Hi, I’m a lawyer. Do want to know what is really meant by a “#proportionate response” under international law? Then read on - and feel free to ask questions! Under International Humanitarian Law, #proportionality requires that any degree of damage (up to and including death) to #civilians not be “excessive” in relation to the “military advantage anticipated from a strike against a military target.” We are going to break that down, so everyone understands what exactly that means. However, first, you should be aware that it is a misnomer that anytime #Palestinian civilians die after an #Israeli strike, it is automatically evidence of an Israeli war crime. This is completely false - the law does not work that way. Simply, and unfortunately, the international rules of law recognize that civilians are often killed during war; and, most of the time, those deaths are actually not indicative of a war crime. Instead, the legal test for “proportionality” requires that each individual strike be looked at with a particular balancing analysis. First, here is a hard and fast rule: the strike must be intended to target a military objective; it is, therefore, an unlawful war crime to strike with the intent of targeting civilians without any military objective whatsoever. Now, let’s get a little technical while still keeping it simple. Under the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 at both Article 51(5)(b) and Article 52(2), we know that when #Hamas uses its own population (or Israeli #hostages) as #humanshields - either by using them to shield themselves or to shield their weapons depots - Hamas has, under international law, turned civilians targets into military targets. That means that when Hamas places weapons caches in and under schools, hospitals, mosques, etc., Hamas has made each of those places legitimate military targets. So, it has been well-known for many years that Hamas purposefully placed its headquarters underground beneath the al-Shifa Hospital. In doing so, international law holds that the hospital is no longer just a civilian target, it is a legitimate military target. That does not necessarily give the IDF carte blanche to attack hospitals, schools, mosques, etc.; however, it does mean that an IDF attack on a civilian target that has been made into a military target by Hamas’ use of human shields is not per se illegal under international law. Instead, such a strike (as is the case with any strike conducted by a military like the IDF), must be analyzed through a balancing test. One part of this balancing test performed by Israel before each strike is to determine whether the human shields in question are being used voluntarily or involuntarily. If the human shields are being used voluntarily - meaning the human shields are there protecting Hamas and its weapons of their own volition - then the target remains a completely legitimate military target. If the human shields are being used involuntarily - meaning Hamas is forcing people to act as human shields to protect themselves and/or their weapons - then the IDF must go back to the balancing test to determine whether the anticipated military advantage of a successful strike would outweigh the reasonably anticipated loss of civilian life. Importantly, the IDF rules state that if it cannot determine whether a human shield is being used voluntarily or involuntarily, it must presume the civilian is being used against his or her own will and treat the civilians as an involuntary participant. Assuming that there is a military target & that there may be human shields that are there involuntarily, the next step in the proportionality analysis for each individual strike (remember, proportionality is determined on a strike-by-strike basis, and not as the accumulation of strikes over time) is to try to determine the likely amount of damage to civilian persons and/or property as a result of the strike. In other words, under international law, Israel must be able to give a sort of “value” to the anticipated impact on civilians (including potential civilian deaths). Simply, a smaller number of anticipated civilian casualties may make the strike proportionate if there is a significant military advantage to be gained by conducting the strike. However, if Israel determines that the anticipated impact of a strike may cause many civilian casualties, it must make the difficult determination of whether the anticipated military advantage is so significant that it warrants carrying out the strike anyway. So, if Hamas has a weapons depot underneath a house with two civilians inside, and that house has been used to fire 500 rockets at Israeli civilians, and it is reasonably expected that there are hundreds more rockets under that house, Israel can almost certainly carry out the strike within the confines of international law. If that same house, however, had 10 families living inside, including many children, it could - and likely would - tip the scales of the proportionality balancing test toward Israel not being permitted to carry out the strike, even though the house has been used to attack Israeli civilians and can be expected to continue to be used to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians. Now, that balancing test can always change. If that same house is being used to fire long-range, precision-guided missiles at Israel’s major population centers in places like #TelAviv (effectively putting millions of Israeli civilians in danger), the balancing test may tip back in favor of Israel being legally permitted to carry out the strike. This all suggests the third and final step in the proportionality balancing test: the #IDF must determine and place a “value” on the anticipated military advantage that would be gained if it were to carry out a particular strike. An attack on Hamas leadership and/or its weapons manufacturers would be considered a high value target. An attack on a single Hamas member who has no special skill, would be a much lower value military target. Similarly, an attack on a small cache of mortars would have less military value that an attack on a large cache of advanced rockets that can reach large Israeli civilian population centers. Once the @IDF determines the anticipated “value” of the likely effect on civilian persons and property and the anticipated “value” of the likely military advantage to be gained if the strike is carried out, the balancing test can be performed, and a certain amount of judgment must go into the determination of whether that strike would or would not be “proportionate.” Importantly, this decision is so vital that the IDF does not simply permit a single solder on the ground with his or her hand on the proverbial (or actual) “trigger” to make that determination. In fact, the decision of whether a strike is proportionate is not even left up to IDF officers. It’s not even left up to IDF Generals. Instead, before any IDF strike can take place, IDF Guidelines provide that the proportionality balancing test must be presented to and analyzed by IDF military lawyers who then determine whether the strike is legally permissible as “proportionate” under international law and the rules of war. And these IDF military lawyers are not mere patsies or people who simply “rubber stamp” what the IDF requests. In fact, the IDF’s military lawyers work entirely independently of the IDF. They are outside of the chain of command and do not answer to anyone in the IDF, including a General (for example). Plus, every IDF military lawyer knows he or she may very well be held to account if he or she makes a wrong decision based on the evidence available at the time. Furthermore, sometimes the decisions to be made while balancing the likely military advantage against the likely civilian casualties can be so difficult that the legality of the strike is first brought to the Israeli Supreme Court for instant review. Another important concept: the comparison of civilian body counts of #Israelis versus #Palestinians (to the extent those numbers can be trusted since they come directly from Hamas-only) is not relevant to a proportionality analysis. Each strike must be viewed individually to determine proportionality. It is not a test of the cumulative nature of the strikes. Also, by simply comparing body counts, it does not factor in how many people killed were actually #HamasTerrorists, how many were Hamas collaborators there voluntarily, and it does not consider what military advantage was gained by Israel carrying out any individual strike. As Israel is now in the process of seeking to secure the military advantage of preventing Hamas from having the capacity to carry out repeated attacks of the kind and nature seen on October 7th, Israel is permitted to act proportionately insofar as necessary to achieve that military objective (the elimination of Hamas and/or its ability to make war). One more important fact people do not know, but that they should know: according to UN statistics of global conflict, the average civilian to combatant killed ratio is a rather appalling nine civilians killed for every one combatant killed. That’s why civilian body counts in and of themselves are never indicative of a war crime. Each individual strike has to be analyzed, and unfortunately civilians always suffer disproportionately in wars. In fact, while Israel is routinely criticized for any of its strikes that kill civilians, you may be surprised to know that Israel’s civilian to combatant ratio is routinely much lower than the nine to one average. In the very last operation carried out by the IDF prior to October 7 (in Jenin), 0.6 civilians were killed for every one combatant killed. In that conflict, not only were the IDF’s ratio numbers nowhere near the nine to one international average, but the IDF actually managed to kill more combatants than civilians - something that is extremely rare. In truth, Israel is targeted by accusations of war crimes almost immediately by the media, by politicians, and by the UN General Assembly despite the fact that those accusations are near 100% of the time based neither in fact nor in law. Since a proportionality balancing test must be used to determine whether a single specific Israeli strike falls within the confines of international law, someone providing an analysis must have all of the facts Israel considered before carrying out that strike as to the anticipated impact on civilians and the anticipated military advantage. Obviously, anyone who is making a snap judgment critical of Israel could not possibly have that information. Understand then, that when you see talking heads accusing Israel of “war crimes” immediately after and/or during Israeli strikes, that is not an actual legal analysis under international law of what constitutes a war crime. Much more likely, what you are witnessing is part of Hamas’ ongoing psychological and propaganda warfare campaign of demonizing and delegitimizing the State of Israel in the eyes of public opinion. #Hamas_is_ISIS #HamasisISIS #HamasISIS #HamasMonsters #October7massacre

