Oma, do-gooder, collaborator, working to improve healthcare, volunteer @ProjectN95, views expressed are my own. Mastodon: mslevib@mastodon.social
Joined December 2012
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Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
Something is going horribly wrong in the Senate race in Michigan. And I am going to keep calling it out.
On the one hand, the Republicans are conducting a campaign of blatant anti-Muslim fear mongering. Mike Rogers, Donald Trump and the rest of the GOP need to knock it off. Mike needs to personally and repeatedly denounce hate against Muslims.
But now, at the same time, we have TWO ads from the Democratic side that ALSO traffic in hate and intolerance — causing alarm for some Black and Jewish voters.
Seriously— WTF ????
The first ad was from Rebellion PAC (NOT the official Abdul El-Sayyed campaign). It suggested that Americans can’t buy groceries because the USA sends so much money to Israel.
That is a lie. The USA spends less than 00.1 percent of our federal budget on support for Israel. But this ad pretends bananas cost too much because the Jewish state is bleeding us dry. TOTALLY nuts. And yet — this kind of thinking has always put Jewish lives at risk. Blaming Jews for everyone’s economic problems has a long, bloody history.
Abdul did try to separate himself from the ad. He accurately noted that his campaign didn’t produce it. But the problem is: if you listen, Abdul actually NEVER DENOUNCED the CONTENT of the ad. He never said, “This ad is wrong.”
He just said, “Hey, it wasn’t me.” 😬😬😬
That ad — and Abdul’s refusal to forthrightly denounce it — is scaring some Jewish Democrats in Michigan, who now are more reluctant to vote for him.
In other words, that one ad alone is jeopardizing our party’s shot at taking back the U.S. Senate.
BUT IT GETS WORSE!
Then Abdul’s formal, official campaign put out its OWN ad — which features none other than the vile and contemptible Tucker Carlson (!!!). As you know, Tucker Carlson is a rabid, anti-Black bigot who also traffics in anti-Jewish stereotypes. He is anathema to most Black people and most Jews.
No Democrat should ever celebrate the words of a white nationalist who actively undermines the safety of Black people and Jewish people.
Moreover, given the importance of Black and Jewish Democrats to our victory in Michigan, the decision to include Tucker Carlson in any Democratic ad there is truly baffling.
Why am I speaking out about this now? Because I want Democrats to build a winning coalition — now and into the future. Chasing off any Black or Jewish voters is a path to defeat — both in the short term and the long term.
As proud Democrats, it can feel uncomfortable or risky to speak against intolerance in our own party, especially just days before a national election. It would be easier for us to let this stuff slide, shut up and close ranks.
But that would make us hypocrites. For 10 years, we Democrats have watched with dismay and disgust as Republicans (who know better) have refused to challenge ANY bad ideas or bad actions in their own ranks. As a result, their party curdled into a cult — one that is now wrecking the country AND falling apart.
As Democrats, we should not make the same mistake.
Anti-Muslim hate is wrong. Period.
Anti-Jewish hate is wrong. Period.
Tucker Carlson’s white nationalism is wrong. Period.
All candidates in Michigan need to say that clearly— and then pull down/denounce any ads that normalize hate or elevate hate mongers.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
🇮🇹 100 Jewish early childhood educators canceled their trip to a professional conference in Italy after they were told to sign a statement condemning Israel.
🇨🇭 An Israeli film was excluded from a queer film festival in Switzerland after the filmmaker was subject to questioning about his beliefs about Israel.
🇬🇧 A British comedian was kicked out of a writing group after being questioned on his beliefs about Israel.
🇮🇪 An Irish hotel cancelled the reservations of 70 people who were attending a conference on combatting antisemitism.
These are just from the past week. Caring about Palestinians is not an excuse to be silent when antisemitism is being normalized across the world.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
1/14
⚠ TW: Sexual Violence.
The most detailed report on the sexual crimes committed during & after the Oct 7 massacre is out.
The Dinah Project reveals Hamas terrorists used rape, gang rape & sexual torture systematically.
This is hard to read, but vital. 🧵
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
A famous Palestinian “journalist” agreed to work with the Hollywood Makeup artist to fake Israeli atrocities better.
And was willing to use children with cerebral palsy to fake starvation.
But bailed when he found out the Makeup artist was non-binary.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
I'm a journalist. And I happen to be Jewish. On Yom Kippur I went to a synagogue service in Toronto and was met by protesters trying to taunt and intimidate me from entering the building. 1/5
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, has downplayed and denied Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, including sexual violence, while receiving awards from European universities, including Ghent University in Belgium.
