Thomas
LightNews LightNews
banner
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Thomas
@quintonthomas.bsky.social
1.5K followers 5.4K following 170 posts
New Yorker in London. I dream of better worlds.
Posts Replies Media Videos
quintonthomas.bsky.social
For insight into Maxwell's treatment of dogs, here's Christina Oxenberg describing a visit to Maxwell's NY apartment in 1991:

pagesix.com/2020/01/16/r...
Quote from Jan 2020 NYPost story: "Also there was “a baby Yorkshire terrier” named Max, which Maxwell had been gifted, Oxenberg writes. “More than once, she threw the quivering little bundle violently across the room. She thought this was hilariously funny.” Oxenberg’s recollection appears as part of a serialized tell-all memoir that the writer has been updating every week on Patreon."
November 10, 2025 at 2:35 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
"A presidential historian and biographer of President Ronald Reagan"
from Craig Shirley's wikipedia entry: "He joined the staff of the Republican National Committee in 1982. During the 1984 presidential campaign, Shirley was communications director for the National Conservative Political Action Committee.[11] After Reagan’s reelection, in the late fall of 1984, Shirley opened his own firm and worked on numerous matters in co-ordination with the Reagan White House including aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, support for the Strategic Defensive Initiative, support for the Afghanistan Mujaheddin, support for Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, and support for the Tax Reform Act of 1986. He also worked on the White House Conference on Small Business in 1985.; and lobbying on behalf of The Heritage Foundation for weapons shipments, via apartheid South Africa, to perpetuate Jonas Savimbi's 20-year insurgency against Angola. He also supported Reagan's Tax Reform Act of 1986, which reduced the top marginal tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent, and participated in the 1985 White House Conference on Small Business. In 1986, he became a consultant to Vice President George H. W. Bush's political action committee, Fund for America's Future, and supported George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential bid.[12] In 1991, Shirley ran an advertising campaign that recruited Kuwaitis to make false charges against Iraq during its occupation of Kuwait which helped lay the groundwork for the Gulf War, later doing public relations for the Embassy of Kuwait and for an international democracy conference hosted by Czechoslovak President Václav Havel. Shirley briefly partnered with David Keene, but that association ended in 1992.[12] During the 1990s, Shirley founded, on behalf of a group of privately owned utilities, a lobbying entity called Citizens for State Power, which — as the Tulsa World pointed out — was a "secretly funded front group to create an illusion of public support," spending "$350,000 on ads for his anti-deregulation group."[13] In 2000, Craig Shirley & Associates …
September 21, 2025 at 5:39 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Same situation at the New York Times:

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/u...
Officials say the casings found with the gun contained messages. Officials said the casings and cartridge found alongside the gun that they said the suspect used to kill Mr. Kirk also had written messages on them. One of those casings contained the words “Bella ciao,” Mr. Cox said on Friday. That is an apparent reference to an Italian song adopted by the antifascist resistance during World War II. It is still sung by the Italian left to commemorate the end of fascism. Mr. Cox also said that he believed that an engraving on an unfired cartridge that read “Hey, fascist! Catch!” showed the gunman’s intent.
September 12, 2025 at 5:40 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
I can't stop thinking about the fanfic Maggie Haberman wrote the day of the shooting:
In the late afternoon, Mr. Trump signed a proclamation lowering the flags to half-staff in Mr. Kirk’s honor through Sunday. At around 5:30 p.m., a worker in black pants and a black shirt walked to the giant flagpole that Mr. Trump had installed on the North Lawn and cranked the flag down; he repeated the same move with the flag on top of the White House minutes later. The president was still on track for a visit to New York on the anniversary of the last significant event to unite nearly all Americans across parties: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
September 12, 2025 at 3:58 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Here's a a picture of 2024 Al Smith dinner in New York, in October, weeks before the election. That's JPM's Mary Erdoes beaming next to Trump. Grotesque.
