My Jumbled Thoughts

Especially since the Jewish community of Iraq had to flee decades ago.

As of 2021, there were only four Jews left in all of Iraq. I don't know if that's still the number today.

The collection of documents they found is digitized here:

And it's both digitized and searchable here:

This. Please wake up and understand the threat that the Jewish people face worldwide now. Antizionism is a hate movement. It’s incitement to murder Jews everywhere.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib—a Palestinian-American analyst who grew up in Gaza—has published a furious response to newly revealed documents attributed to Yahya Sinwar. He calls Hamas a “genocidal cult” that sacrificed Gaza’s population for an international propaganda strategy.

I understand his anger.

The document in question was seemingly handwritten by Sinwar on August 24, 2022, more than a year before the October 7 attacks. It was recovered in Gaza by the Israeli military and subsequently published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

According to the document, Sinwar envisioned sending as many as 10,000 fighters across the border. They would breach the barrier at 25 different locations, seize junctions, attack military bases and enter more than 200 Israeli communities.

Residents would be expelled or taken hostage.

This was a plan for an enormous invasion of southern Israel.

Sinwar also considered how Israel might respond.

He was apparently uncertain about whether Iran and Hezbollah would enter the war. But he was certain that Israel would retaliate with overwhelming force.

He wrote that Israel would use every weapon available to it. He contemplated the possibility that Israel might use an atomic bomb against Gaza.

Nevertheless, Sinwar described the proposed attack as a “battle of life or death” and continued planning it.

This is an extraordinary detail.

Sinwar understood that the attack would provoke an enormous war.

He knew that Gaza was a small, densely populated territory facing one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East. He knew that Hamas could not protect Gaza’s civilians from the consequences of the war it was initiating.

Indeed, in reality, they did not even try. There were no attempts by Hamas to build bomb shelters for Palestinian civilians. There were no attempts to secure Palestinian civilians alternative supplies of water, fuel, electricity in advance of the attacks, either. There was no plan to evacuate Palestinians away from the war.

Sinwar chose to attack anyway, without real preparation for the civilian toll.

(the rest of this essay is paywalled, but this section alone was worth sharing.)

This happened last night at the rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner. I’m not using this post to talk about the clarity of the 22nd Amendment, but instead to point out that these same sack of shit journalists who screamed at Biden’s press secretary and demanded answers for if he had Parkinson’s (which he doesn’t—a Parkinson’s expert visited the White House to weigh in on legislation relating to the disease) and helped drive Biden out of the White House “cuz old” were clapping like seals over this insane old fuck openly declaring he wants to violate the Constitution and illegally hold onto power. Biden’s presidency would’ve ended that night if he’d said anything similar, with claims that this was evidence he had dementia and that he was a threat to democracy. But their special boi gets an adoring audience. 10 fucking years of the press enabling American society’s abuser because he makes them money and they think he’s soooo funnee and based and libs are Cringe

The whole thing is worth reading, but its conclusion is what people who threw our democracy to the wolves "cuz borger expensive" and treat DoorDash like Meals on Wheels don't want to admit. People are mad that they have less access to cheap labor and want to keep services cheap by underpaying people

Relatedly:

yeah, we’ve noticed. it’s why Jews no longer feel safe in groups that are just about knitting or nail polish or biking or any fandoms. that’s what you’ve all done with this issue.

henmazzig:

“Are you a Mossad agent?”

That’s what Christiane Amanpour put to Sarah, the ICC lawyer accusing chief prosecutor Karim Khan of sexual abuse. A Malaysian Muslim woman, showing her face for the first time, describing groping and coercion by one of the most powerful men in international law. And CNN’s move is to make her answer for Israel.

Some will call it fair journalism, giving her the chance to deny the rumor on camera. I don’t buy it. You don’t launder a smear by repeating it to the victim’s face. No one asked Weinstein’s accusers if they were foreign assets. The question exists because Khan’s defenders planted it, and CNN watered it.

Sarah answered anyway: “If ever there was even a hint of suspicion that I was a state agent of any kind, I would have been dismissed.” She passed the highest security clearances at the court, under Khan and under Bensouda before him.

We watched people deny the testimony of women raped on October 7. Now a woman accusing the ICC’s own prosecutor has to prove she isn’t an Israeli spy before anyone will hear her. Invoking Israel has become the fastest way to discredit an inconvenient woman. Shameful is too small a word.

Members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have voted to dismiss Karim Khan as chief prosecutor for alleged sexual misconduct.

Elected the ICC's third prosecutor in 2021, Khan was suspended last month. The decision to remove him was passed with 82 votes in favour.

The court's oversight body found in June he had committed a "serious breach of duty and serious misconduct" by engaging in an improper sexual relationship with a junior ICC staff member and seeking to stop her pursuing her complaint.

