Roy K. Altman

Father. Husband. Judge. Passionate defender of the West. Yale Law School. Former federal prosecutor. NYT bestselling author of "Israel on Trial."

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

My latest in @TheFP: A Jewish History Heist at the British Museum
https://t.co/0UFfhGti88

[Pamela Paresky 🟦 (Habits of a Free Mind) @PamelaParesky]

Museums shouldn’t postpone talks because “a few miscreants might break the rules.”

“We don’t close our banks just because some people might rob them. The solution to rule violators is to punish and deter them, not encourage them with victory.” @RoyKAltman https://t.co/upnW7eoiIk

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

To have a state, there's a simple test. It's called the Montevideo test. It comes from the Montevideo Convention in 1933, and it's a four-part, four-element test.

The four elements are:

1. Do you have a defined population?
2. Do you have defined borders?
3. Do you have the capacity to conduct foreign relations?
4. Do you have a single effective government?

There's a couple things to understand about this. The first thing is that Israel, despite being called an illegitimate state, is actually a very old country.

I don't mean ancient Israel. I mean, the Israel that was founded in 1948 was founded at a time when there were only 58 countries in the world. It became the 59th state.

So people always say, "Oh, this newfangled creation, Israel." No, no, no. Israel's older than roughly two-thirds of all the countries in the world. And in fact, it was created in precisely the same way and at about the same time as many of the decolonized states in the world that were just drawn as lines on the map by European colonialist powers.

It's the same thing with many of the Arab countries. Iraq was drawn up that way. Lebanon was definitely drawn up that way. Syria was drawn up that way with no regard for their indigenous, in many cases, local minority populations.

Lots of countries in Africa were created this way. Cameroon was created this way. Part of South Africa and Botswana were split off this way. We could talk forever about the dozens of countries that were created just the same way Israel was, and nobody ever protests them because there's no Jews there, right? So there's nothing to protest.

The point here is that Israel met in 1948, and has met every second of every day since then until today, all four of the Montevideo Factors.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

We need to look at objective, neutral, independent evidence, so long as we can find it.

And the good thing is that in the colonization claim, we have three major buckets of objective, neutral, independent evidence that hasn't been tampered with, doesn't have incentive structures, isn't receiving immunity for its testimony, and here's the best thing.

It goes back thousands of years. Why is that important? Because we have another rule in the law—it comes up a lot in the hearsay exceptions—where, if you say something that comes about long before the dispute in question arose, we give that extra reliability points because you wouldn’t have expected someone to say something twenty years ago that only became salient when the dispute arose.

And this evidence, these three buckets of evidence I'm going tell you about, it goes back thousands of years, long before there was ever such a thing called "Zionism," long before there was ever such a thing called a "Palestinian."

The last rule of the law that I want to tell you about is that when adverse party says something favorable about you, again, we give it special credibility. Why? Because we don't expect generally that your adversary should say things that help your cause. So when the adversary says things that help you, again, we pay careful attention to it.

All of these factors are at play here.

What are the three buckets of neutral, objective, independent evidence?

1. Rocks in the ground
2. Words on the page
3. Blood in the veins

Let's go through each briefly:

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

The biggest and most important ally in this struggle to defeat Hezbollah will be Syria, and we'll learn a lot about whether Hezbollah can survive by whether the Lebanese government is willing to do what it has promised.

For the first time in 40 years, the Lebanese government has gathered the strength to be able to stand up for itself and say, "Hezbollah is illegal in the country. We want to have a monopoly on military weapons in the country, and we want to expel the man who used to run the country for 40 years, which is the ambassador from Tehran."

So the question is: Will the Lebanese government, working with the new Syrian government, have the willingness, strength, and ability to stop arms transfers from continuing to move through the land corridor across Syria and into Lebanon?

If they can do it, then that'll be a sea change for peace in the Middle East for both Arab and Jew alike.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

Israel is the most free and diverse country in the entire region.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Talk to Israeli Arabs, as I do when I visit Israel, and they will tell you that their socioeconomic mobility, health, life expectancy, and child mortality rates are all better than they would be in any of the 22 Arab countries in the Middle East—or, for that matter, in any of the 57 Muslim-majority countries in the world.

Israel is a country of 10 million people, 21% of whom—2.1 million people—are Arab Muslims who share in the same free commercial, civil, and political rights as their Jewish neighbors.

There is apartheid being practiced all over the Middle East today. Think for example, of how inconceivable it would be to have a Jewish justice on the Supreme Court in Tehran, or a Jewish general in Damascus, or Jewish lawyers, doctors, or judges in Ramallah or Gaza City. These things are absurd even to consider.

