Tim J. Barry

Israel Claims It Had Nothing To Do With Trump's Decision To Attack Iran, And Other Notes Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon is acting like it’s absurd for American voters to have gotten it into their heads that Israel had something to do with the Iran war that’s costing them so much money. Asked by i24 News about JD Vance’s observation that American voters want a change in their country’s relationship with the Zionist entity, Danon framed Israel as an innocent passive witness to the Trump administration’s unprovoked attack on Iran. “I think it’s unfortunate, and we saw it coming from different directions, that many made the linkage between the rising prices, mainly oil prices, to the situation here in Israel,” said Danon, adding, “We know that the decision to attack Iran was the decision of the United States. It wasn’t our decision. We supported the effort of the US. We think it was the right decision.” “It’s very easy always to blame Israel for everything, but that is not the case,” Dannon said. So it sounds like the new narrative from the Israeli government is that they were just sitting there minding their own business when the United States told them “We’re gonna bomb Iran, don’t try to stop us,” and then Israel was all like “WTF bro that’s crazy! I guess we’ll support you because we’re friends, but damn dude that sounds pretty reckless.” Now that the war in Iran is costing Israel support from American voters, they’re trying to pretend they had nothing to do with that whole mess. Which is wild considering the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly bragged about persuading the Americans to attack Iran, and the fact that the US State Department has explicitly said of the Iran war that “the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally.” But whatever. ❖ Hey remember when Charlie Kirk got killed and Republicans were like YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE UNLEASHED, TREMBLE IN FEAR AT WHAT’S COMING and then nothing happened and then they lost everything? That was funny. ❖ People should stop saying the Democrats will do nothing now that they’ve won both chambers of congress; that’s so unfair. Democrats do a lot of things. Genocide, for example. ❖ If you’re wondering how things are going in Australia, it looks like they’re about to start fining universities millions of dollars for allowing criticism of Israel. From The Jewish Independent: “Australian universities could be fined up to $2 million if they do not deal effectively with antisemitism under new legislation to be introduced into parliament this month. “The Education Minister announced last Friday that under the draft legislation, the maximum fine for universities will increase from the existing cap of $40,000 to $2 million — a 50-fold increase. “The fine regime, which will be administered by the university regulator TEQSA, is the government’s response to the recommendation by the Antisemitism Envoy Jillian Segal, which proposed withholding funding or terminating grants from universities that fail to effectively combat antisemitic behaviour.” As we discussed previously, Jillian Segal’s recommendations are completely geared around stomping out criticism of Israel and eliminating pro-Palestine protests, as evidenced by her stated position that pro-Palestine leftists represent “the most pervasive manifestation of antisemitism facing Australia today.” The plan is obviously to lean on universities to shut down anti-Israel speech in order to avoid millions of dollars in penalties. ❖ Tucker Carlson recently claimed that Trump is preparing to launch a nuclear strike on Iran at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu, and I’m really, truly sorry if this comes across as antisemitic, but in my opinion it would be wrong for Trump to do that. ❖ The other day I saw an Israeli flag account on Twitter shrieking that her son got uninvited from a Halloween party because some of the kids said they didn’t want to attend a party with a Zionist. Somebody asked her how old her son is, and she said nineteen. This is the “antisemitism” we’ve been hearing so much about. It’s grown adults whining that anti-genocide sentiments hurt their feelings. It’s people disliking a genocidal apartheid state and its supporters, and then some members of a religious group claiming those opinions shouldn’t be allowed to exist because it upsets their feelings. When you drill down on the actual complaints, that is almost exclusively what’s going on. Ultimately the “antisemitism” narrative is mostly just an especially entitled group of white people demanding that governments and institutions use force to protect them from feeling the uncomfortable feelings they experience when someone says their beloved apartheid state is guilty of crimes against humanity. This is self-evidently ridiculous, and it deserves nothing but a dismissive scoff. You do not have a right to be protected from uncomfortable feelings, no matter what your religion happens to be. You do not have a right to have the government protect you from the feelings of cognitive dissonance brought on by your own genocidal ideology. You do not have a right to silence others because because you find their opposition to mass atrocities emotionally inconvenient. That’s not a thing. Grow the fuck up. ❖ Zionists are like, “No no, it’s not true that antisemitism means criticism of Israel. You’re allowed to criticize Israel, you just need to memorize a very long list of rules you must follow and circumstances under which criticism is acceptable, make sure you’re only criticizing the current sitting government rather than the Zionist state itself, and be careful not to invoke any of the ten thousand obscure Tropes you’ve never heard of, or else you will lose your job and possibly go to prison. So go on ahead, criticize Israel all you want. It’s a free country.” ❖ I saw a BBC report from last month expressing shock and outrage about China forcing companies to stop selling people “AI companions” as a substitute for real human contact, speculating that Beijing is only taking these actions to trick Chinese women into having more babies. Chatbots are turning western brains into pureed spinach while China bans AI “companions” and requires AI models to remind users they’re not talking to a real person, and the western press frame this as China pushing a suspicious agenda. Everything about our civilization is making all of us dumber and dumber. ❖ Reading by Tim Foley:

So the new Israeli narrative is that Israel was just minding its own business and the US told them "We're gonna bomb Iran, don't try to stop us" and Israel was like "WTF that's crazy! I guess we'll support you because we're friends but damn dude that sounds pretty reckless."