One of the things that we don't do when we see information on our phones or over the internet is apply the same rules based on reason and common sense that we would instruct our jurors to apply in a courtroom.

Two very simple rules that we tell jurors to apply are:

1. If a party lied to you before about something important, you can use the fact that the party lied to you before as evidence of whether it is lying to you now.

2. You can use the lie as substantive evidence of the party's guilt.

This is very simple stuff.

In my new book, Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law, I outline many different examples of situations where Hamas, which runs the Gaza Health Ministry, black and white lied, to the world.

For example, when Israel struck Mohammed Deif, the commander-in-chief of Hamas' military forces in central Gaza. Israel said for days that he was dead while Hamas claimed that he was alive and well.

This is a very important claim because this is an easy to verify situation where you're pitting the credibility of the one party directly against the credibility of the other party in a totally black and white way.

He's either dead or he's alive, right? In the end, we now know that and even Hamas agrees, that Mohammed Deif was very much dead. Hamas was lying the whole time for a variety of political and strategic reasons.

One more example. Daniella Gilboa, one of the hostages that Hamas took on October 7. She was held in dungeons, in deep, dark, dank holes for hundreds of days under the ground by real-life monsters without food, without sunlight, without medicine, and Hamas sent out a film showing her covered in blood, buried under rubble, and claimed that she had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

It was terrible, it was sad, and many were distraught over it.

We now know, thankfully, that it was all an act, that Daniella Gilboa's thankfully very much alive. She's back with her family. She's been returned.

Here again we have the credibility of the organization pitted directly against the other party in an easy to verify way.

Hamas was lying for its geostrategic political purposes, and Israel was telling the truth when it told the family, "No, we do not have credible information that she is dead."

John Spencer, Richard Kemp, and Andrew Fox are experts in the field of urban warfare, and I detail their findings in my new book, Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law.

In urban warfare, the average militant-to-civilian casualty ratio is about 1 to 9, meaning one militant killed for every nine civilians killed.

That's not because every war that's ever been fought is a genocide. It's because war is horrible and urban warfare in particular is horrible. That's why Israel would much prefer to fight Hamas out in the open. It's Hamas who chooses to fight in Gaza underneath its civilian population precisely to increase—not decrease—the number of civilian casualties.

In the American war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we and our allies set the gold standard. We had a militant-to-civilian kill ratio of about one to four-and-a-half, maybe one to five, and many experts believed no army would ever be able to meet that standard again.

In much more difficult and complicated circumstances, Israel, even if you believe Hamas's bogus numbers—which you should not believe for all the reasons I lay out in the book—but even if you took Hamas at completely face value and you believed all of their numbers, Israel has a militant to civilian kill ratio of about one to one-and-a-half in Gaza.

If Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, then the Americans committed genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the Americans and the allies committed genocide in Germany and Japan, and literally every war that has ever been fought in human history has been a genocide.

That's not what genocide means.

We should reserve the label for the crime of all crimes, because otherwise the consequences will be dire.

“Israel on Trial is brilliant, meticulously researched, and absolutely mind-opening. It’s also beautifully written. This extraordinary work should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East today.” -@amychua, Yale Law Professor; author, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

I want to talk to you not about October 7—when 1,200 people in peaceful border communities were murdered—but about what happened afterward, and what was so startling to me.

It wasn’t the violence. We’ve seen violence from the jihadists before.

What was so startling to me was the reaction here on our Western campuses, in our Western media outlets, and in our international institutions—institutions that, in many cases, like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, were created precisely in the wake of a real genocide: the Holocaust against the Jews.

Part of what has happened over the last three years was reflected in the things we saw in the days after October 7—October 8, October 9, October 10—when 1,200 Jews were murdered and, by the way, about 26 Americans were butchered, mutilated, and burned alive, all on video for the whole world to see. In many cases, those videos were uploaded by the terrorists themselves onto the victims’ own social media feeds so that the victims’ family members could see the most horrifying and final moments of their loved ones’ lives as they scrolled through their phones at breakfast.

