Yo’av Karny

If Israel is buying stolen Ukrainian grain, we have to wonder whose side Israel and Netanyahu are on? They can’t be the ally of democracy and freedom while empowering Russia. Period

#Russia's grinding machine: it has lost 1,322,550 troops in #Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion in 2022, according to Ukraine military command. The number includes 1,110 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day. In #Donetsk, Russia is losing about 316 soldiers per square kilometer, double last year’s rate msn.com/en-us/news/wor…

Could anything be more emblematic of #Israel's accelerating drift to the status of a #RogueState than the tale of a #kippah, or religious headcover, being torn by Israeli police off an observant man's head for the unforgivable sin of preaching coexistence: #Israeli and #Palestinian flags cohabited on it, side by side. Israelis who claim a historical memory stretching across millennia (of actual and mythical history) couldn't bring themselves to recalling that the very foundation of their state is predicated on their ancestors’ acceptance, under international law, of the Holy Land #partition, mandated by the UN in November 1947. It is that partition which gave them the right to declare independence six months later, be instantly recognized by the superpowers and be admitted to the UN within a year. Israel's renunciation of the principle of partition calls its very legitimacy into question. This kippah mutilation would be viewed one day as the reflection of a twisted mind; ultimate folly on the part of a nation gone obtuse, blind and suicidal x.com/YairGolan1/sta…

Jewish and Arab women draw on an ancient Haggadic theme to narrate the unending nature of the nightmare that their common life has been for over a century. (To so many of their compatriots the very act of raising voice in unison amounts to treason. Need one say more) x.com/IhabHassane/st…

@ChrisMurphyCT Beware sarcasm, Senator. It’s a tool common to the ineloquent

Ok Twitter, I can’t believe I need to clarify this but obviously Trump’s bungled mismanagement of this war is not “awesome”. As I have said a million times here, it’s a disaster and he should end the war immediately. My tweet was something called “sarcasm”.

Fascinating and compelling explained, thank you. I wonder however how this would have been rendered to Spanish. Would the interpreter have provided an inkling of the Confucian idiomatic legacy? Probably not. Would it have occurred to Xi that in the absence of cultural interpretation his words would have been wasted on Sánchez? Is Xi, or are Chinese officials in general, aware of the objective difficulties in rendering Chinese idioms into Western languages? If not, how much of their discourse fails to reach their target audience? Does Chinese diplomacy suffer as a result? Do foreign interlocutors know so much less about China’s positions, or at least about China’s demeanor, than they assume?

So why is Xi complaining about “collapsing etiquette” and “bad music” to the Spanish Prime Minister? This is not a throwaway remark. In the traditional Confucian system, 礼 (etiquette/ritual) dictates what one should do in a given role and circumstance, while 乐 (music) reflects

@kylegriffin1 He has imploded. Couldn’t help himself. Next: sanctions on the Vatican. Perhaps he’ll follow the Chinese example and announce that he alone is allowed to appoint bishops. Time for an anti-Papist campaign, not seen since 1688

The president is now attacking Pope Leo: "Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy." "I don't want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I'm doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History."

We are entering spheres hitherto unimagined and unconceived. We know now what Robert Oppenheimer had in mind when he quoted the the Hindu scriptures upon unleashing the force of the split atom: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” There aren't enough benches in enough courts in enough Hagues to deal with this announced plot against humanity. Boys will be boys no more. Not in the bunkers of the Mullahs, plotting the extermination of Israel; not in the situation rooms and the golf clubs where a deranged commander-in-chief is about to command the end of “a whole civilization”

@PolymarketIntel That’s not what he said. ‘No weaponry’ referred to the unarmed opposition

President Trump on Iran: “They have absolutely no weaponry “

Actually he was kicked out from Berlin. For inexplicable reasons Hitler was furious when he heard of the Adlon conference which sought to reach out to Muslims, in the Caucasus and elsewhere. The conference was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ fruit of labor. Hitler apparently had not been notified in advance. Even though Hitler was sympathetic toward the indigenous peoples of the Caucasus, and told his army to tread mildly and respectfully (‘you’d find the genetic substance of your ancestors,’ he said, invoking the debunked theory on Aryans originating from the Caucasus); and though the Germans treated the locals — Ashkenazi Jews excepted — quite well in the course of their very brief occupation in late 1942, Hitler held any notion of fostering friendship with natives by bestowing autonomy on them. By the way, there’s no evidence an ‘independent Daghestan’ was ever considered or pursued. The Germans didn’t reach Daghestan (western Chechen-Ingushetia was the farthest end of their advance.) The Adlon vision didn’t go into cartographic details. It was about summoning Muslims to fight under the Swastika, which quite a few of them were doing in any event in the various Wehrmacht, and later Waffen-SS, legions.

