Leon Bubis

Hockey Lover, Investor, Lawyer , Husband and Father to 5 kids.

[Lucythegreat @lucythegreat123]

The level of delusion here is staggering.

I am 51. My DNA is 100% Ashkenazi Jew. So is my husband's. Our great grandparents fled pogroms to come to America.

Do you know how many times my ancestors had to resist assimilation and intermarriage? Do you know how many of their relatives died rather than abandon their faith? Do you know how much of my life has been shaped by Jewish community, Jewish education, religious observance, religious charity, summer camp, kosher food? Do you know how hard I worked to raise observant Jewish children in a modern world?

And yet the average user thinks they can throw up one poorly made meme about big bad Israel, or cite one Jew who did one bad thing one time, and I am going to denounce everything I and my ancestors held dear.

It is truly pathetic. And it says everything about the kind of person who posts them, and how cheaply they would trade their own soul.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

Hezbollah began firing rockets isn’t an escalation.

But Israel responding is escalating the conflict.

You cannot hate the New York Times enough.

[Olena Tregub @OTregub]

Ireland defense for supplying roughly 90% of EU alumina exports to Russia is that the EU never sanctioned alumina.
But when it came to Israel, Ireland didn't wait for the EU.
Dublin pushed ahead with its own Occupied Territories legislation, openly challenging the EU's common trade policy and arguing that moral considerations required action.
Apparently, "we can't act without Brussels" applies to Russia, but not to Israel.
Interesting standard.

[Dani Buller @askdani__real]

קח תזמן אחי

[Alex Gandler @AlexGandler]

I met Ben once. We were seated at the same dinner table.

At first, we did not recognise each other. Neither of us had any idea we would end up at the same table.

I asked him where I knew him from. He replied, “Ben, from Ben & Jerry’s.”

I smiled and said, “Nice to meet you. I’m Alex, Deputy Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern United States.”

This was at the height of the Ben & Jerry’s Israel controversy. I decided not to raise politics, out of respect for our gracious host. But I was also biding my time, because I suspected he would not be able to resist bringing it up.

About an hour into dinner, he came over to talk.

I saw it as an opportunity to understand where he was coming from, to explain a few things, and to keep the conversation as civil as possible. And to be fair, it was civil. He was pleasant, curious, and polite.

But quite quickly, I also realised he was completely ignorant about Israel.

He had never visited the country or the region. He had basic facts wrong, not only about the narrative, but about the foundations of the conflict itself: the makeup of the countries involved, the history, and the deeply rooted reasons each side sees the conflict the way it does.

For him, it was simple: there are people who appear oppressed, so someone must be the oppressor.

I do not blame Ben personally. He is a businessman who sells ice cream. Why should he be expected to understand Israel, the Middle East, or geopolitics?

The real problem is with those who treat him as an authority.

The media gives him a pedestal to speak about issues he clearly does not understand. And that is the absurdity of it all: taking an ice cream salesman and presenting him as a voice of moral clarity on one of the most complex conflicts in the world.

[leekern @leekern13]

Thanks Yvette. I really hope the Islamic fundamentalists Hezbollah - whose name means Party of Allah and whose logo is a machine gun - and who are sworn to exterminating the Jews and establishing a global Islamic caliphate will listen to you. You speak such words of reason, how could the Islamic fundamentalists Hezbollah not?

[Daniel Goldman @danielsgoldman]

For this entire campaign, @bradlander has refused to face me. He rejected debates, withdrew from forums, and even insisted that we appear back-to-back at a forum instead of next to each other.

Tomorrow, we will finally get the opportunity to share a stage.

Tune in to @NY1 on Monday at 7pm for our very first debate.

[Leon Bubis @beemer330]

@ScottBilleck @Wpgtjross @NikLynam Chipman may have had a role.Some smart journalists have written about his hands on approach.

[נדב איל Nadav Eyal @Nadav_Eyal]

בסתיו 2024 חיזבאללה היה על הרצפה. במצוקה הקשה בתולדותיו. לא כבשנו את הבופור, ולא איבדנו חיילים כל שבוע מרחפנים. לישראל אין אסטרטגיה בלבנון כבר בערך שנה.

[Andrew Craft @AndrewCraft]

NYPD Commissioner Tisch with another mayor today at the Israel Day Parade

[DToecutter @DToecutter]

@SteveGuest

[Leia @TheSWPrincess]

@SteveGuest She said he's "her kind of man".

[Jacob N. Kornbluh @jacobkornbluh]

Rep. Dan Goldman at Met Council annual breakfast:

“I stand before you as a proud Jew and a proud Zionist — and those of us who feel that way can never waver.”

