THREAD: Various reports suggest that the United States is debating direct participation in Israel’s war against Iran. In addition to the massive supply of arms and funds to its Israeli proxy, the mobilization of anti-missile defenses to protect it from Iranian retaliation, and the provision of diplomatic and political support, this would mean that US forces would become directly involved in attacking Iranian territory and assets. How did we get here? Since Israel launched its war of aggression on Iran, various theories have been floated about the role of the US. One popular interpretation is that the Trump administration’s very different approach to Tehran relative to that during its first term was all a ruse. A joint US-Israeli decision to attack Iran was purportedly made from the very outset, and the negotiations were convened in order to lull Tehran into a false sense of security, and were never meant to be serious. In other words, everything went exactly as planned. This strikes me as excessively simplistic.

THREAD: On 11 June GHF, the US-Israeli project to seize control of humanitarian relief efforts in the Gaza Strip from specialized international agencies, in order to further Israel’s genocidal agenda, issued a press release. In it, GHF claimed that a bus “carrying more than two dozen” Palestinians working for the project was “brutally attacked by Hamas”, with “at least five fatalities” and “multiple injuries”, and that others “may have been taken hostage”. GHF additionally claimed the attack “did not happen in a vacuum”, because “For days, Hamas has openly threatened our team”. In an updated statement the following day, 12 June, GHF claimed the attack resulted in eight dead and twenty-one wounded, and that Hamas was preventing the injured from receiving treatment at Nasir Hospital in Khan Yunis.

THREAD: Until several weeks ago I was unfamiliar with the neo-conservative polemicist Douglas Murray. In my defense, I had also not previously heard of the comedian Dave Smith. Why their 10 April debate has generated so much comment and discussion remains something of a mystery. Presumably this has at least as much to do with it being hosted by Joe Rogan, the most popular English-language podcaster, as with the substance of the exchange itself. I haven’t yet viewed the debate in its entirety, and probably won’t, and will therefore refrain from commenting on it in detail. Regarding one of the main controversies generated by the event, namely questions about the standing of a US comedian to have a clear position on events in a region of the world he has never visited, such criticism is akin to maintaining that those who never visited South Africa during the decades of white-minority rule should have been disqualified from forming an opinion on apartheid and mobilizing for the country’s freedom.

THREAD: I have on several occasions pointed out that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fraudster who invented her origin story out of thin air. Like other immigrants who embrace far-right politics, she is motivated by a combination of opportunism, self-promotion, and callous, gratuitous contempt for those who genuinely experience the challenges she falsely claims as her own. Combine with the requisite insecurity, identity crisis, and burning desire to be accepted by the dominant culture, add a hefty dose of insufferable narcissism, et voila, the far-right immigrant template is complete. I wrote the below in 2006, in response to a disingenuous defence of Hirsi Ali by the unlamented Christopher Hitchens. At the end of this thread I provide a link to the documentary that I reference in this thread. The link is to a copy of the Dutch documentary with (accurate) English subtitles, and I can’t recommend it highly enough for those unfamiliar with the sheer scale and brazen nature of Hirsi Ali’s fraud. Here’s my 2006 text:

THREAD: As of this writing, intensive Israeli air raids and shelling throughout the Gaza Strip has killed more than 350 Palestinians, and wounded hundreds more, in the space of several hours. How did we get here? In January the incoming Trump administration forced Israel to accept a ceasefire proposal that had been largely formulated by the Israeli government and unveiled in late May 2024 by US President Joe Biden.

THREAD: After absorbing the unwelcome news Wednesday morning that their American idol, Donald Trump, is negotiating directly with Hamas, Israel flunkies became positively ecstatic when the US president later that day issued an apocalyptic and indeed genocidal threat against “the People of Gaza”: If Hamas does not immediately, and presumably unconditionally, release all the remaining captives in the Gaza Strip along with the corpses it holds, “you are DEAD”. What are we to make of these very contradictory developments? To its credit, the Trump administration has ventured where its Democratic predecessor never contemplated going: negotiating with not only its Israeli proxy but also its Palestinian adversary in order to achieve an agreement.

