Abbott Koloff

Retired journalist. Former member of investigative reporting team for The Record of North Jersey and USA Today Network.

[Abbott Koloff @AbbottKoloff]

@MarcoFoster_ @DeanObeidallah Half of the Jews in the world live in Israel.

[Abbott Koloff @AbbottKoloff]

@deenayellin They’ll probably say they haven’t received a complaint and will have no further comment.

[Abbott Koloff @AbbottKoloff]

@deenayellin There are also state and NYC laws regarding public accommodations, yet I have heard nothing about a state or city investigation.
Why isn’t the NYC Commision on Human Rights investigating?
Someone should ask them.
https://t.co/u0SzOuNNwU

[Abbott Koloff @AbbottKoloff]

@USATODAY There are also state and NYC laws regarding public accommodations, yet I have heard nothing about a state or city investigation.

Why isn’t the NYC Commision on Human Rights investigating?

Someone should ask them.

https://t.co/u0SzOuNNwU

[Abbott Koloff @AbbottKoloff]

There are also state and NYC laws regarding public accommodations, yet I have heard nothing about a state or city investigation.

Why isn’t the NYC Commision on Human Rights investigating?

Someone should ask them

https://t.co/u0SzOuNNwU

[Deena Yellin @deenayellin]

Federal officials are investigating a Brooklyn coffee shop after the store said Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York congressman, was not welcome following a visit with his daughter.

[Deena Yellin @deenayellin]

Federal officials are investigating a Brooklyn coffee shop after the store said Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York congressman, was not welcome following a visit with his daughter.

[Abbott Koloff @AbbottKoloff]

@mehdirhasan Talk about gaslighting. Be as critical as you want, question motivations all you want, but at least tell the whole story about why Israeli soldiers are in Lebanon.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

There's a lot to say, of course, about how much this sort of thing -- safe, comfortable Westerners appointing themselves arbiters of which nations are allowed to exist -- has taken over the politics of the Western left.

Or about what Israelis see that they don't -- for example, why Israeli Jews who hail from the Arab world are more right-wing and hawkish than the ones thrust upon the land artificially by European empires (or whatever).

Or about how no other Jews in any meaningful numbers actually managed to survive the 20th century outside the Anglophone world -- and when most Jews were actually fleeing to Israel, the Anglophone world was closed to them. The great exception, of course, is Soviet Jews, who were trapped in place and had their culture violently and brutally erased from them, and then fled almost entirely when the Iron Curtain fell.

Or, come to think of it, about how the Jewish claim to the land isn't about some dusty old lineage, but to a great extent from every generation's own contemporary story; from nearly every chapter of the Jewish Bible and prayerbook read and studied in every synagogue on Earth for two millennia; from how every synagogue for two millennia prayed toward Jerusalem; from the medieval rabbis who at the end of their lives boarded a boat to the land of Israel so they can be buried there; from how no Muslim or Christian ever doubted that Jewish attachment until they needed to pretend to forget it in order to fight Jewish immigration.

There's even a lot to say about the fundamental fakery of Western romantic discourse on indigeneity -- about how Jews were told to "go to Palestine" by Polish and Iraqi nationalists who rejected them for not being indigenous enough to Poland or Iraq, and to "go to Poland" by Palestinian activists because they're not indigenous enough to be in the land of Israel. (No one told them to go back to Iraq, of course, though they were a quarter of Baghdad's population in 1930. The brownness of half of Israeli Jews upsets the comfortable assumptions of the Western indigeneity industry, so it's ignored.)

It turns out it's possible, according to the self-appointed indigeneity auditors of the Western left, for there to exist a people that's not indigenous anywhere, and so undeserving, even in the midst of the brutal genocide of millions, of any other place to escape to. (Does Caitlin know that the Jews who fled to Israel had literally nowhere else to go? If not, her crime is ignorance. If yes, her crime is a denial of history so that history can be repeated. I hope it's ignorance.)

There's a lot to say about her final point, that it wouldn't actually be dangerous for the Jews to become a Middle Eastern minority once more; about how minorities generally have fared in the Middle East over the past century, and whether it really is crazy for Israelis, especially those hailing from the Arab world, to suspect that a future as a Middle Eastern minority would be a dark and bloody one; and about how it is the likes of Hamas, not some right-wing Israeli rabble-rouser, that keeps telling Israelis this is the case.

But what would be the point?

What would be the point of saying all that to someone who has adopted the demolition of another nation as the engine of her moral world. Such a person isn't going to sit with any of the actual history or dilemmas of this land and ask herself whether there might be some gargantuan lacunae in her understanding.

Instead, let me offer a small and practical response in place of the great and grandiose dives into the depths of the Israeli soul.

