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RT by @george_szirtes: a slighly older but still wonderful interview I had with @george_szirtes on poetry, translation and Lazlo Kraznahorkai https://open.substack.com/pub/bukus/p/a-conversation-with-george-szirtes?r=9brcu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

https://nitter.poast.org/bukusarkar/status/2061161635666936129#m

Published: May 31, 2026 19:03

a slighly older but still wonderful interview I had with @george_szirtes on poetry, translation and Lazlo Kraznahorkai open.substack.com/pub/bukus/… Video

RT by @george_szirtes: 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.

https://nitter.poast.org/MosheELavi/status/2054618395698418124#m

Published: May 13, 2026 17:42

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…

RT by @george_szirtes: There is a claim that keeps circulating, presented as sophisticated analysis: antisemitic violence is caused by Israel’s actions. If Israel behaved differently, Jewish communities around the world would somehow be safer. This argument is not analysis. It is a moral inversion. And it collapses the moment you apply it consistently. When China imprisons Uyghurs, does anyone warn Muslim communities in Paris to expect attacks? When Russia invaded Ukraine, did anyone tell Russian restaurants to brace for violence? No. Never. The causal chain between a government’s actions and violence against a diaspora is only ever constructed for Jews. Every other minority is extended the basic moral courtesy of being treated as individuals rather than proxies. Now look at what the data actually shows. The SPCJ, which tracks antisemitic incidents in France in coordination with the Interior Ministry, has documented a consistent and damning pattern: it is antisemitic violence that inspires more antisemitic violence, not Israeli policy. After Mohamed Merah murdered Jewish children at point-blank range at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012, antisemitic acts surged by 200%. There was no Gaza operation. No Israeli military action. The massacre of Jews in France produced more attacks on Jews in France. The same logic held after the Hypercacher attack in January 2015: antisemitic acts increased by nearly 300%. Massacres of Jews do not shock antisemites into restraint. They embolden them. They signal impunity. They normalize hatred. And everyone in a position of responsibility knows it. Which brings us to October 7. From the day of the Hamas attack, antisemitic acts in France increased by over 1,000%. A daily average of approximately 25 antisemitic acts was recorded in the 30 days that followed, reaching nearly 40 on some days. In the three months after the attack, the number of antisemitic acts equaled those recorded over the previous three years combined. And here is another detail that makes the “Israel causes antisemitism” argument impossible to sustain: the spike began on October 7 itself, the very day of the attack. Israel had not yet responded. Not a single soldier had entered Gaza. Interior Minister Darmanin sent an urgent message to prefects that same day asking them to immediately reinforce protection of Jewish community sites. Synagogues. Schools. Community centers. By October 10, 10,000 police officers had been deployed to protect 500 Jewish sites across the country. Before any Israeli response existed, the French government already knew that Jewish communities needed protecting. Not because of what Israel was about to do. Because of what had just been done to Jews. Antisemitic violence has one cause. Antisemitism.

https://nitter.poast.org/srodan/status/2051570949896474949#m

Published: May 5, 2026 07:53

There is a claim that keeps circulating, presented as sophisticated analysis: antisemitic violence is caused by Israel’s actions. If Israel behaved differently, Jewish communities around the world would somehow be safer. This argument is not analysis. It…

RT by @george_szirtes: '...perhaps it is the paradox of being so close to a language she didn't understand as a child that creates this hungry, groundbreaking book, brimming with grief and desire' – Martina Evans, @IrishTimesBooks, on @cathygalvin1's debut poetry book Ethnology. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review/2026/03/08/new-poetry-a-masterful-recreation-of-the-surreal-terrifying-world-of-night-workers/

https://nitter.poast.org/BloodaxeBooks/status/2032123069855055951#m

Published: March 12, 2026 15:54

'...perhaps it is the paradox of being so close to a language she didn't understand as a child that creates this hungry, groundbreaking book, brimming with grief and desire' – Martina Evans, @IrishTimesBooks, on @cathygalvin1's debut poetry book Ethnology.…

