Sammy Rosenzweig

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

A lot of subscribers have asked what I made of the Nick Kristof oped.

So much has already been said. What more is there to say?

My first thought was everyone else's. Horrifying. Testimonies of pain and torture. We know that the Israeli Prisons Service is notoriously incompetent. There have been cases of Hamas prisoners abusing each other, and even famous cases of them abusing female Israeli guards. We know, too, that all prison systems struggle with the problem: New York prisons face 2,000 claims against them. So abuse of prisoners isn't merely possible, it's guaranteed. October 7 and the ensuing war sent thousands of detainees into the prisons. And in the early months, drafted into the system undertrained reservist guards. Guards who had seen Hamas's videos gleefully documenting their crimes.

I expected, therefore, a hard-hitting story of real abuse, something Israeli leaders must take notice of.

And then I came across the first obvious lie. And then the second. And then an odd claim -- maybe possible, but how exactly? -- and then another just like it. And a famed Hamas propagandist laundered as a reliable source. And then another.

Why, if there is no doubt that abuse occurred -- and there is no doubt -- was there so much obvious propaganda in Kristof's oped?

I won't pretend the lies weren't a relief. They were. It's agony to read about Israeli criminality, and the lies let me cast doubt on the whole narrative. There's an obvious propaganda campaign at work here.

But as claim followed claim, it became hard not to wonder: Despite the propaganda, what part is nevertheless true? How bad has it gotten?

So here's what we know, or at least what I think I know.

This is a campaign that seeks our destruction. Kristof quotes people who celebrated October 7 and want Israel destroyed, and will lie to achieve that goal. We know how the lies in this story made their way into it, where they came from and what purpose they serve.

Even so, I'm not willing to conclude there's no truth at all in there, just because there are lies.

Dogs did not rape anyone. The people who invented that particular inanity claimed it without evidence, knowing that no one, certainly not self-appointed moral arbiters like Nick Kristof, would ever bother checking the provenance of the claim.

Because they never, ever do. Because why would they?

So the claim spreads through the millions-strong activist network without investigation, exciting and mobilizing -- not because anyone understands how it might be possible but for the sheer thrill of it.

And it's cited by Kristof as a reliable report.

A recent report by a Norwegian NGO, also referenced, claimed "systemic sexual violence" in the West Bank by citing just 16 cases across three years in a geographic region containing as many as three million Palestinians and over half a million Israelis. And some of the examples scarcely cleared the bar for harassment.

But the NGO in question knew for a fact that no journalist would look too deeply into any of it. And indeed, no journalist did.

Because they never, ever do. Because why would they?

Friends, a paper trail is being created. Just like they created a paper trail on mass starvation in Gaza -- mass starvation first claimed in early 2024, and then claimed again and again by NGOs, the UN, everybody. Some were nuanced warnings of a "possibility," some declared it had arrived. The headlines from both were largely the same. And then, in thundering silence, the mass starvation claim just faded away, never having materialized -- while billions of ordinary people around the world who don't follow too closely remain convinced that countless Gazans died of starvation.

So they moved on. A Lancet letter claiming hundreds of thousands of deaths spread like wildfire, mostly because (a) nobody actually read or understood what it claimed and (b) nobody cared enough to check if it was remotely plausible. Then, just in case anyone forgot Lancet, came the claim by UN rapporteurs of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children -- 380,000 infants under five allegedly died, more than the entire population of infants in Gaza. Stupid, right? But it was repeated again and again by activists and protestors.

No one checks, no costs are exacted for the never-ending barrage of fakery. Because why would they?

A wild religious frenzy has taken hold. Hatred of Israel is now definitional to the left, and to parts of the right. Greta Thunberg has forgotten all about climate change. An enemy of humanity has been identified just in time to unleash all the pent-up religious rage that this troubled secular age won't allow against anyone else.

And by complete and utter coincidence, that enemy you're suddenly allowed to hate is vaguely associated with the Jews.

Yes, alas, it really is that simple.

But also, dear friends -- bear with me -- it isn't.

All the above is true. They're fucking liars and bigots. They marched in their millions, again and again and again, for weeks and months and years -- marches completely unprecedented in their size, regularity and duration in all the history of the West, in all the history of war, larger by orders of magnitude than all other marches for all other conflicts and wars and suffering combined, even those caused by their own governments. And no serious person pretends that anything similar could ever have coalesced or will ever coalesce again unless Israel is involved.

