Toby Low @Toby_Low

I don't agree with Russians who believe that Ukraine is part of Russia. I don't agree with Israelis who believe that Palestine is part of Israel. I don't agree with Palestinians who believe that Israel is part of Palestine. This is the only coherent position.

@RonE03241917 Agreed. I think it’s inexcusable that the Europeans haven’t got together to establish a no fly zone over most, if not all, Ukraine, where missiles and drones, let alone manned aircraft and helicopters etc. get shot down somehow. Purely protective. Defensive. Not offensive.

John Spencer says what’s occurring in Gaza is “the opposite of genocide.” After seven trips inside Gaza, he says the evidence he has personally witnessed tells a radically different story. “I’ve seen mountains of evidence to the opposite, literally fields of food and soldiers doing the opposite of genocide.” “The opposite of genocide is your intent is the opposite of destroying the people.” “That’s what I’ve seen in my now eight trips to Israel, seven into Gaza, probably the only person outside the IDF that’s been into Gaza so much.” “Are you trying to destroy the people or are you trying to get to the hostages and destroy the enemy?” “Killing the enemy in wars is sometimes the goal. It’s not a war crime.” “Israel has implemented these civilian harm mitigation measures, things trying to prevent civilians from getting hurt, like evacuations, phone calls, flyers, all of that.” “They’ve actually done more of these than any military’s ever tried in war.” “Putting their own soldiers at risk in order to give these notifications and take all these actions. It’s the opposite of genocide.” @SpencerGuard

For a Palestinian, criticizing Hamas means entering dangerous territory. The global Palestine solidarity movement has drawn its lines quite clearly. Criticize Hamas too loudly, and you risk being pushed outside those lines, accused of betraying your people, serving Israel, or being a “collaborator” or a “traitor.” Hamas has used the same tactic throughout nearly two decades of ruling Gaza: if you oppose its agenda, you must be working for the enemy. Many Palestinian and Western activists, even those who privately oppose Hamas, have chosen to stay in the safe zone. They focus almost entirely on Israel’s crimes. And I have no problem with exposing Israel’s crimes. They must be exposed. My problem begins when solidarity with Palestinians requires ignoring what Palestinians themselves are saying. When Gazans took to the streets in the middle of this devastating war to protest Hamas, something revealing happened. Many of the people who had spent months amplifying voices from Gaza suddenly went quiet. Cameras that documented almost everything else were turned away. Pens that wrote endlessly about Gaza had very little to say. For me, that was a moral test. If your mission is to amplify Palestinian voices, but you silence those voices the moment they criticize Hamas, then you are not really amplifying Palestinians. You are amplifying only the Palestinians who fit your narrative. And too many people failed that test. As @KhalilJeries wrote today: "Hamas is the worst thing to ever happen to the Palestinians after the occupation." My criticism of Hamas has nothing to do with their Islamism, although I am critical of that, but rather with their authoritarianism, war crimes, and complete failure on the Palestinian national level. That being said, if Hamas disappears tomorrow, Israel will not change, nor will the occupation end. This is not just a prediction; Israeli leaders themselves say it out in the open." Hamas can be disastrous for Palestinians, and Israel can still be responsible for its occupation and its actions against Palestinians. Condemning one does not require excusing the other.

Kudos to @nytimes for publishing this important piece by @afalkhatib. If you’re one of those Western activists deluded enough to think that chanting “From the river to the sea!” will actually help Palestinians, rather than lock them into a perpetual cycle of horrible wars, please listen to the “lived experience” of this brave Palestinian writer. Anyone who is pro-Palestinian should be anti-Hamas. "Repeated wars killed thousands of Palestinians and wounded or displaced hundreds of thousands, locking Gaza into a cycle of destruction, reconstruction, resource theft and deeper Hamas entrenchment. Billions of dollars were wasted and the development that I saw emerging as a child was arrested. This alone should have delegitimized Hamas among Western activists, academics, students, journalists, protesters, politicians and those who claim to be pro-Palestine. Yet after Hamas carried out the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the worst catastrophe in modern Palestinian history, I watched with dismay and anger as activists, students, academics, politicians and writers expressed a chilling appreciation for the massacre." "The last thing Palestinians need is more denial from the left. The Palestinian national project has a rare chance to evolve toward nation-building, peace and coexistence alongside a Jewish Israel that is not about to be exterminated. Chants of “from the river to sea” and the like are destructive conceits." nytimes.com/2026/09/04/opi…

