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Mark Taitz retweeted
A “Settler’s” Take on England’s Sanctions Against Jews
Britain has chosen a peculiar enemy. Not the Authority that pays stipends to murderers. Not the textbooks that teach children to hate Jews. Not the governments that torture their own critics, jail journalists, and treat the sale of land to a Jew as treason. London has decided that dates, avocados, and a few bottles of wine grown by Jews in Judea and Samaria are the crisis that requires a speech from the foreign secretary, the prime minister standing nearby, and a media tour to explain the courage of it all.
The boycott is being sold as law and as rescue of a two-state map. It is neither. It is a political performance aimed at a party conference and a by-election, dressed up as foreign policy. One British commentator put it plainly: the theater was written more for Holborn and St Pancras than for Haifa. The volume of produce at stake is small. Diplomats have even been telling other capitals not to treat the step as a rupture. Palestinian activists call it too little. Washington has barely shrugged. And still the statement was made, because Labour needed a louder line against Israel before Liverpool and before a seat it fears losing to the Greens.
That is not statesmanship. It is the oldest habit in British politics when domestic failure becomes uncomfortable: find the Jews and legislate against their presence in their own land.
The legal story London now recites would have surprised London’s own lawyers. In 1967 the Foreign Office’s legal adviser did not treat the armistice line as a sacred border. He wrote that Israel had a fair claim to adjustments beyond it, not merely as spoils of war. The line was a ceasefire, not a frontier of Jewish exile. Treating every Jewish home east of it as contraband rewrites that history and pretends an armistice is a verdict on who may live in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, in Hebron, in the hills of Samaria.
Hebron should end the argument by itself. Jews lived there for generations beside the graves of the patriarchs. In 1929 they were massacred. In 1936 the British Mandate finished the work and emptied the city of its remaining Jews. Property was looted. The synagogue was wrecked. For thirty-one years the community was gone because it had been murdered and expelled. After 1967 Jews returned. Britain now treats that return as the offense. If massacre and expulsion can convert an ancient community into an “illegal” one, then terror has been rewarded and ethnic cleansing has been given a legal afterlife.
Jordan’s occupation from 1948 to 1967 did the same across Judea and Samaria: Jews were driven out, their holdings seized, and no compensation followed. When Israel took the land back in a war it did not start, the demand was not that stolen Jewish life be restored. The demand, then and now, is that Jews stay out. That is not international law. It is a rule written for one people.
The language that made this possible was built over decades. Disputed land became “occupied,” then “illegally occupied,” then a slogan so worn that politicians no longer ask what the Mandate actually said. Britain helped author that Mandate. It later carved Transjordan away. It now lectures the remnant on which side of an old ceasefire a Jew may farm. Israel’s public diplomacy let the vocabulary harden. The result is a public, including ministers, who believe a repetition is a fact.
E1 is the pretext of the week. London says a corridor that would keep Jerusalem tied to Maale Adumim would leave Palestinians with a strip too thin to live with. The same voices demand that Israel accept a waist of comparable width for millions of its own citizens. Narrowness is intolerable when it is theirs and required when it is ours. Construction decisions and planned roads that preserve travel between Palestinian towns were taken long before this announcement.
The claim that a twelve-kilometer stretch killed the two-state idea is theater. That idea was not murdered by housing. It was abandoned, again and again, by an Authority that chose incitement over reform, and by a diplomatic class that paid for the choice.
Europe already tried the other lever. It recognized a Palestinian state and waited for moderation, hostages, and an end to war. None arrived. The lesson drawn in London was not that empty recognition fails. The lesson was that Israel needed a “reset,” beginning with a ban on goods from Jewish towns. The foreign secretary found time to discuss the policy with Qatar. He did not find time to match the energy against pay-for-slay, against curricula that sanctify killing, against the absence of a Palestinian presidential vote since 2005, against corruption, against the silencing of the press. Those files produce no Commons statement and no supermarket ban.
The double standard is the policy. Britain funds and talks with an Authority whose own human-rights body records arbitrary arrest and torture. It watches personal-status laws that grind down women. It watches schools it helps underwrite teach martyrdom. It watches Hamas’s record in Gaza and still aims the economic weapon at Jewish farmers. Arabs already live as citizens inside Israel: voters, doctors, judges, property owners. The unaskable question is why a Jew may not live as a minority in any future Palestinian entity, and why a Palestinian who wishes to sell land to a Jew is treated as a traitor. A ban on Jewish produce answers that question without saying it: Jewish life east of the line is the problem to be managed.
The boycott will not do what its authors claim. It will not police crime. It will not conjure a diplomatic process that does not exist. It will not separate a lid made in one town from hummus packed in another. The economies are braided. Palestinian laborers work in those fields and plants. If the shelves in Britain go empty of that fruit, those workers lose wages first. Timing the move weeks before an Israeli election is not diplomacy. It is interference dressed as virtue, and it will be read inside Israel as proof that pressure from London is a reason to stand firmer, not to retreat.
