Tracie Basch

Fundraiser, former President of my synagogue, wife, but most importantly, mom to two amazing boys

[Eli Albrecht @Elialbrecht]

When I was a lawyer at Gibson Dunn in D.C., we took our summer associates to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. A survivor spoke to us and said something that stuck with me:

Lawyers need to know the holocaust did not begin with camps. It began when Jews were removed from institutions - above all, legal institutions. Judges stripped of their robes. Lawyers disbarred. Then, when law-groups were Judenrein, they codified laws that made discrimination systematic and "legal."

First, you remove the Jews from the institutions. Then, Jews can be discriminated against without representation.

On Monday, Mayor Mamdani announced his 18-member Advisory Committee on the Judiciary. The Committee was promised to be "truly reflective of New York City."

Not one of the 18 is Jewish.

Not one Jewish attorney, former judge, or law professor - in a city where one in eight residents is Jewish and even Justice John Leventhal, recommended by the State's Chief Judge, was rejected.

It is estimated that over 50% of the New York bar is Jewish. That means there is a 0.0004% chance of no Jews being selected to the Committee.

Mamdani’s marginalization of Jews has been ongoing, and few voices on the Left have spoken up.

On Day 1, Mamdani revoked the IHRA antisemitism definition (top priority); he changed the NYPD guidance protecting houses of worship, eliminated Jews from the City's immigrant-heritage map, called for the arrest of the prime minister of the only Jewish state, and now created a Judenrein Judiciary Committee.

My grandmother, Leah, survived Nazi Germany. Before the laws, before the violence, she told me how she was pushed out of her high school groups. Then, once excluded from all activities, she was bullied and marginalized.

We are already seeing Step 2 in NYC. Two weeks ago, on a Jewish Holiday, two men were stabbed outside Upper West Side synagogues - one wearing a kippah- and yesterday, Jewish students were attacked. Every 26 hours, there is a hate crime against Jews in NYC.

In NYC, there is a concerted effort to disappear Jews from public life and leadership.

No one on the Left is speaking out. If this discrimination was happening to any other group, the chorus would be deafening.

To be clear, Jews will find a way. Many are already taking their talents elsewhere. When white-shoe firms shut Jewish lawyers out, they built firms that now dominate. Cardozo, Louis Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg all found a way despite discrimination.

But NYC will be worse off without us. A city government that is judenrein - cleansed of Jews – does not just hurt the Jews, but hurts the city.

The tragedy is not just that Jews were left out of the institutions. It is that the institutions were left without the Jews.

If you see this and have not yet spoken out, I encourage you to do so.

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

@ItayBlumental אין לי מילים לגיד איך אני מרגישה לראות את זהִ. מזל טוב.

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

@RomBraslavski @LahavHarkov מזל טוב לכולם

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

@kampeas He actually bought the cup of coffee because the staff was so nice to his daughter....

[Michael Pope @OyVeyPope]

I never wanted to be a political account.

I'm a British Jew. A husband. A father of two. An engineer. A man who believed that if you worked hard, treated people decently and kept your head down, the world would mostly leave you alone.

My grandfather survived Auschwitz.

For most of my life, antisemitism felt like history. Something to remember, not something my children would have to face.

Then came October 7th.

Since then I've watched Jewish people told to stay quiet, hide who they are, apologise for who they are, or accept standards that would never be applied to anyone else.

For a long time I said very little. I didn't want to drag my family into politics. I convinced myself someone else would speak.

Eventually I realised that silence comes with its own cost.

Martin Luther King Jr wrote:
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

So I'm speaking.

Against antisemitism.

Against extremism.

Against political intimidation.

For free speech, liberal democracy, integration and honest debate.

You don't have to agree with me on everything.

But if you're willing to have difficult conversations without hatred, you're welcome here.

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

@petersterne Happens way more than you think

[Moshe Emilio Lavi @MosheELavi]

Much has been written about @NickKristof's latest NYT opinion column over the past 24 hours, most of it focusing on the specific claims and their sourcing, but what I think deserves most attention is something broader: how this kind of journalism, whatever its intentions, ultimately makes accountability harder to achieve rather than easier, and harms the very people it claims to champion.

The principle that Israeli abuses should be investigated and condemned is not in dispute, and nobody serious is arguing otherwise. Israel is not above scrutiny, and in fact it operates under more intense international scrutiny than almost any country on earth, routinely held to standards applied nowhere else.

The problem here is something different entirely: the complete collapse of evidentiary standards the moment Israel is the subject.

This piece reads less like rigorous reporting and more like a catalogue of hearsay, unverifiable allegations, and activist claims stitched together into a sweeping moral indictment. Its sourcing leans heavily on Euro Med Human Rights Monitor, an organisation repeatedly criticised over extremist ties, disinformation, and deeply questionable methodology, yet treated throughout as a credible authority while its leadership openly engages in pro Hamas propaganda on X.

Worse, the same ecosystem of activists and self appointed “experts” that amplifies Euro Med’s claims online increasingly feeds narratives into more established organisations and media outlets, laundering deeply contested allegations into the appearance of institutional credibility.