THREAD: It seems the Israeli-Palestinian exchange of captives that had been scheduled for this weekend but was suspended by Hamas this past Monday is now back on track. What happened? The short answer: Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, caved. As I noted in my previous thread, Hamas on Monday stated that it was indefinitely suspending the further exchange of captives in response to repeated and escalating Israeli violations of the January agreement between the two parties. Israeli officials, cited in the Israeli press and at the tail end of a NYT article, confirmed the validity of Hamas’s accusations.

THREAD: On Monday 10 February Abu Ubaida, spokesperson of the Martyr Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced that the movement was indefinitely suspending further Israeli-Palestinian exchanges of captives on account of repeated and continued Israeli violations of the agreement reached between the two in January of this year. While Israel has indeed been violating the agreement in various ways, there is also more to the story. Most importantly this concerns Israel’s refusal to commence negotiations on the the agreement’s second phase, and US President Donald Trump’s recent proposal for the forcible mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to the Arab world.

THREAD: The three Israeli captives released on 8 February appeared emaciated, pallid, and in need of medical attention. The Palestinian organizations that held them were under an absolute obligation to treat them in accordance with international law. That includes a prohibition – also absolute – on taking captive civilian non-combatants, because such individuals are considered hostages rather than prisoners-of-war. The primary responsibility for any harm to civilian hostages rests with those who took them hostage and did not comply with their obligation to release them, immediately and unconditionally. They should never have been placed in a situation that exposed them to prolonged confinement, or to the deliberate attempts by Israel to murder them to prevent their captivity, or to the hunger, thirst, and lack of medical care resulting from Israel’s comprehensive, genocidal siege of the Gaza Strip, or to Israel’s efforts to kill them during their captivity to reduce Hamas’s bargaining power.

THREAD: Much has been made of President Bread & Circus, on his first day in office, rescinding the sanctions placed by the Biden administration on several Israeli settlers and a few of the organizations that support them. Let’s put this in perspective: 1. It’s unclear why Trump took this decision. Most likely it has little to do with US Middle East policy, and was motivated by Trump’s determination to undo what passes for Genocide Joe’s legacy, and in the process throw some red meat to the MAGA cult.

THREAD (Jimmy Carter, Part 1): Former US president Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. In his later years he was widely admired by Palestinians, and broadly detested by Israelis, some of whom are exuberantly celebrating his death on this platform. It’s a very different picture than that which existed during his presidency. Carter was elected to office in 1976, ousting Gerald Ford, who had assumed the presidency in 1974 when Richard Nixon was forced to resign on account of the Watergate scandal. Perhaps on account of Carter’s previous obscurity, it was a surprisingly close election. Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon, thus ensuring the latter wouldn’t be held accountable for Watergate (Nixon never faced the prospect of accountability for his infinitely more serious crimes in southeast Asia) sealed Ford’s fate with many voters. Ford was additionally weakened by a strong challenge for the Republican nomination by Ronald Reagan, representing the radical right of the party, and by presiding over Washington’s final defeat and ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam on 30 April 1975.

THREAD (Syria Part I): I started writing a thread about recent developments in Syria, and ended up delving into the country’s very long history. This first instalment attempts to summarise aspects of Syria’s history until the First World War. For those interested, I’ve here and there included references to a number of accessible texts for further reading. These are included in brackets at the end of the relevant paragraphs. With the unanticipated, rapid collapse of the Syrian government between 27 November and 8 December 2024, sixty-one years of uninterrupted Ba’thist rule over the country has come to a sudden end. The repercussions are expected to be seismic, first and foremost for Syria, but also for the wider region, with potentially geopolitical ramifications. How did we get here?

THREAD: There’s much to be said about recent developments in Syria, the background and context, the implications and repercussions. Indisputably, the Syrian government was, like its neighbors Iraq and Israel, and many others in the region, brutally repressive, not only within but also beyond its borders.

THREAD: It is a persistent fad among Israel flunkies to invoke Palestinian toponymic surnames that reference foreign territory to make the argument that these individuals have no business living in their homeland. Thus, surnames like Masri (“Egyptian”), Mughrabi (“Moroccan”), Kurdi (“Kurdish”), Halabi (“Aleppine”), Baghdadi, Hijazi, Hourani, Irani, etc. are presented as proof positive the individuals concerned are not really from Palestine, cannot therefore claim rights within it, and should permanently depart to the territory identified in their surname. There are needless to say multiple fallacies with this approach. A toponymic surname may well indicate foreign origins, but not necessarily so. It could also have originated because the family, or a prominent ancestor, had a particular connection with that territory on account of e.g. commerce, a government posting, or military service. Or because a prominent individual from that territory married into a local family, giving it its current name.