Yet when it comes to Ukraine, she blames NATO, not Russia, for prolonging the war and calls for Kyiv to disarm. The result? The aggressor remains armed, the victim is asked to disarm, and NATO is blamed if the war continues.
It’s a deeply conspiratorial, anti-Western narrative that closely mirrors Russian propaganda. And yet she is celebrated by the very Western institutions she appears to condemn.
Coming from a UN Special Rapporteur, that deserves far more scrutiny.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
ONE HUNDRED Gaza "medical workers" killed in Gaza—doctors, nurses, administrative staff—are confirmed Hamas and Islamic Jihad combatants, mostly commanders, each one profiled below. Gaza's hospitals were military bases. The "Israel targeted healthcare" is now a proven lie.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
.@edsheeran I brought my wife and two daughters to MetLife Friday because we are huge fans of yours. We arrived early, I spent $180 on two sweatshirts for them, watched the first two opening acts and were having a great time.
Then Macklemore decided to turn your concert into his political rally.
When he started chanting “Free Palestine” and pushing his clearly uneducated version of the Israel/Gaza conflict, my daughters looked at me completely confused. I had brought them to an Ed Sheeran concert, not to have an opening act lecture them about Middle East politics.
After Friday night, I started looking into Macklemore’s history. What I found, including his repeated use of antisemitic tropes, made the whole thing even worse.
So I took my family and walked inside alongside hundreds of your other fans. As we were walking in, even the MetLife security guards were rolling their eyes at what was happening on stage.
We waited until Macklemore was finished before returning to our seats. Then we watched your show, which was phenomenal.
I left Friday hoping maybe this had caught you and your team off guard.
Then tonight you allowed it to happen again.
You knew exactly what Macklemore had done the night before, and you gave him the stage again.
Friday might have been Macklemore’s decision. Saturday was yours.
You have a lot of Jewish fans who love your music, buy your albums and merchandise, and bring their kids to your concerts.
Tonight, you lost four of them. And I suspect plenty more.
@CombatASemitism
@StopAntisemites
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
“So do not dare propose that ‘Israel Never Truly Wanted Peace with Palestine’. If anything, we wanted it too much. So now, it is your turn to answer the question: When did you ever truly want peace with the one Jewish state?”
(my 10 min speech with English captions from the Oxford Union Debate):
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
"I don't think you are sloppy. I think you know exactly what you are doing."
Here's the moment I told a room filled with anti-Israel Oxford students about how my Iraqi and Tunisian family were ethnically cleansed from their homes.
My history isn't up for debate.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
The Gaza war has been a terrible tragedy, sparked by the unconscionable horror of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist massacre but rooted in a much longer conflict in which terrible mistakes have been made on all sides—including multiple credible pathways toward Palestinian statehood that Palestinian and Arab leaders tragically rejected.
After October 7, Israel had both the right and the responsibility to dismantle Hamas’s military infrastructure and avoid the urban-warfare trap Hamas had spent years constructing. Israel also made serious mistakes, including restrictions on humanitarian aid that worsened civilian suffering. Those decisions deserve scrutiny and criticism.
But Hamas bears enormous responsibility for the catastrophe it deliberately engineered. For years, it built hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath Gaza—an extraordinary underground infrastructure capable of providing extensive protection from bombardment. Hamas explicitly said those tunnels were for Gaza’s civilians, even though the tunnels were everywhere and could have been used to save thousands of lives.
That was not merely callous indifference. Hamas deliberately provoked a devastating war and then sought to turn the deaths of the people it governed into a strategic weapon. Yahya Sinwar’s own reported messages described Palestinian civilian deaths as “necessary sacrifices” and calculated that mounting casualties would increase international pressure on Israel. Hamas kept its fighters underground while civilians remained exposed above, embedded military operations within densely populated areas, and exploited the resulting deaths to advance its political and military objectives.
The evidence points to the appalling conclusion that Hamas wanted enormous numbers of Gazan civilians to die because their deaths served its strategy. It embedded its terrorist infrastructure in civilian institutions and treated the people of Gaza as human sacrifices. This was horrific and unconscionable. Palestinians in Gaza are among Hamas’s greatest victims.
War is terrible and must be avoided to the fullest extent possible. But Hamas’s strategy was to force Israel into a painful and costly urban war in one of the most densely populated environments on earth, where Hamas had deliberately embedded much of its military infrastructure among civilians. Israel took extraordinary—and by many measures historically extensive and deeply costly in terms of Israeli casualties—precautions to reduce unnecessary civilian casualties, but even extraordinary precautions cannot prevent innocent people from being killed in a brutal urban war, particularly when the battlefield has been deliberately constructed to place civilians in harm’s way.
