Edoe Cohen retweeted
🔥Prince Reza Pahlavi just dropped a masterclass response🔥
German journalist tries to trap him:
“Are you an Israeli asset?”
Prince Reza fires back without hesitation:
“Of course not… but I am a friend to Israelis and the Jews.”
Then he schools everyone:
After reminding them about Cyrus the Great, he added:
“In modern history, Iran is the only country that harbored Jews escaping Hitler and his regime.”
Mic. Dropped.🎤
It’s actually wild that a German journalist feels comfortable throwing shade on Jews and Israel.
Prince Reza Pahlavi stays classy, stays truthful, and stays based.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
Last week, in the southern Lebanese village of Debel, an IDF soldier took a sledgehammer to a crucifix outside a Christian family's home. Another soldier photographed it. Six more were present and did not intervene or report it. The image went viral on Sunday, April 19.
Here is what happened next.
Within hours, the IDF confirmed the photo was authentic and opened an investigation. Prime Minister Netanyahu called the act "unacceptable" and said he was "stunned and saddened." Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar called it "grave and disgraceful" and extended an apology to every Christian whose feelings were hurt. By Tuesday, the soldier who swung the hammer and the soldier who filmed him were both removed from combat duty and sentenced to 30 days in military detention. The six bystanders face separate disciplinary proceedings. That same day, the IDF, in coordination with the Debel community, replaced the crucifix. Over 150 Jewish religious leaders signed a public letter of apology. The U.S. ambassador weighed in. Israeli parliamentarians weighed in. The story ran on every major outlet on earth.
A fair reader will note this wasn't the first such incident, and that smaller acts of vandalism by Israeli soldiers and settlers have not always triggered this level of response. That's a reasonable point. Hold onto it. It will become important in a moment.
Because for now, the facts stand: a statue was broken. No one was hurt. The state apologized, jailed the perpetrators, and paid to replace what one of its soldiers destroyed, inside 48 hours.
Now let me describe a different category of event. Let's start closest to home.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
When the PA took control of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity, in 1995, the city was 86% Christian in 1950 and still around 40% in 1998. Today it is under 10%. Under PA rule, Christians report systematic land confiscation via Palestinian courts, forged property deeds, extortion, exclusion from leadership, and sexual harassment of women and girls. In 2019, a Maronite church in Bethlehem was vandalized. In 2022, the PA arrested evangelical pastor Johnny Shahwan for "normalization with Israel." Also in 2022, the Christian-owned Bethlehem Hotel was shot at after a social media mob accused it of displaying a Star of David. No arrests. No apologies. No restored buildings.
In 2002, during the Second Intifada, dozens of armed Fatah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters stormed the Church of the Nativity itself, the traditional site of the birth of Jesus, and effectively held priests, nuns, and monks inside for 39 days. No Palestinian faction has ever apologized. No one was ever prosecuted by the PA. Several of the gunmen were later celebrated.
Then came Hamas. In October 2007, Rami Ayyad, a 32-year-old Palestinian Christian, manager of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, father of two with a pregnant wife, was kidnapped off the street in Hamas-ruled Gaza, stabbed repeatedly, shot, and dumped near his shop. His bookstore had been firebombed earlier that year by Islamist "vice" enforcers. He had received explicit death threats for selling Bibles. Hamas "condemned" the killing and promised an investigation. A decade later, Hamas acknowledged that Ayyad's killer was one of their own Qassam Brigades members, but only when they executed him for killing a Hamas commander, not for killing a Christian. The anti-Christian murder was never prosecuted at all.
Under Hamas, Gaza's Christian population collapsed from roughly 5,000 in 2006 to around 1,000 by October 2023, an 80% disappearance in a single generation. Bishop Alexios of Gaza publicly warned of forced conversions to Islam in 2016 and petitioned Ismail Haniyeh. He received no reply.
Overall, Christians in Palestinian-controlled territory went from roughly 11% of the population a century ago to 1% in 2017. That is not emigration. That is demographic erasure.
>>
Edoe Cohen retweeted
The Arab Word is Watching a Different War:
Three reasons why it has been difficult to understand the Arab position:
The first is the Arab relationship with Iran. From the vantage point of Brussels or London, Iran presents itself as a resistance movement with a grievance against American hegemony and Israeli occupation, and this presentation maps comfortably onto familiar Western anticolonial frameworks.
What it does not map onto is the lived experience of Arab populations in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and across the Gulf. In those countries, Iran's presence meant Hezbollah holding the Lebanese state hostage to Tehran's decisions, thirty-five armed factions in Iraq drawing salaries from Iranian funds channeled through the Iraqi national treasury, and Houthi commanders answering to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while firing on Arab civilians from Yemeni soil. Freedom is not the word any serious Arab observer would use for what Iran brought.