There is a darker pattern as well. Economic isolation of Jews has never been a neutral tool. It has been the opening move of campaigns that begin with goods and end with people. When the punishment is detached from the stated goal, when only the Jewish state is treated this way, the historical warning is not hysteria.
I find this legislation despicable. I also notice something that matters more than Britain’s self-regard. For months too many Israelis and Jewish Zionists spent their energy on the inflated slander of “settler violence,” as if a sliver of criminality defined the hundreds of thousands of Jews raising children, teaching, farming, and building ordinary towns in Judea and Samaria. The slander was useful to people who needed a moral alibi for boycotts. It was never a description of those communities. Now, watching London put Jewish labor on a blacklist, many of those same voices have come back to the defense of our towns. That return is overdue. It should not have required a British edict.
Judea and Samaria are not a colonial nickname invented after 1967. They are the names of the Jewish heartland. Jews live there because the land is theirs by history, by law older than Labour’s press operation, and by the simple rule that a people is not required to stay expelled in order to please a foreign ministry. Britain may enjoy the applause in the hall. It will not decide who may plant a vineyard in Samaria or sell dates from the Jordan Valley. Those towns will remain. The Jews who built them will remain. The countries that confuse a grocery ban with justice will discover that they have measured themselves, not us.
Mark Taitz retweeted
No, they really don't. I don't think you understand the word "deliberately" and "in part."
"Deliberately" means that the intended harm be the destruction of the protected group, in whole or in part.
This is the dolus specialis standard that is found in the first part of the Convention. Meaning you must prove, fully conclusively, that the intended harm be the at least in part destruction of the group. And to infer it requires that there be no other reasonable explanation (only reasonable inference test). In Gaza, you cannot establish that it is the only reasonable inference to be genocidal intent unless you were to assess the totality of the evidence, which requires assessing the conduct of Hamas as a belligerent and how it informs Israeli conduct. Not one accusation has done this.
As a demonstration of the requirements of the law, see below:
Bosnia v. Serbia (2007) para. 373: “The dolus specialis, the specific intent to destroy the group in whole or in part, has to be convincingly shown by reference to particular circumstances, unless a general plan to that end can be convincingly demonstrated to exist; and for a pattern of conduct to be accepted as evidence of its existence, it would have to be that it could only point (emphasis added) to the existence of such intent.”
ICTY Tolimir Appeal Chamber para. 745: "Indications of such intent are rarely overt, however, and thus it is permissible to infer the existence of genocidal intent based on “all of the evidence, taken together”, as long as this inference is “the only reasonable [one] available on the evidence” (emphasis added). Factors relevant to this analysis may include the general context, the perpetration of other culpable acts systematically directed against the same group, the scale of atrocities, the systematic targeting of victims on account of their membership in a particular group, or the repetition of destructive and discriminatory acts. The existence of a plan or policy, a perpetrator’s display of his intent through public speeches or meetings with others may also support an inference that the perpetrator had formed the requisite specific intent."
"In part" requires substantiality that is so numerous that it threatens the existence of the whole.
As a demonstration of the requirements of the law, see below:
ICTY Krstić Appeal Chamber para. 8: "It is well established that where a conviction for genocide relies on the intent to destroy a protected group “in part,” the part must be a substantial part of that group. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole. Although the Appeals Chamber has not yet addressed this issue, two Trial Chambers of this Tribunal have examined it. In Jelisić, the first case to confront the question, the Trial Chamber noted that, “[g]iven the goal of the [Genocide] Convention to deal with mass crimes, it is widely acknowledged that the intention to destroy must target at least a substantial part of the group.” The same conclusion was reached by the Sikirica Trial Chamber: “This part of the definition calls for evidence of an intention to destroy a substantial number relative to the total population of the group.” As these Trial Chambers explained, the substantiality requirement both captures genocide’s defining character as a crime of massive proportions and reflects the Convention’s concern with the impact the destruction of the targeted part will have on the overall survival of the group (emphasis added)."
