The Jewish Star 02-09-2024

NY’s Trusted Jewish Newspaper • Honest Reporting, Torah-True

PILIP vs SUOZZI

3rd CD votes to replace George Santos

TheJewishStar.com

Who’s ‘good for the Jews?’

February 9, 2024 30 Shevat 5784 • Mishpatim • Vol 23, No 6

Publisher@TheJewishStar.com • 516-622-7461

THE JEWISH STAR EDITORIAL

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Democrat Tom Suozzi and Republican Mazi Pilip in the offices of The Jewish Star. Tim Baker, The Jewish Star

f some of us lacked focus before Oct. 7, Hamas’ atrocities in Israel and the worldwide displays of Jew-hatred that followed have clarified our priorities.

In Long Island’s special congressional election on Feb. 13 — and in every vote we cast this year wherever we live — our prime directive will revolve around support of Jewish interests.

“Who’s good for the Jews” — a cliche among American Jewish voters of an earlier time — may have felt overworn and dated before Oct. 7. Now it’s unapologetically back in the driver’s seat.

With early voting underway in the 3rd CD (to fill the unexpired term of disgraced Rep. George Santos in portions of Nassau County and Queens), Jewish issues are foremost in our minds. But whoever wins, the Jewish community will win.

From a Jewish-interests perspective, voters in the 3rd CD have the rare opportunity to choose between two candidates who are both entirely supportive of Israel’s interests and resolute in the fight against Jew-hatred in America.

Whether Democrat Tom Suozzi or Republican Mazi Pilip is elected, we’ll do fine. Both are

“good for the Jews”: •Pilip, because of who she is (no one should question the heartfelt support of the Jewish state or of Jews in this country by this Ethiopian immigrant to Israel who served proudly in the IDF and is raising seven children in Great Neck).

•Suozzi, because of his track-record during six years in the House and the energy he’d bring to pro-Israel Democrats battling their party’s anti-Israel radical left. ith unique Israeli and Jewish interest assured, it’s entirely reasonable that Jewish voters in the 3rd CD (which has a history of significant Jewish turnout on Election days) may be guided by other issues, including these: •Immigration: Suozzi claims that during his service in Congress between 2016 and 2022, he advanced creative solutions to the US immigration crisis, even working “across the aisle” with LI Republican Rep. Peter King. Pilip argues that Suozzi has supported President Biden “100% of the time” and that, to the extent Biden bears responsibility for an ever-enlarging border crisis, Suozzi does too. You decide.

See Editorial on page 2

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Houthi who? Crazed Shi’ites vow death to Israel and US, ‘curse upon the Jews’

By Uzi Rubin Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies he Israel-Hamas War has seen the materializing of what has been until now a vague and somewhat imaginary-seeming threat from the Yemeni Houthi regime.

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The Houthis (or, more precisely, the Houthi movement, named after its founder, Hussein al-Houthi) is an extremist Shi’ite Islamist movement that wrested control of the mountainous region of Yemen from the previous, pro-Western government by capturing the

capital city of Sana’a in 2015. Following this coup, the movement proclaimed itself the legal government of the entire country. Like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the movement has a civilian arm that deals with civil affairs and welfare, as well as a military

Growing up in the Bronx, Torres knew nothing of Jews and Israel

By Andrew Bernard, JNS Growing up in the Bronx, Ritchie Torres, one of Israel’s boldest backers in Congress, had no awareness of the Jewish community or Israel.

“I was born and raised in a community that was almost exclusively Latino and AfricanAmerican,” Rep. Torres, a 35-year-old gay AfroLatino, told JNS. When he was first elected to the New York

City Council in 2014, he was “a blank slate on this subject,” he said. Then later that year he accepted an invitation to join a Jewish Community Relations Council delegation to Israel.

See Torres on page 10

arm — one that is now indistinguishable from a regular army.

The Houthis practice Yazidi Islam, which is a branch of global Shi’ite Islam. Yazidi Muslims ruled Yemen for nearly a millennium until they were deposed in 1962 by a revolt by an Arab nationalist faction. Thus, the capture of Sana’a by the Houthis and reestablishment of Yazidi control over part of the country can be viewed as a counter revolution that restored Yemeni Shi’ites to their former position. Yemeni Shi’ites constitute about 65% of the population of northern Yemen.

