Joshua Ort-Leifer
@joshualeifer
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Author of TABLETS SHATTERED @DuttonBooks. Writing @nybooks, @guardian, @972Mag etc. Editorial board @DissentMag. My better half @ShaindOrtLeifer.
Joined December 2011
Working on a couple of new projects so will be off here for a while. Might post some updates at: Otherwise via email.
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This video is a horrifying testament to what Zionism has done to Judaism.
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That the first serious American Jewish presidential contender is being slurred as an anti-Semite is completely outrageous.
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In nearly every Jewish space I was in growing up, the conflation between Jewishness and Israeli nationalism was absolute. It does not surprise me that non-Jews struggle to make this distinction when it is so often intentionally blurred.
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There are obviously a lot of reasons why the US discourse on Palestine seems to be shifting dramatically—the effect of second wave BLM protests is clear. But it's also that neocon-style framing of a democratic Israel vs. a "Islamofascist" Hamas is simply no longer credible.
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The Democratic Party leadership has spent the past several days literally defaming their junior colleagues in front of AIPAC lobbyists.
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NOW: Some creative chanting, tense but energetic on the Manhattan Bridge
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Talking with an activist friend in Jerusalem, they said they had never seen, in their years of activism, such numbers of far-right youth, some of them armed, storming the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah tonight. 1/.
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Turned on my phone after the holiday and was overwhelmed by the images of death and horror. My partner and I frantically text friends and loved ones to make sure they're okay. Everyone seems to have lost someone or knows someone who has. The loss, the tragedy—incomprehensible. 1/.
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Bari Weiss defending Gina Carano for sharing a meme almost identical to the one that fueled "Muralgate" and the condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK is a more perfect illustration of the hypocrisy and stupidity of this entire discourse than I ever could've imagined.
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In this video, a Jewish man is driving around with a loudspeaker asking, "Give me the addresses of Arabs in Netanya.".
לאן הגענו? אדם נוסע ברחובות עם כריזה ומבקש ״תנו לי כתובות של ערבים בנתניה״
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Like countless American Jews, I grew up celebrating "Jerusalem Day" in school. The violence of this day was always just below the surface, but we were taught to venerate the IDF and Israel's military might. Looking back on it all, it horrifies me.
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Netanyahu took Bolsonaro to visit Yad Vashem, where Bolsonaro claimed there was no doubt the Nazis were leftists. The Israeli prime minister is actively fostering Holocaust revisionism — at Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum no less.
נשיא ברזיל לאחר ביקור ב"יד ושם": אין ספק שהנאצים היו שמאלנים • @BarakRavid ו-@dannymoljo עם כל הפרטים >> (צילום: רויטרס)
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I thought we were leftists because we abhor cruelty, detest violence, and believe in the inherent, even divine, worth of all human life. I thought we were leftists because our struggle was for all people to be able to live with freedom and dignity. 3/.
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Now is a time to mourn the lives, and, against all odds, keep our faith in the possibility of a better future for all people, Palestinians and Israelis alike. We must not give up on that faith, no matter what, for if we lose that faith, everything is lost. 6/6.
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NOW: In Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinians protesting against the war in Gaza, calling for an end to the bombing, the occupation, and the siege.
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There's also a deep sense that the left abroad has lost the values it was supposed to stand for. I thought we were leftists because we wanted a world without war, torture, the killing of families & children in their beds 2/.
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People who were supposed to have been interlocutors, partners in some type of common conversation, self-professed human rights defenders, even would-be colleagues are celebrating and glorifying unspeakable acts that violate the most basic elements of human life. I feel sick. 5/.
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Yet another glimpse of the incitement that occurs regularly on Israeli TV: . "If they fire rockets at us," says Ariel Sharon's son, "you strangle them. No water, no electricity, no food, no gas, no medical treatments. Nothing.".