"But we fund you," shouts the American activist to explain this mind-numbing selectivity. Then why did one-third of the city of Amsterdam march? Or millions of Spaniards, Brazilians and Indonesians? It was unprecedented and it was everywhere.

And Kristof has joined the new religion. Not by being concerned about abuse, but by not caring one whit whether he's trafficking in truths or lies. Only the Jews will ask to distinguish between the two. He just needs to throw it all on the page, and his membership in the glorious crusade is assured.

Alas, the Jews are correct about the nature of this moment. Some things are so big and fundamental, so assumed and widespread, that they become hard to see. Fish don't notice the water. Activists who can only ever march against Jews are convinced they are merely righteous people enraged by war, without ever pausing to wonder why the only war that ever enraged them or ever made its way to their phones was one particular war, and not larger and deadlier wars also conducted with Western weapons and money.

And so the Jew is made fearful once more. Throughout Christendom and Islam, he is being returned to his proper place in the social hierarchies of old, complete with anxious conversos and ideological purity tests.

And yet, still, despite it all, their lies aren't the end of the story. Their lies are a separate story. A campaign of lies that constitutes a return to the mean for the Jewish condition in the West. A campaign meant to justify brutality against us, not to end war or suffering.

And despite all of it, dear Jews, there really is abuse.

It's nowhere near as much as the psychotic claims of these fantasists. Not by orders of magnitude. If it was, they wouldn't need to lie so much.

But it's there nonetheless. Many dozens of cases at least, probably in the low hundreds by now, most of them without any sexual aspect, but still wanton violence. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but the army gave a few estimates to the courts a couple of times over the past three years. There have been many indictments filed against soldiers, serious ones. I know something about a handful of those cases. I know that the problem is real.

It's there, it's real, and it doesn't seem to be stopping. And if it isn't stopped with an iron will and uncompromising hand, it will continue to fester and grow.

And it must be said: neither Ben Gvir nor Netanyahu are interested in fixing it. Nobody at the top cares about the rights of prisoners.

Let me be clear: For the first time in my life, I support a death penalty. No one who crossed over the border to massacre and kidnap on October 7 should be left alive; they came to kidnap children precisely because they sought the release of mass murderers kept alive in our prisons. Hamas, as always, in its totalizing brutality, forces the choice: If their murderers live, our children may die. I choose our children. And those who came for our children cannot be deterred, reformed or deradicalized. They murder their own to clear a path to murdering ours. And so I believe they must die. We must try, convict and destroy them.

And even I, radicalized in this narrow, specific way, say we cannot collapse into torture or abuse. That's not justice. It isn't even vengeance. It is participation in Hamas's way of war.

Nor do our leaders seem to care about the simple breakdown of discipline that these abuses represent, the kind of breakdown we saw again and again with the incidents of looting in Gaza and in the early cases of prisoner abuse that came to light.

No, dogs aren't being trained to systematically rape prisoners, you nattering halfwits. And no, Hamas propaganda operatives are not reliable sources on the question of Israeli crimes. The vast, vast majority of soldiers are honorable men who walked into fire so our families may live. The whole world may turn on them; I will stand with them, grateful for their sacrifice. And Kristof, a willing purveyor of propaganda happily feigning that he can't see the water and thrilling to a moral crusade engineered by would-be genocidaires he pretends not to understand -- is no messenger of moral reckoning.

But friends, so fucking what. Let the narcissistic guttersnipes strut their moral emotions before the world, let the UN publish endless reports that don't hold up to basic scrutiny, let the NGOs dream their rabid, sick dreams that no journalist ever fact-checks -- yes, they're lying. But so fucking what.

We still, for ourselves -- because fuck them -- must see that it isn't all fake. The problem is real. It's far smaller than they claim, but real nonetheless. And when discipline and morality break down, it can only get worse. We either crack down now or we watch it fester and grow.

And our own Ben Gvirs are stubbornly refusing to fix what is actually broken, the real thing in the real world.

And so we are caught in a strange sort of vise, the same vise we find ourselves in with the genocide lie: A vast propaganda machine that seeks to destroy us -- countless activists too high on their own self-regard to see the irony of raging against a "genocide" while calling for the erasure of a people -- all while our own incompetent, venal, self-absorbed political class insist in their mindless chatter on confirming every claim of our enemies for sheer, bald egomania.

I'm sick of it all. I know you're all sick of it too.

And that, in a nutshell, is what I think about this.

