A few quick thoughts on possible US recognition of Somaliland as a fully independent sovereign state:

https://x.com/AcrossTheBay/status/1866870671743259040

-It upends 30 years of US policy that Somalia is a single, unitary country. Whether this policy has worked or not, no president of either party has ever backed off the position that it is one country, with paramount national authority in Mogadishu

Interesting that the issue of ICC sanctions has become partisanized. Senior officials in the US military and the Biden administration have intimately involved in planning Israel's campaign against Iranian proxies, and Isreal has generally operated w/i limits we've set for them... ie there would, as a practical matter, be a certain degree of *American* exposure if Netanyahu or Gallant were ever arrested and tried. And the people most exposed would be the ones currently inp ower—Lloyd Austin, Jake Sullivan, Biden himself probably

I believe my story from last year is still the only real in-depth profile of Bessant, whose background is, uh, atypical of the rest of the MAGA high council

https://x.com/MZHemingway/status/1722334782309138848

On the one hand, Bessant is Soros's former protege, and his right-wing publishing house—which he owned in secret, until I came along—sued one of its star writers and has a still-obscure link to the Trump documents case. But:

Some interesting stuff in here. For instance, it's apparently possible to become a leading voice on Israel without ever having gone there in adulthood newyorker.com/magazine/2024/… The sense you get from the article is that Angel is making an earnest go at holding together a great many tensions within herself and her movement. But maybe it can't be done, and maybe there's nothing inherently noble in trying

https://x.com/ya3ili/status/1833516166918311962

Almost everyone in Sinwar's inner circle is either dead or unaccounted for; the IDF is currently moving into the part of Khan Younis where he may be hiding out... jpost.com/israel-hamas-w… This might explain why the Israelis don't seem like they're in a huge hurry for a hostage deal. They'll have a bit more leverage in any agreement if Sinwar is dead. It would also be stupid to stop the war, withdraw troops etc if they think they're close to getting him

I've been to a good number of refugee and IDF camps over the course of my career. The first one I can remember visiting is a place called Yida, in the northern desert wilderness of South Sudan, back in 2012. Yida was considered a "militarized camp"... because of the alleged presence of separatist militants from the Nuba Mountains, who supposedly used the camp as a a safe-haven. I didn't see anything like that during the day and a half I spent there, but as a result of this perception most int'l NGOs and the UN had pulled out

Periodic reminder: The Ahly hospital strike, the Shifa rapes, the aid massacre, mass graves, famine, the Gaza death toll, the casualty list, the claim Israel destroyed half the buildings in Gaza...every single of these lies fell apart under examination.Hamas has no credibility... ...but despite—because of?—10/7 they have an advantage few other armed groups in history have ever enjoyed, which is that every one of their claims, no matter how outrageous or easily disproven, will be believed by many of the most powerful people, media outlets etc on earth

It's Yom Hazikaron today. As I try to mention every year, Jews around the world owe Israel's war dead an unpayable debt for defending our existence and salvaging our self-respect after the worst event in our history—and doing it despite much of the the world's scorn... This year it doens't feel nearly as abstract as all that. The stakes are more obvious, the scorn more intense than ever—and I also think it's pretty likely many of you have a connection to someone who has died defending Israel or the Jewish people over the past year

What if a thing that's never happened before, happened. Really makes you think doesn't it

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1783534422404321373

What if pro-Israel protesters shut down the Holland Tunnel. Can you imagine? What if they shot up a bus of Madrassa students on the Brooklyn Bridge. What if they repeatedly attempted to blow up the World Trade Center...

Hate to say it, but the attacks last night were clearly a net gain for Iran timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry… They have somehow gotten the US to create and then actively enforce a principle whereby a state-declared direct bombadment of hundreds of missiles and drones doesn't reach the thresshold for retaliation,even when it's an American adversary attacking a close ally.More importantly,

Here's the thing,a notable percentage of the worst accusations again Israel since 10/7 have ended up being disproven or recanted: The Ahly hospital massacre, the alleged % of buildings destroyed in Gaza, the rapes and infanticides at Shifa, the Hamas-provided casualty numbers etc Meanwhile Israeli claims that were once widely rejected have tended to pan out. Various foreign governments eventually agreed Hamas had penetrated UNWRA. Hamas really does use hospitals as their operational HQs. 10/7 victims and hostages really were sexually abused...

