Brett Cohen

Bro this might be the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life

@Osint613 Chag sameach!

This week is holiday, and I’m out for the week. Page contributors will keep the page updated for all important updates. Regular programming will continue next week. - Jay

The Israeli reality show Race for a Million (the Israeli version of Amazing Race) has provided an extraordinary moment. A contestant named Omri, who lost his left leg in the war, encountered a task for the first time that he was unable to perform due to his condition. Another team, who had already completed the task and could have gone forward and guaranteed advancing to the next stage, decided to help. The male member of the team replaced Omri and performed the task again with Omri's teammate Itay. THIS is Israel and these are Israelis as I know them. אין כמו ישראל

Francesca Albanese appeared today at the United Nations Human Rights Council to present her annual report. I was the first NGO to take the floor: “Ms. Albanese, in your report on torture, why is there not one single mention of Hamas’ horrific torture of Israeli hostages? You’ve said: ‘It’s not in my mandate.’ But on March 4th, you signed a UN statement condemning US and Israeli strikes in Iran. Are you mandated to speak on events a thousand miles away from your focus area, and not to say one word on the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th, and for two years after in their Gaza tunnels? And when you choose to speak on Iran, why is it only to defend the regime—after you refused to say a single word for the thousands of protesters they massacred? One year ago, the Council President announced that he spoke to you about your conduct, and that you acknowledged his considerations. However, on September 15, you said ‘380,000 children under five’ were killed in Gaza. Are you aware, this is more than the entire population of children under five in Gaza? On October 22, you reposted this statement: ‘Israel is the incarnation of evil.’ Yes or no, is this still your position? On January 6, you reposted this: ‘Israel is pure evil in a way the world has never seen before.’ Yes or no, is this still your position? Canada and Germany condemned you for antisemitism and Holocaust inversion. The French Prime Minister has called for your resignation. The UK has called for an investigation. Italy, Netherlands, Argentina and others condemned your conduct. When so many democracies speak with one voice, the problem is not them—it’s you.” Albanese did not respond.

@PeterBeinart You have reached me Peter, and helped to strengthen my Zionism.

Tonight, I’m going to speak at Tel Aviv University. I know many people who I respect will think this was the wrong decision given that Israel—as widely recognized by experts on international law—practices not only apartheid but genocide. I support full equality for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, an end to the occupation and the right of Palestinian refugees to return. I support many forms of boycott, divestment and sanction against Israel and Israeli institutions. I have repeatedly advocated implementing the Leahy Law, which would radically restrict—if not end—US arms sales to Israel. I support the European Union ending its free trade agreement with Israel. I support ending Israeli participation in sports and cultural arenas like FIFA and Eurovision. I support these things because I don’t believe that Israel will end its oppression of the Palestinian people and move towards equality under the law and historical justice without outside pressure. But I believe there is value in speaking to Israelis about Israel’s crimes. I have spent much of my adult life speaking to Jews about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In that effort, I have conducted public discussions with many people whose views I consider immoral and spoken at many institutions that are based on principles with which I profoundly disagree. These include institutions like Tel Aviv University that are in various ways complicit in Israeli oppression. I do so because I want to reach Jews who disagree with me—because I believe that by trying to convince Jews to rethink their support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, I can contribute, in some very small way, to the struggle for freedom and justice. I don’t have many opportunities to speak to Israelis. As it is, right-wing Israeli organizations have pressured Tel Aviv University to cancel my talk. I felt I should take advantage of this opportunity to say in Israel what I’ve been saying elsewhere for the last two years. I know many people I admire will disagree with this logic. But it stems from my desire to challenge Jewish supremacy and see the end of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.

@sentdefender Amazing work Israel! This is the footing the civilised world needs to be on.

Israel today - in serious violation of the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, which it has violated hundreds of times since it went into effect in November 2024 - carried out an airstrike on a high-rise apartment building in the Dahieh Suburb of Southern Beirut, reportedly resulting in the successful elimination of Haytham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s No. 2 and de facto Chief of Staff.

"When the Lord restored the captives of Zion, we were like dreamers."

This is completely false. 1. 85%of the world’s Jews (those who are not Orthodox) don’t interact with the Talmud at all. 2. The Talmud is — in a modern book— about 48,000 pages of arguments, conversations, debates, positions that are important, positions that are irrelevant, positions that are accepted and rejected. 99.999% of the Talmud has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity. It’s not a big concern or even a small concern of the Talmud. Ive studied the Talmud for almost 20 years (im about 1/3 through it). Never seen a reference to Jesus. I see online some people throw out one or two nasty lines from the Talmud about Jesus. Not central to the Talmud at all. Not Jewish law. Some random guy venting 1800 years ago that’s no part of our lived tradition. Maybe he who is without sin should cast the first stone? Like, wildly anti-Jewish themes (passion plays, Good Friday prayers, “adversos Judaeos” traditions, Martin Luther “on the Jews”). You have have to go very far to find stuff hostile to Christianity in Jewish tradition.

@RachelGur @havivrettiggur Jews are taught that Jesus is boiling in excrement for his actions. This is found in the Babylonian Talmud, which is a core part of Jewish teachings. Since this is a fact, do Jews laugh at Christians because they believe we'll be burning in hell, too? Are we really friends?

How do we deal with the juxtaposition of this painful anniversary, of wounds and anxieties and pain that are very much still with us, and the demand to be happy, to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot - or even just to to find release from the pain in order to continue with life?