None of this diminishes the immense suffering in Gaza. Every innocent Palestinian and Israeli life lost is a tragedy. Israelis and Palestinians both deserve security, dignity, and a peaceful future.
But “genocide” is not a synonym for a horrific war with terrible civilian casualties. It is a specific legal charge requiring proof of an intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or substantial part, as such. the evidence clearly does not establish that Israel possessed such an intent, and the demographic record certainly does not establish genocide on its own.
What happened in Gaza was horrific enough without mischaracterizing it: a devastating war triggered by a monstrous terrorist attack, fought against an enemy that deliberately entrenched itself among civilians and viewed their deaths as strategically useful, with terrible mistakes and immense human suffering along the way.
Cynically calling this tragedy “genocide” does not bring us closer to truth, accountability, reconciliation, or peace. On the contrary, it serves the interests of the adversaries of peace, justice, and meaningful accountability for the many mistakes and terrible decisions that have been made on all sides of this conflict for the better part of a century.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
Did you know that Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Cate Blanchett, and other actors have expressed support for releasing Marwan Barghouti, the convicted terrorist responsible for attacks that killed, among others, a Greek Orthodox priest in Jerusalem and four other people?
The reason? Moral selective outrage based on ignorance and virtue signaling.
They support the release of a convicted mass murderer because they believe it is the “right thing to do.”
Why? Because they apparently believe they understand the politics, dynamics, and conflicts of the Middle East well enough to make that judgment from the comfort of Hollywood.
Are they prepared to take responsibility for the bloodshed that could follow? For the next victims in a conflict they do not actually understand, and that does not neatly fit the simplistic Western Marxist frameworks of “oppressor” and “oppressed” that are so often imposed on it?
And since when did being a celebrity can qualify someone as an authority on the history and politics of a conflict in which other human beings have to live with the consequences? We have seen what happened during previous periods when Barghouti was free and directing violence.
Apparently, they care neither about Palestinians nor Israelis. For some Hollywood celebrities, all of us can apparently be sacrificed on the altar of moral purity and virtue signaling.
Will they say anything about the world’s largest displacement crises and the hundreds of thousands killed in Sudan? What about the violence in Congo? What about the persecution of Christians by Islamist extremists in Nigeria?
Probably not.
It doesn't generate enough likes.
And that tells you everything you need to know about these hollow Hollywood moralists.
@MarkRuffalo
🤖 Made with AI
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
What if the most important peacebuilding tool in the Middle East isn’t a peace agreement , but a textbook?
The UAE offers a fascinating case study.
Years before the Abraham Accords with Israel, it began reshaping education around tolerance, coexistence, critical thinking and engagement with people of other faiths.
By 2020, peace with Israel could be presented to students not as a radical break, but as consistent with Islamic values, national identity and a vision of prosperity.
The bigger lesson is about the future.
The UAE is showing what Muslim Arab leadership can look like when the next generation is taught to see peace and openness not as weakness, but as strength. If this model spreads, the most hopeful transformation in the region may not come from yesterday’s politics, but from what today’s children learn.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
I rarely appeal directly to my platform, but I am going to do it now.
On August 24, Montréal City Council will vote on a motion asking the City to recognize and denounce an “apartheid regime,” declare that a “genocide” is being perpetrated, and suspend ties with the Israeli government, its institutions and municipalities.
There has been enormous mobilization in support of it.
I have spent a considerable amount of my own time over the past few weeks reading the motion, the relevant laws and case law, and the international law decisions it invokes, on top of a Big Law practice that currently has me working close to 80 hours a week.
I don’t say that for sympathy. I say it because I rarely ask the people who follow me to actually do something. I am asking now.
Municipalities exercise delegated powers. Those powers are broad. They are not unlimited.
In Shell Canada v. Vancouver, Vancouver adopted resolutions refusing to do business with Shell until it withdrew from South Africa. The Supreme Court struck them down.
Yes, municipal law evolved after Shell. In Spraytech v. Hudson, the Court emphasized that municipal powers should be interpreted generously. But the bylaw upheld there regulated pesticide use within Hudson, for the health and welfare of its residents. That was an exercise of delegated municipal power, not foreign policy.