Just because they're lying, just because a vast perfidious campaign has overwhelmed global elites in a bid to clear the way for our removal, just because they're still, after two millennia, building their visions of redemption on The Evil Jew -- doesn't mean there isn't also, separately, a problem on the ground.

So what do we do now?

Simple. We see it, we acknowledge it's happening, we bring our rage to our inept leaders until they bend to our will and act to stop the breakdown...

And we soldier on.

We soldier on because the enemy really is coming to murder us. Because Hamas must still go if Gaza is ever to rise to a new day. Because Hezbollah will yet destroy Lebanon on the altar of destroying us. Because the ayatollahs built their whole damn religion on the extermination of our children.

We fix the broken things within us as if the pogromists and their simpering Kristofs don't exist. We owe no answers to the propagandists who seek to clear a path to our deaths. But we do owe answers to ourselves.

Let the screaming mob rage and churn like so much sea-foam. Despite that raging mob, despite the enemy who still seeks our destruction, and yes, despite feckless incompetents like Ben Gvir, our minister of prisons, who claim to lead us -- we remain the strongest, freest Jews who ever lived, more capable and committed than our self-destructive enemies ever imagined. And the task is still before us, yet to be completed, the sacred duty given to our generation to ensure our children don't have to face the genocidaires who now surround us. We do not waver, we do not stumble. We soldier on.

Because fuck them all.

[Sammy Rosenzweig @SamBalones]

@artscroll @DBashIdeas KOHANIM

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

“The antisemite doesn’t accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence.”

They’ve only got one trick. This is that trick. They think words are weapons, so they throw them around mindlessly and see what sticks.

None of it sticks anymore. They’ve used up all the words and are now victims of semantic creep. The words have lost their power. No one believes these clowns anymore. Not on X and not at @UCLA.

The fact that they do it in the service of genocidaires, for the ayatollahs and Hamas and Hezbollah, makes these insults a source of pride.

Zach is a pretend historian who refuses to deal seriously with history. If you want to understand how a pro-Palestinian activist might end up fighting not for independence from Israel but to saddle the Palestinians with more Hamas tyranny and abuse, he’s an excellent example of that.

Don’t worry, dear reader, my pockets are exposed. I’ve supported almost from day one moving Gazan civilians into Israel, setting up humanitarian compounds and then prosecuting the war more effectively in Gaza with minimal civilian casualties and no Palestinian fear that they would not be allowed back.

I respect this Gazan fear and think we could allay it while achieving the war’s goals. I’ve even criticized the Israeli government with some frustration for not thinking in these terms.

I empty my pockets in this way not for the antisemite, but because - maybe I’m naive - I still think this is a workable solution to the problem of defeating Hamas and rebuilding Gaza, while also creating easier political conditions for building out our Arab alliances.

As for bombing Iran’s energy infrastructure and nuclear program — guilty as charged. This is a regime that can be bankrupted easily, with almost zero harm to civilians. The IRGC owns 50% of Iran’s oil infrastructure, which is a major source of foreign currency funding for the regime’s catastrophic proxy wars in the region.

In the name of hundreds of thousands of dead in Syria and Yemen, of those the Iranian empire planned to see killed in Lebanon for its imperialism, and of my people who they still fantasize about exterminating in the name of their weird, warped vision of religious redemption, yeah - a long, brutal regional war, in other words, is already very much underway - let’s take out those oil depots.

And Zach, a gentleman tags the person he’s obsessively hounding.

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

Why are there Palestinian refugees?

In the months before the British abandoned its mandate & Israel declared independence, civil war raged as Arab factions tried to prevent the Jewish state from being born.

Of course, had the Arabs agreed to the UN's partition plan, they would have had yet another state & there would have been no war in 1948.

But their goal was not another Arab state; it was to ensure there would be no Jewish state.

Meanwhile, 5 #Arab armies amassed on the borders & waited for the British to leave so they could push the Jews into the #Mediterranean Sea.

As Secretary-General of the Arab League Azzam Pasha put it on the day of the Arab #invasion:

"This will be a war of extermination & momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."

Or as the then war #criminal & fugitive #Nazi Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini put it during the invasion:

"Murder the #Jews. Murder them all!"

But before the invasion began, & starting as early as Dec 1947, Arab officers began ordering Arab residents of specific villages to flee.

Their reasoning? Arab citizens not involved in active fighting could only: (1) "treacherously" abide the creation of a the Jewish state &/or even become citizens of same; or (2) be in the way of Arab #military deployments & potentially get caught in the crossfire.