הנה הצעה מפורשת לביצוע רצח עם, מפיו של הבן של אדון סברה ושתילה. (הרי בלי מים, אנשים מתים. כן?) עדיף היה שישמור על זכות השתיקה, כמו בפרשת האי היווני, ויסתום. אורן וינגנפלד, המראיין, שאל אותו אחרי האמירה הזו: "מדוע להבנתך זה לא קרה עד עכשיו". יופי @N12News
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Are these not the values that led us to oppose the cruel siege on Gaza? To resist the brutalities of the occupation? To oppose apartheid? Where are these values when Israeli children are held hostage, families wiped out, corpses violated before cheering crowds? 4/.
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For decades, Israeli and Jewish leftists tried to warn the Israeli government and its defenders that perpetual occupation, indifference to Palestinian suffering, and hubris would not only corrode the country's moral fabric but ultimately harm the legitimacy of the state.
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The Israeli Prime Minister's son really is a white nationalist.
@EUinIsrael @ThePCFF @cfpeace >>> countries! Schengen zone is dead and soon your evil globalist organization will be too, and Europe will return to be free, democratic and Christian!.
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It is hard to capture just how huge this rally, for Black Trans Lives, really is, by the Brooklyn Museum
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Happening now: Dozens of Israeli Jewish activists gathering for a vigil in front of the US embassy in Jerusalem, calling for a ceasefire and mourning the 20,000 Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip
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Since Andrew Yang supports the right of Palestinian refugees to return—a core anti-Zionist demand—and Bari Weiss endorsed Yang, I guess this means Weiss is now complicit in fuelling the rise of antisemitism around the world? Sorry Bari, I don't make the rules—you did.
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Netanyahu’s closest parallel, at this point, is Milosevic. Eventually, the Serbian people rejected his system of rule. Israel’s future depends on its people’s ability to do the same to Bibi’s violent kleptocracy.
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Less than an hour before the launch event for my book Tablets Shattered, a conversation with Rabbi Andy Bachman, @powerHouseBooks in Brooklyn told me they were unwilling to host the conversation with Andy because they would not permit a Zionist on the premises.
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Just wait until Lindsay Graham learns what a kibbutz is.
On Fox right now, Sen Lindsay Graham describes @aoc and others as "a bunch of communists. They hate Israel. They hate our country. they're socialists. They're ant-Semitic.".
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Bret Stephens: "calling me a bedbug is fascism". Nicholas Kristof: "Hong Kong was nicer under British colonialism". David Brooks: "Democrats are losing because they like fancy ham". Bari Weiss: "free speech is a right except for Palestinians". Maureen Dowd: "Yo, proletariat".
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The horror of a Jewish candidate speaking from a place of Jewish particularism to advocate for universalist values instead of merely parochial concerns. There is a long history of Jews fighting for all people's rights as well as their own. Bernie is part of this tradition.
Sanders introduces this "plan to reject Trump's hate" in the context of anti-Semitism. But there's nothing here about fighting anti-Semitism or protecting Jews. His "Welcoming and Safe America for All" is an immigration plan, a complete 180 since his strong borders talk of 2015.
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A friend from the South Hebron hills just sent this message. Settlers are threatening to expel him and his whole village if they don’t comply. With all attention on Gaza, settlers are carrying out village-to-village expulsions in the occupied West Bank.
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It's by now cliché to say this, but the people who so often claim to speak for American Jews are extremely out of sync with what the vast majority of American Jews actually believe.
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I think it is worth saying—yes, again—that the great lacuna of the self-appointed free-speech warriors is Israel-Palestine.
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If you support making BDS illegal in the US, but you would also like space in prestige publications to write about "the disease of the Arab mind," you are not a defender of free speech, but a bigot, who wants not only a platform but to be insulated from criticism for that bigotry.
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For all the talk of the need to root out bigotry, the pro-Israel community has done little to combat its own rampant anti-Arab & anti-Black racism. Figures like Boteach, Mort Klein, Adam Milstein—with long records of outrageous comments—are not just welcomed but celebrated.
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I'm old enough to remember when left-wing Jews were barred from speaking at Hillels, forced out of communities, silenced and defamed, their Judaism second-guessed or deemed illegitimate.
Well done, @bungarsargon.
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"Two Muslim US congresswomen have been targeted by a vast international operation that exploits far-right pages on Facebook to inflame Islamophobia for profit."