On This Day — June 13, 1944 Exactly one week after D-Day, as Allied troops fought inland from Normandy beaches, Nazi Germany unleashed a new nightmare on London: the world’s first operational cruise missile — the V-1 “buzz bomb.” Built by concentration-camp slave laborers worked to death in underground factories, these robot planes carried a ton of high explosives. Their pulse-jet engine made a distinctive, terrifying buzzing sound that Londoners learned to dread. When the engine suddenly cut out overhead … you had roughly 12 seconds of silence before it dove and detonated with catastrophic force. The first one struck London that morning near Grove Road in Bethnal Green. Thousands more would follow. My grandfather, Captain Allen, was in and around London at the time. Just four days later, on June 17, 1944, he wrote in his diary: “Have learned today that the raid was caused by a new type of bomb. It is a sort of robot plane with no pilot. When the current (whatever that is and it appears to have something to do with rocket power) is cut off the plane falls. It is filled with heavy explosives and exploded with terrific force on hitting the ground.” Even as Germany was losing the war on every front, they diverted scarce resources — fuel, materials, manpower — into these “vengeance weapons” aimed at civilians. At the same moment, the Holocaust reached a horrific peak. In June 1944, Auschwitz was operating at maximum killing capacity. Trains from Hungary arrived daily (sometimes multiple per day), carrying hundreds of thousands of Jews straight to the gas chambers. The Reich was collapsing, yet the Nazis still prioritized genocide over military defense. They couldn’t win the war. But they were determined to finish their other war — the one against the Jews. The V-1 campaign and the death camps ran in parallel: one last spasm of hatred and revenge while the Reich burned.

