Religion is a Mental Illness

How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative

a powerful group of editors is hijacking Wikipedia, pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about Hamas,

piratewires.com

a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around israel with alarming influence

• A coordinated campaign led by around 40 Wikipedia editors has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years, intensifying after the October 7 attack
• Six weeks after October 7, one of these editors successfully removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article on Hamas
• The group also appeared to attempt to promote the interests of the Iranian government across a number of articles, including deleting “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Islamic Republic Party] officials”
• A group called Tech For Palestine launched a separate but complementary campaign after October 7, which violated Wikipedia policies by coordinating to edit Israel-Palestine articles on the group 8,000 member Discord
• Tech For Palestine abandoned its efforts and its members went into a panic after a blog discovered what they were doing; the group deleted all its Wiki Talk pages and Sandboxes they had been using to coordinate their editing efforts, and the main editor deleted all her chats from the group’s Discord channel

On everything from American politics to corporate brands, Wikipedia plays host to a smoldering battle of ideas and values that occasionally erupts into white-hot, internecine edit wars. But no fire burns hotter than the Israel-Palestine topic area. The topic is such a flashpoint that the Palestine-Israel Articles (PIA) designation is used synonymously with its own dispute resolution abbreviation — Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel Articles, known as ARBPIA in Wiki-speak.

While always contentious, over roughly the past four years, and intensifying since October 7, PIA has been subject to a highly coordinated, sustained and remarkably effective campaign to radically alter public perception of the conflict. Led by around 40 mostly veteran editors, the campaign has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream.

A separate but complementary campaign, launched after October 7 and staged from an 8,000 member-strong Discord group called Tech For Palestine (TFP), employed common tech modalities — ticket creation, strategy planning sessions, group audio “office hour” chats — to alter over 100 articles. Operating from February 6 to September 3 of this year, TFP became a well-oiled operation, going so far as to attempt to use Wikipedia as a means of pressuring British members of parliament into changing their positions on Israel and the Gaza War.

These efforts are remarkably successful. Type “Zionism” into Wikipedia’s search box and, aside from the main article on Zionism (and a disambiguation page), the auto-fill returns: “Zionism as settler colonialism,” “Zionism in the Age of the Dictators” (a book by a pro-Palestinian Trotskyite), “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,” and “Racism in Israel.”

The aggregate effect of these efforts is a wholesale shift to the landscape of the Palestine-Israel topic online. As I reported in a previous Pirate Wires investigation, this is largely thanks to Google, which grants Wikipedia a “most favored nation” status with articles automatically given the first spot on any topic-related search result. If you Google “Zionism and settler colonialism,” for example, what you get is a Wikipedia article automatically anchored to the very top of the Google search results, with its own knowledge panel to the right. A fringe concept that would have only shown a smattering of unfocused articles just two years ago — before the article was created — now has its own primetime Internet stage.

“The recent issue with the ‘Zionism’ Wikipedia page is fundamentally a Google problem,” says someone familiar with the matter. “Wikipedia articles act as an unprotected back door to top Google search results, with the article's introduction often populating the knowledge panel, giving the impression Google has vetted this content — when it hasn’t. Malicious editors exploit this vulnerability, platforming fringe views and giving them priority over more reliable sources.”

The kind of coordination carried out by these groups violates many of Wikipedia’s most fundamental policies, including one of its core content policies, Neutral Point of View (NPOV), which states that, “Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them.” The practice also violates the Gaming the System guideline, which prohibits editors from “engineering ‘victory’ in a content dispute.” It runs afoul of the broader Wikipedia ethos discouraging Tag teaming, when “editors coordinate their actions to circumvent the normal process of consensus.” Most flagrantly, it violates a guideline called Canvassing, which prohibits secret coordination with the “intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way.”

To skirt this, the pro-Palestine group leverages deep Wikipedia know-how to coordinate efforts without raising red flags. They work in small clusters, with only two or three active in the same article at any given time. On their own, many of these edits appear minor, even trivial. But together, their scope is staggering, with two million edits made to more than 10,000 articles, a majority of which are PIA or topically associated. In dozens of cases, the group’s edits account for upwards of 90% of the content on an article, giving them complete control of the topics.

One of the most prominent members of the pro-Palestine group is the user Iskandar323, a prolific editor whose nuanced approach to historical and even esoteric articles is representative of the larger effort. In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle, the implication is significant: unlike nations, “cultural communities” don’t require, or warrant, their own states.

Iskandar also worked to sanitize articles on Hamas, in one case removing mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article “Hamas.” (The edit remains intact today.) He removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter in at least three other articles.

To expand his reach, Iskandar also goes on editing rampages, or “speedruns.” Last August, he removed 22,000 characters from the article on Amnesty International that were critical of the organization, in one case wholesale deleting a 1,000-word long passage related to criticism of its stance on Israel. On the “History of Israel” article, Iskandar deleted a paragraph critical of the Iranian government; removed an account of 16th century Jewish immigration to Israel; excised a mention of the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem's alliance with Hitler; and made dozens of similar edits — all in a matter of minutes.

Far from a lone wolf, however, Iskandar is part of a group of editors that uses coordinated “swarm” tactics that, taken together, invert Wikipedia’s founding vision, turning the site's perceived neutrality and authority into an attack vector that can be hijacked to advance ideological aims at a mass scale.

In August, an analysis of the intensity of editing in PIA between January 2022 and September 2024 found that the top contributor to PIA by number of edits, a user called Selfstudier, made over 15,000 edits in the space in that period. Iskandar323 contributed over 12,000 edits to PIA articles in the same period. Other members of the pro-Palestine group are equally prolific, with top contributors including CarmenEsparzaAmoux (8,353), Makeandtoss (8,074), Nableezy (6,414), Nishidani (5,879), Onceinawhile (4,760) and an admin called Zero0000 (2,561).

The 15,000 edits by Selfstudier and the 12,000 by Iskandar323 put those two users in the top 99.975% of editors by number of edits — solely for their PIA edits made in under three years. The other pro-Palestine group members’ PIA edits from this period place them among the top 99.9% of Wikipedia editors. All together, the top 20 editors of this group made over 850,000 edits to more than 10,500 articles, the majority of them in the Palestine-Israel topic area, or topically connected historical articles.

