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Roy K. Altman

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Father. Husband. Judge. Passionate defender of the West. Yale Law School. Former federal prosecutor. NYT bestselling author of "Israel on Trial."

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If someone had asked me before October 7th what I wanted to be remembered for, I would have said that I wanted people to know that I was a good father, husband, and friend; a fair judge; and a model American citizen. But October 7th was a watershed moment in the history of Western civilization—not because of what happened thousands of miles away, but because of what happened here in our supposedly sacred institutions. Hamas killed 1,200 innocent people. They butchered them in their bedrooms. They beheaded them at their dance parties. They blew them up clutching their families in their bomb shelters. And yet, at my alma maters, in our universities, we Jews became the oppressors. Hamas raped dozens and dozens of Jewish women and girls, mothers together with their daughters. That's now clear beyond peradventure. You can go home tonight and watch the videotaped confessions of Hamas terrorists admitting to these unspeakable acts. They committed the crime of kinocide. This was just announced in a recent report by an international NGO on May 12th of this year. It is the first documented use of kinocide as a weapon of war anywhere on the planet since Rwanda in the 1990s. And yet, in our Western media outlets, we Jews became the aggressors.

If someone had asked me before October 7th what I wanted to be remembered for, I would have said that I wanted people to know that I was a good father, husband, and friend; a fair judge; and a model American citizen. But October 7th was a watershed moment in the history of Western civilization—not because of what happened thousands of miles away, but because of what happened here in our supposedly sacred institutions. Hamas killed 1,200 innocent people. They butchered them in their bedrooms. They beheaded them at their dance parties. They blew them up clutching their families in their bomb shelters. And yet, at my alma maters, in our universities, we Jews became the oppressors. Hamas raped dozens and dozens of Jewish women and girls, mothers together with their daughters. That's now clear beyond peradventure. You can go home tonight and watch the videotaped confessions of Hamas terrorists admitting to these unspeakable acts. They committed the crime of kinocide. This was just announced in a recent report by an international NGO on May 12th of this year. It is the first documented use of kinocide as a weapon of war anywhere on the planet since Rwanda in the 1990s. And yet, in our Western media outlets, we Jews became the aggressors.

251,214 views • 17 days ago

It’s on YOU to get involved and fight for Western civilization. This war didn't start on October 7th. This war started 25-30 years ago. Here’s why I'm optimistic. Martin Luther King—a great hero and a great Zionist until the day he died—always said, “the moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” Our cause is the most righteous and moral cause, the most just cause the world has ever known, the cause of Western civilization, the cause of the Judeo-Christian family of religions that gave us monotheism, the Bible, Jesus Christ, and political democracy, and the cause of the crown jewel of this planet Earth, the United States of America, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. We must understand that there is a geostrategic conflict that has already begun and it is on every single one of you—not just me and not just the people you see on TV—it's on you to get involved and fight for Western civilization. One of the things that happens to me when I go around the country to churches is people tell me about dinner parties where there were 8-12 people at the table, one Jew, and someone said “genocide,” “apartheid,” “colonialism.” And the Jew wanted to be polite and didn’t speak up. And a lot of these people will tell me, “You know what? We just assumed it was true because the Jew didn’t say anything.” And you don't say it. I understand why, because you don't want to make it awkward. You don’t want to ruin a friendship. But here’s the thing: if you don't speak up now, it’ll be much more awkward 20 years from now when every single American assumes that it’s true because you didn't object at the dinner table. And so what gives me optimism is that we as Westerners, we as the Jewish people, Am Hanetzach, the eternal nation who have been around for thousands of years, when we are awakened to the reality that a fight is upon us, we have never, ever lost, and we will not lose this one if we fight it, I guarantee you.

It’s on YOU to get involved and fight for Western civilization. This war didn't start on October 7th. This war started 25-30 years ago. Here’s why I'm optimistic. Martin Luther King—a great hero and a great Zionist until the day he died—always said, “the moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” Our cause is the most righteous and moral cause, the most just cause the world has ever known, the cause of Western civilization, the cause of the Judeo-Christian family of religions that gave us monotheism, the Bible, Jesus Christ, and political democracy, and the cause of the crown jewel of this planet Earth, the United States of America, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. We must understand that there is a geostrategic conflict that has already begun and it is on every single one of you—not just me and not just the people you see on TV—it's on you to get involved and fight for Western civilization. One of the things that happens to me when I go around the country to churches is people tell me about dinner parties where there were 8-12 people at the table, one Jew, and someone said “genocide,” “apartheid,” “colonialism.” And the Jew wanted to be polite and didn’t speak up. And a lot of these people will tell me, “You know what? We just assumed it was true because the Jew didn’t say anything.” And you don't say it. I understand why, because you don't want to make it awkward. You don’t want to ruin a friendship. But here’s the thing: if you don't speak up now, it’ll be much more awkward 20 years from now when every single American assumes that it’s true because you didn't object at the dinner table. And so what gives me optimism is that we as Westerners, we as the Jewish people, Am Hanetzach, the eternal nation who have been around for thousands of years, when we are awakened to the reality that a fight is upon us, we have never, ever lost, and we will not lose this one if we fight it, I guarantee you.

18,672 views • 1 day ago

Shani Louk—a 23-year-old German woman who was at the Nova dance party—was raped, butchered, murdered, and her body was dragged back to Gaza behind a car. Thousands of Palestinians are on video fighting with one another—regular people in Gaza, not dressed as Hamas—just for the chance to get at her body, spit on her, beat her, and kick her. And then they take her lifeless, broken body, and they dump it into the back of one of these pickup trucks. It's 6:37 in the morning, and there are all these guys chanting Allahu Akbar in the back of the truck. And there was an AP photographer present who snapped that famous photo of her broken body among these huge men chanting. How did that photographer know to be there? He won essentially what amounts to the Pulitzer Prize of photography for that photograph that he was only able to take because, of course, he was in league with the terrorists who told him to be there. That's the kind of moral distortion that I think we, as members of Western society, need to be deeply concerned about.

Shani Louk—a 23-year-old German woman who was at the Nova dance party—was raped, butchered, murdered, and her body was dragged back to Gaza behind a car. Thousands of Palestinians are on video fighting with one another—regular people in Gaza, not dressed as Hamas—just for the chance to get at her body, spit on her, beat her, and kick her. And then they take her lifeless, broken body, and they dump it into the back of one of these pickup trucks. It's 6:37 in the morning, and there are all these guys chanting Allahu Akbar in the back of the truck. And there was an AP photographer present who snapped that famous photo of her broken body among these huge men chanting. How did that photographer know to be there? He won essentially what amounts to the Pulitzer Prize of photography for that photograph that he was only able to take because, of course, he was in league with the terrorists who told him to be there. That's the kind of moral distortion that I think we, as members of Western society, need to be deeply concerned about.

