I spent months digging into Ahmad Mansour, visiting Tira, spoke to classmates, family, and his college. Much of his backstory is an exaggeration or a fabrication. He was never a Muslim Brother, the Imam wasn’t an Imam, he didn’t study psych @ Tel Aviv Uni hyphenonline.com/2023/07/03/cri…
The story told by Mansour about radicalisation by a bushy-eyebrowed Imam didn’t match what contemporaries said about Mahmoud Mansour, a religion & arabic teacher who wasn’t an official Imam, 3 people who knew him said
Mansour contradicts himself a lot. In this video by @RashadAlhindi (German with Arab subs) he claims both that the Imam offered him a scholarship to study in Tel Aviv as well as saying the Imam was against it ???
@RashadAlhindi Where/what did Mansour study? In German interviews and his books, he claims the prestigious uni of Tel Aviv. But contemporaries remember him studying at the Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo. The college confirmed to me that he graduated with a BA in Behavioural studies in 2000
@RashadAlhindi In Hebrew interviews like this ^ with Haaretz, or this old Ynet op-ed different claims emerge.
We also couldn’t find a record of his Thesis from Hunboldt. Sadly @AhmadMansour__ refused to comment about where he studied & graduated, though we reached out multiple times.
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ Mansour started as an expert in extremism, with his FOR PROFIT consultancy receiving nearly a million euros from the Bavarian gov alone. Since then he now talks on antisemitism (which he blames for the ME conflict), mental health, integration and now even France.
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ But his credibility has been questioned for a while, insulting Moroccan football players with Islamophobic psychobabble and this “expert in racism” saying ACAB is racist
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ Contradictions from his Imam uni story summarized here
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ One aspect that’s clear from his books - Mansour’s frustration and ambition. He was jealous of older boys with a full schedule (very German). A voice that didn’t make it into the final piece was Mansour’s cousin, who told me “Ahmad was always an opportunist”
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ Mansour led a major investigation into antisemitism at DW - 7 arab journalists were fired as a result, though most of them have since won court cases. His report was heavily criticized by a real antisemitism expert in @RashadAlhindi’s report for Arab48
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ I need to thank my fantastic editors @pagreenwood & Dave Stelfox who helped shape this investigation and made sure we had a balance of voices with dif opinions on issues like Israel
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood Mr Mansour has posted a photo of his Humboldt Diploma (which we didn’t question in the article btw). No response as yet as to his education in Israel, why his Humboldt thesis isn’t online, and why he didn’t respond to our repeated requests for comment
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood Mansour has now defamed me & Hyphen as Antisemites as an excusenfor not answering our requests for comment. The same guy who wrote in 2002 that “the Jews in Israel are the most insolent people in the history of mankind”.
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood Mansour is claiming that info about his studies at Tel Aviv Yaffo has been on his website “for years”.
There’s a big problem here: last year there was nothing about TAY college. It appears he changed the website after I requested comment.
Ahmad, stop digging!
@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood An older version of his homepage says very clearly that he studied at Tel Aviv University. Not Academic College of TA Yaffo
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The Green think tank wrote an article about Germany’s Palestinian community and their experiences as refugees. They apparently deleted it after criticism from the usual suspects
This is apparently the offending passage, which historically connects the Nakba (1948) with the Holocaust (-1945).
A common reaction and one often forgotten in English: Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe after WWII, so Palestinians have nothing to complain about.
@TIME These demonstrations are styled after weekly protests in the 1980s against the GDR.
One speaker in Zittau asked "How did an ideology-driven elite manage to completely destroy the livelihoods of of such a well-educated people as the Germans?" 2/
@TIME The protests began in 2020 over COVID-19 lockdowns, they have swelled in recent months as anger mounts in Germany amid the economic fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The AfD are capitalising on this and surging in support, particularly in the east, polling up to 30% 3/
@WIRED Staff have described the plant as "total chaos", with workers wasting weeks while waiting for machines to function.
Giga Berlin wanted 12,000 staff by the end of the year, but only hired 7000. Of these, 1000 were previously registered unemployed. Not good for production quality
@WIRED According to metalworkers union IG Metall, Tesla is paying 20 percent less than similar companies, and the head of Germany's Employers Association accused T of “threatening Germany’s social partnership model” of cooperation between businesses and unions.
Remember Angela Merkel? it's hard to think of a political figure whose star has faded so much without being sent to prison. Her legacy in Germany has received blow after blow and she already seems like a relic of a bygone era.
@NewsweekOpinion Merkel backed Nord Stream 2 gas to the hilt, even after Putin showed his imperialistic intentions. Through self-delusion or myopia, she made energy-hungry Germany dependent on the whims of a murderous dictator, against the protests of eastern European allies who knew better 2/
@NewsweekOpinion A decade ago, Germany had one of the best renewable energy sectors in the world, and Merkel was dubbed the climate chancellor. But the CDU wanted rural votes by capping solar and wind expansion, leading to over 100,000 lost jobs in the sector and increased dirty lignite coal 3/
Were changes to Bosnia's election laws made while votes were still being counted an "illiberal putsch" or necessary to stop the Bosniak majority undermining the Dayton peace agreement?
@euobs Most Bosnians want a functioning government, something they haven't had since 2018, blocked by the Croat HDZ.
Many Bosnian Croats feel disenfranchised. Petra in Mostar told me "We are really fed up.... We cannot elect our own President."
This is due to an legal loophole.
@euobs Bosnia has 3 Presidents: Serb, Croat, Bosniak. In the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, voters can chose at whether they want to vote for the Bosniak or a Croat President
But Bosniaks make up the numerical majority, and many vote for moderate Croat war hero Željko Komšić