On #NY10 primary: “What we need is more than anything is moral clarity. We need to stand for what we believe in, and I will do that right through the tape.”

[Henrik Dahl @SociologenHD]

If a country sitting on a rock in the North Atlantic comes to regard a conflict nearly 4,000 kilometres away as more important than almost anything else, it is worth asking why.

I like Ireland. It is a small country living next to a much larger neighbour. A country that has never been afraid to speak its mind or stand on its own feet. In that respect, it reminds me of something.

But Ireland's apparent obsession with condemning Israel at every opportunity is not healthy. Especially when many of the arguments involved turn out to be the same exaggerations, distortions and manipulations that have long been commonplace in Middle Eastern politics.

Why is it not the starting point of public debate in Ireland that Israel, as a state, has every right to exist?

Why is it not the starting point that Israel has repeatedly been attacked by opponents who have never reconciled themselves to the establishment of a Jewish state nearly eighty years ago?

Why is it not the starting point that the current war began when Hamas committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Second World War on 7 October 2023?

Why are so many people in Ireland willing to accept even the most extravagant accusations coming from the Palestinian side, while showing remarkably little interest in hearing the counterarguments?

And then there is the critical question.

If Israel were to lose this war against Hamas - an outcome that some voices in Ireland seem surprisingly relaxed about - what exactly would follow?

Hamas is not a liberal democratic movement. It is an Islamist movement whose ideology has far more in common with groups such as ISIS than with any Western political tradition. An Israeli defeat would be celebrated as a major victory by Hamas and by the Iranian regime, a regime that has spent decades repressing its own citizens and destabilising the wider region.

I do not believe that many Irish people genuinely wish to see Hamas achieve its political objectives. Nor do I believe that many Irish people would welcome a major strategic victory for Iran.

Or rather, I hope not.

Because if there really is a large majority in Ireland that believes a victory for Hamas and Iran over Israel would be a positive development, then the discussion should no longer be about Israel alone.

It should also be about Ireland itself - and about what role Ireland wishes to play in Europe.

[Dr. Brian L. Cox @BrianCox_RLTW]

I am not a Jew. But as a professor of international law & retired military lawyer who studies how distorted legal rhetoric is used to justify hate & violence directed against Jews, you are 💯 mistaken to believe your safety "as Jewish New Yorkers" is "inextricably intertwined with Palestinians."

I am not progressive, either. But based on your comments in this clip & my background with the study mentioned above, I do have a few tips you should consider exploring if you are genuinely concerned with your safety as a Jewish New Yorker.

Spoiler alert: these tips have absolutely nothing to do with Palestinians - at least, not directly.

1. Stop blaming @Israel for what you refer to as "the utter destruction of Gaza."

First of all, #Gaza isn't "utterly destroyed" to begin with. There are absolutely areas that are currently uninhabitable due to the conflict. But it's not all of Gaza. This perception has been carefully curated by influencers showing isolated clips of select destroyed areas while giving the false impression that this visualization represents the entire Strip.

It doesn't. If you think otherwise, do yourself a favor & find/follow accounts like @GAZAWOOD1 that present clips of videos that are posted from people living inside Gaza right now.

If you believe Gaza is utterly destroyed, educate yourself. You are being played, and only you can stop it.

Second, learn at least something about international law. Like this.

You criticize your opponent @RepDanGoldman for supporting "unconditional aid to Israel" (Ilana Glazer's words) "even despite Israel's utter destruction of Gaza" (your words).

Here, you are actually supporting strategic objectives of literal terrorists whose only goal is the utter destruction of Israel. #Hamas committed the atrocities of 10/7 to provoke a large-scale armed conflict in order to derail normalization between 🇮🇱 & select Arab countries.

Their best shot at getting away with it was for sympathetic partisans throughout the West - such as yourself & Ilana Glazer - to convince Israel's traditional closest partners & allies to restrict military aid & pressure Israel into implementing a ceasefire as early as possible. Doing so would ensure Hamas could survive to continue in a governance role in Gaza after the conflict.

And the way to convince Iran's useful idiots, such as yourself, to pressure Western governments to restrict military aid is to manipulate the language of international law to make it seem that these countries are failing to comply with their own legal obligations or even "complicit" in systemic "war crimes" by failing to condition or restrict aid.

It's a hoax, and it always has been. Determining whether a war crime has been committed requires evidence of the knowledge & intent of personnel responsible for each attack at the time. If you don't believe me, study this highlighted excerpt of the Rome Statute (pic 1).