BROWDER: Putin has no intention of doing a peace treaty, a ceasefire, or anything like that with Ukraine. He has every interest in carrying on with this war because he looks weak. And looking weak in Russia is the ultimate sin. Russia is a strongman country, and a strongman who looks weak eventually gets taken over by a stronger strongman. And so, from Putin’s perspective, the only option he has is to escalate. Even if that’s suicidal, terrible for economy, leads to tens or hundreds of thousands more young Russian men dying, he will escalate. Putin has never been sincere about reaching a peace deal at any step of the way. He’s been pushed and prodded by Europeans, by Americans, by Ukrainians to do a peace deal. And Putin just doesn’t want to do it because he understands that a peace deal effectively means that a million psychopathic, murderous soldiers come back from Ukraine and then start doing terrible things inside Russia. And most importantly, doing a peace deal means that people then question him: why did he start this war in the first place? He didn’t achieve any of the goals he stated. Why did Russia lose 1.5 million young men? Why did Russia lose a trillion dollars of value, of property, of resources in this terrible war? And then they’ll say it’s all the fault of Vladimir Putin, and he understands that it’s not going to end well for him.

@EuroKitco @LisaRich_III @CaptMarkKelly Free elections require a free press, free speech, free political parties, not dead opposition politicians, not defenestrated prominent Russians and journalists, not state controlled media. He’s a dictator. A cult leader. A tyrant in other words.

@LisaRich_III @CaptMarkKelly Dictator? Putin is the dictator, what an American would call a tyrant. He hasn’t held legitimate elections in Russia for so long that he is a genuine cult dictator..

Post-WW2 Germany lost 25% of its land, saw up to 14 million people expelled & 2.5m people die in that process, paid over $90 billion since 1952, was split in two & occupied for 45 years, & still pays out reparations. Palestinian Arabs tried to kill and expel Holocaust survivors. The international community preferred a one state solution where Jews, though a minority, could immigrate to the small percentage of Palestine where they constituted a majority and (perhaps) some empty desert wasted as well. Palestinian Arab rejection of any further Jewish immigration and rejection of Jewish local autonomy was what led to the international preference for partition. The White Paper of 1939, Morrison-Grady Plan of 1945, 1947 UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) minority proposal, and 1948 first Bernadotte proposal all involved “one state solutions” that would see Palestinian Arabs as the strong majority in perpetuity. Palestinian leadership rejected all of these ideas because they opposed any further Jewish refuge immigration and any status for the Jews other than a tolerated and subordinated minority. Palestinians waged war against the Jews in the 1929 pogroms, the 1930-1935 Black Hand insurgency, the 1936-1939 Great Revolt, and in the 1947-1949 Arab-Israeli War. The leader of the Palestinians at the time was a Nazi-aligned war criminal wanted by Britain and Yugoslavia, who lobbied against Jews (even children) being allowed to leave Axis-occupied Europe even when he knew about what was happening to Jews, who gloated in his memoirs about the Holocaust, who whipped up pogroms and insurgency, and who laid a complete siege to Jerusalem and its 100,000 Jews (no food, no water, no medicine, etc). And who made clear in 1937 (i.e., before the Holocaust) that the 400,000 Jews already in Palestine had to go one way or another. You could argue that he wasn’t well liked by most Palestinians. But the point remains that the catastrophe Palestinians endured wasn’t a product of some sort of Holocaust reparations. It was the fault of absolutist Palestinian leadership couldn’t say yes to repeated winning offers and proceeded to gamble and start a war.

evan loves worf @esjesjesj

3 days ago

Remember when Emma Vigeland pointed out that Germany didn’t really have to pay for the Holocaust but Palestine did and everyone called her an antisemite

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@cohenj_ @AynReagan x.com/afalkhatib?s=1…

@barbartholomew @AynReagan The author discussed is this guy, he’s on X here x.com/afalkhatib?s=1…

@aziz0nomics The man makes so much sense.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib

3 days ago

In a new opinion piece for the Forward, How Hamas still holds Gaza captive, I describe the stalemate in Gaza, Hamas's vile criminality, the dehumanization of Gazans, the normalization of Hamas's narratives and offer a plea to the "pro-Palestine" community. forward.com/opinion/848177…

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They are attacking Ahmed Fouad al-Khatib because he is telling the truth about Hamas, and they can't handle the truth.