The most severe claims are anonymous, uncorroborated, and presented in the emotional register of established fact rather than allegation, despite lacking meaningful evidentiary backing. Yet Kristof largely adopts them without serious scrutiny, publishing the piece in the Opinion section because even the already diminished evidentiary standards often applied to reporting on the Israeli Palestinian conflict would likely not suffice for it to pass as straight news reporting.

This approach doesn't strengthen accountability, it actively destroys it. When every allegation is immediately inflated into systematic rape and "standard operating procedure" before any serious verification, genuine investigation becomes harder rather than easier.

Real abuses, if they occurred, get buried beneath maximalist narratives so extreme that large portions of the public simply stop trusting any of it, and the people who actually suffered pay that price.

It also alienates the vast majority of Israelis and Jews worldwide, including the many who are perfectly capable of criticising Israeli policy and supporting investigations into misconduct, but who understandably recoil when accusations begin resembling modernised blood libels dressed up as human rights reporting. The framing matters enormously, and so does proportionality, and so does evidence.

Nor does any of this serve Palestinians. Atrocity inflation entrenches both sides deeper into defensive tribalism, and every dubious claim amplified by a prestigious outlet makes legitimate criticism easier to dismiss when it actually matters.

The timing compounds everything. On a day when documented reporting on Hamas sexual violence was again circulating, the NYT chose to run an opinion column built substantially on unverifiable anonymous testimony asserting that Israelis are conducting systemic rape campaigns, not as a rigorously evidenced investigative report but as an opinion piece with the imprimatur of the paper of record.

Kristof is not a naive bystander in any of this. In 2014 he used the full credibility of the NYT to repeatedly platform Somaly Mam, a Cambodian anti-trafficking activist whose harrowing personal story he championed across multiple columns, until it emerged that her backstory was substantially fabricated and he was forced to issue a public correction. When challenged this time around on his sourcing, corroboration, and methodology, he defaulted to bad faith engagement on social media rather than addressing the underlying concerns seriously.

It is the same pattern, playing out again in a different context. Real journalism requires skepticism, corroboration, and restraint applied consistently regardless of the subject, and when those standards disappear the moment Israel is involved, what remains is not human rights reporting but narrative activism wearing a journalist's costume that does far more harm than good to everyone it claims to serve.

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

Nope. Nope. Nope.

[Mish @Mish_K_]

Why?!?!

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

Never underestimate the power and importance of summer camp! While this is not my camp, we have very similar stories as well.

#surpriselakecamp

[Gabby Deutch @GSDeutch]

Jeopardy 🤝 Jewish summer camp

One of last night's Jeopardy contestants met her spouse at Jacobs Camp, a Jewish sleepaway camp in Mississippi, and brought a cheering section from the camp to watch her

[Underdog @Underdog]

💰 We're paying your rent 💰

The Mets are 0-10 since Mamdani hugged Mr. Met

For every day NYM go without a win, we're sending out $1,000 towards someone's rent payment 🤝

To enter, just:
1️⃣ Repost this
2️⃣ Follow us

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

@TheMossadIL Are they pesachdic cookies?

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

Let me get this straight: TSA agents aren't getting paid b/c of the behavior of ICE. So, we're sending ICE agents, who are getting paid, to help the TSA agents. How do we expect TSA agents to feel that the people causing them to not be paid are helping them. Make this make sense.

[The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome @TheMossadIL]

This is the version of the Haggadah that contains the codes to the space laser.

Every Jew has used it at least once.

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

@IsraelinUSA @NBA @DeniAvdija8 @trailblazers @BrooklynNets I root for each one to have a good game….

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

@WellsJorda89710 Thank you for this post. It means a lot.

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

Friends in Israel just told me to be safe in NYC this shabbat. You know it's pretty bad when the people who keep running into bomb shelters at all hours of the day and night are concerned for your safety....

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

I can attest to this. At my synagogue, instead of focusing on additional programming & staffing, our budget dollars are increasingly going to security. We need to make sure our community FEELS safe because if they don't it doesn't matter what we do.
#endjewishhate

[Rep. Jake Auchincloss 🟧 @RepAuchincloss]

“Jewish institutions now spend $765 million annually on security… A typical Jewish organization spends 14 percent of its annual budget on security.”

This money should be going to community building, child care, and charity. Instead the Jewish community must fortify itself against a surge of hate that is being mainstreamed by opportunists online.

https://t.co/PPIH3KNvMC

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

My generation grew up with the heroism of Entebbe and the miracle of the Six Day War. The next will grow up in awe of Israeli pilots bombing ballistic missile launchers in Iran, the James Bond beeper plot, and hacking Tehran’s traffic cameras. We’ve still got this 😎

[Tracie Basch @TracieBasch]

Only in Israel can you get a de-stress massage while in a bomb shelter.

[leekern @leekern13]

Someone has brought a massage table to my bomb shelter and is giving massages

[Yael Bar tur @yaelbt]

Of course some genius Israelis invented an app where you can scan a barcode and see who’s single in the shelter 😂