CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC

🧬Genetic Counselor since 2005🧬

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Only sick & vile terrorists would attack a house of worship that also has a daycare full of children because they have issues with the faith or due to political conflicts at home or abroad, whether at a Muslim Center in San Diego or a Jewish Synagogue in Michigan. Stop the hate💔

[Nuseir Yassin @nasdaily]

Narrative violation warning:

Elders in my Arab village in Israel told me the richest Palestinians sold their land and left first. 80 years later, their grandkids now claim to be displaced victims.

I am so allergic to victim mindset. It boils my blood. ~15 million displaced Hindus and Muslims in India-Pakistan around the SAME year. No one is trying to be a victim there. It's time to move on.

"You only get to be a victim once. After that, you’re a volunteer."

[Dave Chadwick - Author @DChadwickAuthor]

Why it’s so important to defend the state of Israel and fight antisemitism; it’s very simple.

The Jewish people are the most maligned and lied about people in the history of humanity. From Martin Luther, to the composers of the learned elders of Zion, to Hitler and the Nazis, to Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and the Young Turks, the Jews have been blamed for everything wrong in the world with insane conspiracy theories and outright malicious lies.

And we are less than a century removed from the near extinction of world Jewry at the hands of a maniacal, genocidal state that was bent on world domination with antisemitism as its core value.

That’s not a conspiracy theory, it actually nearly happened.

And when the world saw these atrocities and what radical antisemitism was actually capable of, it became apparent that the Jewish people needed not only their own state, but the means of which to defend itself against those malevolent elements that seek their destruction.

Those forces are not only still extant, but currently hold and control great power and wealth on the world stage, and have shown they will use their resources to exterminate the Jews and the state of Israel for merely existing.

But as the holocaust and World War II fade from living memory, and the lessons of history are being forgotten, antisemitism in the west is again on the rise.

Why?

Because it’s easy to blame a vague external force, like the Jews, for all problems with unprovable conspiracy theories.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to latch onto lies and hatred if it not only fills in the gaps of why things are so bad in the world, but also personally absolves you from any personal responsibility or shortcomings in yourself for things not going your way.

It’s not my fault, it’s the Jews! They did this!

And in the age of social media and monetized clickbait, Jew hatred is now a lucrative business backed by those same elements that seek the destruction of the Jews. You can make a lot of money being a professional antisemite. Just sign your soul away and watch the foreign money and ad revenue pour in.

So we are now in an age where the lessons of the holocaust are no longer in living memory, where antisemitism is socially and financially rewarded, and we have an entire disaffected populace ready to eat this stuff up all over again.

The rise of casual antisemitism in our society coupled with world powers that still seek the destruction of the Jews, it is more important than ever to fight this evil and to stand with the state of Israel, who fights back against the enemies of the west, even while the west condemns them for it.

🇮🇱 🇮🇱🇮🇱

[CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC @cefogel]

@alexandrmenashe @GadSaad @LadyLevnon Yes but he was making a point, and I (as an observant Jew) understood that point; I'm assuming you probably did too. So maybe I wouldn't use the word ignorance 🤷‍♀️

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

Happy Purim everyone.

For thousands of years they rose up against us. Empires with armies, flags, and power. They swore we would disappear. Persia. Rome. Inquisitors. Tyrants. Terrorists. Etc.

They are now all just names in history books.

And we are still here.

We are still reading the Megillah. We are still celebrating. We are still building families. And we are still carrying the same Torah.

They tried to erase us. Instead, we outlived them.

Chag Purim Sameach🎉 🎭

[Todd Richman @toddrichman]

I’ve been asked my thoughts on this war with Iran.

As an American 🇺🇸 I think about:

• 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days in the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis.
• 241 U.S. service members murdered in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings.
• 19 Americans killed in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.
• Multiple Americans killed in the 1995 Riyadh bombing.
• 17 American sailors killed in the 2000 USS Cole bombing.
• ~600+ U.S. troops killed in Iraq by Iranian-backed militias using EFPs (2003–2011).
• 3 U.S. soldiers killed in a 2024 drone attack in Jordan carried out by an Iranian-backed militia.