It’s not just the raw number of edits that matters. The same analysis shows that fully 90% of total edits by Selfstudier in that period were made to Palestine-Israel articles. Other members of the group clock in at 90% (sean.hoyland), 86% (CarmenEsparzaAmoux), 82% (Makeandross), 64% (Nishidani), and 43% (Onceinawhile). After October 7 the intensity increased, with Selfstudier peaking at 99% in October 2023, while others got to 97%, 98% and even 100% of their total monthly edits dedicated to PIA.

To evade detection, the group works in pairs or trios, an approach that veils them from detection. They also appear to rotate their groupings for the same reason. Likewise, one or more of the group’s editors can come to the aid of another in the case of pushback. In many instances, editing by the group is made to articles focused on historical issues, where a single editor might be patrolling for this kind of abuse, making it easy for two dedicated users to overwhelm or exhaust the lone editor.

A separate analysis shows the number of instances in which two members of the group edited the same article to be extraordinarily high. As of time of publication, Nableezy and Onceinawhile have co-edited 1,418 articles. Nableezy and Iskandar323 1,429 co-edited articles. Onceinawhile and Zero0000 have co-edited 2,119 articles. Zero000 and Nableezy have co-edited 1,754 articles. Onceinawhile and Iskandar323 have 1,594 co-edited. Huldra and Onceinawhile have co-edited articles 2,493 times. Nableezy and Huldra have co-edited 1,764 times.

One of the articles targeted most intensively by the group is the one for Amin Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem from the 1920s to the 1950s, a pivotal figure in Palestinian history. While Iskandar323 worked to remove negative content from the Al-Husseini article, it was two other members of the group — Zero0000 and Nishidani — who would have the greatest impact, together making over 1,000 edits to the article, often in an attempt to erase or downplay Al-Husseini’s well-documented collaboration with Hitler.

In one instance in April 2021, Zero0000 and Nishidani worked together to keep a photo of Al-Husseini touring a Nazi concentration camp out of the article. While a single editor, Shane (a newbie), advocated for its inclusion, a trio of veterans including Zero0000, Nishidani and Selfstudier fought back. After Selfstudier accused Shane of being a troll for arguing for the photo’s inclusion, Zero0000, days later, “objected” to its inclusion, citing issues of provenance. Nishidani stepped in to back up Zero0000, prompting a response by Shane. The following day, Zero0000 pushed back against Shane, who responded. The day after, Nishidani returned with his own pushback. The tag-team effort proved too much for Shane, who simply gave up, and the effort succeeded: the photo remains absent. To date, Nishidani’s contributions to the article on Al-Husseini comprise 56.4% of its content.

In another case, Nishidani worked with a member of the pro-Palestine group editors, Onceinawhile to produce an article called “Zionism, race and genetics.” (The article’s title was later changed to “Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism”.) The article attempts to tie Zionism’s roots to 19th century views on “race science” embraced by the Nazis, thereby drawing an implicit — and, in at least one instance in the article, explicit — parallel between Zionism and Nazism. Pro-Palestine group member Onceinawhile created the article in July of last year, accompanied by a note arguing, “Early Zionists were the primary supporters of the idea that Jews are a race, as it offered scientific ‘proof’ of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent.”Together, Onceinawhile and Nishidani’s contributions account for nearly 90% of the article’s content. Onceinawhile would continue to push this view in numerous other articles, including the article on “Zionism.”

In March, a Wikipedia user submitted a case to Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) alleging “a systematic removal of instances documenting human rights crimes by Iranian officials on Wikipedia, accompanied by the addition of misleading information favoring the IRP (Islamic Republic Party) on the platform.” The case shows that a member of the pro-Palestine group called Mhhossein edited the article on the Mahsa Amini protests — the months-long anti-regime demonstrations that rocked Iran when a young woman died in custody after being arrested for improperly wearing her head scarf — to change key wording to falsely depict widespread support for the Iranian regime and whitewash violent calls from pro-government counter-demonstrators.

According to the allegations, Iskandar323 (who has co-edited with Mhhossein nearly 400 times) worked with a separate editor to delete “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Iranian] officials.” This included a claim about Iran’s post-revolution death commissions that executed thousands political prisoners; details showing executions were carried out by “high-ranking members of Iran’s current government”; mention of the Iranian government’s “unprecedented reign of terror” in the early 1980s; the sentencing of an Iranian official to life in prison in Sweden for his role in the executions; the targeting of an Iranian dissident group with “psychological warfare,” and dozens of others.

The charges are serious, and the evidence backing them up abundant. Nevertheless, seven months later the Arbcom case is still pending. The reason is systemic: in a lengthy request for arbitration on a separate PIA case, one of Wikipedia’s arbitrators noted that the final decision-making panel is staffed by 12 volunteers, only 10 of whom are active. “It is clear that AE [arbitration enforcement] has run out of steam to handle the morass of editor conduct issues in PIA,” the arbitrator wrote. “PIA is a Gordian knot; and AE has run short of knot detanglers.”

Electing more Arbcom members would require a massive overhaul of the site’s governing regulations, a task akin to the US government amending its constitution. And though Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site, has around $500 million in assets, because of the air-gap between Wikipedia and WMF and the volunteer ethos of Wikipedia’s mission not a penny can be used to hire people to oversee contentious topics.

So the group’s pro-Iran efforts go unchecked. One of its most prominent members, Nableezy (over 6,000 PIA edits since 2022), has put considerable effort into sanding the hard edges off of Iran’s most powerful proxy, Hezbollah. Nableezy — who took the extraordinary step of including a userbox on his Talk page that links to a text that reads “This user supports Hezbollah.” — has worked to rebuff claims that Hezbollah is a terror organization. In one instance, Nableezy pushed back against another user characterizing a Hezbollah attack on Israeli population centers as a terror attack, arguing “An attack on military targets is not terrorism.” Last year, Nableezy, who appears to be an American, argued in the Talk page for the “Hezbollah” article that, “The US military is designated as a terror group by Iran, should we include that as an endnote everywhere the US army is mentioned?”

