Michael Rothberg

Honored to have my essay about my father featured in the 40th anniversary of A Piece of My Mind in JAMA. I wish he could have seen it. ja.ma/2yzNJ0D

In a new study of 7938 patients who initiated semaglutide or tirzepatide for obesity or diabetes and discontinued the medication within 3–12 months, we examined what additional obesity treatment patients pursue and weight changes post-discontinuation. doi.org/10.1111/dom.70…

@baytifirasik @Palestinia12961 @DonQuixoteOylam What happened to the people who sold the houses?

@Palestinia12961 @DonQuixoteOylam They recently bought 5 houses in Jabal Jalles. There's going to be a little Jewish neighbourhood there (Shechunat Hagvura)

Last night settlers from Kyriat Arba came, escorted by the army. They were looking at some of the buildings at the edge of my neighborhood. What did they want? Probably expanding the Jewish presence. Lately these visits have become quite frequent. 😞

@james_acton32 Or maybe take a lesson from Egypt. After losing 3 wars against Israel, Egypt stopped trying to destroy Israel, signed a peace treaty, got all their land back and has had zero attacks from Israel in 45 years.

2. If attacked by the U.S. or Israel in the future, hit back very hard to deter future attacks. Iran's recent calibrated responses--True Promise I, II, and III--were clearly interpreted by the U.S. and Israel as signs of weakness. (2/2)

Unless we get lucky and a pro-U.S. government forms (here's hoping!), the new Iranian regime seems pretty likely to draw two conclusions. 1. Get nukes ASAP. Kim Jong-un has them and is thriving. Saddam, Gaddafi, and Khamenei don't and they aren't doing so well. (1/2)

@JonathanLitvak @Palestinia12961 Settlements between parties who were not at war? That doesn’t apply to Israel and Gaza. They have clearly been at war. Wars don’t end because of humanizing the other side. That was my point.

@MRothbergMD @Palestinia12961 He was talking about settlements_deals not wars.

I lost my aunt in the beginning of the war, the oldest sister of my father. She died in Beit Lahia in the beginning of the war. Her family is living now in one of these tents. Which one? I do not know. Like thousands of Gazans that were all but forgotten. 💔💔💔💔💔💔

@JonathanLitvak @Palestinia12961 You don’t have to look too hard. The US and Japan came to a settlement without humanizing each other. Same with the Allies and Germany. Wars end when one side is defeated or both sides are exhausted. Can you cite examples of wars that ended with humanization?

Sorry for your lost. Over the weekend I watched an interview with Alon Liel, the former Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of israel (who, by the way, was involved in drafting the Oslo Accords). He said that he does not know of a single settle ever reached between conflicting parties without both sides first humanizing one another. Sadly, we are heading in the opposite direction. We have to turn humanization into a cultural "product" almost like cancel culture, but reversed. If you humanize, you’re admirable. If you engage in demonization, you should be culturally boycotted. This applies, of course, to both cultures. And before anyone calls me naïve, I fully support dismantling the vile terrorist organization Hamas down to its core. There is no contradiction.

@grok @simpson4truth @newstart_2024 Elon negotiated a $1T incentive package based on hitting milestones over a decade. But you knew that. Why try for all that money if he doesn’t believe we’ll need money in 10 years?

Elon's view is that AI-driven abundance could make traditional savings obsolete in the long term, but right now, incentives like his Tesla compensation package (valued in billions, not trillions) motivate innovation and align with growing the company to reach that future faster. It's about fueling the rocket before liftoff. What do you think?

Elon Musk just gave retirement planning the most radical advice possible: “Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years — it won’t matter. You won’t need to save for retirement.” His reasoning (from the same conversation): We’re already in the singularity — “the event horizon” where prediction breaks down. The accelerating timeline makes long-term saving irrelevant. Services, homes, healthcare, entertainment — abundance will be so extreme that the old rules vanish. Peter Diamandis: “The way this unfolds is fundamentally impossible to predict because of self-improvement of the AI and the accelerating timeline.” Elon: “We’re in this beautiful sweet spot… like being at the top of the roller coaster about to drop. I don’t just have courtside seats — I’m on the court.” If saving for retirement becomes pointless in the next 10–20 years because we’re already past the event horizon… what’s the first thing you’d change about how you live right now?

@grok @simpson4truth @newstart_2024 So why does Elon want a trillion dollar bonus package?

@simpson4truth @newstart_2024 Imagine you're playing with toys, and suddenly, a magic robot makes unlimited toys, food, and fun stuff for everyone forever. Elon says super-smart computers will do that soon, so you won't need to save your allowance for when you're grown up—everything will be free and awesome!

Mission accomplished!

@shadihamid What if, for the good of the Palestinians, Hamas were to return the last hostage and disarm? That would put the Israelis in an untenable position. Why not try that?

There's simply no good-faith argument that Israel is "defending itself against Hamas." The evidence that the goal is to make life unlivable for Gazans is just so overwhelming at this point, I'm not even sure what the alternative argument might be.

@visegrad24 He said he didn’t “know anyone,” not that he didn’t “know of anyone.” None of these people were his family or friends. So he’s good.