And so, for example, on this day (March 8) in 1948, the Arab Higher Committee ordered all Arab women, children & elderly to leave Jerusalem. The order continued, "Any opposition to this order ... is an obstacle to the holy war ... & will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.”

In fact, the Arab Higher Committee ordered the evacuation of dozens of Arab villages between April & July of 1948 (see photo of Arab citizens fleeing below).

Meanwhile, on April 19, 1948, Jewish forces secured Tiberias, which had a population of ~6,000 #Arabs - all of whom chose to leave. In fact, they left under British military supervision.

The Jewish Community Council immediately issued a statement regarding Tiberias' Arabs:

"We did not dispossess them; they themselves chose this course ... Let no citizen touch their property."

At around this same time, in early & mid-April of 1948, an Arab faction led by Fawzi al-Qawukji was attacking Haifa & attempting to take the city. Then, rumors spread among Haifa's Arab community that Arab air forces were about to bomb the city & ~25,000 of Haifa's Arabs fled.

As U.S. Consul-General in Haifa Aubrey Lippincott noted on April 22, 1948: "local mufti-dominated Arab leaders ... [urged] all Arabs to leave the city, & large numbers did so."

On April 23, 1948, however, #Jewish forces fought back the Arab attack & retook Haifa.

Three days later, on April 26, 1948, a British police report from Haifa noted:

"[E]very effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe."

What were some of those "efforts?"

Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, sent future Prime Minister Golda Meir to Haifa with the direct instructions to "persuade the Arabs to stay."

Ms. Meir was unsuccessful, however, as Haifa's Arabs told her they feared that if they stayed, they would be branded "#traitors."

And so, another ~25,000 of Haifa's Arabs fled.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but despite facts on the ground, Arab leaders at the #UN began demanding the end to a fake "#massacre."

Specifically, #Syria's UN Ambassador Faris al-Kouri, said the Jewish victory at Haifa was a "massacre" that provided "evidence that the '#Zionist program' is to annihilate Arabs within the Jewish state if partition is effected."

The #British were still on the ground, however, & the British Ambassador to the UN, Sir Alexander Cadogan, told the UN the very next day both that the fighting in Haifa had only begun as a result of "continuous attacks by Arabs against Jews" & that the "reports of massacres & deportations [were] erroneous."

Meanwhile, after Israel declared its independence & was invaded by five Arab armies, the newly established #IDF issued an Order on July 6, 1948, making it clear that non-combatant Arab civilians were not to be harassed or expelled, nor their villages touched.

But the Arabs were being given a very different message.

#Iraqi #PrimeMinister Nuri Said announced:

"We will smash the country with our guns & obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives & children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."

This used to be known. In fact, Arab leaders for years after the war had no qualms about repeating it.

For example, Syrian Prime Minister Haled al Azm later wrote:

"Since 1948, we have been demanding the return of the #refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave & our appeal to the UN to resolve on their return."

Similarly, #Jordan's King Abdullah wrote:

"The tragedy of the #Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false & unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs & 400 million #Muslims would instantly & miraculously come to their rescue."

Similarly, Edward Atiyah, Secretary of the Arab League Office in #London wrote:

"This wholesale #exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic #Arabic press & the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States & the #Palestinian Arabs enabled to re­enter & retake possession of their country.”

Even as the war still raged on Aug 16, 1948, the Arab #Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of the Galilee told #Beirut newspaper Sada al-Janub:

“The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, & that they would return within a week or two ... Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the ’Zionist gangs’ very quickly & that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.”

A few months later, on Feb 19, 1949, the Jordanian newspaper Filastin confirmed:

"The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies."

Even many of the Palestinian Arab refugees themselves admitted their reasons for leaving.

For example, on June 8, 1951, Habib Issa admitted to #NewYork Lebanese newspaper Al Hoda:

"Azzam Pasha assured the Arab peoples that the #occupation of Palestine & #TelAviv would be ... simple ... He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers & that all the millions the Jews had spent on land & economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean ... Arabs of Palestine [were told] to leave their land, homes & property & to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”

Similarly, Asmaa Jabir Balasimah recalled being told by Arab leaders to "evacuate the village & return after the battle is over," & that she & others in her village left all their possessions behind "based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours."