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Trump's re-classifying American Jews as a national minority in the United States feels bad, and like a harbinger of something worse. Hopefully it won't be, but it's hard not to fear.
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Dark-money groups like this want you to think this is just teenagers celebrating a holiday. And it is, except they're chanting a hateful song and shouting "may their names be erased" at the Palestinians. You can't lie about what's happening anymore. It's all plain to see.
@joshualeifer Palestinians are setting fire to their own mosque and you're upset Jewish teenagers are celebrating Jerusalem Day?. Are you guys sharing the IfNotNow kool-aid?.
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Not surprising but still absurd that the Israeli govt’s public position is: actually, international law doesn’t matter because the Bible.
This policy reflects an historical truth - that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judea and Samaria. In fact, we are called Jews because we are the people of Judea.
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It's depressingly funny that the Jewish Agency head Herzog demanded that he speak to Rogen, then went to the press claiming Rogen apologized when Rogen claims to have done no such thing and also never gave permission for the call to be published
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It is truly insane that Sanders can continually talk about his Jewish background, the impact of the Holocaust on his life, and yet rightwing Jewish commentators insist he's insufficiently loyal to Jews because also believes that Palestinians have basic human rights.
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In the streets of Jerusalem tonight: a crowd of several hundreds. They're chanting "death to the Arabs.".
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One way to understand the striking denialism that characterizes much of the American Jewish community's response to Israel's policies is that it's a kind of political fantasy. Many in the community *do not want* to know what's actually happening.
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I wrote this book to explore debates within American Jewish life, which of course includes many people who identify as Zionists. My biggest worry was about synagogues not wanting to host me. I didn't think it would be bookstores in Brooklyn that would be closing their doors.
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Two NYPD officers just brutally arrested a homeless man in the Broadway-Lafayette station. They had him in a chokehold and punched him.
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I think it's time to view the concerted false accusations of antisemitism against leading progressive politicians as part of the broader right-wing misinformation ecosystem. And I worry that even sharing these accusations to debunk them inadvertently ends up fueling them.
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If "Yom Yerushalayim" was part of your upbringing, now is the time to betray everything about that holiday and to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, the Old City, the rest of Jerusalem & all of Palestine. It's their homes & livelihoods that are at stake.
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After Israel’s war last war in Gaza in 2021, I wrote about the settler right’s growing ambition—to capture the Israeli state and carry out a Second Nakba. They’ve been saying it out loud for years.
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If you celebrate the killing of innocent civilians as you did on Oct. 7 you aren't a leftist—just another apologist for indiscriminate nationalist violence.
A “right to self-determination” is not something that follows from ethnic identity. It is a right to live free of colonial domination. It is self-defense. If you side with Wilson over Lenin on this then you aren’t a leftist.
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Civility is a demand placed by those with power on those who have less.
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The brutality meted out by Israeli forces against Palestinians in Jerusalem these last few weeks is what "Jerusalem Day" has always meant for Palestinians. The ugly truth is that American Jewish communities have abetted, justified—and rejoiced in—this violence for decades.
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The knee on the back of his neck.
While kneeling on his neck, an Israeli soldier brutally assaulted the Palestinian young man Omar Alkhatib before arresting him. Alkhatib was participating in a peaceful demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood tonight. #Jerusalem #SaveSheikhJarraj
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First it was Beto, then Yang, then, Buttigieg. It seems every week there's a media storm around new 2020 democratic candidate. Why? Because there is a stubborn refusal to recognize that Bernie is actually the front-runner and grapple with what that means.
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What is described here are not instances of anti-Semitism but having your ideology—Zionism—be challenged in the public sphere and being asked to justify it.
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The carnage coming out of Gaza is unbearable to witness. This war must end. It should have ended long ago.
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The disjuncture between the Anglo/international left and the Israeli left is huge. Even when the former performatively amplify the latter, they usually and maddeningly disregard their actual politics completely.
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Hardly a week passes now without an instance of such violence or the explicit threat of it directed towards Palestinians (or those suspected of being Palestinian) in Jerusalem’s downtown. This video is one instance of many recently:.