RT by @george_szirtes: It is Holocaust Remembrance Day and I would like to post some thoughts. My first thought is that we do not remember anymore. My second thought is that we have never remembered well enough. People have become quiet, perhaps fearing that remembering 6 million dead entails some other thought. It is a gruesome fact that this entailment has been created in so many minds. That good people stay silent out of fear. That there is this ugly cloud around remembrance itself. This should all be rejected. We should remember what happened because it happened. Here is what I would like people to know: We never have truly remembered the Holocaust because we never truly knew the Holocaust. The depths of that evil are truly undiscoverable. People say this insulting thing--that we place Holocaust remembrance above all else. I say we most certainly have not. We do not even know the Holocaust enough to remember it, much less elevate it. And once you learn it, it is a unique event in human history. When the camps were liberated, there was little mention of Jews specifically. The Nazis were so depraved to so many. The world was an antisemitic place. The initial news reports were of the horrific treatment of POWs. People could not comprehend what had happened to these men in these camps. It broke the human mind. General Patton vomited when he visited Ohrdruf. Eisenhower wrote that "the visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick." Soldiers doubled over, throwing up. At Dachau, soldiers could smell death and decay five miles before they reached the camp. One liberator recalled seeing soldiers vomiting, crying, experiencing disbelief and rage. Nurses wrote of seeing "human wreckage, living skeletons, diseased, infested with lice and maggots." That is what happened to the POWs; What happened to the Jews was worse. And that greater suffering of the Jews? That is another part of this story many of us have never known well enough to properly "remember." So many in Europe had suffered so horrifically that they resented the Jews for suffering worse. After liberation, Jews were forced into displaced persons camps alongside antisemites and individuals who had harmed Jews during the war--housed together with displaced Germans and Austrians, many of whom had been Nazi collaborators, until Earl Harrison's 1945 report led to separate Jewish camps. Harrison wrote that "we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them." When Jews returned to their homes after liberation, much of the rest of Europe turned on them. Stealing their clothes and their homes. Beating them to death. Telling them the Germans should have made soap from their bodies. These are things we do not remember because we never knew them in the first place. Another thing we never knew: the safest place in Europe for European Jews after the war was Germany, where Allied Forces could protect them. These Jewish survivors lived in worse conditions than any other group of survivors. They were not recognized as special. They were recognized as lesser. Their pain was held against them. Their lack of statehood, too. The horror of these conditions led the Americans to eventually pressure the British to open greater immigration gates to British Mandated Palestine. Millions of displaced people; the Jews were treated as the least among them. That is the aftermath of the Holocaust. A history we do not know enough to remember. We have never truly held this history in our popular imagination. The sardine packing used by the Einsatzgruppen in Lithuania and other Soviet territories; the death camps in Poland. Everyone calls everything else "The Holocaust" these days, but few things are like the Holocaust. Josef Mengele conducted experiments on twins, sewing children together to create conjoined twins. Prisoners were subjected to bone grafting experiments without anesthesia. Mengele injected dye into the eyes of children attempting to change their eye color. Prisoners were deliberately infected with typhus, malaria, and other diseases to test treatments. Limbs were amputated and doctors watched them attempt to heal, or transplanted bones to observe nerve regeneration. Women were subjected to sterilization experiments. They did the sardine packing—forcing naked people to lie facedown in rows in deep pits, then shooting them, with the next group ordered to lie on top of the bodies and then shot, layer upon layer. They kept a list of every Jew in Europe, including the youngest children, and hunted them all down across the entire continent until 6 million were murdered. They became more and more psychopathic as time went on. Augmenting each other in their lust for Jewish death and suffering. When you actually learn about the Holocaust, it is a human horror story unlike many others, at least in our direct domain of experience in this Western world. Jews were ignored at best after the Holocaust; at worst, murdered by their neighbors. Formal Holocaust remembrance days weren't established until the late 1970s in the United States. Even then, this word, "Holocaust," was opposed by many survivors. "Holo" means "whole." "Caust" is from the Greek kaustós, meaning "burnt." "To burn in whole." Many Jews, including survivors, fought against the term; it felt sacrificial. It was only in the late 1980s and 1990s that "Holocaust" remembrance itself became a "thing." Schindler's List was, at the time, revolutionary; yet people treat this all now as if it had been forced upon them. Now, with this history we do not remember and/or malign, we march around the world and say, "Oh, this is like the Holocaust." Were children hunted down across a continent? Were people injected with disease? Were limbs amputated to watch them heal? Were they packed into "sardines" to be executed—generations upon generations removed from this earth? When one method of mass murder--shooting--proved insufficient for the scale of murder desired--were more "efficient" mechanisms adopted? Are the names of millions still missing because literally no one was left to remember they ever existed at all? I do not think we remember well now. I do not think we have ever remembered well at all. Because I do not think we have ever really understood what happened there, in Europe, to Jews. It is a very sad thing, I believe, if we turn back time so far that we bring ourselves to 1945, when the rest of Europe said to the Jews who survived: "I hate your survival. I hate your suffering, too." We should do better, for the sake of history, if nothing else.