Important from @Scrollletter: The claim Israel massacred aid recipients in Gaza is a lie that Hamas is strategically deploying in order to save itself In the long run the lie won't stick, but it doesn't need to. It's been pretty successful so far

https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1763302408854130735

Really worth reading from Elliott Abrams, hismelf an ex-peace processer of some note. When people talk about a "Palestinian state," what do they mean? What would it look like? Would it be democratic? Would it rly be demilitarized? Who would its allies be? tabletmag.com/sections/israe… For instance...to me it is obvious that the 17-year geopolitical experiment of Palestinian control over the Philadelphia corridor has been a failure. Palestinian control of that border is clearly a threat to global security, cuz here we are. So:

Burns did his job well. Israel's negotiating position has considerably softened over the past week. They're now contemplating something close to a US-managed battlefield defeat timesofisrael.com/potential-deal… The Israelis are now at a real crossroads. They can refuse to lose a war to Hamas, thus infuriating Washington. Or they can captiulate to Burns etc, thus risking a severe internal crisis...

A couple quick notes on that Ilhan video:

1) As I mentioned in yesterday's @Scrollletter, the fact Ilhan often makes major policy statements in a language very few Americans understand is pretty far outside the norm in US politics 2), also from @Scrollletter: Relatively few Twin Cities Somalis are Somalilanders. Refugees frm earlier S'land phase of the civil war went to Britain/Europe; those frm South went to the US, in part b/c some, like Ilhan's family, had some sort of a role in the regime...

One of about a dozen totally unsustainable aspects of the current situation in Israel

https://twitter.com/ElliotKaufman6/status/1737931128764346780

A small country cannot have a quarter-million internally displaced, plus another 350,000 mobilized, on an indefinite timeline. Same goes for getting attacked on mutliple fronts—with the result of a major port losing 85% of its traffic—without a major military response...

By now there is abundant evidnece Hamas has deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians. But the intellectual/moderate Pal nationalist poistion is congitive dissonance—best to believe 10/7 & everything after cldn't possibly have happened or was a betrayal of the true cause or w/e A rly depressing takeaway frm the past month is that Hamas *is* the true cause. Pal marches emphasize "resistance;" no one says anything when Hamas guns down fleeing refugees etc. Mainstream movement goal is to create moral/political conditions where Hamas can maximally operate

One big takeaway from the gut-wrenching events of the past few days: Everyone got Hamas wrong. Israeli strategic planners got it wrong, incl many hard-liners. America got them wrong. Experts got them wrong. *I* got them wrong... The widely-held conventional wisdom in both Washington and Jerusalem was that Hamas was strongly ideological but inevitably pragmatic, and cared about retaining its infrastructure and domain in Gaza more than it cared about killing Jews

Maybe I missed it, but has anyone at any level, from rank and file to local officers to members of Congress, resigned their DSA membership over yesterday's Times Square celebration of the Hamas rampage? Yesterday's rally was a self-inflincted political setback of course, but it prsents a number of practical moral challenges for DSA. For instance, DSA has very progressive gender politics. How do you square that with support for a mass rape? It doesn't make any sense

In case you were wondering if any of this was actually all that serious axios.com/2023/08/25/isr… US is creating a new negotiating baseline by asking for things the Saudis did not themselves ask for—similar, in a way, to how Obama administration's demands for a settlement freeze became the PA's de facto position. There are poision pills on all sides of this...

Palestinian resistance groups shoving each other out of the way to clam credit for murdering a kindergarten teacher in front of her young child

https://twitter.com/TOIAlerts/status/1693997843047206923

Actaully, these aren't just resistance groups. These are the parties in charge of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, respectively. Ie, the powers in a hypothetical Palestinian state are eager to claim credit for the murder of a kindergarten teacher in front of her young child