In a new opinion piece for the Forward, How Hamas still holds Gaza captive, I describe the stalemate in Gaza, Hamas's vile criminality, the dehumanization of Gazans, the normalization of Hamas's narratives and offer a plea to the "pro-Palestine" community. forward.com/opinion/848177…

An excerpt from "To Save Gaza, Resist Hamas": While many play verbal gymnastics to mask support for Hamas, or resist calls to denounce them, the rhetoric makes that support clear. Efforts by university administrators, the media or members of the public to push back against this devolution by pro-Palestinian activists were met with cries of censorship. Despite this obfuscation, the boundary between solidarity with the Palestinian people and endorsement of their Palestinian oppressors dissolved. As the horrors continued, the people of Gaza made it clearer, despite repression from Hamas, that they were disgusted with the group and wanted it out. There were several rounds of anti-Hamas protests during the war calling for the group to stop the disaster it began, to leave Gaza and release the hostages. Opposition to Hamas’s torture, extremism and failed governance has been strong and present for years. There were mass protests against the group in 2023 before Oct. 7, and in 2019 and 2017, sometimes under the banner of “We want to live.” Hamas brutally suppressed those demonstrations. The people of Gaza clearly did not matter to those claiming to champion Palestinian lives. Two months ago, 44 percent of American Muslims surveyed by Pew Research said they had a favorable view of Hamas, a number I believe understates the true level of support among Arab and Muslim diaspora communities. I cannot enter a mainstream Arab, Muslim or Palestinian American space and critique Hamas meaningfully without facing backlash or outright hostility. Hamas is now facing a humiliating defeat. Despite Israeli rejection of the initial phased disarmament framework, Hamas acquiesced to the Board of Peace’s demands. All the devastation was for nothing. Large segments of the pro-Palestinian community and Western left bet on a losing horse and embraced a rotten resistance narrative now invalidated by Hamas itself. The last thing Palestinians need is more denial from the left. The Palestinian national project has a rare chance to evolve toward nation-building, peace and coexistence alongside a Jewish Israel that is not about to be exterminated. Chants of “from the river to sea” and the like are destructive conceits.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib

6 days ago

In an op-ed for The New York Times, I argue that saving Gaza & its Palestinian people requires resisting Hamas, weaving in personal themes, addressing issues with the Left & "pro-Palestine" movement & proposing a vision for Gaza's future Transformation. nytimes.com/2026/09/04/opi…

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The Nazification of the so‑called “pro-Palestine” movement is no exaggeration. Large segments of this conglomerate have turned what should be a moral cause into an exceptionally hateful, racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and toxic ecosystem of low‑information activists, journalists, academics, and online personalities. Since my New York Times opinion piece, “To Save Gaza, Resist Hamas,” I have been targeted by a global smear campaign driven by Hamas, “pro-Palestine” fascists, antisemites, racists, and deeply disturbed individuals with hundreds of thousands of followers. They have circulated AI‑generated images and fabricated posts claiming I am Jewish, an Epstein‑connected agent blackmailed by Mossad, a closeted gay man, and a paid influencer funded by Israel (I am none of those things, in case you are curious). This is happening at the same moment other corners of the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex are calling a Black member of Congress a “monkey” and a “boy.” Add to that the meltdown among supposed journalists, academics, and influencers who clearly did not read the op‑ed and reacted only to the title, furious that I criticized Hamas, their favorite “resistance” Islamist fascist group in Gaza, or that I refused to place all blame for the coastal enclave’s problems on Israel. The backlash actually proves my central argument in this piece. Many in the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex refuse to engage with complexity around Gaza, Hamas, and Palestinian agency and responsibility, even within the reality of Israel’s overwhelming power advantage. By personalizing their reactions and resorting to insults instead of substance, including my explicit critique of Israeli policies, they are doing exactly what I argue must change. Palestinians and their allies can criticize Israel as much as they want, but fantasies about Israel’s destruction are neither moral nor pragmatic. Most critically, no one holds a monopoly on what counts as a legitimate Palestinian viewpoint. Palestinians are diverse, their opinions are deeply fragmented, and many in Gaza are furious with Hamas’s narratives and actions, a reality ignored by externally based Palestinians and non-Palestinians in the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex. It is time to delegitimize, call out, resist, and dismantle the current “pro-Palestine” movement and build an entirely new apparatus that rejects the hateful, bigoted, racist, homophobic, Jihadi, violent, and antisemitic voices that have become mainstream within this failed environment.