As a Jew ✡️ I think about:

• ~1,200 Israelis slaughtered on October 7 by Hamas.
• Tens of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians by Hezbollah and Hamas.
• 29 killed in the 2012 Burgas bus bombing carried out by Hezbollah.
• 85 killed in the 1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina — orchestrated by Iran.
• 29 killed in the 1992 Argentine Israelite Mutual Association embassy bombing.
• Iranian regime leaders openly calling for Israel’s destruction for decades.

As a citizen of the world 🌍 I think about:

• Ten of thousands of Iranians killed in domestic protests and crackdowns inside Iran since 1979.
• Iranian drones and weapons have contributed to thousands of deaths in the Ukraine war.
• Iranian-backed militias in Yemen have fueled one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
• Iran has launched missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities, including the 2019 Abqaiq/Khurais attacks that knocked out roughly half of Saudi oil production, and later strikes on Ras Tanura, threatening global energy security.
• Iran has exported terror and chaos across continents — from Latin America to the Middle East, to Europe and Africa.

And currently I see how Hamas and Iran were so worried about the Middle East Peace Process expanding between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel, that it launched October 7th. Look at the destruction that has caused the last 2 1/2 years. We choose peace. They choose war.

This isn’t new. It didn’t start yesterday. And it’s not about “misunderstandings.”

For 45+ years, the regime in Tehran has funded, armed, and directed terror across the globe targeting; Americans, Israelis, Jews, Arabs, and anyone standing in its way.

That’s not opinion. That’s documented history.

Maybe without the current regime, peace across the Middle East can finally come to be!

[CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC @cefogel]

@Average_NY_Guy And BTW, it was the security guard in front of our shul that kept us updated about the strikes on Iran all throughout Shabbos

[CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC @cefogel]

@Average_NY_Guy And this is why in our town (not NY) we hire private security

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Judging by some reactions to the demise of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, I'm truly convinced that if Hitler were to be resurrected today & strike the U.S. or its allies, millions, if not billions, would call him & his Nazi regime "resistance", "post-colonial", "anti-Western", "freedom fighter", "anti-fascist", "against capitalism" and "courageous" - including many leftists, Islamists, alt-rightists, progressives, communists, antisemites, anti-Zionists, and nationalists.

[Eve Barlow @Eve_Barlow]

Khameini was a war criminal.
He was the biggest financier of terrorism worldwide.
He was responsible for murdering his own citizens, for beating young women, for imposing homophobic and misogynist laws, and for oppressing 90 million Iranians.
He was also responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

If you’re unsure about whether or not his death is a good thing, you are not a humanitarian.

[CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC @cefogel]

@HilzFuld Everything always happens over Shabbos! 😂

[CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC @cefogel]

@khaos_swordsman @ianmiles No. What it should do is make you question her opinion on everything else and make you suspect that in truth, she is not actually intelligent in other areas, or in any area for that matter.

[CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC @cefogel]

@ianmiles On behalf of girls everywhere...we don't claim her.

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

This week is Shabbos Zachor.

On this Shabbos, we read the verses in the Torah commanding us to remember what Amalek did to us and to erase the memory of Amalek from under heaven. It’s not just another reading. According to halacha, every adult Jew is obligated to hear these verses read publicly from a kosher Torah scroll in shul in order to fulfill the mitzvah (commandment).

This mitzvah is direct and serious. It reminds us that evil that rises to destroy the Jewish people isn't random, and new. Amalek attacked the weak, the stragglers, and the vulnerable. Amalek represents cold, calculated hatred.

And we’re reading this right now, as the world braces again for the possibility of war with Iran, and it feels closer than ever before.

So when we stand in shul and hear those words, we will have kavana. We will pray that God erase the evil of the Islamic regime. That He remove the threat without it costing innocent lives, not in Israel and not in Iran. That He protect protect our American soldiers who may be drawn into conflict.

We are commanded to remember, and we are commanded not to forget.

