Daniel Seidemann
90K posts
Daniel Seidemann
@DanielSeidemann
All things Jerusalem. Retweet is not necessarily an endorsement (often the opposite). At POST: @DanielSeidemann
Wow.
I trust & listen to @DanielSeidemann - it’s hard to know what’s true & what’s fake. He’s generally on target and knows. He was an Israeli special forces soldier & is the expert on boundaries/maps etc He is sought out by American Democrats & Republicans alike.
Speaking from Jordan, the former Custos of the Holy Land makes an appeal for a “great gathering for all” in the name of peace and an end to violence in the Middle East, stressing that the only weapons Christians should use are "prayer and fasting." vaticannews.va/en/church/news…
Okay, I will bite and respond to this sockpuppet account reply guy with fewer than 100 posts and 2 followers... What @DanielSeidemann has written is entirely factual. Indeed, the issue of disinformation surrounding the closure of the Holy Sepulchre and other religious sites (Western Wall, Haram Al Sharif) in the Old City of Jerusalem, has caused a great many issues for local Palestinians who are literally telling western audiences to not make shit up about the reality in Jerusalem. The situation for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank is absolutely horrific without even mentioning the cataclysmic reality in Gaza as a result of Israel's genocide. Disinformation only ever serves the Israeli occupation and their propagandists. They feed on any slight factual error and run with it because it makes so-called pro-Palestinians look stupid, bigoted and lazy. Archbishop Theodosios (Hanna) of Sebastia, the highest ranking Palestinian in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy City of Jerusalem and all Palestine, even published a statement on his social media correcting the disinformation because it is damaging to the Palestinian cause and to the local Palestinian Christian population who are struggling to keep their community, traditions and families alive in the land of Jesus. Israel's decision to close the Old City of Jerusalem, to shutter Holy sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims, absolutely deserves to be analysed and critiqued. The impact it has on businesses belonging to Palestinian, Armenian and other residents of the Old City should not be understated. Israel's punitive closure of Palestinian East Jerusalem while West Jerusalem remains open on certain days is also worth looking at closely. The disproportionate impact it has in the Israeli use of such closure powers to harm the Palestinian population needs to be highlighted. Provision of bomb shelters or lack thereof in Palestinian populated areas within Israel and occupied East Jerusalem is also another very important topic. Most of the Churches, Mosques and synagogues in Old Jerusalem are hundreds if not thousands of years old. Of course they do not have bomb shelters. In fact, the old city lacks bomb shelters no matter where you are standing. To conclude: making things up and spreading disinformation is not only wrong but also extremely harmful to the Palestinian cause. Stop doing it.
"If Netanyahu, so arrogant about his ability to influence the US, ends up destroying America’s alliance with Israel, there will be a measure of poetic justice in it. But the fallout won’t be Israel’s alone, given how often both Zionists and antisemites conflate Israel with the Jewish people as a whole." nytimes.com/2026/03/18/opi…
This is probably the most important article of the month: an op-ed by Oman's Foreign Minister, who mediated the talks between the U.S. and Iran, in which he writes that the U.S. "has lost control of its foreign policy" to Israel. He repeats that a deal was possible as an outcome of the talks (something confirmed by the UK's National Security Advisor, who also attended: x.com/i/status/20341…) and that the military strike by the U.S. and Israel was "a shock." Interestingly, given he is one of Iran's neighbors and given that Oman has been struck multiple times by Iran since the war began (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran…), he writes that "Iran’s retaliation against what it claims are American targets on the territory of its neighbours was an inevitable result" of the U.S.-Israeli attack. He describes it as "probably the only rational option available to the Iranian leadership." He says the war "endangers" the region's entire "economic model in which global sport, tourism, aviation and technology were to play an important role." He adds that "if this had not been anticipated by the architects of this war, that was surely a grave miscalculation." But, he adds, the "greatest miscalculation" of all for the U.S. "was allowing itself to be drawn into this war in the first place." In his view this was the doing of "Israel’s leadership" who "persuaded America that Iran had been so weakened by sanctions, internal divisions and the American-Israeli bombings of its nuclear sites last June, that an unconditional surrender would swiftly follow the initial assault and the assassination of the supreme leader." Obviously, this proved completely wrong, and the U.S. is now in a quagmire. He says that, given this, "America’s friends have a responsibility to tell the truth," which is that "there are two parties to this war who have nothing to gain from it," namely "Iran and America." He says that all of the U.S. interests in the region (end to nuclear proliferation, secure energy supply chains, investment opportunities) are "best achieved with Iran at peace." As he writes, "this is an uncomfortable truth to tell, because it involves indicating the extent to which America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told." He then proposes a couple of paths to get back to the negotiating table, although he recognizes how difficult it would be for Iran "to return to dialogue with an administration that twice switched abruptly from talks to bombing and assassination." That's perhaps the most profound damage Trump did during this entire episode: the complete discrediting of diplomacy. If Iran was taught anything, it is: don't negotiate with the U.S., it's a trap that will literally kill you. The great irony of the man who sold himself as a dealmaker is that he taught the world one thing: don't make deals with my country. Link to the article: economist.com/by-invitation/…