https://nitter.poast.org/magi_jay/status/2016316622319899110#m

Published: January 28, 2026 01:05

It is Holocaust Remembrance Day and I would like to post some thoughts. My first thought is that we do not remember anymore. My second thought is that we have never remembered well enough. People have become quiet, perhaps fearing that remembering 6…

RT by @george_szirtes: posted on substack by a person named Teri Leigh I’m writing this from Minnesota. These are just a few things that may not be making the national or international news. a beloved local donut shop Glam Doll Donuts across the street from where Alex Pretti died turned into a warming house and medic center for protestors building and maintaining the memorial site. a 70yo independent bookstore owner DreamHaven Books down the street expressed his pain on camera, walked through a tear gas cloud, and his website crashed less than 24 hours later from too much business and donations. the day after tear gas bombs destroyed a N-Mpls neighborhood sending a 6mo old baby to the hospital, at daybreak, a small church community cleaned up the mess of pepper balls, tear gas containers and trash so the neighbors didn’t have to wake up to the memories. a local independent journalist Mercado Media pounding the streets everyday reporting things from the ground had a testicle removed and showed up two days later to walk with 75,000+ community members to walk the streets in -20 degree weather. a local sex-positive adult-store The Smitten Kitten has completely transformed into a donation and distribution center. a local pizza place Wrecktangle Pizza raised over $83K in less than a few days to support families that are sheltering in place. tow-truck companies are donating their services to clean up the accidents and abandoned vehicles left by ICE and the city is waiving impound fees. local multi-faith spiritual leaders are spearheading sit-ins at corporate headquarters such as Target and USBank to have deeper conversations with CEOs and boards of directors about community relief. social workers are taking in children who came home from school with both their parents “disappeared.” animal shelters and pet-fostering agencies are rescuing pets left alone for days or weeks after their humans were detained. every restaurant, church, karate dojo, dance studio, school, barber shop, and other small business has created their own underground grassroots supportive network to protect their neighbors, get people to and from work, and raise funds to pay everyday bills. women who are moms and work full-time jobs are donning reflective vests in shifts to stand watch at bus stops, city parks, and grocery store parking lots ini sub-zero temps to bear witness before going home to tuck their babies in at night. the MN National Guard offered donuts, coffee, and hot cocoa to peaceful protesters the day after Alex Pretti died, reminding community that we are all in this together and they are here to keep the peace. These are just a few examples. Stories like this are happening in the hundreds here, every single day! Community is EVERYTHING! This Substack community and the MN-Strong resistance has saved my mental health these last weeks. Thank you for reading. Thank you for giving a shit. I love you.