Shabbos Zachor isn't a call for revenge. It’s a call for clarity. It’s a call recognizing evil for what it is, and asking Hashem to remove it from the world.

דברים כ״ה:י״ט
זָכוֹר אֵת אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה לְךָ עֲמָלֵק… תִּמְחֶה אֶת זֵכֶר עֲמָלֵק מִתַּחַת הַשָּׁמָיִם לֹא תִּשְׁכָּח

Deuteronomy 25:19
“You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens; you shall not forget.”

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

You said nothing when Iranians were slaughtered in the worst massacre of our time. Now, you speak up to defend the terrorists that killed them.

You are a disgrace. The city of New York, the U.S., the Iranian people, and the world sees you now for what you are. An inhumane, heartless defender of terror.

Your legacy will live side by side with the Islamic regime: on the ash heap of history.

[Dave @heyyoudvd]

You’re coming at this from the wrong direction.

The discussion about a “right to exist” isn’t happening because Israel is claiming or demanding any such right. It isn’t.

This discussion is happening because Israel is the ONLY country that is constantly put in a position where it’s forced to justify its very existence.

No other country on Earth has to defend its very existence like Israel does.

This is why anti-Zionism is, in fact, anti-Semitism. Every single argument and attack used to demonize and denigrate Jews has simply been rebranded to demonize and denigrate the one Jewish state on Earth. Criticizing government policies is of course 100% fine. But that’s not what this is. There is a large movement to destroy the Jewish state, just like there was a large movement to destroy the Jews not long ago. Those are the same movement, just with adapted PR.

[CE Fogel, MGC, L-CGC @cefogel]

@mimi_teaching @TheModerateCase Spot on. Christians have every right to believe their faith, I support that. What we don't like is being proselytized to. Let Jews be Jewish, just like we let Christians be Christian. Don't come into our spaces waving Jesus in our faces.

[Jonah Platt @JonahPlatt]

Libels are Antizionist racist hate.

Slurs like “Israhell,” “Zio,” or “Zionazi” are racist hate.

Defacing something Jewish with “Free Palestine” is racist hate.

Talking over Jews and explaining to us who we are, what we are, what Zionism is — that is racist hate.

Chanting for Israelis to be ethnically cleansed, for jihadist violence against Jews, or for the killing of Jewish men and women is racist hate.

Refusing service — whether in an Uber, a restaurant, or a therapist’s office — simply because someone is Jewish or Israeli is racist hate.

Covering your face so you can roam the streets and harass Jews at synagogues, hospitals, or campuses is racist hate.

Spitting on, chasing, assaulting, or killing Jews or Israelis simply because they are Jews or Israelis is racist hate.

Moral clarity exists when the door to doubt is slammed shut.

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

Nations are born with fire. Only Israel is told the flames invalidate its existence.

When people discuss the birth of modern Israel, the conversation many times turns to a deluded assumption that violence surrounding its establishment was somehow an extraordinary rupture in an otherwise orderly regional history. As if the Middle East were largely shaped by calm transitions briefly interrupted by one uniquely contentious state.

History tells a very, very different story.

The creation of modern nations is rarely peaceful. Political identities are forged through wars, revolutions, and mass disruption. This pattern is neither Israeli nor Middle Eastern. It's global. It's human.

Consider Turkey. The modern Turkish Republic didn't simply appear in 1923 through paperwork. It emerged from the violent disintegration of the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923, a decade defined by world war, civil conflict, foreign occupation, nationalist resistance, and demographic catastrophe. Millions were killed, displaced, or expelled across the region during this period, including Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and others caught in the empire’s collapse.

The Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923), led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, wasn't merely a defensive struggle. It was also a project of nationalist consolidation. Territory was secured. Borders were enforced. A new state identity was forged from the ruins of empire. The violence was immense, multilayered, and inseparable from the birth of the modern Turkish state.

Yet Turkey’s existence isn't framed as morally conditional on the bloodshed of its founding era.

Its creation is understood as part of the violent reordering of the 20th century.

