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Kragdar

@kragdar.bsky.social
1.9K followers 993 following 2.9K posts

Lawyer & observer of the Middle East / West Asia. فارسی بلدم; biraz Azərbaycanca.

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Alexandra Halaby 🇵🇸 @iskandrah.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Allah yerhamo 🙏
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: “The thorough cleansing that we are carrying out now in southern Lebanon is unprecedented. “They have nowhere to return to. Look at how it looks. “And by the way, the world isn’t stopping us.”
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Unfortunately those accounts seem to get the most positive engagement on here. Makes me think this place is structurally not for me. Your account is one of the few keeping me on here and I spend far less time on it when you periodically take breaks.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
You were really patient with them for a very long time! People like that on this site and a few others this week again make me realize how little I enjoy this site so often. Plus the banning of several others I didn’t always agree with, but whose perspective I wanted to see.
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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
After all, it is the thought that counts.
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
NEW: CBP just seized an American attorney's phone as he returned from Palestine, despite it containing attorney-client privileged communications. …Here's some interesting context — this attorney is married to another lawyer who *just last month* filed an ethics complaint against this Florida judge:
Zeteo news story headline:

Trump-Appointed Federal Judge Says, 'To Be American Is to Be a Zionist'

Judge Roy Altman boasts about taking '10% of the entire federal judiciary in America" on trips to Israel, and promotes his genocide-denying book from his chambers.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
You will not understand what I’m talking about if your primary experience with this is posting online and reading a lot of articles. Sorry. You just won’t.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Working for an administration that is helping commit genocide is fundamentally disturbing. You feel you are contributing to it. I worked for another federal agency that had nothing to do with foreign policy and many of us felt it too. It’s not a feeling that goes away because the next one is worse.
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Travis @someforeignfield.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
It is simple, but it is not easy. I talked to two former USAID experts about how humanitarian food aid typically works. What I thought was a standard part of my old job is now the centerpiece of an unfolding discourse by bad actors who lie and obfuscate in order to starve Gaza to death. Read here:
someforeignfield.substack.com
Humanitarian Food Distribution: Simple but not Easy
I talked to two former USAID food assistance experts about food distribution
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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
the received wisdom of the dnc superfan is not nearly as unshakeable as they would have you believe. as a rule most don't believe in anything other than mirroring the establishment. move the establishment and they will play ball immediately
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Travis @someforeignfield.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Ditto for aerial bombs. They were pulling vietnam-era M117 dumb bombs out of The Oldest Vault in NOVEMBER 2023 until Sleepy Joe spun up a few C-17 flights full of Mk 82s and Mk 84s per day to Nevatim. Aerial bombs are not expensive or sophisticated, but Israel can't make them at scale.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Ok a bit taken aback by this one at first but I think I got it
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
On the other hand a press lackey I knew at the White House is for sure going to hell along with many of you here on Bsky.app
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
From at least one reliable source, I know she was still reflecting on this and seemed quite emotional and regretful about it right before that admin left office, Dec 2024-Jan 2025. So a few sincere people can really learn if they want to, I think.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Several people spoke to her in the near-immediate aftermath in fall/winter 23-24 and she was shocked by our expectation that she should demonstrate an equivalent level of care for Palestinian lives, staff. She heard us out.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I like to have hope for the human condition so I’ll also say in fairness I know of at least one Biden appointee (who also held senior DNC roles) who seemed to really reflect on the ways the admin got Oct. 7 wrong. She didn’t work in a foreign policy role.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Having lived in DC and interacted with enough “Biden people” for a lifetime, the other part of it is that people want to earnestly believe they’re warriors for a righteous cause; no facts can dissuade them of their beliefs. The racism is also fundamental though
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Not really sure what the utility is, it’s not exactly an electoral winner nor is it right on the merits. People just love being racist and killing Muslims and justifying their killing “lol”
