Omri Gazitt

dad, husband, founder at @aserto_com, ex-@puppetize cpo, MSFT / @azure alum, @RiceUniversity alum, skier, aspiring martial artist, wannabe guitarist

[Amjad Taha أمجد طه @amjadt25]

A Letter to the World’s Leftists and to Righteous People : 7th of October. There are days history writes in ink, days it writes in tears, and days so terrible that history writes their names in blood. October 7 was such a day. The morning came quietly. Some were sleeping. Some were praying. Mothers were beside their children. Then Hamas terrorists, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, entered homes in Israel. Blood. Fire. Screams. Women were raped. Children were burned. Families were executed. Babies were kidnapped. Jews were hunted and murdered.

Homes that once held prayers, laughter and children's footsteps became places of death. Beds became graves. A mother's arms became empty. A child's room waited for a child who would not return.

There are no words large enough for such grief. Only the silence afterward. The silence of a mother waiting for her child. The silence left when evil has finished screaming.

Once again, Jews were murdered for being Jews. An ancient nightmare suddenly had a date in the present tense. The old hatred had found new mouths and new excuses.

From my country, the United Arab Emirates, a Muslim Arab country, came a voice within minutes calling it by its name: A terrorist attack. No excuse. No ideology can make rape resistance. No slogan can make burning a child justice. No flag can make kidnapping a baby freedom.

And yet, London. Paris. Toronto. You would have expected tears. Instead, people celebrated while Jewish families searched for the missing and children remained with kidnappers. People waved the flag of the kidnappers of babies instead of demanding freedom for the babies.

This was another wound of October 7. Innocent people were murdered, while others had forgotten how to mourn them. It felt as though civilisation had turned backwards. Back toward 1936. Back toward the old darkness. That was where morals failed.

I have travelled to universities around the world and stood beside Jewish communities attacked simply for being Jewish, to tell them: You have a friend here.

When the Holocaust happened, I was not there. I cannot go backwards and stop the trains or take one terrified child by the hand. But I was alive on October 7. And I had a choice.

One day my children may ask: Where did you stand? I want to tell them: I stood with the baby, not his kidnapper. I stood with the mother, not her rapist. I stood with the murdered, not the murderer. I stood with the Jew hunted simply for being a Jew.

When people found sophisticated words to excuse barbarism, I chose humanity's simplest word: No. No to rape. No to kidnapping. No to burning children. No to terrorism. No to antisemitism.

Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, may have lost in Gaza, but an ideology does not die because it loses a battlefield. Look at the streets of the West, universities, some parliaments and city councils. Too many young minds have become hostages to propaganda for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran's proxies in the West.

When you become silent about an October 7, you do not guarantee that October 7 will remain in the past.

Hatred begins as a sentence before it becomes a scream. Extremism begins as an excuse before it becomes an act. Evil first asks to be tolerated, then excused, then normalised.

Remember October 7. Remember the empty beds. Remember the empty arms. Remember the kidnapped. Remember the murdered. Remember Jewish families hunted in the one place every human should believe is safe: home.

Be like my country, the UAE, where antisemitism is not an opinion to celebrate. It is a crime. Where the Muslim Brotherhood is banned, not romanticised as activists.

History will ask something simple: When a child cried, where did you stand?

On October 7, I knew my answer. With the baby, not the kidnapper. With the mother, not her rapist. With the innocent, not the terrorist.

And when my children read this chapter of history, I want them to know: Their father did not look away.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

WARNING: Longer post (but worth reading or bookmarking for later).

Your life has seasons.

Each one is unique. Characterized by its own distinct desires, struggles, opportunities, and identity.

But one reflection I've had recently is just how easy it is to completely disassociate with the present season.

To give all your time and energy toward a longing for some nostalgic memory of a prior season or an anticipation for some beautiful state of a future season.