Trump is standing at a lectern making remarks at the 2024 Al Smith dinner. He's surrounded by fellow elites, including JPM executive Mary Erdoes, seated next to Trump and smiling enthusiastically at his remarks
September 8, 2025 at 1:28 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
20 books that have influenced you. One book per day
19/20
#booksky
the cover of "On Photography" by Susan Sontag A quote from the book: "A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetize the injuries of class, race, and sex. And it needs to gather unlimited amounts of information, the better to exploit natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, make war, give jobs to bureaucrats. The camera’s twin capacities, to subjectivize reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these needs and strengthen them. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by a change in images. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. The narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption of images."
September 8, 2025 at 12:25 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
A quote from the piece: "But the French political crisis goes much deeper. It is about the damaged relationship between the people and their politicians, which looks likely to sour the country’s politics until the 2027 presidential election and beyond as the far right remains a potent force. “There is a broad anger towards political leaders who are seen as not bringing any benefit to the people … who are seen as playing more for their political future than the country’s,” said Mathieu Gallard, research director at Ipsos pollsters." Another quote: ""Politicians on all sides feel their only hope is to harness the anger. Béatrice Bellay, a Socialist MP on the island of Martinique, where there have been protests over the high cost of living, with prices far greater than in mainland France, said: “There is something in the general atmosphere, which is not just French, but almost global: a kind of cold anger because people see an ultra-free-market capitalist system crushing people and making their life all about survival. There’s a sense of injustice and that something is wrong with the system.”"
September 7, 2025 at 11:02 AM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
20 books that have influenced you. One book per day; only covers or images.
18/20
#booksky
The cover of Amitav Ghosh's "The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis"
September 7, 2025 at 10:46 AM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
A NY Times Pitchbot tweet: “Having mastered epidemiology, toilet paper supply chain logistics, large language models, and submarine engineering, I will now proceed to explain the load-bearing capabilities of a truss bridge and the reverse propulsion system onboard a intercontinental cargo freighter...(1/93)”
September 6, 2025 at 11:20 AM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Kara is on it!
A screenshot of the title of the latest episode of kara swisher’s podcast: “liberal media bias, trump & taming big tech with cable impresario john malone”
September 4, 2025 at 5:31 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
This passage, from Max Chafkin's "The Contrarian," describing Thiel at the time of his high school graduation, does help capture how broken – and absurd – he was even pre-power.
"“Thiel’s senior quote was from The Hobbit: “The greatest adventure is what lies ahead / Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.” Years later he’d say that he’d memorized the entire passage, which continues: “The chances, the changes are all yours to make / The mold of your life is in your hands to break.” It would become, in a way, the motto of his life—though it was still, at this point, a confused life. The passage is not, in fact, from Tolkien, who wrote The Hobbit, as well as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, books Thiel obsessed over. It is from a theme song, written by Jules Bass, creative genius behind the 1980s cartoon ThunderCats, for the animated version of The Hobbit, which had come out in 1977. That spring, Thiel got into Stanford, his dream school. Among his classmates, legend had it that on the application, Peter had been asked to pick a word that best describes himself, and Thiel chose “intelligent.”"
September 4, 2025 at 2:30 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Les Moonves, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump cozying up with each other
September 2, 2025 at 10:00 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Graphic showing that House Minority Leader Jeffries has received more than $1.7mm in funding from AIPAC
September 2, 2025 at 9:17 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Hi Mike – I'm sorry if I've missed it, but could you please explain why you were calling for your smelling salts as you clutched your pearls over Biden's health last year, but are now dismissing questions about Trump's indisputable & ongoing mental & physical decline?
September 2, 2025 at 7:51 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
I've been working my way through Adam Curtis's latest documentary – "Shifty" – and this sequence from the first episode is... striking
September 2, 2025 at 8:39 AM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Was this guy actually compensated for vomiting up this garbage?

If we're to stand any kind of a chance at defeating fascism, it's not only incumbent politicians (particularly leadership) who need to be forced off-stage; it's pernicious commentators who churn out bullshit like this.
The moves, and others, signify what lies ahead. The school has been through upheaval, the exam results were awful, pupils and parents, not to mention fellow staff members, are fed up. This immediate term is set to be crucial in the life of “Starmer High”. Purpose and confidence must be restored, and fast.