And yet, we Jews became the oppressors. At the United Nations, we Jews became the violators of human rights.

How can this be? Where does this moral inversion, this moral confusion, come from?

I’ve spent the last two and a half years trying to answer that question.

Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law tries to answer that question.

“As a Federal Judge, Roy Altman’s ‘day job’ is to determine what is true and what is not. He performs that task by rigorously applying rules of evidence and common sense—principles that have reliably guided fact finders over many centuries. Now, Judge Altman applies that analysis to Israel’s recent war with Hamas in Gaza—free of emotion, wishful thinking, or bias, just as a judge should do. And his product is the definitive word on who is right and who is wrong, what is true and what is false. This is a must-read for anyone who wishes for an accurate understanding of this historic conflict.” -@DavidM_Friedman, Former United States Ambassador to Israel, 2017-2021

I was honored to be mentioned by Bobby Gilbert as a profile in courage, alongside @VanJones68 and Dartmouth President Dr. @sianbeilock.

Congratulations to Bobby on receiving the Judge Learned Hand Award, a prestigious honor bestowed by the American Jewish Committee upon members of the legal profession for excellence, community service, and humanitarian values.

Is it a good thing for judges to be outspoken on things that matter?

There’s a divide among federal judges. Some believe judges should remain totally siloed in their chambers, issuing opinions but never speaking publicly at high schools, law schools, or college campuses. I disagree.

I think it’s important for everyday people to see federal judges up close—especially now, in the 21st century, when we expect to get all our information in real time. People should be able to hear what we do, what we care about, and why we serve. They should understand that I love this country more than anything in the world, and that I consider it the greatest honor and blessing of my life to be able to serve my country and my community—a community that embraced me and my family with open arms when we came from Venezuela with nothing, when I was just a little boy. To serve that community with dignity and respect in my hometown—what an honor. What a privilege.

And so, I think people may say, “I may not agree with that decision he made. I may not agree with that book he wrote,” or whatever else. But if they understand who you are, I think they will recognize that it comes from a place of love and deep respect for the constitutional project that, hopefully, we’re all embarked on together.

"An outstanding contribution. This book brings together rigorous analysis, historical context, legal reasoning, and geopolitical clarity in a way few works manage to achieve. It lays out the key facts about Israel with precision while equipping readers to approach the subject with disciplined, well-structured thinking. Judge Altman's expertise is evident on every page—careful, exacting, and sharply argued—yet consistently engaging to read. Anyone involved in discussion, scholarship, or debate surrounding Israel will find this volume exceptionally useful and deeply enlightening." -Bishop Robert Stearns, Founder and President, Eagles Wings

One reason these trips to Israel with federal judges are so inspiring is that, in Israel, you can feel our shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

When Jesus was one-year-old, He moved to Nazareth in the north, and He became a great rabbi in Nazareth, in the Galilee. And then, of course, He comes down to Jerusalem. But before He can go to the Temple Mount, He has to do one thing.

He has to bathe in the mikvah.

And it says that He bathed in the mikvah known as the Siloam Pool and walked on what we call the Siloam or Pilgrimage Road, 700 meters to the Temple Mount, which is where He fought with the Pharisees and the money changers who weren't living up to the letter of Jewish law.

For decades, the Palestinian narrative has been that this is simply Zionist and Christian fantasy land.

But 20 years ago, digging underneath Jerusalem, next to the City of David, archeologists uncovered first the Siloam Road, and then the Siloam Pool. And guess how far it is from the edge of the Siloam Pool up to the edge of the Temple Mount?

700 meters.

It's about to be open to the public for the first time in 2,000 years. You will be able to go and take your families by the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027. But we, the judges, we got to go on every trip down into the tunnel.

And we're under there one day on one of these judges' trips, and one of the judges says to the Israeli tour guide, "How far down would we have to go to touch the stones that Jesus Himself would have walked on?"

