Fran 🎗🧡 , Zionist

I don't tolerate liars. Israeli-American, Feminist & Granny! Child of Shoah survivors. Retired fed. civ. rts lawyer. Go Israeli baseball! UChicago,UWis Law

[Fran 🎗🧡 , Zionist @josephpapptheat]

One cannot annex one's sovereign territory. The West Bank and Gaza were within Israel's borders as of the declaration of statehood in 1948. The West Bank was occupied by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt in their aggressive war in 1948. It was recovered in 1967.

[Natasha Hausdorff @HausdorffMedia]

On the status of the disputed territories in international law and the legality of "settlements".

[Reuven Goldstein @curatorWH]

In the 1600s, coffee spread from the Ottoman Empire into Europe. Livorno, Italy became a key gateway through its thriving Jewish merchant community. One of Europe’s earliest coffeehouses opened there in 1632.

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

Remembering the life and legacy of Nobel Prize-winning Jewish poet and playwright Nelly Sachs.

Born in Berlin in 1891, as the Nazis rose to power, her world shattered. By 1940, she faced imminent danger.
With the help of Swedish contacts, including efforts initiated by Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf, Nelly and her elderly mother escaped Nazi Germany to Sweden.
In exile, grief became her pen. She wrote haunting, luminous poetry giving voice to the millions who were silenced, capturing the agony of the Holocaust while reaching toward hope, humanity, and the enduring spirit of the Jewish people.
In 1966, Nelly Sachs shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with Israeli author S.Y. Agnon.
At the age of 78, she passed away on May 12, 1970, in Stockholm, Sweden.
May her memory forever be a blessing. 🕯️

Photo: Nobel Foundation and National Library of Israel

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

In 2005, Israel gave Palestinians exactly what the world demanded: “Land for Peace.”

They unilaterally withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip, but got no peace.

The IDF forcibly removed every last Jew — even digging up Jewish graves. Gaza was made completely Jew-free, exactly as Palestinians demanded.

Israel handed over thriving communities, farms, and hundreds of millions in infrastructure — including productive greenhouses that could have become an economic engine for a Palestinian state.

What did the Palestinians do with this gift?

They destroyed it.

Mobs looted and burned the greenhouses. They ransacked and demolished synagogues. They celebrated with Hamas flags and gunfire.

Then, in January 2006, they voted Hamas — a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews — into power.

By 2007, Hamas completed a bloody coup, threw Fatah members off rooftops, and seized total control of Gaza.

The result?

- Tens of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians

- More than 500 miles of underground terror tunnels

- Billions in international aid stolen for war, not welfare

- Gaza transformed into a fortified Islamic terror enclave

Land for peace was tried — and violently rejected.

Everything Israel gave away in 2005 became the launchpad for the October 7 Massacre.

This is the ultimate proof: the Palestinian movement has never wanted a state living next to Israel. Its goal has always been the destruction of the Jewish state — in any part of the Land.

Important note: The blockade only came after Hamas seized power in 2007 and turned Gaza into a launchpad for war. And when that happened, Egypt joined it too.

Disengagement didn’t bring peace.
It brought the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

[Stephen Uzzell @StephenUzzell2]

The children pictured below survived the #Holocaust thanks to the efforts of Jewish resistance fighters Marianne Cohn & Mila Racine.

#OTD 31 May 1944 Marianne was caught by a German patrol.

"She had the opportunity to leave us, to save her own life... but she did neither."

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

On August 7, 1942, a 28-year-old German oil executive stood outside a Jewish orphanage in Nazi-occupied Poland and watched SS soldiers throw babies out of windows.

That moment changed his life forever.

His name was Berthold Beitz.

At the time, he wasn’t a resistance fighter. He wasn’t a politician. He wasn’t part of an underground movement.

He was a businessman working for the German oil industry in Boryslaw, a town in occupied Poland where Hitler’s war machine depended heavily on oil production.

Beitz had a wife at home.
A small daughter.
A comfortable position.

And after witnessing what the SS were doing to Jewish families, he went home and told his wife Else:

“We have to do something.”

Most people in occupied Europe survived by looking away.

Berthold and Else refused.

Over the next several years, they would save around 800 Jewish lives.

Not with weapons.
Not with speeches.

With forged papers.
False job titles.
Hidden rooms.
And unimaginable courage.