But there are Arab Muslim Supreme Court justices in Israel. There are Arab Muslim and Druze and Christian judges, lawyers, and doctors all over the country. There are four major Arab political parties in the Knesset in Israel, who by the way, were part of the governing coalition of the country just four years ago in 2022.

If Israel's practicing apartheid, it's doing a real bad job of it.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

There’s no doubt that Israel’s war in Gaza was not genocide. It is the least likely urban conflict in modern history to meet the standard legal definition of genocide.

And you don't have to take my word for it. Take the word of the High Level Military Group, the HLMG, which is a collection of all the of high level officers and generals from almost all the Western democracies in the world, not just the United States. These people aren't Jews. They have no connection with Israel. They're just generals in militaries around the world.

They wrote a report and a brief to the International Criminal Court, the ICC, saying that Israel’s civilian warning system is completely unlike anything any other country has ever been willing to do for the civilian population of an enemy in wartime. Under this system, Israel tells the civilian population of Gaza exactly where it will be striking the next day and then provides humanitarian corridors for them to leave those zones. They also say it is something our own democracies would never be able to do, because our civilian populations would never stomach endangering the lives of our own soldiers by warning the enemy where our sons and daughters will be.

Israel's unprecedented efforts to protect the lives of civilians in Gaza has taken a very heavy toll on the IDF. Over 800 Israelis have been killed in Gaza precisely because they warned the civilian population to get out of harm's way.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

It's really important to understand a baseline legal principle. A man cannot trespass, a man cannot illegally occupy his own home.

The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has been the home of the Jewish people for thousands of years.

We know it because of three buckets of totally independent and objective neutral evidence going back thousands of years.

The first bucket is what we call rocks in the ground. This is archeological evidence, black and white stones going back thousands of years, found in many different layers in the geological earth, showing that the people who lived in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea were Jews who practiced the Jewish religion, who spoke the Hebrew language, and who passed on to their children and grandchildren Jewish Hebrew naming conventions, just like the Jews of Israel do today.

Second is words on the page. This is documentary proof going back thousands of years, oftentimes written by Israel's ancient enemies. Why is that important? Because it's important to remember that in the law, we always care about what a party says about itself, but we care a lot more about what a party's adversary says about it, because we don't expect a party's adversary to say things that are beneficial to the party. So when an adversary says things that help your cause, we pay special attention. And here, for thousands of years, Israel's ancient enemies, the Romans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, even the Ottomans and the occupying, invading Muslim forces, took very detailed notes about the people they were ruling in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And guess what? Those were Jews who spoke Hebrew, practiced the Hebrew Jewish religion, and passed on Hebrew names like Eliyahu, David, and Benjamin onto their children and grandchildren.

And then third, we have blood in the veins. This is DNA evidence. These are genetic studies, dozens of genetic studies that have been conducted on all the major Jewish populations around the world over the last few decades along many different genetic markers, all confirming not just that Jews all over the world are genetically and intimately connected one to another, but that we all come from a common source, from the Levant, the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and that we broke off from there into our separate diaspora populations 2,000 years ago.

And why is that important? Because it corroborates the other two buckets, which tell us that in 70 AD, 2,000 years ago, Titus of Rome, the son of Vespasian the emperor, conquered Jerusalem, burned the temple to the ground, and exiled a huge proportion of the Jewish populations, which then became the diaspora communities around the world, and the blood DNA evidence has proven that too.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

On the subject of anti-Western propaganda that Americans are hearing today from some podcasters, it’s important to know that the groundwork was first laid by America’s geostrategic enemies. They infected the minds of millions of Americans and made them open to new third rail, provocative ideas about the Jews and about America and about America’s allies.

These podcasters are now the second wave. They realize that there’s a lot of money to be made by appealing to this new class of disaffected people who don’t really love America, who don’t believe in the future prospects of Western civilization, and who are willing to absorb propaganda from America’s geostrategic enemies.

And these podcasters are willing to take advantage of that infection to make money for their own personal livelihoods.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

There’s a long history of trying to destroy the Jewish state with tank columns and air forces. Those efforts failed. And then there were ballistic missiles and a nuclear weapons program, and thus far, thankfully, those have failed, too.

But this has much less to do with Israel and the Jews than it has to do with us—with America.

All of the information that we’re getting—or a large part of the information that our young people are getting through TikTok and through Al Jazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood and its many tentacles—comes from information sources whose incentive structures we’re not scrutinizing enough. And these are America’s geostrategic enemies.