Tucker in new interview: “I don’t know anyone in the USA in the last 24 years who has been killed by radical Islam” Let’s remind Tucker of the 111 people killed in 9 Islamist terror attacks since 2009: 1. 2009 Little Rock recruiting office shooting: One person killed by Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a U.S.-born convert to Islam who claimed inspiration from jihadist ideology and had recently returned from Yemen. 2. 2009 Fort Hood shooting Thirteen killed by Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Army major of Palestinian descent who communicated with al-Qaeda figures. 3. 2013 Boston Marathon bombing: Four people killed by the Chechen Islamist brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. 4. 2015 Chattanooga shootings: Five people killed Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Kuwait to Palestinian-Jordanian parents, inspired by jihadist propaganda. 5. 2015 San Bernardino shooting: 14 killed by the married Pakistani couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik after they pledged allegiance to ISIS. 6. 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting: Forty-nine people killed by Omar Mateen, U.S.-born to Afghan parents and who pledged allegiance to ISIS. 7. 2017 New York City truck attack: Eight people killed by Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek immigrant who displayed ISIS materials and pledged support. 8. 2019 Pensacola Naval Air Station shooting: Three people killed by Mohammed Alshamrani, a Saudi Air Force lieutenant training in the US; linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. 9. New Orleans Bourbon Street truck attack: Fourteen people killed by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S.-born Army veteran and convert from Texas. He put an ISIS flag on the car. U.S. security services have foiled dozens of other attacks that would have claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

@EUtopean @OunkaOnX Just look what happened when Egypt and Jordan stopped fighting!

@OunkaOnX ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ ⬇️⬇️⬇️ ⬇️⬇️ ⬇️

A CNN anchor asks Gazan journalist Wael Al-Dahdouh if he wishes Oct 7 never happened. His powerful response reframes the question: the focus must be on ending the 75-year occupation

@IhabHassane This is a horrible crime. They were arrested. timesofisrael.com/5-settlers-arr…

HORRIFIC: Israeli settler terrorists attacked a Palestinian family’s home on the outskirts of the town of as-Samu. They slaughtered sheep, vandalized property, and assaulted family members. A mother and her three children were injured and evacuated to the hospital.

@aziz0nomics @Canreadsome Don’t forget the settlements they dismantled in Gaza.

@Canreadsome They put settlements even in Sinai, and subsequently dismantled them.

My critics: "Compromise with Israel is impossible. They will NEVER compromise or give back land. It's IMPOSSIBLE to compromise!" And then I show them the map of the Sinai peninsula that Israel gave back to Egypt in 1982 as part of a peace agreement:

@mysteriouskat If we really wanted people to get them we should have said they were limited in supply and only very wealthy or important people could have them.

Even if the covid vaccines were wonderful and perfect, I think mandating them had such a horrible impact on how so many people view healthcare today, and the extreme skepticism, distrust, fear, etc, that we are seeing. This will affect us for years to come and I think it's going to end up in more casualties overall than what we would have seen if they were not mandated during the pandemic. In fact, I suspect we would have seen a higher compliance if they were just explained very well, and left up to the individual and their doctors. The communication around all this was also a colossal failure as were so many of the policies. The reason I am thinking about this today, years after, is because I just see how much it has impacted people's trust in the medical field today and how damaging it has been. I encounter the mental aftershock on a near daily basis.

@tkpearson @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza You are back to “constantly expanding”except that it expands and contracts. That’s demonstrably true.

@MRothbergMD @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza So their 1993 agreement was a charade? They were lying again? They launched a massive terrorist attack in the mosque, assassinated Rabin for signing it, and then flooded the place. The extremists run the agenda in Israel. It is a sick society. Constantly expanding (and lying)

Sarah is partially true here. Israel, like many 20th-century countries, was born out of war, partition, and mass displacement of the Palestinians. But what she misses and what makes Israel's case different is how the country approached that legacy. Many countries with violent or exclusionary histories, from the U.S. to countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, eventually created legal, educational, and political frameworks to examine and address the dark parts of their past. Israel has not sat on comparable mechanisms, and serious engagement with 1948 or the early years of statehood is politicized and framed as delegitimizing the state. There is still no official way for the state to reconcile and include both Israeli and Palestinian narratives. The ongoing occupation adds to that and makes historical responsibility inseparable from present-day policy.

@aziz0nomics @David_Y3 This one was actually called the Reconquest because they were reclaiming land that had previously been Christian.

@David_Y3 I thought back then this kind of change of ownership of land was simply called a conquest, and we do not apply modern moral or legal standards to it? At least, that's what many people told me.

Before the genocide against Muslims in Spain, 80% of the population was Muslim. Now, the Muslim population in Spain is less than 5%. Spain, which was once a Muslim-majority state, has now become a Christian-majority state because of the genocide carried out against Muslims.

@GregMozart @grok @IhabHassane Grok can’t read Hebrew. The graffiti says Revenge for the Gush referring to the attack one week earlier at Gush Etzion. reuters.com/world/middle-e…

@grok @IhabHassane What arw they retaliating against? I only hear about settler attacks. Are settler being attacked too?

BREAKING: Israeli settler terrorists set a mosque on fire in the town of Biddya in the West Bank and sprayed hateful graffiti on its walls.

@tkpearson @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza The best way to limit settlement would have been to make peace immediately in 1967. The 2005 withdrawal from Gaza to the 1948 border didn’t bring peace, it brought more war. The withdrawal from Lebanon brought war. The lesson is to expand and never withdraw without a treaty.

@MRothbergMD @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza How does flooding the West Bank with 700,000+ settlers work with this "making peace"? Looks very much like pushing to constantly expand.

@tkpearson @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza They intended to make peace but the Arabs refused. They still refuse. When they want to make peace Israel will consider concessions. Lebanon should make peace. That border could be as quiet as Egypt and Jordan.

@MRothbergMD @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza Born in 48 makes it acceptable to the real modern Zionists. They celebrated. All this BS about Judea, Sumaria, Golan, Eretz etc is manifestly different. Or were they lying? Always intending to expand?

@tkpearson @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza The “born in 48” would make them acceptable to you but not the Palestinians. If the 48 borders had been acceptable, there would have been peace in 48.

@MRothbergMD @realgloverpark @HowidyHamza When they give the land back and return to "Israel" (1948 - the land of Israel that original Zionists agreed to), then they are not expanding. I will, at that stage, withdraw my assertion.