On This Day — June 13, 1946 The second Bergen-Belsen trial opened in Germany. When British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, they walked into hell on earth: 60,000 prisoners crammed into a camp designed for 10,000, thousands of unburied bodies rotting in the open, and survivors too weak to even stand. Typhus and starvation raged. Commandant Josef Kramer — who had previously served at Auschwitz-Birkenau — remained at the camp. He calmly showed the arriving British officers around the nightmare he had helped create, displaying a chilling arrogance even in defeat. Now, in June 1946, more SS personnel and camp functionaries faced British military justice. The defendants included brutal guards, doctors, and kapos who had turned the camp into a death pit. Across the full Belsen trials, figures like Irma Grese — the sadistic “Hyena of Auschwitz” — and Kramer himself had already been condemned. These proceedings gave the world some of the earliest sworn testimony of industrialized Nazi cruelty: the deliberate starvation, the casual sadism, the piles of emaciated corpses bulldozed into mass graves. It was a measure of justice. But for the tens of thousands murdered at Bergen-Belsen — including Anne Frank and her sister Margot — and the millions across the Nazi camp system, it would never be enough. The evil was put on trial. Only a small handful of the monsters were punished. The full accounting continues.

On This Day — June 12, 2014 Three Jewish teenagers — Naftali Fraenkel (16), Gilad Shaer (16), and Eyal Yifrah (19) — were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists while hitchhiking home from school. They were executed at point-blank range inside the car almost immediately. These were ordinary boys with bright futures. Naftali was a talented student who loved music. Gilad was known for his warmth and quick smile. Eyal was the responsible one, always looking out for others. They were simply trying to get home for Shabbat. For 18 agonizing days, the entire nation of Israel held its breath. Prayers rose from every corner of the country. Jewish mothers stood together pleading for their sons’ return while the world watched. On June 30, their bodies were found. They had been murdered almost immediately after being taken. Hamas terrorists carried out the attack. Many in their ranks celebrated. This is what they call “resistance”: the deliberate kidnapping and slaughter of Jewish teenagers for the sole crime of being Jewish and living in Israel. The abduction shocked Israel to its core, triggered Operation Brother’s Keeper, and became one of the catalysts for the 2014 Gaza war. It served as a brutal reminder that Hamas’s hatred has no bottom — they will murder children without hesitation. May the memories of Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal be a blessing.