394,685 views • 1 month ago

Here’s 5 ways to know there was no genocide in Gaza: 1. Military Advocate Generals (MAG). In Israel, advice from the MAG, which is their version of America’s Judge Advocate Generals (JAG), is a mandatory order that must be followed. And we have seen firsthand dozens and dozens of videos where MAGs have canceled strikes to protect the civilian population in Gaza. 2. The High-Level Military Group. The HLMG, an organization of the top-level officers and generals in every Western army in the world, including ours, has submitted a brief to the International Criminal Court (ICC), detailing the tremendous efforts Israel's army goes through on a daily basis to warn the enemy civilian population before it attacks a particular area. The HLMG says not only is it the most sophisticated warning system of its kind in the world, they say that their armies would never be allowed to implement it because their civilian populations would never allow it because it tells the enemy where you are going to strike in advance in order to protect civilian life. This results in more casualties for Israel. 3. The Polio vaccination program. When it became clear that there were rumors of a polio outbreak in Gaza, Israel brought its doctors into a war zone and vaccinated 99% of the children in Gaza for free. Ask yourself this question: Would the Nazis have gone through the trouble to vaccinate the Jewish kids before they were being pushed into the gas chambers? The question is absurd even to ask it. 4. Past false genocide claims. The Palestinians have claimed that Israel has perpetrated not one, but five separate genocides on them in Gaza since the Israeli disengagement of 2005. This despite the fact that the Gazan population has more than doubled during that 20-year period from one million in 2005 to 2.2 million today. 5. Top experts note Israel’s historic achievement in preserving life in urban warfare. As John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and Richard Kemp, a former British Army officer and top intelligence official in England have written, Israel has the lowest militant-to-civilian kill ratio in the history of urban warfare.

Here’s 5 ways to know there was no genocide in Gaza: 1. Military Advocate Generals (MAG). In Israel, advice from the MAG, which is their version of America’s Judge Advocate Generals (JAG), is a mandatory order that must be followed. And we have seen firsthand dozens and dozens of videos where MAGs have canceled strikes to protect the civilian population in Gaza. 2. The High-Level Military Group. The HLMG, an organization of the top-level officers and generals in every Western army in the world, including ours, has submitted a brief to the International Criminal Court (ICC), detailing the tremendous efforts Israel's army goes through on a daily basis to warn the enemy civilian population before it attacks a particular area. The HLMG says not only is it the most sophisticated warning system of its kind in the world, they say that their armies would never be allowed to implement it because their civilian populations would never allow it because it tells the enemy where you are going to strike in advance in order to protect civilian life. This results in more casualties for Israel. 3. The Polio vaccination program. When it became clear that there were rumors of a polio outbreak in Gaza, Israel brought its doctors into a war zone and vaccinated 99% of the children in Gaza for free. Ask yourself this question: Would the Nazis have gone through the trouble to vaccinate the Jewish kids before they were being pushed into the gas chambers? The question is absurd even to ask it. 4. Past false genocide claims. The Palestinians have claimed that Israel has perpetrated not one, but five separate genocides on them in Gaza since the Israeli disengagement of 2005. This despite the fact that the Gazan population has more than doubled during that 20-year period from one million in 2005 to 2.2 million today. 5. Top experts note Israel’s historic achievement in preserving life in urban warfare. As John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and Richard Kemp, a former British Army officer and top intelligence official in England have written, Israel has the lowest militant-to-civilian kill ratio in the history of urban warfare.

39,628 views • 8 days ago

Hamas committed the crime of kinocide during the October 7 attacks. They forced men at gunpoint to have sex with their sisters and daughters, something we really haven’t seen in the world since Rwanda. And yet in our Western media outlets and on our Western campuses, we Jews became the aggressors and oppressors. 1,200 Jews were butchered and burned alive, mutilated and beheaded in their homes, in their kitchens, at their dance parties for peace. They raped dozens and dozens of Israeli women and girls. They took 251 people hostage, stolen from their homes, and kept them in dark, dank holes, deep underground. And yet at the United Nations—which was created in many ways to ensure that never again would anything like this happen to the Jewish people or to any people in the world—we Jews became the violators of human rights. It's preposterous. Where does it come from—this moral inversion, this moral distortion of everything we have always believed in, everything we have ever cared about? How do we fix it? And that is really the question I started trying to answer, the question that led me on this journey of giving speeches all over the country, in almost all 50 states over the last three years, at hundreds of schools, colleges, law schools, and churches of every denomination. Along the way, I have had thousands of conversations with people about Israel, many of whom see the world very differently than I do. And what I came to realize is each of these people who is chanting about Israel, they've come to believe one or more of these six main claims about Israel. The good news is, each of the six claims is totally false. The other good news is that all of these claims are, at their core, legal claims. We do not have to shout at each other about politics. The problem with politics is that two people just shout at each other and they're never going to find common ground, because they're looking at different things that they're interested in and that they care about, and they're playing by different rules. They’re not playing on the same field. In the law, there's only one set of rules. It applies to everybody, whether you're black, brown, or white, whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. Everybody has to comply with the law. So I thought, why not apply the same legal methodology that we have been applying for hundreds of years in courtrooms all across this country—a methodology that we know and trust because we use it where truth-telling matters most? That is the methodology I apply to each of these six claims in the book.

Hamas committed the crime of kinocide during the October 7 attacks. They forced men at gunpoint to have sex with their sisters and daughters, something we really haven’t seen in the world since Rwanda. And yet in our Western media outlets and on our Western campuses, we Jews became the aggressors and oppressors. 1,200 Jews were butchered and burned alive, mutilated and beheaded in their homes, in their kitchens, at their dance parties for peace. They raped dozens and dozens of Israeli women and girls. They took 251 people hostage, stolen from their homes, and kept them in dark, dank holes, deep underground. And yet at the United Nations—which was created in many ways to ensure that never again would anything like this happen to the Jewish people or to any people in the world—we Jews became the violators of human rights. It's preposterous. Where does it come from—this moral inversion, this moral distortion of everything we have always believed in, everything we have ever cared about? How do we fix it? And that is really the question I started trying to answer, the question that led me on this journey of giving speeches all over the country, in almost all 50 states over the last three years, at hundreds of schools, colleges, law schools, and churches of every denomination. Along the way, I have had thousands of conversations with people about Israel, many of whom see the world very differently than I do. And what I came to realize is each of these people who is chanting about Israel, they've come to believe one or more of these six main claims about Israel. The good news is, each of the six claims is totally false. The other good news is that all of these claims are, at their core, legal claims. We do not have to shout at each other about politics. The problem with politics is that two people just shout at each other and they're never going to find common ground, because they're looking at different things that they're interested in and that they care about, and they're playing by different rules. They’re not playing on the same field. In the law, there's only one set of rules. It applies to everybody, whether you're black, brown, or white, whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. Everybody has to comply with the law. So I thought, why not apply the same legal methodology that we have been applying for hundreds of years in courtrooms all across this country—a methodology that we know and trust because we use it where truth-telling matters most? That is the methodology I apply to each of these six claims in the book.

