Pensions, retirement, savings, investment, social care, economics expert. Believes pensions are about people, not just about money

Joined March 2009
197 Photos and videos
Ros Altmann retweeted
Everyone knows that a two-state solution would involve an Arab-only Palestine alongside a multiethnic Israel with a sizable Arab minority with full citizenship. Yet we're supposed to believe that Israel is the racist apartheid ethnostate. As ever, hatred of Israel is subrational.
290
964
6,484
137,421
They say: “Jews never stepped foot here before European Zionists arrived in the late 1800s.” But that’s false. 📷 Jerusalem already had a Jewish majority in the mid-1800s, decades before political Zionism even existed. Longing had already become presence. A living Jewish community in its ancient capital. In 1857, James Finn, the British Consul in Ottoman Jerusalem, reported to London: “The Jews form the largest portion of the population of Jerusalem.” That official record confirmed what Jewish history had always known. 🇮🇱 Gaza had Jewish life since biblical times. In the 16th century it was home to Rabbi Israel Najara, one of the great Hebrew poets and the rabbi of Gaza at the time. 🇮🇱 Safed was a thriving Jewish epicenter in the 16th century. It became the world center of Kabbalah, home to Rabbi Isaac Luria and Rabbi Yosef Karo, and for roughly a century rivaled Jerusalem in influence. 🇮🇱 Hebron maintained an ancient and continuous Jewish community, with synagogues, neighborhoods, burial grounds, and scholarship rooted in the patriarchal era. 🇮🇱 Tiberias was a central rabbinic authority from the 2nd to 5th centuries CE. The Sanhedrin held its final seat there, and the Jerusalem Talmud was finalized in its academies. History did not begin in the 1800s. The Zionist movement did not invent Jewish history here. It restored and strengthened what already existed. 🇮🇱 The Nation of #Israel Lives (author unknown)
15
58
135
2,981
Ros Altmann retweeted
On August 7, 1942, a 28-year-old German oil executive stood outside a Jewish orphanage in Nazi-occupied Poland and watched SS soldiers throw babies out of windows. That moment changed his life forever. His name was Berthold Beitz. At the time, he wasn’t a resistance fighter. He wasn’t a politician. He wasn’t part of an underground movement. He was a businessman working for the German oil industry in Boryslaw, a town in occupied Poland where Hitler’s war machine depended heavily on oil production. Beitz had a wife at home. A small daughter. A comfortable position. And after witnessing what the SS were doing to Jewish families, he went home and told his wife Else: “We have to do something.” Most people in occupied Europe survived by looking away. Berthold and Else refused. Over the next several years, they would save around 800 Jewish lives. Not with weapons. Not with speeches. With forged papers. False job titles. Hidden rooms. And unimaginable courage. Beitz discovered that Jews officially classified as “essential oil workers” were temporarily protected from deportation. So he started expanding the definition. Tailors became “petroleum technicians.” Hairdressers became “oil specialists.” Rabbis and scholars suddenly had paperwork claiming they were critical to Germany’s fuel production. He signed the papers himself. When deportation trains arrived, Beitz sometimes walked directly up to the cattle cars and demanded prisoners back, claiming they were essential workers needed for the war effort. And astonishingly, it often worked. While Berthold rescued people publicly, Else turned their home into a sanctuary. Jewish children hid in the cellar while Nazi officers sat upstairs eating dinner. Parents who knew they were about to be murdered entrusted their children to her arms. If the Gestapo had searched the house thoroughly, the Beitz family would have been executed. They did it anyway. In 1943, the Gestapo finally investigated Berthold after forged work permits were discovered. He denied everything. Somehow, he escaped arrest. By the end of the war, approximately 800 people were alive because the Beitz family refused to accept evil as normal. After the war, Berthold rebuilt his life quietly. He became one of the most powerful industrialists in Germany, eventually helping lead the massive Krupp steel empire and later ThyssenKrupp. He advised world leaders. Helped strengthen postwar Germany. Worked behind the scenes during the Cold War. But he almost never spoke publicly about what he had done during the Holocaust. His own grandson later admitted the family learned many details only by reading newspapers. When people called him a hero, Berthold rejected the word. He said: “I was just a human being who saw what was happening.” In 1973, Israel honored Berthold and Else Beitz as Yad Vashem “Righteous Among the Nations,” one of the highest recognitions given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Berthold Beitz died in 2013 at age 99. Else died the following year. The children they saved went on to have children of their own. Today, thousands of people exist because one German couple refused to look away while others did. Berthold Beitz spent the rest of his life believing he had simply done what any human being should do. History tells us otherwise. Because when cruelty becomes ordinary, the people who choose compassion become extraordinary.