In 1455, a large group of Jews in Sicily tried to sail home to Eretz Israel, but Sicilian authorities found out and stopped them. After nearly 1,500 years of exile — ever since the destruction of the Second Temple — the ancient yearning burned as strongly as ever. “Next year in Jerusalem” wasn’t just a phrase at the Passover table. For these Sicilian Jews, it was a plan. But the rulers of Sicily had grown rich off their Jewish population through crushing special taxes and economic control. They weren’t about to lose such a valuable “asset.” So they arrested the would-be emigrants, imprisoned them, and demanded an enormous ransom — 1,000 ounces of gold. Only after the community paid did the authorities relent … but just barely. A mere 24 Jews were finally permitted to depart. They were forced to leave with nothing but the shirts on their backs. Everything else — homes, businesses, savings — was confiscated by the Sicilian crown. For centuries, Jewish communities across the diaspora dreamed of returning to their ancestral homeland. Some did. But many others were blocked, taxed, or punished for the crime of wanting to go home. The pull of Zion never faded. Even when the doors were bolted shut.

The classic witch — hooked nose, pointed black hat, cackling as she steals and poisons children — is one of the most enduring images in Western culture. It is also soaked in antisemitism. From the Middle Ages onward, European artists and storytellers built the visual language of the witch directly from longstanding anti-Jewish tropes: - The grotesque hooked nose — a staple of medieval Jewish caricatures - The pointed hat, widely traced to the Judenhut (the cone-shaped “Jew hat” Jews were forced to wear by Church decree after 1215) - Accusations of secret rituals, devil worship, poisoning wells, and murdering Christian children for blood — the exact libels long used against Jews The Brothers Grimm collection is drenched in this poison. Their most infamous example, “The Jew in Thorns,” features a Jewish man tortured with magic music until he dances himself bloody in a thorn bush, then robbed and hanged. The story was illustrated in bright, child-friendly colors. The Grimms included multiple antisemitic tales, and the Nazis enthusiastically promoted the entire collection as perfect German folk literature for indoctrinating children. Fast forward to 1959: Disney’s Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty — dramatic hooked nose, horns, and malevolent elegance. She didn’t read as generic “evil fairy.” She read as witch ... and coded Jewish. The visual formula has barely changed in over 500 years. Witch hunts and blood libels were never really about magic. They were about projecting society’s deepest fears onto a recognizable “other.” For centuries in Europe, that “other” was the Jew. Some stereotypes never die. They just put on a pointy hat.

On This Day — June 12, 1929 A little girl was born who would one day become the voice of 1.5 million murdered Jewish children. Her name was Annelies Marie Frank — Anne to the world. She was only 4 when Hitler came to power. Her father Otto immediately understood the danger and moved the family to Amsterdam. Anne joined them in 1934. For a few years they knew safety. Then, in 1940, the Germans conquered the Netherlands. In July 1942, the family went into hiding in the secret annex. For more than two years, eight people lived in constant fear, trapped in a few cramped rooms. There, a 13-year-old girl poured her soul into her diary. She wrote about arguments with her mother, her first love for Peter, her dreams of becoming a writer — and her stubborn hope. On July 15, 1944, while still in hiding, she wrote the now-famous words: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.” Those were among the last lines she ever wrote. Just three weeks later, on August 4, 1944, the annex was betrayed. The Franks were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Anne and Margot were later transferred to Bergen-Belsen. There, amid filth, starvation, and disease, both sisters died of typhus in February or March 1945 — only weeks before the camp was liberated. Anne was 15. She never got to write about Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. She never got to record the full horror of the Holocaust. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive. Miep Gies saved the diary and gave it to him after the war. Published in 1947, it became one of the most powerful books in history — the living testament of a child who never got to grow up. Anne Frank’s voice still echoes because she captured something rare and precious: Hope, while hiding from evil … before the evil finally caught up with her. Never forget the 1.5 million Jewish children — more than 90% of all Europe’s Jewish children — murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

