Arron Ferster

@afalkhatib Wishing you a long life - Chaim Aruchim. May his memory continue to be a blessing

Exactly four years ago, my dad in Gaza, Dr. Fouad Alkhatib, passed away a year after being diagnosed with lung cancer. He was a senior physician for UNRWA, having retired from the agency’s primary medical clinic in the Jabalia refugee camp, where he served tens of thousands of patients on a monthly basis. The lack of medical care in Gaza and the inability to travel to Israel or the outside world for treatment sealed his fate when many could live for years with proper access to care. Yet he was blessed with incredible allies in Gaza, and inside Israel, who voluntarily and informally helped with his care and assisted in providing some medications that normally cost tens of thousands of dollars entirely for free. Friends at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and others throughout Israel worked selflessly and tirelessly to support my dad in whatever ways they could. This complex and horrible experience with my dad’s passing was yet another example of human-to-human connections across our differences and disagreements, helping save lives and comfort someone in urgent and desperate need. Israeli policies towards Gaza, including the blockade and restrictions to the freedom of movement, sealed my dad’s fate, but Israeli people helped prolong my dad’s life by a year and offered myself and our family incredible and selfless support without expecting anything in return. Humanity will always win – something that’s lost on so many nowadays. Allah yerhamak yaba

@darrenrichman It’s a tricky wank but if you time it just right…

You were jerking off during Private Ryan?

Latest column is on the extremists, narcissists and other supposed “allies” who make peace between Israelis and Palestinians ever harder to achieve theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Hamas’s dark lords, or as Gazans call them, the “merchants of blood and religion,” are determined to cause maximum misery to the Palestinian people in Gaza as an actual part of their strategy and tactics. Statements today by senior Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya that the Israeli military won’t be able to control Rafah, claiming that the IDF has failed to dominate northern Gaza, are demonstrative of the detached and parallel universe that the Islamist group’s leaders live in. Not only has the IDF been able to destroy and control most of northern Gaza but it continues to prevent displaced Gazans from returning to what remains of their homes. Israel is in such indisputable control of the north that it is now building a temporary fortified road (called Highway 749) that stretches from Gaza’s eastern borders with Israel all the way to the Strip’s coast, bisecting Gaza into two parts — this highway is meant to allow the Israeli military to quickly send in units across northern Gaza and deal with future emerging threats. In other words, not only is Israel in control of the north, but it is putting in place the infrastructure for the long-term military occupation of the coastal enclave. What Al-Hayya is referring to are small-scale, individually initiated attacks against Israeli ground troops by remnants of the Al-Qassam Brigades which have been largely decimated and destroyed in the north as a cohesive fighting structure. That Al-Hayya or others in Hamas consider those small harassment attacks against the Israeli units as evidence of Israel’s lack of control in northern Gaza is incredibly misleading and a desperate attempt to turn utter defeat into a glorious victory. Al-Hayya and other delusional Hamas leaders know that what remains of the group’s military assets in the south will also be decimated in confrontations with the Israeli military. However, they are counting once again on overwhelming civilian casualties which are always a horrendous outcome and byproduct of Israel’s military strategy, to try and force the halt of the invasion of Rafah. From the beginning of the war, Hamas counted on rising Palestinian casualties creating unprecedented pressure to force Israel to stop its military offensive after October 7. But when that bet failed and Israel continued its systematic destruction of Gaza, the group experienced an existential crisis that, for the first time, actually threatened its very survival as a cohesive body in Gaza, something that Hamas had not experienced in previous wars which tended to stop within a few weeks of starting. Now, and instead of reassessing, moderating its conditions for a ceasefire, and expediting the end of the war to save what remains of its people, Hamas is doubling down on its strategy to cause unbearable loss of life and humanitarian suffering to Gaza’s civilians as the only way of forcing an end to the conflict. Currently, Hamas is counting on starvation, hunger, chaos, and apocalyptic scenes emerging during the Rafah invasion to create a new round of global outrage that could force Israel to stop its operations. I want to be clear that I absolutely want the war to end as soon as possible and I don’t want the invasion of Rafah to take place. Not only would the invasion of Rafah be a terrible disaster to Gaza’s battered and exhausted civilians and to what remains of my surviving family, but it would play directly into Hamas’s plan and nefarious designs to survive the war. Israeli policymakers and war planners have already done such a horrible job conducting this war, on multiple fronts, that Israel expended much of its political capital and global empathy it had accrued after the horrendous October 7 massacre. By failing to address the unbelievably awful humanitarian disaster and suffering throughout Gaza, Israel has played directly into Hamas’s explicit and deliberate strategy and desired outcome. The aforementioned regarding Hamas’s strategy is not just my own analytical opinion; it is what Gazans are saying about Hamas’s refusal to turn over the Israeli hostages and to moderate the group’s unrealistic demands for a ceasefire. This is a known fact for so many Palestinians in the coastal enclave and that is why they consider Hamas a merchant who trades and deals in blood and religion to justify holding Gazans hostage to the group’s suicidal policies and failures. Hamas has suffered terrible defeats and vastly miscalculated the consequences of carrying out October 7, and yet, it is behaving and negotiating as if it's a victorious party to a two-sided war. Northern Gaza right now is the scene of a true hunger/starvation crisis that is absolutely about to spiral out of control. Israel’s refusal to allow desperately needed food aid into the north is worsening this crisis. However, Hamas’s actions are giving Israeli decision-makers and war planners excuses and pretexts not to take rapid action and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions from worsening. Hamas's irresponsible and damaging actions include continuing to launch rockets from areas where IDF troops withdrew, causing the Israeli military to re-enter those zones and prevent the return of civilians to their neighborhoods. But here is a particularly egregious example: I and several others behind the scenes are pushing for food airdrops especially in northern Gaza which is unreachable, isolated and receiving virtually no aid from the south. Yesterday, Jordan announced its intention to carry out more airdrops in the north since that is seemingly the only way, for now, to deliver substantial food and humanitarian supplies to the hundreds of thousands of besieged civilians in the north. So, what do the Hamas dark lords in Gaza City do today? They publish videos of a few fighters using shoulder-launched surface to air missiles (SAM-7, Soviet-era Strela-2 IR launchers) to target Israeli helicopters and fixed-wing drones. There is no evidence that these launches successfully downed any aircraft, particularly because the system is ancient and most modern military aircraft are equipped with defensive countermeasures. However, what this does is complicate efforts to conduct food airdrops over northern Gaza either because civilian cargo aircraft lack countermeasures or, more importantly, food airdrops would need to be carried out at a lower altitude, elevating the risk of them being hit by shoulder-launched SAMs. Nevertheless, I maintain that food airdrops can be safely conducted while accounting for the operational risks which can be mitigated.