110
1,413
4,375
74,982
Ros Altmann retweeted
Listen to Sophia Salma Khalifa, a Muslim Arab-Israeli woman, tell the truth about Gaza. In 2005, Israel completely left Gaza. No Jews alive or dead. They even took the graves. They handed over greenhouses, homes, and infrastructure, hoping Gaza would become the Singapore of the Middle East. The people of Gaza had a real chance. Then they elected Hamas. Hamas burned it all down, murdered everyone who opposed them, stole the opportunity, and turned Gaza into a launchpad for terror instead of a thriving state. This is what happens when radical Islamists win. They don’t build. They destroy. Powerful testimony from someone who actually understands the reality on the ground. Civilizational suicide has consequences. H/T @prageru
182
5,549
12,208
231,245
Ros Altmann retweeted
In 2005, Israel gave Palestinians exactly what the world demanded: “Land for Peace.” They unilaterally withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip, but got no peace. The IDF forcibly removed every last Jew — even digging up Jewish graves. Gaza was made completely Jew-free, exactly as Palestinians demanded. Israel handed over thriving communities, farms, and hundreds of millions in infrastructure — including productive greenhouses that could have become an economic engine for a Palestinian state. What did the Palestinians do with this gift? They destroyed it. Mobs looted and burned the greenhouses. They ransacked and demolished synagogues. They celebrated with Hamas flags and gunfire. Then, in January 2006, they voted Hamas — a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews — into power. By 2007, Hamas completed a bloody coup, threw Fatah members off rooftops, and seized total control of Gaza. The result? - Tens of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians - More than 500 miles of underground terror tunnels - Billions in international aid stolen for war, not welfare - Gaza transformed into a fortified Islamic terror enclave Land for peace was tried — and violently rejected. Everything Israel gave away in 2005 became the launchpad for the October 7 Massacre. This is the ultimate proof: the Palestinian movement has never wanted a state living next to Israel. Its goal has always been the destruction of the Jewish state — in any part of the Land. Important note: The blockade only came after Hamas seized power in 2007 and turned Gaza into a launchpad for war. And when that happened, Egypt joined it too. Disengagement didn’t bring peace. It brought the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
122
1,284
3,050
51,286
Ros Altmann retweeted
The US Federal Authorities just found 4 more UN officials who directly kidnapped civilian women both those that were alive and those that had been murdered and subjected them to torture and sexual violence and are perusing criminal charges against the UN for being implicit in terrosist activities. Let's not forget about the EU officials who admitted to taking bribes from Qatar. UN offcials are currently being investigated for the same crime and in additional payments from Iran. This will explain how the UN decided to place Iran (terrosist entity) on the UN Human Rights Council.
20
49
1,095
Ros Altmann retweeted
Israel just published a detailed dossier on UN bias in Gaza. Most people won't read it. Here's what's in it: 🔹 OCHA undercounted aid trucks entering Gaza by nearly 10,000 vs. Israel's own records 🔹 UNRWA staff participated in Oct. 7 — the UN called it "a few bad apples" and opened no serious investigation 🔹 The IPC famine report relied on an undisclosed dataset with measurements that exceeded anything in medical literature 🔹 UN Women ignored Israeli victims entirely 🔹 The Secretary-General blacklisted the IDF while staying silent on Hamas This isn't Israel crying bias. It's a documented, agency-by-agency breakdown. Read it yourself: govextra.gov.il/un-gaza-bias
55
1,089
2,503
40,136
Ros Altmann retweeted
Of the 750,000 Palestinians who left what became Israel in 1948, how many of them owned land deeded to their name? In an Ottoman Empire where tax farmers owned land on behalf of the state and taxed peasants who lived on the land and worked it, I’d say that the number of Palestinians who lost deeded real estate was low. Bear in mind that in any country, private ownership of land is — on average — half (in Canada 11 percent, in the U.S. 60 percent) of the total territory of the state. For some reason, Global Intifada seems to think that Israel belongs to Palestinians through the power of real estate deeds— a weak argument.
