ozi

[Boy George @BoyGeorge]

#Shalom

[Amit Segal @AmitSegal]

In 1995, an American president needed two Hebrew words to bury an Israeli prime minister. In 2026, Israel needs the same two for a Baptist son of a South Carolina pool hall:

Shalom, chaver.

Israel has lost its greatest friend on Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham.

That isn’t an exaggeration; it’s the consensus of the Israeli opposition and coalition, who rose in unison this morning to eulogize the beloved senator.

Born and raised in his beloved South Carolina, Graham grew up living in a cramped room behind his parents’ combined pool hall, bar and liquor store. Later becoming a lawyer and enlisting in the U.S. military, he entered Congress in 1995, becoming the first Republican to represent South Carolina’s 3rd District since Reconstruction. In 2003, he moved up to the Senate, where he and John McCain became a trio with Joe Lieberman—dubbed the “Three Amigos” by Gen. David Petraeus on one of their endless trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. Hawks, travelers and crossers of aisles for wars worth fighting. Especially Israel’s.

Sander Gerber, his partner on the Taylor Force Act, once quipped that the senator was “more pro-Israel than AIPAC,” while Christians United for Israel counted him among Israel’s most stalwart allies in Congress. His evangelical base—a pillar of both South Carolina politics and American Zionism—wasn’t a constituency he courted so much as one he belonged to.

Addressing AIPAC’s annual dinner on March 22, 2010, he told the room the evening was about “our best friend in the world, the State of Israel”—and had every member of Congress present stand while he pledged that Congress had Israel’s back and would not let it down. In the same speech, he declared Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel and the eternal home of the Jewish faith, said it was sometimes better to go to war than to allow a second Holocaust to develop, and closed with “never again.”

He more than lived up to the commitment. From Obama’s JCPOA—which he fought—to Donald Trump’s short-lived rapprochement with Tehran this past month, through the Taylor Force Act, the anti-BDS legislation, the embassy move and the Golan recognition he personally championed, Graham operated on a single axiom, the one the Hebrew press identified this morning as his signature line: Israel’s security is America’s security. He applied it without exception. In 2013, he threatened to sink Chuck Hagel’s nomination as the most anti-Israel defense secretary in American history; in December 2014, standing in Jerusalem beside Netanyahu, he promised on Iran sanctions that “the Congress will follow your lead”—a sentence no other American senator would say to a foreign leader, and Graham said it on camera.

Just 15 days after the October 7 massacre, Graham was in Tel Aviv leading a bipartisan delegation—noting that “10 percent of the United States Senate is in Israel.” Destroying Hamas, he made clear, was nonnegotiable, and he had stark words for Tehran: “We’re here today to tell Iran, we’re watching you”—if the war grew, it was coming to their backyard: “There won’t be two fronts, there will be three.” He told the room exactly why it had happened, insisting no one would ever convince him the massacre was about anything but stopping reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Israel—the very normalization project he had spent the preceding months building.

He wasn’t shy about Biden’s flip-flopping either. When the administration threatened to withhold weapons over Rafah, Graham hauled Lloyd Austin before the Armed Services Committee and asked whether he’d have supported Hiroshima and Nagasaki—then demanded to know how Washington could dictate terms to a country whose neighbors want to kill all the Jews. He called Biden’s approach “ass-backwards.” When the ICC prosecutor moved on Israeli leaders, his warning was five words of pure Graham: “If they do this to Israel, we’re next.”

When Israel launched Operation Rising Lion on June 13, 2025, his reaction was five words: “Game on. Pray for Israel.” The tweet drew fury from all directions—including from Meghan McCain, his late best friend’s daughter, who informed him it was not a game—but it was, in its way, the most honest sentence of the war: the fight he had demanded since at least 2010 had finally arrived, and he was not going to pretend otherwise. By August, he was telling South Carolina Republicans that if America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us. By 2026, per The Wall Street Journal, he was shuttling to Jerusalem to coach Netanyahu on making the case for war to Trump.