September 1, 2025 at 6:11 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I kept meeting scholars of ‘German-Jewish studies’ or ‘memory culture’ in Berlin. The word ‘memory’ usually seemed to mean ‘memory of the Jews’. In one sense, it couldn’t be otherwise. That Germany has a responsibility to remember the Holocaust is beyond question. But it’s striking how little concern there is for other populations that have experienced racial discrimination or violence at the hands of the Germans: Turkish guest workers and their descendants, Syrian refugees and Palestinians, to say nothing of the Namibians whose ancestors were the victims of an earlier German genocidal campaign, or the Roma who perished alongside Jews in the camps. ‘Memory culture’ is used to refer almost exclusively to German-Jewish relations between 1933 and 1945. And under the policy of Staatsräson, which has made the defence of Israel a central pillar of the German state, the lesson of the Holocaust seems to be that Jews must remain eternally protected so that Germany can expiate its guilt, even if the state that now claims to speak in the name of the Jews is carrying out war crimes – even genocide – against another people.
August 30, 2025 at 7:23 AM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
@craigunger.bsky.social writes about all of this in "American Kompromat," excerpted here:
www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01...
As Epstein’s operation continued into the 2000s, he began importing girls from the former Soviet Union. After the 1998 Miss Universe pageant, Anna Malova signed up with Karin Models, which had been founded by Epstein friend Jean-Luc Brunel. Known as “le fantôme” (the ghost), Brunel, who also owned MC2 Modeling Agency, was the subject of a 1988 piece that aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes in which several young models accused him of groping them sexually, drugging their drinks, and rape. “I really despise Jean-Luc. … This is a guy who should be behind bars,” John Casablancas, the late modeling agent, told journalist Michael Gross, whose book Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women alleges that Brunel repeatedly drugged and raped models. According to Casablancas, Brunel and his pals “were very well known in Paris for roaming the clubs. They would invite girls and put drugs in their drinks.” And Casablancas, who married a 17-year-old when he was 50, would have known, having used his stature in the modeling business to indulge in similar activities with young girls at a Look of the Year modeling competition at the New York Plaza Hotel, with his friend Donald Trump, then the hotel’s owner. Trump was closely involved with the contest, in which the average age was 15, and, according to The Guardian, several of the models said that they were required by their agency to have dinner with Trump and Casablancas. Their friendship frayed beyond repair, Epstein became less discreet as the keeper of Trump’s secrets and was not averse to showing off potentially compromising photos of him and Trump. An associate of Epstein’s who asked not to be identified told me that Epstein showed him one photo of Trump with a topless young girl. In another, the source said, Trump is with two young girls who are said to be laughing as they point out what appears to be a wet spot in an unfortunate location on his pants. The description of the photo suggested that it was a semen stain—but the photos have never been released.
August 17, 2025 at 12:55 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Here's what NYMag had to say contemporaneously about Anna Malova's "odd" participation in Trump's 1998 Miss Universe pageant:
nymag.com/nymetro/news...
NOT RUSSIAN TO GIVE UP HER TITLE It’s nice to know yesterday’s beauty queens aren’t always written off as over the hill. Oddly, Anna Malova was allowed to compete in this year’s Miss Universe pageant even though she was Miss Russia in 1995. According to beauty-world sources, it’s not a coincidence that the stunning Slav, who wound up a finalist in last month’s event, is a friend of Donald Trump, co-owner of the event. Did the Donald pull a few strings on an old friend’s behalf? “That’s something that’s never done,” a Miss Universe spokesperson says. “Russia has a pageant, and she won it fair and square. It’s impossible for Donald to select someone from another country.” Another spokesperson agrees. “That’s not the ethics of the pageant; our company has a great degree of integrity, and that’s not the way we run our company … that kind of stuff doesn’t go on in modern-day network TV.” While the Miss Universe camp insists Malova won the Russian event honestly, Malova’s agent says, “I don’t think she was Miss Russia this year. She was Miss Russia several years ago.” When asked for documentation that Malova – who lives in Trump Tower – won the title a second time (perhaps an occurrence unique to Russian contests), the Miss Universe Pageant headquarters refused to furnish it. Trump was out of the country and could not be reached for comment, and a spokesperson would only say, “I haven’t heard about Trump giving any preferential treatment to Malova.”