And the Israeli tour guide says, "No, no, no. You don't understand. These are the stones."

And at that, all these judges get on their hands and knees and touch the stones.

These judges had come to Israel to stand, they thought, with the Jewish people, and with the one Jewish state in the world, but they went home understanding they had actually come to stand with their own people and their own heritage and their own history, because our Judeo-Christian family has been passed down to us for thousands of years, and it comes from only one place, and that's the Holy Land, and one country, and that's the State of Israel, and one city, and that's the Holy City of David.

The world needs a strong, sane, and morally clear America. And the problem I saw after October 7 is that history has taught us something important: societies that persecute the Jews are societies that are sick and dying.

Look at the Russia of Kishinev in 1903. Fourteen years later, it was gone.

Look at the Nazi Germany of 1938, of Kristallnacht. Seven years later, it was dead.

So, not because I’m Jewish, but because I’m first and foremost an American who loves this country — and who understands the blessings of this Judeo-Christian civilization that has been bequeathed to us — I believe we have a moral obligation to root out Jew-hatred whenever and wherever it appears.

It is the moral rot in the wooden framework of our house, and if we’re not careful, it will bring the whole house tumbling down on all of us, not just our Jews.

.@SpencerGuard, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies, Modern War Institute at West Point:

“Judge Roy Altman has done something rare and urgently needed. He applies the discipline of evidence, methodology, and truth-seeking that governs a courtroom to the most misunderstood conflict in the world. ‘Israel on Trial’ cuts through slogans, propaganda, and moral inversion with the clarity of a legal mind and the precision of a fact-finder. Altman lays out the history, the law, and the record in a way that allows any reader, regardless of background, to understand what is real and what is fiction. In an age where disinformation fuels hatred and violence, this book is a guide back to facts, reason, and moral clarity.”

Chapter Two of Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law is all about this question of whether Israel's an illegitimate state.

Modern-day Israel is a very old state. This is kind of counterintuitive.

Israel was created in 1948, it was the 59th state to be admitted into the United Nations. There's now 193.

Israel is actually older than roughly 67% of the world’s nation-states because so many of the countries were created in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s when Africa and Asia became decolonized.

"Israel on Trial is not only a model of rigorous evidence-based analysis but a beacon of moral clarity in a world that desperately needs it." -Jed Rubenfeld, Professor of Law, Yale Law School

One of the sub-themes of Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law, is that each of the six claims about Israel—genocide, apartheid, colonialism, etc.— actually is a thing that's happening in the Middle East, it's just not being done by Jews. It's being done to the Jews.

Each of the claims is actually like a mirror being held up to Jewish suffering.

So as to that point, there's no doubt that Israel is a legitimate nation state. That's one of the myths. People call it illegitimate. But it meets and has met, since it was founded in 1947, all four of the elements that international law outlines for the creation of legitimate nation states. Those come to us from the Montevideo convention of 1933.

The four elements are:

1. Does it have a defined population? Yes.
2. Does it have defined borders? Yes.
3. Does it have the capacity of conducting foreign relations? It always always will.
4. Does it have a single effective government? Yes.

On the other hand, the state that over 140 countries around the world have seen fit to recognize in the last few years, the supposed state of Palestine, doesn't meet at least two of those four elements, because first of all it doesn't have defined borders.

In fact, all of the recent European states that have recognized it have refused, notably, to say what its borders are because they know that it doesn't have any.

But second, and more importantly, it doesn't have one government, much less an effective one.

Gaza is being run partly by Hamas, partly by Israel. Judea and Samaria is being run partly by the Palestinian Authority, who the Palestinians themselves have said they don't want, and partly by Israel. So it doesn't meet the Montevideo test.

I was truly honored to learn yesterday that Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law made The New York Times Best Sellers list.

Thank you all for your support.

If you have not picked up your copy, you can order it today: amazon.com/Israel-Trial-E…