Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Armin Rosen Profile picture
Armin Rosen
@ArminRosen
Searching in the sun for another overload @TabletMag Armin dot Rosen at Gmail dot Com
human Profile picture Potato Of Reason Profile picture 3 subscribed
Apr 14 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
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,
Apr 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
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...
Feb 29 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Important from @Scrollletter: The claim Israel massacred aid recipients in Gaza is a lie that Hamas is strategically deploying in order to save itself Image In the long run the lie won't stick, but it doesn't need to. It's been pretty successful so far
Feb 1 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
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:
Jan 31 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
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...
Jan 30 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
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 Image 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... Image
Dec 21, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
One of about a dozen totally unsustainable aspects of the current situation in Israel 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...
Nov 5, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
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
Oct 10, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
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
Oct 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
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
Aug 25, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
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...
Aug 22, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Palestinian resistance groups shoving each other out of the way to clam credit for murdering a kindergarten teacher in front of her young child 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
Aug 22, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm sure the Musk article is very interesting; I'm just not sure why anyone would automatically trust an investigative story in the New Yorker at this point, especially one by a journalist whose record is already so cloudy The New Yorker fucked up a half-dozen of the biggest stories of the past few years. Ronan Farrow was involved in a couple of these fuckups. And yet articles like these are breathlessly repeated as if the publication is still at a 2011 level of credibility
Mar 27, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
What's happening in Israel right now is minoritarianism through extra-systemic means—it's anyone's guess where ultimate power in the system resides, but it's clear on critical issues it lies w/unions, tech sector, the legal establishment etc rather than the voters... Perhaps that's a good thing, and national paralysis sewn by the side that just lost an election (in this case fairly decisively) operates as one last check on error, a nuclear option that could save the system from its worst excesses. Yeah, maybe. But:
Oct 13, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Some thoughts on the big ESPN piece on the disgusting Dan Snyder:

-Man is it suspicious Goodell wanted report given to him as a one-on-one oral presentation. Feels like ass-covering infosec move, knowing u might look bad if a paper copy were ever foia'd, leaked, subpeona'd etc -Van Natta's too careful a reporter to write beyond what he can really prove, and ESPN obviously has an in-house lawyer or ten, but boy does it seem like Snyder leaked the emails that got Jon Gruden fired—meaning he's ruined the life of both Grudens lol
Oct 12, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Lotta eye-opening shit in the first 70 pages of Postwar. By far the most shocking tidbit is that denazificaction is a self-serving myth propagated by the US, the Soviets, and the Germans themselves. In both regular Germany and East Germany it simply never happened It was also striking to read abt various population upheavals of the 40s and realize there's only one anyone still cares about, ie the one that stateless Holocaust survivors/the Jews can be blamed for, that also happened in the midst of an elective war w/explicitly genocidal aims
Sep 21, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Remember, there's never been a truly democratic debate in the US about the UN—what we get out of it, whether it's worth it, whether it makes sense to spend taxpayer funds to allow this organization to exist at all, never mind on our soil There are compelling arguments *in favor* of all of these assertions. But they've never really had to be put to the test before the American people before. I'm guessing that'll change at some point in the coming decades
Sep 20, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
This is a must-read for anyone following the debate over yeshivas in New York—a sometimes discomforting look at what the Times article and the overall discussion ignores, and why American Haredi communities are almost never explored on their own terms commentary.org/articles/moshe… Why discomforting? Because this essay is the first treatment of this topic that I've seen that makes explicit something painful/obvious, ie that the issue's animated by a particularly Jewish wariness towards the Haredim rooted in both the Haskala and in our own deep insecurities
Sep 19, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The Times published a bit of an odd story this weekend about how discord within the Women's March wasn't because of the Farrakhanites and anti-Semites at high levels of leadership but was in part the responsibility of those ever-present Russian trolls nytimes.com/2022/09/18/us/… It's a bit of an exotic theory, but far the weirdest thing about this article is something most readers probably missed. The Times based the bulk of its findings on a report from a group called Advance Democracy, Inc...
Aug 22, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Fauci is 81 years old. If the Republicans take over Congress a month after his retirement, he's liable to be battling subpeonas for the rest of his life washingtonpost.com/health/2022/08… As I've tweeted a few times before, preventing future Faucis is one of the key challenges facing American democracy right now
Aug 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Billy Joe Shaver did a tremendous amount of shit in his long and colorful and occasionally deadly career, but tbh the thing I love him for the most is the "Squidbillies" theme God it's perfect