Ibid. para. 10: "This interpretation is supported by scholarly opinion. The early commentators on the Genocide Convention emphasized that the term “in part” contains a substantiality requirement. Raphael Lemkin, a prominent international criminal lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and was instrumental in the drafting of the Genocide Convention, addressed the issue during the 1950 debate in the United States Senate on the ratification of the Convention. Lemkin explained that “the destruction in part must be of a substantial nature so as to affect the entirety.” (emphasis added) He further suggested that the Senate clarify, in a statement of understanding to accompany the ratification, that “the Convention applies only to actions undertaken on a mass scale.” Another noted early commentator, Nehemiah Robinson, echoed this view, explaining that a perpetrator of genocide must possess the intent to destroy a substantial number of individuals constituting the targeted group. In discussing this requirement, Robinson stressed, as did Lemkin, that “the act must be directed toward the destruction of a group,” this formulation being the aim of the Convention." (emphasis added)
Ibid. para. 12: "The intent requirement of genocide under Article 4 of the Statute is therefore satisfied where evidence shows that the alleged perpetrator intended to destroy at least a substantial part of the protected group. The determination of when the targeted part is substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of considerations. The numeric size of the targeted part of the group is the necessary and important starting point, though not in all cases the ending point of the inquiry. The number of individuals targeted should be evaluated not only in absolute terms, but also in relation to the overall size of the entire group. (emphasis added) In addition to the numeric size of the targeted portion, its prominence within the group can be a useful consideration. If a specific part of the group is emblematic of the overall group, or is essential to its survival, that may support a finding that the part qualifies as substantial within the meaning of Article 4."
To determine what constitutes the area we need to look at ibid. para. 13: "The historical examples of genocide also suggest that the area of the perpetrators’ activity and control, as well as the possible extent of their reach, should be considered (emphasis added). Nazi Germany may have intended only to eliminate Jews within Europe alone; that ambition probably did not extend, even at the height of its power, to an undertaking of that enterprise on a global scale. Similarly, the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda did not seriously contemplate the elimination of the Tutsi population beyond the country’s borders. The intent to destroy formed by a perpetrator of genocide will always be limited by the opportunity presented to him. While this factor alone will not indicate whether the targeted group is substantial, it can - in combination with other factors - inform the analysis."
In the ICTY Sikirica Trial Chamber decision, para. 72, they stated: "For the purpose of determining the number of victims within the terms of Article 4(2)(a), (b) and (c), one is, therefore, left with a number of approximately 1000-1400 Muslims out of a total of 49,351 in the Prijedor municipality. This would represent between
2% and 2.8% of the Muslims in the Prijedor municipality and would hardly qualify as a “reasonably substantial” part of the Bosnian Muslim group in Prijedor (emphasis added). It also needs to be borne in mind that not all the detainees at Keraterm were Muslims."
In Gaza, as of today, 73,335 people have reportedly been killed per the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Included in that are about 25,000 belligerents (we're going to choose to ignore this for the time being). The pre-war population of Gaza was 2,230,000. Through the entirety of the Palestinian population in which Israel holds effective control it is 5,500,000.
That gives us a look into nearly three years of war about substantiality, so let's take a look at both Gaza specific and the entirety of the Palestinian population (since Israel holds effective control of both).
Gaza: 3.28%
Totality: 1.33%
So, we can now do the legal analysis for "in part" destruction of Palestinians. This is similar to Sikirica in which about 3% or less has been killed in the area of control. In Sikirica the ICTY Trial Chamber found this to "hardly qualify as 'reasonably substantial' part of the Bosnian Muslim population in Prijedor. The reason for this is that it didn't affect the ability of the whole to survive within Prijedor. Like in Prijedor and Sikirica we see about 3% killed compared to the whole of Gaza. Unlike in Sikirica, under the totality of control the killed population is 1.33% which is substantially less than what was found in Prijedor to not constitute genocide.
Because about 3% does not constitute threaten the existence of the group as a whole, it cannot be substantial enough to constitute "in part" destruction of the group. Thus, there is not "in part" destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza, let alone the entirety of the area of control.
Now, it is clear that there needs to be a full analysis of the only reasonable inference test. This requires assessing the totality of the evidence and facts. We know that Hamas does not distinguish in combat, meaning they do not wear uniforms. We also know that Hamas has weaponized civilian infrastructure including homes, mosques, schools, even UN facilities. We further know that Hamas has weaponized healthcare facilities, this can be demonstrated by the piece of evidence in the original UN COI report accusing Israel of genocide where the report mentions the bombing of a tunnel at the European hospital. The European hospital tunnel was the same tunnel, and the same bombing, that killed Mohammed Sinwar. Mohammed Sinwar was directing the war from that tunnel. The Geneva Conventions have trigger conditions in which these places lose their protections, subject to proportionality, and we know that these trigger conditions have occurred in Gaza as caused by Hamas due to their tunnels (GCIV 28 & API 51(7)), diversion of aid (GCIV 23), weaponization of healthcare infrastructure (GCIV 19). Meaning, we have law on point stipulating that there is a reasonable alternative explanation other than genocide because the trigger conditions have been met.
Further, this also demonstrates a demonstration of reasonable alternative explanations other than genocide. Which means that the only reasonable inference cannot be genocide, which fails the only reasonable inference test.
Because it fails the only reasonable inference test it cannot be, per the law, that the dolus specialis requirement has been met through inference to intent.