In January, no sooner had he disembarked than he posted: “I just landed in Israel, the one and only Jewish State, and America’s strongest ally and friend since its founding.” He returned once more in February 2026—Netanyahu, Defense Minister Katz, the General Staff—the final visit of several dozen across the decades. In March, amid the MAGA backlash over the Iran war, he gave the line that now reads as a valediction: “I will be with Israel until our dying day.”

Far too soon, that day arrived. It found him the same as always: back from an ally’s capital, stalwartly defending a country’s right to freedom and safety, and scheduled for Sunday television to explain why.

[AIPAC 🇺🇸🇮🇱 @AIPAC]

At just .05% of the federal budget, security assistance to Israel is an investment with massive returns for America.

🇺🇸🇮🇱

[Aaron David Miller @aarondmiller2]

Having been around block in Arab-Israeli negotiations, this is one impressive document, especially bold from Lebanese Govt, given Iran/Hizbollah threats. Israel had pretty good lawyers. The word withdrawal doesn’t appear; redeployment does. Clearly implementation is challenge.

[Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian @manniefabian]

Buried beneath a hilltop village in southern Lebanon, just kilometers from the Israeli border, the Hezbollah terror group built an underground drone “airbase” from which it launched Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles at Israel.

The subterranean facility, guarded by massive steel blast doors, was built in the past decade with direct Iranian assistance, including planning and funding, Israeli military officials told The Times of Israel during an organized media tour of the site last week.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, the tunnel runs several hundred meters into the mountain, reaching depths of 29 meters (95 feet) under Majdal Zoun — including beneath a mosque.

Inside the tunnel, which was wide enough for a standard vehicle to drive through, Hezbollah had assembled Iranian-made drones using parts smuggled into Lebanon, according to the army.

[John Spencer @SpencerGuard]

To be very clear: reality is very different from the rhetoric. The IDF takes extraordinary measures to mitigate civilian harm in Lebanon. In fact, as in Gaza, it employs more civilian harm mitigation measures than any military in past or current operations.

The IDF issues evacuation warnings through multiple channels including text messages, phone calls, voicemails, flyers, radio, television, and social media. It operates dedicated civilian harm mitigation cells, tracks civilian presence through drones, cell phone data, and other ISR capabilities, and uses rigorous targeting processes that include legal reviews and proportionality assessments for any planned strikes. Legal reviews at lowest tactical level, and with the ability (which happens often as well as command decisions not to strike based on all context) to override commander decisions, unlike any other military.

In southern Lebanon, these measures are particularly effective because civilians can move away from military objectives and active combat areas.

Even in Beirut, the IDF has repeatedly provided warnings identifying specific buildings that will be struck and when. The warnings have proven so reliable that Lebanese citizens and journalists have set up cameras in advance to record the strikes. When targeting Hezbollah senior leaders, command meetings, or other military objectives in densely populated areas such as Dahiyeh (the Hezbollah controlled neighborhood of Beirut), the IDF relies on precision-guided munitions, small diameter munition (warheads with less explosives), and other low collateral damage munitions, detailed intelligence, and other methods designed to limit collateral damage while achieving the legitimate military objective.

There is also no equivalency. Israel does not intentionally target civilians. Hezbollah is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization whose strategy includes deliberately attacking civilians. Hezbollah launches rockets, missiles, and drones at civilian communities in northern Israel (daily, despite any cease fires), targeting homes, schools, businesses, and civilian infrastructure.

One side conducts legal reviews, proportionality assessments, civilian warnings, and precision strikes against military objectives. The other is a international designated terrorist group that intentionally places military assets among civilians while deliberately targeting civilians.

[Eric Adams @ericadamsfornyc]

What an incredible display of unity, love, and resilience as tens of thousands of New Yorkers turned out for the Israel Day Parade in NYC!

Today, we boycotted antisemitism and sent a powerful message: New York will always stand with its Jewish community, and New Yorkers will always stand with Israel.

