“In the hours after the Hamas attack on Israel began, users subscribed to X Premium — whose accounts show a verified check mark and get boosted engagement in exchange for a monthly fee — spread a number of particularly egregious pieces of misinformation. According to a running tracker by Media Matters, these accounts amplified a fake White House memo claiming the US government was about to send $8 billion in aid to Israel; circulated videos from other conflicts (and in some cases, footage from a video game) while claiming they showed the latest out of Israel and Gaza; falsely claimed that a church in Gaza had been bombed; and impersonated a news outlet. These posts were shared by X users with huge followings and viewed tens of millions of times. The Tech Transparency Project said on Thursday that it had identified X Premium accounts promoting Hamas propaganda videos, which were viewed hundreds of thousands of times.”
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has ordered pro-Palestinian student groups at Florida universities to shut themselves down. While the stated rationale is that these activists are providing “material support” for terrorism, the governor’s order is a direct violation of free speech principles, as well as the First Amendment.
State University System of Florida Chancellor Raymon Rodrigues announced the order on Tuesday, citing the on-campus activism of National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student group that is active at both the University of Florida and the University of Southern Florida.”
…
“Conservatives who claim to oppose censorship on college campuses—and call it out whenever right-leaning students and faculty are the victims and leftwing activists are the aggressors—are engaged in obvious hypocrisy if they do not criticize DeSantis for this. The answer to bad speech is more speech; it is not state action.”
“Europe should take in the one million people trying to flee Gaza if it cares “about human rights so much”, a senior Egyptian official reportedly told a European counterpart.
“You want us to take one million people? Well, I am going to send them to Europe. You care about human rights so much – well, you take them,” the unidentified official said.
The rebuke, first reported by the Financial Times, came as media reports suggested that the Egyptian government was categorically refusing to accept the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in northern Sinai.
To avoid a mass exodus from the Gaza Strip into Egypt, the Egyptian army has begun setting up new positions close to the border, reinforcing the wall with barbed wire, expanding patrols in the area, and installing a concrete wall at the Rafah crossing with Gaza.”
“Immigrants seeking to come to the U.S. to live and work are absolutely not terrorists conducting a paramilitary operation. Mexico and the U.S. are not Israel and Palestine. And, as Saturday’s attack makes obviously clear, even the most extreme measures designed to “shut down” a border can be defeated.
Conflating these issues only serves to make the debate over U.S. immigration policy more toxic and stupid than it already is.
Unfortunately, DeSantis is not the only one doing this. Former President Donald Trump, never one to care much about accurately describing the status of U.S. immigration policy, claimed in a TruthSocial post on Monday that “the same people that raided Israel are pouring into our once beautiful USA, through our TOTALLY OPEN SOUTHERN BORDER, at Record Numbers.”
Meanwhile, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley—who has at times seemed like the metaphorical adult in the room during this GOP presidential primary contest—made a similar claim during an appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday. “We have to remember that what happened to Israel could happen here in America,” Haley said. “We have an open border. People are coming through; they’re not being vetted.””
…
“There are not many borders in the world more heavily militarized than the one between Israel and the Gaza Strip. It should stand in stark contrast to how these Republican politicians are describing America’s southern border.
In fact, the Gaza border wall went far beyond anything that would be feasible or affordable for the U.S./Mexico border. As Amir Tibon, a journalist who survived Saturday’s attack in Israel, described to The Atlantic on Monday, the structure included an “underground wall” meant to prevent Hamas from digging tunnels.
And guess what? The wall didn’t work.”
…
“Thankfully, the U.S. has not been in a decades-long, slow-simmering conflict with our neighbor to the south—though some Republicans now seem eager to start one. There is no terrorist organization in Mexico motivated by centuries-old religious and cultural hatred that refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the American state or the rights of the people who live in it.
Most importantly, there is little evidence that any terrorists seeking to harm Americans are passing through the southern border.”
…
“the best way to focus on whatever actual threats might exist would be to allow more immigrants into the country legally—leaving only those who cannot clear background checks to be sneaking over the fence illegally. That’s the opposite of shutting down the border.”
…
“If a politician can’t tell the difference between migrants coming to the U.S. for jobs and terrorists hell-bent on murder and mayhem, they shouldn’t be trusted with making federal policy in either arena.”
“The restrictions have mostly been about security concerns in North Sinai where the Egyptian authorities have long been involved in a deadly conflict with jihadists linked to Al Qaeda.
But Egypt’s current reluctance to open the crossing without clear conditions and guarantees may be more about trying to avoid a mass exodus of Palestinians from Gaza.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, says the Egyptian authorities fear a great influx of Gazans – for whom they would then be responsible, for an indefinite period.
In addition, Egypt does not want to play any role in what could amount to a permanent resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza.”