19
34
184
9,336
Ros Altmann retweeted
On This Day — May 28, 1948 Israel appointed a Jewish American badass as its first general in nearly 2,000 years — David “Mickey” Marcus. Marcus was a tough Brooklyn kid, a West Point graduate, and a decorated U.S. Army colonel and war hero who volunteered to help the newborn Jewish state on the brink of annihilation. He had already lived a legendary life: helped take down Lucky Luciano, parachuted into Normandy with the 101st Airborne, liberated Nazi death camps, and worked on the Nuremberg trials. Then, in 1948, he walked away from a promising U.S. Army career, took the fake name “Michael Stone,” and sailed to Israel to turn the ragtag Haganah into a real army. To turn it into the IDF. See him immortalized by the great Kirk Douglas in the clip below from the 1966 movie Cast a Giant Shadow. On May 28, David Ben-Gurion gave Marcus command of the Jerusalem front. The situation was dire: 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem were under siege. The Arab Legion (with British officers) had cut the only supply road, starving the city. Food was rationed to near nothing. Water was cut off. People were eating mallow leaves and facing surrender. Marcus didn’t flinch. He helped design and build the legendary Burma Road — a desperate, hand-carved bypass through mountains and ravines under enemy fire. Convoys, jeeps pushed by hand, and even donkeys carried supplies over terrain many thought impossible. That road broke the siege and saved Jerusalem. He trained fighters, designed command structures, and brought American military know-how to men and women who had just survived the Holocaust and refused to die again. On June 10, hours before a ceasefire, Mickey Marcus was tragically killed by friendly fire — a young sentry didn’t recognize him in the dark. He was wrapped in a white sheet, walking back to his quarters. He never saw the full victory he helped make possible. Israel buried its first general with full honors. His body was returned to West Point, where his tombstone reads: “A Soldier for All Humanity.” Mickey Marcus is the ultimate “Never Again” hero: a man who had everything in America but chose to risk it all so Jews would never again be defenseless. From a Brooklyn street fighter to Israel’s first general since the Maccabees. That’s the spirit that built the Jewish state.
25
202
1,081
49,116
Ros Altmann retweeted
Yesterday, I led more than 90 colleagues in urging the Administration to dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and transition its responsibilities to transparent, accountable partners free from ties to terrorism. The United States must ensure humanitarian aid supports peace, stability, and security in the Middle East, not organizations linked to Hamas.
710
794
3,568
178,813
Ros Altmann retweeted
How have we found ourselves in a world where talking about ancient artefacts and history has become too dangerous? My piece below 👇🏼
25
247
692
14,251
Ros Altmann retweeted
This matters. An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters. How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age? Well, it is a little more than that which is why it is both disturbing and important. And it matters because at its least it is a threat to history in Britain’s - but also the world’s - greatest temple of History @britishmuseum - and its scholarly integrity. The BM and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals but I am sure the BM realizes it is essential to announce a new event fast lest it give the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it hold events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum. British cultural life is the right and exercise of civic and cultural freedom – a privilege of our liberal democracy - that does not require the permission of gangs of ideological activists nor can it cancelled or postponed nor endured at their beck and sufferance nor permitted with a bend of the knee to their permissions or veto. But that is what this appears to be. Across the cultural world in the West, though the bewildered middleaged managers of our institutions that are confronting and often submitting to a wave of self-righteous blackmail and mob threat, there is an increasingly thin – indeed ever more fragile and sometimes nigh invisible – line between ‘security concerns’ – and institutional pusillanimity. Then there is the history itself. This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BCin the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70ADetc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds. These small kingdoms and the subsequent Temple priestly mini-state (restored by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius 539BC) and then the larger Judean kingdoms of the Hasmoneans and Herodians – between 167BC and 135AD chronicle the long indigenous history of Jews in the region – which the protesters are keen to erase. This is a political project of