LevantComments

@adam_louis52328 @ezraklein It's a fallacy to say that bc the USSR asserted something 2-4 gens ago that today's anti-Zionists are inspired by that. The biggest factor in the increase in anti-Zionism is Isrl's own actions & rhetoric. Saying it's USSR inspired is intended to obscure Isrl's real HR violations.

According to @ezraklein antizionism is a purely spontaneous response to “what Israel is doing” in the last two and a half years. Why then were all the core libels of antizionism—colonizer, apartheid, genocide, and more—formulated decades ago?

@NTarnopolsky It would also be false in the context of the Iran War eing necessary because Iran was willing to give up its U235 for sanctions relief.

💥"𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 time I got the intel in time," Netanyahu hissed, again hinting the IDF hid crucial info from him before October 7– a lie– before dropping another lie: "If we hadn't acted in time, Iran would already have had nuclear weapons." Both US & Israeli intel say this is false.

@Twah72 @EylonALevy You're right, unfortunately. cnn.com/2024/08/06/mid…

@EylonALevy Israelis are convincing the world of that all by yourselves.

The purpose of the Antizionist hate movement is to convince you Israeli Jews are genocidal monsters who must therefore be destroyed.

@EylonALevy If you don't want people to think that, you MUST OPPOSE THE ISRAELI FAR RIGHT. cnn.com/2024/08/06/mid…

@AmitSegal Did you know that Bibi gave the Haredim (who are overt draft dodgers) NIS 5 billion a few weeks ago? jpost.com/israel-news/ar…

Likud: Bennett’s true face was revealed once again today when he added Keren Turner from “Brothers in Arms” to his party — an organization that encouraged refusal to serve in the IDF, thereby weakening Israel and harming our security. Don’t say you weren’t warned: just as he did last time, Bennett will again form a government with the Left and the Muslim Brotherhood.

@AmitSegal FYI... The Likud has the Haredi parties in their coalition. Their demand, aside from billions in shekels in various subsidies, is DRAFT EXDEMPTION. nytimes.com/2024/03/30/wor…

@yatusabe @sfrantzman You're right. People exaggerate when they talk about a "nation's" foreign policy. Whether its the US, South Korea, or Israel, it's just the president/prime minister's foreign policy.

@sfrantzman lee jae myung is the most left-wing president in south korean history, who won a hasty election in the middle of an acute political crisis. probably a statistical outlier and acting more out of his administration's ideology than a national consensus.

Interesting, recent Israel diplomatic clashes and quarrels with 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇰🇷 and 🇹🇷 Each for different reasons with some different results or actions; however all of them within the last 48 hours. South Korea is certainly a new one because usually ties are quite good.

@Nassreddin2002 The Houthis only control a part of Yemen too. Not the whole country.

Syria still being red is all you need to know The current Syrian govt is not at all allied to Hezbollah or Iran Yet Israel fears that Syria develops and rebuilds to a functioning country. It wants Syria to be a permanent war torn wasteland

The map alone is bullsh*t and a demonstration of what a liar Bibi is. Syria is now anti-Iranian. The Houthis don't control all of Yemen.

@CathyYoung63 @ProfDBernstein Bibi has given the rightmost 10% of Israel wildly disproportionate power. Smotrich is the second most powerful person in Isrl, Ben-Gvir the 3rd. The rightmost 10% has more power than the center. There are equal distortions in favor of the Haredim. That is not democracy.

@ProfDBernstein I think his alliance with people like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich & his embrace of the nation-state law have unquestionably damaged Israel's standing as a liberal democracy. And let's not forget his attempts to curb the judiciary.

No, he isn't saying that. He's saying, unequivocally, that he wants Iran defeated. He's also saying that he can't see it as an unalloyed good if it strengthens Trump & Netanyahu, given how dangerous they are for American & Israeli democracy. Which is entirely reasonable.

@EylonALevy Bibi is annexing the West Bank, making 1 mil homeless in Lebanon, seizing half of Gaza, and led the US to war in Iran. How can you equate hatred of him with the irrational religious prejudice of Spain in the 16th century?

In so many ways, it’s amazing how little Spain has changed since the Inquisition.

@Jerusalem_Post Why are you so confident that Israel will never be put under economic sanctions?