Thus, you cannot establish that the intent requirement for genocide has been met.
Essentially, @sparklenaloha, I think I know the law on this extremely well, unlike you. And the ICJ's jurisprudence would preclude a finding of genocide, just as Amnesty stated in their report on page 101: "However, its rulings on inferring intent can be read extremely narrowly, in a manner that would potentially preclude a state from having genocidal intent alongside one or more additional motives or goals in relation to the conduct of its military operations."
Mark Taitz retweeted
A while ago, I watched the infamous 47-minute video documenting the atrocities of October 7th — the one not made publicly available, to protect the privacy of the victims.
The worst part of this video is not what it displays, but who is displaying it: the perpetrators themselves. Gleefully. Sadistically. Unabashedly. Most of the footage was filmed by Hamas terrorists on their GoPro bodycams, some also by ordinary Gazan civilians on their cellphones.
Even the Nazis tried to cover up their atrocities, but Hamas brags about theirs for the entire world to see. The killers are euphoric throughout the massacre, and their relentless, ecstatic cries of "Allahu Akbar" (punctuated by the occasional "Kill the Jew!") are simply nauseating.
Some images are seared into my memory forever. I will never forget the two boys in their underwear — one with his eye socket hanging out of his face — asking his brother whether he thinks they're going to die, while the Hamas monster who had just thrown a grenade in their saferoom helps himself to a drink from their fridge, taking a casual break from the slaughter.
Neither will I ever forget the terrorists playing football with a severed head. Or the Thai migrant worker whose head is viciously hacked off with a garden hoe — another "Zionist colonizer" getting what he deserved, right?quillette.substack.com/p/wha…
Or the throngs of Gazans crowding around pickup trucks loaded with the mutilated corpses of Jewish women, filming and spitting on the bodies. Or the woman in Kibbutz Mefalsim, crouching and begging in vain for mercy.
There is some evidence of sexual violence in the video — the charred corpse of a young woman with her legs splayed and her genitals exposed — but not much. Apparently even Hamas draws a line somewhere: they are not as proud of raping Jewish women as they are of murdering them. Or, more likely, they simply didn't want to embarrass the delicate sensibilities of their legions of useful idiots in the West.
But yes — there was rape. Not "rape" in scare quotes, as the apologists would have it, but sadistic, murderous sexual violence, documented in a new damning new report by The Civil Commission, an independent Israeli women's rights NGO. (video summary here: youtube.com/watch?v=K7fJuzr4…)
Across its 180 pages, the report describes "a recurring pattern of rape and gang rape; sexual torture; mutilation; targeted shooting to the face, head and genital area; forced nudity; binding and restraint; genital burning; objects inserted into intimate areas; post-mortem sexual humiliation; and execution during or after sexual assault."
And it was premeditated and organized. The terrorists crossing into Israel carried printed Arabic-to-Hebrew phrasebooks with handy expressions like "take off your pants," "lie down," "spread your legs," and "don't make trouble." I wonder why they expected to need those particular phrases?
I know one thing: no civilized country on earth would tolerate the existence of an organization like Hamas on its border after October 7th. Not one. This includes every self-righteous Westerner currently lecturing Israel from thousands of kilometres away, without an inch of skin in the game.
dailymail.com/news/article-1…
Mark Taitz retweeted
24 years ago, the Palestinian propaganda machine invented one of its most notorious fake massacres — and (shockingly, I know) the world believed it instantly.
In the spring of 2002, suicide bombings had become almost daily events inside Israel. They reached their horrifying peak with the Passover Massacre on March 27, when a terrorist walked into the Park Hotel dining room in Netanya and murdered 29 people — many of them elderly Holocaust survivors.
Israel had had enough. On March 29, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in Palestinian cities that had become safe havens for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Nowhere was that infrastructure more entrenched than in Jenin — the self-proclaimed “suiciders’ capital.”
During the operation, the Palestinian "brand-Israel-as-war-criminals" routine immediately went into overdrive.
They screamed the IDF had conducted a “massacre” in Jenin - more than 500 Palestinians slaughtered in cold blood, they said.
The international media and the UN swallowed it whole. Headlines screamed about “Jenin: the new Srebrenica.” Demands for war crimes investigations poured in.
Then the truth slowly dribbled out.
The actual Palestinian death toll? Around 52, the vast majority of whom were armed terrorists. Oh, and roughly the same number of Israeli soldiers died clearing the camp house-by-house — because Israel deliberately chose the riskier ground-troop route to spare civilian lives instead of leveling the place from the air.
The “massacre” was a lie. A deliberate, coordinated lie.
This is the standard playbook in the anti-Israel propaganda war: invent a shocking atrocity, flood the media with it, let the world condemn Israel in real time … and by the time the facts prove it was fake, nobody cares anymore.