158,003 views • 1 month ago

I was born in Venezuela. My family came here with nothing and we knew no one. But my parents always taught me that in America, you could be and do anything, so long as you worked hard and treated people with respect. When I was in college, I was playing football and my grandfather—who fled Europe during the Holocaust—was dying of cancer. My father called and said, “If you want to see him again, this is your last chance.” So, we flew down to Caracas, and it happened to coincide with a momentous event in Venezuelan history. Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, and the Constitution said he could run for only one five-year term. So, in 2003, like any self-respecting dictator, he petitioned the Supreme Court to run again. And to their credit, the judges ruled he could not. So, what is a self-respecting autocrat to do? He packed the Supreme Court with his buddies and petitioned for reconsideration. This time the Court said, “Not only did we get it wrong, not only can you run again, you can run as many times as you like, until the day that you die.” And that's what he did. He was president until 2013 when he died. After that decision came down, Venezuelans took to the streets to protest and that coincided with my last trip to see my grandfather. During my visit, my grandfather asked me to take him out on the balcony so we could play chess one last time. He had taught me how to play as a little boy. People were protesting on the streets below. He said to me, “Your father tells me you want to go to law school.” I said I did. He asked, “What kind of lawyer are you going to become?” I said I didn’t know. Then he gathered all the strength that he had, and he lifted his bony finger out at the crowd and he said, “Always remember, this is what happens to a country when good people don't serve.” And so, when I was 34 and the president intended to nominate me to be a federal judge, which is a lifetime appointment, people said, “You're crazy. You got your whole life ahead of you to make money for your family.” But for me, the opportunity to serve this great country was a no-brainer. And what you should know is this country is very much worth serving.

I was born in Venezuela. My family came here with nothing and we knew no one. But my parents always taught me that in America, you could be and do anything, so long as you worked hard and treated people with respect. When I was in college, I was playing football and my grandfather—who fled Europe during the Holocaust—was dying of cancer. My father called and said, “If you want to see him again, this is your last chance.” So, we flew down to Caracas, and it happened to coincide with a momentous event in Venezuelan history. Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, and the Constitution said he could run for only one five-year term. So, in 2003, like any self-respecting dictator, he petitioned the Supreme Court to run again. And to their credit, the judges ruled he could not. So, what is a self-respecting autocrat to do? He packed the Supreme Court with his buddies and petitioned for reconsideration. This time the Court said, “Not only did we get it wrong, not only can you run again, you can run as many times as you like, until the day that you die.” And that's what he did. He was president until 2013 when he died. After that decision came down, Venezuelans took to the streets to protest and that coincided with my last trip to see my grandfather. During my visit, my grandfather asked me to take him out on the balcony so we could play chess one last time. He had taught me how to play as a little boy. People were protesting on the streets below. He said to me, “Your father tells me you want to go to law school.” I said I did. He asked, “What kind of lawyer are you going to become?” I said I didn’t know. Then he gathered all the strength that he had, and he lifted his bony finger out at the crowd and he said, “Always remember, this is what happens to a country when good people don't serve.” And so, when I was 34 and the president intended to nominate me to be a federal judge, which is a lifetime appointment, people said, “You're crazy. You got your whole life ahead of you to make money for your family.” But for me, the opportunity to serve this great country was a no-brainer. And what you should know is this country is very much worth serving.

237,864 views • 2 months ago

There’s no doubt that Israel’s war in Gaza was not genocide. It is the least likely urban conflict in modern history to meet the standard legal definition of genocide. And you don't have to take my word for it. Take the word of the High Level Military Group, the HLMG, which is a collection of all the of high level officers and generals from almost all the Western democracies in the world, not just the United States. These people aren't Jews. They have no connection with Israel. They're just generals in militaries around the world. They wrote a report and a brief to the International Criminal Court, the ICC, saying that Israel’s civilian warning system is completely unlike anything any other country has ever been willing to do for the civilian population of an enemy in wartime. Under this system, Israel tells the civilian population of Gaza exactly where it will be striking the next day and then provides humanitarian corridors for them to leave those zones. They also say it is something our own democracies would never be able to do, because our civilian populations would never stomach endangering the lives of our own soldiers by warning the enemy where our sons and daughters will be. Israel's unprecedented efforts to protect the lives of civilians in Gaza has taken a very heavy toll on the IDF. Over 800 Israelis have been killed in Gaza precisely because they warned the civilian population to get out of harm's way.

There’s no doubt that Israel’s war in Gaza was not genocide. It is the least likely urban conflict in modern history to meet the standard legal definition of genocide. And you don't have to take my word for it. Take the word of the High Level Military Group, the HLMG, which is a collection of all the of high level officers and generals from almost all the Western democracies in the world, not just the United States. These people aren't Jews. They have no connection with Israel. They're just generals in militaries around the world. They wrote a report and a brief to the International Criminal Court, the ICC, saying that Israel’s civilian warning system is completely unlike anything any other country has ever been willing to do for the civilian population of an enemy in wartime. Under this system, Israel tells the civilian population of Gaza exactly where it will be striking the next day and then provides humanitarian corridors for them to leave those zones. They also say it is something our own democracies would never be able to do, because our civilian populations would never stomach endangering the lives of our own soldiers by warning the enemy where our sons and daughters will be. Israel's unprecedented efforts to protect the lives of civilians in Gaza has taken a very heavy toll on the IDF. Over 800 Israelis have been killed in Gaza precisely because they warned the civilian population to get out of harm's way.

177,292 views • 2 months ago

Hamas took 251 of us hostage on October 7, 2023. Included in that number were two boys, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, four years and ten months old respectively. Four separate independent medical examinations have corroborated the finding of the Israeli coroner that those two children were strangled by adult human male hands in a deep, dark hole far away from their parents. Those 251 people were held hostage for hundreds of days without food, without medicine, without even enough oxygen to breathe. I've had the privilege in the last two or three years of meeting with some of these released hostages. One of the things some of them mentioned is despite the fact that the women were being sexually assaulted, despite the fact that the men were being turned upside down and hung from a ceiling and tortured, many of them could think only of about they had enough oxygen to survive. They would gasp for air and would hold it for as long as they could because there was so little oxygen down there. They weren't sure there was enough for the next breath, and the breath after that, and the breath after that. Imagine doing that for one whole hour. Imagine doing it for 24 hours. Imagine doing that for hundreds of days.

Hamas took 251 of us hostage on October 7, 2023. Included in that number were two boys, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, four years and ten months old respectively. Four separate independent medical examinations have corroborated the finding of the Israeli coroner that those two children were strangled by adult human male hands in a deep, dark hole far away from their parents. Those 251 people were held hostage for hundreds of days without food, without medicine, without even enough oxygen to breathe. I've had the privilege in the last two or three years of meeting with some of these released hostages. One of the things some of them mentioned is despite the fact that the women were being sexually assaulted, despite the fact that the men were being turned upside down and hung from a ceiling and tortured, many of them could think only of about they had enough oxygen to survive. They would gasp for air and would hold it for as long as they could because there was so little oxygen down there. They weren't sure there was enough for the next breath, and the breath after that, and the breath after that. Imagine doing that for one whole hour. Imagine doing it for 24 hours. Imagine doing that for hundreds of days.