The same historical logic applies across the world. Nations born from revolution, partition, civil war, or decolonization are treated as products of geopolitical forces rather than permanent defendants in a historical trial. Violence during formation is recognized as tragic, often horrific, but structurally common.

Israel’s birth fits squarely within this global pattern.

It emerged from the end of British rule, from competing national movements, from a UN partition plan accepted by Jewish leadership and rejected by surrounding Arab states, and from a regional war launched with the stated objective of preventing the state’s survival. The violence didn't materialize in isolation. It followed invasion, mobilization, and existential confrontation.

War, by definition, guaranteed suffering on all sides.

What stands out historically isn't that Israel was born amid violence.

What stands out is the way that violence is remembered.

Every state born through conflict narrates its founding struggle as survival, liberation, or independence. Israel does the same. But uniquely, its legitimacy is often rhetorically tied to the impossibility of a bloodless birth, a standard rarely applied consistently to any other nation.

Why is nationalist consolidation understood as statecraft elsewhere but framed as indictment in the Jewish case?

Why is violence during Turkish state formation contextualized within imperial collapse, yet violence surrounding Israel treated as uniquely disqualifying?

The asymmetry is difficult to ignore.

Israel’s establishment didn't violate the historical norms of 20th century state formation. Partition conflicts, population displacements, wars following colonial withdrawal, and contested borders defined the era across continents. From Eastern Europe to South Asia to the Middle East, the pattern repeats with dark consistency.

Israel is not an exception to history.

Recognizing this doesn't require dismissing suffering, nor sanitizing war. It requires intellectual coherence. If violence during state formation invalidated legitimacy, vast portions of the modern world would lose their standing. If founding-era conflict determined moral worth, few nations would survive scrutiny.

What makes Israel different isn't how it was born.

It is the fact that its birth remains uniquely litigated, politically, morally, and emotionally, long after similar historical processes elsewhere have been absorbed into accepted history.

And that difference says far more about modern narratives than it does about 1948.

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

For centuries, the territory formally known as Palestine, didn’t exist as a sovereign, self-determined state. It was territory governed by one empire after another. The Romans ruled it. Then the Byzantines. Then various Islamic caliphates. Later the Ottomans. Eventually the British Mandate. Authority kept changing hands, but one basic fact stayed the same: no independent Palestinian Arab state emerged during those long stretches of imperial control.

Self-determination, the concept everyone talks about today, basically wasn’t part of the region’s political structure for hundreds of years. Empires governed. Borders constantly moved around. Local populations lived under outside rule because that was simply how the world worked for most of history.

By the late 19th century, the Jewish population of the land, which had never fully disappeared, was relatively small. Roughly 24,000 Jews lived there in the 1880s. What happened next was a slow, methodical process of building. They didn’t sit around and complain about foreign control. They actually started to build institutions, agricultural networks, schools, political bodies, economic systems. They revived the national language. Civic foundations were established long before statehood even arrived.

Then came the turning point. The end of British rule. The declaration of independence. And ultimately, sovereignty was established in 1948.

In practical terms, it was the local Jewish population that brought an end to the final phase of imperial governance in that territory. They didn't do it through slogans or "wanting" a state, but through state-building, diplomacy, and war when war was forced upon them.

For surrounding Arab societies, this had deep psychological and symbolic effects. A minority population, infidel Jews no less, who are long associated with exile and vulnerability, succeeded in creating a functioning state in a region who for centuries didn't know anything other than conquest and imperial rule. This wasn’t viewed by them as just a minor political adjustment. It touched identity, pride, religion, and historical perception.

Much of the modern conflict comes from that collision. Not only from competing territorial claims, but from clashing narratives. One side sees national revival and success. Another sees loss or disruption. Beneath the politics, however, sits something more human and more complicated: history rarely feels the same to everyone living through it. At some point, though, reality settles in. You can debate it, reject it, resent it, but you don’t get to rewrite it. Not everything sits in our hands to change just because we’re uncomfortable with the outcome, Israel is a reality and no amount of whining will change it.