We saw the exact same pattern again in October 2023 at Gaza’s Al-Ahli Hospital.
Palestinian officials and their allies screamed that Israel had bombed a hospital and murdered 500 civilians (same false number claimed in Jenin 21 years earlier). World leaders rushed to condemn Israel. The libel raced around the globe.
Then the evidence emerged: it was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket. No Israeli strike was involved, and the death toll was far lower. But by then, the damage was done.
Large parts of the international community love to tell and share the story of Jews as bloodthirsty killers. They buy it hook, line, and sinker - every ... single ... time.
I try to push the historically verifiable facts into the open, one post at a time; but I know, by sheer numbers, that I can never "win" this battle. The anti-Israel propaganda machine is too loud, too well-funded, and too massive.
But I can chip away at it, little by little, every day. Because the truth still matters. Even when the world would rather believe the lie.
Mark Taitz retweeted
I looked at all his claims, and its embarrasing and shameful how wrong he is.
A bold and unfiltered exchange as a Christian pastor challenges Helen Zille over her stance on Palestine.
Raising tough questions on bias, justice, and moral responsibility, the interview shines a light on the growing demand for accountability from political leaders on one of the world’s most pressing humanitarian issues.
Mark Taitz retweeted
There is a genre of October 7 commentary that works by constructing a historical arc so compressed and so selective that the conclusion becomes inevitable. A people wronged, hemmed in, their world dismantled across generations. Rage follows. What else would you expect?
The history offered in support of this arc is not really history. It begins where it needs to begin, omits what complicates it, and arrives at a destination that was chosen before the argument started.
The Arab population of Mandatory Palestine never held sovereignty that was taken from them. There was no state. A significant portion immigrated to the land only in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The land passed from Ottoman to British control, and two national movements competed within that framework. One of them, the Jewish national movement, was not a colonial project arriving from outside. Jewish communities had existed without interruption in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, Gaza, Tiberias, the Galilee and elsewhere, through centuries of pre-modern colonial empires, Roman, Byzantine, several Arab Caliphates, the Crusaders, and Ottoman, and long before any of them emerged.
The Zionist movement was a national liberation movement of a people with three thousand years of documented connection to that land, rejecting the exile that was imposed on many of them, and building upon a presence that had never left.
The other national movement, the Arab Palestinian one, crystallised largely in reaction to Zionism rather than predating it, which is why the sovereign state being projected backwards into history as ancient and continuous is itself part of the inversion, not a foundation for it. Arab leaders, who rarely called themselves Palestinians then and most of whom saw themselves as part of greater Syria, rejected partition in 1937 and again in 1947. That rejection, and the violence that accompanied it across the three decades of the Mandate period, is precisely what this genre of argument leaves out.
What does the enforcing are films like "Palestine 36," marketed as historical drama about the bloody Arab Revolt, but functioning as something closer to historical replacement. They strip Jewish indigeneity and continuity from the record, recast a people with millennia of connection to that land as recent colonial arrivals, and present the conflict as a simple story of indigenous resistance to foreign imposition.
The purpose is not to inform Western audiences about a complex national conflict. It is to recruit them to a conclusion: that Jews and Israel are an illegitimate implant in the region, that the appropriate remedy is dismantlement, and that what would follow, the imagined state from the river to the sea, would be a tolerant, secular, democratic alternative, where Jews can live in peace under their Arab Palestinian Muslim rulers, not as a national group but as a religious minority.
That last part is perhaps the most dishonest element of the entire narrative. The movements driving that agenda in the Middle East are neither democratic nor secular, and whatever secular veneer some of them maintain is precisely that, a veneer. The model being implicitly promised has no precedent among Muslim-majority states in the region, and sits in direct and unacknowledged tension with the political and religious character of the organisations whose cause these films are made to serve, like Hamas.
Without all of this, October 7 cannot be made to look like the inevitable product of accumulated injustice. It looks instead like what it was: a brutal, sadistic rampage by Arab Palestinian Islamist terrorist organisations, and the civilians who joined them, to murder, rape, and kidnap Israeli citizens, residents, and foreign nationals. No historical narrative, however artfully constructed, changes what happened that morning. It only changes who the audience is willing to hold responsible for it.
This is the genre James represents, and he is far from alone in it. It is not engagement with history. It is the use of a selective version of it to launder a conclusion that was held before the argument began.
I’ve just watched Palestine 36: So many people need a history lesson. October 7th wasn’t the start. It goes back a long long way. Imagine being a citizen to a place that lost status, sovereignty, human rights, freedom and land. And then for decades got hemmed in, encroached, destroyed and an appropriation of the land unchecked. Destinies of people who have lived there for generations completely torn up. Grief turns into rage. It would anywhere. But apparently it’s “antisemitic” to raise any concerns about this.