15,103 views • 5 days ago

One of the claims I address in my new book, Israel on Trial, is the allegation that Israel has committed genocide. Genocide has a clear legal definition. It means that a country, not individual soldiers, a country has the specific intent to destroy an entire people in whole or in part as such, because they are that people, by killing their members or because of their racial, religious, or ethnic origins. The proponents of the genocide claim have to show that the Israeli government had the specific intent to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza because they are Palestinians, not because there's Hamas fighters embedded within them, not because they're trying to release the hostages. That's why when you read, for example, the briefing book that the legal team from South Africa submitted at the International Court of Justice, there's no mention of Hamas really. There's barely a mention of October 7th. There's no hostages. It's a fictional world in which there are no hostages, there was no October 7th, there is no Hamas, and there's just Israeli war planes and an innocent civilian population. That starts to look a lot more like genocide if you remove all of the essential elements that are the reality on the ground. How do we begin to analyze this question? The first is historically. We know for example from the Nuremberg trials that this argument that Hamas and its supporters are advancing was already rejected by the original people who tried the original war crimes trial at Nuremberg. The German defense team wanted to advance the defense that you shouldn't be too angry with our people, and you shouldn't think that the prosecution has any moral right to be prosecuting and trying our defendants, because the pilots who were flying over Dresden and Berlin and Tokyo and Hiroshima are equally guilty of these war crimes. And the Nuremberg trials resoundingly rejected that theory and said, "You're not guilty of these war crimes when you're fighting a war of existential survival against a genocidal regime in a war that is defensive in origin, that you didn't start, and never wanted and frankly never expected." But it's much more than that. Israel has fought the most precise, and in some respects the most humane, urban warfare conflict the world has ever seen. And you don't have to take my word for it. Take the HLMG, the High Level Military Group. The HLMG is a collection of high-level officers and generals from almost every Western army in the world. Not Jews. Not Mossad agents. These are generals from America, from Canada, from New Zealand, who all went to Gaza, went to Israel, looked at the evidence, looked at Israel's strike packages, realized that Israel is fighting a war that is essentially run by lawyers. This doesn't appear in the newspapers, but as I can tell you when I lead these judges' trips to Israel, Israel is fighting an almost preposterously Jewish war, where all of the calls of strikes that are not emergent are made by lawyers in the field. This is a reality that must be understood. Israel has a corps of military advocate generals. They're called MAGs. Think about our JAGs, for example, and many of our judges were JAGs, and so the context and the contrast is stark. Military advocate generals are deployed in the field with the commanders all over Gaza and on the Gazan border, and one of the things that you should remember about the military advocate generals isn't just their deployment. It's also that their advice is not precatory. So in the United States, a JAG says to a commander, "You shouldn't strike. That's my advice." But the commander can always override the strike because the advice is precatory. In Israel, the MAG's advice is not precatory. It's mandatory. It's an order that must be followed. Of course, if the commander disagrees, there's a whole appellate mechanism that goes to senior commanders that ultimately could end up in front of an IDF judge. I mean, this is the ridiculously legalistic way in which these Jews fight these wars. And frankly, we have seen, as judges, dozens and dozens and dozens of videos where this plays out in real time. Videos, which somehow don't make it into The New York Times, where pilots are in their planes or flying their drones over clear Hamas targets— terrorists shooting out of a mosque or out of a hospital or out of a UN car. Yes, that happens in Gaza every single day. And the pilot says, "I'm ready to fire." And then something amazing happens, something our American JAG officers are like, "What is happening here?" A nerdy Jewish lawyer comes over the air, the airwave and says, "Hey, what's that 50 yards away on the top right of the screen? Scan over to the top right of the screen." And it's two children playing soccer or three women holding a loaf of bread having a conversation. And instantly it's "Strike canceled. Strike canceled. Strike canceled." Over and over again in Gaza and in Lebanon, legitimate strikes on legitimate military targets that almost any other Western army in the world would take are canceled by Israeli lawyers, international law scholars, because of a concern for the preservation of innocent Palestinian civilian life.

One of the claims I address in my new book, Israel on Trial, is the allegation that Israel has committed genocide. Genocide has a clear legal definition. It means that a country, not individual soldiers, a country has the specific intent to destroy an entire people in whole or in part as such, because they are that people, by killing their members or because of their racial, religious, or ethnic origins. The proponents of the genocide claim have to show that the Israeli government had the specific intent to wipe out the Palestinians of Gaza because they are Palestinians, not because there's Hamas fighters embedded within them, not because they're trying to release the hostages. That's why when you read, for example, the briefing book that the legal team from South Africa submitted at the International Court of Justice, there's no mention of Hamas really. There's barely a mention of October 7th. There's no hostages. It's a fictional world in which there are no hostages, there was no October 7th, there is no Hamas, and there's just Israeli war planes and an innocent civilian population. That starts to look a lot more like genocide if you remove all of the essential elements that are the reality on the ground. How do we begin to analyze this question? The first is historically. We know for example from the Nuremberg trials that this argument that Hamas and its supporters are advancing was already rejected by the original people who tried the original war crimes trial at Nuremberg. The German defense team wanted to advance the defense that you shouldn't be too angry with our people, and you shouldn't think that the prosecution has any moral right to be prosecuting and trying our defendants, because the pilots who were flying over Dresden and Berlin and Tokyo and Hiroshima are equally guilty of these war crimes. And the Nuremberg trials resoundingly rejected that theory and said, "You're not guilty of these war crimes when you're fighting a war of existential survival against a genocidal regime in a war that is defensive in origin, that you didn't start, and never wanted and frankly never expected." But it's much more than that. Israel has fought the most precise, and in some respects the most humane, urban warfare conflict the world has ever seen. And you don't have to take my word for it. Take the HLMG, the High Level Military Group. The HLMG is a collection of high-level officers and generals from almost every Western army in the world. Not Jews. Not Mossad agents. These are generals from America, from Canada, from New Zealand, who all went to Gaza, went to Israel, looked at the evidence, looked at Israel's strike packages, realized that Israel is fighting a war that is essentially run by lawyers. This doesn't appear in the newspapers, but as I can tell you when I lead these judges' trips to Israel, Israel is fighting an almost preposterously Jewish war, where all of the calls of strikes that are not emergent are made by lawyers in the field. This is a reality that must be understood. Israel has a corps of military advocate generals. They're called MAGs. Think about our JAGs, for example, and many of our judges were JAGs, and so the context and the contrast is stark. Military advocate generals are deployed in the field with the commanders all over Gaza and on the Gazan border, and one of the things that you should remember about the military advocate generals isn't just their deployment. It's also that their advice is not precatory. So in the United States, a JAG says to a commander, "You shouldn't strike. That's my advice." But the commander can always override the strike because the advice is precatory. In Israel, the MAG's advice is not precatory. It's mandatory. It's an order that must be followed. Of course, if the commander disagrees, there's a whole appellate mechanism that goes to senior commanders that ultimately could end up in front of an IDF judge. I mean, this is the ridiculously legalistic way in which these Jews fight these wars. And frankly, we have seen, as judges, dozens and dozens and dozens of videos where this plays out in real time. Videos, which somehow don't make it into The New York Times, where pilots are in their planes or flying their drones over clear Hamas targets— terrorists shooting out of a mosque or out of a hospital or out of a UN car. Yes, that happens in Gaza every single day. And the pilot says, "I'm ready to fire." And then something amazing happens, something our American JAG officers are like, "What is happening here?" A nerdy Jewish lawyer comes over the air, the airwave and says, "Hey, what's that 50 yards away on the top right of the screen? Scan over to the top right of the screen." And it's two children playing soccer or three women holding a loaf of bread having a conversation. And instantly it's "Strike canceled. Strike canceled. Strike canceled." Over and over again in Gaza and in Lebanon, legitimate strikes on legitimate military targets that almost any other Western army in the world would take are canceled by Israeli lawyers, international law scholars, because of a concern for the preservation of innocent Palestinian civilian life.