@daraobriain I really needed that this morning! 🤣

If you think the Irish are doing well at all the Movie awards this year, wait until this wins Best Picture next year.

'We are frightened for our families, we are frightened for our fellow Jews, frankly I am frightened for the country' British novelist & Booker prize winner - Howard Jacobson says @vicderbyshire surge of the antisemitism should not be tolerated in the UK #Newsnight

That’s actually not the biggest either. It’s weird that someone who admits not knowing when, where and why Jews have been massacred nevertheless has strong views about how Jews are always tricking people about it. It’s even more weird that y’all treat these ignoramuses (ignorami?) like they matter.

@OwenJones84 Comparative suffering is a futile task, it certainly doesn’t help innocent Palestinians. Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust is simply using the situation as a stick to beat Jews with. @OwenJones84 you might think you are being brave but in reality you are intellectually bereft.

This week, the highest court on earth placed Israel on trial for possible genocide Holocaust Memorial Day remembers the Shoah - the genocide of 6 million European Jews - and other genocides since. Kate Osamor has been suspended for referring to Gaza as one of those genocides.

Comparative suffering is a futile task, it certainly doesn’t help innocent Palestinians. Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust is simply using the situation as a stick to beat Jews with. @GaryLinekar you might think you are being brave but in reality you are intellectually bereft.

@L3GSV 🤣

@OwenJones84 I think the issue is that you don't ever appear (at least not publicly) to apply the same journalistic scrutiny to info coming out of Gaza. Also, not ideal to describe the online reaction to your viewing a screening of mass as 'the most... deranged thing I've seen in my life'

The response to my video about the screening of the 7th October atrocities is the most unhinged, deranged thing I've seen in my life. In the video I speak - in depth - about *grave, serious war crimes* committed by Hamas 👇 youtube.com/watch?v=mc5iG3…

This, read this! After the pogrom in Israel, the angel of death is licking his lips | Jonathan Freedland theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Hi @verypopularname please could you DM me your email address, would love to chat to you about a potential TV gig. Cheers, Arron

Here's the first trail for my Jews Don't Count documentary, on Channel 4 next Monday. youtube.com/watch?v=IESSx_…

@tabletmag I was astonished and delighted to read this article as this bench was put there by my family and memorialises my grandfather. Could you DM me please as I would love to contact Howard Jacobson through you to answer some of the questions about Chaim's later life that he poses.

A Howard Jacobson Park Bench Tale for the High Holidays tabletmag.com/sections/arts-…

How panic buying affects Jews - Kosher Kingdom out of chicken stock 😬

@Baddiel Just caught up with this, brilliantly done and so important. Thank you! My grandfather survived 8 camps including Auschwitz, but for a time the first hit when googling his name was a vile site attempting to do a hatchet job on his testimony. This vile abuse needs combatting.

Thanks once more for all the amazing responses to my documentary Confronting Holocaust Denial. It's here on iPlayer: bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod…

@MrLukeMcQueen @LouSanders @ComedyCentralUK Very excited for this!

@MrLukeMcQueen @rosentweets Silly boy

@josierones Just saw your name on the credits, that's awesome, great ep! Hope all's good with you, certainly seems so! x