Mark Taitz retweeted
Israel performed the ultimate sacrifice and the most painful concession in modern history for the dream of peace. We surrendered the Sinai Peninsula - a massive territory of 60,000 square kilometers, an area three times the size of the entire State of Israel.
This was not empty land. It was essential strategic depth that granted us security and early warning. We handed over to Egypt strategic oil fields we developed with our own hands, which could have guaranteed energy independence for generations. We surrendered advanced, massive air force bases vital to our aerial dominance in the region.
But the most searing pain was the human sacrifice. For this agreement, we uprooted thousands of Jewish pioneers from their homes in the Yamit region and south Sinai. Flourishing towns, thriving agriculture, and entire communities were destroyed to the ground and handed over. We sacrificed parts of our homeland and real lives for a signature on a piece of paper.
No nation in the world has ever made such a vast sacrifice, yielded assets so vital, and uprooted its own citizens for a promise of peace. History proves that in the Middle East, land is security. Painful concessions do not bring true peace; they only bring the next threat closer. We must learn from this lesson: the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel, and defending it requires holding every inch.
Mark Taitz retweeted
🧵
During the Holocaust ~63% of Europe’s Jews were murdered, and those left alive were mostly displaced. Whilst we pretend the mentality that allowed this was extinguished, it was not. Because it was antisemitism, not Nazism.
/1
Mark Taitz retweeted
Why children should never be allowed to boycott one another in school sport?
School sport exists for one reason above all others: the development and wellbeing of children. When pupils are encouraged or even permitted to boycott other children in a school sporting environment, we abandon that purpose and replace it with adult ideology, division, and harm.
In the context of a tennis fixture between Roedean School and King David Linksfield, it is essential to state this plainly: children are not political actors, and school sport must never become a proxy battlefield for adult conflicts.
1. Children are not responsible for global politics:
No pupil chooses their nationality, religion, or community. Allowing one group of children to refuse to play another teaches a dangerous lesson: that identity alone is grounds for exclusion. That is not activism — it is discrimination, regardless of the intention behind it.
Schools exist to protect children from the weight of the world, not place it on their shoulders.
2. Sport is one of the last neutral spaces children have:
Tennis courts, fields, and pitches are rare environments where children meet as equals, governed by rules, respect, and shared effort. Once sport becomes conditional on ideology, it stops being sport and becomes segregation by another name.
If we allow boycotts today, we teach children that dialogue is optional, empathy is selective, and walking away is preferable to engagement.
That lesson will not serve them in adulthood or in society.
3. This is how prejudice is normalised:
Boycotting another school because of who its pupils are or who they are perceived to represent embeds collective guilt. History shows us clearly where this leads. Schools should be actively dismantling prejudice, not institutionalising it under the guise of moral positioning.
Children learn most powerfully from what adults permit, not what they say.
4. Schools have a duty of care, not a political mandate:
Independent school boards and leadership structures are custodians of education, not arbiters of geopolitical morality. Their responsibility is to ensure inclusion, fairness, emotional safety, and educational integrity.
Interfering in fixtures on ideological grounds undermines professional educators and sends a message that some children are less deserving of participation than others.
5. Real courage is playing, not boycotting
If schools truly want to raise compassionate, resilient young people, the answer is not separation, it is engagement.
Let children play.
Let them shake hands. Let them compete fiercely and respectfully. Let them see one another as human beings, not symbols.
That is how future leaders are formed.
Bottom line:
Once we allow children to boycott other children in sport, we cross a line that schools should never approach.
We replace education with ideology, inclusion with exclusion, and childhood with burden.
Mark Taitz retweeted
IDF soldiers singing after the recovery of Ran Gvili.
The song they are singing is Ani Ma’amin (“I Believe”):
“I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah.
Even though he may tarry, nonetheless I will wait for him.”
It has been over 800 days. Our faith may have wavered at times, but we never gave up.
Welcome home, Ran. We have been waiting for you.
Mark Taitz retweeted
Make clever moves with our all-new Wing Edition Boxes! Have it your way from only R49.90!
Mark Taitz retweeted
Bob Dylan dropped Neighborhood Bully after Israel took out Saddam’s nuclear program
An unapologetic anthem for Jewish self-defense — and a clear show of support for the IDF
Now imagine stealing Dylan’s name just to incite violence against his people
The audacity. The stupidity.
Mark Taitz retweeted
So, Let Me Tell You What a Coward Is
This week, President Cyril Ramaphosa stood on a stage at NAMPO and called Afrikaners who are leaving South Africa “cowards.” Days earlier, while speaking at the African CEO Forum, he remarked that South Africa is the only country on the continent where colonisers were not driven out. Taken together, the message is clear: those who leave aren't just deserters — they were never meant to belong in the first place. implying that those who leave should have been chased out in the first place.