125,400 views • 2 months ago

When I was a little boy, all of our family vacations were the same. We would travel around the southern United States to Civil War battlefields—to places like Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia. We’ve been to all the battlefields you’ve heard of, and a hundred you never knew existed. And one day, we were at Chattanooga. A very important battlefield in the Civil War. The entire Union Army was arrayed at the bottom of a ridge called Missionary Ridge. The Union had lost battle after battle, and the command came down not to charge up the hill at the Confederates. But there was a young man—to show you how one man can change the world—a 17-year-old boy named Arthur MacArthur, who later became the father of Douglas MacArthur, the great general from World War II. And he saw the standard bearer in front of him get shot, and the flag hit the earth. And he couldn't bear the American flag on the ground, so he picked it up and charged up the hill. And the entire American army charged after him and won the day. He got the Medal of Honor pinned on his lapel on top of that ridge. I was standing there with my father when I was eight years old, looking out over the battlefield, and it started to snow. Now, I grew up in Miami, Israel, and Venezuela, not a lot of snow in my life. So, I turned to my dad, and I said, "Papi, this is beautiful. This is so fun." And he turned to me, very stern, and said, "Fun? You think this is fun? You don't understand why we bring you to these places. We bring you here so that you and your sister can understand the soul of the country we brought you to. This is a country where 600,000 men died so that a part of the country who were enslaved could be free. That is the level of devotion and dedication that a free and fair democracy demands."

When I was a little boy, all of our family vacations were the same. We would travel around the southern United States to Civil War battlefields—to places like Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia. We’ve been to all the battlefields you’ve heard of, and a hundred you never knew existed. And one day, we were at Chattanooga. A very important battlefield in the Civil War. The entire Union Army was arrayed at the bottom of a ridge called Missionary Ridge. The Union had lost battle after battle, and the command came down not to charge up the hill at the Confederates. But there was a young man—to show you how one man can change the world—a 17-year-old boy named Arthur MacArthur, who later became the father of Douglas MacArthur, the great general from World War II. And he saw the standard bearer in front of him get shot, and the flag hit the earth. And he couldn't bear the American flag on the ground, so he picked it up and charged up the hill. And the entire American army charged after him and won the day. He got the Medal of Honor pinned on his lapel on top of that ridge. I was standing there with my father when I was eight years old, looking out over the battlefield, and it started to snow. Now, I grew up in Miami, Israel, and Venezuela, not a lot of snow in my life. So, I turned to my dad, and I said, "Papi, this is beautiful. This is so fun." And he turned to me, very stern, and said, "Fun? You think this is fun? You don't understand why we bring you to these places. We bring you here so that you and your sister can understand the soul of the country we brought you to. This is a country where 600,000 men died so that a part of the country who were enslaved could be free. That is the level of devotion and dedication that a free and fair democracy demands."

186,424 views • 3 months ago

As a historian, I can tell you that societies that allow Jews to thrive are societies in history that are flourishing themselves. Look at America. It is the center of the most influential, the wealthiest, the most powerful Jewish community that has ever existed in the world, and it is no surprise it is also the most powerful, the most influential, and the wealthiest force for good the world has ever had. We are privileged to live here. But on the other hand, societies that allow themselves to be taken over by Jew hatred are societies that are sick and dying. Look at the Russia of Kishinev in 1903, the worst pogrom of the 20th century before the Holocaust. It was the biggest country in the world at that time. It had existed for hundreds of years. 14 years later, it was gone. Look at the Germany of Kristallnacht in 1938, the most powerful army, the most powerful air force. It was supposed to be the thousand-year Reich. Just seven years later, it was dead. So not because I'm a Jew, but because I am an American who came here from Venezuela with nothing, knowing no one, and who was embraced by this community and this country with open arms, which has given me and my family every blessing and privilege under the sun, I understand that we, each of us, Jew and not Jew alike, have a moral and practical obligation to root out anti-Semitism in our society because it is the moral rot in the wooden framework of our house. If we are not careful, it will bring the entire edifice tumbling down on all of us, not just the Jews.

As a historian, I can tell you that societies that allow Jews to thrive are societies in history that are flourishing themselves. Look at America. It is the center of the most influential, the wealthiest, the most powerful Jewish community that has ever existed in the world, and it is no surprise it is also the most powerful, the most influential, and the wealthiest force for good the world has ever had. We are privileged to live here. But on the other hand, societies that allow themselves to be taken over by Jew hatred are societies that are sick and dying. Look at the Russia of Kishinev in 1903, the worst pogrom of the 20th century before the Holocaust. It was the biggest country in the world at that time. It had existed for hundreds of years. 14 years later, it was gone. Look at the Germany of Kristallnacht in 1938, the most powerful army, the most powerful air force. It was supposed to be the thousand-year Reich. Just seven years later, it was dead. So not because I'm a Jew, but because I am an American who came here from Venezuela with nothing, knowing no one, and who was embraced by this community and this country with open arms, which has given me and my family every blessing and privilege under the sun, I understand that we, each of us, Jew and not Jew alike, have a moral and practical obligation to root out anti-Semitism in our society because it is the moral rot in the wooden framework of our house. If we are not careful, it will bring the entire edifice tumbling down on all of us, not just the Jews.

155,318 views • 2 months ago

Occupation under international law has to be the occupation of another state's territory. There is no state that's being occupied—in this case by Israel—because the Palestinians have, on six different occasions, been offered a state of their own, and in each case have rejected the state. Every poll that's ever been conducted and every political settlement that's ever been broken—from 1936, 1947, and 1967 after Khartoum, to Oslo in 1993 and the offers in 2000 and 2008—show that the Palestinians do not want a second state. They want one state from the river to the sea, a fully Arab state with no Jews on it. This is the analogy I like to make: You go to the store and they tell you that a pair of jeans is a hundred bucks. And you say, "Okay, I'll, gonna pay a hundred bucks." Then a guy next to you in line comes, he returns a shirt that was worth 50 bucks. He wants to buy the same pair of jeans. How much does he have to pay? He only has to pay 50 bucks. He gave back a shirt that was worth 50 bucks. The pants were a hundred bucks, he only has to pay 50 bucks. Now, if you say to the store owner, "Hey, I don't want to give you anything of value, not the shirt, not the money, but now I want the jeans," no business person in the world would accept that claim. You can't say, "I take the jeans, I give you no money." That's not how business transactions work. It's not how the law of contracts work. But that's exactly what the claim of occupation does in this case. The Palestinians rejected the state that was offered to them, insist on calling themselves a state, and then claim that Israel is occupying their territory. But here's the problem: There is an international law test for the creation of legitimate nation states. There are over 7,000 ethnic groups in the world that archeologists and anthropologists and linguists have pieced together. The vast majority, over 98%, don't have a state of their own. So who gets to have a state? There are only 193 states in the world. These are nation states that meet these four elements from a conference in Montevideo in 1933. The four elements are: 1. Do you have a defined population? 2. Do you have defined borders? 3. Do you have a single effective government? 4. Do you have the capacity for conducting international relations? Israel has unquestionably met all four elements every single day since its founding. The supposed state of Palestine, which people now claim is more legitimate than the Jewish state, indisputably fails at least two of those four elements.