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A lot of capital L liberal Democratic genocide-denying racist Biden apologia on the timeline today
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vanagonfan 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇻🇪🇬🇱 @vanagonfan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"You don't understand, I need to give this murderer a gun otherwise he'd get creative with a knife and we don't want that."
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I like how they say they can’t ask you how you know because replies are limited, and they are doing this in the quote tweet. 🧠
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I’m biased of course but I think there is nothing quite like seeing the occupation with your own eyes. It’s unbelievable to the point of absurd. Also biased because I went to Palestine with some of the same guides who escorted Khanna and it fundamentally changed everything for me.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I’ve seen a marked change in him ever since he actually went to Palestine (and settlers detained him).
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Travis @someforeignfield.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The sanctions regime imposed by the US is now explicitly aimed at hurting regular Iranian civilians to make them desperate enough to charge Basijis with machine guns and armored vehicles. It is a callous, cruel, and explicitly cynical program designed to kill Iranians who want freedom.
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ℳatt @matttomic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Worth noting, as Macklemore was banned by NFL owners in what will be dubbed "fighting antisemitism", that Kanye, who - sold merch with swastikas - said on Alex Jones that he idolizes Hitler - tweeted he was "going Defcon 3 on Jewish people" is currently on a multi-city tour of NFL stadiums
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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
You learn about what makes us different, but also about what we have in common. You take this course so that you will never be able to do this to someone else." Those words have stayed with me ever since.
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Israel is still killing children every day in Gaza. Five-year-old Wafaa was murdered today by an Israeli drone strike on her family’s car on the way back from her first day at school.
Beautiful little girl in a blue shirt doing a thumbs up signDrop Site
@DropSiteNews
X.com
• BREAKING: Five-year-old Wafaa
Yusuf Akilah went to school on Sunday.
It was her first day of the year. Israel killed her before she made it home.
An Israeli drone struck the vehicle carrying Wafaa and her father, Yusuf, near Hamid Junction in western Gaza City, killing them both without warning, witnesses told Drop Site.
In photographs, Wafaa smiles in her blue school uniform and gives a thumbs-up. At the site of the strike, her school books lay open atop the burned wreckage. Her small body lay face down in the street.Footage captured by Drop Site contributor Abdel Qader Sabbah shows two men holding pieces of her hair.
"This is all that's left, world," one says.
"What truce are you talking about?"
"There has been no ceasefire," another says. "Every day there are massacres.
Every day there is killing. Every day children are dying."
"Enough of this abandonment."
* Abdel Qader Sabbah
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
After the genocide, I will no longer accept that the squatting in homes, the apartheid, the theft, the mass graves, the childrens’ body parts in grocery bags, is secondary. Many of us no longer do. It didn’t work when we did anyways.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
“and I learned that, when speaking to diplomats visiting our zoo of a neighborhood, the settlers squatting in our home must be the secondary point of my presentation, second to an effusive denunciation of global antisemitism.”
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
“So, I heeded these calls—what else is a 10-year-old supposed to do?—and I learned about Hitler and the Holocaust, I learned about the nose stereotype, the poisoned wells, the bankers, the vampires, the snakes and the lizards (I just found out about the octopus),…”
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
“A drone is one thing, but a trope—a trope is unacceptable. We learn to internalize the muzzle.” Just read the article.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
If your first instinct is to reach for the obscure origin of a commonly-used phrase rather than being struck by the genocidal fact of how many Palestinian children Israel killed in a few short weeks, you should think about whether you are actually concerned about dehumanization or not.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
“Using the “wrong words” had the magical ability to make things disappear; the boots, bullets, batons, and bruises all become invisible if you say anything in jest or in fury.”
mondoweiss.net
Jewish settlers stole my house. It’s not my fault they’re Jewish.
Palestinians are told the words we use dwarf the decades of violence enacted against us by the self-proclaimed Jewish State. A drone is one thing, but a trope—a trope is unacceptable. No more.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
“Language was more of a minefield than the border between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights, and we, children at the time, were expected to hop around them, hoping we don’t accidentally step on an explosive trope that would discredit us.”
mondoweiss.net
