Dad of three adorable daughters, Co-Architect of PHP, Co-founder of Zend. Opinions my own.
Israel
Joined February 2009
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Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
There was a situation at my daughter’s school last week which left her in tears. I went in to the school the day after to let them know we were removing her with immediate effect. The head teacher tried to explain but I had no interest in her excuses or reasons.
The school had a play and an open evening for next year’s new pupils, and my daughter’s class were asked to take the potential new pupils and their parents for a tour of the school and classes.
My daughter is the most softly spoken, polite and friendly child you’d probably ever meet. She’s one of just 40 Jewish pupils at the school out of over a thousand children. My wife wanted her to go to a non Jewish school because she felt concerned about the security threats at Jewish schools, and I don’t have much say in the matter as I’m just the dad. Our youngest goes to a Jewish school and the security simply isn’t anywhere good enough. This would be both their last year at school in this country because we’d already made the decision to leave the country before their next school year.
My oldest wears a tiny discreet Star of David pendant. It’s so inoffensive to anybody but allows her to express her Jewish faith in a small way.
When it was her turn in line to greet the family she would show around, the family was a Muslim family. My daughter has no personal issue with anybody and is friendly with two Muslim girls in her class who aren’t bothered by her being Jewish. But this family clearly were. In front of everyone, the father refused to be shown around by “a Jew”. He apparently, according to several parents and a teacher, raised his voice at her, and demanded that another child show them around. Instead of the head teacher condemning his behavior and telling him to leave, she asked my daughter to step aside and asked another pupil to show them around. Nobody except other parents, non Jewish parents, came to my daughter to ask if she was even ok. She was in a flood of tears, frightened and confused.
My wife got a phone call from another parent and insisted she would go fetch our daughter because she already knew what I would do had I gone there myself. But this is what we live in now. This is the new normal.
For reasons of what will come next, I won’t name the school. But this is going to escalate, a lot.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
The question of genocide in Gaza is not just a matter of “semantics,” as many are now claiming, quietly backpedaling from their earlier confident assertions. It is not a borderline case, or a matter of interpretation, or an issue on which reasonable people can differ.
It is an obscene lie, contradicted by everything we know about Israel’s conduct during the war (which is not to absolve the IDF of war crimes). Here are 76 retired senior military leaders and legal experts flatly rejecting the genocide allegation:
“Israel has not committed genocide but rather set a high bar for how to conduct urban warfare against an enemy who will stop at nothing, including the death of its own civilians.”
The fact that the rector of my own university wanted to prohibit questioning the “Gaza genocide,” as though it were the equivalent of flat-earthism or climate denialism, still fills me with disbelief and rage. One day it will become clear who are the real flat-earthers here.
jinsa.org/open-letter-from-m…
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Maybe next year they’ll give the Chemistry prize to a Hamas bomb maker.
The Nobel committee chair says they have "great faith" in Navi Pillay's integrity, but whether the Hamas-Israel war can be called a genocide is for the ICJ to decide, not them.
Then why give the Peace Prize to the person whose commission already decided it, with no authority to do so?
This is the same Navi Pillay who:
🚩 Signed a 2020 statement calling on governments to "Sanction Israel," then was appointed a year later to chair the UN inquiry into Israel without disclosing it
🚩 Defended a fellow commissioner who said social media is "controlled largely by the Jewish lobby," calling him "deliberately misquoted." He later apologized for his antisemitism himself
🚩 Ran the 2009 Durban conference that Ahmadinejad opened with an antisemitic speech, after dismissing Jewish groups' warnings as a "lobbying campaign"
🚩 Criticized the US in 2014 for funding Iron Dome to protect Israeli civilians from rockets, with no mention of Hamas firing them
They handed her the world's most famous honour two days after the October 7 anniversary and then said they're not taking a position on what she's known for.
So what do they mean by "peace"?
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Kasparov: Ukraine is under the heaviest bombardment one can imagine. On CNN you see Gaza, Gaza, Gaza.
If Israel did to Gaza for 24 hours what Putin does to Ukraine, there would be no Gaza. Russia's bombing of Ukraine is much worse than carpet bombing. 1/
If you want to understand what the war here is about, watch this short low resolution security cam clip and let it haunt you - you will never be the same again.
Ужасающие кадры, на которых две маленькие девочки бегут, спасая свои жизни, пока палестинец преследует их, словно добычу.
Он выстрелил первой девочке в спину, когда она в отчаянии пыталась убежать. Вторая замерла, обернулась и умоляла его не убивать её.