Beitz discovered that Jews officially classified as “essential oil workers” were temporarily protected from deportation.

So he started expanding the definition.

Tailors became “petroleum technicians.”
Hairdressers became “oil specialists.”
Rabbis and scholars suddenly had paperwork claiming they were critical to Germany’s fuel production.

He signed the papers himself.

When deportation trains arrived, Beitz sometimes walked directly up to the cattle cars and demanded prisoners back, claiming they were essential workers needed for the war effort.

And astonishingly, it often worked.

While Berthold rescued people publicly, Else turned their home into a sanctuary.

Jewish children hid in the cellar while Nazi officers sat upstairs eating dinner.

Parents who knew they were about to be murdered entrusted their children to her arms.

If the Gestapo had searched the house thoroughly, the Beitz family would have been executed.

They did it anyway.

In 1943, the Gestapo finally investigated Berthold after forged work permits were discovered.

He denied everything.

Somehow, he escaped arrest.

By the end of the war, approximately 800 people were alive because the Beitz family refused to accept evil as normal.

After the war, Berthold rebuilt his life quietly.

He became one of the most powerful industrialists in Germany, eventually helping lead the massive Krupp steel empire and later ThyssenKrupp.

He advised world leaders.
Helped strengthen postwar Germany.
Worked behind the scenes during the Cold War.

But he almost never spoke publicly about what he had done during the Holocaust.

His own grandson later admitted the family learned many details only by reading newspapers.

When people called him a hero, Berthold rejected the word.

He said:

“I was just a human being who saw what was happening.”

In 1973, Israel honored Berthold and Else Beitz as Yad Vashem “Righteous Among the Nations,” one of the highest recognitions given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Berthold Beitz died in 2013 at age 99.

Else died the following year.

The children they saved went on to have children of their own.

Today, thousands of people exist because one German couple refused to look away while others did.

Berthold Beitz spent the rest of his life believing he had simply done what any human being should do.

History tells us otherwise.

Because when cruelty becomes ordinary, the people who choose compassion become extraordinary.

[Dr. Maalouf ‏ @realMaalouf]

HEARTBREAKING: Her 10-month-old baby was cut in half with a knife in front of her, her husband shot dead, and she watched them split her second child's skull with a machete. They also cut off one of her hands.

This is life for Christians in Nigeria. The media remains silent.

[Kosher @koshercockney]

This is Kim Dukarker, a hero in the Israeli Border Patrol, 22 years old.

She was butchered on October 7th at the Nova Festival by Palestinian Terrorists.

During her service she was known for preventing multiple terror attacks.

The strength of Israeli women. This is a hero

[Muzeum Auschwitz @MuzeumAuschwitz]

31 maja 1911 | W Pradze urodził się czeski Żyd Kurt Singer.

Deportowany do #Auschwitz z getta w #Theresienstadt 1 lutego 1943 r. Nie przeżył.

[Spencer Joseph @SpencerJJoseph]

‘During Ireland’s hour of greatest need, Jews donated more aid than anyone.’

https://t.co/lG4p5MRe9x

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

On This Day — May 31, 1834

114 years before the modern State of Israel, 1000s of Arab fellahin (peasants) & Bedouins — enraged by Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha’s conscription law — stormed Jerusalem & unleashed hell on its ancient, defenseless Jewish community.

No “occupation.” No “settlements.” No Israel. No modern political Zionism. Just Jews living as subjugated dhimmis under Muslim/Egyptian rule.

On the night of May 31, ~40 men from the Bethlehem Fawaghirah tribe crawled through the sewage canals of Silwan, overpowered guards, and opened the gates from inside. Thousands of armed Arabs poured in.

The small Egyptian garrison fled to the Tower of David. The mob then turned on the Jews.

Eyewitness Rabbi Jehoseph Schwarz:

“The savage victors, men, women and children surrounded the markets and the streets and cheered with their strange catcall ‘loo, loo, loo’… At dawn, we looked through our windows and saw that the city was full of wild and cruel Bedouins… several homes had been devastated.”

Jews hid in caves and crevices. Homes and shops were plundered. Many were murdered in the streets. Women and daughters were raped.

A contemporary Western report (Plymouth Herald - below) described Jews left with “not a bed to lie on ... many were murdered, their wives and daughters violated.”