But Nableezy’s main area of focus is Israel. To this end, Nableezy’s editing has included subtle, ideologically consistent moves like removing a picture of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the “Israel” article (the image remains absent at time of publishing), pushing for the removal of the ancient history of Israel from the article, and altering a sentence on Zionism that described it as a call by its leaders for the “restoration of the Jews to their homeland” to a call for “the colonization of Palestine by European Jews.”

This exchange embodies the rhetorical approach taken by the group: the shifting of language, the torturing of settled definitions, and positioning fringe academic theory as mainstream — an approach developed by the radical left, in concert with global Islamist movements, in the wake of 9/11, when the attacks put Islamism on the moral back foot. In response, the leftist-Islamist alliance launched two decades of ideological assault on the US, and the West more generally. The same post-9/11 dynamic took place after October 7, when the savagery of the Hamas attack opened a vulnerability as the broader public would recognize it as a barbaric attack on civilians.

In response, the ideological push-back on Wikipedia ramped up. In February, an explicitly coordinated effort was launched when leaders on a group called Tech For Palestine (TFP) — launched in January by Paul Biggar, the Irish co-founder of software development platform CircleCI — opened a channel on their 8,000-strong Discord channel called “tfp-wikipedia-collaboration.” In the channel, two group leaders, Samira and Samer, coordinated with other members to mass edit a number of PIA articles. The effort included recruiting volunteers, processing them through formal orientation, troubleshooting issues, and holding remote office hours to problem solve and ideate. The channel’s welcome message posed a revealing question: “Why Wikipedia? It is a widely accessed resource, and its content influences public perception.”

At the heart of TFP Wikipedia Collaboration was a veteran editor called Ïvana, who was tapped as the resident expert on the site, and whose Discord username featured the red triangle affiliated with Hamas’ targeting.

With Ïvana’s guidance, as well as her hands-on editing of articles, the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration group coordinated both on Discord and Wikipedia, where they created editing staging grounds on Talk pages that included elements like “Work in Progress Table,” “Investigate and Decide,” and a volunteer job board with detailed responsibilities. Off-wiki, the group created planning documentation with agendas, meeting notes, goal setting, role allocation, skills and breakdowns. Their activities ranged from editing celebrity articles by adding pro-Palestine statements they made to creating new articles out of whole cloth, like a proposed article called “Palestine: The Solution.” The group focused extensively on the article for German discount supermarket Lidl, adding a section in the “Criticism” section about products from Israel being incorrectly labeled as Moroccan. They also put special emphasis on articles concerning sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, with Ïvana questioning the veracity of reports of rape from that day, while adding to other articles claims that Israeli soldiers raped Palestinians. (In March, a senior UN official who investigated sexual violence on October 7 concluded that, “There are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023.” The official wrote her investigation produced a “‘catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors,’ including sexual violence.”)

In its most audacious case, TFP members developed a project to use Wikipedia as a means of pressuring British Members of Parliament to change their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict in advance of UK elections in July. The plan called for scraping data on visits by MPs to Israel and Israel-related donor information, to create a dedicated Wikipedia article using the data to (as the originator of the project put it) inform “voters to put pressure ahead of the next [parliamentary] elections.”

Within the TFP channel, there was always a background awareness that what they were doing was not in keeping with Wikipedia norms. Early in the channel’s existence, a user and veteran Wikipedia editor called shushugah wrote, “I’m a little confused what the goal is here. I’m an active Wikipedia editor, and for any Israel/Palestine topics you need a solid grasp of Wikipedia policy/culture, and have 500 edits/30 days of activity…no shortcuts.” Within minutes, another user, Heba, wrote “Let’s chat [hand wave emoji].” One of the channel’s power users, zei_squirrel, who runs an X account with 270,000 followers, noted “it’s important to keep this as decentralized and organic as possible to avoid it being used against us, but again this should all be familiar to those who know how wiki works.”

The anxiety was not unwarranted. In September, a researcher discovered the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration channel and published a number of posts on a blog called Wikipediaflood. (A magazine called Jewish Insider also stumbled across the group, but mostly failed to appreciate its full significance.) These events sent the group into a panic, with Ïvana erasing all her chats in the channel, and deleting the Talk pages and Sandboxes staging pages she’d created. The group locked down the TFP Wikipedia Collaboration channel in September. At minimum, the group made revisions to at least 112 articles on celebrities, American cities, pro-Palestine organizations, and figures and events related to the Gaza war.

There is little doubt that the kind of careful, intelligent Wikipedia coordination detailed above will continue. Wikipedia is simply too powerful a tool — and one too easy to manipulate — for actors like the pro-Palestine group and TFP activists to stay away from. But Wikipedia is coming to a crossroads. The ask-and-answer modality of generative AI will eat away at the value of the site’s privileged position within the Google information ecosystem. Groups less savvy than pro-Palestine will also learn to exploit the site, to much more public effect. As with so many of our once-cherished institutions, trust will be lost, and credibility will soon follow.

One of the hallmarks of an institution in crisis is that, far from preparing for the future, it is barely capable of managing the present. With Arbcom grinding to a halt and edit wars erupting in all corners — all while Wikimedia Foundation, fiddling to the baroque tunes of DEI, has turned its attention to funding progressive activism — it seems Wikipedia is facing exactly this challenge. In most cases, calling a crisis existential is overblown. While Wikipedia may not be there just yet, it’s clear that moment is not far off.

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” -- George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

And if you do not, then be informed of a war [against you] from Allah and His Messenger. But if you repent, you may have your principal - [thus] you do no wrong, nor are you wronged.

If you do not, beware of war on the part of God and His Apostle. But if you repent, you shall keep your principal. Oppress none and no one will oppress you.

O you who have believed, fear Allah and give up what remains [due to you] of interest, if you should be believers.

O you who believe, fear God, and give up, abandon, the usury that is outstanding, if you are believers, true to your faith, since it is expected of the believer that he adhere to God’s command: this was revealed when some of the Companions, after the prohibition, wanted to reclaim some of the usury from before.