The best answer to: “What does America get for the $3.8 billion in aid to Israel?” Spoiler: It’s not charity. It’s one of the highest-return strategic investments the United States makes anywhere in the world — in jobs, technology, intelligence, and real-world combat experience.

On This Day — June 11, 1943 Heinrich Himmler ordered the final erasure of Jewish life in Poland. By mid-1943, most of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews — the largest Jewish community in Europe — had already been murdered. The few remaining ghettos were now marked for total liquidation. Himmler’s order was brutally simple: clear every ghetto, send the able-bodied to slave labor, and “refer the rest to the East” — Nazi code for immediate death. He expanded it to the Soviet territories ten days later. The goal: make Poland and the East Judenrein. SS units, aided by local collaborators, surrounded the ghettos. They went house to house. Children ripped from parents. The sick and elderly shot in the streets or in their beds. Those hiding in bunkers were burned alive when the buildings were set on fire. One story among hundreds of thousands: In the Będzin ghetto, 13-year-old Rutka Laskier kept a diary as the end approached. She wrote with heartbreaking maturity about hunger, fear, and the growing certainty she would never grow up. Just days after Himmler’s order, Rutka, her parents, and her little brother were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz. She was murdered shortly after arrival. Her diary, hidden in an attic, survived — one of the most powerful testimonies from the final days of Polish Jewry. By the end of 1943, Poland — the Ashkenazi Jewish Jewel of Europe — had been turned into a vast graveyard.

On This Day — June 11, 1967 Before the invention of the “settler-colonial” myth & decades of propaganda, and just days after Israel’s miraculous victory in the Six Day War, American public opinion delivered a stunning verdict. A Louis Harris poll released this day showed: - 99% of American Jews sympathized with Israel. - Among Protestants: 41% supported Israel vs 1% for the Arabs. - Among Catholics: 39% supported Israel vs 0% for the Arabs. - Overall Americans: 41% sympathized with Israel compared to just 1% with the Arab states. A Gallup poll taken around the same time told a nearly identical story: 55% sympathized with Israel versus only 4% with the Arab states. Before the war on common sense, there was overwhelming, broad-based American sympathy for the Jewish state. Israel had just fought and won a defensive war for its very survival against enemies who had openly threatened to “throw the Jews into the sea.” The contrast with today is jarring. In 1967, ordinary Americans looked at tiny Israel surrounded by hostile armies and instinctively knew who the underdog was … and who the aggressor was. They saw a people who had survived the Holocaust just 22 years earlier fighting for their lives again — and sided with them. History sometimes whispers uncomfortable truths. One of them is this: for decades, the moral clarity on Israel in America was not a partisan issue. It was just the obvious right thing.

On This Day — June 11, 1941 Vichy France — the Nazi-collaborating regime already rounding up Jews in France — joined the Axis effort to bomb British Mandatory Palestine. A lone French Glenn Martin 167F bomber headed for Haifa. It never made it. Jewish volunteers in the newly formed 1st Palestine Light Anti-Aircraft Battery were among those firing at it. The plane was shot down near Tiberias. A few weeks later, on July 2, Vichy bombers struck again — this time accidentally hitting a British POW camp at Latrun (holding German and Italian prisoners), killing two and wounding 35. For the Jewish community in Palestine — the Yishuv — this was a bitter chapter. While much of the world was still only dimly aware of the horror unfolding against the Jews of Europe, the Yishuv were already on the front lines — volunteering for the British Army, manning anti-aircraft guns (often for the first time in their lives), and defending their ancestral homeland against Axis and Vichy attacks. The same Jewish gunners who helped shoot down German and Italian planes now turned their fire on Vichy aircraft too. These raids didn’t break the Yishuv. They hardened it. Instead of fear, they produced more volunteers, more resolve, and another step toward the fighting Jewish force that would emerge in 1948. The more enemies tried to crush the Jewish return, the more determined the Jews became.