The extremism of the Houthi movement is reflected in its flag, which, true to its faith, bears no graven images. Instead, it features a five-line slogan: “God is great, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” It is hardly surprising that the ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran See Crazed Houthi Shi’ites on page 4

Editorial…

Continued from page 1 •Crime. Both candidates say they are against crime and firmly support law enforcement. Pilip carries the tough-on-crime Republican label; Suozzi was the tough-on-crime candidate in his primary challenge against Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022. You decide.

•Abortion. Suozzi is a clear ally of abortion rights. Pilip says she is personally opposed to abortion but would not support a federal abotion ban. Will she stand apart from follow Republicans on abotion or fall in line behind continued or further restrictions? You decide.

•Trump. Pilip responded affirmatively when The Jewish Star asked if she would respect the electoral process and, if a member of the House next Jan. 6, certify results submitted by the states.

She declined to discuss President Trump’s effort to subvert the electoral process in 2020, and deflected a question about Trump’s legal woes by saying she would let the legal process play out. Asked whether Jews could be confident in Trump’s continued support now that Israel-foes like Tucker Carlson have displaced Israel-advocates like Jared Kushner and Ambassador Friedman in his inner circle, she recalled Trump’s role in furthering Israeli interests when he was president. She said she would support the Republican presidential nominee this year. Suozzi has a very different position vis-à-vis Trump. You decide.

[The winner of the Feb. 13 election will complete George Santos’ unexpired term, which ends in December, and run for reelection in November. The winner in November will sit in the House during the presidential-election certification process next Jan. 6.]

•Aid to Israel and Ukraine. Both candidates insist they will oppose attaching “strings” to American aid to the Jewish state. Meanwhile, Trump and the House Republican leadership have attached strings linking such aid to domestic political considerations, and the Democratic administration has

linked Israel aid to Ukraine aid. Increasingly, House Republicans disagree with the Democratic administration that a robust American commitment to Ukraine is relevant to the defense of Israel and other US interests. Pilip affirmed that she supports attaching strings to Ukraine aid. Suozzi supports a continuation of emergency funding to both Israel and Ukraine. He said on Tuesday that he would back a Republican resolution to fund Israel alone (and not Ukraine) if that’s what it takes to bring timely American aid to the Jewish state. You decide.

•Party affiliation. Many Orthodox Jewish voters have gravitated to the right and favor Republicans. Pilip herself is an example of this; when she first registered to vote, it was as a Democrat (a registration she’s kept, even when twice running successfully as a Republican candidate for the Nassau County Legislature and now as a Republican candidate for Congress). Social issues and support for Israel played a role in this shift, along with revulsion at left wing Democrats appearing to have captured that party’s bully pulpit if not control of the party itself. While there is an anti-Israel and antisemitic stream in the Republican Party as well (Jewish space lasers, “Jews will not replace us”), it is discounted by those who’ve made the rightward leap. While this shift benefits Pilip, Suozzi counters that he, as a pro-Israel Democrat, would make a more meaningful contribution by helping to keep Israel advocacy bipartisan. You decide. ith many millions being spent by nationalparty interests in this contest — much of it on nasty TV commercials broadcast to the entire New York metropolitan region — the Pilip-Suozzi race may be viewed as a preview, a beta test, for the big game in November, when the presidency and control of Congress will be decided. Voters in the 3rd CD should appreciate their privileged role.

Whichever candidate you prefer, if you are a registered voter in the 3rd CD, it’s essential that you vote. Voters in districts that turn out on election day literally count, and their voices can wield power between elections far more than those of voters in districts with low turnout.

—Ed Weintrob, Editor and Publisher

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For Conservative Jews, no interfaith weds (yet) Conservative Judaism has surrendered to the rising tide of intermarriage among its followers. The movement wants to engage interfaith couples in “meaningful ritual ways” but should not officiate at interfaith weddings “at this time,” according to a standard suggested by a working group of the Rabbinical Assembly, the nearly 125-year-old international association of Conservative spiritual leaders.

