4/ Congress must come back and vote. Not as a formality. As a fundamental assertion that this country doesn't go to war because one man decided it was time.
28.02.2026 19:00
👍 0
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
4/ Congress must come back and vote. Not as a formality. As a fundamental assertion that this country doesn't go to war because one man decided it was time.
3/ The question nobody is answering: what does the end of this look like? What's the plan for the day after? Who governs if the regime falls? How do we protect Americans now at risk across six countries?
2/ I won't pretend Iran is simply a victim. This is a gov that massacred thousands of its own people 6 wks ago, has killed Americans through proxies & has destabilized region 4 decades through the forces it funds & directs. That truth doesn't disappear because we're questioning how this war started.
🧵1/ What happened this morning was serious, dangerous, and launched without congressional authorization. No public accounting of what success looks like. That's not how a democracy goes to war.
Almost a year to the day, I was in NY with my friend Arsen.
Today, he’s alive by luck alone. A bullet grazed his head at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. His family was there.
This isn’t abstract. Violence doesn’t come out of nowhere. Silence doesn’t keep the peace. It decides who gets hurt.
7/ If you believe in pluralism, Jewish safety can’t be conditional.
If you believe in justice, Jews don’t come with footnotes.
Silence doesn’t keep the peace. It decides who gets hurt.
6/ You don’t get to say “this isn’t what we meant” after people are dead.
Words set the weather.
Eventually, someone steps into the storm.
5/ But norms don’t erode all at once. They erode when nothing happens. When lines are crossed and everyone learns it’s safe to keep going.
4/ Antisemitism almost never shows up announcing itself anymore.
It blends in.
It borrows language that sounds principled enough to avoid consequences.
And Jews are told to trust that it won’t go further.
3/ When chants calling for “intifada” get waved off as passion.
When people insist it’s just words.
When Jewish identity gets put on trial, and Jewish objections get dismissed as tactics.
That pause? That’s where things turn.
2/ Attacks like this don’t start with bullets. They start earlier. With language that teaches people whose fear is taken seriously, and whose isn’t.
🧵1/ Eleven people murdered at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney.
Kids there for music and bubbles. Candles lit. Then gunfire.
This was targeted. It didn’t come out of nowhere.
Virginia’s JCRCs are sounding the alarm, and we should listen.
Leaders, especially those shaping our schools, have a responsibility to lower the temperature, not fuel hate.
Our Commonwealth deserves better.
10/ If we want stronger coalitions, inside the Jewish community and across communities, we need to believe people when they tell us they’re scared. Not after something happens. Before. That’s how trust actually gets built. That’s how we stay whole.
9/ The sages teach: “Words from the heart enter the heart.” Real dialogue starts with curiosity, not judgment. The first response to fear should never be “calm down.” It should be: “Tell me what this brought up for you.” That goes for all of us.
8/ A lot of people, good people, people working for Jewish safety, said the fears around Mamdani’s election were overblown. That Jews were overreacting. Then this happened. And now those same groups are condemning it. I’m glad they did. But maybe we should ask ourselves: what changed?
7/ And outside, people screamed “we need to make them scared.” If you can’t condemn that without a “but,” then the problem isn’t the event.
6/ Whatever your views on Israeli policy, and there’s plenty to debate, here’s what happened that night: Jews gathered to ask questions about moving to Israel. Not where in Israel. Just: is this right for my family?
5/ For generations, Jews weren’t allowed to make that choice—not during the Holocaust, not under Soviet rule. And now a New York leader is suggesting a synagogue shouldn’t even host a conversation about it?
4/ The mayor-elect’s response? He said the synagogue shouldn’t host events that “violate international law.” He was talking about an organization helping Jews consider moving to Israel.
3/ Someone screamed “we need to make them scared” at Jews walking in. When Jews say this felt threatening? We’re not being dramatic. We remember what comes next.
2/ The protest outside Park East Synagogue wasn’t abstract. People chanted “globalize the intifada” & “death to the IDF” outside a Jewish house of worship.
🧵1/ You can’t fight division by telling people their fears are the problem. Real leadership starts with listening.
10/ The people who built Emek Sholom refused to disappear. Refused to let the broken glass be forgotten. That was their defiance.
86 years after Kristallnacht, we’re still here lighting candles and asking to be seen.
Some of us are still sweeping up the shards.
9/ Solidarity either means something or it doesn’t.
So my ask is simple: Call out antisemitism when you see it, even from your own side. Believe Jews when we say we’re scared. Understand that remembering isn’t dwelling — it’s how we survive.
8/ My whole life, I’ve believed this: when someone says they’re afraid, you listen. You don’t explain their fear away. You don’t tell them they’re wrong about their own experience.
That shouldn’t be conditional based on whether it’s politically convenient.
7/Jews are 0.2% of world. Synagogues still need armed security. Jewish students get harassed on campuses — from the left & right. Antisemitic incidents are spiking everywhere.
But when we say we’re scared? People tell us we’re being dramatic. Or weaponizing trauma. Or 2 white 2 count as vulnerable.
6/ Look, I know most of you genuinely care about protecting vulnerable communities. That’s not performative — it’s real, it’s who you are.
So I’m just asking you to keep that same energy here.
5/ Memory is the only thing standing between “never again” and “here we go again.”
Antisemitism didn’t disappear in 1945. It got quieter for a bit. Now it’s loud again, and people are mad that we’re pointing it out.
4/ Here’s what gets me: these survivors built this memorial after they’d already escaped. They were safe. They’d started over, raised kids, became our neighbors.
But they still needed to carve those names in stone. Because they understood something most of us don’t want to believe.