The very next night after the attacks in Lod & Hadera, fedayeen terrorists infiltrated from Jordan and broke into a home in Kfar Hess and shot a young couple to death in their own bed. This was not “resistance.” This was not about “occupation.” This was murder for the sake of murder — part of the relentless campaign of terror that began long before Israel even declared independence.

The naive fantasy of a single Arab-majority state “from the river to the sea” treating Jews as equal citizens has always been historical illiteracy. In 1937 — long before Israel existed — the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem told the British Peel Commission that if Arabs received the entire land, the 400,000 Jews there would face “liquidation of the Jewish problem in an unpleasant way.” For 1,300 years under Arab and Muslim rule, Jews lived as dhimmis — tolerated second-class subjects forced to pay the jizya tax, barred from full legal equality, restricted in worship and residence, and subject to periodic massacres and expulsions. No Arab country in history ever granted its native Jewish population full and lasting equality as citizens. The alternative to Jewish sovereignty was never peaceful coexistence. It was subjugation, expulsion, or annihilation.

This day (June 11) in 1948, corporate Germany got a slap on the wrist for the Holocaust. The Nuremberg tribunal delivered its verdict on 24 top executives of I.G. Farben — the chemical conglomerate that turned industrialized mass murder into a profitable business. I.G. Farben didn’t just profit from the Holocaust. They built it. - They manufactured Zyklon B, the cyanide pellets used to gas more than 1 million Jews, mostly at Auschwitz. - They constructed and operated Auschwitz III-Monowitz (Buna), a slave labor camp where tens of thousands of Jews were literally worked to death producing synthetic rubber and chemicals for the Reich. - They “rented” more than 100,000 concentration camp prisoners from the SS across their empire, paying pennies a day. Those too weak to work were shipped back to Birkenau for extermination. - They looted factories and resources across occupied Europe with ruthless efficiency. The charges: planning aggressive war, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and participation in the SS. The punishment? 13 executives were convicted. 10 were fully acquitted. Sentences ranged from 18 months to just 8 years — with generous credit for time already served. Most were free within a few years. Take Fritz ter Meer, one of the most senior executives and a key figure behind the Auschwitz plant. Sentenced to 7 years. Released early in 1950. By 1956, he was Chairman of Bayer’s supervisory board — one of the companies I.G. Farben was broken into. Today, you still use products from the corporate successors of I.G. Farben: Bayer (aspirin, pharmaceuticals), BASF (chemicals, plastics), and Sanofi (from Hoechst). The men who helped make the Holocaust logistically possible didn’t just walk free — their companies thrived. While low-level SS guards were sometimes hanged, the businessmen who designed the factories of death, counted the profits, and shook hands with the SS mostly went home to comfortable lives. This was justice in 1948: hang a few sadists, slap the industrial machine on the wrist, and let the money keep flowing. The Holocaust wasn’t carried out only by fanatics in black uniforms. It was enabled by men in suits with briefcases and balance sheets.