“Fifty years after the RA formally adopted standards that prohibited members from officiating at interfaith wedding ceremonies, our connections to these families and understanding of their roles in our communities have changed significantly,” the report states.

Many North American Conservative congregations include interfaith families who are raising Jewish children and “frequently” play leadership roles, it adds. “This reality did not exist when the RA standards were implemented in the 1970s, at a time when intermarriage was viewed broadly as a ‘threat’ to Jewish survival.”

The report aims to move “beyond a binary discussion about Jewish identity and marriage and towards the countless opportunities to welcome and engage interfaith families in the beauty and meaning of Jewish community and practice.”

It adds that Conservative spiritual leaders ought to “fully embrace interfaith couples through their pastoral approach and through updated policies.”

In the 1970s, Conservative rabbis were thought to have authority, but it turned out that they “failed to dissuade Jewish community members from intermarrying.” Instead, per the report, they alienated many families that might otherwise have participated in Conservative Jewish life.

“Today, rabbinic authority is much more

about trust and relationship,” the report said.

“People don’t explore and evaluate their beliefs, practices and behaviors with a rabbi because they are convinced the rabbi is right — but because they believe the rabbi knows and cares about them and because they respect the rabbi’s knowledge base and commitments.”

The working group recommends that Conservative rabbis retire “the legacy of disapproval.” (A rabbi from the Midwest who was part of a listening session reported rarely officiating at weddings “because of how normalized intermarriage is in their community, which has a small Jewish population.”)

“I have been asked to officiate at interfaith weddings and every situation is different,” one spiritual leader told the group. “I would like the standard to change to give me latitude to figure out what is best.”

“I used to get requests as Hillel rabbi to officiate at intermarriages. Not now,” another said.

“They know I don’t and it makes me irrelevant to my families. People are not ashamed. They just don’t tell me.”

It became clear to the working group that Conservative communities vary globally.

An Israeli Conservative rabbi told the group that “any change in the standards would be a disaster for the movement in Israel. It would cause a schism in our Assembly.”

A Latin American rabbi added, “There are already some who don’t see us as being ‘proper’ rabbis.” Those whom the rabbi marries want another wedding ceremony afterward with an Orthodox rabbi.

“If we were to permit intermarriage, then the Jewish public would see us as not being halachic,” the rabbi said. —JNS

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Crazed Houthi Shi’ites want to kill us all…

Continued from page 1 embraced the Houthi movement from the day of its establishment in 2004 and have supported it ever since with ample funds and arms.

Soon after the capture of Sana’a in 2015, a Sunni Arab coalition of nations headed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates embarked on a military campaign to oust the Houthi regime and reinstate the previous, internationally recognized Government of Yemen (which still controls parts of southern Yemen). The Arab coalition military campaign against the Houthi regime continued until a temporary ceasefire was achieved in April 2022. uring the seven years of warfare, Iran supported the Houthi regime to the hilt, copiously supplying it with money, arms and military expertise and training by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanese Hezbollah. Circumventing the UN Security Council embargo on arming the Houthi regime, the IRGC flooded their protégés with light arms, ammunition, rockets, missiles and UAVs. Moreover, the Iranians delivered machinery and know-how to the Houthi regime to help it establish local defense industries that now provide the Houthi armed forces with some of its equipment, including UAVs and possibly some types of missiles and rockets.

Iran used the Yemen war to test its indigenously designed weapons systems — but at the same time showed sensitivity to the UN embargo. This is shown by the lengths to which the Iranian regime went to dissociate itself from its arms supply to the Houthi regime. To this effect, they made efforts to disguise the Iranian origin of their supplied armaments. In some cases, the effort was superficial, like painting Houthi-destined ballistic missiles different colors from the Iranian originals. More frequently, the effort was significant and profound.

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The prime example of a sophisticated dissociation effort was the development by Iran of UAVs and rockets tailored specifically for Houthi use — that is, not to be used

by Iran’s own armed forces (at least at first).