Indeed, the Arab world's quarrel with Iran runs far deeper than American bases or Israeli airstrikes. What drives it is the systematic subversion of Arab sovereignty by a foreign power that uses the language of Islamic solidarity as cover for an imperial project conducted through proxies.
The second dimension is the proxy question itself, where Western analysis fails most comprehensively. Iran goes far beyond supporting armed groups. Parallel state structures get built inside Arab countries, financial systems get captured, and political figures get installed who owe their existence and survival entirely to Tehran.
The Iranians who have administered this project understand it as the export of a revolution, but what Arab populations have experienced is closer to a colonial occupation conducted through intermediaries, and as of now, they’re not mourning the Islamic Republic.
When Westerners treat these proxy networks as instruments of legitimate resistance rather than as mechanisms of subjugation, they endorse an imperial project while believing themselves to be opposing one, and as a matter of fact, make themselves the legitimizing force behind Iran’s war against the Arab world.
The third dimension is the most counterintuitive for a Western audience, and it is the one most consequential for how the current war is understood and misunderstood. For Arab nationalists, including secular nationalists and even those with deep reservations about Israeli policy, Iran represents a greater and more immediate threat than Israel does.
This is a position that Western media are structurally ill-equipped to render intelligible, because Western discourse on the Middle East has been organized for decades around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary axis of regional injustice.
The result is that when Western governments and Western publics take strong positions against Israel’s actions against Iran’s operations, they believe themselves to be standing with the Arab world. In reality, they are advancing a position that the Arab world does not share and has not asked for, while ignoring the threat that Arab governments and Arab populations actually live with.
The rhetorical use of Israel as a perpetual alibi for Iranian aggression has been one of the Islamic Republic’s most durable tools, and Western opinion has served as the unwitting amplifier of that tool across the entire duration of the Islamic Republic’s existence.
open.substack.com/pub/zinebr…
Edoe Cohen retweeted
Tel Aviv has launched a tourism campaign in Farsi, hoping for peace with a free Iran soon 🇮🇱🕊️🇮🇷
Edoe Cohen retweeted
The headlines are relentless.
AI seems posed to outthink many of us.
So what do humans do?
Twenty years after writing A WHOLE NEW MIND about the rise of right-brainers, here’s my initial answer:
Double down on six human skills. 🧵👇
Edoe Cohen retweeted
There is nothing quite as poignantly & nauseatingly demonstrative of western privilege than having no grasp of, no ties, connection, experience, or understanding of jihadism than to jubilantly throw together a tweet about the leader of a death cult that raped and sexually assaulted, massacred, and kidnapped innocent civilians, held them hostage, shot and tortured it’s own people, extorted them & stole their money, caused unfathomable destruction of the land it buried itself under, wreaked havoc across the Middle East with its co-collaborators in the oppression and tyranny of millions under Islamist rule, stole the money of Iranians and expanded the regime’s empire through proliferation of its rotten and cancerous ideologies, as “badass.”
Nothing is more grossly out-of-touch than empowering authoritarian regimes while not having to bear the consequences of living under them. If you think Hamas are “badass,” ask @HowidyHamza
If you think Houthis are “badass,” ask @ghadayemen
If you think Hezbollah are “badass,” ask @WalidPhares
If you think the Islamic regime in Iran and its proxies are “badass,” ask the 90 million of my people living under its brutal occupation and being starved of the money used to fund these “badass” proxies.
Woke leftists built their entire ideologies around not “speaking over” people of a particular race or native to a land, while they systematically take advantage of getting likes and engagement from other westerners in support of Islamism over the forced silence of millions of voiceless Middle Easteners under authoritarian rule.
It isn’t just Islamism that is the biggest threat to the Middle East, it’s also its alliance with leftists, and nothing is more exhausting than knowing our fight for freedom means having to defeat this double headed monster.
The “woke” have become the co-conspirators to Middle Eastern oppression.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
This is a must-watch and a must-listen.
@elicalebon Absolute masterclass.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
You have many thousands of UN soldiers in south Lebanon whose job, according to UNSC resolutions, is to stop Hezbollah. But they refuse to stop Hezbollah.
You have two UNSC resolutions that demand Hezbollah disarm and leave the border, but you won’t even name them in any of your statements.
You have systematically avoided any action that might have prevented this war. You refuse to protect the Israelis, you refuse to protect the Lebanese, you don’t even pretend to try to implement your own solemn decisions. And now, in your moralizing, you effectively run defense for Hezbollah.