I think, dear Caitlin, that for all the reasons above and a few more besides, we Israelis will keep our self-determination, this safety we have found in a world that for all its endless self-righteousness never actually saves anyone. And I think, too, that those activists, like you, who condition Palestinian self-determination on us losing our own only pushes off the day of that blessed and necessary independence.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

.@zarahsultana I assume this is a different Zarah Sultana MP to the one who was recently filmed clapping along to loudspeaker chants for intifada, on a street in Surrey.
https://t.co/J9nLlYtw59

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Paragraph 3 of the Shema prayer speaks of "the good land that the Lord is giving you" and tells Jews to steer clear of idolatry (I'm simplifying) "so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied on the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors to give them, like the days of the heavens over the earth."

I don't think @mehdirhasan "loves the Shema." I think he asked ChatGPT to name an important Jewish prayer and picked the first one on the list.

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

Every single word of this by @havivrettiggur.👇

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

This is the same Hasan Piker who incited violence against me & is now campaigning along several Democratic candidates for political office. The Democratic party is finished if it allows for pro-Jihadi, pro-terror, pro-Hamas, champaign communists to be part of its senior ranks! 🤦‍♂️

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Eleven Iranians were hanged last week. You heard me correct they were hanged in 21st-century for demanding freedom.

I’m grateful to @bariweiss, @jaketapper, and @marthamaccallum for giving me the platform to name them. I hope a responsible media must bring their stories and their faces to the front pages.

A ceasefire does not mean peace in Iran. The Islamic Republic’s war against its innocent civilians continues, with hundreds still on death row.

I call on international community to help save their lives.💔
#StopExecutionsInIran
#DigitalBlackoutInIran

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

“Hurt people do hurt people.” What the fuck. I’m sure this is what @AbdulElSayed & @hasanthehun believe, but, my fellow Democrats, if you nominate/elect someone who says that about an Islamist terrorist who tried to kill hundreds of Jews in a Michigan Temple, you deserve to lose.

[Abbott Koloff @AbbottKoloff]

This is no way to run the FBI. Agents allegedly were fired for being perceived as political opponents.
https://t.co/cqWx2Y23Ie

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

Dear @mehdirhasan,

I have a proposal. I’ll put $100,000 in escrow and you can too. And we will both submit to financial audits.

If the Israel or the pro-Israel lobby has given me a dime, you can have my $100,000.

And if Qatar has given you money by funding your projects, I can have your $100,000.

Deal? I mean, I know you critiqued Donald Trump heavily for being financially influenced by Russia, so both of us should take foreign interference fairly seriously.

I liked you before October 7th and the depth of your Israel derangement and Jew hate became apparent.

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

As a very new Democrat, I am so damn concerned about this. The Democratic Party will not win nationally and will not win in battleground states if they abandon their support for Israel.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

This is why I never go to protests anymore, regardless of the topic - because you can always count on Third Worldist Intifadists, pro-Hamas, pro-the Iranian regime, pro-Maduro, anti-human death cultists to be present and loud. Whether it is the "No Kings," "anti-ICE," or other demonstrations, somehow, the Palestinian flag, Hamas's, and now the Venezuelan and Iranian flags have to be present at anything that Democrats or just normal people put on to share their thoughts. Leftist lunatics are now hijacking any and every social and political cause and issue, ensuring their fascistic, violent grip on all topics, and making sure that this once negligible minority is now a mainstream staple of American politics and discourse.

Ironically, the only mention of "peace & harmony" among their chants for death while carrying Hamas flags and hiding their faces like terrorists was immediately paired with calls for "burning the settler colony" or the United States. May God help us all, and may God save this generation from itself.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Mehdi wants to school people in Middle East history and accuses them of “hasbara” for pointing out his errors.

But all the strutting and thumping and cussing in the world won’t make truths of his childish lies.

Yes, Begin said that quote about Israel choosing to respond to Nasser’s blockade with war. And bigots like Mehdi have quoted that single sentence for years. It’s so famous among anti-Israel propagandists that he probably lifted it from ChatGPT.

But no, Begin didn’t think Israel was the aggressor. He said the 67 attack was a response to “multiple acts of aggression designed to debilitate Israel step by step as a preliminary to outright war.” He argued 67 was a response to aggression with potentially existential consequences.

This is incidentally what the Arab states were saying in the run-up to the war. Mehdi is arguing with the Arabs of 1967 more than he’s arguing with the Israelis.

Begin, in fact, called Nasser’s blockade and massing of troops a “casus bellum.” Because duh.

Begin’s point wasn’t that Israel was the aggressor. He thought Egypt was. His point in the context of 1982 was that Israel has agency in how to respond to aggressive actions and war preparations by its enemies.

It’s tempting to think Mehdi is lying, misrepresenting, that he’s a petty propagandist rather than just ignorant or dumb.

But this is a false choice. You read this and realize he’s both.

Which explains why he’s so keen to accuse others of, variously, “dumbass”-edness and “hasbara.” A thief is fanatical about protecting his property, a liar assumes everyone else is lying to him. And Mehdi thinks history is what he needs it to be and everyone who knows better is lying and dumb.