This is kind of amazing. Now that Israel's president Reuven Rivlin is leaving office, Israel's security service released a photo showing how they disguised him so he could walk among the general public. Take a look:
He's done some impressive work but this may have been @PatinkinMandy's greatest role:
Israel's public broadcaster is having fun with this revelation:
"We’ll have our monthly Ask Me Anything chat on Thursday, tackling our usual uplifting mix of politics, religion, antisemitism, and whatever else is on your mind, such as whether Israel’s president was actually just a character played by Mandy Patinkin" yair.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-…
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My latest: Last month, Israel's new government announced it would transfer 1.2 million vaccines to the Palestinian Authority. Yesterday, 700,000 of those doses landed in South Korea instead. I wrote about how this deal fell apart, and why it matters: tabletmag.com/sections/israe…
Israel, which is mostly vaccinated, traded its soon-to-expire doses to South Korea, which desperately needs them, in exchange for South Korea's scheduled fall shipment of Pfizer vaccines. That's the exact arrangement Israel originally had with the Palestinians. So what happened?
After the deal with Israel was announced, extremists began protesting it. Rather than stand up to them, the Palestinian Authority cancelled the entire deal on the pretext that some of the doses would soon expire—which was exactly the point of the swap, and agreed upon in advance!
If you want to see how unreliable Wikipedia can be: observe how NY State Senator Julia Salazar's page has been scrubbed to remove or sanitize her documented lies about her background, wealth, (false) immigration history, education, and criminal record. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Sal…
I recommend checking out the history & talk pages for NY State Senator Julia Salazar's Wikipedia page to see how a politician's lies and criminal history, reported everywhere from the New York Times to NY Mag to Vox, can be systematically erased by ideologically inclined editors.
This is Nick Fuentes. He is a white supremacist anti-Semite. That's not Twitter hyperbole, just a straight-up description. Here he is smilingly denying the Holocaust:
This is Republican congressman @DrPaulGosar. He spoke after Fuentes at a political event in February. Fuentes claims that he is doing an actual fundraiser with Gosar on July 1. Fuentes is a liar, so this needs to be confirmed, but if true, Gosar should be expelled from Congress.
@DrPaulGosar The most racist member of the U.S. Congress, a story in two parts
This looks VERY bad. On June 10, after anti-Jewish crimes spiked, the Black Jewish diversity officer for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators @scbwi posted a condemnation of antisemitism. Today, she was fired, apparently for not mentioning Islamophobia? Yikes.
@scbwi To emphasize: The statement condemning antisemitism was put out by an American organization, and did not mention Israel at all. That some people would interpret it as an attack on Muslims or Palestinians says something unfortunate about their worldview, not the statement.
People think crazy people being congresspeople is new, but this person was a Democratic member of Congress from 1993-2003 and 2005-2007, then was the Green party candidate for president in 2008. None of this is new, it's just more obvious thanks to social media.
This person is no longer consequential, but the antisemitic bigotry she is reflecting still is. Notice how she doesn't say "the Jews" did 9/11, she says "the Zionists" did it. This substitution is one of the most common ways antisemites today lazily try to launder their hate.
Anti-Zionism is not ipso facto antisemitism, as I've said before. But many antisemites use anti-Zionism as a flimsy cover for their old-school anti-Jewish ideas. It's important to be aware of this common bait-and-switch and not to fall for it.
The idea that the Biden administration was reversing Golan recognition never passed the smell test. If they're going to pick a fight, it's not going to be over ceding the Golan to Bashar Assad, something no serious person entertains. Come on.
As I wrote in my piece today, Netanyahu is doing everything he can to poison the well between the new Israeli government and both Democrats & Republicans. Leaking false claims about shifting US positions to undermine the relationship wouldn't surprise me. tabletmag.com/sections/israe…
The Biden administration has plenty of actual issues of consequence to negotiate with Israel, from Iran to the Palestinians. A symbolic spat over the Golan, which isn't going anywhere, isn't one of them.