David Markus Rutsche

Editor | thinking about politics, philosophy, theology | avowed Brandomian | Israel & antisemitism | PhD HSG (on Rawls)

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

Unsortierte Gedanken: Die Männer, die das Massenverbrechen am Samstag begangen oder es bejubelt, angefeuert haben, waren nicht „verzweifelt“. Es entlud sich nicht der Hass von Unterdrückten gegen ihre vermeintlichen Unterdrücker, sondern offen zur Schau gestellter und… (1/n)

[Jüdische Allgemeine @JuedischeOnline]

Der Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels ging in diesem Jahr an Philippe Sands. Ausgerechnet ein Mann, dessen Autorität auf juristischer Präzision und universellen Maßstäben gründet, nimmt es mit dem Völkerrecht erstaunlich ungenau. Ein Kommentar. https://t.co/oRloUPpP3E

[Lahav Harkov @LahavHarkov]

Is the Whole World Wrong?
Great essay by @NatanSharansky
https://t.co/DruRDp48Cn

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

@ajournomento Ich stimme seiner Folgerung natürlich zu, vermisse bei Verlautbarungen dieser Art aber immer, dass mitgedacht oder jedenfalls mitgesagt wird, dass die Ablehnung der Todesstrafe auch für die katholische Kirche eine relative neue Erkenntnis und das Ergebnis eines Lernprozesses ist.

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

@KatyaSedgwick What genre of tweet is this and where can I get more of it?

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

@titusfilm Instant follow. Can’t wait to go back.

[Daniel Sugarman @Daniel_Sugarman]

After the Green Party's "Zionism is Racism" vote, the Leader of Haringey Council, which is controlled by the Greens, wrote to various Synagogues in the borough to "reassure" them.

I want to show you Highgate Synagogue's reply. I believe it is worth reading in its entirety.

[Daniel Friedman @DanFriedman81]

Israel’s valid military objective after October 7 was the rescue of its kidnapped people and the destruction of the military capacity of Hamas and the neutralization of the the threat to its civilians that Hamas demonstrated it represented on that day.

That meant no more rockets launched from Gaza at Israel. No more tunnel network for transporting, hiding and protecting troops, munitions and kidnapped Israeli hostages. And no more standing army of tens of thousands of bloodthirsty paramilitary fighters right on Israel’s border training and planning to slaughter civilians and drag children into spider-holes.

All of that had to be destroyed. Any action necessary to achieve that goal was proportionate. The collateral damage is unfortunate, but falls within parameters when balanced against Israel’s crucial security needs after suffering the atrocities of October 7, 2023.

If the death, destruction and loss was too much for the Palestinian people to bear, on every single day of the war, Hamas had the option to surrender and release the hostages. If Gaza had voluntarily disarmed and transitioned to civilian leadership that would cooperate with Israel on the decommissioning of Hamas’s munitions and tunnel infrastructure, Israel’s security objective could have been achieved with zero loss of civilian life.

Every single photo you see of the destruction in Gaza is something that Gaza chose. Every single death and every single destroyed building was proportionate and justified by the necessity of Israel’s security objective.

“Never again” doesn’t mean peace at any cost. That is the policy of Neville Chamberlain. “Never again” means we will fight like demons before we will ever allow ourselves to be herded onto boxcars. “Never again” means what happened to Gaza will happen to anyone who does something like October 7, 2023.

Gaza had the option not to do that. They are proud they did it and their supporters are rallying all over the world today to declare their intent to do it again. Gaza chose what happened and they are choosing what will continue to happen until they make a different choice.

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

Statt vieler Worte, zum heutigen Tag der Erinnerung an den 7. Oktober 2023 nur das.

https://t.co/VkMKVbduob

🇮🇱

[עובדה @Uvda_tweet]

אישה אחת, שעשויה מחומר מיוחד, מוקפת מחבלים, ויודעת שהופקרה לגורלה. ואז, היא מישירה מבט אליהם – ומוצאת את הדבר האחד שהיא יכולה לעשות להם, וחורצת לשון, מולם. כנרת גת. יהא זכרה - מהפכה

[Blake Flayton @blakeflayton]

Kinneret Gat, 67, was executed in kibbutz Be’eri after looking into the cameras of our era’s Einsatzgruppen.