August 17, 2025 at 12:42 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
A few more relevant excerpts. These passages touch on interactions between Epstein, Ghislaine, Prince Andrew, and Trump in the 90s. Trump's preexisting ties to shady Robert Maxwell (Ghislaine's father) are also referenced, as is Trump's Miss Universe.
“Enter Jeffrey Epstein” On the morning of 9 February 1999 a small group gathered at Teterboro Airport, just outside New York, ready to catch a Gulfstream jet to Saint Thomas, second largest of the US Virgin Islands. One of the three waiting passengers was the glamorous socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who had fled to New York in 1991 from the UK on a hundred-thousand dollar annual allowance to support her father Robert Maxwell’s business activities. Shortly afterwards, the media baron with longstanding connections to British, Russian and Israeli intelligence had met a sudden and mysterious death whether from suicide, an accident or as his youngest daughter believed, murder. Her personal assistant, Emmy Taylor, waited with her. The third and final member of the group was Prince Andrew. He claimed he had met Ghislaine while she was at Oxford in the 1980s but it is far more likely he had been introduced to her through his ex-wife — both women were well-known on the New York social circuit. Andrew and Ghislaine were good friends — and over the years had been occasional lovers — and through her, the prince had come into the ambit of her boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was seven years older than Andrew and had made a fortune from his own money-management firm, J Epstein &… … Company, handling $15 billion on behalf of a group of secretive clients, as financial adviser to the billionaire Leslie Wexner, chairman of the lingerie firm Victoria’s Secret, and, as he described himself, a ‘financial bounty hunter’. Epstein had also been involved in a Ponzi scheme soliciting over $500 million in investments which he had then spent on himself. The lantern-jawed New Yorker had stood by Ghislaine after the death of her father, and the subsequent discoveries of Robert Maxwell’s crimes, and, according to bank records, over the period 1999-2007 would give her more than $30 million to restore her to the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. In return, the well-connected Oxford graduate played a crucial role in Epstein’s complicated but lucrative business and personal life, introducing him to influential contacts and organising a steady stream of young girls to be supplied to the very same men who would then be blackmailed, as well as satisfying his own demanding needs. It has been suggested the connections go further back and that Robert Maxwell, before his death, entrusted Epstein with up to $20 million to hide from creditors. There were also longstanding connections between Maxwell and Donald Trump — they had both bid for the New York Post and often met socially. A product of working-class Coney Island, Epstein owned houses all over the world including a fifty-thousand-square-foot townhouse — the largest in Manhattan — valued at $77 million, an eight-thousand-acre ranch in New Mexico and a home in Palm Beach, two miles from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. It was, however, to his seventy-two-acre private island, sometimes known as Little St Jeff’s, replete with helipad, lagoon and villa served by a staff of seventy, which he had bought the year before for $7.95 million, that the party was now heading by helicopter. The trip was not and never has been listed on any of Andrew’s official schedules because he was not there on official busin… Andrew returned three days later accompanied by one of the women provided by Epstein for the enjoyment of his guests, Anna Malova, appointed Miss Russia the previous year in order to compete in the 1998 Miss Universe competition, and a close friend of Donald Trump. The Duke of York claims to have only met Epstein earlier that year though it is unlikely that such a close relationship could have been nurtured in a matter of weeks. The truth is Andrew and his ex-wife had known the financier for almost a decade by then. According to Andrew's private secretary, Alastair Watson, the two men had met in 'the early 1990s'. The flight logs of Epstein's plane alone, known as the Lolita Express because it flew so many young girls, reveal the duchess travelled on it with Epstein the previous April. Whatever the exact dates of their first meeting, Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew had by then become business contacts and friends, united by a shared interest in money and sex. In April 1999, Epstein threw Andrew a dinner at his Manhattan townhouse and the following month, according to Miles and Cathy Alexander, a South African couple hired to manage Epstein's Caribbean property, the duke came to the private island 'via helicopter with his bodyguard and a woman in her thirties, who said she was a brain surgeon': 'She was tall, bleached blonde and had big boobs. They shared a room and spent most of their time on windsurfing, sailing or doing other water sports. One day he came back into the house in great mirth, claiming his guest had stepped on a sea urchin and he urinated on her foot as a remedy. "The royal member has done its duty," he chuckled? In July, Andrew invited Epstein and Ghislaine to visit Balmoral for an overnight stay at the seven-bedroom Craigowan Lodge on the estate. They arrived accompanied by two friends, Fiona Folley and Erig Taylor. One, a model in her twenties, related how on the first night Andrew provided a tour of the estate. He was really nice,' she said. 