Several assaults on Palestinian workers reported in several parts of Jaffa Street W of Jerusalem City. Be advised accordingly
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Boosting Naftali Bennett's career to end Netanyahu's is a decision that the Israeli center-left will almost certainly come to regret.
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Barak, born in Lithuania, evades liquidation of the Kovno ghetto, survives Holocaust, escapes to mandatory Palestine, eventually becomes head of Israeli Supreme Court, now out of retirement to serve on ICJ tribunal charging Israel with genocide. In one life, a terrible century.
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For @thenation, I wrote about why it is long past time to recognize that the ADL lacks the credibility to be the arbiter of what counts as bigotry.
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Extreme right-wing Israeli youth shouts at protesters against the judicial overhaul in Jerusalem: “I’m going to do a Shoah to you, I’m Hitler, heil Hitler.”. The far-right in its own words.
״אני אעשה לכם שואה! שואה! אני היטלר!״ בן נוער בצעקות על המפגינים. השוטרים לידו ללא תגובה.
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The result is that on the streets, far-right vigilantism is on the rise, while on the radio, TV, and social media, the ideas that normalize and fuel this violence receive unprecedented airtime. It is a dangerous feedback loop. And this is only the beginning. 6/6.
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Everyone knows Wolf Blitzer worked for AIPAC and edited its monthly magazine, right?.
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@mkazin They are chanting this verse from Judges about taking revenge on the Philistines, which has become something of a right-wing hate anthem:
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While in the past there were periodic attacks on Arab residents, by small groups of far-right Jewish hooligans, this has now become a routine feature of Thursday nights. 3/.
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The sight of Israel at the ICJ is an enormous shame. It should be a jolt to the entire Israeli system. And yet mainstream media and politicians are already at work labeling the trial as a baseless attack on Israel. The bitter fruit of hubris met with more hubris.
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Only in the Orwellian double-speak of the hasbara world is it somehow inappropriate to write that Israeli military technologies are, in fact, developed in order to kill people. The Merkava tank was not invented to cultivate tulip fields.
We call on @nytimes to delete and explain it’s outrageous tweet disparaging Israel + apologize immediately. The anti-Israel bias expressed in this rhetoric misrepresents the Jewish State’s research & development for the good of all nations as we collectively combat COVID-19.
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One of the amazing things about the present is how powerful people continually reveal that they have no idea what they’re talking about.
Benny Gantz forming the government in Israel and Trudeau and the Liberals winning the most seats is a sign that the wave of Trumpism has crested and the center-left alternative is rising.
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Two months into the war, Israel still has no plan—not now, now for the day afterward. Listening to interviews with former security officials, it’s clear the strategy is one of gruesome improvisation: inflict maximum carnage, see what happens next. 1/.
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Over half a million Israelis live in the occupied West Bank. .
Thank you so much to @BBC and @PRI for having me on to talk about anti-Semitism in the US in both parties, and how American Jews are the eyes and ears for Israelis who aren't allowed into the occupied West Bank. Listen in later today to see how these connect!
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Jerusalem, of course, has always been a “flashpoint,” but over the last several years the street politics have changed for the worst in perceptible ways. An example…2/.
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This is Tel Aviv tonight, as protests against police violence continue following the killing of 18-year-old Ethiopian Israeli Solomon Teka by a plainclothes Israeli policeman.
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NOW: Protesters walking off the bridge and back into Brooklyn
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The uncomfortable reality is that between the river and the sea there are three political visions backed, obviously with substantial power differentials, by force of arms. - 1 state Israeli settler vision.- 1 state Hamas/Islamist vision.- 2 state Fatah-PA/liberal Zionist vision.
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The idea that anti-Zionist or non-Zionist Jews are somehow being "used" by non-Jews is pernicious and frankly insulting.
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So many of us who criticized Israeli government policies, who opposed right-wing Zionist organizations on campuses, were hounded out of Jewish communal spaces, passed over for jobs & other opportunities, because of our views—and with the support of people who signed the letter.
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This intensified street violence is part of the rise of the far-right, exemplified by MK Itamar Ben-Gvir but not limited to him. This far-right has given a political form to teenage hooliganism, while at the same time waging a successful discursive battle. 5/.
