Eric Leventhal

Arguing and engaging is better for society than bubble silos. Teach me! #Isles #Comedy #Politics In House Tech/Privacy/Entertainment Lawyer + Adjunct @utexaslaw

[Eric Leventhal @EricMLeventhal]

Came so close #isles We’re meant to win the Cup @UBSArena just like we were meant to win our first playoff series since ‘93 @barclayscenter. Next to my daughter, this team has been most imp emotional piece of Pandemic. I trust in Lou Lam & Trotz. We will soon climb this mtn.

[The Stanley Cup @StanleyCup]

Farewell, Nassau Coliseum.

I'll never forget the memories we made.

[Shea Serrano @SheaSerrano]

i need all my new york homies to boo this motherfucker so thunderously when they show him on the jumbotron that my TV vibrates off the wall

[Dan Diamond @ddiamond]

Conan’s riff on becoming a parent — and specifically how unexpectedly freeing it can be — has stuck in my brain ever since I heard it on the @BenSasse and @ChrisStirewalt podcast a few months ago.

Funny, true, heartfelt — aka classic Conan.

[Eric Leventhal @EricMLeventhal]

@LoewyLawFirm @statesman Obvi the physical paper is irrelevant, but it's the journalistic infrastructure of the institution + the coverage, even if, yes, the website is dreadful. If Statesman leaves, nothing like it will ever exist again. It's like a pro sports team: you never want to lose such an asset.

[Eric Leventhal @EricMLeventhal]

@LoewyLawFirm @statesman I'm not sure which race(s) you're talking about re: runoffs but I don't really need a newspaper telling me how to vote anyway. Their reporting on the budget cuts and school closures with @AustinISD has been crucial to me as a parent of young kids in central Austin.

[Eric Leventhal @EricMLeventhal]

@LoewyLawFirm @statesman Obvi the physical paper is irrelevant, but it's the journalistic infrastructure of the institution + the coverage, even if, yes, the website is dreadful. If Statesman leaves, nothing like it will ever exist again. It's like a pro sports team: you never want to lose such an asset.

[Henshi @HenshiG]

In 1942, in Nazi-occupied Tunisia—the only Arab country to suffer direct German occupation—a drunken officer bragged at dinner about the Jewish woman he planned to seize from a forced brothel.

He named her.

Across the table sat Khaled Abdul-Wahab, a 31-year-old wealthy Muslim Tunisian who had studied art and architecture in New York, spoke fluent German, and was trusted by the Nazis. They invited him to their tables. He smiled, poured the wine, finished the meal… then raced through the night.

He pounded on the door of the woman’s family at midnight. “Pack nothing. Come now.” He gathered 25 terrified Jews—mothers, fathers, children, cousins—and drove them nearly 20 miles to his family farm. For four agonizing months, he hid them in the olive press, stables, and storage sheds.

He fed them as supplies ran desperately low. He kept crying babies silent. When German soldiers came to count Jews, the hidden families pinned on their yellow stars, stood motionless, then tore them off the moment the danger passed.

One terrifying night, a drunk soldier stumbled upon them and threatened to kill everyone. An 11-year-old girl, hiding under a bed, watched in horror—until Khaled appeared like a guardian angel.

He calmly disarmed the soldier and sent him away.

No one on that farm died.

In May 1943, the British liberated Tunisia. The 25 returned home alive. Khaled went back to his quiet life—painting, raising daughters, serving his country—and never spoke of it again. Not to his wife. Not to his children.

He died in 1997 at 86. His secret died with him.

A decade later, his daughter Faiza sat in a Paris café reading a newspaper. An American historian was describing a Tunisian Arab who had hidden 25 Jews. He named her father. She was 45 years old and hearing the story for the first time. “I rediscovered my father,” she said.

Khaled was nominated to be the first Arab recognized as Righteous Among the Nations—Israel’s highest honor for those who saved Jews. The committee declined.

Today, those 25 souls have hundreds of descendants living in Israel, France, America, and Tunisia. The little girl under the bed grew up, built a family in Paris. None of them would exist if Khaled had looked away that night.

He had everything to lose. He acted anyway. Then he carried the silence for the rest of his life.

The world almost forgot him twice.
Now you know his name: Khaled Abdul-Wahab.

A true hero. A Muslim who stood against evil when it mattered most.

Colorized image of black and white photo poster by Israel the Jewish State.

[John Bistline @JEBistline]

Texas just passed California in utility-scale solar. And it's not close in wind or energy storage.

[Eric Leventhal @EricMLeventhal]

This is well said Professor @RyanHNelson. Fully agreed. Thank you for writing it!

[Ryan H. Nelson @RyanHNelson]

Ethics rules say lawyers must verify AI output. But that makes AI-assisted legal help unaffordable. My new op-ed in @statesman argues that we should change that. https://t.co/KHf5uqbSkO

[Acyn @Acyn]

Reporter: What do you make of Republicans saying that Virginia—

AOC: Wah wah wah.