The mob was preparing to storm the Tower of David when rumor of Ibrahim Pasha’s approach sent them fleeing.

But Jerusalem was only the beginning.

Two weeks later in Safed (then the largest Jewish community in the Land, ~2,000 households), the pogrom lasted 33 days. Armed Arab villagers and locals:

- Murdered ~500 Jews

- Raped women in front of husbands and children, sometimes on Torah scrolls

- Burned more than 500 Torah scrolls — using them for horse reins, blacksmith aprons, and shoes

- Tore tefillin and tallitot for sashes and sacks

- Beat rabbis mercilessly, gouged eyes, and drove survivors naked into fields “like wild animals,” left starving for weeks

- Destroyed the only Hebrew printing press in the Land

No army. No state. Just defenseless dhimmi Jews — convenient, powerless scapegoats for an Arab revolt against the Egyptians (in which the Jews had zero involvement).

Pattern recognition matters. Long before modern politics, when Arabs held power over Jews in the Land of Israel, the impulse to humiliate, plunder, rape, and massacre Jews was already deeply entrenched.

[Mazelit Airaksinen 🎗🇺🇸 🇮🇱 @Mazelit_]

"I lived and worked on a Kibbutz in Israel when I was 16 and I have loved our Jewish homeland ever since. My heart is breaking from these atrocities. ... I will always stand with Israel and the Jewish people."

—Jerry Seinfield (October 9th 2023)

[Reuven Goldstein @curatorWH]

Leslie Buck, born Laszlo Büch in 1922 in Czechoslovakia,survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald before emigrating to the U.S. In 1963. He created NYC’s iconic blue and white “Anthora” coffee cup. Becoming an iconic piece of New York City history.

[Rabbi Poupko @RabbiPoupko]

The people of Gaza burned this family alive on October 7th.

We will never forget Tamar, Johnny, 5-year-old Arbel, Shachar, and baby Omer Kedem Siman Tov.

May their memory be a blessing.

[Tami 🇮🇱 @roitele1]

Cuando terminó la guerra, la matanza paró. Pero para decenas de miles de niños judíos, la liberación no significaba volver a casa. 💔

No había casa al que volver.

Se estima que 1,5 millones de niños judíos fueron asesinados en el Holocausto. Los que sobrevivieron a menudo emergían solos: padres disparados en los bosques, gaseados en campamentos o simplemente se fueron. Organizaciones como el Comité de Distribución Conjunta Judío Americano y OSE lucharon para encontrar a estos niños esparcidos por toda Europa, escondidos en conventos, granjas y hogares de extraños. A muchos se les había dado nombres falsos y se habían olvidado los suyos.

Los hogares infantiles de personas desplazadas que se abrieron en Alemania, Austria e Italia después de 1945 se convirtieron en algo notable: lugares donde los niños judíos comenzaron a recordar quiénes eran. Aprendieron hebreo, celebraron Shabbat por primera vez y reconstruyeron lentamente las identidades que los nazis habían intentado borrar.

Sus historias se encuentran entre ls capítulos más desgarradores y silenciosamente heroicos de todo el Holocausto. Merecen que les digan.

[Auschwitz Memorial @AuschwitzMuseum]

31 May 1939 | Dutch Jewish girl, Sara Channah Jacobsen, was born in Rotterdam.

She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Westerbork in August 1942. She was murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection.

[John Cocker 🇺🇦 @joecocker15]

On this day in 1926, a Czech Jewish girl was born. On the 10 Jun 1942 she was deported, with her parents, to the Ujazdow labour camp in German occupied Poland. They all perished in the Shoah. Of the 1000 Jews deported that day, only 3 survived. Her name was Johana Ledererová

[Fran 🎗🧡 , Zionist @josephpapptheat]

Why has a country of just 330,000 citizens and a leading patron of the Muslim Brotherhood plowed $400 billion dollars into the United States?Mapping Qatar’s $400 Billion Footprint in the United States — Natalie Ecanow; FDD Memo https://t.co/SVEwX7H7X9

[Fran 🎗🧡 , Zionist @josephpapptheat]

https://t.co/BaXWNovqMx

[Fran 🎗🧡 , Zionist @josephpapptheat]

https://t.co/sRulQA3JLK

[Fran 🎗🧡 , Zionist @josephpapptheat]

Born in Haifa.
https://t.co/SI0gHl8xdu