Nir @nirindc

@DavidMakovsky Great observation and framing

The key question is whether the current Iran-Israel missile exchanges are over or merely a prelude to a broader round of fighting. Iran appears intent on linking the fronts: if Israel strikes Hizbullah's stronghold in Beirut's Dahieh district, Tehran will signal that Lebanon and Iran are part of the same confrontation. Israel, however, is likely to resist that linkage. If Iran launches another salvo of missiles, Israel appears prepared to respond with a new round of strikes. It is notable that Israel targeted Iranian air-defense batteries - a classic precursor to more extensive operations. Israel also struck a petrochemical facility - creating speculation tied to missile production. These do not look like purely symbolic attacks. They could indicate preparations for a more sustained campaign lasting days rather than a brief exchange of blows. Stay tuned.

Much has been written about @NickKristof's latest NYT opinion column over the past 24 hours, most of it focusing on the specific claims and their sourcing, but what I think deserves most attention is something broader: how this kind of journalism, whatever its intentions, ultimately makes accountability harder to achieve rather than easier, and harms the very people it claims to champion. The principle that Israeli abuses should be investigated and condemned is not in dispute, and nobody serious is arguing otherwise. Israel is not above scrutiny, and in fact it operates under more intense international scrutiny than almost any country on earth, routinely held to standards applied nowhere else. The problem here is something different entirely: the complete collapse of evidentiary standards the moment Israel is the subject. This piece reads less like rigorous reporting and more like a catalogue of hearsay, unverifiable allegations, and activist claims stitched together into a sweeping moral indictment. Its sourcing leans heavily on Euro Med Human Rights Monitor, an organisation repeatedly criticised over extremist ties, disinformation, and deeply questionable methodology, yet treated throughout as a credible authority while its leadership openly engages in pro Hamas propaganda on X. Worse, the same ecosystem of activists and self appointed “experts” that amplifies Euro Med’s claims online increasingly feeds narratives into more established organisations and media outlets, laundering deeply contested allegations into the appearance of institutional credibility. The most severe claims are anonymous, uncorroborated, and presented in the emotional register of established fact rather than allegation, despite lacking meaningful evidentiary backing. Yet Kristof largely adopts them without serious scrutiny, publishing the piece in the Opinion section because even the already diminished evidentiary standards often applied to reporting on the Israeli Palestinian conflict would likely not suffice for it to pass as straight news reporting. This approach doesn't strengthen accountability, it actively destroys it. When every allegation is immediately inflated into systematic rape and "standard operating procedure" before any serious verification, genuine investigation becomes harder rather than easier. Real abuses, if they occurred, get buried beneath maximalist narratives so extreme that large portions of the public simply stop trusting any of it, and the people who actually suffered pay that price. It also alienates the vast majority of Israelis and Jews worldwide, including the many who are perfectly capable of criticising Israeli policy and supporting investigations into misconduct, but who understandably recoil when accusations begin resembling modernised blood libels dressed up as human rights reporting. The framing matters enormously, and so does proportionality, and so does evidence. Nor does any of this serve Palestinians. Atrocity inflation entrenches both sides deeper into defensive tribalism, and every dubious claim amplified by a prestigious outlet makes legitimate criticism easier to dismiss when it actually matters. The timing compounds everything. On a day when documented reporting on Hamas sexual violence was again circulating, the NYT chose to run an opinion column built substantially on unverifiable anonymous testimony asserting that Israelis are conducting systemic rape campaigns, not as a rigorously evidenced investigative report but as an opinion piece with the imprimatur of the paper of record. Kristof is not a naive bystander in any of this. In 2014 he used the full credibility of the NYT to repeatedly platform Somaly Mam, a Cambodian anti-trafficking activist whose harrowing personal story he championed across multiple columns, until it emerged that her backstory was substantially fabricated and he was forced to issue a public correction. When challenged this time around on his sourcing, corroboration, and methodology, he defaulted to bad faith engagement on social media rather than addressing the underlying concerns seriously. It is the same pattern, playing out again in a different context. Real journalism requires skepticism, corroboration, and restraint applied consistently regardless of the subject, and when those standards disappear the moment Israel is involved, what remains is not human rights reporting but narrative activism wearing a journalist's costume that does far more harm than good to everyone it claims to serve.

@ChrisVanHollen No word against Hamas and disarmament. Our MD Senator has gradually become a Hamas apologist. We will remember in 2028 and we will in MD campaign with all our might against you! We will not forgive and not forget.

@ewarren This sums it up

@IsraelinUSA Sawsan is the best! Kol Hakavod!

If you walk through an Israeli cemetery, you’ll notice something different. On the graves of Holocaust survivors, below their own names, there are often lists of others. These are their parents, brothers, and sisters who were murdered by the Nazis, etched into the stone because they never received a grave of their own. My grandparents’ headstones bear their names, and in their case as well, the slabs below carry the names of their siblings who were murdered in the Holocaust and denied a final resting place. For survivors, their own grave became a memorial for an entire family wiped out. It is a way to defy the Nazis’ attempt to erase them from history. It gives us, the grandchildren, a physical place to light a candle and say: “You existed. You are part of us.” But there are those with no grave and no name carved into stone, because no one was left to write their names. Our job is to be their memory. We remember those who have a name on a stone, and those who do not. May their memories be a blessing. 🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

@ChrisVanHollen As a Marylander, I am repulsed by your use of the sacrifice and death of American service members to spread your lies. You are using the school children death when it s very possible it was an Iran misfire. You hate so much our President that you became an IRGC apologist.

@ChrisVanHollen You are a pathetic Ayatollah apologist. Shame that you represent us in MD!

@MathildePanot Ta grande gueule de poissonnière, elle était bien fermée quand le régime des Mollahs massacrait les siens.

@BrugeHiplo @ChrisVanHollen He cannot help it. And this guy got elected on a pro-Israel platform….to become a Hamas-Iran apologist…

@brhodes Stop defending the Ayatollahs, Mr. Hamas

@brhodes Shut up. We know why your nickname was Hamas. You are an Iranian apologist

@CaronAymericoff Petit minable défendeur du régime de Téhéran

@DavidMakovsky So exciting. One of my favorite podcasts

@ChrisVanHollen You are a Hamas apologist! You should focus on asking Hamas to disarm and speak loudly for the people of Iran. You barely said anything on Iran and it took you 17 days. Shame on you! We will work very hard to defeat you in the next election!

@CaronAymericoff @LCI @CaronAymericoff une petite tête à claque!

@CaronAymericoff Petit obsédé

@ChrisVanHollen Let’s see, it took you 17 days to say something on Iran. When it comes to Israel, you are so quick to condemn. Yet no word about Hamas, violation of ceasefire and its lack of disarmament. Since Oct. 7th, you have slowly become a Hamas apologist. I am disappointed you represent MD