If you can’t protect us, if you can’t do a damn thing to push back the influence of malign and evil actors, at least shut up.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
Hamas: “We will repeat October 7 until Israel is destroyed”
Hezbollah: “Our fight will end only when Israel is obliterated”
Houthis: “Death to Israel, Curse the Jews”
Terrorist simps: “We’ll have peace when Israel stops fighting” 🤡
Edoe Cohen retweeted
According to self-described human rights organizations, there are two, and only two, rules of international law.
Rule One: Israel must do nothing.
Rule Two: Israel's enemies may do anything.
The mass electronic device explosions across Lebanon and Syria in recent days bear the hallmarks of a sinister dystopian nightmare.
International humanitarian law prohibits attacks that fail to distinguish between civilians and military targets and prohibits the use of these types of booby traps.
The UN Security Council should take all the measures at its disposal to ensure the protection of civilians. An international investigation must be established to ensure justice now.
Read more about what we have to say around these tragic events here: amnestyusa.org/press-release…
ALT Black, white, and yellow graphic that says: The perpetrators of the electronic device explosions across Lebanon and Syria must be held accountable. More than 2,931 people were injured and at least 37 were killed including a nine-year-old girl, an 11-year-old boy, and two medics.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
WATCH
PIERS MORGAN vs. DOUGLAS MURRAY:
PIERS MORGAN: Do you not feel that something has to give here, that this has to get resolved somehow, and that the only way to do that is, as with all these situations, you have to eventually compromise in some way? The problem for Netanyahu is that people think he is completely incapable of offering Hxmas any compromise. Therefore, there is no deal. So the families of the hostages are still there, and hundreds of thousands of protesters in Israel are on the streets of Tel Aviv right now. They are of the firm belief that it's his own intractable position on this, which is not going to allow any kind of ceasefire to be achievable.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: But there it is again, if I can say so, Piers—it's the same thing. There’s this presumption that it’s Netanyahu who is uncompromising. We end up with this notion because Netanyahu is a democratically elected leader, so it’s assumed that some pressure can be brought to bear on him. In my view, it’s not Netanyahu who’s uncompromising—it’s Hxmas. They could have handed back the hostages last October. They could have chosen not to do any of this.
I mean, they could have tried to build a state since 2005 when Israel withdrew from Gaza and handed the place over to them. Hxmas could have used the billions of dollars in aid that British, European, and American taxpayers gave them since 2006. They could have used that money to build up Gaza, to create a thriving, prosperous society. They could have made it a booming Mediterranean paradise. They could have created wealth for their people, but instead, what did they do?
They built downwards instead of upwards. They constructed a tunnel network bigger than the London Underground, and they siphoned off the money, just like Yasser Arafat did before them, making themselves rich. Why is Ismail Haniyeh worth billions of dollars? Why is Khaled Meshaal worth billions? Why do their children live like princes in luxury apartments in Doha?
Because they took the money from Americans, Brits, and Europeans and kept it for themselves, while leaving the people of Gaza in misery and poverty. Since 2005, there has been a complete counterfactual of what could have happened, but the Hxmas leadership didn’t want that. They’ve openly said they’re willing to use Palestinian children as human shields to manipulate world opinion. These are fanatics. They’re willing to sacrifice their own citizens to turn the world against Israel.
Again, how do you negotiate with that? The assumption in the West today is that because we’re so comfortable, we believe peace is the norm and historically expected. But that’s not true. We always think wars end with compromise and coming to the table, to use the cliché. But historically, most wars end because one side wins, and one side loses.
And one of the reasons, in my view, why there are endless rounds of conflict in this region is because Israel is never allowed to win, and Hxmas is always allowed to come out even. I think that simply sets up the next round of conflict. If Hxmas comes out of this with any fighting capability, then we will see another round of this war in a few years. So when David Lammy and others say we need a peace deal, I’d ask, on what terms? Everyone wants peace—except for Hxmas and the fanatics.
Everyone else wants peace. All those people in the south, the kibbutzniks, the partygoers, and others who were murdered on October 7—they all dreamed of peace with their Palestinian neighbors, their brothers and sisters. Who made that peace impossible? Hxmas, from 2005 to today.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
Journalism "has died".
Hersh was murdered by gunshot to the head after being abducted from a music festival, having his arm blown off and held hostage by the psychopathic Hamas scum terrorists you all keep fangirling over for 11 months.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
This is “resistance?” This is “free Palestine?” To kidnap people from their homes, torture them, execute them at point blank?
This is the revival of Islamic Caliphate, Arab Greatness?
Shame!