We have asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering. And for 10 years, Republicans have said no. Republicans have fought for partisan gerrymanders across the United States of America. And these are the rules that they have set.

And so if the Republican Party wanted to start this, they did this in North Carolina. They drew out three Democratic members of Congress in North Carolina. They did it in Texas.

What they’re just mad at is that they have been accustomed to a Democratic Party that rolls over, doesn’t fight, and takes everything sitting down. And what they’re mad at right now is that we are here in a new day. And we have been asking the Democratic Party to stand up and fight, and now they did—and now the Republican Party doesn’t like the fact that they are fighting against someone who actually will stand up for the American people.

So if Republicans decide that they would like to revisit a ban on partisan gerrymandering, I welcome them. We have the bill right here to end this all today. But they don’t want to, because they like pursuing and continuing to enact an unfair electoral landscape. And so we have an obligation to defend ourselves.

[Sheila of the Most High @sheilatebra]

Anonymous

I run a small pizza shop. Deliveries mostly. Late nights. Got a call at 10 PM. Woman’s voice shaking. “Can you deliver to Sunset Motel?” “Yes ma’am. What would you like?” Long pause. “What can I get for six dollars? I have three kids.” Six dollars wouldn’t cover one pizza. “We have a special tonight. Family meal. Three pizzas, breadsticks, drinks. Six dollars.” No such special. She started crying. “Really?” Made the pizzas myself. Added wings. Cookies. Juice boxes. Drove it over.
She opened the door. Bruises on her neck. Three little kids behind her. Terrified. Quiet. “Thank you. You don’t understand.” I did understand. Started happening weekly. She’d call. I’d have a special ready. Month three she didn’t call anymore. Worried me. Two months later she walked in. Different person. Confident. Had a job. Apartment. Kids looked healthy. Happy. Handed me three hundred dollars. “For all the specials that weren’t real. I knew.” Tried to refuse. “Please. Let me pay forward.” That money started a fund. When someone calls from a shelter or motel desperate, we use it. Six years now. Over a thousand meals delivered. She’s a paralegal. Refers families to us constantly. Works with domestic violence survivors. Her oldest is in high school. Works at my shop weekends. “Because you fed us when we were running. Now I want to feed others.” Last Saturday she delivered to a family at that same motel. Came back crying. “That was us five years ago. Now I get to be you.”

[Sophia ❣️ @KeruboSk]

Millennials are the elite generation because they cranked out 12-page essays the night before they were due. No ChatGPT. No Claude. Just lo-fi beats playing in the background, Black coffee at midnight, footnotes that were somehow correct, and pure delusion. Grade was an A minus. Period.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC]

This is sad. I know as a politician these companies are going to spend a billion dollars against me for saying it but 🤷🏽‍♀️

Pervasive gambling is not good for society. It turns life into a casino, traps people in addiction & debt, surges domestic violence, and fosters manipulation.

[Sam Rosenfeld @sam_rosenfeld]

Don't sleep on the Chuck Norris story in Jessica Simpson's memoir. https://t.co/6hHSNAYjDv

[Chris Walker @WalkerATX]

It's 1988 and you're at Auditorium Shores for Austin's RiverFest @fox7austin

[Russ Finney @rfinney]

Savitha was one of our superstar students at the UT Austin McCombs school of business - she was set to graduate this May, and then she was on to start her career at a big professional services firm. She was a double major with honors. Involved in student organizations - a light in the classroom. Absolutely crushing to lose her.

That location on 6th Street is pretty far west of Congress (toward Lamar), and considered safe by our students. Really no words to express the wave of sadness rolling over @UTexasMcCombs and @UTAustin. Other students are still in the hospital in very serious conditions - this is a very tough week for our community, the families, and #ATX in general. Thanks for releasing this information.

[Eric Leventhal @EricMLeventhal]

@cmclymer Well said Charlotte. Thank you for writing it.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

A few weeks after the horrific Oct. 7th attacks, I wrote an op-ed for The Daily Beast that I hoped would be something of a wake-up call for those on the far-left—and in progressive spaces generally—that antisemitism was metastasizing and the broader movement has a responsibility to enact zero tolerance for anti-Jewish hatred.

At the time, it felt as though any opinion whatsoever on the Gaza crisis was vulnerable to being hostilely conflated with biases held by any given observer operating in bad faith, and naïvely, I thought bringing attention to some of the worst examples of antisemitism might give folks a chance to reflect, re-adjust, and make it clear that hatred against Jewish people would not be tolerated.

It’s been 29 months since the attacks, and in that time, it’s pretty clear that antisemitism in the United States has only worsened — not just from any one political ideology but across the board.