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Well, I guess for some “pro-Palestine” activists in the West, Palestinian victims only matter when the perpetrator is Israel. When Hamas brutalizes Palestinian civilians in Gaza, kidnaps them, tortures them, and breaks their limbs, suddenly Palestinian lives don’t seem to matter anymore. Palestinians in Gaza protested against Hamas last year. They protested again this year. And for nearly two decades under Hamas rule, Palestinians have risked their lives to speak out against Hamas terrorism, endless wars, corruption, repression, and abuse. Instead of receiving solidarity from many of the so-called “pro-Palestine” activists in the West, Palestinians who protested against Hamas were branded “traitors” by the very people who claimed to stand with them, simply for daring to speak out against Hamas. Imagine claiming to stand with Palestinians while making excuses for those who kill, beat, torture, threaten, and silence Palestinians simply for demanding a better life and a future for their children. Palestinian lives do not become less valuable when the person abusing them is Palestinian. Palestinian human rights do not begin and end with Israel.

Tyranny is a bad thing. Putin is a tyrant. Actually what is more he runs a kleptocracy, bribery and corruption are tools of state. Thats a dysfunctional state. Where Putin rules by fear. Hence all the dead journalist, politicians, and prominent business men who have fallen from windows etc.

No you did, you just proved his point. Disagreeing with Hamas in Gaza IS seriously bad for your Palestinian health, there are lots of mutilated, beaten, tortured, raped and dead Palestinians to prove that. Hamas rule by fear. That’s the point. That’s not a good thing. It’s a sign of a dysfunctional society.

Imagine [hopefully] reading a piece that calls for Gaza to become the pride and joy of the Palestinian people and a hub of compelling Palestinian national identity by rejuvenating the territory, embracing peace, and rejecting a terror organization that admitted to refusing Gaza development offers worth billions, including an airport and seaport, only to proclaim that the op-ed is "pro-genocide." And how was this brilliant conclusion reached? Because the article I published in The New York Times didn't do the ubiquitous "everything has to be Israel's fault" that seems to be the only line of thinking within the supposed "pro-Palestine" camp. Speak to Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t Hamas or making content for the “pro-Palestine” community abroad, and you hear the same thing again and again. They describe, plainly and without theatrics, how Hamas halted Gaza’s development and crippled the broader Palestinian national project since its founding in 1987. They do not need to mention Israel in every sentence to sound authentic to outsiders, including other Palestinians or non-Palestinians alike. They simply recount their lived reality. For Gazans, Hamas is the central problem. There were no Israeli soldiers inside Gaza before October 7. The blockade that everyone loves to speak about was imposed after Hamas’s cross‑border abduction of an Israeli soldier in June 2006 and tightened after the group’s violent takeover of the territory on June 14, 2007. From that point forward, Hamas massively built tunnels, fired rockets, smuggled weapons, waged repeated rounds of conflict, and declared its intent to “destroy” Israel, while turning Gaza into a fortress of armed “resistance” that got Gaza destroyed, tens of thousands killed, millions displaced, and wasted billions of dollars. Hamas imposed punishing taxes on Gazans to fund its terror; stole diesel from Gaza’s only power plant and caused chronic power outages; suppressed women’s freedoms; blocked travel for anyone it disliked; and routinely killed, tortured, jailed, beat, and humiliated countless Gazans. Research the political and cultural divides between Gaza and the West Bank, and you quickly see how many Gazans resent West Bankers for cheering Hamas and October 7. These dynamics are complex, real, and central to understanding Palestinian politics, yet they are brushed aside or overlooked to satisfy low‑information audiences who consume the toxic narratives produced by the "pro-Palestine" industrial complex. Some people are simply uninformed. Some are unsophisticated. And then there are those who know exactly what they are doing and deliberately twist, manipulate, and distort reality to manufacture ignorance and maintain obedience and Orwellian-grade compliance among the crowds.