But the potential ultra vires nature of the motion is not the only problem. The motion asks City Council to adopt contested international law conclusions as settled fact. The ICJ has made no determination on the merits that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. And in its 2024 advisory opinion, while finding that certain policies of separation violated Article 3 of CERD, the Court did not itself characterize that separation as apartheid.
Yet Montréal is being asked to do both.
And what exactly does an “institutional rupture” mean when imposed by a city?
A municipality acts through contracts, procurement, grants, partnerships, cultural and scientific collaborations and relationships with other public institutions. If “Israeli institutions” is left undefined, how far does that exclusion extend? A university? A researcher? An artist? A supplier?
That is not an abstract concern. If these declarations are later used to exclude people or institutions because of their connection to Israel, that may also engage Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, including its protections against discrimination based on religion, political convictions and ethnic or national origin.
This is not merely a symbolic resolution. It risks institutionalizing, through the machinery of municipal government, a distinction based on connection to one particular country.
And we need to talk about which foreign state is being singled out.
Montréal’s Jewish community has been particularly vulnerable to the explosion of antisemitism of the last several years. Jewish schools and synagogues in this city have been targeted. In 2025, Jews were the targets of over 70% of police-reported hate crimes motivated by religion in Canada.
And now, against that backdrop, our municipal government is being asked to make the world’s only Jewish state the object of an official institutional rupture.
The motion says Montréal’s Jews cannot be held responsible for Israel while simultaneously asking the City to institutionalize the singling out of Israel.
I cannot separate those two realities.
I am doing my part to the extent that I can. But lawyers cannot manufacture public opposition where people remain silent.
So this is my ask: share this post.
Share it outside the Jewish community. Share it with Montrealers who may have no idea this vote is happening. Share it with people who may disagree with me about Israel but believe that municipal government has limits, and that our public institutions should not single people out because of their connection to one country.
And if you live here, make yourself heard before August 24.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
Just a week after the primary, my opponent is dusting off a tired political playbook. This is the type of distortion and deception that we need to keep out of the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. That’s why I’m calling it out early.
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
“Mary Moriarty is the clear choice to be our next Hennepin County Attorney. She has the integrity, character, and ability to lead” - Cedrick Frazier
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
While Flanagan has insisted she was not seeking an endorsement in her outreach to AIPAC officials, she did write an Israel position paper that she submitted to the group as part of their discussions, according to two people familiar with the matter jewishinsider.com/2026/08/pe…
Marilyn Levi-Baumgarten 🇺🇦 retweeted
Every day, for years now, someone asks me the same question: "How much are the Israelis paying you?" As if the only explanation for defending Jews and Israel is a paycheck. The idea that I might simply see this conflict differently doesn't compute for them. What I do is, to me, entirely normal. It only looks strange in a world where hating Jews has become the default setting of the crowd, and staying silent, or joining in, is what passes for sanity.
Many are familiar with this photograph from the Lviv pogrom, 1941. Locals — including a child and an adolescent — chase a woman stripped of her clothes, bleeding, terrified, humiliated. The Nazis had spent years demonizing the Jews before this moment. They didn't need to pull the trigger themselves. They just needed to make the target "legitimate," and ordinary people did the rest, voluntarily. Something otherwise suppressed in them came out, and they let it.
On October 7, I woke up to the videos. One of them was of Naama Levy, arms zip-tied behind her back, dragged by her dusty hair out of a black jeep. As she was moved to the front of the car, she looked straight into the camera of the man filming her. The back of her trousers was soaked in blood. I saw the cuts on her arms, her bare feet, and I watched a crowd film her while cursing her, spitting on her, hitting her. I wished I did not have an imagination. I wished I could delete what I'd seen before her mother saw it.
Weeks later, I flew to Israel for the first time, burning every bridge to a world that was celebrating what I'd watched. I went to Ra'anana and met Naama's mother, Ayelet. We made the first post from Israel asking the world to listen, asking the universe to bring her back alive. I promised her that what Hamas did would haunt them in their graves.
Arendt called it the banality of evil, and people needed mental gymnastics to accept what she meant. It's easier to believe monsters do monstrous things than to believe your neighbor might. But human beings are built for both good and evil. What we become is a choice, shaped by the moral compass we build or fail to build.
Just like an ordinary person joins a mob to taunt a scapegoat, an ordinary person is capable of standing against it. For some of us, peer pressure is minuscule in comparison with a nagging conscience.
That's why the photo above matters, still, 85 years later. The Nazis were defeated in Europe but their legacy is rampant in large parts of the Arab world, especially in Palestinian culture. Fused with a dash of communism and a splash of Jihadism, that legacy morphed into global Antizionism.
#October7