You look back at the past and all you see is sunshine. Because it all worked out. You forget (or glaze over) the struggle you endured. You're here today. You made it. You're alive. You're doing fine.

You look forward at the future and dream on what could be. You'll have so much more. More freedom. More purpose. More health. More deep connection. More everything.

The past is beautiful and the future feels limitless. So, logically, you slowly start to treat everything about the present as the bridge. A dash connecting your past and your future. A gap to be crossed as quickly as possible.

Everything you do today is in anticipation of some eventual end state.

I'm doing this now, so that I can have that later.

Unfortunately, the danger of that dissociation with the present is significant. You may spend your entire life living for a future that has a decidedly mirage-like property. You inch closer, but when it's right in front of you, it disappears and reappears on the horizon.

You may spend your entire life skipping through the present, deferring your presence, your joy, and your very humanity to a future that never comes.

In a classic French fable, a young boy is gifted with a magic ball of golden thread. He's told that if he simply pulls on the thread, time will leap forward. The catch, of course, is that once it's pulled, it can never be put back.

The young boy takes advantage of the newfound powers. Each time he's faced with a boring day at school, a frustrating set of chores, or a scolding from his parents, he pulls the thread, skipping through to the good parts.

As an adult, he continues, leaping through mundane struggles in his marriage, the friction of having a newborn, and the boredom at work. He finds himself pulling on the thread more and more, avoiding even the most minor inconveniences of his life.

But when he wakes up one day and sees an old man looking back at him in the mirror, he's filled with regret. He realizes in that moment that as he chose to skip through the boredom, struggles, and friction, so too did he miss the real texture of being alive.

How often do we all do the same? How easily do we default into this disassociation? Disconnecting from the present in anticipation of some future.

A mentor recently asked me this:

"Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?"

It hit me hard.

And to be honest, I haven't stopped replaying those words since he said them.

Why are you in such a rush?

The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.

In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.

In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.

Be in the season you're in. Don't romanticize the past, don't fantasize the future. Be here. Be now. Be in this. All of its texture, depth, and struggle. All of its joy, tension, and pain. Sit with the uncertainty. Become friends with it. Fall in love with it.

Because every single thing you do today is something your younger self dreamed of and something your older self will wish they could go back and do.

The good old days are happening, right now.

And the next time you find yourself skipping through the present, remember these words:

Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

@SamarAtTemporal @temporalio @a16z Congrats! Huge milestone indeed

[Bill Clinton @BillClinton]

Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come.  This is one of them.

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

#ErfanSoltani

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

Urgent: how to help save a young protester’s life.

I cannot believe how many years we’ve had to recycle this dystopian practice. God, when will it end? #ErfanSoltani

[Caitlin Flanagan @CaitlinPacific]

“Globalize the intifada” means “shooting or bombing people in Sydney, London, Paris, Toronto, Los Angeles and New York City as well as Tel Aviv or Jersusalem”

⁦@davidfrum⁩ makes is perfectly clear. https://t.co/xOjeQeLkTN

[David French @DavidAFrench]

So well said, by Bret.

"Though we’ll probably learn more in the weeks ahead about the mind-set of Sunday’s killers, it’s reasonable to surmise that what they thought they were doing was “globalizing the intifada.” That is, they were taking to heart slogans like “resistance is justified,” and “by any means necessary,” which have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies the world over. For many of those who chant those lines, they may seem like abstractions and metaphors, a political attitude in favor of Palestinian freedom rather than a call to kill their presumptive oppressors.

But there are always literalists — and it’s the literalists who usually believe their ideas should have real-world consequences. On Sunday, those consequences were written in Jewish blood. History tells us that it won’t be the last time." https://t.co/cL3gauYbAA

[Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 @JewsFightBack]

🚨 BREAKING: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ADMITS TO SYSTEMIC ANTISEMITISM 🚨

Columbia’s own task force has finally admitted the truth.