Occupation under international law has to be the occupation of another state's territory. There is no state that's being occupied—in this case by Israel—because the Palestinians have, on six different occasions, been offered a state of their own, and in each case have rejected the state. Every poll that's ever been conducted and every political settlement that's ever been broken—from 1936, 1947, and 1967 after Khartoum, to Oslo in 1993 and the offers in 2000 and 2008—show that the Palestinians do not want a second state. They want one state from the river to the sea, a fully Arab state with no Jews on it. This is the analogy I like to make: You go to the store and they tell you that a pair of jeans is a hundred bucks. And you say, "Okay, I'll, gonna pay a hundred bucks." Then a guy next to you in line comes, he returns a shirt that was worth 50 bucks. He wants to buy the same pair of jeans. How much does he have to pay? He only has to pay 50 bucks. He gave back a shirt that was worth 50 bucks. The pants were a hundred bucks, he only has to pay 50 bucks. Now, if you say to the store owner, "Hey, I don't want to give you anything of value, not the shirt, not the money, but now I want the jeans," no business person in the world would accept that claim. You can't say, "I take the jeans, I give you no money." That's not how business transactions work. It's not how the law of contracts work. But that's exactly what the claim of occupation does in this case. The Palestinians rejected the state that was offered to them, insist on calling themselves a state, and then claim that Israel is occupying their territory. But here's the problem: There is an international law test for the creation of legitimate nation states. There are over 7,000 ethnic groups in the world that archeologists and anthropologists and linguists have pieced together. The vast majority, over 98%, don't have a state of their own. So who gets to have a state? There are only 193 states in the world. These are nation states that meet these four elements from a conference in Montevideo in 1933. The four elements are: 1. Do you have a defined population? 2. Do you have defined borders? 3. Do you have a single effective government? 4. Do you have the capacity for conducting international relations? Israel has unquestionably met all four elements every single day since its founding. The supposed state of Palestine, which people now claim is more legitimate than the Jewish state, indisputably fails at least two of those four elements.

183,351 views • 3 months ago

I have a story to tell you about how one person altered the course of history without even knowing it. Stay with me for a minute. In 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel, John Hagee was a young man in Texas. His pastor said, “We’ve got five tickets to go to Israel. Who wants to go?” He raised his hand and he went to Israel. He was there for a week, had an amazing time. The last day, they go to the Kotel, and he’s praying at the Kotel, and something told him to turn to the right, and there was a very elderly gentleman, Jewish, with a kippah, in a wheelchair, eyes closed, crying and praying fervently. And he said that something told him to speak to this man. Now, the man spoke halting English. Hagee spoke no Hebrew. Somehow they spoke for 5-10 minutes. I said, “Pastor, what did you talk about?” He said, “I have no idea. But based on those five or 10 minutes, I knew that I had to change the entire trajectory of my life and devote it entirely to saving and protecting the Jewish state and the Jewish people.” And that's what he has done every single day since. This elderly man, of course, would never know the impact that his decision to go to the Kotel that day would have on the future trajectory of the Jewish people or the Jewish state. But that man he was speaking to—Pastor John Hagee—now sits in the Oval Office and meets one-on-one about Israel with the President of the United States. Pastor Hagee recently announced that Christians United for Israel has surpassed 10 million members. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s more people than there are in the entire state of Israel—Muslim, Christian, and Jew. That’s almost twice as many Jews as there are in the entire United States. That's more Jews than exist in the entire diaspora in the world outside of Israel. Any person has it within his or her grasp to change the world. You need only believe it and speak up everywhere and anywhere that you can.

I have a story to tell you about how one person altered the course of history without even knowing it. Stay with me for a minute. In 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel, John Hagee was a young man in Texas. His pastor said, “We’ve got five tickets to go to Israel. Who wants to go?” He raised his hand and he went to Israel. He was there for a week, had an amazing time. The last day, they go to the Kotel, and he’s praying at the Kotel, and something told him to turn to the right, and there was a very elderly gentleman, Jewish, with a kippah, in a wheelchair, eyes closed, crying and praying fervently. And he said that something told him to speak to this man. Now, the man spoke halting English. Hagee spoke no Hebrew. Somehow they spoke for 5-10 minutes. I said, “Pastor, what did you talk about?” He said, “I have no idea. But based on those five or 10 minutes, I knew that I had to change the entire trajectory of my life and devote it entirely to saving and protecting the Jewish state and the Jewish people.” And that's what he has done every single day since. This elderly man, of course, would never know the impact that his decision to go to the Kotel that day would have on the future trajectory of the Jewish people or the Jewish state. But that man he was speaking to—Pastor John Hagee—now sits in the Oval Office and meets one-on-one about Israel with the President of the United States. Pastor Hagee recently announced that Christians United for Israel has surpassed 10 million members. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s more people than there are in the entire state of Israel—Muslim, Christian, and Jew. That’s almost twice as many Jews as there are in the entire United States. That's more Jews than exist in the entire diaspora in the world outside of Israel. Any person has it within his or her grasp to change the world. You need only believe it and speak up everywhere and anywhere that you can.

20,904 views • 10 days ago

We now know from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel that The New York Times was made aware weeks before publishing Nicholas Kristof’s explosive op-ed that the independent commission, an NGO, was investigating and going to report on Hamas’ systemic use of sexual violence against Israeli women, girls, and men. Remember, initially, we all thought it was just women and girls, and that was horrible enough. We now know Hamas at gunpoint forced men to have sexual relations with family members in their homes, something we really haven’t seen in the world much since Rwanda. Horrible stuff. And The New York Times, according to Israel and the NGO, was made aware that this report was going come out May 12th. The NGO, independent from the government of Israel, asked for permission to run an article detailing its findings in The New York Times. The New York Times responded that they were not interested in running an article on Hamas’ use of sexual violence against Israelis. And then the day before—not a week before, not a month before, not a week after—the day before, on May 11th, The New York Times runs this explosive Kristof piece. Remember, The New York Times had said it was not interested in this subject. Then, the day before the NGO released its report, the paper ran an explosive piece that blamed the victims. Now, the Israelis are the perpetrators of mass systemic sexual violence against Palestinians. It flips everything on its head.

We now know from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Israel that The New York Times was made aware weeks before publishing Nicholas Kristof’s explosive op-ed that the independent commission, an NGO, was investigating and going to report on Hamas’ systemic use of sexual violence against Israeli women, girls, and men. Remember, initially, we all thought it was just women and girls, and that was horrible enough. We now know Hamas at gunpoint forced men to have sexual relations with family members in their homes, something we really haven’t seen in the world much since Rwanda. Horrible stuff. And The New York Times, according to Israel and the NGO, was made aware that this report was going come out May 12th. The NGO, independent from the government of Israel, asked for permission to run an article detailing its findings in The New York Times. The New York Times responded that they were not interested in running an article on Hamas’ use of sexual violence against Israelis. And then the day before—not a week before, not a month before, not a week after—the day before, on May 11th, The New York Times runs this explosive Kristof piece. Remember, The New York Times had said it was not interested in this subject. Then, the day before the NGO released its report, the paper ran an explosive piece that blamed the victims. Now, the Israelis are the perpetrators of mass systemic sexual violence against Palestinians. It flips everything on its head.