Let me tell you what a coward really is.
A coward is a president who, in the middle of a pandemic, hides behind a blanket lockdown instead of crafting a plan to protect lives and livelihoods.
A coward is a president who allows ministers accused of corruption to stay in government rather than clean up his cabinet.
A coward is a man who, when caught with foreign currency stuffed into his furniture, uses his party machinery to silence accountability — and then has the audacity to remain in office.
A coward is a man who calls citizens cowards simply for doing what he refuses to do: act decisively in defence of their families’ futures.
Cowardice is refusing to look inwards and admit, “We’ve messed up.” Cowardice is the inability to show empathy. Cowardice is avoiding the mirror and pretending leadership means never acknowledging weakness. Cowardice is dodging the elephant in the room and blaming others — just because it’s uncomfortable.
Cowardice is promoting a VAT increase because you're too afraid to cut the patronage network bleeding this country dry. Cowardice is hiding behind racial transformation policies when what you're really doing is stealing from the poor. Cowardice is taking money from authoritarian regimes to fight their battles in international forums — not for justice, but to buy political survival.
Cowardice is putting your party above your country — rejecting real solutions simply because they didn’t come from your ideological stable, even when your ideology has failed across Africa for decades.
Cowardice is promising opportunity through the state — and then looting it dry. Cowardice is destroying the very bridge you told people would carry them out of poverty. And when there's nothing left, cowardice is turning on the private sector, pushing expropriation without compensation — not as justice, but as cover for your own failure. Cowardice isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about blaming what still works.
Cowardice is leaving the economic heartland of Gauteng — Johannesburg — in the hands of a fractured, corrupt coalition. Cowardice is refusing to work with real reformers because doing so would expose the rot. Cowardice is letting a city collapse rather than risk your party's secrets being dragged into the light.
There is nothing cowardly about leaving a country that refuses to hear you. There is nothing cowardly about seeking safety, dignity, or opportunity. There is nothing cowardly about wanting your children to have a chance.
Cowardice doesn’t look like leaving. Cowardice looks like refusing to change.
South Africa isn’t broken because some people are leaving. It’s breaking because those who should be fixing it are hiding.
So, Mr. President — if you're looking for cowards, try a mirror.
Mark Taitz retweeted
What do you want me to do?
When Jews were being slaughtered in Europe and Russia, I didn’t invade anyone. I went home. I bought land, legally.
The region had no sovereign state at the time, only centuries of occupation under foreign empires. I drained swamps, built cities, created infrastructure, and that success attracted migrants, from Egypt, from the Levant, from the Arabian Peninsula, who came seeking opportunity in the land I was reviving.
When the occupation collapsed, everyone in the region got a state.
The Maronites in the north got Lebanon.
The Hashemites got Jordan.
Iraq was born. Syria too.
So yes, I asked for one state. Just one.
And I was told no.
I still agreed to share the land, even though I was offered the worst half, mostly desert.
They still said no.
Then came 1948.
Five Arab armies invaded to wipe us out.
I fought. I survived. I won.
Then I offered peace again. But they answered with the Three No’s of Khartoum: No peace. No recognition. No negotiations.
They tried again in 1967 to destroy me. I survived again.
I captured more land, not out of ambition, but necessity.
But when peace was possible, I gave land back.
I returned Sinai to Egypt.
I withdrew from Southern Lebanon.
I offered to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank.
I offered them everything they asked for in 2000.
They walked away.
In 2005, I unilaterally withdrew from Gaza.
In return I got rockets, terror tunnels, kidnapped civilians.
Then came October 7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Civilians slaughtered. Babies burned. Women raped.
So again I ask: What do you want me to do?
Because “Never Again” means never again.
You don’t get to massacre my people and then cry about the consequences. You don’t get to raise your children to hate and then blame me when war comes.
You don’t get to reject every peace offer, every two-state solution, and then ask the world to pretend none of that happened.
But I will not apologize for surviving.
I will not apologize for fighting back.
Never Again means Never Again.
Mark Taitz retweeted
Eulogy by Yarden Bibas, husband of Shiri and father of Ariel and Kfir:
"Mi Amor"
I remember the first time I said "mi amor" to you. It was at the very beginning of our relationship. You told me to only call you that if I was certain I loved you, not to say it carelessly. I didn't say it then because I didn't want you to think I was rushing to say "I love you." Shiri, I'll confess to you now that I already loved you back then when I said "mi amor."
Shiri, I love you and will always love you!
Shiri, you are everything to me!
You are the best wife and mother there could be.
Shiri, you are my best friend.
Mishmish, who will help me make decisions now? How am I supposed to make decisions without you?
Do you remember our last decision together?