The claim was made that these weapons were indigenous Yemeni designs. A case in point is the rudimentary cruise missile “Quds 1,” first unveiled at a Sana’a arms expo in July 2019. There is clear evidence that the missile was designed and developed in Iran, but the Houthi regime bragged that the weapon had been indigenously designed and produced in Yemen.

The Iranians, meanwhile, surreptitiously used the weapon operationally to attack the Saudi oil industry while avoiding displaying it at their own military parades and expos until 2023, when they finally featured it under a different name. The Iranians continue to maintain the fiction that they are complying with the UN embargo, and that the modern and deadly UAVs and missiles used by the Houthis were indigenously designed and built in Yemen by Yemeni scientists and engineers. uring the seven-year war in Yemen, the Houthis launched a significant campaign against Saudi Arabia that included attacks by rockets, ballistic missiles and UAVs on population centers, military bases, industrial plants and state symbols. Most of the attacks targeted the southern provinces of Saudi Arabia that border Yemen.

Saudi Arabia’s hinterland also came under attack, and its capital city of Riyadh was hit at least eight times by Iran-supplied, Houthioperated ballistic missiles and UAVs. Oil installations deep within Saudi territory were also subjected to mainly long-range UAV and cruise missile attacks, including the oil terminals at the port of Jeddah, the oil pipeline that connects the oil fields of northern Saudi

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The USS Carney guided-missile destroyer defeats a combination of Houthi missiles and unmanned US Navy aerial vehicles in the Red Sea on Oct. 19, 2023.

Arabia to the Red Sea ports and to oil fields like Shaiba in the eastern part of the Kingdom.

The United Arab Emirates, too, was a victim of several missile and UAV attacks from Houthi-controlled Yemen. These attacks targeted the construction site of the UAE’s nuclear power reactor and Abu Dhabi as well as the Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports. In the most recent attack, in January 2022, Houthilaunched UAVs and missiles caused several casualties in an Abu Dhabi suburb. The Saudi Armed Forces spokesperson disclosed in December 2021 that a total of 851 UAVs and 430 rockets and ballistic missiles had been launched by the Houthis against Saudi targets since the start of the Yemen war in 2015.

The longest range reached by Houthi missiles during the Yemen war was about 1,200 kilometers (746 miles). How far their UAVs and cruise missiles traveled is not precisely known, but it seems that their maximum range was about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles). At the time of the ceasefire, the Houthi regime had in its possession a significant arsenal of long-range weapons that could threaten the entire territory of Saudi Arabia. Their range was not, however, sufficient to hit Israel, the southernmost point of which is about 1,700 kilometers (1056 miles) away from the nearest point in Yemen. everal Israeli analysts foresaw that once the war with Saudi Arabia abated, the Houthi regime would turn its long-range capabilities against Israel. One clear warning of Houthi intentions was provided by a video clip released by the Houthi regime in 2019 that featured the newly unveiled “Quds 1” cruise missile. This propaganda video had Hebrew subtitles threatening Israel, ending with the words — in Hebrew — “In the future, many more [missiles].” It was clear that the range gap could be bridged by extending the reach of the cruise missile and introducing heavier ballistic missiles.

As predicted, extended-range missiles were unveiled at a military parade held in Sana’a on Sept. 22, 2023, barely two weeks before the Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War. At the parade, the Houthis unveiled two new missile types: the “Quds 4” cruise missile, which has a longer range than earlier variants (the exact range was not specified); and a new, larger ballistic missile dubbed the “Toufan” that was clearly the 1,900 kilometer (1180 mile) Iranian “Ghader F” — an extended-range version of the liquid propellant “Shahab 3.” Since the Houthis don’t need missiles with ranges beyond 746 miles to threaten Saudi Arabia, it was clear that the intended target of the two new missiles was Israel.

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This threat first materialized on Oct. 19, 2023, when a salvo of UAVs was launched from Yemen towards Israel. This salvo was apparently intercepted and destroyed by US warships stationed in the Red Sea. In another attack, on Oct. 27, some Yemeni-launched UAVs reached the Gulf of Aqaba.