🇺🇸🇮🇱 עם ישראל חי 🇺🇸🇮🇱

[Aizenberg @Aizenberg55]

🚨“Dog rape” hoax update:

The @nytimes continues to stand by Nicholas Kristof’s story alleging Israel trained dogs to sexually penetrate prisoners on command, part of what he claims is "standard operating procedure." Key updates:

📌Somehow, despite this claim about dogs never being documented in history and garnering intense worldwide interest, neither the NYT nor any other major outlet has treated it as a news story. It remains “opinion journalism,” as the NYT itself admits.

📌One of the key sources, Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, has already walked back the central claim on Piers Morgan's show. It is no longer “penetration” on command. Now he says: “the detainee sort of exposed and having a dog sort of seemed like it was about mounting… Whether there’s been penetration or not, I don’t know if there has been or hasn’t.” Even this is still wholly unverified, but it is very different from Israel trained dogs to rape.

📌Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert contradicts Kristof’s claim that he accepted the article’s allegations. Olmert says he was effectively duped into endorsing a narrative he did not accept as true. So the most easily checkable testimony in the piece was misrepresented, but we are supposed to trust the testimony of mainly unnamed persons that of course cannot be fact-checked.

📌After 5 days of international discussion, millions of views, and endless comments, not one dog expert has come forward to confirm that a dog can be trained on command to become aroused and penetrate a human anally. All so far have called the claim absurd and anatomically impossible. The NYT claims the story was carefully fact-checked but did not produce an expert to back the claim.

📌The supposed historical examples do not rescue the story. The claims about Pinochet era Chile and Nazi Klaus Barbie are false and do not support the specific claim of actual rape, which by definition requires penetration. In those cases, dogs were reportedly used to mount naked victims as torture and assault. Obviously horrific, but it is not evidence of dogs being trained to become aroused and penetrate humans on command.

📌The actual Chile testimony (not articles about the incident) regarding Ingrid Olderock and her dog Volodia by a victim says the dog was ordered to “climb on top of me.” One naked victim specifically said, “mercifully, there was NO PENETRATION.” Another said she thought a man was coming to rape her, then realized “it was a dog” when it was on her. None of the testimony establishes penetration, just mounting and general assault on naked victims.

📌The Klaus Barbie testimony specifically says: “Barbie kept two German shepherd dogs. One was trained to lunge and bite. The other was trained to mount naked women who had first been ordered on their hands and knees.” Again, no arousal or penetration is claimed - because that is not possible. Many bad faith actors have called anyone who points this out as "denying the Holocaust."

📌The same appears true in the David Parker Ray case. Dogs were allegedly used to threaten, terrorize, and sexually abuse naked victims. But the record does not establish dogs trained to perform actual penetration on command. There is no evidence Ray was a dog trainer capable of such feats that dog experts say is impossible. Ray horrifically did what Olderock & Barbie did.

📌Further connections established (even though it was already 100% established) between Euro-Med Monitor, the ultimate source for this story and Hamas. "Journalist" Sami al-Sai also a proven Hamas mouthpiece. Ultimately the entire "opinion" piece is a form of well-laundered "Hamas told me so."

📌The NYT’s denial that the piece was timed ahead of the Civil Commission report on Hamas’ 10/7 sexual violence is not credible. Publishing this about 12 hours earlier as sheer coincidence strains belief. Journalists from various outlets were approached in the weeks prior to the report's release and people in the industry talk. Israeli officials affirmed they approached the NYT, and this is credible. Why approach CNN and others but not the NYT? Someone at the NYT knew and curated the timing.

📌“Why not allow an investigation?” is not an answer to this hoax. First, Israel is not required to open outside investigations every time an opinion writer publishes an unverified atrocity claim. Plenty of Israelis are already demanding investigations into prison abuses, and those should be handled by Israel internally as a law-abiding democracy. Second, the burden of proof is on the accuser. If you allege “dogs trained to rape,” you need credible evidence. You do not get to make an absurd claim and then demand that others disprove it.

