Stuart Markus

Singer-songwriter-guitarist–music lover–history buff–tall ship aficionado–pirate–Jewish-American–seeker of truth–cynical idealist–Israel advocate–psych student

[Yehuda Teitelbaum @chalavyishmael]

The UN accused Israel of genocide, and one of the 3 commissioners behind that accusation just admitted, in front of a live audience, that they never independently verified one of the most explosive statistics in their own report.

Chris Sidoti insisted that his commission conducts independent investigations and doesn't simply rely on media reports.

Except paragraph 21 of their official genocide report claims that 83% of those killed in Gaza were civilians. The footnote cites The Guardian.

When asked whether the commission had actually verified that figure, Sidoti admitted:

“No, we didn't… we literally do not know.”

Now watch how this works.

The Guardian publishes a statistic. The UN cites The Guardian. TIME and other media orgs then repeat the statistic while reporting on the UN's genocide findings, giving readers the impression that they're looking at an independently established fact.

The media quotes the UN, the UN quotes the media, and somewhere along the way a newspaper's claim gets transformed into an authoritative finding of international investigators.

This is how information gets laundered. Each new citation adds another layer of credibility without necessarily adding a single piece of independent evidence.

But the commissioner himself admits they never verified the number.

We're talking about an official UN report accusing the Jewish state of the gravest crime in international law, circulated around the world as authoritative evidence, while one of its own authors acknowledges that they literally do not know whether a central statistic they published is accurate.

How many other claims in that report have been through the same process?

[Lara Logan @laralogan]

This is interesting to me because it echoes what I heard when I was on the ground reporting from Gaza, Hebron, Ramallah and other Palestinian territories. I had similar conversations with Palestinian mothers and could never relate to the idea that a mother could be proud or happy to sacrifice her child even if it was for a cause believed to be greater than everything else. This is not about passing judgement - for me it just meant we were not the same in this respect and never would be. I recognize different experiences & different lives shape different belief and behaviour. I always respected people for who they were. But so many times I had heard people say, “we’re all the same” and because of this very issue, I would think, “no we’re not, not necessarily. In some ways we are actually very different”.

This was only reinforced when I interviewed the terrorist leader in charge of recruiting child suicide bombers in Afghanistan. I was a correspondent for “60 Minutes” at the time. He told me he would happily give up both his sons to blow themselves up, that it would be “an honor” to sacrifice them.

I didn’t believe him. Here was a man who was taking other people’s children, strapping explosives on their little bodies, drugging them and sending them out to die WITH a back-up detonation switch so they could blow up the child from a safe distance if they lost their nerve.

Wonderful.

As far as I know, it is years later and his son’s are still alive & well.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Let me introduce you to Aida Rostami, another hero from my country, Iran.

She was 36 years old. A general physician.

During January arising in 2026,, while the streets of Iran were filled with injured protesters, Aida chose to do help them. She was a doctor. Her job was to save lives.

Quietly and anonymously, she traveled to homes in western Tehran,l, to provide medical care to protesters who were afraid to go to hospitals because they feared arrest, torture, or worse.

On December 12, 2022, Aida left her home of one of the injured protesters to get medical supplies. She never came back.

The next day, her family was called to a police station and told that Aida had died in a car accident.

But when her family saw her body, they saw something very different.

Her hands were broken. The right side of her face was crushed. Her nose was shattered. Her left eye had been severely injured. There were bruises across her body.

Her family questioned the official story. And then the story changed.

First, they said it was a car accident. Later, authorities claimed she had fallen from a pedestrian bridge.

Her family continued to reject the official accounts.

And later, her brother released an audio recording that shed light on the pressure security forces had placed on the family. They took her life.

Aida was not carrying weapons, she was carrying medical supplies. She was treating wounded people.

I have a question:

How many people outside Iran know the name of Aida Rostami?

How many doctors around the world know the story of a physician who risked everything to treat injured protesters when hospitals were no longer safe?

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

“I always said I was anti-Zionist but not antisemitic”

Taryn Thomas used to join campus protests at Stanford where students called Israel’s war with Hamas a genocide.

Then, she attended the Nova exhibit, and learned for the first time about what actually happened on October 7th.
Now, she realizes, those protests “had already decided how the story was going to end,” before Israel even responded to the massacre.

This is exactly why Free Palestine protests the Nova exhibit wherever it opens.

They are afraid that if more people learn the truth, their movement will run out of support.

Video Credit: GB News

[The Persian Jewess @persianjewess]

This woman was blinded with acid by the Islamic Regime for refusing to wear a hijab.

Happy International Women’s Day.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Arbel Yehoud revealed that she was sexually assaulted by terrorists almost every single day during her 482 days of captivity with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Her captivity was so horrific that she attempted to take her own life three times.

Romi Gonen was raped by four different men on separate occasions during her captivity in Gaza, including a “nurse” who was supposed to care for her wounds.

Sasha Troufanov said that his PIJ captor repeatedly tried to force him to perform a sexual act on himself. He also revealed that he was filmed by a camera while showering.

Alon Ohel was sexually abused by his captor while naked and showering.

Guy Gilboa Dalal said his Hamas captor sexually assaulted him after a shower, holding a gun to his head and a knife to his throat.

Amit Soussana described being sexually assaulted by her captor while held hostage. Every day, he would ask when her period would end so he could finally have his way with her.

Dafna Elyakim, 15, said her captor touched her constantly and told her she would stay in Gaza to marry him and have his children.

Rom Braslavski revealed that PIJ terrorists sexually abused and humiliated him. They stripped him naked, tied him up, abused and tortured him.

Aviva Siegel told the UN that she saw a young girl in captivity crying after her captor followed her into the bathroom and forced her to perform oral sex.