But if you do not, do what you have been commanded, then be warned, have knowledge, of war from God, and His Messenger, against you: herein is a grave threat for them. When it was revealed, they said, ‘What power can we have in a war against Him!’ Yet if you repent, and forgo it, you shall have your principal sums, the original amounts, not being unjust, by charging interest, and no injustice being done to you, by way of any diminution.

(O ye who believe!) the reference here is to the sons of 'Amr Ibn 'Umayr Ibn 'Awf al-Thaqafi, [and they were four brothers:] Mas'ud [Ibn 'Amr], Hubayb [Ibn 'Amr], 'Abd Yalayl [Ibn 'Amr] and Rabi'ah [Ibn 'Amr] (observe your duty to Allah) fear Allah regarding usury, (and give up what remaineth (due to you) from usury) leave that which the Banu Makhzum owe you of usury, (if ye are (in truth) believers) if you really believe in the prohibition of usury.

(And if ye do not) if you do not abstain from usury, (then be warned of war (against you) from Allah and His Messenger) then be ready for a torment from God in the Hereafter by means of the Fire and its chastisement and also be ready for the sword from His Messenger in the life of this world. (And if ye repent) from usury, (then ye have your principal (without interest)) that is owed to you by the Banu Makhzum. (Wrong not) anyone by demanding interest, (and ye shall not be wronged) by anyone if they give you back your capitals; it is also said that 'wrong not' means: do not harm others; and 'you shall not be wronged' meaning: you shall not be harmed because of your debts.

Riba is an Arabic word used in Islamic law and roughly translated as "usury": unjust, exploitative gains made in trade or business. Riba is mentioned and condemned in several different verses in the Qur'an (3:130, 4:161, 30:39, and most commonly 2:275-2:280). It is also mentioned in many hadith (reports of the life of Muhammad).

Definitions of riba include:

• Unjustified increment in borrowing or lending money, paid in kind or in money above the amount of loan, as a condition imposed by the lender or voluntarily promised by the borrower. This is called fiqh riba al-duyun (debt usury) (Abdel-Rahman Yousri Ahmad). • Unequal exchange. In addition to loan interest, this can include the exchange of nonequivalent quantities of goods (riba al-fadl) or unequal exposure to risk (Olivier Roy). • All forms of interest, "any excess on the principal sum of loan", i.e. any and all interest, irrespective of how much is lent, whether the borrower is rich or poor, or the use of the loan for investment or for consumption. Some translations of verses of the Quran substitute the word "interest" for riba or "usury". This is the "orthodox"[26] or "conservative" view of classical jurists, as well as revivalists such as Abul A'la Maududi.

And finally, New Rule: if you're out protesting for a couple of hours wearing this...

... you have to go all the way and spend an afternoon running errands wearing one of these.

You can't side with the people who ruthlessly oppress women without at least getting a taste of what you're supporting.

Well, now that summer is here and the Hamas-backing college protesters have dispersed back to their summer internships at Goldman Sachs, I thought it might be a good time to say this: I actually admire your youthful idealism, and our world would be poorer without it. Much like your parents who just wasted 300 grand on that ignorance factory you call a college.

Not that I think it's your fault, being this poorly educated and morally confused. That takes a village. Shitty schools, overindulgent parents, social media, that priest who rubbed lotion on you.

But three cheers to you for at least having the impulse to seek a cause in something bigger than yourself. It's just that the one you picked, you missed the boat by a fucking mile.

But here's the good news. You want a cause? Cuz I totally got one for you. Apartheid. Yeah, apartheid, the thing you've been shouting about with Israel for months. Never mind that Israeli Arabs are actually full citizens. You learned that word from a 2 Chainz song and discovered that protesting South Africa's apartheid in the 80s was a righteous cause, and so it was. To this day, when celebrities are asked, who is the person they most admire, one name is always the safest choice.

So, naturally, when you heard that Israel was an apartheid state it gave you such a boner you literally pitched a tent.

You knew how wrong it was when tens of millions of South Africans had been treated like second class citizens just because of their race.

But here's the thing. Today, right now, hundreds of millions of women are treated worse than second class citizens. When you mandate that one category of human beings don't even have the right to show their face, that's apartheid. And it goes on in a lot of countries.

For the last couple years, women in Iran have been saying, "take this hijab and shove it." Because in 2022, a young woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested for wearing her mandatory hijab incorrectly and then died in police custody. And now security forces have killed over 500 people protesting her death and this obvious human rights violation. How about defunding those police?

Amnesty International says that, "Iranian authorities are waging a war on women that subjects them to constant surveillance beatings sexual violence and detention." What P. Diddy calls a hotel stay.

In Iran, MeToo isn't a movement, it's what a woman says when another woman says, my life sucks.

Yasmine Muhammad is a human rights activist who got married off to a Muslim man with fundamentalist views about women not exactly uncommon in the Muslim world. He forced her to wear the niqab all the time, including once beating her because she took her hijab off at home, because the apartment had a window through which people might see in. And this was in Vancouver.

Here's what Yasmine said about veiling.

"It just suppresses your humanity entirely. It's like a portable sensory deprivation chamber and you are no longer connected to humanity. You can't see properly. You can't hear properly. You can't speak properly. People can't see you. You can only see them. Just little things. Passing people on the street and just making eye contact and smiling, that's gone. You're no longer part of this world, and so you very quickly just shrivel up into nothing under there."

And that's my answer when someone says "Islamophobe."

Really, feminists? Come on, there's got to be a happy medium between a husband making his wife wear this, and a husband making his wife wear this.

I know 1619 was bad, but this is happening right now, right under your nose rings. And it's not just the clothes. 15 countries in the Middle East, including Gaza, have laws that require women to obey their husbands. Laws. Not just Harrison Butker's opinion.

And those societies also have guardianship laws, which means a woman needs permission from her husband to work, to travel, to leave the house, to go to school, to get medical attention. Nothing?

Honor killings, where women are murdered by their own fathers and-or brothers happen so frequently they can't even have an accurate account of how many.

In 59 countries, there are no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, and many have no laws against domestic violence or spousal rape. 20 countries have marry-your-rapist laws. Multiple societies have laws about what jobs women can and can't do. Make a Barbie movie about that. 30 countries practice female genital mutilation, and 650 million women alive today were married as children.