Again, however (& most importantly), had the Arabs agreed to Partition or even agreed to negotiate different borders with Zionist leaders who begged Azzam Pasha to make any counteroffer instead of invading with #genocidal intent, there would never have been a single Palestinian #refugee.

#Education #Israel #Palestine

[Shai Davidai @ShaiDavidai]

I am calling it.

It's time for EVERYONE in the antisemitism task force at @Columbia to resign RIGHT NOW.

Every extra minute that you don't do so is an extra minute of you being an accomplice.

Retweet if you agree.

[David/Dovid Bashevkin @DBashIdeas]

Incredibly powerful.

A proud Israeli Jew plans on keeping Shabbos for the first time this Shabbos.

He invites others to join him.

Let’s join him. Let’s share.

Let’s invite Shabbos into our lives. ❤️

[Shai Davidai @ShaiDavidai]

Many people are wondering about what’s happening on U.S. campuses.

While I can’t speak about all other college campuses, I can definitely give you an insider’s view about @Columbia University.

(this thread may be a bit long, but trust me: it's worth it)

[Ion Legarda @IonLegarda]

This is the video you send to the October 7th denier that wants to "see the footage". Hope it helps.
#october7th #HamasisISIS #HamasMassacre

[Ion Legarda @IonLegarda]

They think they can easily fool you, so let's bring their tactics to light.
#Hamas #IsraelPalestineConflict #FreePalestineFromHamas #HamasPropaganda

[Annika H Rothstein @truthandfiction]

As a friend of mine pointed out last night: in the basement of Israeli hospitals, they keep neonatal units and operating theaters, so they’re able to continue the crucial work when being attacked. It’s where they keep what’s most important to them.

In the basement of Gaza hospitals, they keep weapons depots, so they can use newborn babies and heart patients as human shields while shooting rockets. It’s where they keep what’s most important to them.

[Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis @chiefrabbi]

“Together with many others, I am finding this Tisha B’Av to be exceptionally painful. After close to two millennia since the loss of our Temple in Jerusalem, we have still not learnt the lessons of that horrific national tragedy.

The first century historian, Flavius Josephus, recorded how, while under Roman siege, the defence of Jerusalem was mortally weakened by internal division and destructive conflict. The Temple was destroyed because of a failure to unite for the greater good, at the moment of greatest peril.

Over the course of 75 simply miraculous years of accomplishment, the State of Israel has survived against unrelenting enemies and insurmountable odds, becoming a global beacon of Torah study, innovation, culture and democracy. Yet the deep polarisation and political animosity on display today, leaves many of the most passionate supporters of Medinat Yisrael feeling the great pain of unprecedented division.

One of my illustrious predecessors, Rabbi Lord Jakobovits ztl, pointed to an extraordinary feature of ‘Sim shalom’, our daily prayer for peace. Within it, we exclaim, “Barchenu Avinu kulanu ke’echad” – bless us, our Father, all of us as one. Why, in a prayer for peace with our external foes, do we make a plea for internal unity? Rabbi Jakobovits explained: We cannot hope to achieve peace with those who wish us harm if we are plagued by internal strife.

Although Tisha B'Av is a day of mourning, it is nevertheless described as a 'mo'ed' – a 'festival' (Eicha1:15). This is because we resolve to look forward to a time when it will indeed be a day of great celebration. So too, even in these most challenging of days, let us resolve to actively work towards a strengthening of all that we value in our cherished Jewish State, and a time when unity and respectful disagreement will reign.”

[Sammy Rosenzweig @SamBalones]

@Vlo_Avlasa_Bo 4. Last minute waiting to become milchig. 5. Last minute before the bell rang. #tbt

[Sammy Rosenzweig @SamBalones]

@Vlo_Avlasa_Bo רוח שאינו מצויה*

[Elliot Steinmetz @elliotsteinmetz]

I posted a reel to Instagram with the simple comment of how great it is to watch your guys chase their dreams…

See some of the results in 🧵 below.

[Sammy Rosenzweig @SamBalones]

@simmy_cohen

[jewboy media @simmy_cohen]

$100 each now

[jewboy media @simmy_cohen]

@aimhumor OBO

[jewboy media @simmy_cohen]

Selling 2 tix to tomorrows Yankee game, sec 411, 164 face selling 125 each pls DM if interested

[Sammy Rosenzweig @SamBalones]

@BluegrassRabbi https://t.co/zXmt83iVyG this always hits the spot….

[Talkin' Yanks @TalkinYanks]

The legend of Matt Carpenter continues to grow, his 14th of the year!