In Israel, A Shining Name (or two)

Children of Israel are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

So in my last newsletter, I opined that the best way to get an accurate picture of what’s going on in the I/P conflict is not from the mainstream media, though I’m not saying we should stop reading that — we should just read a good cross-section of sources and when it comes to this topic, I even think that should include Fox.

In fact, this reminds me of one of my favorite memes that’s been created since the war began. To understand it, you need to know that one of the most famous quotes attributed to Golda Meir is: “When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”

So here is the 2023/2024 spinoff:

To me, it is the saddest irony that Fox is willing to air what so many left-leaning sites are determined to ignore, such as a Dearborn imam calling for death to Israel and America from his Michigan pulpit, or protestors in the same town chanting explicit support for Hamas.

At any rate, in Monday’s comment section, reader Carolyn Fine wrote: “Elissa, will you share here, or perhaps in a future post, a list of people to follow, podcasts to listen to, etc.?”

This struck me as an excellent suggestion for a whole post, and I promised to create one today.

Let me say at the outset that I follow so many different sources that it was hard to narrow it down to my top dozen, so as not to overwhelm, and I believe each of these deserve a modicum of depth and detail, so I will likely cover half a dozen over the rest of this week and the other half dozen on Monday.

Let me start with Twitter / X accounts.

1. During the last 8 months, I have hung on every word of the brilliant, formidably informed and rapier-sharp Chief Malcolm Nance.

   

   Chief Nance is an intelligence and foreign policy analyst who specialized in naval cryptology during his career in the U.S. Navy. He’s an expert in counterterrorism, national security and Islamic extremism. He’s the founder and Executive Director of TAPSTRI, the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideologies.

   
   Interestingly enough, I started following Malcolm for his expertise and analysis of the war in Ukraine and I kind of swooned when he even flew to Ukraine to join the fighting from the ground. So imagine my surprise and pleasure a year and a half later, when his commentary began to include Israel, from a stance of left-leaning but fiercely informed and passionate support.

   
   I’m a paying subscriber to his substack, Special Intelligence. This includes access to his podcast Black. Man. Spy. And I follow him religiously on Twitter / X, where he often predicts with devastating accuracy exactly what’s going to happen in the war, even if it’s at odds with what’s being printed in the news or announced at press conferences.

   
   He also seems to get a huge kick out of bitch-slapping haters into next week with witty and blistering takedowns of the people trying to drag him. The more they come at him, the more he seems to enjoy himself.

   
   In fact, the permanent pinned Tweet at the top of his feed opens like this, under the heading DEPT OF DILLIGAF (which stands for Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck):

   
   Many of you are disappointed in the fact that I see the Israel-HAMAS war through the lens of counterterrorism & war but not your misguided ill-informed myopia & latent antisemitism. I understand. It’s your first time ever seeing a war … but many of you just really hate Jews. So here are the parameters to make sure you unfollow me properly.
   
   Why have the informed opinion of an expert who worked these MidEast wars for decades? That’s crazy, right? So try this:
   
   1) If you don’t like my opinion on Gaza, Israel or counterterrorism strategies. -Unfollow me.
   
   2) If you think I’m a war monger who hates the Palestinian people, or a Zionist who loves killing babies, women & hates Arabs. You’re an idiot. -Unfollow me.
   
   3) If you always followed me & say “Wow, I respected him but now he supports the Jews/Zionists/Netanyahu/Genocide/Colonialism/Occupation”please Jesus -Unfollow me.
   
   4) If you think… I hate you for your proHAMAS, antisemitic, or patently stupid opinions, you’re right. -Unfollow me.
   
   5) If you cry over the terrible deaths of Palestinian babies but never once mention the dead Jewish babies executed on 10-7. Or say dead Jewish babies are fake. Help me God, -Unfollow me.
   
   6) If you can’t spell Israel (Isreal) or Gaza (Gazza) without spell check & think about lecturing me on the Middle East … that’s right - Unfollow me.
   
   7) If you have ever chanted “From the River to the Sea…” be advised, the real ending is - “Malcolm says Unfollow me”.
   