THREAD: Encounter with the Thought Police (Remarks delivered at the Fletcher School's Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies) It’s a real pleasure to be speaking again at the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Fletcher School. I’m particularly grateful to its Director, Professor Nadim Rouhana, and his colleague Amaia Arregi for bringing us together.

THREAD: The mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, today released a 12-page report on the events in Amsterdam during the past week. It provides the most detailed account we have thus far, and corrects some details in my earlier posts on the matter. For example, and contrary to what I reported, the police did in fact arrest a few Israeli hooligans (ten in total), but appear to have quickly released them as well. The above notwithstanding, Halsema like virtually every other Dutch politician continues to frame the disturbances within the broader framework of the long history of anti-Semitism rather than the specific one of opposition to continued Israeli participation in international sports competition while the state engages in genocide against the Palestinian people, or more directly of Israeli hooligans running amok in the streets of Amsterdam. As if the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans were singled out because they are Jewish, rather than on account of their violent and vile conduct. As if Israelis were singled out not because they were presumed to be visiting Maccabi supporters but because of Jew hatred.

THREAD: It’s now pretty clear what happened in Amsterdam this week. But first some background. For over a decade the football governing bodies FIFA, the International Federation of Football Associations, and UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, have consistently rejected demands to suspend or expel the Israel Football Association (IFA) and individual Israeli football clubs from their ranks.

THREAD: Citing a “crisis of trust”, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has finally fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. He’d fired him once before, in March 2023, when Gallant warned that Netanyahu’s program to overhaul the Israeli judiciary, and the consequent polarization of Israeli Jewish society, would have negative repercussions for Israel’s security. On that occasion widespread protests forced Netanyahu to reinstate Gallant. The insight that got him fired the first time notwithstanding, no Israeli leader was caught with their pants further down on 7 October of last year than Gallant himself. On this occasion as well it appears that Gallant’s failures as defense minister were not the reason for his dismissal. Rather, Netanyahu’s primary motivation appears to be Gallant’s role in drafting members of the Orthodox Jewish community known as Haredim, measures which he and the military’s leadership consider necessary to address the Israeli military’s growing manpower shortages. Other differences, among them those relating to Gallant’s leadership of the Israeli military, the future of the Gaza Strip, and relations with Washington also played a role, but a secondary one.

THREAD: On 2 November 1917, Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration. The document is of enormous significance because it transformed Zionism from a political aspiration into a credible project. The First Zionist Congress, convened in the Swiss City of Basel in 1897, recognized that great power sponsorship was vital to the success of Zionism. Thus Article 4 of the Basel Program called for “Preparatory steps for obtaining the governmental approvals necessary for the achievement of the Zionist goal”. For the next two decades, Zionist leaders spent as much effort obtaining imperial sponsorship as they did to promoting what the Basel Program called “The expedient promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and businessmen in Palestine”.

THREAD: On Friday 27 September Israel launched an unprecedentedly intense series of air strikes on the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Multiple 2,000 pound missiles flattened an entire area of the city’s densely populated southern suburbs, including multiple apartment buildings comprising many dozens of homes. The explosions were so powerful they could be felt dozens of kilometers away. Casualty figures are expected to be massive. Israel claims it targeted the central command headquarters of Hizballah, and that this facility was situated below the buildings it targeted. Multiple Israeli press reports indicate the target of the bombings was Hizballah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah, and that Israel had received a “golden tip” that the senior Hizballah leadership was meeting the moment it struck. If its claims are accurate and the strike was successful it would, in combination with a series of assassinations over the previous weeks, amount to a decapitation of the Lebanese movement.

THREAD: The latest fad among Israel flunkies is to denounce the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa as illegitimate colonizers. In this telling, not only are Russians, Germans, and Lithuanians indigenous to the Middle East, but those who have actually lived there for millenia are not. The claim is based on the supposition that the Arab Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa collectively hail from the Arabian Peninsula. It is often accompanied by an insistence that Christians, Jews, Druze, and members of other faiths in the region are not Arabs at all, but rather the surviving remnants of distinct indigenous populations that are living under a foreign Arab colonial yoke to this very day.