Kids, if you really want to change the world and not just tie up Monday morning traffic, this is the apartheid that desperately needs your attention. Gender apartheid. This is what should be the social justice issue of your time. How about, from the river to the sea, every woman shall be free?

But in reality, it's not an issue at all. For one reason: the people who are doing it aren't white. I hate to have to be the one to break it to you kids, but non-white people can do bad things too. Now, white on black racism certainly has been of one of history's most horrific scourges. But also, it's true that in today's world being non-white means you can get away with murder.

So good on you kids for following your instinct to protest social injustice. Just remember, when it comes to finding a cause, pulling your head out of your ass is an important rite of passage.

The death of Iran’s president Raisi has exposed the sickness at the heart of the West

While women in Iran risk their lives to celebrate Raisi’s death, global bodies show how sick they are

The Telegraph

The women of Iran are dancing. Women blinded, with one eye, or one arm, are dancing. Iranian Kurds are dancing. Across Europe, Iranian dissidents are dancing. Iranians – often, relatives of the regime’s victims – are drinking to show their joy. The daughters of Minoo Majidi, a mother shot dead by security services during the 2022 protests, shared a video of them raising a glass to President Raisi’s death. 

Dark humour – the jokes of an oppressed people – are circulating. “Mr Raisi, you surprised us. We have no tapas for our drinks,” chuckles one Iranian in a celebratory video on social media. There was the gag about how a Mossad agent called “Eli Copter” had caused the crash. People have handed out cakes and sweets in public squares – an act of symbolic importance in Persian culture, often associated with joyous events. Celebratory fireworks filled the skies in Iranian cities.

Such courage is all the more impressive given how little Raisi’s death is likely to change anything in this closed prison of a society. It may somewhat alter the succession, since he had been one of the men tipped to succeed Khamenei, but the Ayatollahs retain their stranglehold. The bravery of anyone involved in any celebration or act of civil disobedience such as removing a headscarf, is astounding. Those letting off fireworks or handing out sweets are risking their lives. 

History will remember Raisi as a squalid tyrant who took a twisted pride in human suffering. He was involved in the torture and extrajudicial murder of thousands of political prisoners held in Iranian jails and the mass killings of opponents in 1988, when as many as 30,000 are believed to have lost their lives. As Mariam Memarsadeghi wrote in a chilling article for the Tablet, “virgins were systematically raped before their execution, to circumvent the Islamic prohibition on killing virgins and to prevent women and girls from reaching heaven”. 

And yet, the BBC posted about “President Ebrahim Raisi’s mixed legacy in Iran”. You can imagine the 1945 headlines about the mixed legacy of “motorway-builder, vegetarian rights enthusiast and dog-lover” Adolf Hitler, or that of “inspirational plus-size influencer” Hermann Goering. Reuters described how Raisi “rose through Iran’s theocracy from hardline prosecutor to uncompromising president, as he burnished his credentials to position himself to become the next supreme leader”. 

Reading such things you would think Raisi was, at worst, a slight renegade. A cheeky chappie in a kaftan whose loss will be felt by light entertainment for generations. They tweeted like he was Rod Hull – rather than, you know, someone nicknamed “the Butcher of Tehran”. But in the real world, faced with the real consequences of the regime he ran, people are dancing. 

It wasn’t just the BBC in its classic “tightrope walk” mode, either. Things were getting a bit Candle in the Wind at the UN, as the entire Security Council (including both the UK and US representatives) stood to observe a minute of silence for President Raisi. Goodbye Tehran’s rose. 

European Council president Charles Michel tweeted out his sincere condolences, while the “European Commissioner for Crisis Management” committed the EU’s Copernicus satellite system to help locate Raisi’s helicopter, in the name of “#EUSolidarity”. 

Lest we forget, Johan Floderus, a young EU official from Sweden, has been incarcerated at Iran’s notorious Evin prison for more than two years. We don’t see much “#EUSolidarity” coming from the other direction. Not to be undone, President Higgins of Ireland channelled the spirit of Eamon de Valera c.1945, by offering his “deepest sympathies” upon the death of a tyrant. 

Such statements go well beyond basic diplomacy. Nobody asked anyone to gush; they chose to. The message it sends is a slap in the face to those bravely putting their lives on the line for freedom. But it’s par for the course in what is (sometimes optimistically) termed the “international community”. 

Speaking of which, on Monday, the International Criminal Court put out joint bids for arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and the prime minister and defence minister of Israel. Given that the ICC has no jurisdiction, nor power of its own to arrest anyone, there was something bleakly comic about the manner of the announcement. Chief prosecutor Karim Khan delivered his statement flanked by a couple of glaring bureaucrats. The ICC appeared to be putting on its best “don’t mess with us” face. It looked like a geriatric version of Bugsy Malone.

The ICC application refers, pointedly, to the “territory of Israel” and the “state of Palestine”, which makes it clear which side its bread is buttered. It notably ignores Hamas’s use of human shields, surely a factor when assessing the civilian death toll. It even holds Israel entirely responsible for “closing the three border crossing points” after October 7. 

Yet Hamas destroyed the Erez crossing, murdering its operators and blowing up the barriers separating it from the Gaza strip. Small wonder border checkpoints weren’t up and running immediately. Condemning Israel for this is grotesque; gaslighting on an international scale. 

The timing is also telling. We have known about the crimes of October 7 from day one, thanks to the body-cams Hamas terrorists so proudly wore to document their butchery. Yet the ICC waited until May 2024 to condemn both Israel and Hamas on the same day. The effect is to suggest a moral equivalence between a democratic state and a genocidal terrorist group that says it wants to repeat the atrocities of October 7 indefinitely. You don’t have to believe Israel is above criticism – and nor should we – to recognise this. 

Multinational organisations like the ICC are often held up as moral arbiters in themselves, when they will only be as virtuous or corrupt as their component member states, and reflecting the same biases. The World Health Organisation has long excluded Taiwan from its membership due to Chinese pressure. A ruinous decision, when Taiwan’s early warnings about the risks of human-to-human transmission of Covid in late 2019 were ignored. Something is rotten in the state of many international bodies and moral courage is in short supply. 

