The Standing Together event went forward in the end, but was visited/raided twice by police who demand a get out of Gaza sign be removed. Another great day for Israeli democracy.

Mohammed Ibrahim is free!

Palestinian-American teenager held in Israeli prison freed after nine months

“Israel is the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes children in military courts, according to a 2013 Unicef report.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

More from the only democracy in the Middle East: the mayor of Haifa is trying to cancel a conference which Standing Together is planning on holding later this week (their venue is part owned by the city.)
The city is accusing ST of “dishonoring fallen soldiers and slandering the state of Israel.”

And now for some numbers- a new poll finds 47% of Israeli Jews identify as right or hard right. 23% as moderate or center right. Everything from center to hard left combines for only 25%.

I don’t really think Israel within the green line is an apartheid state, but this kind of thing certainly complicates that argument.

Israel has been moving rightwards for decades and the last two years seem to have only hastened that trend.

The only democracy in the Middle East!
Would be interesting to hear what everyone complaining about the “hypocrisy” of criticizing Israel but not the RSF/UAE has to say about this.
www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

#WATCH | The propagandist and deputy mayor of Be'er Sheva, Shimon Tobul, last night on Channel 14:

"We had a golden opportunity to erase this thing called Gaza! Kill 100-150 thousand of them every day."

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza goes on, extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank are attacking Palestinians with impunity, displacing them & disrupting the olive harvest. We must end our complicity. Opposing annexation isn't enough, we must demand an end to the occupation.

What style should Tottenham play?

1️⃣ <a href="https://poll.blue/p/c1pb4F/1" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link="bsky">Spurs should play positive football to win matches
2️⃣ <a href="https://poll.blue/p/c1pb4F/2" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link="bsky">Spurs should play pragmatically to win matches
3️⃣ <a href="https://poll.blue/p/c1pb4F/3" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link="bsky">It doesn’t matter how Spurs win matches

📊 Show results

Tottenham have failed to register a first-half shot on target for the second home game this season, something that only happened once in the entirety of last season...

::movie trailer voice:: They said he was retired, but Bill Kristol has one more regime to change...

Fact-Checking Claims About Zohran Mamdani https://theonion.com/fact-checking-claims-about-zohran-mamdani/

Giora Eiland spent most of the last year promoting his “starvation plan”, imposing a total siege on N. Gaza to pressure Hamas. Today he was invited to speak at a conference held by the Israeli Democrats, who hold themselves out as the last representatives of “left wing” Zionism.

So does this mean they are officially giving up the “only democracy in the Middle East” line?

Important to realize that the (most likely) next government in Israel is not going to be meaningfully different wrt the Palestinians.
The probable next PM, Naftali Bennett, is not in the Knesset but almost certainly would have joined the right wing opposition parties in supporting annexation.

Butlerian Jihad now

61% of American Jews say Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza; 40% now say Israel is committing genocide. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

I wish the 40% number were higher but this can hardly be dismissed as a tiny fringe of the community.

Naftali Bennett, PM of the “change government” and the person most likely to replace Netanyahu, said basically the same thing last year. The Israeli (Zionist) opposition has no alternative vision to offer, just tinkering around the edges and less personal corruption.

Yair Lapid calls for withdrawal from the UN in favor of a new “alliance of democracies.” Don’t seem like he has thought hard enough about whether Israel would qualify to join such an organization.

IDF sniper from Chicago who says he killed Gazan teenager just for trying to retrieve his brother's corpse: “They’re thinking, ‘Oh I don’t think [I’ll get shot] because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon' and all that, but they were wrong. That’s what you have snipers for.”

The only democracy in the Middle East!
Wonder whether this will have any effect on the insistence of Standing together (which organized the event) on focusing on political change within Israel.

The polling discourse has died down, but a new survey shows 76% of Israeli Jews believe there are no innocents in Gaza (52% of opposition voters disagree, but presumably that includes Israeli Arabs, meaning that likely a majority of Jewish opposition voters agree.)

A few months ago there was a big to do about whether to believe a poll showing 82% of Israelis supported expelling Palestinians from Gaza. Anyone questioning these results?
Some will say it’s natural bc of the ongoing war and horrors of Oct 7, but Israeli society is in a very dark place right now.

In the Israeli parliament MP Ofer Cassif was pulled away from the podium & prevented from continuing his speech. Why? Because he said genocide was taking place in Gaza.

Meanwhile here in the UK we're constantly told Israel is a democracy.