Ilana Gritzewsky woke up on October 7 in Gaza, half-naked, her breasts exposed and her pants pulled down, surrounded by seven terrorists.

Agam Goldstein-Almog testified that she witnessed another hostage being forced at gunpoint to touch, and be touched by her captor.

These are only the stories we know. Hundreds more will never be heard, because most of Hamas's rape victims were murdered. On October 7, countless bodies were found without underwear, with mutilated genitalia, or with broken pelvises.

Several Nova survivors also testified that they heard terrorists gang-raping women and men during the massacre.

While Hamas and its minions try to make the world forget the massacre and mass rapes of October 7, don’t let them.

BELIEVE THE SURVIVORS. BELIEVE ALL VICTIMS.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

A Jewish teacher is suing the United Nations International School (UNIS) in Manhattan, after years of antisemitic harassment that the administration ignored.

Nadine Sebag, who taught French at the school for 30 years, says another teacher subjected her to a “sustained and targeted campaign of harassment,” including claims that “Jews are driven by money” and that Jews control UNIS and New York.

Hamas-linked posters with QR codes were also displayed on the school’s “Walls of Peace” without disciplinary action.

She denounces the fact that the school ignored her repeated complaints and instead retaliated against her after she reported the harassment she suffered, causing severe emotional distress and forcing her into early retirement.

When a Jewish teacher faced antisemitism at one of Manhattan’s most elite schools, educating the children of diplomats and global elites, the scandal isn’t that she spoke up.

It’s that the institution meant to protect her didn’t.

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

The argument over whether Golan Heights is occupied or not is irrelevant. Not unimportant, but irrelevant.

The argument over whether the West Bank is occupied or not is irrelevant. Not unimportant, but irrelevant.

The reason it’s irrelevant is because no matter which way it cuts, it doesn’t change the outcome.

Give away Golan Heights and nothing changes.

Give away the West Bank and nothing changes.

The land has traded hands several times and nothing changed.

These are red herrings because the conflict isn’t over what has been rightfully or wrongfully annexed.

The conflict is over Israel’s existence.

Once Israel’s existence has been accepted, peace deals are made (including drawing lines over land), and every conflict ends.

It’s really that simple.

[Jonathan Greenblatt @JGreenblattADL]

Since Tuesday night, I've watched CNN eulogize arch-terrorist Ismail Haniyeh as a "moderating force" and a "political leader." The New York Times called him "relatively pragmatic." Washington Post called him "one of the moderate figures" within Hamas.

Give me a break.

Let's be clear: Haniyeh was a mass murderer who authorized and celebrated the unspeakable savagery of 10/7.

For decades, Haniyeh specialized in barbaric violence and sinister propaganda that dehumanized Jews, demonized Israelis, disparaged America, and justified genocide. His hands were stained with the blood of thousands of Israelis. All the while, he embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars to enrich himself even as he impoverished his own people.

Without question, the death of *any* civilian is a tragedy -- Jew, Druze, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and individuals of no faith. However, Haniyeh was far from a civilian. He was a combatant and terrorist who reaped what he sowed.

While some try to sanitize this butcher, I will continue to mourn the real victims – the children of Majdal Shams, those murdered on 10/7, and all who have lost their lives to terror. https://t.co/J9De031DNl

[Xaviaer DuRousseau @XAVIAER]

The inconvenient truth about Palestinian culture:

[Im Tirtzu @IMTIzionism]

The truth comes out eventually...

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

An incredible letter written by a non-Jewish Scottish professor to his students who voted to boycott Israel

It's a response from Dr. Denis MacEoin to the motion put forward by The Edinburgh Student's Association to boycott all things Israeli, in which they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime.

Denis is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and was a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Here's his letter to the students.

TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain 's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel .

That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I'm speaking of a hatred that
permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is
this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).

In Iran , the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why
aren't your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa .

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.

On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid.

Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the
Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel . I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.

Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that
protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on?

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side.

Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and
that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence.

It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Denis MacEoin

[Stuart Markus @StuartMarkus]

@BrianLehrer
The Fatah party which controls the PA also has never recognized Israel's right to exist.
Israel had offered to recognize a Palestinian State multiple times, but the Palestinians walked out each time because it would require them to accept israel.

[Stuart Markus @StuartMarkus]

@BrianLehrer @WNYC
So much discussion has been whether Israel will recognize a Palestinian state, but does anybody asked whether Palestinian leadership will recognize israel? Hamas explicitly rejects it and says that violence is the only means to "liberate" all of Israel.

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

Makes me want to puke.

[Stuart Markus @StuartMarkus]

@KarenCarsonNYC does anyone remember the movie Basic Instinct? When you cheat on your spouse, you are playing with fire. This guy just got burned by it.

[Stuart Markus @StuartMarkus]

Billy Joel's concert on CBS just because this generation's Heidi game.

[Stuart Markus @StuartMarkus]

Perspective on last week's aid convoy disaster from someone who knows what it's like:
I Have Delivered Aid in War Zones. They Were the Missions We Feared Most | Opinion https://t.co/liyfyH1P9M

[TIME @TIME]

A complicated, subtle form of antisemitism is emerging, argues Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman (@NoahRFeldman) in an essay https://t.co/PiAgZpf2C0

[Israel Defense Forces @IDF]

Our troops uncovered the largest weapons production site since the beginning of the war. Where did Hamas position it? In Bureij, a densely populated civilian area in central Gaza.

Here are some other things we located in the area:

- Components for long-range rockets capable of reaching northern Israel.
- Underground long-range rockets manufacturing facilities.
- Exposives and mortar shells accuracy enhancers.
- Tunnel shafts reaching approx. 30 meters underground.
- Light weapons and UAVs.