Progressive Politics

“If you attack Zionists, we will hunt you down for the rest of your life. Thanks to Google, if you’re looking for a job or a partner, we’ll be there doing our job. We’ll pressure companies, their CEOs will resign, workers will be fired—we monitor everything.”

Liora Rez, the Zionist founder of the StopAntisemitism organization, threatened to destroy the lives of anyone who attacks “Israel” and warned that they are monitoring everyone thanks to the systems provided by Google.

These are persecutory speeches typical of fascist dictatorships of the last century, in the Nazi style: you must support the Reich or suffer the consequences.

Video link -> https://video.twimg.com/amplify/_video/2043905030244442112/vid/avc1/1920x1080/CotvD5keBgh3xC7P.mp4

Source -> https://xcancel.com/DaniMayakovski/status/2043905344569540764#m

Cross post from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11319443

https://archive.ph/emaOy

The idea of recruiting Nazi Germany to help liberate Palestine from British rule was conceived by Stern, who advocated uncompromising violent resistance to the British. His position contradicted that of most of the Jewish community, which had suspended its struggle against Britain in favor of fighting Germany.
One document describes Stern's ideology as follows: "With the outbreak of World War II… Stern argued that there is no better time for a war of independence than during wartime. Britain's forces are tied down… and it would be possible to overcome them. The question of orientation seemed simple to him.

"The Jews are a party in the war and therefore cannot be neutral. Britain betrayed the Jewish people and will never allow the establishment of a Jewish state. On the other hand, Germany has no special interest in Palestine, and since the Nazis want to cleanse Europe of Jews, nothing is simpler than transferring them to their own state."

The document further states that Stern believed "it is possible to reach a practical agreement with the Germans… negotiations should be opened, and Jews of Europe should be recruited into a special army that would fight its way to Palestine and conquer it from the British. The Germans, he argued, would agree because it would rid them of the Jews while also removing the British from the Near East."

Crosspost from https://altmedia.house/post/253022

The argument, as I understand it, is that Israel is just a normal small country like any other small country, and any special focus on it suggests a sinister desire to single out Jews for discrimination.

But have you ever noticed how the same people who accuse Israel’s critics of “obsession” with a tiny insignificant country will also fall all over themselves to tell you that Israel is an indispensable ally whose interests are inextricably intertwined with the interests of western civilization?

Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/41786

US Vice-President JD Vance has insisted he was right to stage a two-day campaign visit to back Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán five days before he was voted out of office by opposition party Tisza's landslide victory.

Insisting Orbán was a "great guy" who did a "very good job", Vance told Fox News he was "one of the few European leaders we've seen who's been willing to stand up to the bureaucracy in Brussels".

While he was sad Orbán had lost, he was sure the US would "work very well" with the new government, he said.

Dr. Veliz is an award-winning physician who worked at Knapp Medical Center in Weslaco as a resident doctor of UT Health RGV. In 2025, Veliz was recognized as the program’s “best resident doctor,” according to his husband. Veliz was part of the family medicine residency program, according to his LinkedIn, and had previously earned a medical degree from La Universidad Central de Venezuela. Veliz has been in the U.S. for about nine years and had entered the country legally.

“However, due to a recent federal visa pause, Ezequiel’s work permit renewal was halted and he was unexpectedly detained,” the GoFundMe post reads.

Currently, Veliz is being held in a migrant detention facility in McAllen.

Dr. Bolivar is an emergency room physician who works for South Texas Health Systems (STHS), one of the largest hospital systems in the Valley. On Saturday, April 11, Bolivar was traveling to meet her husband in California, where the couple were scheduled to attend an asylum interview, according to a GoFundMe campaign launched by her family. Bolivar and her 5-year-old daughter — a U.S. citizen — were detained by immigration officials at the airport, according to reporting by The New York Times. The child was ultimately released to a relative later that day.

Bolivar has been in the United States lawfully for a decade and had a work permit that was valid through 2030, her husband told the Times.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45601600

This episode is sponsored by Ellydee. To sign up, go to ellydee.ai/mehdi

NOTE: This episode was recorded on April 3, 2026.

It’s been six months (!) since Bassem Youssef joined Mehdi for an episode of ‘We’re Not Kidding’, and since then Israel has started two new wars, right-wing podcasters have turned on Donald Trump over his war with Iran, and centrist Democrats have mounted a cancellation campaign against leftist streamer Hasan Piker. But before they get to any of that, they dig into Epstein and Mehdi’s viral interview with the so-called “Professor Jiang,” the two get into a friendly argument over which terms and ideas qualify as religious tropes and how the weaponization of antisemitism by Zionists has diluted the meaning of the word.

The two also debate whether right-wingers like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson can be trusted allies for calling out Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Donald Trump’s war with Iran, or if they’re just opportunists who see the writing on the wall for the MAGA movement. “Why don't you like Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson?” Bassem asks Mehdi, who explains his position on the two.

The two also discuss: Zionists cracking down on free speech and civil liberties. Why “Pax Judaica” is an antisemitic trope and “Greater Israel” is not. US citizen Moshe Katz who recently died in Lebanon fighting for the Israeli military. Why Bill Maher is… just the worst.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/44949084

A 49-year-old Mexican man named Alejandro Cabrera Clemente died on April 11 at the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana. He was found unresponsive, transferred to a medical center, and pronounced dead. He’s the 47th person to die in ICE detention during the Trump administration’s second term.

...

Forty-seven people have died. The rate is accelerating. And the people in charge are ignoring it.

Everyone hates Israel now, which is as it should be. But we all need to understand that Israel has never acted alone.