Two struck towns in Egyptian Sinai and others were shot down by Israeli Air Force fighters.

Four days later, a Houthi-launched ballistic missile that targeted Eilat, Israel’s southernmost city, was intercepted and destroyed by the Arrow anti-missile system. Subsequently, two more Houthi-launched ballistic missiles were destroyed by Arrow interceptors well before they could hit Eilat.

Further UAV attacks were foiled by the IAF, and from video footage released by the IAF of these interceptions, it seems the intercepted threats were “Quds 4” cruise missiles.

According to media reports, some of the UAVs launched against Israel were intercepted and destroyed by Saudi Air Defense command. he impression is that while the nominal range of the “Quds 4” cruise missile covers southern Israel, including Eilat and points north, in real life its range is only marginally sufficient to reach Eilat. One clue suggesting this to be true is the debris of a Houthi cruise missile found in the deserts of southern Jordan, about 124 miles short of Eilat. It might have failed to reach Eilat because of a technical glitch, but it also might have run out of fuel earlier than anticipated.

It appears that Israel’s Air Defense Command prepared in time to face potential missile threats from Houthi Yemen. This has enabled it (with the help of the US Navy) to parry all Houthi-launched cruise and ballistic missile attacks to date. At the same time, there is little doubt that the Houthis, aided by their Iranian patrons, will make further efforts to improve their performance and break through the defensive arrays of the US Navy and Israel’s Air Defense Command (and probably that of Saudi Arabia’s air defense, too).

The Houthi regime formally declared war on Israel on Oct. 31, 2023, so it stands to reason that it will persist in its efforts to hit Israel with its missiles, both to show solidarity with Hamas, a fellow Iranian proxy, and to dilute Israel’s air defenses against the rockets, missiles and UAVs of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Houthi missile threat is clearly destined to become a permanent feature of Israel’s missile threat environment. Israel’s Air Defense Command will probably redeploy its assets for instant readiness against the threat from the south, a threat that has now become as tangible and dangerous as the missile threats from Gaza and Lebanon.

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Bat mitzvah shifts destination: Israel to Curaçao

By Alan Smason, JNS When Hamas terrorists struck on Oct. 7, hundreds of b’nai mitzvah celebrations in Israel were put on hold or canceled.

Gabriella (“Gabi”) Kittrie had been studying with her religious-school instructor and preparing a d’var Torah for her assigned parshah, Vayechi.

Four years earlier, her older brother Ari had celebrated his milestone event at the Kotel with their parents, Orde and Elizabeth Kittrie, and several Israeli family members and friends. They were planning a similarly meaningful and spiritually uplifting celebration at the Kotel for their daughter.

But when British Airways canceled their tickets to Israel in early November, they sprang into action, looking for a Jewishly meaningful place that could accommodate them on short notice.

That’s when they thought of the oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, on Curaçao in the Caribbean.

Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel is nestled in the bustling port city of Willemstad, a formerly walled city and a favorite stop for cruise ships and more than a half million tourists each year.

One of the features of the island is the vibrant palette of colors that mark its historic architecture. The bright canary yellow and tan building that houses Mikvé Israel-Emanuel traces its history to 1730. Several of its present members can track their family roots back more than a dozen generations.

One of those is Mali de Waard, the synagogue’s president, who claims family roots on Curaçao to the 16th century and a family heritage that can be traced even further back to Amsterdam, where her ancestors had fled the Inquisition on the Iberian Peninsula.

Locals like de Waard refer to Mikvé IsraelEmanuel as the “Snoa,” a sobriquet for “synagogue” in Papiamento, a Creole language in-

fluenced by African dialects and based on an amalgam of Portuguese, Spanish and a little Dutch. Etymologists suggest it is probably derived from the Portuguese word esnoga for “synagogue.”

Founded originally in 1651 as an Orthodox synagogue with Sephardic traditions by Dutch and Brazilian Jews, the first Torah scroll was donated by the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1659. A building for the community was purchased in 1674, and the present building was erected in 1730 with major renovations occurring in 1878 and 1974.