This is the Chinese Communist Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are looking around the world and saying to themselves, “Well, America is a very serious enemy. They have the biggest, most powerful army and economy the world has ever known. But who’s going to stand with America in the geostrategic conflict that’s coming?” And when they look across the aisle, I don’t think they’re so afraid of the Belgians, the Spaniards, or the Irish.

Those people have proven themselves to be prior empires with prior histories and pedigrees of glamour. They have shown themselves unwilling to stand up and fight for Western civilization.

But there is one ally that America has that votes with America over 90% of the time on the international stage at the United Nations, that has proven itself not only willing but able to fight and win the wars of the 21st century against enemies that are not just much bigger but supposedly much stronger than it is—and that’s Israel.

So is it any surprise that a huge proportion of the information our young people are getting on social media, on the internet, and through their news sources—information that comes from the Chinese Communist Party on TikTok and through Al Jazeera—is negative about that one ally?

These geostrategic enemies of the United States are desperately trying to peel off America’s fighting allies before the geostrategic conflict comes.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

I wrote "Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law" not as a judge but as an American.

After October 7, I looked around and thought: 1,200 people were murdered in cold blood—in their bathrooms, at their kitchen tables, in their babies’ nurseries, and at a dance party for peace. They were butchered, mutilated, and burned alive. Israeli girls and women were raped—violently raped. That is now clear beyond peradventure.

And somehow, after all of that, we Jews were cast as the oppressors. In our Western media outlets, we Jews became the aggressors.

They took 251 people hostage and held them in holes hundreds of feet beneath the ground—not only Jews, but 26 Americans, infants and toddlers, Muslims, Vietnamese, Thai, and others. They held them for hundreds of days in deep, dark, dank tunnels, without food, without water, without sunlight.

And yet, at the United Nations, we Jews became the violators of human rights.

This moral inversion—this moral contortion—where does it come from? And what does it say about the future of this amazing country, America, which I believe has been the greatest force for good the world has ever known? So, for the last two and a half years, I have taken myself across the country—to churches of every denomination, to high schools, to colleges, and to law school campuses in nearly all 50 states—trying to answer that question.

I’ve had thousands of conversations with people about Israel. What I came to recognize is that the entire debate is based on six questions about Israel—each of which is, at its core, is a legal question.

And so I thought: Why not apply the same legal methodology that is used every day in courtrooms across this country—a time-tested methodology that has been around for hundreds of years, and that we trust precisely because we use it where truth-telling matters most: in a courtroom where someone’s life is at stake? Why not apply that methodology to each of these six claims and see what happens? And that’s why I wrote the book.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

A lot of the propaganda and attacks Israel faces in the media do not have much to do with Israel or the Jews.

It's very important to understand that the principal target is us, America.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

Appreciate the kind words from @NRO about “Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law.”

https://t.co/jO4VC5sn7x

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

There are a few things things that college kids—especially the ones chanting "free palestine" and "from the river to the sea"—should know about the history and founding of Israel.

A Palestinian state was already created in 1921. There was a British mandate of Palestine, which was a foreign occupied colony of the British Empire, which comprised modern-day what's Israel and what's now Jordan.

The Jews believed they were entitled, based on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, to the entire mandate of Palestine to be the future Jewish state. In 1921, it became clear that wasn't to be. The British understood they were gonna need oil from the Arab states in a future global conflict, and so they ceded 77% of that land to create a state for the Arab Muslim Palestinians.

They weren't called Palestinians then, but they were the Arab Muslims who lived in the British colony of Palestine. That country became first known as Transjordan on the other side of the Jordan, then it became the Kingdom of Jordan, and ultimately today we know it as Jordan. So there is a Palestinian state full of Palestinian Muslim Arabs.

There's a Palestinian queen in that state today. The prince and future king of that state is a Palestinian, and over 60% of the population are people who are Arab Muslims from the mandate of Palestine. So there is a Palestinian state. What they really want is a second Palestinian state, a 58th Muslim state, a 23rd Arab state in the world—but it's just too much to have one teeny-tiny Jewish state.

The second and more important thing to understand is that Israel and the international community have already offered the Palestinians on six prior occasions, in 1936 in the Peel Commission, 1947 in the Partition Plan, 1967 at Khartoum after the Six-Day War in Sudan, 1993 at Oslo, 2000 at Camp David with Bill Clinton, and again 2008 with Ehud Olmert as the prime minister.

On six different occasions, Israel, America, and the international community offered the Palestinians their own state, their own sovereign territory with their own government to to do as they please with, on the land that college kids now seem to believe they deserve a state on.

And what college kids don't understand is the Palestinians rejected that state on six different occasions.

On college campuses, when kids chant "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," realize that is only the English jingle that was created in order to appeal to and deceive American college kids.