1938 Turkish passport issued to Mehmet Said Şamil, a North Caucasian politician and émigré leader. He spent the prewar years in Warsaw only to flee to Beirut after the invasion of Poland. He returned to Berlin to attend talks at the Hotel Adlon at the request of the Germans, talks that did not lead to the independent state of Dagestan as he and others wanted, thus leaving the capital.

Absolutely thrilling @BBCWorldService audio clips from November 1979 (linked below.) They are of brief hourly newscasts depicting America and the world in the immediate aftermath of the fateful seizure of the American embassy staff in #Tehran, #Iran, when the current war was conceived, indeed rendered inevitable. Radio fans would find them doubly exciting for they remind us of the golden age of short wave radio. I am one who owes almost anything that he is (or is not) to the 1970s on BBC World Service. As an adolescent, and later very young adult, the news announcers were my faceless mentors, interlocutors and esteemed acquaintances. I was missing a heartbeat each time the Lillibullero tune was being played, announcing the coming beeps of the news. I have just stumbled on these historic clips for which I deeply thank Random Radio Jottings who posted them on #YouTube. They offer an extraordinarily dramatic re-encounter with news that sounds eerily and painfully unchanged youtu.be/S3QJnlXnllo?si…

@NAFOvoyager NPR has recently covered extensively the heroic suffering of Kherson in a two-part report by the intrepid Joanna Kakissis. Linked below is the first part, including a transcript. May Ukraine live npr.org/transcripts/nx…

Kherson. Absolute horror. russian fascists are dropping aerial bombs on residential neighborhoods. And the world is still watching. Every moment of silence gives Moscovia a vote of confidence.

How Benjamin Disraeli of you, Mr Zarif. The British Jewish statesman told a hateful parliamentarian: “Yes, I am a Jew, and while the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.” I am not sure you’d approve of your association with that early harbinger of Zionism that you are committed to drown in blood. I didn’t realize, Mr Zarif, that the Atatollahs allowed their ministers, current and former, to claim credit for the Jahiliyyah. What’s next for you? Perhaps leading a procession to Persepolis to celebrate the grandeur of Darius and Cyrus? Or reembracing Zoroastrianism? Beware, Mr Zarif, you are being marked for heresy, and we know what fate befalls the heretics in your medieval theocracy. (No approval here of the despicable words spoken by Trump and Hegseth advocating the return of Iran to the Stone Age. Nastiness, stupidity and ignorance don’t serve this governing team, or the world, very well.)

Iran stood at the heart of the cradle of civilization while your ancestors in Europe (as the U.S. wasn’t even on the map) were still in the Stone Age—painting faces & swinging clubs. We taught order, law and statecraft. Pity none of it reached some arrogant, ignorant descendants.

Must watch: #Armenia’s prime minister humiliates #Putin over freedom of speech while the Kremlin is tightening the noose and restricting the Internet even further. Hats off to little, tormented and isolated Armenia, the last remaining democracy in the Caucasus/Central Asia

#India’s slide toward #authoritarianism accelerates as official censors multiply, intolerant government acts by whim against critics, claims ever stricter control of social media. Ominous for the country we used to lionize as ‘the world largest democracy’ f24.my/Bq5h

Let’s pursue it further: * Ukraine grants complete sovereignty over Donbas to the Trump family. * UK undertakes to blow up all wind turbines along its shores. * Germany enshrines in its constitution a recognition of the Trump klan’s unique role in its history and orders the erection of Trump statues in its main cities. * Oh, yes, Scotland declares a thorough genealogical research confirms the Trumps as the legitimate pretenders to the Stuart throne; to be crowned once Scotland regained its independence