With its high vaulted ceiling, massive chandeliers, dark mahogany pews, interior pulpit and imposing holy ark that holds more than a dozen sefer Torahs, the Snoa has been often favorably compared to the Great Synagogue in Amsterdam.

Another central feature of the synagogue is the application of white sand on its floor, which is often raked to remove footprints. According to legend, conversos — converts to Christianity who still secretly practiced Judaism — used sand to muffle the sounds of footsteps and to deaden the volume of the prayers lest they be overheard by eavesdroppers. The congregation placed sand on the floor at the time of its founding and today is one of only four in the world — all located in the Caribbean — to continue the practice. The others are in Suriname, St. Thomas and Jamaica.

Congregants at Mikvé Israel-Emanuel additionally refer to the sand as an ever-present reminder of the 40 years of wandering by the Hebrews in the desert.

As the Kittrie family learned, the history of the synagogue and the story of the Jewish people in Curaçao requires more than the collective memory of its congregants. A small museum filled with artifacts is housed in an enclave of the building opposite the courtyard that leads to the sanctuary doors.

Museum tours (daily except on Shabbat and Jewish holidays) inform visitors of a schism in

The dark mahogany pews, suspended chandeliers and aron in Curaçao’s Congregation Mikvé IsraelEmanuel have been compared to the Great Synagogue in Amsterdam.

Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star

the middle 19th century when elements within Mikvé Israel broke away and formed their own Reform Jewish congregation, Emanu El. For more than 100 years, the two groups maintained separate synagogue buildings but due to dwindling attendance, the two reconnected, merging into the renamed Mikvé Israel Emanuel in 1964.

Today, the synagogue is part of the Reconstructionist movement associated with the Portuguese Dutch community and is fully egalitarian.

An imposing pipe organ built in Amsterdam in 1865 is housed on the sanctuary’s second floor. Occasionally still played at services, it is the oldest in the region and the second

oldest in the Americas.

The combined the bat mitzvah with a week of sightseeing on Curaçao for everyone to familiarize themselves with the important Jewish history of the island.

“Since my family is Mexican Jewish, I was particularly intrigued by the heavy Hispanic influences on the culture of Curaçao and particularly its Jewish community,” said Orde Kittrie. “I enjoyed learning how the Curaçao Jewish community was at one time the largest in the entire Western Hemisphere, and how it went on to inspire and help build the beginnings of the US Jewish community.”

The synagogue can be visited during the week, and is open for Shabbat services on Friday nights at 6:30 pm and Saturday mornings at 10 am as well as for all Jewish holidays.

Prohibitions are enforced at the door on immodest clothing that might expose shoulders, and for torn or faded jeans and open-toed footwear, especially flip-flops. Head coverings are required for men and suggested for women.

Initially, when she learned of the trip to Israel being canceled, she was heartbroken, said Gabriella. “I was upset because I couldn’t get to Israel, and we had relatives and friends there, but I was definitely happy” when the family decided on Curaçao “because it wouldn’t be the same as my brothers’ [milestones].”

In addition to the balmy weather and the unique aspects of the celebration, Gabriella emphasized her delight in being in Curaçao.

“It’s very historical, and it seemed like it had a great Jewish community,” she added.

“Also, for me, I’m really into beaches, and I’ve always wanted to go the Caribbean,” Gabriella noted. “And what’s better than getting a tan?”

In addition to Congregation Mikvé IsraelEmanuel, which is located downtown and near many hotels and beaches, Curaçao also has an Orthodox congregation further inland, Shaarei Tsedek Congregation.

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SOLDIER MOTHER FIGHTER As a Nassau County Legislator, Mazi Pilip held the line on spending, cut property taxes by $200 million and hired hundreds of new police officers to keep our communities safe.

Mazi Pilip is the leader we need in Congress.

3 Repeal the Middle Class Tax Hikes passed by Joe Biden and Tom Suozzi.

3 Restore the full State and Local Tax (SALT) Deduction to help homeowners.

3 Pass the strongest Border Security Law to close Biden’s Open Borders.

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Farce: Critics slam review of UNRWA neutrality

By Mike Wagenheim,JNS Following allegations that a dozen employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) participated directly in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, the United States and other nations announced their suspension of future funds, pending an investigation. The UN has said that the actions of a few shouldn’t tarnish an otherwise essential aid organization — a sentiment that White House officials have echoed at times while emphasizing the seriousness of the charges.