Opinion: Israel needs to be feared, not loved. It is a resilient country, not a wet rag that meekly accepts international restrictions and absorbs Western denunciations. jpost.com/opinion/articl…

@elikowaz Israel, under Bibi, alienates or infuriates people on purely domestic issues that have no security basis. The Nation-State Law, Lara al-Qasem ban, judicial "reform," toleration of anti-Christian harassment, and disrespect for non-Orthodox Judaism alienate ppl for no benefit.

Israel didn't need Ben Gvir calling for Gaza to be wiped out to fight Hamas. It didn't need Smotrich saying it would be 'justified and moral to starve 2 million people.' It didn't need a death penalty bill for Palestinians in the West Bank to dismantle terror infrastructure. Multiple US allies sanctioned these ministers specifically for their statements — not for fighting Hamas. Those were choices. Choices have costs.

@netanyahu Arrogance. Why are you trying to start a war with Turkey?

ישראל תחת הנהגתי תמשיך להילחם במשטר הטרור של איראן ובשלוחותיו, בניגוד לארדואן שמסייע להם ואף טובח באזרחיו הכורדים.

@SethAMandel Israel restarted the Gaza War twice to pursue a "total victory" that it never attained (Hamas is still armed and still governing half of Gaza). By not doing that it could have preserved more US support.

I think the fact that there was no sympathy after Oct. 7 for Israel to even squander was the real shock, and it makes a lot of the 'advice' it got afterwards from abroad seem in bad faith.

Israel is facing an unusually difficult challenge to its image in America. The question, then, becomes: what would it cost Israel to maintain its popularity? Could Israel plausibly live in safety and security while also keeping Americans' sympathy? commentary.org/seth-mandel/wh…

@AvivaKlompas @SethAMandel A reminder of how Israel prolonged and restarted the war.

@AvivaKlompas @SethAMandel That's a false binary. Israel could have chosen not to restart the Gaza War in the fall of 2023 or spring of 2025. It could not have used food deprivation as a weapon.

What could Israel have done to prevent its continuing fall in U.S. public opinion? @SethAMandel has the answer - all Israel had to do was “let Iran and its proxies get away with Nazi levels of violence against Jews.” Hard pass. We’ll take being hated over being butchered. commentary.org/seth-mandel/wh…

@BriannaWu It's not just "information warfare." The animus results from actual Israeli policy that Netanyahu wants. What you call "demonization" I think is 90% of the time "appropriate criticism." There are so many examples. nytimes.com/2026/02/23/wor…

The reason I don’t bother critiquing Netanyahu is he’s a scapegoat. Does Ben Gvir and his right wing government suck? Obviously. I talked to Israelis in Habima Square holding massive protests against him. But the actual problem is the information warfare set up to mislead the public into hating Israel no matter what it does. What happened in Lebanon this week is a great example. The Pallywood storyline is indiscriminate bombing of civilians. The reality was 4 terrorists were killed for every civilian in a highly targeted attack as Israel took out the terrorists firing missiles at their civilians. This is an EXCELLENT civilian to combatant ratio. And the realty is any leader in Israel would stop Hezbollah from slaughtering its civilians. So why single out Netanyahu? Their internal disputes over his (atrocious) changes to the judiciary are an internal problem to be solved by Israelis. My focus is our nation’s shared national security strategy. I see no point in demonizing him further. My opinion is Israelis are excellent at actual warfare, but losing the information warfare badly. If they don’t get better at it soon, antisemitism is only going to continue growing.

@moseshessstan I don't think non-Likud prime minister would have had the immediate paranoia about al-Shaara and bombed Syria for weeks despite the lack of anti-Israel rhetoric and capabiliity from the (very weak) Syrian government.

Eh, Rabin probably wouldn't have flattened Gaza the way they did and would have accepted way more IDF losses.

@NormalDemocrats I'm a Zionist, and it's blind to say that there is nothing that is sustainable or serious" behind the hatred. There are daily pogroms in the West Bank and Israel is openly annexationist. Crimes like this happen every day and they align w/ govt policy. nytimes.com/2026/02/23/wor…

We desperately need unapologetic Zionist in the Democratic Party. The current position of “we hate Israel and AIPAC, and think Zionists secretly control the government, but we like Jews and only hate Israel because of Netanyahu but can’t really point to a specific fact that justifies that hatred” is just not sustainable or serious.