104,191 views • 2 months ago

One of the things that I think people don't understand is that Israel is actually a relatively old country. And I'm not talking about Talmudic Biblical Israel. I'm talking about the modern state of Israel, founded in 1948, became the 59th state in the world, and there are now 193 states represented at the United Nations. That means if you're doing the math, Israel is actually older than 67% of the nations in the world, and that's because so many countries were created just like Israel was—by having colonialist powers, mostly European in origin, draw lines kind of randomly on a map, creating countries out of whole cloth without very much regard for the populations that were being swept up into the newly formulated states. That's how a lot of states were formed in the '40s, '50s, and '60s in the Middle East. That's how a lot of states were formed in the '40s, '50s, and '60s in Asia, and especially in Africa. But of course, nobody protests the creation of Cameroon or of Botswana. Nobody's protesting the creation of Lebanon or Syria or India and Pakistan or Iraq. Remember, there are 57 Muslim countries in the world and 22 Arab countries with two billion citizens. But the world cannot stomach one tiny Jewish state in its ancestral homeland with only seven million Jewish citizens.

One of the things that I think people don't understand is that Israel is actually a relatively old country. And I'm not talking about Talmudic Biblical Israel. I'm talking about the modern state of Israel, founded in 1948, became the 59th state in the world, and there are now 193 states represented at the United Nations. That means if you're doing the math, Israel is actually older than 67% of the nations in the world, and that's because so many countries were created just like Israel was—by having colonialist powers, mostly European in origin, draw lines kind of randomly on a map, creating countries out of whole cloth without very much regard for the populations that were being swept up into the newly formulated states. That's how a lot of states were formed in the '40s, '50s, and '60s in the Middle East. That's how a lot of states were formed in the '40s, '50s, and '60s in Asia, and especially in Africa. But of course, nobody protests the creation of Cameroon or of Botswana. Nobody's protesting the creation of Lebanon or Syria or India and Pakistan or Iraq. Remember, there are 57 Muslim countries in the world and 22 Arab countries with two billion citizens. But the world cannot stomach one tiny Jewish state in its ancestral homeland with only seven million Jewish citizens.

108,332 views • 2 months ago

As we see videos circulate online of Israeli airstrikes inside Iran, I would remind people about what the German Air Force chief said of Israeli Air Force strikes targeting Hamas in Gaza. The German Air Force chief went to Israel and reviewed their military plans, reviewed all the protocols they go through before every strike. As we do here in America, Israel has lawyers who review every strike for legality before it's conducted. And the German air chief said it is the most moral air force in the world. Israel has done more, he said, to preserve innocent Palestinian lives than any other air force would do in the circumstances. And we know that from the facts that have come out. Israel sends hundreds of thousands of text messages, issues hundreds of thousands of leaflets and flyers, issues maps on all of its websites which show the Palestinian civilians which areas will be attacked at which days and on which times. I was a football player. When you're on offense, surprise is the name of the game, and that's no less true in the military. Israel has relinquished the power of offensive surprise in order to preserve innocent Palestinian lives by telling Hamas exactly where it means to assault before it issues its orders. It has done so at great cost to the lives of its own soldiers in order to preserve and protect innocent Palestinian lives. What other country in the world would do that?

As we see videos circulate online of Israeli airstrikes inside Iran, I would remind people about what the German Air Force chief said of Israeli Air Force strikes targeting Hamas in Gaza. The German Air Force chief went to Israel and reviewed their military plans, reviewed all the protocols they go through before every strike. As we do here in America, Israel has lawyers who review every strike for legality before it's conducted. And the German air chief said it is the most moral air force in the world. Israel has done more, he said, to preserve innocent Palestinian lives than any other air force would do in the circumstances. And we know that from the facts that have come out. Israel sends hundreds of thousands of text messages, issues hundreds of thousands of leaflets and flyers, issues maps on all of its websites which show the Palestinian civilians which areas will be attacked at which days and on which times. I was a football player. When you're on offense, surprise is the name of the game, and that's no less true in the military. Israel has relinquished the power of offensive surprise in order to preserve innocent Palestinian lives by telling Hamas exactly where it means to assault before it issues its orders. It has done so at great cost to the lives of its own soldiers in order to preserve and protect innocent Palestinian lives. What other country in the world would do that?

152,765 views • 4 months ago

Following the October 7 attacks, my wife and I did not sleep for several nights. We stayed up all night, doomscrolling on our phones. A few nights later, my wife reached out, grabbed my hand, and asked, “How is it that, 80 years after the Holocaust, we are still all alone?” And then, something amazing happened. We weren't alone. In the days and weeks after that, I would get calls and text messages and emails, and some people even showed up in Miami in person to show me that they stood with the Jewish people, that they stood with me and the one Jewish state in the world. And who were these people? These people were Christians of every denomination. And they were federal judges from all across the country. And I thought to myself, “Why don't I start a program to take these judges to Israel so they can see for themselves what it's really like?” And so I started taking federal judges to Israel right after October 7th. I've taken 10% of the entire federal judiciary in America in just three years.

Following the October 7 attacks, my wife and I did not sleep for several nights. We stayed up all night, doomscrolling on our phones. A few nights later, my wife reached out, grabbed my hand, and asked, “How is it that, 80 years after the Holocaust, we are still all alone?” And then, something amazing happened. We weren't alone. In the days and weeks after that, I would get calls and text messages and emails, and some people even showed up in Miami in person to show me that they stood with the Jewish people, that they stood with me and the one Jewish state in the world. And who were these people? These people were Christians of every denomination. And they were federal judges from all across the country. And I thought to myself, “Why don't I start a program to take these judges to Israel so they can see for themselves what it's really like?” And so I started taking federal judges to Israel right after October 7th. I've taken 10% of the entire federal judiciary in America in just three years.

157,560 views • 5 months ago

In 2010, there were all these shark attacks in the Red Sea, which is situated between Israel and Egypt, and it just so happened, I think there were six or seven, and they were all on the Egyptian side of the border. An Egyptian minister came out and claimed that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was training sharks to like only Arab flesh. At the time, everyone was laughing about how absurd the claim was. What we didn’t understand was that less than 20 years later, The New York Times itself would be parroting almost identical claims: that Israeli intelligence services were training dogs to rape Arab men. It's a sign of how absurd the news reporting and blood libeling has gotten in our mainstream media.

In 2010, there were all these shark attacks in the Red Sea, which is situated between Israel and Egypt, and it just so happened, I think there were six or seven, and they were all on the Egyptian side of the border. An Egyptian minister came out and claimed that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was training sharks to like only Arab flesh. At the time, everyone was laughing about how absurd the claim was. What we didn’t understand was that less than 20 years later, The New York Times itself would be parroting almost identical claims: that Israeli intelligence services were training dogs to rape Arab men. It's a sign of how absurd the news reporting and blood libeling has gotten in our mainstream media.