[Shany Mor שני מור شني مور @ShMMor]

Today the paywall was lifted (temporarily?) on my article from three years ago “Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip.” It was my attempt in the first weeks after October 7 to understand a current event as a historical one. https://t.co/SuncMQqUr4

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

This Israeli account, normally satirical, is posting a series of very explicit 7/10 raw material today.
This is helpful. It makes a point.
Hamas butchered its victims by hand. Its murders were artisanal. Not a single victim was ״incidental damage”, every dead child and adult body was marked by the message “We mean it and greatly enjoy it.”
As my father used to say, if you don’t discern between degrees of evil you will become a servant of evil.

[rose @brandeispilled]

Something that bothers me is that we teach the Holocaust in such a way that it’s perfect in narrative structure— a beginning, middle, and end. Rising and falling action. Book-like. We don’t teach that after the Holocaust, Jews had nowhere to go back to. Their businesses and homes repossessed. Their property looted. Families slaughtered.

Oftentimes, the only place they could remain, and temporarily at that, were displaced persons camps.

We don’t teach that after the war was officially over, European society remained intensely antisemitic and continued carrying out persecution and pogroms. We don’t teach about communist governments in Eastern European countries purging out what few Jews remained after the Holocaust.

Instead, we make it a narrative. We put a bow on it. We pretend that after Hitler died, everything was well in the world once again and everyone lived happily ever after.
Who does this serve?

[Traveling israel @travelingisrae1]

October 7 Through the Lens: Evidence They Can’t Ignore

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

@larscastellucci Die Nachkommen der Opfer sind nicht dafür zuständig, dass die Nachkommen der Täter ihre historische Verantwortung im Gedächtnis behalten. Es ist deshalb ziemlich perfide, die Israelis dafür in Mithaftung zu nehmen, dass unsere Erinnerungskultur gerade vor die Hunde geht.

[Mena-Watch @MENA_WATCH]

Der versuchte Massenmord im Dubai-Flieger wird von großen Medien zur banalen Cockpit-Keilerei umgedeutet. Wenn Passagiere im Visier von Terroristen stehen, greift eine anti-israelische Voreingenommenheit, die Zivilcourage verschweigt und Täter schützt. https://t.co/WpAeQ4cJyh

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

@derspiegel Es nervt wirklich. Ihr schreibt "abgestürzt", so als wäre es ein Missgeschick und nicht etwa die absichtsvolle Tat eines Terroristen gewesen, dessen mörderischer Plan zum Glück noch verhindert werden konnte. Aber alles, was nicht ins Framing passt, muss zurechtgebogen werden...

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

In short, the facts now emerging about the fatalities in Gaza are exactly as we predicted back in 2024.

A lot of people should lose their careers over their ridiculous statistical modelling predicting hundreds of thousands of deaths in outlets like the Lancet and joke NGOs like AOAV. They won’t. They’ll get a free pass. Their blood libel work is done.

Famine allegations, destruction of healthcare, targeting civilians; all debunked by Hamas’s own numbers. That’s before we get to the 5,000 combatants we’ve found on the lists so far (from obituaries released mainly by the militant groups themselves).

The world’s media should hang their heads in shame.

[Eirik Schrøder-Bråtane @EirikSchr]

Gaza Ministry of Health has now released mortality numbers for 2025. For the first time since the war, they give numbers for all deaths, including natural deaths.

In 2025 there were a total of 24,650 deaths in Gaza. 18,870 (76.6%) of these were violent, of which 17,286 (70.1%) were due to "war operations" and 1,584 (6.4%) were classified as accidents. There were a total of 5,780 (23.4%) non-violent deaths, including disease, old age, and all other causes.

5,780 deaths is about the same as the annual non-violent mortality in Gaza before the war, and the age distribution is similar to 2022. There is no significant excess of non-violent deaths.

In other words, despite frequent and loud claims to the contrary, there seems to be very few indirect deaths due to the war in Gaza in 2025.

As there were 50,227 births in 2025, this gives a natural population growth of 25,577 or 1.2% in Gaza in 2025, which is higher population growth than most countries in the world and more than the world average.

There are currently ~6,000 births/month in Gaza, per GMH. Assuming a similar number of non-violent deaths in Gaza in 2026 as in 2025, that means there are currently 12x more births than deaths in Gaza, and that Gaza is now experiencing one of the highest population growths in the world.

[David Markus Rutsche @dm_rutsche]

RT @Ron_Prosor: Wir sind heute offenbar nur um Haaresbreite einem zweiten 9/11 entkommen.

Ein mutmaßlich dschihadistischer Terroranschlag…