Everyone who’s still defending Hamas, including demanding a ceasefire, this is on you.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
By now, you’ve probably seen footage of the small protest in the Gaza Strip yesterday (thank you @IhabHassane) by displaced civilians who were calling on Hamas to release the Israeli hostages, end the war, accept the ceasefire/hostage deal, and stop their suffering. These voices are smothered and are begging to be heard by the pro-Palestine community, diaspora Palestinians, Arabs & Muslims, and those who want to see an end to the horrendous violence and killing in the coastal enclave. I urge and beg every single person who cares about Gaza and the Palestinian civilian population there: understand that most of the Strip’s population is not only against Hamas, Islamism, and the “resistance” agenda, but they are paying a heavy price for the continuation of a war they didn’t start and can’t end.
Criticize Israel all you want, but please, stop giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt; never support Islamist “resistance” that has harmed Gazans and the Palestinian national project; respect that there are diverse Palestinian voices and narratives; acknowledge that Hamas is a nefarious player in this entirely avoidable war and has to do everything it can to stop it; put yourself in the shoes of Gazans who are stuck between a relentless/merciless Israeli war machine and a despicable terror group that doesn’t care one bit for the well-being of civilians.
Hamas is a cancer that is serving the Palestinian people in Gaza on a golden platter to the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. It’s easy to cheer on the “resistance” when you haven’t had to live under the consequences of this supposed resistance that holds Palestinians hostage to a futile and suicidal project. Diaspora pro-Palestine Arabs and Muslims have a responsibility to hear Gazans who are pleading for Hamas to stop using them as human shields and to accept the current ceasefire/hostage deal. Admitting defeat would not constitute the end of the Palestinian national project. In fact, it would be an opportunity to engage in some soul-searching and reflection to figure out how to best proceed in pursuit of dignity, freedom, and self-determination for the Palestinian people. Start calling for Hamas to do its part in ending the war now! And I mean, right now!
Edoe Cohen retweeted
Massive protests in New York, London, Paris, Berlin after Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers ban women showing their faces or speaking in public. edition.cnn.com/2024/08/22/m…
Edoe Cohen retweeted
🧵
The thing that really winds me up about the global obsession with Palestine is the moral superiority some claim, while indisputably engaging in a clearly racist motivated obsession with anything that involves Jews.
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Edoe Cohen retweeted
🧵
A very large number of Muslims have popped into my mentions to tell me that zionism (self determination for Jews) is "genocidal". And there's something very, very interesting about this. Which is this..
/1
Edoe Cohen retweeted
After 10,000 innocent Iranians & more were lynched by the Islamic regime in the shadows of the world’s neglect, the “human rights attorneys” finally speak out, not to condemn the non-consensual rape, torture, murder, lynching, shooting, and flogging of the Iranian people, but to condemn the “non-consensual” assassination of a terrorist.
Where were you when Iranians were not consenting to the Islamic regime?
Where were you when Iranians were not consenting to being lynched?
Where were you when Iranians were not consenting to rape and torture?
Where were you when Iranians were not consenting to the stealing of Iranian money to pass on to terror proxies?
And now that those embezzlers, rapists, kidnappers, and murderers were assassinated, you finally found your voice to speak up about “Iranian consent?”
Disgusting beyond measure.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
After 12 innocent Druze/Arab children were killed by Hezbollah rocket fire in Golan Heights, there was silence in Times Square.
After the leader of a terrorist regime who had kidnapped and slaughtered thousands (propping up his framed picture behind the hostages and forcing them to pray) was assassinated, the “anti-war” crowd took to Times Square to hold up his picture and chant, “Intifada revolution” while waving Hamas flags.
Why are they more upset over the assassination of a terrorist than murdered children?
You know that red pill moment where you realize these people don’t care about Palestinians or Israelis or women or children or Arabs or Iranians or Jews or anyone, they are just the lunatic fringe radical left who are besotted with terrorists and oppressive regimes because they’re bored of indulging in the spoils of an excess of privilege?
Yeah, this is that moment.
Edoe Cohen retweeted
Ismail Haniyeh should never have been on Iranian soil. His presence was an insult to our nation and our people. This mass criminal’s terrorism against both innocent Israelis and Palestinians was funded by the Iranian people’s money against their will and against their interests.
The elimination of #Haniyeh in the heart of Tehran reveals how weak, feckless, incompetent, and at the highest security levels, penetrable this regime is. Its pretense of power is only in beating, imprisoning, and killing innocent and defenseless Iranians fighting for their freedom in the streets.
It is those brave Iranian freedom fighters who are the solution and only path to lasting peace in the Middle East. By backing them to bring down Ali Khamenei and his criminal caliphate, the region can finally be stable and at peace once again.