86,185 views • 2 months ago

The last time I saw my grandfather, Izu, was in 2003. He was dying of lung cancer in Venezuela. He was a larger than life man from the Kingdom of Romania who was orphaned at 10 years old, came to Venezuela, and built his entire life from scratch. I was at playing football at the Columbia University when my father called and said, "Look, I know you're really busy with school and sports and all that, but if you ever want to see him again, this is the time." So I talked to my coaches and worked things out and I flew down to Caracas with my father. If you know Venezuelan history, in 1998, Hugo Chavez, the dictator, became president. And the Constitution was clear you could run for only one five-year term. So in 2003, his term was up, but as an autocrat, he was not going to take that lying down. So what does he do? He packs the Supreme court with a bunch of his buddies and petitions for reconsideration.Constitution is clear, you can't run again." So what does he do? He packs the supreme Court with a bunch of his buddies and petitions for reconsideration. The new Supreme Court told him that not only could he run again, he could run as many times as he wanted to. He ruled until 2013 when he died of cancer. After the ruling, there were mass protests which happened to coincide with when I was visiting my grandfather. My grandfather, who was down to roughly 85 pounds and confined to a wheelchair, asked me to wheel him outside onto the balcony and set up the chessboard so we could play one last time. As a little boy, he had taught me how to play chess. I set up the pieces. He couldn't lift his arm enough to move them, so I was moving them for him. He said to me, "Your father tells me you want to go to law school." And I said, "I do." And he said, "Where do you want to go to law school?" So I said, "I want to go to Yale, but I don't know if I'll get in." And then he said, "Well, what kind of lawyer are you gonna be?" And I said, "I really don't know, I'm just in college, I mostly just care about football, you know?" And he looked at me and he had watery eyes at that moment, and he picked up his very bony finger, which took a great deal of effort, and he pointed out at the crowd below and said, "Always remember, this is what happens to a country when good people don't serve it." And so when I got the call to serve as a federal judge, it was a no-brainer. This country welcomed us with open arms when we had nothing and gave us everything we have today. It's the honor of a lifetime to be able to serve, and I'm grateful for it every single day.

The last time I saw my grandfather, Izu, was in 2003. He was dying of lung cancer in Venezuela. He was a larger than life man from the Kingdom of Romania who was orphaned at 10 years old, came to Venezuela, and built his entire life from scratch. I was at playing football at the Columbia University when my father called and said, "Look, I know you're really busy with school and sports and all that, but if you ever want to see him again, this is the time." So I talked to my coaches and worked things out and I flew down to Caracas with my father. If you know Venezuelan history, in 1998, Hugo Chavez, the dictator, became president. And the Constitution was clear you could run for only one five-year term. So in 2003, his term was up, but as an autocrat, he was not going to take that lying down. So what does he do? He packs the Supreme court with a bunch of his buddies and petitions for reconsideration.Constitution is clear, you can't run again." So what does he do? He packs the supreme Court with a bunch of his buddies and petitions for reconsideration. The new Supreme Court told him that not only could he run again, he could run as many times as he wanted to. He ruled until 2013 when he died of cancer. After the ruling, there were mass protests which happened to coincide with when I was visiting my grandfather. My grandfather, who was down to roughly 85 pounds and confined to a wheelchair, asked me to wheel him outside onto the balcony and set up the chessboard so we could play one last time. As a little boy, he had taught me how to play chess. I set up the pieces. He couldn't lift his arm enough to move them, so I was moving them for him. He said to me, "Your father tells me you want to go to law school." And I said, "I do." And he said, "Where do you want to go to law school?" So I said, "I want to go to Yale, but I don't know if I'll get in." And then he said, "Well, what kind of lawyer are you gonna be?" And I said, "I really don't know, I'm just in college, I mostly just care about football, you know?" And he looked at me and he had watery eyes at that moment, and he picked up his very bony finger, which took a great deal of effort, and he pointed out at the crowd below and said, "Always remember, this is what happens to a country when good people don't serve it." And so when I got the call to serve as a federal judge, it was a no-brainer. This country welcomed us with open arms when we had nothing and gave us everything we have today. It's the honor of a lifetime to be able to serve, and I'm grateful for it every single day.

83,775 views • 3 months ago

I was asked by USA Today to respond to remarks made by Hasan Piker about Zionism. Piker claimed as follows: “Zionism is the ethnoreligious supremacist ideology that is exterminationist in principle, born out of the wrong assessment that this was a land without people for a people without land. It required the extermination of the indigenous population, and that's precisely what has happened since its inception. And its final iteration of that has been the Gaza genocide that we watched unfold.” You can call a blowtorch an avocado as many times as you want, but it still doesn’t have a seed, and it still isn’t green because it’s still just a blowtorch. The claim that Zionism is an exterminationist ideology is just as nonsensical as calling a blowtorch an avocado. The suggestion that Jews want to exterminate the Arabs who also live on the land is likewise, as it has always been, ludicrous and false. Zionism is a simple idea, which is that Jews have the same rights — not more rights, but also not fewer rights — than every other people on Earth have to sovereignty in their national homeland. So just as you might think that Bulgarians have the right to sovereignty in their homeland, Japanese people, Korean people, German people all have the right to sovereignty in their homeland, Zionism is just the idea that Jews should be treated the same. By the way, this is in the charter, the charter that is the foundation of the state of Israel. In that document, the word ‘extermination,’ of course, would never appear there, but anything that even remotely resembles that word or idea is foreign to any of the early laws or that document. In fact, the document says precisely the opposite. The document says that one of the purposes of the state of Israel is to allow Jews and Arabs alike to live in peace and to flourish together in the land of Israel. That's what the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel says, and by the way, that's what the state of Israel has proven, more so than what it said in 1948, in the decades since.

I was asked by USA Today to respond to remarks made by Hasan Piker about Zionism. Piker claimed as follows: “Zionism is the ethnoreligious supremacist ideology that is exterminationist in principle, born out of the wrong assessment that this was a land without people for a people without land. It required the extermination of the indigenous population, and that's precisely what has happened since its inception. And its final iteration of that has been the Gaza genocide that we watched unfold.” You can call a blowtorch an avocado as many times as you want, but it still doesn’t have a seed, and it still isn’t green because it’s still just a blowtorch. The claim that Zionism is an exterminationist ideology is just as nonsensical as calling a blowtorch an avocado. The suggestion that Jews want to exterminate the Arabs who also live on the land is likewise, as it has always been, ludicrous and false. Zionism is a simple idea, which is that Jews have the same rights — not more rights, but also not fewer rights — than every other people on Earth have to sovereignty in their national homeland. So just as you might think that Bulgarians have the right to sovereignty in their homeland, Japanese people, Korean people, German people all have the right to sovereignty in their homeland, Zionism is just the idea that Jews should be treated the same. By the way, this is in the charter, the charter that is the foundation of the state of Israel. In that document, the word ‘extermination,’ of course, would never appear there, but anything that even remotely resembles that word or idea is foreign to any of the early laws or that document. In fact, the document says precisely the opposite. The document says that one of the purposes of the state of Israel is to allow Jews and Arabs alike to live in peace and to flourish together in the land of Israel. That's what the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel says, and by the way, that's what the state of Israel has proven, more so than what it said in 1948, in the decades since.

20,582 views • 20 days ago