ideological erasure and malicious incitement of course concerned with the complex, brutal Israel-Palestine conflict that has now gone on for a hundred years and is unlikely to be solved in a small lecture theatre in the British Museum. But it also attempts to deny or erase Jewish history itself – and by implication the heritage of British Jews who live here in Britain, a small community that is now under cultural and sometimes physical threat. Incidentally - but it is worth saying, this history does not deny anyone else’s history, nor the many other small realms in this region through ancient times nor the many names of the region and its entities and the historical origins of those names (Canaan, or Philistia or Peleset, Phoenicia, Aram Damascus or Moab or later Nabatea and the provinces of Palaestina Prime, Seconda and Tertia and the Ghassanid kingdoms and so on etc etc). The history of one can not be used to erase the history of the other and does not need to do so. The pursuit of knowledge which is one of the delights of human life and is the mission of the BM and indeed anyone who writes, reads or enjoys history, can celebrate and recognize all of these. Yet this protest and the many like it deployed across Britain nowadays is the opposite of that - an attack on history using the methods of intimidation and vandalism. Much of this involves distorting or dismantling actual history or often lying to replace it with a fabricated ideological structure that nourishes no one and helps no one but degrades our culture and civic life not to speak of history itself. By the way, the frequent claims that these histories or names are ‘denied’ or ‘noone knows them’ is nonsense: anyone and everyone who is interested knows this history. (Much of it appears for example in my book Jerusalem a history of the Holy Land.) And this is relevant not just to those of us who write study or enjoy the history of the region but also to those who believe that cultural life and civic society is a right that must not be submitted to the aggressions and plots of loud well-organized much-indulged ideologues who take advantage of the freedoms of our society to undermine its principles and the very freedoms they are designed to guard. Just as vital is a rule of history itself that concerrns the rise and fall of civilizations: the society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail.
Dark times when a talk about Ancient Judah and Israel @britishmuseum is cancelled ‘for security concerns’?
86
839
2,878
211,880
Ros Altmann retweeted
An American Jew is shocked by Palestinian Muslims telling him that Jews especially women and children deserve to be raped and murdered by Muslims from Gaza. Zach Sage Fox, a fearless American Jew, posed as a woke Italian journalist and sneaked into the Palestinian Territories in the West Bank. He wanted to hear for the first time what ordinary Palestinians really think about the rape and mass murder of 1200 people in Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7. He also asked them about Hamas plans to destroy Israel and commit genocide against Jews. Their answers will make your blood boil. This is the raw, unfiltered truth the Western media refuses to show you about the conflict. While the mainstream media and leftist politicians push the lie that this is just a “land dispute” or “resistance,” Palestinians on the ground openly celebrate the slaughter of Jews and demand more. They do not want peace. They want every Jew dead. They say it straight to the camera with smiles on their faces. This is not a fringe view. This is the mainstream Palestinian position. Zach Sage Fox risked everything to expose it. The media does not care about the facts. Too many Western journalists promote Hamas propaganda and disinformation to demonize Israel and its people. The civilized world must stop pretending this is normal political disagreement. This is genocidal hatred rooted in Islamic supremacism. The same ideology that fuels October 7, grooming gangs in Britain, and endless jihad worldwide. If you want the truth, stop trusting the media and start listening to the people who live it. Share this video. Retweet it. Hit like. Follow the truth tellers who refuse to bow to the narrative. The mask is off. Palestinians said the quiet part out loud.
284
3,961
9,085
178,571
Ros Altmann retweeted
Brilliant.
299
3,730
15,525
127,681
Salary sacrificed pension cap will damage pension provision, with extra costs for employers, reduced pension contributions and lower take-home pay for many basic rate taxpayers Ros Altmann urges gov to 'press pause' on 'rushed' salary sacrifice cap professionalpensions.com/452…
8
12
703
Moving workers' small pension pots, without their consent, after just 12 months, is too short to give them a fair chance to re-start contributions. Hope the Regs will give at least 2 yrs Altmann seeks to amend small pots proposals via @@corpadviser corporate-adviser.com/altman…
1
3
5
1,236