Он всё равно казнил её, не выказав ни малейшего колебания.
Это то, что палестинцы из Газы сделали 7 октября.
Никогда не забывайте.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
For me, this is the worst video from Oct 7.
How the first little girl seemingly disappears in a cloud of her own tissue; how the second little girl cowers. What was she thinking in those final moments.
It’s why I don’t forget the savagery.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Three years ago today, an attempted genocide on the Jewish people took place. Rather than the world uniting with the Jews against a common enemy of humanity (Islamic terrorists), the West decided that Hamas (Gaza) was deserving of our full empathy and the Jews were the ones committing a "genocide." The inversion of reality is beyond what Orwell or Kafka could have imagined. The explosion of global Jew-hatred post October 7 highlights a very ugly reality: Scratch the surface and you quickly sink into the infinity pool of arguably the oldest hatred known to mankind.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Read NYC Mayor’s message today. A masterclass in hijacking, erasure and inversion of October 7 (did something similar on this year’s 9/11).
Once it is seen it is impossible to unsee.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Putting terrorists and aggressors on the same moral plane as their victims and targets is repugnant. At best it whitewashes horrible crimes, at worst it feeds the culture of murder and martyrdom that Hamas espouses.
This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.
Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Liberals Prepare For Anniversary Of October 8, The Day Israel Attacked Gaza For No Reason buff.ly/gXYIrmJ
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
“About two years ago, I started dating someone.
A few days in, she laid out a verbal agreement: a certain number of days each year, she would be with another partner.
We agreed on the days together in advance, and on those days I would need to let her be with him.
She loves him very much.
Honestly, I'd heard about him a few times, and we had even met in the past.
Even before I knew we'd be together under this agreement, I understood her completely.
You can't give up on a guy like that, he's the best there is. Salt of the earth.
On each of those days she goes to him, sits and talks with him, shares her life with him: her work, her successes and her struggles, and also our relationship.
They can sit for hours, talking about the future and the past, about everything they did together and everything she still wants to become.
And me? Well, I usually wait at home. I give her that; it's part of the agreement. Most of the time she's with me, and when she's with me, she's with me one hundred percent.
Every now and then, when we're together, I ask about him: about his career, about their relationship, what there is to learn from him, and how we're different.
Over these years, I've discovered that it doesn't bother me.
I love her, and she loves both of us. It all happens together, completely. One doesn't overshadow the other.
But sometimes I wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been killed. We never would have met. And I wonder whether I'm her blessing, but also part of her curse. Am I doing something wrong, or am I part of the healing?
And this too all lives together, and that's okay.
When we started dating, I told her that in this world, we're in it until the end. And when we go to the next world, I release her to go back to him and pick up where they left off.
And I love her, I love her very much. I love him too.
In memory of Major Benji Trakinsky, who fell in the battle to defend Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7 💔”
-Nevo Dan, translated from Hebrew.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Breaking: "As retired senior military leaders and legal experts, on this, the third anniversary of Hamas's October 7, 2023 brutal attack on Israel, we reject claims that Israel committed genocide in Gaza." @jinsadc
I am honored to be a part of 76 retired U.S. officers (including 13 Generals, 27 Lieutenant Generals, 19 Major Generals, 5 Brigadier Generals) Refuting the Genocide Allegation Against Israel.
jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads…
"The precedent established today regarding Israel will shape the conditions under which American forces fight tomorrow. Protecting civilians and preserving the ability of our nation to defend itself requires us to defend the truth when the laws of war are being distorted to make false charges of genocide."
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
3 years after October 7th, and…
Jews still can't mourn without being told "but Gaza." (Looking at you, @MayorofLondon and @NYCMayor.)
I still believe Israeli women.
It's still a war, not a genocide.
useful idiots are still marching for people who'd kill them.
Every hostage is finally home. Too many in coffins.
The kids at Nova never got to finish the song.
It's still an uphill fight, but we're never giving up.
Israel is still here, and so are we.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Mamdani's October 7th Address Derailed As Wife's Party Balloons Keep Floating Across Screen buff.ly/G2epjU3
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
49 words in tribute to the Jews murdered on October 7. 141 words on how Israel is responsible for everything and the only answer is to hand more power, money, and authority to those who wish to destroy Israel.
This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.
Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.
Zeev Suraski 🇮🇱 retweeted
Remember
Even in Nazi Germany, Germans saved Jews
Not a single Gazan saved a single hostage
