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Alon (they/them)

@alonlevy.bsky.social

9K followers 600 following 32K posts

Transit researcher in Berlin. Lived in Tel Aviv, Singapore, the Riviera, New York, Providence, Vancouver, Stockholm, Paris. https://pedestrianobservations.com/ http://patreon.com/alonlevy [email protected] @[email protected]

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 9m

By all accounts, the hostages who were alive a year ago came back alive. The well-publicized murders of hostages were in the summer of 2024.

And from Bibi's perspective, having Hendel's satellite party transfer 4-5 seats from the opposition bloc to him is the biggest win.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 24m

She voted for MAGA Supreme Court justices.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 25m

Berlin had Stalinallee (now Karl-Marx-Allee).

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 26m

Yeah, to be clear, I'm not comparing the deal to what if Israel had established permanent government in Gaza in January 2024 and transitioned to PA rule; I'm just saying that in the Israel vs. Hamas conflict, the current deal favors Israel to the point that it's practically a Hamas surrender.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 28m

I mean, the majority of Congress would be under indictment if the US had the same anti-corruption standards of the average EU country, cutting across parties and age groups.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 29m

In general: "lol you just admitted" should be an insta-block.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 8h

No, it's not. This deal is way more favorable to Israel - Israel gets all the hostages back in a single release without having to fully withdraw from Gaza first; in 2024 Israel insisted on this and Hamas said no, and notably this feature was not present in the February-March ceasefire.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 8h

>But is someone who will be 84 at the end of her first term *really* better?

If she votes against Republican health care and tax cuts and judicial nominations and in favor of Democratic spending bills and judicial nominations, then yes, absolutely.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 8h

Trump is popular in Israel, and the segments where he's unpopular, i.e. the left, soured on Biden for not launching a CIA coup against Netanyahu last year, so there's a lot of cope crediting Trump for things.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 8h

Yes, and a bunch of these foods are specifically syncretic, created within Israel by Jews combining different cuisines' traditions. For example, sabich.

Reposted by Alon (they/them)

Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 8h

No paywall

archive.md/2025.05.01-1...

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 8h

France didn't build the TGV by having SNCF broken into regional operators with the state only ordering services.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 9h

It's not just about ordering services, though - it's also about building the required infrastructure for them.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 9h

In Berlin it's months, not years; I'm mostly shocked at the realization there are way worse-run government offices than ours.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 9h

Garett Jones?

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 9h

Borgia: Faith and Fear has some Della Rovere slash, if you want.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 10h

Yes, but the fact that Israel's getting all hostages before it has to commit to a full withdrawal from Gaza that guarantees Hamas can take control of the territory is an important difference. The February-March ceasefire did not have that.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 10h

Yes, but all of this is a development of negotiations after the second ceasefire; it's not something Bibi rejected out of an attempt to ratfuck Biden, because the Israeli demand to release all hostages at once as a serious sticking point (as opposed to Smotrich's BS) only goes back seven months.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 10h

Yeah, but still a distinct minority, and treated as an afterthought until the 1940s. (There were Yemeni Zionists making aliyah in the 1910s, and they were treated poorly by the kibbutzes.)

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 10h

He didn't reject *this* deal. All proposals in 2024 included gradual release of the hostages, culminating in the Hamas propaganda flair of the second ceasefire. What happened is that Hamas agreed to a deal that's a lot more favorable to Israel than previously, likely because of Qatari pressure.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 10h

The basic issue is that Rashid Khalidi found one paragraph by Herzl that sounded conspiratorial against Palestinian Arabs, and then ignored the entire book Herzl wrote about his vision, in 1902, when people who held colonialist views freely talked about them in public and didn't need to hide them.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 10h

Or that the people in Israel backing selective aliyah were the ones most likely to also think Israel should allow some of the Nakba refugees back.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 10h

Herzl wanted it to be European, because nearly all Jews in the world at the time were European. Israel got to be 50/50 Ashkenazi/Mizrahi because the Nazis exterminated 6 million Ashkenazis.

He also believed Arabs should be a minority with full legal and social equality.

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Reposted by Alon (they/them)

Alexander Kustov @akoustov.bsky.social · 11h

Migration needs more common ground!?

Glad to join Konrad's excellent "Migration Debates" on the importance of compromise with Marc Helbling and Oliviero Angeli.

The interviews are available in English (and German) here:
www.kas.de/en/web/analy...

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Reposted by Alon (they/them)

Voice4Justice @voices4justice.bsky.social · 11h

He stayed only in tunnels throughout the entire period of captivity

Most of the time he was chained, released from them on his wedding day, and then also allowed to showe

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