There has been less attention to a separate investigation of UNRWA, which predates the announcement of the allegations that agency employees participated in the terror attacks.

In response to “allegations of serious breaches,” the UN assembled an ostensibly independent panel to assess whether UNRWA is acting in a neutral manner.

The new “review group,” which will operate parallel to an internal investigation, is helmed by Catherine Colonna, former French foreign minister. But it’s seriously tainted — two of the three European research organizations with which she will work have praised South Africa’s genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Colonna herself praised UNRWA during a Jan. 12 meeting with Lazzarini, writing in French that she gives him her “full renewed support” and calling his work “more useful than ever.”

Both the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway and the Danish Institute

for Human Rights presented the ICJ case in a positive light, while the third group, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, a Lund University affiliate, in Sweden, has not.

“By bringing Israel before the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, with the objective of putting an end to the ongoing massacres in Gaza — while the West continues to side with and provide military supplies to the oppressor — South Africa (with the support of its partners, all of which are exclusively from the global South) is challenging the west’s moral high ground and exposing its double standards,” per a blog post co-written by a research staff member at the Norwegian group CMI, which promotes the item atop its homepage.

CMI, which is now being positioned as a neutral arbiter on anti-Israel bias at UNRWA, further referred to the “suffocation of Palestinians” that “prepared the ground for genocidal acts to take place.” It adds, “the massacre or the suffering of the ‘civilized’ is considered as more tragic than the massacre or the suffering of ‘others,’” apparently criticizing distinctions between Hamas’s attack on civilians and Israel’s subsequent war of self-defense against a terror organization.

South Africa’s genocide case “marks a historic breakthrough and progress for international law,” according to a post that the Danish Institute for Human Rights promotes on its homepage.

On Nov. 6, Louise Holck, president

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini during a visit to the al-Shati ` Rahim Khatib, Flash90 refugee camp in Gaza City on Oct. 12, 2021.

of the Danish Institute, delivered a speech in which she referred to a Russian soldier who stripped a 75-yearold woman and strangled and raped her after she refused to undress — and suggested that Israeli soldiers could do the same, without mentioning that Hamas terrorists had raped and killed Israeli women.

The Wallenberg Institute, which does not appear to have commented on the Oct. 7 attacks at all, issued a statement on Jan. 27 (International Holocaust Remembrance Day) that universalized the Holocaust and referred to “all the tragedies in conflicts and genocides worldwide.” It did not refer specifically to Hamas’ attack, which was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Two experts told JNS that they are

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highly skeptical of the neutrality of the new panel tasked with investigating the agency’s neutrality.

“This is a farce, a desperate scheme to save UNRWA,” said Rich Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who studies international organizations.

“The United Nations does not recognize Hamas or Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations, and this secretary-general [António Guterres] has proven himself biased against Israel,” Goldberg told JNS. “UNRWA’s time has come to an end. The only reform that will protect US taxpayers is ending UNRWA.” Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch whose exposé of a Telegram channel for UNRWA teachers appeared to finally push UNRWA

Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini into calling for outside help, said that the new investigation is “tainted from the start.”

Lazzarini has already said that allegations against UNRWA amount to a “smear campaign,” Neuer noted.

The new review group’s articulated aim is to “assess whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”

The panel, which begins its work on Feb. 14, is expected to file an interim report to Guterres in late March, with the final report completed in April.

The report will “make recommendations for the improvement and strengthening, if necessary, of the mechanisms and procedures that are currently in place or for the creation of new and alternative mechanisms and procedures that would be better fit for purpose, taking into account the particular operational, political and security context in which the agency works,” the UN announced.

“Congratulations to the United Nations on forming the investigative committee. We will submit all evidence highlighting UNRWA’s ties to terrorism and its harmful effects on regional stability,” wrote Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister. “It is imperative that this committee brings the truth to light, necessitating the immediate resignation of the UNRWA chairman Philippe Lazzarini.”