   8) If you completely forgot 10-7 even happened or claim it was fake or don’t even know what happened to start this cycle of violence, but but but genocide! - Unfollow me.
   
   9) If you say you will vote for Trump or won’t vote or call Biden “Genocide Joe” because you don’t know the meaning of the word genocide, or if you don’t know the Sykes-Picot treaty did not involve tortillas, that the Balfour Declaration was NOT signed by Jefferson or you think that Transjordan was a car featured on Fast and Furious X - Unfollow me.
   
   10) If you are offended by any of the above or are just in doubt about any of the above - Unfollow me.
   
   Even when I’m most pressed for time and have to severely limit my news intake, I go to his Twitter even if I look at nothing else that day. He’s my go-to and my gold standard, and I could not recommend him more highly.
   

2. Another absolutely golden Lion of Zion is the venerable Hillel Neuer, international lawyer, diplomat, writer and Executive Director of UN Watch.

   

   I first became aware of Hillel Neuer around 7 years ago, when he was fighting the false charge of apartheid against Israel at the U.N. His iconic response to the Council left me shivering in appreciation:
   
   Mr. President, let me begin by putting the following on the record: everything we just heard — from the world’s worst abusers of human rights, of women’s rights, of freedom of religion, of the press, of assembly, of speech — is absolutely false; and, indeed, Orwellian.
   

   Today’s report does not consider Israelis to be deserving of human rights — consistent with the approach of this council, where today’s notorious agenda item against Israel completely ignores their human rights.
   

   Over the weekend, President Abbas announced he was giving his highest medal to Rima Khalaf, who resigned from the Economic and Social Commission of Western Asia, a Beirut-based UN agency of 18 Arab states, after Secretary General Guterres rightly instructed her to remove an absurd report which accused Israel of “apartheid.”
   

   Mr. President, why is Mr. Abbas celebrating a report written by the notorious Richard Falk, after his own Palestinian Mission here, tried in 2010, to remove Mr. Falk on the basis that he was “a partisan of Hamas,” as we know from WikiLeaks?
   
   The accusation against Israel is absurd. Israel’s 1.5 million Arabs, whatever challenges they face, enjoy full rights to vote and to be elected in the Knesset, they work as doctors and lawyers, they serve on the Supreme Court.
   

   Now I’d like to ask the members of that commission, that commissioned that report, the Arab states from which we just heard. Egypt, Iraq, and the others:

   How many Jews live in your countries? How many Jews live in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco? Once upon a time, the Middle East was full of Jews.
   

   Algeria had 140,000 Jews. Algeria, where are your Jews?
   

   Egypt used to have 75,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?
   

   Syria, you had tens of thousands of Jews. Where are your Jews?
   

   Iraq, you had over 135,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?
   

   Mr. President, where is the apartheid?
   

   Why is there a U.N. commission on the Middle East that does not include Israel?
   
   From the 1960s and the ‘70s they refuse to include Israel. Where is the apartheid, Mr. President?
   

   Mr. President, why are we meeting today on an agenda item singling out only one state, the Jewish state, for targeting.
   

   Where is the apartheid, Mr. President?
   
   You can listen to the above, which left the entire chamber in dead silence, here:

   Hillel Neuer posts consistently across social media platforms and is often featured on news segments. I trust his perspective implicitly and I’m overwhelmingly grateful for his presence and his work.
   

   *

I thought I would cover more folks to follow today, but I’m seeing that this is already quite long. But I’ll continue with my list on Friday because I don’t think I could do this community any greater service than sharing the work of these incandescent souls. As of now, I plan to include:

Debbie Lechtman

Dr. Einat Wilf

Mandana Dayani

Haviv Rettig Gur

And next week I’ll talk about my favorite news sources and podcasts.

Truly we have stunning and brilliant folks in our corner, both from within and outside of the tribe. I lean on them when things get really hard. I hope you’ll take sustenance from them too, and support their work in any way possible.

I’ll be back with you Friday. Much love to you all. Chazak v’ematz.

Am Yisrael Chai.