In Arabic, the original phrase is: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arabic."

They want a full Palestinian Arab state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea with no Jews on it.

That's what they've done in every other Arab country in the world, where they've expelled and ethnically cleansed the 850,000 Jews who lived all over the Muslim world, starting in the middle of the 20th century. People who have lived there, by the way, for centuries, all ethnically cleansed.

They want to do the same thing with the 10 million people who now live in Israel, and we're never gonna allow that to happen.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

So many of us were asleep before October 7.

Whether you're a Jew or a non-Jew, we were complacent. We were lazy. We were happy. We were so wealthy and disconnected from everything else that was going on in the world.

But we did not understand that our geostrategic enemies—chief among them China and Iran—were hard at work fighting a war under our noses: in our schools, in our media outlets, and in our elite institutions, corroding them from the inside.

What each American must do if we are to ensure the survival of our civilization is never go back to sleep again, never to fall into complacency again.

It is as if a flare has gone up. It was dark outside, but now it is light, and we can see who you are and where you stand at this inflection point in the history of Western civilization.

It is no longer appropriate—or acceptable—to remain silent. You must make your voice heard and be counted in the fight over the kind of society we will pass on to our children and grandchildren, God willing.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

I had the honor of speaking last week at St. Thomas University College of Law’s commencement ceremony.

My challenge to the graduating class was simple: live lives of meaning.

Live lives of service to your community so that decades after you are gone, young men and women will speak of you and the lessons you imparted.

And always remember to love this great country.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

I was born in Venezuela.

My family came here with nothing and we knew no one. But my parents always taught me that in America, you could be and do anything, so long as you worked hard and treated people with respect.

When I was in college, I was playing football and my grandfather—who fled Europe during the Holocaust—was dying of cancer.

My father called and said, “If you want to see him again, this is your last chance.” So, we flew down to Caracas, and it happened to coincide with a momentous event in Venezuelan history.

Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, and the Constitution said he could run for only one five-year term. So, in 2003, like any self-respecting dictator, he petitioned the Supreme Court to run again. And to their credit, the judges ruled he could not.

So, what is a self-respecting autocrat to do? He packed the Supreme Court with his buddies and petitioned for reconsideration. This time the Court said, “Not only did we get it wrong, not only can you run again, you can run as many times as you like, until the day that you die.” And that's what he did.

He was president until 2013 when he died. After that decision came down, Venezuelans took to the streets to protest and that coincided with my last trip to see my grandfather.

During my visit, my grandfather asked me to take him out on the balcony so we could play chess one last time. He had taught me how to play as a little boy.

People were protesting on the streets below.

He said to me, “Your father tells me you want to go to law school.” I said I did.

He asked, “What kind of lawyer are you going to become?” I said I didn’t know.

Then he gathered all the strength that he had, and he lifted his bony finger out at the crowd and he said, “Always remember, this is what happens to a country when good people don't serve.”

And so, when I was 34 and the president intended to nominate me to be a federal judge, which is a lifetime appointment, people said, “You're crazy. You got your whole life ahead of you to make money for your family.”

But for me, the opportunity to serve this great country was a no-brainer.

And what you should know is this country is very much worth serving.

[Roy K. Altman @RoyKAltman]

As a historian, I can tell you that societies that allow Jews to thrive are societies in history that are flourishing themselves.

Look at America. It is the center of the most influential, the wealthiest, the most powerful Jewish community that has ever existed in the world, and it is no surprise it is also the most powerful, the most influential, and the wealthiest force for good the world has ever had. We are privileged to live here.

But on the other hand, societies that allow themselves to be taken over by Jew hatred are societies that are sick and dying. Look at the Russia of Kishinev in 1903, the worst pogrom of the 20th century before the Holocaust. It was the biggest country in the world at that time.

It had existed for hundreds of years. 14 years later, it was gone.

Look at the Germany of Kristallnacht in 1938, the most powerful army, the most powerful air force. It was supposed to be the thousand-year Reich. Just seven years later, it was dead.

So not because I'm a Jew, but because I am an American who came here from Venezuela with nothing, knowing no one, and who was embraced by this community and this country with open arms, which has given me and my family every blessing and privilege under the sun, I understand that we, each of us, Jew and not Jew alike, have a moral and practical obligation to root out anti-Semitism in our society because it is the moral rot in the wooden framework of our house.

If we are not careful, it will bring the entire edifice tumbling down on all of us, not just the Jews.

[The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show @clayandbuck]

.@RoyKAltman to @BuckSexton: "90% of people on these college campuses are still open to being persuaded by reason and logic and common sense."

Read Israel on Trial: https://t.co/gi93zTFC2V