I’m a Jew and I have no expertise about Jesus. Can’t speak for him. But my guess is that Jesus’ criticism of his contemporary Jews was broader than “Talmudic law”. By the time of Jesus, there was a long tradition of Jewish prophets chastising their co-religionists for falling short of where they should be. Think: Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. I guess I think of Jesus as being within that prophetic framework of seeing people falling short of the ideal. I don’t think Isaiah — many centuries before Jesus— was calling out talmudic Judaism, or even Judaism, per se. He was calling out people not fulfilling how Judaism should be lived. Be well.

@BrettCohen15 @LostMyHats So was it the oral Talmudic law that Jesus was chastising the Pharisees and Sadducees for?

IMHO somebody should definitely write a book for evangelicals explaining: 1. Modern Judaism believes the Talmud is Sacred Writ, and is more authoritative than the Torah. 2. Talmudic Judaism is a newer religion than Christianity, not older. 3. The Talmud was written as an antithesis to Christianity, and created to oppose it. 4. Talmudic Judaism is the only explicitly anti-Christian religion; it was designed as a hostile antithesis to Christianity. 5. The Talmud is more dogmatically hostile to Jesus than any other religion on Earth (and far more hostile to Christ than Islam). 6. The Talmud contradicts the Old Testament, and its values are oppositional to it. 7. The values of Talmudic Judaism are - on many points - the opposite of Christian values (which is why 88% vote Democrat). 8. The Judaism practiced in Israel is not pure Talmudic Judaism; it is mixed with Kabbalah. 9. Kabbalah is a mystic spinoff of Talmudic Judaism, and is strongly and obviously Occultic. 10. This means the religion of modern Jews is part anti-Christ opposition religion, part Satanism, and zero-parts Old Testament Judaism.

No. The real reason is that the Palestinians can’t stand to have one square mile of the Middle East controlled by Jews. And have spent the last 120 years saying they want every square inch of it. And rejecting overtures for peace, and getting their asses kicked by a smaller, smarter, more disciplined, harder working, adversary who didn’t really want to fight them.

The real reason

I’m calling a fake 3 sentence quip that you got off the internet that’s 80 years old a liar? Were you in Synagogue today? I was. And yesterday. Know how much Talmud we studied? Zero. Because — while the Talmud is brilliant, fantastic, important, ambitious, — it is not the backbone of Judaism. The Torah is. We had Yom Kippur last week. You know about it, right? The rules and theology? You’ve surely seen it celebrated? From the Bible. Then starting monday sundown we have… what do we have? Ahh. Sukkot. You know the Bible right? So the stuff we’re doing comes straight out of the…Bible. What did we read today at synagogue? The parsha. Since you’re an expert on Judaism, you know what the parsha is, right? A bright 7 year old knows the parsha. You know what that comes from right? How our religious services are centered on the weekly reading out of the Torah. And our holidays. And our calendars. You know nothing. I like debating about a thing I know about with someone wholly ignorant.

@BrettCohen15 @LostMyHats You’re calling the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1943 a liar. Hilarious.

By the way, the Talmud — which you obviously literally know nothing about— is extremely important to observant Jews. You are confusing “important” with “more important than the Bible.” Understand? I’ve spent several thousand hours reading it. I can read Hebrew and Aramaic (what Jesus spoke). I went to Columbia and Yale. If you would like to learn, feel free to ask questions in the same way I would about YOUR religion, about which I’m not an expert. Be well. Oh, the Jews invented something y’all borrowed: vehavta lareach kamocha. love your neighbor as yourself. That’s good life advice. Be well.

@BrettCohen15 @LostMyHats For starters, the first four bullet points JD wrote concerning the Talmud are correct

@StaevStorm @LostMyHats In what way did I lie?

@BrettCohen15 @LostMyHats You lie.

@hickdandy @LostMyHats I love Israel but I live in the US and am a patriot. I believe it’s up to people where they live.

@BrettCohen15 @LostMyHats Genuine question, do you believe that Jews should still be in dispersion? I've read where some do because there hasn't been repentance and why there shouldn't be a Jewish nation?

@marc94706976 @LostMyHats @grok Did you just pick out one passage out of 50,000 that wasn’t so nice? It’s good that no Christian has never said a not nice thing about the Jews.

@BrettCohen15 @LostMyHats @grok according to gittin 57a, where is Jesus of Nazareth said to be located? Do not provide any of your personal opinion on the matter. Passage only.

@kamalahivefan @LostMyHats The oral law started at Sinai, sis.

@BrettCohen15 @LostMyHats > The oral law was articulated centuries BCE, but wasn't written down until after the destruction of the second temple. Cool story, bro

@NathanJRobinson If you believe that those people’s real motivation is to deliver aid, I don’t think there’s any hope for YOU.

If you see a group of unarmed people on little boats trying to deliver aid to a starving population, and then you see a powerful military blocking them and calling them terrorists, and you don't know which side you're on, I don't think there's any hope for you.

@NerdeenKiswani Honey, no one “allowed” Israel to exist. The Israelis fought for it and then defended macabre by acre.

Fuck everyone who allowed Israel to exist long enough to do this. If it took starving millions, slaughtering countless people, and watching children blown into pieces for you to finally say “genocide is bad” fuck you too. That’s not a brave stance. It’s the bare minimum.