On This Day — June 10, 1948 Six hours before the ceasefire that would secure Israel’s survival, the Jewish state lost its first general in nearly 2,000 years — and it happened by heartbreaking friendly fire. David “Mickey” Marcus, the Brooklyn-born West Point colonel who had just built the secret Burma Road to break the siege of Jerusalem, couldn’t sleep. Wrapped in a white sheet against the cold night air, he stepped outside the guarded perimeter at Abu Ghosh to relieve himself. An 18-year-old Palmach sentry challenged him in Hebrew. Marcus, who spoke almost no Hebrew, answered in English. The young guard — who had never met the American advisor now commanding the Jerusalem front — fired a warning shot, then a fatal one. Marcus was killed instantly. He died never knowing the truce had held. Never knowing his road had saved 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem. Never knowing the army he helped forge would become the IDF. But his legacy did not end that night. The military manuals and command doctrines Mickey Marcus wrote for the fledgling Haganah were never rewritten — they are still taught, unedited, in IDF battalion commanders’ courses today. The kibbutz founded in 1949 on the very border he defended was named Mishmar David in his honor. And though he and his wife Emma had no children of their own, his “children” are everywhere: in the tactics still used by Israeli soldiers, in the streets and memorials bearing his name, and in the unbreakable spirit he helped instill in a people who refused to be defenseless again. Ben-Gurion said it best: “He was the best man we had.” From Brooklyn street fighter to the first “Aluf” since Judah Maccabee — and the only American buried at West Point who died fighting for another country. That is the measure of one Jewish hero who answered the call when it mattered most.

On this day — June 10, 1940 Nazi Germany completed its conquest of Denmark & Norway (Operation Weserübung). Two neighboring countries. Same brutal occupier. The fate of their Jewish communities could not have been more different. Denmark had around 8,000 Jews, and they refused to play along. For the first 3 years, the Germans were forced to treat Denmark’s Jews relatively mildly. No yellow stars, no immediate persecution. Then in October 1943, when the Nazis finally tried to round them up: - Ordinary Danes — fishermen, doctors, teachers, priests, police, farmers — warned the Jews in time. - In just three weeks, they smuggled more than 7,200 Jews and 700 non-Jewish family members across the sea to neutral Sweden in fishing boats, often hidden under piles of fish. - The result was an incredible 99% survival rate for Denmark’s Jews. About 51 Danish Jews were killed in the Holocaust. It was one of the greatest collective rescues in human history. In contrast, Norway’s small Jewish population (just over 2,000) faced a far darker fate with Norwegian police and collaborators actively helping the Nazis. Starting in 1942: - Norwegian authorities registered Jews, seized their property, and assisted in roundups. - Between October 1942 and February 1942, around 800 Norwegian Jews were arrested and deported — mostly to Auschwitz. Only 34 survived. - Roughly half the Jewish community was murdered, with some killed in Norway itself. About 900 escaped to Sweden thanks to some brave resistance networks, but the state and police largely failed them. Same evil. Same invasion date. Same Nazi master. Denmark showed the best of humanity — neighbors protecting neighbors at great personal risk. Norway showed how collaboration and indifference enabled mass murder. This is why “ordinary people” matter. Courage is a choice. Silence and cooperation have deadly consequences.

Reality check for New York City. Divesting from companies that do business with Israel would cost NYC pension funds and taxpayers $37.55 billion over the next decade! The targeted firms include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Intel, JP Morgan, ExxonMobil, and others. This is what happens when you elect an "anti-Zionist" as mayor and ideology collides with math. It's pure fiscal malpractice that would mean higher taxes, cuts to schools, police, and fire services, all to punish the world’s only Jewish state. The numbers don't lie.

Indigenous leaders from Canada & New Zealand told a landmark Indigenous-Jewish summit that Israel is “the greatest decolonization project” and “most successful land-back project in modern history.” They emphasized the continuous Jewish presence in the land for millennia — “they kept the fires burning, and that is what indigeneity looks like to us” (Dr. Sheree Trotter, Māori). This is exactly right. Jewish indigeneity isn’t a slogan — it’s history. And when actual Indigenous voices reject the “settler-colonial” myth, the propaganda machine loses its strongest rhetorical weapon.