'He wa… The next day they had a picnic in the grounds of the castle, then just before dinner, which was to be fillet of beef, the duke apparently became incandescent with rage, screaming: "Who was the ******* idiot who cut the meat up?", sending the cook into the pantry in tears. Other staff, 'accustomed to the duke's tantrums on virtually a daily basis, covertly exchanged knowing glances'. By the time the meat had been barbecued, the duke was all smiles and full of compliments for the cook on her Victoria sponge, which was his way of apologising: 'That's what he always does. Explode one minute and then try to take it back the next.' Andrew's friendship with Epstein continued, with invitations to Windsor and a shooting weekend at Sandringham in January 2000. The following month the prince, introducing himself to guests as Andrew York, was photographed with Ghislaine and Epstein at a party at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach. There he took a fancy to two twenty-something guests, Gwendolyn Beck and Christina Drangsholt. Beck managed about $65 million of Epstein's investment funds for Morgan Stanley, and had already met the duke the previous year, and brought along her friend Drangsholt, who ran a mail order business that specialised in selling testosterone - the hormone that enhances the male sex drive - which she advertised as 'Get more bang for your buck'. The next day, after a round of golf with Trump, Andrew joined the two women at the pool. They had a wonderful time, according to Drangsholt, who later distributed pictures of herself with the prince to social and business contacts, calling him 'charming' and 'very attentive' but insisting they were all just good friends.
August 17, 2025 at 11:29 AM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
Here is the verbatim – forgive the poor quality of the pics.
"The President and the Prince" In December 2019, Donald Trump, interviewed on television, would deny knowing Andrew, in spite of extensive photographic records of their public meetings going back twenty years, including the visit to Trump's Palm Beach home in February 2000. In October 2000 both of them had attended Heidi Klum's Halloween costume party, at which Trump was quoted as saying of Andrew, 'He's not pretentious... He's a lot of fun to be with.' Shortly afterwards and clearly good friends, Trump and Andrew together were overheard at an event discussing Trump's plans for a golfing complex in the north-east of Scotland, talking entirely about 'pussy', with the American producing a list of masseuses for the prince. In a 2015 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump would be asked what he thought of former president Bill Clinton. He replied: 'Nice guy, got a lot of problems coming up in my opinion with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein.' When a Bloomberg reporter asked Mr Trump what 'problems' he thought Mr Clinton would face, he replied: 'I don't know, but what island was really a cesspool, there's no question about it, just ask Prince Andrew, he'll tell you about it, the island was an absolute cesspool.' He was talking about Little Saint James, which Andrew had first visited back in 1999. In 2007, Epstein told one author that he had facilitated the relationship between Trump and his future wife Melania. "The first time Donald had sex with Melania was on my plane. Little did he know I beat him to the punch a year before when I was at a party of New York's top models by Metropolitan Models, one of the world's top agencies... Things got wild, and by the end of the night, I ended up almost naked in the back of a limo, going at it with Melania..." "... I'll leave it to your imagination how the rest of the night went." One of Palm Beach's wealthiest residents, who knew both Epstein and Trump, related how the future president had tried to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein 'by claiming he wasn't close to him. It's the furthest thing from the truth.' The witness recalled attending several functions at which both men were present, including one in 2002, 'when they were sitting at the same table and talking to each other most of the time.' He also described a party on a private yacht, for which several Russian escorts had been booked: 'Both Trump and Epstein were there, and attractive young girls surrounded them. They both seemed to be in their finest element around the girls.' The source also claimed that the two men were involved in several business deals and that Epstein was Trump's 'go-to man whenever he wanted to have fun.' 