Given such a clear-cut case of evil as Raisi, the mealy-mouthed global response does not bode well. For genuine bravery, we can look to the people at the sharp end of such regimes. Because still, in the midst of it all, the women of Iran dance. 

Fireworks and dancing as Iranians defiantly celebrate Raisi’s death

Jubilant scenes posted online while regime broadcasts footage of mourning after president killed in helicopter crash

The Telegraph

Defiant acts of celebration broke out in Iran as state television broadcasted footage of mourning following the death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.

Fireworks were set off in several cities on Monday night and some people posted videos of themselves dancing in the streets early on Tuesday.

However, the open displays of celebration were limited as dissent is often met with a strict crackdown by the hardline regime.

In one video showing fireworks, a woman’s voice can be heard saying: “People are rejoicing at the downfall of Raisi.”

“People are celebrating and I congratulate the president’s death,” said another man over another clip. “I hope the rest of them die too.”

People in the capital Tehran told The Telegraph there was a heavy presence of armed security forces in several neighbourhoods.

“I went up to the roof last night, and there were fireworks in several parts of the city,” a resident of Karaj, near the capital Tehran, said.

“I also heard people chanting ‘death to the dictator’ somewhere close by,” he added.

Many Iranians celebrated in secret and some people told the Telegraph they stayed awake waiting for “good news to come out of the mountains”.

“I was on my phone all night and when I finally saw the news, I jumped from bed and started dancing,” a man in Tehran said.

“I went to a nearby shop, and it was incredible. The shopkeeper, whom I know, gave me a free cigarette and said, ‘Let’s hope for more crashes like this’,” he said.

The mother of a Kurdish prisoner executed earlier this year posted a video of herself dancing upon hearing the news of Raisi’s death.

A shopkeeper in central Isfahan said he experienced a surge in selling sweets on Monday as people “keep coming to celebrate”.

“It’s very strange and good, people come and congratulate me for the death of Raisi,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I saw something like this.”

“Many are hiding their happiness because they are afraid of government spies and worried about the subsequent consequences,” he added.

On Monday afternoon, state TV continued to broadcast scenes of mourning and tearful individuals.

“I don’t know what to say,” said a crying man. “I’m shocked, and I hope God helps people in these grieving times,” said another.

“He lost his life while serving the nation, which made me very sad,” said a man in a mosque where people had gathered to mourn. “He held a special place in people’s hearts.”

Mourning songs and live footage of memorials played continuously on several state channels.

Many changed their logos to black and aired tributes about how “beloved and close to the people the martyred president” was, highlighting that he lost his life on the “flight of service”.

“The president set new benchmarks for good governance, and we hope his legacy continues,” a presenter said. “He accomplished significant feats and would have achieved even more if given more time.”

“He was a soldier of the Supreme Leader, and anyone who respected the Supreme Leader respected him as well. He was dedicated to the development of Iran,” an analyst said on state TV.

Iran’s president and his foreign minister were confirmed dead after the helicopter they were travelling in crashed in a mountainous region during bad weather on Sunday evening.

Rescuers reached the wreckage early Monday morning after a desperate search mission hampered by rain, fog and snow.

Mr Raisi won Iran’s closely stage-managed 2021 presidential election, a vote marked by the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

His victory brought all branches of power under the control of hardliners, after eight years in which the presidency had been held by Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who entered into a nuclear deal with Washington.

“These three years of Raisi were like a nightmare,” said a woman in her late 20s in northwestern Mashhad, Raisi’s hometown.

“I do not expect any big change to happen now, at least we can hope,” she added.

Under the code name “Noor” or “light” in Farsi, the Islamic Republic has intensified a clampdown on anyone violating its draconian female dress codes.

Iran Ramps Up Executions, Averaging One Every Five Hours

Over the course of two weeks, from April 16 to April 30, the Iranian government executed 63 individuals, averaging one execution every five

Iran International

Over the course of two weeks, from April 16 to April 30, the Iranian government executed 63 individuals, averaging one execution every five hours, continuing a trend that began last year.

The data presented by the Iran Human Rights Organization (IHRNGO), headquartered in Norway, highlights a broader pattern of capital punishment in Iran.

Since the beginning of 2024, 171 people have been executed across various prisons in the country.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of IHRNGO, criticized the international community's silence on the issue, stating, "In the last two weeks, the Islamic Republic has executed one person every five hours without any political cost. States that adhere to human rights and have diplomatic relations with Iran must react to the wave of executions in Iran. Silence paves the way for more executions."

The organization's latest figures indicate that at least 71 people were executed in 24 different Iranian prisons during April alone, with 63 of the executions occurring in the latter half of the month. Out of these, 44 were executed for drug-related offenses, 26 faced 'qisas' (retribution-in-kind) for murder, and one for rape.

The surge in executions follows the onset of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in 2022, after which the Iranian government has significantly increased the pace of carrying out death penalties. In 2023 alone, the country saw at least 834 executions.

An April press release from 82 Iranian and international human rights organizations pointed out that over half of the executions in 2023 involved individuals arrested on drug-related charges. The statement emphasized the low cost of the drug-related executions to the government, signaling a potentially punitive approach towards non-violent offenses.

Why do the UN and BBC mourn 'Butcher of Tehran' who hanged rape victims?

THE President of Iran died at the weekend in a helicopter accident – news that the BBC marked with the headline “President Ebrahim Raisi’s m

The Sun

THE President of Iran died at the weekend in a helicopter accident – news that the BBC marked with the headline “President Ebrahim Raisi’s mixed legacy in Iran”.

“Mixed legacy” is an interesting way to sum up the life of someone better known as the “Butcher of Tehran”.

Raisi rose through the ranks of the revolutionary Islamic Government that overthrew the Shah in 1979.

And he made his name in the usual revolutionary Islamic way.

By killing his political opponents — including the leftists who the regime rounded up, imprisoned and murdered by the thousands in their jails.

Some of the obituaries have noted that Raisi helped speed up the backlog of trials in Iran.

That is true. He did it in the same way Stalin did — by killing his opponents fast.

The United Nations noted his passing in its own unique way.

