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David Weinfeld @davidweinfeld.bsky.social · 1h

This article says it all. The Trump administration is the enemy of the university project, a project I've dedicated most of my life to and firmly believe makes the world a better place.

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 3h

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

perhaps the biggest story TFPever ran was a catastrophically shoddy argument that George Floyd ackshully died of an overdose. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that the piece was simply wrong, Weiss didn’t take it down, she asked her critic, @radleybalko.bsky.social, to come on a podcast.

max tani @maxtani.bsky.social · 2d

David Ellison’s note to staff on Paramount’s acquisition of the Free Press

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Dana El Kurd @danaelkurd.bsky.social · 21h

Grieving for all the lives taken. I dont know what we look like as a society when this is over

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Dana El Kurd @danaelkurd.bsky.social · 15h

Can I also say I am so angry today. It's the lives lost, the cities wiped out, the time taken from us. We have been consumed with this level of unspeakable violence for 2 years. To think of all the potential futures taken away... it's unfathomable

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Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 1d

My statement on the two-year anniversary of the horrific Hamas terrorist attack against Israel and Netanyahu's ongoing war against the Palestinian people:

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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 1d

Mourning those murdered by Hamas isn't incompatible with mourning those murdered by the Israeli state.

Demanding that the hostages return isn't incompatible with naming & demanding an end to genocide.

Naming the power imbalance & impact thereof doesn't desecrate those murdered two years ago today.

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 1d

Zohran making a statement that he had to know would enrage the more deranged of his supporters is more evidence of him juice-having I think.

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 1d

My statement on the two year anniversary of October 7, 2023.

“Two years ago today, Hamas carried out a horrific war crime, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and kidnapping 250 more. I mourn these lives and pray for the safe return of every hostage still held and for every family whose lives were torn apart by these atrocities.

In the aftermath of that day, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government launched a genocidal war: adeath toll that now far exceeds 67,000; with the Israeli military bombing homes, hospitals, and schools into rubble. Every day in Gaza has become a place where grief itself has run out of language. I mourn these lives and pray for the families that have been shattered. Our government has been complicit through it all.

This must end. The occupation and apartheid must end. Peace must be pursued through diplomacy, not war crimes, and our government must act to end these atrocities and hold those responsible to account.

These last two years have demonstrated the very worst of humanity. We must answer it by modeling the very best: a relentless pursuit of our higher ideals and an unwavering commitment to universal human rights.”

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David Klion @davidklion.bsky.social · 1d

The notion that Bari will be "running CBS News" is slightly misleading. What the reporting suggests is that Tom Cibrowski, a guy with normal qualifications, will be doing that. Bari will be Emperor Ellison's Vader-esque enforcer, outside the chain of command, intervening at will.

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 1d

"It feels as if everything has vanished. Not only the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza erased without graves, without records, as if they had never existed – so many other things have been hollowed out: basic conceptions of morality, decency, compassion, humanity, hope, future."

Disappearing people, disappearing morals – how two years has changed Gaza and Israel | Orly Noy

There can be no healing until the world stares into and acknowledges the void torn open by this conflict, says Israeli journalist Orly Noy

www.theguardian.com

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Nathan Kalmoe (he/him) @nathankalmoe.bsky.social · 1d

I hope Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, and Garland (among others) come to fully recognize how they were our era’s Chamberlains before they leave this earth, since there will never be any real accountability for their gross negligence while they held power.

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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 2d

I was told not to teach a class on the intellectual histories of Zionism and Anti-Zionism next year - not because they doubted I could teach it fairly, but because it would attract too many politicians scrutinizing the syllabus.

A society where that is a valid fear is no longer fully democratic.

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Mohamad Bazzi @mbazzi.bsky.social · 4d

“Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza” — Biden never made this simple demand, despite 15 months of relentless Israeli slaughter of Palestinians during his presidency

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Monica Maalouf, MD @maaloufmd.bsky.social · 5d

My husband was detained by ICE today

Juan Muñoz, an American citizen, father of 2, and local government official, was peacefully protesting w. other elected officials. He was assaulted and taken away

I have had zero contact or updates since

#SOS
@duckworth.senate.gov @durbin.senate.gov

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David Weinfeld @davidweinfeld.bsky.social · 8d

i introduce myself by saying “it’s like Seinfeld with a W”

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David Weinfeld @davidweinfeld.bsky.social · 8d

my Jewish history survey course is called “From King David to Larry David”

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David Weinfeld @davidweinfeld.bsky.social · 8d

I think I knew that Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson are not the same person, but I have no idea what distinguishes them.