In the safe room, I asked if we should "fight or surrender." You said fight, so I fought.
Shiri, I'm sorry I couldn't protect you all. If only I had known what would happen, I wouldn't have fired.
I think about everything we went through together—there are so many beautiful memories.
I remember Ariel and Kfir's births. I remember the days we would sit at home or in a café, just the two of us, talking for hours about everything under the sun. It was wonderful. I miss those times deeply.
Your presence is profoundly missed.
I want to tell you about everything that's happening in the world and here in Israel.
Shiri, everyone knows and loves us—you can't imagine how surreal all this madness is.
Shiri, people tell me they'll always be by my side, but they're not you. So please stay close to me and don't go far!
Shiri, this is the closest I've been to you since October 7th, and I can't kiss or hug you, and it's breaking me!
Shiri, please watch over me...
Protect me from bad decisions. Shield me from harmful things and protect me from myself. Guard me so I don't sink into darkness.
Mishmish, I love you!
Chuki, Ariel,
You made me a father. You transformed us into a family.
You taught me what truly matters in life and about responsibility.
The day you were born, I matured instantly because of you. You taught me so much about myself, and I want to thank you.
So thank you, my beloved.
Ariel, I hope you're not angry with me for failing to protect you properly and for not being there for you. I hope you know I thought about you every day, every minute.
I hope you're enjoying paradise. I'm sure you're making all the angels laugh with your silly jokes and impressions. I hope there are plenty of butterflies for you to watch, just like you did during our picnics.
Chuki, be careful when you climb down from your cloud not to step on Toni...
Teach Kfir all your impressions and make everyone laugh up there.
Ariel, I love you "the most in the world, always in the world," just as you used to tell us.
Poopik, Kfir,
I didn't think our family could be more perfect, and then you came and made it even more perfect...
I remember your birth. I remember during the delivery when the midwife suddenly stopped everything—we were frightened and thought something was wrong—but it was just to tell us we had another redhead. Mom and I laughed and rejoiced.
You brought more light and happiness to our little home. You came with your sweet, captivating laugh and smile, and I was instantly hooked!
It was impossible not to nibble on you all the time.
Kfir, I'm sorry I didn't protect you better, but I need you to know that I love you deeply and miss you terribly!
I miss nibbling on you and hearing your laughter.
I miss our morning games when mom would ask me to watch you before I went to work. I cherished those little moments so much, and I miss them now more than ever!
Kfir, I love you the most in the world, always in the world!
I have so many more things to tell you all, but I'll save them for when we're alone.
Mark Taitz retweeted
I’ve had many people attack me today and saying that I care so much about one baby and his brother, but I don’t care or value the 10000 or 20000 or whatever number they want to make up of Gazan children.
So I’ll be crystal clear:
Not one Gazan baby would have been killed had it not been for Gazans, not Hamas but Gazans, slaughtering 1200 innocent people and kidnapping 250 more including “the baby and his brother”. They’re death of any and every child in Gaza is a tragedy, and the sole responsibility for each and every one of those is on Gaza, not Hamas, but all of Gaza. They started this. They broke the ceasefire on Oct 6.
I don’t give a flying rock what mental gymnastics anyone wants to play or what reasons and comments or any of it. None of this was necessary. No child had to die. But the Gazans chose war. As they’ve always chosen war. They were funded, armed and fully supported by the United Nations and the ENTIRE Arab world. This has never had anything to do with land. It’s only to do with Muslims refusing to accept that Jews rule any land in this region, including the Jews’ land. Islam has no compromise. It’s all or nothing. And this bloodlust has lost them every war and given them only humiliation.
Hamas didn’t murder those children and their mother. Gaza did. The whole Muslim Arab world did. And their hate is responsible for every child killed in Gaza.
It is a repeat of the story of Moses (especially since all Gazans are Egyptian). The Pharaoh enslaved and murdered the Israelites as his father before him and his father before his. Moses offered a peace deal. Pharaoh rejected it. Moses offered another, pharaoh rejected it and punished the Israelites. Then G-D took the first born of Egypt. The difference between then and now is that at least the pharaoh cared. He felt pain. He felt loss. But the Gazans feel nothing but sick joy. Pharaoh then wanted revenge because he refused to accept he was solely responsible. And he lost everything. And you know what, the Israelites eventually got Israel. And we have it today and never ever letting it go.
The Arab world is responsible, and if they continue to choose war with us, every death to come is on them and them alone. October 7 changed everything. And the memory of the baby and his brother that the Arabs murdered will haunt them forever. We will make sure of it.
Dear @CityPowerJhb @CityofJoburgZA, for the third time now you have closed my ticket without fixing the street lights in our road. The street lights in our road and also on 1st Avenue Linden have not been working for months. @jozi117 can this not be escalated? It's a disgrace!