https://nitter.poast.org/LincolnsBible/status/2016212667279499323#m

Published: January 27, 2026 18:12

posted on substack by a person named Teri Leigh I’m writing this from Minnesota. These are just a few things that may not be making the national or international news. a beloved local donut shop Glam Doll Donuts across the street from where Alex…

UNCLE ZOLTÁN MEETS HISTORY Uncle Zoltán dreamt he was Napoleon. Yes, he was wrong, and yet there was a moment when he stood before his troops, shorter by a head than the mass of them. Surely, this is how things start, he reasoned. The rest must be history.

https://nitter.poast.org/george_szirtes/status/2011117051159736438#m

Published: January 13, 2026 16:44

UNCLE ZOLTÁN MEETS HISTORY Uncle Zoltán dreamt he was Napoleon. Yes, he was wrong, and yet there was a moment when he stood before his troops, shorter by a head than the mass of them. Surely, this is how things start, he reasoned. The rest must be…

RT by @george_szirtes: Former President of Poland Lech Walesa wrote the following letter to Trump. Your Excellency, Mr. President, We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, with fear and distaste. We find it insulting that you expect Ukraine to show respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States in its fight against russia. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for more than 11 years in the name of these values and the independence of their homeland, which was attacked by Putin’s russia. We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this. Our alarm was also heightened by the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation, which reminded us of the interrogations we endured at the hands of the Security Services and the debates in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the all-powerful communist political police, would explain to us that they held all the power while we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Volodymyr Zelensky was treated in the same manner. The history of the 20th century shows that whenever the United States sought to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided in 1917 that the United States must join World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he resolved that the war to defend America must be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with the nations under attack by the Third Reich. We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and America’s financial commitment, the collapse of the Soviet empire would not have been possible. President Reagan recognized that millions of enslaved people suffered in Soviet russia and the countries it had subjugated, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their defense of democratic values with their freedom. His greatness lay, among other things, in his unwavering decision to call the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and to fight it decisively. We won, and today, the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy. Mr. President, material aid—military and financial—can never be equated with the blood shed in the name of Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the entire free world. Human life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and their freedom. This is self-evident to us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet russia. We call on the United States to uphold the guarantees made alongside Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its relinquishment of nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—there is no mention of treating such assistance as an economic transaction. Signed, Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland

https://nitter.poast.org/MAGACult2/status/2007986459454980502#m

Published: January 5, 2026 01:24

Former President of Poland Lech Walesa wrote the following letter to Trump. Your Excellency, Mr. President, We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, with fear and distaste. We find it insulting that…

And this useless art, these words that fade in a breath and yet we practice as in a fever, what will we do with it now? Has it done much good? Still we must talk on as if we were singing them, as if singing were the one strange harbour.

https://nitter.poast.org/george_szirtes/status/2005426715955454228#m

Published: December 28, 2025 23:52

And this useless art, these words that fade in a breath and yet we practice as in a fever, what will we do with it now? Has it done much good? Still we must talk on as if we were singing them, as if singing were the one strange harbour.

Ghosts of December vanish into night. The moon curves like a sharp knife, its future shrouded in cloud. Who can see that far? Rabbits by the road shudder in headlights. Late cars sweep homeward, music behind glass. All ghosts, all passing or passed.

https://nitter.poast.org/george_szirtes/status/2005070228829643211#m

Published: December 28, 2025 00:16

Ghosts of December vanish into night. The moon curves like a sharp knife, its future shrouded in cloud. Who can see that far? Rabbits by the road shudder in headlights. Late cars sweep homeward, music behind glass. All ghosts, all passing or passed.

On train to London for a Krasznahorkai conversation at the Liszt Institute. It’s raining and doesn’t look likely to stop. Perfect Krasznahorkai weather.

https://nitter.poast.org/george_szirtes/status/2001652407076557118#m

Published: December 18, 2025 13:54

On train to London for a Krasznahorkai conversation at the Liszt Institute. It’s raining and doesn’t look likely to stop. Perfect Krasznahorkai weather.