Yes, neither 🇮🇱 nor 🇺🇸 have ratified this multilateral treaty. But the main war crimes provisions in Article 8, as well as the mental element/mistake of fact provisions of Articles 30 & 32, are consistent with our military doctrine. And guess what evidence you need, pursuant to this doctrinal source, to determine a war crime has been committed.

That's right! If a war crime involves "intentionally directing an attack against" civilian persons or property, and "intent" means "awareness that a circumstance exists," and the "circumstance" is the civilian (not taking direct part in hostilities) character of the person/object attacked, then we require evidence demonstrating personnel responsible for each attack were aware of the civilian character of the target at the time & they attacked it anyway.

Any guesses what you can't determine just from looking at "utter destruction" in a battlespace? Right again! Knowledge & intent of personnel responsible for each attack at the time that led to that utter destruction.

Maybe - just maybe - a transnational terrorist organization committed one of the most horrific atrocities in living memory then deliberately hid & fought among its own civilian population in the ensuing large-scale armed conflict it decided to provoke. And maybe they hid IEDs in every structure they could so that @IDF troops clearing the area successfully capturing it would still continue to perish. And maybe that is cumulatively the reason for the "utter destruction of Gaza."

News flash: that is exactly the cause of most of the destruction in Gaza. And because that's the case, there is no obligation to condition military aid to Israel. No clear risk of systemic war crimes being committed with arms supplied to Israel (🇺🇸 hasn't ratified the Arms Trade Treaty, but we have a similar process for determining whether to provide military aid nonetheless) means no requirement to condition aid.

The reason the language of international law is routinely distorted in this manner, btw, is to convert a policy argument into what appears to be a legal one. A "should" to a "must."

But if you believe 🇺🇸 is failing to abide by its international law obligations by providing military aid to 🇮🇱, once again you are being played. Stop.

2. Stop perpetuating the "genocide" blood libel.

As you criticize Dan Goldman for supporting "unconditional aid to Israel," along with the "utter destruction" nonsense you also say he does so, "Even despite Israel's utter destruction of Gaza, which I consider a genocide" (emphasis added).

There are a lot of people nowadays who believe Israel is responsible for genocide in Gaza. But all of you who do simply demonstrate you don't understand what "genocide" actually is.

See, if we start with the doctrinal definition from the Genocide Convention, we see that this crime of crimes is committed by engaging in enumerated acts (not pictured) "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such" (pic 2, especially red highlight).

Guess what doesn't qualify as a "national, ethnical, racial, or religious group". Right! Terrorist groups like Hamas.

And take a wild guess which group IDF ops in Gaza intend to destroy. If you said "Palestinians," you are, once again, just another of Iran's useful idiots. If you said "Hamas," give yourself a pat on the back.

The stated intent, from the very beginning of Swords of Iron all the way until today, has been to: 1) eliminate the enduring security threat posed by Hamas; and 2) repatriate all hostages. If you're not sure about that, I invite you to review these excerpts from public remarks provided by @IsraeliPM @netanyahu in October 2023 (pic 3) & October 2025 (pic 4). Slightly different wording, same intent.

Yes, I've heard the argument too many times to count now that most major "human rights" orgs & a number of "genocide scholars" & a UN commission of inquiry & even a handful of countries have all determined Israel is responsible for genocide. But they ALL use the same flawed methodology, and so their conclusions are also irreparably flawed.

That is, they ALL begin with a few specimens of political rhetoric from various Israeli officials, most of which are misrepresented or taken out of context to begin with, to establish the requisite "intent." Then they take an equally selective collection of "evidence" - much of which is from untrustworthy or unreliable sources anyway - to establish the enumerated acts to go along with the purportedly genocidal intent.

It is, once again, a hoax. Not a single one starts with the actual stated intent (eg pics 3 & 4 attached here) then takes a balanced, unbiased approach to assessing whether actions actually observed in the battlespace are consistent with the intent to destroy Hamas or, instead, to destroy Palestinians in whole or in part as such.

If you do that - if you understand the correct methodology & you apply it rigorously - there is only one conclusion: Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza, nor has it ever.

It doesn't matter what "you consider" it. You are being played, because you are ignorant. Stop, by educating yourself.

3. Stop blaming "Trump and Netanyahu for setting the Middle East on fire."

Do you know who actually set the Middle East on Fire? Terrorists like Nasrallah, Deif, Sinwar, and the Ayatollah Khamenei, along with the militaries & proxies armed groups they led. And they did so on 10/7, once again, simply to derail normalization.