Jewish settlers stole my house. It’s not my fault they’re Jewish.
Palestinians are told the words we use dwarf the decades of violence enacted against us by the self-proclaimed Jewish State. A drone is one thing, but a trope—a trope is unacceptable. No more.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Which is a wonderful opportunity to re-up Mohammed el-Kurd’s brilliant article, one I first read a few weeks before 10/7 and that made me completely re-analyze how I’d been conditioned as an American. Everyone should read it, especially if you think you’re inclined to disagree.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
If you go a little deeper, you’ll find it came from Shylock, a Jewish character, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. I have an above-average level of education like most people here on Bluesky.app and I didn’t know this! www.thevillageidiom.org/idioms/pound...
thevillageidiom.org
pound of flesh: Idiom Meaning and Origin - The Village Idiom
What does ‘pound of flesh’ mean? The idiom *pound of flesh* refers to an unreasonable or extreme demand for repayment, often resulting in great harm or sacrifice to the person being asked to provide i...
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
A few people got hung up on “pound of flesh here” and I wasn’t sure why. It’s a very common phrase and nothing in the dictionary definition ties it to any specific group of people as far as I can tell. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/p...
merriam-webster.com
Definition of POUND OF FLESH
a payment or penalty exacted to fulfill a deal or punishment… See the full definition
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Parastoo @parastoo.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
درخواست کردم یادداشت‌های افسر مهاجرتی رو روی پرونده اقامت دائم بهم بدن. پرونده‌ام رفته به چک امنیتی پیشرفته. چرا؟ علتش اینه که در تهران روزنامه‌نگار بوده‌ام. نگاه دولت کانادا هم به روزنامه‌نگار همونه که دولت ایران. متأسفانه.
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Christiaan Triebert @trbrtc.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The strike happened at 21:30 local time. Within 30 mins, reports spread online. One came from Motahareh, a henna party guest. Her last photo before the blast showed them smoking shisha. She survived and documented the aftermath online.
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Christiaan Triebert @trbrtc.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Three other named victims are Mohammad Malahi, 16, whose body was so badly disfigured that they used the mobile phone found on his body to confirm it was him; Kolsoum Malahi Najandnia, 43; and Zarkhatoun Taheri, 50. The bride and groom survived the attack.
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Travis @someforeignfield.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Current Trump strategy to help Iranians: -kill them in the South -deport them back to Iran if they flee here -prevent all opportunities for them to leave legally (TOEFL sanctions etc) -economic warfare making daily life impossible -whine about how theyre not rising up
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Fared Al Mahlool | فريد المحلول @faredalmahlool.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
BREAKING NEWS: Iranian officials say a U.S. strike hit a wedding in Kuhestak, Sirik County, Hormozgan, killing two people and injuring 50. The death toll may rise due to the condition of some of the wounded.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
How absurd. I’ve been counseling students at another university (not UCLA) that similarly seems intent to find something to punish these kids for. As far as I know, they haven’t resorted to AI-drafted complaints yet.
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Thomas Harvey @tbh1910.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I've represented Dylan for nearly 2 years in a series of increasingly ridiculous hearings aimed at suppressing pro-Palestine speech. Excited to file this case against UCLA and hope to create more space for people speaking out against genocide. Lawsuit here. adc.org/wp-content/u...
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I can’t believe this gets constantly relitigated. There are so few Palestinians here now, I guess it’s just an opportunity to pat themselves on the back? What they say is unfalsifiable, and if Bsky is so full of fake accounts, they themselves may be fake.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
To be fair though, a lot of Bosnians feel similarly rosy about western intervention as far as I can tell. To the extent we’re still doing standpoint theory. And they’re probably right.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Clinton’s intervention and Dayton were taught in my IR classes as victories for liberal multilateral interventionism
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
There’s so few credible Iranians capable of such critiques while remaining clear-eyed about what Iran faces in terms of foreign domination and subjugation. I can’t blame too many non-Iranians for not knowing what to think but the Guardian letter was certainly a fair attempt.
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Kragdar @kragdar.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Bored and exhausted by the endless diaspora responses and takes on the Guardian letter. Seems like a lot of words wasted on the point that no one outside Iran should ever criticize the Islamic Republic ever. Again, please cut off the diaspora from the internet.
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