At the Security Council, the member States were invited to stand and observe a minute’s silence for Raisi.

Those taking part shamefully included our own deputy ambassador to the UN, James Kariuki.

At the same time, Iranians were letting off fireworks and handing out sweets in their own streets.

There has been more mourning at the United Nations than there has been in Iran.

Perhaps that is because the Iranian people are the first ones who have had to suffer under the cruel rule of President Raisi.

It was on his watch that students and others who have protested against his regime have been abducted, tortured and killed.

It is Raisi’s regime which has overseen the harshest rule of Islamic law — which includes the hanging of women who have been raped.

That’s right. If you are a woman who has been raped in Iran, you are the culprit.

And you will be the one that is hanged.

Are the women who suffered that horror worth a minute’s silence at the UN? I would have said so.

Is their hangman? I’d have said not. Yet the UN and others continued with this gross spectacle.

Today, the organisation flew its flags at half-mast at its HQ in New York.

How morally sick can an organisation be?

We seem to have come to the stage where international bodies, as well as some sick people at home, will love anyone so long as that person hates us.

And Raisi and his foreign minister, who died with him, certainly did hate us.

Theirs is a regime which has, for 44 years, called for “Death to America” and “Death to the UK”.

It is a regime which has caused a numberless loss of lives inside Iran and in the wider region.

It is a regime which has been trying to expand its power in its own region and whose assassins have made it as far as New York and London.

Only last month, a member of the Iranian opposition was stabbed outside his house in London.

Almost certainly by assassins sent to the UK by the government in Iran.

All the time, Raisi and his friends have tried to make their regime invincible by gaining a nuclear weapon.

So far they have had that project delayed many times.

But they still seek the bomb and are one of the very few regimes on Earth that has said they would like to use it.

We should take them at their word.

It is the regime in Iran that has, for years, funded and trained terrorists across the region and indeed the world.

In October last year, when Hamas terrorists broke into Israel and carried out the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, it was Iran which backed them.

It is Iran that has funded Hamas. It is Iran that has trained Hamas. And it is Iran that has armed Hamas.

Just as they have also trained, funded and armed their other terrorist groups.

Notably in Yemen. Where Iran’s Houthi friends have fired missiles and attacked British ships.

But also in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, where Iran’s weapons have killed British and American soldiers.

And that is before even getting on to the 150,000 missiles Iran has helped Hezbollah store up in southern Lebanon.

Or the drones and other munitions it has been giving to Vladimir Putin’s Russia as he tries to overrun Ukraine.

All of his foul life, Raisi hoped to start and win a massive regional war.

Why should the man who oversaw all this and very much more be given any respect?

You might say it makes political sense to keep doors open — as most of our Foreign Office seems to think.

But it is quite another thing to mourn, or lament, the passing of this man.

The BBC, Foreign Office and United Nations may not know what a tyrant is. But the Iranian people do.

If only we could show that we are on their side.

We could start by showing that we are also on our own.

A month ago, Raisi, the Butcher of Tehran, launched an unprecedented missile and drone strike on Israel to murder thousands of innocent Israelis. Deliberately. The blood of thousands of innocent Iranians on his hands. Women, members of the LGBTQ community, peaceful protesters and many, many others. He is responsible for butchering thousands around the globe. Thousands.

This is who the Security Council dedicates a moment of silence to? A terrorist? A man who murdered, oppressed and imprisoned so many? How can it be that your list of moral priorities is so distorted?

This Council, which has done nothing, nothing to advance the release of our hostages commemorates the man responsible for their suffering.

What's next? Will the Council hold a moment of silence for bin Laden? Will there be a vigil for Hitler?

Of its many failures, social media is let down by the speed of its news cycle, and the fickleness of its followers.

We’ve all seen it happen…

A flash-in-the-pan story blows up overnight, catches fire, and captures the eyes and ears of the online world.

A groundswell arrives, ‘this is it’ you hear, whispered, and then as fast as it arrived… it’s gone. Nothing changes.

All that knee-taking, and placard waving.

All that chest beating, and fist shaking.

All those buckets of icy water dumped on heads, and black squares slapped onto Instagram feeds.

The endless clapping, and clattering of pans on doorsteps.

After all of it; the performative grandstanding and slack-tivism… and nothing.

So we look around, blinkered, confused and deflated, shuffling home like a washed-out trip head, coming down from last night’s high.

The words we yelled are a rapidly fading dream, to be wound up, stored away and cringed over, in years to come.

The party is packed down, but don’t worry, the next ‘this is it’ moment is right around the corner.

Two years ago, we saw scenes of historic bravery and sacrifice in Iran, we saw strength, unity and heartbreaking loss.

We saw the familiar response from social media, and heard the same promises made, as they always are.

And again, nothing.

But Iran never stopped, and the revolution rolls on, quieter now, and away from the watchful eyes of the world.

The ‘women-lead revolution’ and the colossal sacrifice it’s built upon, falls on the deaf ears of fair-weather activism, too busy indulging in its next great battle.

But we cannot afford for Iran, and the thousands killed, to be consigned to the history books, or forgotten about, as tomorrow’s chip paper.

Because the violence continues none the less, and the deaths stack up.

So why is nobody talking about Iran?

And does it need our help now, more than ever?

I just got back from Israel and yes, I was there on Saturday night for the enormous drone and missile attack by the Iranian regime.

I witnessed the spectacular display of defense by the Israeli air force, the IDF and global partners.

As an American, what a surreal night to live through what Israelis have to experience all of the time because they are surrounded by people who want them dead simply because they are the Jewish state.

To those of you marching in the streets for Islamists, for the Iranian regime, for Hamas. You are sheep, performative sheep with a serious streak of Jew hate.

Cheer for the Iranian people. They are harmed by the Iranian regime.

But, oh my god, wake up. Because the same people you're cheering for want you dead too.

[Remember] when your Lord inspired to the angels, "I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah 's Apostle said, " I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' and whoever says, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' his life and property will be saved by me except for Islamic law, and his accounts will be with Allah, (either to punish him or to forgive him.)"

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."

"Iran has a right to 'fight back.'"