In doing so, these literal terrorists demonstrated that the status quo of appeasement & diplomacy in pursuit of peace in the Middle East & a two-state solution was no longer tenable. Tbh that approach wasn't tenable for quite a while - but 10/7 proved that to be the case.

And now Trump & Netanyahu are the two world leaders with both the intestinal fortitude & the resources to establish a new status quo. That's what Swords of Iron & Rising Lion & Midnight Hammer & Roaring Lion & Epic Fury have been all about - achieving a new status quo after the aforementioned literal terrorists actually (literally) set the Middle East on fire.

The only way to successfully achieve a new, acceptable status quo is through force of arms - not arms embargoes. If you believe otherwise, you are being played. Stop it. Open your eyes & educate yourself.

Okay, those are three suggestions for specific actions you can take to help improve your safety as New York Jews. The same goes for Jews really throughout the West.

Because here's the thing. Your safety as Jews in the West has absolutely nothing to do with Palestinians. It has everything to do with countering the false narratives - primarily involving misrepresentations of international law - that are being used to justify hate & attacks against Jews.

It doesn't matter how much you try distance yourself from Israel, or zionism, or Bibi, or Trump. That won't stop some crazed lunatic from pulling a gun on you or siccing his dog on you or driving his car into your synagogue or throwing bricks at your head or any other number of seemingly random & horrific attacks against Jews we've seen escalate in the West since 10/7.

G-d forbid any of these or other acts of violence ever happens to you or someone you love. But if it does, recent experience suggests the perpetrator - and his supporters afterward - will accuse you of supporting genocide & war crimes just for being Jewish.

Because Jews are being regarded as proxies for Israel, and Israel is being regarded as a proxy for zionism, and Hamas doctrine justifies the "struggle" against the "Zionist entity" known as the State of Israel.

I've heard the term "self-hating Jew" be directed toward folks like yourself. Oftentimes you're referred to by the term "As-a-Jew." @GadSaad would probably diagnose you with suicidal empathy.

Regardless of whether any of those descriptions apply, as someone who specializes in international law I can definitively affirm you are both ignorant & naive.

If you're concerned about your safety as a Jew, stop perpetuating the lies & distortions that are - unfortunately - putting you most at risk. Stop blaming Israel & @AIPAC & conservatives like Netanyahu & Trump for ... well, everything in the Middle East & at home in New York.

Learn how to push back, with precision, against the false narratives that are being used to justify hate & violence directed against the Jewish population. This is the most effective direction you can take if you are genuinely concerned about your safety as a Jew.

[Meghan McCain @MeghanMcCain]

One thing about my life is at least no one thinks I secretly take foreign money from Qatar to spread antisemitism.

Gotta take the wins where I can.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

The Islamic Republic just attacked Kuwait.

If Israel had randomly attacked Kuwait, it would be front page news, along with every podcaster saying “Israel is dragging the Middle East into chaos.”

Iran does it? Silence.

Weird.

[Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט @naftalibennett]

כמו שלמרדכי ואנונו אסור להתקרב ללשכת ראש הממשלה - כך גם ליונתן אוריך.

יועצו הקרוב של ראש הממשלה בגד במדינת ישראל והואשם היום *במעשים עם כוונה לפגוע בבטחון המדינה*.

כפי שכבר אמרתי:
זו הבגידה החמורה בתולדות ישראל, מכיוון שהיא נעשתה *מתוך לשכת ראש הממשלה*, קודש הקודשים של בטחון ישראל.

ראש ממשלה שבטחון ישראל חשוב לו היה מוקיע את הבוגדים בבושת פנים, ומרחיק אותם מיד מלשכתו.

כל רגע שנתניהו ממשיך להעסיק בוגדים בלשכתו, מסכן את ביטחון ישראל והופך אותו לשותף לפשע.

אני מצפה מגורמי הביטחון שאמונים על כך להרחיק מלשכת ראש הממשלה אדם שמואשם בכוונה לפגוע בביטחון ישראל.

[Rabbi Poupko @RabbiPoupko]

Dear Hannah Einbinder,
I have many criticisms of the current Israeli government, its leader, and many of the decisions it has made.

I am sure Jerry Seinfeld has his criticisms as well.

But if you didn't show up like Jerry showed up after October 7th, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, you are not an anti-Zionist; you just don't care about Jewish lives.

Photo: Dorit Asraf Mizrachi

[Adam Ma'anit @adammaanit]

@TheEconomist Bundists don't celebrate their Jewish heritage. They celebrate a fantasy identity they have to artificially construct and in negation to the vast majority of Jews. Bundism isn't "here" or "there". It's nowhere because the Bundists keep ending up dead or fleeing progroms.