In a 70-page internal report, Columbia confirms that Jewish and Israeli students were harassed, isolated, and targeted. Not by fringe activists, but by the professors paid to teach them.

Here’s what Columbia itself now admits:

• Israeli students were publicly called murderers in class
• Jewish students were told their people survived the Holocaust just to commit genocide
• A rare class on Zionism was disrupted simply for not being hostile to Jews
• Professors read private emails from Jewish students out loud to shame them
• Classes were canceled so students could protest Israel
• Others were held in “Zionist-free” protest camps. Open ethnic exclusion
• A required class of over 400 students was told Israel is “so-called Israel” and that Jewish donors were laundering blood money
• One professor denied Hamas sexual violence, calling the reports “exaggerated or fabricated” during a class on advocacy
• Graduate students were told to “teach for Palestine” in every subject
• A professor claimed Theodor Herzl was an antisemite and that Eastern European Jews were not really Jewish
• Anti-Israel messaging was forced into astronomy, architecture, photography, nonprofit management, and more. Wherever they could inject antizionist hate, they did
• Columbia’s task force confirmed that swapping the word Jew for Zionist does not make it any less antisemitic

Columbia admits it has no full-time Middle East faculty who are NOT antizionist.

In other words, every professor teaching the region wants to dissolve the world’s only Jewish state in the Jewish ancestral homeland.

And the faculty behind it?
Still employed. Still spreading antizionist hate. No accountability whatsoever.

This report is not reform.
It is a signed confession.

Columbia engineered a campus-wide assault on Jewish identity and called it education.

Bookmark this post.
Spread the truth.
Stop pretending this is a debate.
This is a moral collapse.
And it happened at one of America’s most "elite" institutions.

No one gets to say “we didn’t know.”
Now you do.

(link to full report in comments.)

[Amir Tibon אמיר תיבון @amirtibon]

אתמול זכיתי לארח בבית שלי בנחל עוז את הקנצלרית לשעבר אנגלה מרקל, שהגיעה לביקור קצר בישראל.

מרקל באה ארצה כדי לקבל תואר ד"ר של כבוד מטעם מכון וייצמן. היא לא פגשה פה פוליטיקאים ולא עשתה ראיונות לתקשורת, אבל כן היה לה חשוב לראות בעיניים את השבעה באוקטובר, ולהקדיש יום שלם לביקור בעוטף עזה.

היא הגיעה אלינו לנחל עוז אחרי סיור באתר הנובה, וניכר היה שהסיור שם השפיע עליה מאד.

בנחל עוז היא הייתה כמעט שעתיים. בלי פמליה ויועצים, בלי הצהרות ומצלמות. באה לשמוע, לראות וללמוד, בצניעות ובשקט.

היא ביקשה לראות את הממ"ד שהיינו כלואים בו במשך עשר שעות, וכשהסברתי לה איך החשמל נפל באותו בוקר וכל המשפחות בשכונה נאלצו להסתגר בחשיכה מוחלטת, היא שאלה אם אפשר רגע להרגיש איך זה היה. אז כיבינו את האור וסגרנו הכל, ונשארנו באפילה גמורה שתי דקות. היא מאד התעניינה בילדים - איך הם חוו את אותו יום, איך מסבירים להם מה קרה, מה עוזר להם להתמודד עם הטראומה.

בהמשך הסתובבנו בקיבוץ, כל אדם שעבר מולנו היא עצרה ללחוץ יד, לשאול שתי שאלות, לתת מילות חיזוק ונחמה. במיוחד התרגשה לפגוש את ההורים של אילן פיורנטינו ז"ל, רכז הביטחון שנפל בהגנה על הבית ב-7/10. בשלב מסוים נתקלנו בשלושה גרמנים חביבים שמתנדבים בשיקום הקיבוץ, והיו המומים לגמרי לראות פתאום את הקנצלרית הולכת לכיוונם בדשא של חדר האוכל. וגם להם, היא פשוט אמרה שלום וכל הכבוד, והמשיכה.