This is not just a problem of the right or the left or the center, but when I observe someone in left or left-leaning spaces claim the left doesn’t have an antisemitism problem, I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

Of course the left has an antisemitism problem.

Let me give you an example of something that happens like clockwork.

Anytime I post online about an antisemitic hate crime, there are responses from real people on the left (not bots) that engage in an absurd whataboutism exercise.

“Yeah, that’s terrible, but what about Gaza?”

“Okay, now do Israel.”

“Have you posted anything about Gaza?”

Well, I have posted (and written pieces) about the horrific violence against innocent Palestinian civilians, but it remains unclear to me why acknowledging the murder of any Jewish person by a vicious antisemite is required to be coupled with disclaimers that include an itemization of other acts of violence.

Why is the life of any Jewish person only to be honored and their death only to be mourned and the atrocity that took their life only to be held accountable if—and only if—other atrocities are acknowledged in the same breath?

That never made sense to me, and I once naïvely chalked it up to incompetence. The past few years have made clear that it’s an intentionally undermining tactic and an active erasure of violence against Jewish people.

We can talk all day about how most people on the left don’t do this, which is true, but if we’re not holding things like this accountable and establishing a strict standard across the movement that this behavior is unacceptable, does it really matter if it’s most people on the left or a small fraction?

An authentic rejection of hatred does not come with the expectation of something in return; it is done solely for the sake of rejecting that hatred.

Let me give you another example. For some on the far-left, in order for me to demand accountability for Netanyahu and stopping the deeply inhumane violence inflicted on Palestinian civilians and supporting self-determination for the Palestinian people, I must also claim that Israel shouldn’t exist, let alone defend itself.

That is not only batshit insane and wildly impractical beyond any reasonable adult’s comprehension, but it has accelerated into using this mindset as an excuse to harass, discriminate against, assault, and murder not only anyone with any association with Israel, regardless of their politics, but any Jewish person anywhere.

For some of these people, any act of discrimination or violence against an Israeli citizen, no matter their background, and/or any Jewish person anywhere, no matter their views, somehow gets drawn into an irrelevant debate over Zionism.

I personally support a two-state solution, but I fail to see how that discussion is in any way relevant when teenage boys are heckled at a hockey game for wearing kippahs or when a college student has “Zionist” shouted at her on campus because she’s wearing a Star of David necklace or when Jewish people are maimed and murdered by an antisemitic sociopath throwing a Molotov cocktail at them solely for raising awareness about innocent Israeli citizens being held hostage by Hamas or when a Jewish gathering is the target of a mass shooter who clearly just wants to murder Jewish people and any Jewish person will do.

Many people on the far-left will immediately condemn actions like these but will also fail to acknowledge how this mindset is partly an outgrowth from tolerating with their silence the use of “Zionist” as a catch-all slander for anything related to Judaism and Israel.

I am well aware there are Jewish people who oppose Zionism—and progressive Zionists—who are horrified by the actions of Netanyahu’s government, and I would never equate good faith criticism of Netanyahu and the Israeli government with being antisemitic.

Moreover, I’ve been deeply and consistently critical of Netanyahu and the current Israeli government, and not once have I ever been called antisemitic for voicing my views.

But I will also not tolerate the conflation of Judaism and the people of Israel with the horrific actions of Netanyahu’s government, and I really don’t think the far-left and much of the left generally is doing enough to have zero tolerance for that either.

It’s not that our Jewish siblings don’t just feel unsafe, as though this is some failure of psychological strength on their part.

They are, in fact, not safe. They are clearly not safe. Not here in the United States. Not in Israel. Not anywhere in the world.

And to deny that is to be completely detached from reality.

The time for discussion on this and considering bad faith argumentation on it and permitting the enabling of it is over. It should have been over long ago.

If you’re the kind of person on the left who believes that expressing antisemitic views through other vehicles is appropriate, I want nothing to do with you.

I don’t care how many other causes we agree on. I don’t care if you’re a huge champion of trans equality. I don’t care if you’ve supported my work.

We’re just done. There will be no email. There will be no text. I am not going to go fifteen rounds with you in unpacking why the antisemitic thing you said actually means something else when we both know what you clearly intended.

If you express hatred or antipathy or even what you feel is some “harmless” stereotype against the Jewish community, you have decided to end our relationship.

I am not your non-Jewish colleague or friend who will tolerate your bullshit, hateful thinking.

I wouldn’t tolerate it with misogyny or white supremacy or any other form of hatred, and I am sure as anything not going to tolerate it with antisemitism.

There is no need for nuance here because the nuance doesn’t exist. If you’re a grown adult who buys into any form of anti-Jewish hatred, you are not my friend or my valued colleague.

It’s simple as that. The choice is yours.

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Link to full essay for easier sharing here: https://t.co/XBwIgxNXTX