On This Day — June 10, 2007 Hamas turned Gaza into a butcher shop. Two years after Israel unilaterally withdrew every soldier, ‘settler,’ and Jew from Gaza — leaving the greenhouses intact and handing over the keys in the name of peace — Hamas showed the world exactly what they do with power. After winning the 2006 elections, they didn’t build a state. They butchered. On June 10, 2007, during the final phase of the Fatah-Hamas civil war, Hamas gunmen grabbed Mohammed Sweirki, an officer in the elite Palestinian Presidential Guard. They dragged him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building — the tallest in Gaza — and hurled him to his death. His body plummeted through the air and smashed into the concrete below in a public execution designed to send a message: This is what happens to our enemies. Fatah retaliated that same night: they murdered the imam of Gaza’s Great Mosque and opened fire on Hamas leader and newly elected Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s home. Then, just before midnight, Fatah’s own terrorists seized a Hamas fighter and threw him screaming off a 12-story building. Rooftop executions. Bodies shattered on pavement. Blood running in the streets of Gaza. This wasn’t politics or ‘resistance.’ The was raw, medieval savagery between two terror factions fighting over who would get to rule the ruins. By June 14, it was over. Hamas completed its bloody coup. They seized total control of Gaza through murder, intimidation, and terror — throwing political rivals from rooftops, executing opponents in the streets, and dragging their bodies through the dirt. This is how Hamas won absolute power. Israel left. Palestinians voted. Hamas murdered its way to dictatorship. And from that river of Arab blood spilled in 2007 flowed the October 7 Massacre in 2023. Never forget how this nightmare actually began: not with ‘occupation,’ but with Hamas choosing barbarism and destruction over peace and building the moment they had the chance.

On This Day — June 10, 1977 Just three decades after the Holocaust — when the world closed its doors and left Jews to die on sinking ships and in sealed trains — the State of Israel rescued 66 Vietnamese refugees drifting helplessly in the South China Sea and made them citizens. For the first time in nearly 2,000 years of exile and powerlessness, the Jewish people had sovereignty … and they chose to use it to save strangers. In the middle of the vast ocean, a leaking wooden boat carried 66 terrified men, women, and children with no food, no water, and failing SOS signals ignored by ships from East Germany, Norway, Japan, and Panama. Death was closing in. The Israeli cargo ship Yuvali, en route to Taiwan, spotted them. Captain Meir Tadmor radioed Haifa for instructions. Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally gave permission, and the Jewish crew took every soul aboard, fed them, clothed them, and diverted their voyage — sailing home to Israel. When the ship arrived, Begin — whose parents and brother were murdered in the Holocaust — stood before the Knesset and declared with deep emotion: “We Jews know what it is to be refugees. We know the agony of wandering the seas while the world looks away. For the first time in two millennia, we are no longer powerless wanderers. We are a sovereign nation — and therefore it is natural for us to give these people a haven in the Land of Israel.” This first group of 66 was only the beginning. Between 1977 and 1979, tiny Israel — still absorbing its own Jewish refugees from Arab lands and the Soviet Union — welcomed more than 300 Vietnamese boat people in total, granting them full citizenship and a new life. Many of these Vietnamese-Israelis went on to build beautiful, fully integrated lives in the Jewish state. Their children grew up speaking Hebrew, served in the IDF, started families with Israeli spouses, and thrived in professions ranging from business and policing to the restaurant industry — becoming a small but vibrant thread in the tapestry of Israeli society. This was not politics. This was the Jewish soul speaking. After centuries of being the stranger, the outcast, the one no empire would shelter … the Jewish people were finally the ones with the power to open their gates. And they chose to remember.

This is exactly right. In the latest PA budget (publicly released this year), the “Martyrs’ Fund” & payments to terrorists’ families still receive hundreds of millions of dollars — more than the PA spends on health & education combined — with higher payouts explicitly tied to the number of Jews killed. This is the same machinery that turned 15-year-olds into walking bombs during the Second Intifada and continues to glorify mass murdering terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi and Abu Jihad in school murals and summer camps today. The slogan “Globalize the Intifada” isn’t abstract rage. It’s an export order for the death cult the PA has spent three decades perfecting. Thank you @palwatch for the relentless documentation