If Israel were acting alone, it would be an asshole with a pointy stick instead of an asshole with an attack helicopter. The west gave it the attack helicopter.

An asshole with a pointy stick is not much of a problem. The world is full of assholes with pointy sticks. Get yourself your own pointy stick and you can deter their aggressions without much difficulty.

An asshole with an attack helicopter can ruin everyone’s day. He can fuck everything up and kill whoever he wants — even people who have pointy sticks. He doesn’t need to negotiate with anyone. He doesn’t need to be polite or diplomatic. You just have to give him whatever he wants or he’ll fly over there and chain gun you and your family.

The US and its allies are responsible for ensuring that Israel remains an asshole with an attack helicopter instead of an asshole with a pointy stick. They’ve created this situation where Israel doesn’t have to get along with its neighbors like any other normal country on the planet, and can instead exist in a perpetual state of war.

It is right and good to despise Israel; Israel is a genocidal apartheid state which should not exist and should never have been created in the first place. But political maturity means carrying that disdain forward to the entire western power structure under which we all live.

Hating Israel without hating the western empire is nonsensical, because Israel would not exist without western weapons, military support, narrative control, and diplomatic cover. It’s like hating Bonnie without hating Clyde. Like hating Butch Cassidy but not the Sundance Kid. There are laws against being an accomplice to murder because we all understand that if you aid and abet a murderer then you necessarily share moral culpability for the killing.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is hustling to win over left-wing critics who say the progressive leader cares too much about mainstream approval and is too cozy with senior Democrats.

Between the lines: If Ocasio-Cortez's diplomacy is successful, it could be more difficult for any potential 2028 presidential candidate to run to her left — but moderate Democrats argue it also could make it tougher for her to win a general election.

Despite her recent efforts, some loud voices on the left — including people who have worked closely with her — have gotten under her skin by continuing to question her progressive bona fides.

Zoom in: In recent weeks, Ocasio-Cortez has tried to repair her relationship with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Many members of the group opposed her support for giving Israel defensive weapons, including the Iron Dome missile system, during the war in Gaza — which she has called a "genocide."

In July 2024, national DSA leaders withdrew their endorsement of her for the elections that year, arguing that she'd conflated "anti-Zionism with antisemitism and condemned boycotting Zionist institutions," which the group considered a "deep betrayal."

The intrigue: AOC also has had a fraught relationship with some progressives who helped launch her political career.

Her first chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, co-founded Justice Democrats, a group that helped Ocasio-Cortez with her insurgent House campaign in 2018. Chakrabarti is running for Congress in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco, but Ocasio-Cortez pointedly hasn't endorsed him in the June 2 primary.

She's indicated she believes that some of her early allies on the left have taken too much credit for her upset House victory eight years ago, and she's distanced herself from them over the years, people familiar with the dynamic told Axios.

President Donald Trump had a very bad weekend.

In the most crushing blow, his favorite European leader, the pro-Putin, anti-Zelensky exemplar of “illiberal democracy,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—whose reelection Trump had strongly endorsed—lost his bid to stay in power by a stunning landslide margin.

Only slightly less embarrassing, the much-touted peace negotiations with Iran—the first direct talks between U.S. and Iranian leaders in almost 50 years—ended in failure, dramatizing Trump’s failure to convert a massive wave of U.S. military power (hitting more than 13,000 Iranian targets in five weeks of airstrikes) into a political victory.

Finally, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has tried more than any other Western leader to maintain good relations with the American president, said he was “fed up” with the fact that energy prices dip and soar “because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.” In an op-ed for the Guardian last week, Starmer wrote: “Britain’s national interest is best served by de-escalation, diplomacy, and the swift reopening of the strait of Hormuz.”

Former President Barack Obama rubbed the Trump administration’s nose in its own failure in the wake of the Hungarian election.

President Donald Trump dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Europe to whip up support for autocrat Viktor Orbán, whose 16 years in power came to an end with a landslide victory for rival Péter Magyar on Sunday.

“The victory of the opposition in Hungary yesterday, like the Polish election in 2023, is a victory for democracy, not just in Europe but around the world,” Obama wrote in the wake of Vance’s mission to central Europe. “Most of all, it’s a testament to the resilience and determination of the Hungarian people—and a reminder to all of us to keep striving for fairness, equality and the rule of law.”

Link to the video https://xcancel.com/IraninHyderabad/status/2043402556257558972

Mayor Zohran Mamdani will announce on Sunday that New York City will open a city-owned grocery store in East Harlem in Manhattan by the end of his first term, taking an early step to deliver on a key campaign pledge.

The mayor wants to spend roughly $30 million to build the store at La Marqueta, a city-owned marketplace under elevated train tracks in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Mr. Mamdani will announce the plan at a speech on Sunday to mark his first 100 days as mayor.

As a candidate, Mr. Mamdani said he would create five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough, in hopes of bringing down food costs for struggling New Yorkers.

As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum moves forward with a plan to enact universal healthcare for her country’s more than 130 million people, a longtime advocate for Medicare for All in the US called the development “both inspiring and frustrating.”

“Inspiring because it shows what is possible,” Wendell Potter, a former insurance company communications director who has become a leading critic of the industry, told Common Dreams. “Frustrating because here in the US we are going in the opposite direction.”

Earlier this week, Sheinbaum announced a decree that she called “a historic step” for Mexico.

Beginning in 2027, her government plans to unify Mexico’s public health institutions into a single Universal Health Service, allowing patients across the country to receive care from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the Social Security Institute and Social Services of Workers of the State (ISSSTE), and the IMSS‑Bienestar program, which provides free services to those without employer-provided insurance.