תודה גדולה לשגריר גרמניה בישראל @GerAmbTLV שאירגן את הביקור החשוב הזה, ובכלל, תומך באנשי נחל עוז מאז אוקטובר האיום ועד היום.

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

@TheFP @bariweiss Much respect @bariweiss. As a long-time subscriber I hope you continue to put principle over team, as you have since you founded TFP. You’ve built an amazing org and culture. I hope you’re able to bring that to Paramount, and step away if the corporate tax proves too high.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Our democracy is not self-executing. It depends on us all as citizens, regardless of our political affiliations, to stand up and fight for the core values that have made this country the envy of the world.

[Emily Damari Amit @EmilyDamari1]

Dear Members of the @PulitzerPrizes board,

My name is Emily Damari. I was held hostage in Gaza for over 500 days.

On the morning of October 7, I was at home in my small studio apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza when Hamas terrorists burst in, shot me and dragged me across the border into Gaza. I was one of 251 men, women, children, and elderly people kidnapped that day from their beds, their homes, and a music festival.

For almost 500 days I lived in terror. I was starved, abused, and treated like I was less than human. I watched friends suffer. I watched hope dim. And even now, after returning home, I carry that darkness with me - because my best friends, Gali and Ziv Berman are still being held in the Hamas terror tunnels.

So imagine my shock and pain when I saw that you awarded a Pulitzer Prize to Mosab Abu Toha.

This is a man who, in January, questioned the very fact of my captivity. He posted about me on Facebook and asked, “How on earth is this girl called a hostage?” He has denied the murder of the Bibas family. He has questioned whether Agam Berger was truly a hostage. These are not word games - they are outright denials of documented atrocities.

You claim to honor journalism that upholds truth, democracy, and human dignity. And yet you have chosen to elevate a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered.

Do you not see what this means? Mosab Abu Toha is not a courageous writer. He is the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier. And by honoring him, you have joined him in the shadows of denial.

This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed it.

[Yehuda Teitelbaum @chalavyishmael]

🚨 BREAKING: Harvard Just Released its Final Report on Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias.

It’s 300+ pages and pretty devastating to read.

I thought I knew what was going on at Harvard, but even I wasn't prepared for this.

Let's break down the most shocking parts🧵

1/

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

The most important design decision for an authorization system is how to bring data to the engine. There are two prevalent models - stateless and stateful. Read all about the tradeoffs 👇

https://t.co/WTLjgolCF0

#authorization

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

✨ @openid #AuthZEN momentum continues to build! Our next interop event/showcase is at the @Gartner_inc IAM Summit in London in March.

We're proud to announce that as of v0.32.54, #Topaz now supports #AuthZEN API's natively! Check out the post. 👇

https://t.co/SHfVFHJJ85

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

I'm excited to speak at @DeveloperWeek 2025! If you're in Santa Clara, come check out my talk, "Your Cheat Code for API Authorization", part of the @OpenApiSpec track. And if you want to chat, you can set up some time using the link below. https://t.co/OEMBdNPX4y
#DevWeek2025

[OpenID @openid]

✅ Calling AuthZEN implementers! ✅

We are delighted to announce that the AuthZEN WG will be hosting an interoperability session at Gartner IAM Summit in London on March 24-25! https://t.co/03eTVNkz9V @omrig @davidjbrossard

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

@tnachen Hey, if there was an MP of a venture fund that would be managing k8s clusters, my money would be on you :)

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

Authorization is hard. It needs to be low-latency, support high throughput, and be manageable. The industry seems split between #centralized and #distributed architectures. Our latest post explores the tradeoffs, and offers an attractive middle ground.
https://t.co/pZrw8G3JvF

[Omri Gazitt @omrig]

@AvivaKlompas Indeed it made me cry. Thank god they are home, and may the other 95 hostages be back home soon.