'Terrific guy,' Trump told New York Magazine. 'He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' Epstein's black book had sixteen numbers for Trump and the financier told Michael Wolff he was 'Donald's closest friend for 10 years.' During 2000, Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein invited Prince Andrew, by now enjoying his status as a divorced man, to a number of social events in New York, including a party hosted by designer Ralph Lauren and a £630-a-head charity concert in aid of the American Friends of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The duke continued to spend time with Epstein and Ghislaine, often staying at the millionaire's homes in New York or Florida. The Duchess of York frequently stayed there too.* That summer, a British couple, staying with Ghislaine, met Andrew at a party at Epstein's house where guests, including a... * The duchess stayed three times in the year to April 2000. ... two-time Oscar-winning actress, played games of virtual tennis on the huge movie screen in the basement. The next night they ate at a neighbourhood restaurant and were told Andrew would be joining them. As one recollected: 'I remember seeing him sitting at a table at the far end with these three young [not underage] blonde girls when we walked in. He immediately got up, I imagined to join us, but instead he said goodbye and left with them in tow. It was all very strange.' Ivan Novikov, Jeffrey Epstein's personal driver, remembered: ''Whenever Andrew was in town I'd be picking up young girls who were essentially prostitutes.' He continued: 'One time I drove Prince Andrew and two young girls around age eighteen to the Gansevoort Hotel in the Meatpacking District. Both girls were doing lines of cocaine. Prince Andrew was making out with one of them.' Epstein's housekeeper, Debra Gale, alleged Andrew's interest in young women: 'One night he took a Swedish girl to his bedroom. They spent the entire night together and most of the next day.' Pressed further, Gale added: 'When the girls would leave Andrew's bedroom I'd give them an envelope Mr Epstein left with anywhere from one to 25 thousand dollars in it. Sending on the girl and the situation.'
August 16, 2025 at 5:15 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
A picture of Krauss posing cheerfully with Jeffrey Epstein
August 14, 2025 at 6:30 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
From "A Brief History of Fascist Lies" by @finchelsteinf.bsky.social
"What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening." -Donald J. Trump, 2018 "Since then, a struggle between the truth and the lie has been taking place. As alway, this struggle will end victoriously for the truth." -Adolf Hitler, 1941 "You must believe me because I have the habit -- it is the system of my life -- of always and everywhere saying the truth." -Benito Mussolini, 1924
August 14, 2025 at 12:38 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
“One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps” by @andreapitzer.bsky.social is one of the most revelatory books I’ve ever read. It is a vital resource in this moment. The below passage is from the intro, “Sailing to Guantánamo”:
April 12, 2025 at 3:14 PM
quintonthomas.bsky.social
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
An excerpt from the linked piece: "This winter in Israel-Palestine is a dark one, and not because the days are shorter. We have war crimes, man-made famine, and ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and the West Bank. Since early October the army has intermit- tently stopped humanitarian aid—namely food—from entering the northern part of Gaza, which has a population of some 200,000 or more. Much of that population has now been forcibly displaced toward the tent cities farther south, but it seems that tens of thousands of Palestinians are still hanging on in Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya, where the fighting and the bombing continue. Brigadier General Itzik Cohen, who is in command in the Jabaliya arena, has claimed that there are no civilians left in the north of Gaza. Oddly, many of these nonexistent ordinary people are being killed nearly every day. Here is one egregious example. On October 29, after four soldiers were killed in Beit Lahiya, the army bombed a five-story apartment building; it claimed that a “lookout” had been sighted on the roof. Nearly a hundred people died, at least twenty of them children, and we have no count of the wounded. An obscene question arises: Was it worth it—for a presumed lookout? But I can’t help asking myself: For this we created a Jewish state?"
January 2, 2025 at 4:07 PM