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The president of the United States and his supporters incited the deadliest antisemitic attack in the country's history. It is outrageous that this fact has been submerged beneath the endless fretting about left-wing antisemitism.
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A Sanders presidency would likely resemble Obama's in the sense that a campaign with strong grassroots and activist support would become a government incapable of meeting its supporters demands. The question for the left is what to do with this disappointment.
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tfw you’ve completely forgotten the past 200 years of Jewish history
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Nakba denialism (for lack of a better term) is pervasive in the American Jewish organizational world, and that is true even in milieus where people advocate for an end to the occupation.
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This is obvious, but the margins by which members of the Squad won their primaries—compared to the headlines about their primaries in the mainstream press—really demonstrates how "objective" political journalism actively roots against progressives.
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This is a heinous, brutal war crime on top of innumerable Israeli war crimes.
SCOOP: Israel tells UN to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip within 24 hours. My story on @axios .
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Not everyday you wake up to an op-ed in the NYTimes with a second paragraph that says, in short, "I do not believe in the concept of universal human rights"
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In the mixed Israeli city of Ramle, right-wing Jewish demonstrators are checking cars for Arab drivers—and stoning their cars.
זה מה שקורה כרגע ברמלה. בודקים רכבים יהודי רשאי לעבור, ערבי נרגם. כמו אתמול בחלק הערבי של העיר - המשטרה פשוט לא כאן וההמון משתולל
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There is, in fact, a nonviolent movement that aims to end the occupation. It’s called BDS, and it’s one the NYJA opposes.
.@nycDSA: why not take a more constructive approach to fighting Netanyahu's terrible policies? One idea: ask candidates to commit to supporting a just & peaceful settlement for both Palestinians AND Israelis.
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The anti-war protests should start now.
Trump orders 1,000 troops to Middle East amid Iran tensions
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The "free-speech debate" is a strategy in an actual political struggle with material stakes. And it is—consciously—being fought in parallel with a very serious legal push to make anti-Zionism, BDS, etc *illegal* in the US
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A leaked memo shows the ADL strategizing how to defend Israel against annexation's critics. The ADL is particularly worried annexation could exacerbate already strained relations with leaders of color and civil rights activists. My report @JewishCurrents.
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This linking of antisemitism with anti-Americanism, as if one were a corollary of the other, is how the ruling class uses Jews to shield itself from criticism and scrutiny. And this instrumentalization of Jews is itself the product of anti-Jewish thinking.
. they are Anti-Semitic, they are Anti-America, we don’t need to know anything about them personally, talk about their policies. I think they are American citizens who are duly elected that are running on an agenda that is disgusting, that the American people will reject. .
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explaining to the landlord that rent might be late because Paypal thinks Qassam Soleimani payed the Quds force via Paypal.
Nine paychecks of JC staff and contributors are currently being held by PayPal. The reason: we used the word "Iran" in reference to @DavidKlion's piece published last week.
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Hard to take some in the ceasefire movement seriously at their word when chants to wage war until the last Israeli is gone are a near-constant feature of demos.
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Heard yesterday from a lawyer working w/Palestinians in Israeli prisons that conditions have declined dramatically to an even more abysmal level than before: cases of dozens of people held in a single room, forced to sleep on the floor, minimal food (“hard boiled egg for dinner”).
Guardian: More than 8,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, rights groups say -- Number held without charge at historic high amid intensified wave of arrests after 7 October attacks by Hamas.
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My reply to @gabrielwinant and all those on the left who seem to think it’s impossible to oppose the killing, torture, and kidnapping of innocent civilians and the brutal Israeli assault on Gaza at the same time.
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Hawkish, pro-Israeli government groups have spent many millions of dollars in campaigns against progressives like Omar this primary season. In basically every race, that money has won nothing.
I've seen enough: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) wins renomination in #MN05, defeating Antone Melton-Meaux (D).
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The biggest, best-funded organizations in American Jewish life put on a pro-Israel rally in DC last Sunday. Barely 1,000 people showed up. There is an entire communal, organizational edifice seemingly lacking a real constituency.
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