Khan has repeatedly denied all the allegations against him. His lawyer said he would challenge "the lawfulness and fairness of the decision through all available legal mechanisms".

It was not immediately clear what legal avenues remained open to the ousted prosecutor.

In a statement after the vote, the ICC "took note" of the decision of the Special Session of the Assembly of States Parties - the 125 member states which voted to remove Khan.

"The Court will continue to attach the utmost importance to maintaining a safe, inclusive, and respectful working environment for all personnel," the ICC statement said.

The entire process, however, goes beyond the fate of a single prosecutor and could reshape the world's only permanent war‑crimes tribunal.

The misconduct investigation has put the institution under a glaring spotlight, intensified divisions inside it and played out alongside an unprecedented campaign to weaken, and in fact dismantle, the ICC in its entirety.

The fear among its supporters is that the court will emerge weakened and less able to face the gravest global threats.

Khan, a prominent British lawyer, has been on voluntary leave to fight the allegations since May 2025. He remains suspended from practising law in the UK, after the Bar Standards Board imposed an interim ban while it conducts its own inquiry.

He was unable to attend the vote, held in the United Nations headquarters in New York, because he is barred from entering the United States under sanctions imposed by the Trump administration over the ICC's investigation into alleged war crimes by Israeli officials in Gaza.

Regardless of his removal, the controversy is unlikely to end there.

The decision follows a highly sensitive process that has left the court under intense scrutiny.

In May 2024, allegations that Khan had engaged in sexual misconduct involving a female staff member were reported to the ICC by a third party.

The court's Independent Oversight Mechanism (IOM) opened an investigation, but the case was later closed after the alleged victim declined to participate.

Critics of the process argued that the investigation had been mishandled, undermining confidence in the IOM.

Investigators ultimately said there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations.

A second referral was made in October 2024. The matter was then transferred to the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which conducted a broader investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of authority.

That inquiry ran from November 2024 to December 2025 and generated more than 5,000 pages of evidence and testimony.

The OIOS findings were subsequently reviewed by a panel of three judges tasked with advising whether Khan's conduct amounted to serious misconduct, less serious misconduct, or no misconduct.

The allegations have unfolded during a period of exceptional pressure on the ICC, coinciding with wider political tensions.

The United States imposed sanctions on Khan after he sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged crimes linked to the war in Gaza.

Washington's attitude to the court in general has become increasingly hostile in recent years.

Earlier this month, the US launched a new "whole‑of‑government" campaign to dismantle the ICC "brick by brick" in what it calls a threat to American sovereignty, promising visa bans, asset freezes and diplomatic pressure on allies to withdraw from the court or reject its jurisdiction over their nationals.

the level of racism you have to have to even think these things are remotely equivalent is absolutely disgusting. And if you don't want to believe me because, well, I am not Black nor African?

However sometimes, I will cover it up as a precaution. Today, that choice was validated.

I had done my shirt up to the top before getting a taxi with friends who had joked about me being cold - it's like 28+ celcius (82+ Fahrenheit) - and I'd laughed it off.

Anyway, there's three of us in the taxi, I'm in the front with driver, and he starts talking about how the "Jews killed JFK". There's a beat of silence as the three of us process what we've just heard and then he says, "I guess I should say The Zionists" with a chuckle.

I go into damage control mode as there's 15 minutes left of this journey and I Do Not want to be having this conversation.

And then he starts talking about how everyone thinks the president runs America but actually it's Israel and they're in control of everything. And like the three of us are fighting for our lives to chance the conversation topic for the final few minutes of the drive.

Anyway, we get to our destination and he drives off and I basically turn to the others as I unbutton the top of my shirt and am like, "that is why I cover up. You never know who you're gonna get a taxi with."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/07/24/jesse-jackson-was-my-father-he-blessed-my-embrace-judaism/

archive

I love the art included with this piece.

Two years before he died, my father came to my synagogue. For many of my fellow congregants, it was the day they learned that my father was the Rev. Jesse Jackson — a stalwart of the civil rights movement, an African American Baptist minister and one of the architects of multiracial coalition politics. To me, he was simply Dad: a gentle father who reached back for my hand on every car ride and taught me to meet difference with curiosity.

As the Saturday morning service proceeded, my father sat in the front row — holding my hand, dancing to prayers in a language he did not speak, eating the Sunkist candies the congregation had tossed to celebrate a bar mitzvah. Beside him, I banged on my siddur like it was a tambourine, weaving into those ancient prayers the rhythm of the Black church I was born into.

