mysteriously in a jail? And now we just don't talk about it.
I am very glad Israel got all the hostages back. Now can we spend that same energy to discuss the nearly 4,600 hostages Israel is holding without formal charges? They include globally respected figures such as Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, Bushra al-Tawil and Ismail al-Ghoul.
I call on the Europeans to stop their inflammatory rhetoric. The only formula is land for peace. Europe must be realistic and make territorial concessions. Intransigence and radicalism are not the path forward. Only dialogue and negotiation.
I took this footage when I was about 13. What youโre seeing is Jewish American tourists parading around our house like itโs a zoo, gloating about stealing it, harassing us and hurling insults. This is some of what we are protesting when we protest land theft events at Yeshivas.
โTo preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library. To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewellery, art, banks, food. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a manโs teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.โ
- Omar El Akkad (2025)
In a normal world, this should be an immense scandal in Europe.
Le Monde has a long article (https://t.co/HsWFThQ5wF) describing the hellish life of Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the ICC in The Hague, due to U.S. sanctions punishing him for authorizing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.
Guillou's daily existence has been transformed into a Kafkaesque nightmare. He cannot: open or maintain accounts with Google, Amazon, Apple, or any US company; make hotel reservations (Expedia canceled his booking in France hours after he made it); conduct online commerce, since he can't know if the packaging is American; use any major credit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex are all American); access normal banking services, even with non-American banks, as banks worldwide close sanctioned accounts; conduct virtually any financial transaction.
He describes it as being "economically banned across most of the planet," including in his own country, France, and where he works, the Netherlands.
That's the real shocking aspect of this: the Americans are:
- punishing a European citizen
- for doing his job in Europe
- applying laws Europe officially supports
- at an institution based in Europe
- that Europe helped create and fund
and Europe is not only doing essentially nothing to protect him, they're actively enforcing America's sanctions against their own citizen - European banks closing his accounts, European companies refusing him service, European institutions standing by while Washington destroys a European judge's life on European soil.
Again, in a normal world, European leaders and citizens should be absolutely outraged about this. But we've so normalized the hollowing out of European sovereignty that the sight of a European citizen being economically executed on European soil for upholding European law is treated, at best, as an unfortunate technical complication in transatlantic relations.
A message for my Dutch friends. Despite its length and my shadow ban, I ask that you read and share as widely as possible:
When a genocidaire minister of a genocidal state calls you out on cancelling a concert featuring the IDF chief cantor (a fully accredited officer) and then goes on to blame you for being perennial antisemites, please know you are on the right side of history. You are taking a moral stand that you will remember proudly. You face the growing power of global, genocidal Fascism and you do so with courage and clarity. You are an inspiration to me and to the others in Israel and around the world who resist the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in every way possible. Love and courage and power to you all ๐ณ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฑ๐ซถ๐ป
Iโm always surprised by techโs hostility to subjects like sociology since many of their big ideas require social technology far beyond what's possible today.
As an example, we basically have no idea how to engineer a sociologically stable mars colony from first principles.
Zohran Mamdani has written a playbook for a new generation of political leaders.
In a world where 100% of legacy politicians regurgitate โIsrael has a right to exist as a Jewish state,โ all you have to say is โIsrael has a right to exist as a state with equal rights.โ
Youโll expose your opponent for NOT supporting equal rights in Israel & youโll expose Zionism as a Jewish supremacist ideology.
All in 12 words!