Netherlands: following a request by NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte (VVD-RE), King Willem-Alexander (*) abdicates from the throne in favour of US President Donald Trump (GOP~ECR). Trump will be inaugurated as Daddy-King of the Netherlands on 27 April. ➤ europeelects.eu/netherlands

@JGreenblattADL One hopes @ADL would soon respond to the introduction of the noose into #Israel’s judicial system and, perhaps even more importantly, to the turning of the noose into an emblem of a major coalition partner in the Israeli government. As shown below, the noose is displayed prominently in a fresh social media post by Otzma Yehudit, national security minister #BenGvir’s Knesset faction without which the #Netanyahu govt wouldn’t survive. “A promise kept,” the poster boasts in wake of the new legislation imposing mandatory death by hanging on terrorists of the non-Jewish kind. “We have made history!” I am sure I need not tell you what the noose means, historically and morally, anywhere in the world but especially in the United States. Would you please assign #ADL’s brilliant (truly) research team to find out where in history a government party ever used the noose to advertise itself. You’ll see that the said poster associates the noose with Passover. By way of refreshing anyone’s memory I link here the treatment ADL gives the noose in its own Web site adl.org/resources/hate…

New Surveys of American Jewish Opinion Show Disapproval of War, Erosion of Support Ted Sasson, INSS researcher, writes: Two polls of Jewish American opinion—the first since the launch of the Iran war—report widespread opposition to the joint US-Israeli campaign. One poll, conducted by the Mellman group on behalf of the non-partisan Jewish Electorate Institute, reports 55% of Jewish voters disapproving of the military action. The second poll, conducted by the GBAO group on behalf of the liberal advocacy organization, J Street, reports 60% opposed to the war. Both surveys were conducted among likely Jewish voters during the second half of March and have margins of error of 3.5%. Overall, the views of Jewish Americans about the war appear to closely resemble the views of the broader American public, which in most polls disapproves of the war to a similar extent. The partisan divides are also quite similar. In the Mellman survey, 83% of Jewish Republicans approve of the campaign whereas 74% of Jewish Democrats disapprove. In the GBAO survey, 98% of Republicans support the action whereas 83% of Democrats oppose it. Although shaped by partisan loyalties, attitudes toward the war also reflect a measure of strategic judgement and concern about possible backlash. In the GBAO survey, 63% of Jewish respondents said “diplomacy and sanctions” are the most effective way to address Iranian threats compared to 37% who favored military action. In the Mellman study, 54% of Jewish respondents said the war is likely to cause “concern about the role of Israel and American Jews in US foreign policy.” The GBAO survey in particular points to continued erosion of overall Jewish American sentiment about Israel, a process that began during the second year of the Gaza war. In response to a question often asked in surveys of the general public, 30% of the Jewish respondents said that, in the Middle East conflict, their sympathy is more with the Palestinians than the Israelis—a proportion that was even higher among the younger age groups. Jewish voters were also divided about US financial and military assistance to Israel, with 31% supporting “unconditional” assistance, 44% supporting assistance to Israel “only if they comply with US law,” and 26% opposed to all assistance. Older and more religiously observant (Orthodox and Conservative) Jews were more likely to support “unconditional” financial and military assistance. The two surveys should serve as a warning sign for Israeli policy makers. Jewish Americans, who are among Israel’s strongest supporters in the United States, are signaling increasing discontent with Israel’s military and strategic direction.

Note the irony: Trump is fêting the British king and excoriates the French president on the eve of the 250th anniversary of America’s independence. Are descendants of Benedict Arnold invited to the Ballroom as well? ‘Great general, the best general ever, unfairly hated by Woke and antifa.’ Will he ask the German and Japanese far-right to join him in commemorating the 85th anniversary of Pearl Harbor later this year? ‘Our so-called allies didn’t help us at all in December 1941; they just asked us to give them arms free of charge. ‘I hereby renounce Land-Lease and withhold any future help from the Churchill regime.’ (Hungary’s Orbán, an ideological descendant of Hungarian pro-Nazi fascism, shall soon be assigned an office and staff at the White House West Wing given that he’s about to lose his seat of power in Budapest, JD Vance’s campaigning for him notwithstanding)