On June 12, carrying my parents’ blessings, I completed my conversion — a journey I held close until now. I was raised to believe that faith must lead to action. In Judaism, I found an enduring expression of this belief. Ancient ritual and the rigors of textual study were accompanied by the calling to “repair the world.” The Hebrew liturgy felt familiar on my tongue before I understood its meaning. On my first Rosh Hashanah, the shofar’s cry touched a depth of my soul I had not yet reached, and tears poured down my face.

As my father looked on, I reflected on the identity I would claim as a Black and Jewish woman, a twin inheritance filled with sorrow and wonder. Sorrow because, for Black Jews, racism and antisemitism can surface in even the most intimate and familiar spaces. But wonder, too, in the meeting of two diasporas: kosher soul food, Black oral tradition finding its cousin in Jewish debate, twin memories of an exodus from slavery.

So much of my life was determined before I was old enough to choose it: who I was expected to become, what I would inherit, how the watching world would understand me. My parents understood the burden of those expectations and were careful to give me the freedom to become a seeker — of knowledge, meaning and God.

Though I was raised among people of many faiths, Judaism became personal to me almost by accident. In college, my studies kept leading me back to questions of faith and justice, and during the pandemic, a serious illness and the long isolation that followed gave those questions new urgency. I happened across an online conversation about Jewish life and became captivated. That encounter led me to read about the faith and eventually attend my first Shabbat service. I kept going back. In that community, I recognized myself, and over time, we became bound to one another.

The connection between African Americans and Jewish Americans was forged in the struggle for civil rights. This shared history is now under attack. In some communities, speaking out against antisemitism is seen as siphoning attention from the fight against anti-Black racism. In others, confronting anti-Blackness is seen as a threat to Jewish identity and belonging.

About 1 percent of American Jews identify as Black. Their experience — my experience — shows that the alienation between these two communities can be overcome. The ethical language of my childhood was shaped by a Black prophetic tradition that responded to dehumanization with an unyielding insistence on the sanctity of life. Judaism supports this struggle for dignity, affirming that whoever destroys a single soul destroys an entire world, and that whoever saves one saves an entire world. Both traditions tell a liberation story that begins with a particular people but does not end there.

At the end of my father’s Shabbat visit, my rabbi, Sharon Brous, called his name to offer him a blessing. Before she could speak, the congregation was already on its feet. My father — one of the most recognizable Baptist ministers in America — wept as the congregation offered him a spontaneous ovation.

It was a moment of mutual recognition. Speaking a year and a half later at my father’s funeral, Brous said, “What a holy thing it is to be seen for who you really are.” That morning, my father and my Jewish community saw one another clearly.

And here is the resulting image. There is at least Someone in the U.K. government who is actually doing their job, and it is Chief Mouser to the Cabinet, Larry the Cat.

The term Nakba - which today refers almost exclusively to a narrative of Palestinian displacement and victimization, originally meant something else.

Constantin Zureiq, a Syrian intellectual and professor at the American University of Beirut, published a pamphlet titled Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster) in August 1948.

Zureiq wrote the book during a ceasefire, specifically to analyze why the combined forces of seven Arab nations had failed to prevent the establishment of the State of Israel.

He defined the Nakba as the civilizational and military defeat of the Arab world. He famously wrote:

The defeat of the Arabs in Palestine is no small downfall... It is a catastrophe (Nakba) in every sense of the word and the worst that has befallen the Arabs in their long history."

The shame was about how a the entire supposedly mighty Arab/Islamic world failed to destroy a state of Holocaust survivors, dhimmi, and refugees.

Academic sources confirm that Zureiq's focus was on internal Arab reform rather than external victimhood.

Zureiq argued that the defeat was caused by Arab "backwardness," lack of unity, and scientific inferiority compared to the "modern, disciplined" Zionist movement.

Zureiq figured this out almost immediately, historians since have agreed with him.

He used the term to shock the Arab public into modernization, industrialization, and secularization. To him, this Nakba was a symptom of a deeper cultural rot that needed to be fixed through a "total revolution" in Arab thought.

The original "Nakba" was about that failure, not the displacement narrative that would emerge decades later.

History is a lot more complicated than hashtags suggest.

My 15yo explaining Nakba Day to her brother:

Jewish narratives: "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat."

Palestinians narratives: "We tried to kill them, they survived, let's play the victim."

About 750,000 Arabs left the area. About 850,000 Jewish refugees were expelled from Islamic nations to Israel.

Today's framing of the Nakba is dishonest, ahistorical revisionism.

We're denying a narrative because it isn't supported by the recorded historical facts.

One can't do the same with the Holocaust because, get this: There is copious evidence that it happened.

Your inability to differentiate between those two things will continue to be a problem for you.

If you had any sort of intellectual maturity or basic epistemological faculties, you'd try to argue based on the facts.

Since the facts aren't on your side, you shoot for pathos - emotional resonance.