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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 9d

It's very frustrating how many leftists either deny the existence of Mizrahi Jews entirely to tell a story of "Israelis are Europeans who stole Middle Eastern food," or else insist Mizrahim were all living completely happily in the MENA world until the Zionists came in and ruined it all.

Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 9d

This is not a random person, but the writer of "Mornings in Jenin," the most widely-read Palestinian novel of all time.

This person is opining on Jewish history without knowing anything about it. None of this is true about the concept of Jewish peoplehood.

Post from Susan Abulhawa: "Historically speaking, there was never such a thing called "The Jewish People" before zionism.

There were Jews--Egyptian Jews, European Jews, Yemeni Jews, etc.

The fairytale they sell now to the world was manufactured in the 19th century. Most Jews didn't buy it at first; so zionists set up schools (literal schools!) to indoctrinate them into believing that colonizing Palestine had been their lifelong dream.

Initially, the only Jews they could get to move from their home countries to Palestine were poor and disenfranchised Eastern European jews. It was easier to lure them with promises of "milk and honey," riches and land of their own.

Others were more difficult to dislodge from their homelands. Zionists had to bomb synagogues in Iraq, for example, to make Iraqi Jews--a prosperous indigenous community in Iraq--to leave, believing their fellow Muslims and Christians had bombed them.

They didn't really want Arab Jews. For example, they kidnapped the babies of Yemeni Jews and gave them to European Jews to raise them in the preferred jewish supremacist strand. Ethiopian Jewish women were involuntarily given birth control to curtail the Black jewish birthrate.

The only thing Israelis have in common is their hatred and jealousy of the Palestinians--the actual indigenous people of the land--and their delusions of grandeur, premised on a fairytale of common heritage."

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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 9d

This is not a random person, but the writer of "Mornings in Jenin," the most widely-read Palestinian novel of all time.

This person is opining on Jewish history without knowing anything about it. None of this is true about the concept of Jewish peoplehood.

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David Weinfeld @davidweinfeld.bsky.social · 10d

"I call for greater international pressure to end this war and secure a hostage deal. As someone who served in the IDF – and is father to a soldier – I now even call for bans on offensive weapons, something I never thought I’d do." - Yehuda Cohen, father of Israeli hostage Nimrod Cohen

My Son is Held Hostage. Here’s What I’ll Be Thinking About During Netanyahu’s UN Speech - J Street

I cannot stay silent while the man who has sabotaged my son’s freedom again and again stands before the world and pretends to represent me, my family and the people of Israel.

jstreet.org

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Michelle Wu 吳弭 @wutrain.bsky.social · 12d

Cities make America great

Bill McKibben @billmckibben.bsky.social · 14d

It's not just Mamdani. Michelle Wu, Katie Wilson--the Dems may soon have a remarkable cast of young, gifted mayors
www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Can Progressive Mayors Redeem the Democratic Party?

Zohran Mamdani isn’t the only candidate challenging the status quo—and having fun doing it.

www.newyorker.com

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David Weinfeld @davidweinfeld.bsky.social · 12d

this raises the question: how much does it matter what people believe - or say they believe? I’m sympathetic to theories of Emile Durkheim and Kathryn Lofton and more interested in what people do and who they do it with, especially how they spend their time and money.

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Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 12d

Jon Finer and Phil Gordon, both of whom served as senior members under the Biden administration's foreign policy team, now claim that they're in favor of conditioning and even suspending military assistance to Israel altogether.

Opinion | We Served in the Biden Admin. It's Time to Impose Conditions on Aid to Israel.

The United States should distance itself morally and materially from the slaughter in Gaza.

www.politico.com

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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 13d

Ezra Klein conducted a good interview with Corey Robin, about which I have some thoughts. The first is that Ezra's opening claim that the Reichstag fire analogy is "wrong" suggests a zero sum view that does not do justice to how most historians think about analogy.

In the hours and days after Charlie Kirk’s murder, there was a discussion on social media about whether this would be America’s Reichstag fire — a reference to the fire that was a rationale for Hitler’s crackdown on political freedom in Germany.

Many of us were worried hearing that, and I think what we’ve seen since suggests the fears were right. But the analogy was wrong. We should have been looking closer to home. This isn’t a Reichstag fire. This is more like the Red Scare.

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