Sources below:

[Arnav Mehta @arnavmehta3]

As a pancreatic cancer doc, cannot understate the gravity of this moment. I get chills at the prospect that we will imminently have something else to offer our patients with real clinical impact. @AACR #AACR26 @RevMedicines

[Iris @streetwize]

This is a documentary unlike anything we've seen before :
OCT 7 , The moments when members of kibbutz Kfar Aza enter the ‘Alonit’ adjacent to the kibbutz. Soldiers carry children in their arms and the residents see each other for the first time – after being rescued from the fire, and the ‘Alonit’ cameras record everything: the pain, the friendship, and the kindness. Here:
@GaliGnt
@Uvda_tweet

[Am Yisrael Chai 🐙 @AmYisraelChai_X]

“Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

• General Eisenhower, who realized that people would try to deny the Holocaust took place.

[Rep. Pat Fallon @RepPatFallon]

General Eisenhower's comments after viewing the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945, will forever stand as a clear reminder that the world must never forget the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.

Just days after US troops liberated the camp, Eisenhower, along with Generals Bradley and Patton, personally toured the site. The horrors they encountered were beyond words.

Eisenhower was determined for the world to see the truth. He ordered comprehensive documentation through photographs, films, and reports.

In a letter to US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, Eisenhower wrote, "I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda.'"

That is the kind of moral clarity America needed then and still needs today.

On Yom HaShoah, we remember the six million Jews and millions of others murdered by the Nazis. We honor the American & Allied heroes who liberated the camps, and we recommit ourselves to teaching this history honestly so that such an atrocity never happens again.

[Itai Biran @ItaiBiran]

If you walk through an Israeli cemetery, you’ll notice something different.

On the graves of Holocaust survivors, below their own names, there are often lists of others. These are their parents, brothers, and sisters who were murdered by the Nazis, etched into the stone because they never received a grave of their own.

My grandparents’ headstones bear their names, and in their case as well, the slabs below carry the names of their siblings who were murdered in the Holocaust and denied a final resting place.

For survivors, their own grave became a memorial for an entire family wiped out.
It is a way to defy the Nazis’ attempt to erase them from history. It gives us, the grandchildren, a physical place to light a candle and say: “You existed. You are part of us.”

But there are those with no grave and no name carved into stone, because no one was left to write their names.

Our job is to be their memory. We remember those who have a name on a stone, and those who do not.

May their memories be a blessing.
🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

[Auschwitz Memorial @AuschwitzMuseum]

A heart-breaking moment captured in an SS photograph of a group of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in or around May 1944.

A child found a flower & is giving or showing it to an older boy.

All the people in the picture were murdered in a gas chamber moments later.

#YomHaShoah

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

U.S. soldiers look at bodies stuffed into an oven in a crematorium in April of 1945.

Never forget🕯️

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

A little boy walks down the road at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, passing hundreds of bodies as if they’re part of the landscape, with no one left to tell him this isn’t normal.

Never forget🕯️

[Henshi @HenshiG]

81 years ago today, April 11, 1945, the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated by American forces. Pictured are survivors from Buchenwald at the Haifa Port on the way to the Atlit Detention Camp (July, 1945). The little boy holding the flag is Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel. At 8 years old, Lau was one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald. His brother Naphtali (on the left) looked after him throughout the war and together they made it to Israel.

Credit @jggoltz

[ADL @ADL]

“Jewish people had been showing up for me and my family my whole life and it was time for me to show up for my Jewish friend.”

Powerful words from @mrjerryoc as he shared why he’s at #NeverIsNow and why he shows up for the Jewish community every day.

[Wall Street Journal Opinion @WSJopinion]

Whatever one thinks of Israel’s domestic politics, Gavin Newsom’s call to cut off an ally in wartime ought to be disqualifying for someone who wants to be the U.S. Commander in Chief.
https://t.co/0BxEm2uacs

[Yael Bar tur @yaelbt]

What do you do when your most fun holiday happens to start in the middle of a war? Just move the party to a bomb shelter! Happy Purim everyone. Be safe!