If those are the words that are coming out of your mouth, remember, you're not talking about the people of Iran. You're talking about the Islamic Republic.

You're talking about the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps). This is one of the Iranian generals that were killed in the Damascus airstrike. Now, Mohammad here was a Quds (IRGC branch) commander. He helped execute and plan the October 7th massacre. He led Hezbollah's operations in Syria and Lebanon. And he also worked very closely with this guy. He also has the blood of Americans on his hands. So, this is what you're defending, not the people of Iran.

You claim that Israel hit a diplomatic compound, which, by the way, it did not. You can see it's still intact here. It did, however, hit the building next to it, which was being used as an IRGC base, which strips it of diplomatic immunity.

But here's the question. Is Israel, by your logic, allowed to fight back? When our borders are invaded? When the Republic's proxies killed 1200 of our people and are still holding 134 hostages? What about the seven months of almost daily bombardment from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis? Are we allowed then?

When you defend the Islamic Republic, you're not speaking for the people of Iran. Iranians are saying this.

And this.

And this.

The real sad part is the people of Iran are the ones that have suffered at the hands of this regime the most. So please stop pretending that your genocidal fetish towards Israel's destruction is on behalf of the people of Iran.

American Anti-War Activists Cheer for Iran’s War

At a left-wing conference in Chicago, activists believe Iran is ‘part of the arc of resistance because the enemies are Israel and the USA.’

https://www.thefp.com/

CHICAGO — About 300 anti-war activists crowded into the basement of the Teamsters Union’s headquarters on Saturday to hear organizers from all over the country describe their plans to disrupt the Democratic National Convention this August. Joe Biden’s backing of Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack has turned these left-wing radicals against their own party.

“It’s really inspiring to see that people are just as enthusiastic, and maybe even more enthusiastic, to march on the DNC as they are to march on the RNC,” says Omar Florez, a Milwaukee-based activist. “We can thank Genocide Joe and our movement for that.”  

But then a man stumbles to the podium, wiping sweat from his forehead. He grabs the microphone to announce that the Islamic regime of Iran has launched missiles and drones heading straight toward Israel.

“They believe that they will be in Palestinian—I don’t call it Israeli—airspace between two and four a.m., which means about two to four hours from now,” he says. “In addition, there are reports of drones having been fired on Israel from Yemen and Iraq.”

The crowd, all wearing black N95s, erupts into applause. Someone in the back lowers their mask to send a celebratory whistle soaring throughout the room.  

The man at the podium, Hatem Abudayyeh, heads the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, “a purported community group which, on information and belief, is an affiliate of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror organization based in Gaza,” according to a lawsuit over the alleged relations between U.S. advocacy groups and Hamas. 

“This is when this country and the world needs us because the United States is going to, quote unquote, defend the criminal Israeli state,” says Abudayyeh, whose home was raided by the FBI in 2010 as part of an investigation “concerning the material support of terrorism.” 

“We have to assume that the United States is going to try to retaliate against Iran.”

After the boos and calls of “shame” subside, Abudayyeh says it is “incumbent” upon Americans to “stop the United States from expanding this war and hitting Iran.”

“We’ve got to be the strong, powerful anti-war movement that we are,” he says, placing the microphone down and exiting the stage. 

The crowd immediately began chanting, “Hands off Iran.”

A woman in a hot pink gas mask, wielding a matching neon cane and dressed in a “Protect Trans Kids” t-shirt, throws her fist in the air. Nearby, a service poodle is taking a nap under the chair of his owner, who is wearing a leather harness over his t-shirt. Then the group that has joined here from cities across America—Seattle, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles—cheers and claps in celebration. 

Joe Iosbaker, an organizer with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which called October 7 a “good turn of events” in its press release about the terrorist attacks, tells me he supports Iran. His organization has since released a statement backing Iran, where citizens gathered to shout “Death to America” during their nation’s strike against Israel Saturday night.

“We demand hands off Iran,” the statement says. “The people have power, and we will exercise it in the streets.” 

Earlier that day, before news of the attack broke, at a “breakout session” on “the anti-war movement,” Shabbir Rizvi, an organizer with Anti-War Committee Chicago, taught participants how to chant “death to Israel” and “death to America” in Farsi. 

“Marg bar Israel,” he chanted, leading a group of about 80 attendees along with him. A man draped in a Soviet flag bearing a gold hammer and sickle clapped his hands. 

A man in a full black denim outfit shouted out behind his N95—“Can we get a ‘marg bar America’?”

“We can get a ‘marg bar America,’ ” Rizvi replied. 

Then Rizvi raised his hand in the air, leading the crowd like a conductor.

“Marg bar America,” they cheered. 

On my way out of the event, I ask a woman smoking a cigarette to fill me in on the latest news regarding Iran’s lobbing of missiles and drones, which were later intercepted with help from forces from France, the U.S., and the UK. Iran said its strike was retaliation for Israel’s hit on the Iranian embassy in Syria earlier this month, which destroyed the consulate building next to the embassy and killed two of Tehran’s top commanders, and that the matter is “concluded”—unless Israel hits back.

“Iran is part of the resistance,” said the woman, who flew in that morning from New Orleans, where she’s been part of an effort to disrupt Israel-bound shipments in her hometown. “Yemen and Iran and Hezbollah, who are also a militant group in Lebanon, and the Syrian government are all parts of the arc of resistance.” 

A smile creeps across her face as she tells me: “They’re part of the arc of resistance because the enemies are Israel and the USA.” 

www.atheistrepublic.com

UK officials probe Iran generals' antisemitic talks to students https://t.co/8GJvEReZt2 — BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 22, 2024

This is former IRGC commander Gen Saeed Ghasemi - he falsely claims the holocaust never happened and urges students to join an apocalyptic war. pic.twitter.com/oT5jMZZ6Bb — Ed Thomas (@EdThomasNews) January 23, 2024

This is ridicuously shocking. How does this go under the radar? — Melanie Amini (@TheMelAmini) January 23, 2024

I thought “absolute free speech” in universities was paramount, and that students had to learn to be resilient when faced with “opposing views” or am I misremembering the last ten years or so? — Robin Chud (@MisterDanielBro) January 23, 2024