Several members of Congress have called for Lazzarini and Guterres to resign.

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9 THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784

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Torres was ‘blank slate’ until visiting Israel…

Continued from page 1 The trip turned out to be “one of the most formative and transformative experiences in my life,” he said.

Torres spoke with JNS about Israel’s war against the Hamas terror organization in Gaza, the prospects of a future Palestinian state, and how he became a fighter for Israel on Capitol Hill, particularly after Oct. 7.

When Torres first visited the Gaza envelope in southern Israel, he recalls a local Israeli mayor telling him that most of the children in the area struggle with post-traumatic stress from living under relentless rocket fire.

“I grew up in the Bronx where people live in fear of bullets, gun violence, but no one in the United States lives in fear of rockets,” he told JNS. “No one worries that Mexico and Canada are going to fire a rocket into American homes and communities.”

Early on, Torres realized that the Jewish state faces “a level of insecurity and volatility that has no equivalent in the American experience.”

“I developed profound empathy not only for the plight of the Jewish people but for the complex security situation confronting Israel as a Jewish state, which is surrounded by adversaries,” he added.

Torres said that most of his views on Israel are informed by his trips to the area, as well as by the writings of experts, including former Knesset member Einat Wilf, Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur, and Tal Becker, who helped argue Israel’s case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Torres’ district now includes heavily-Jewish Riverdale, as well neighboring communities which are predominantly Black and Latino.

While a growing number of Democrats in Congress are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Torres said that lawmakers aren’t trying to persuade one another on the issue.

“There are no real conversations,” he said.

“Everyone has their minds made up.”

He said that there are two kinds of ceasefire — one that keeps Hamas in power and the hostages in captivity, and the other after Hamas surrenders unconditionally and releases the hostages.

“I find it outrageous that most of the international community is calling for the former rather than the latter,” he said.

Torres has written in recent days that the international community “has blood on its hands” for its role in helping Hamas govern the Gaza Strip. He elaborated on that charge to JNS, calling the current system “utter insanity.”

“Hamas is a terrorist organization that has no interest in governance. It sees governing as a distraction,” he said. “Hamas does not exist to govern Palestinians. It exists to murder Jews in Israel.”

Hamas has essentially told the world, “We, Hamas, are going to murder Jews, and we expect the rest of the world to govern the Palestinians for us,” he said. “The rest of the world said yes.”

“It’s utterly insane that we, the international community, are subsidizing a social contract, whose terms and conditions have been set by a genocidal terror organization,” he added.

Torres has been steadfast in supporting Israel’s campaign against Hamas. He also believes that a two-state solution is the eventual path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That has been the standard position for many American supporters of Israel for decades, but the viability and desirability of a future Palestinian state has come into question for many Israelis after Oct. 7.

Torres wrote on social media that ruling out a Palestinian state entirely was “morally wrong.”

He told JNS that history shows that even the bitterest enemies can reconcile.

“I’m under no illusion that it will happen in

Rep. Ritchie Torres in New York City on Jan. 9, 2022.

Lev Radin, Shutterstock

the short term, especially in the wake of Oct. 7,” he said. “But Germany went from nearly exterminating the Jewish people to becoming one of the strongest supporters of the Jewish state. The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and Japan has emerged as one of the strongest allies of the United States.”

History demonstrates that peace is possible, though it can take a long time. “The facts on the ground can and do change over time,” he said. “The notion that there will never be peace strikes me as ahistorical.”

But Torres was also critical of the Biden administration over reports that the State Department is reviewing options for the United States to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state soon after the Gaza war concludes.

Torres believes that the Palestinians need

to meet preconditions for statehood, including renouncing the so-called “right of return” and coming to an agreement with Israel on borders, before Washington should consider recognizing a Palestinian state.

“We in the United States have to disabuse ourselves of the notion that we can legislate or enact a two-state solution from the ivory tower of the United States Congress or the White House,” he said.

“A two-state solution can only be achieved by Israelis and Palestinians,” he added. “It cannot be issued by executive order.”

After Oct. 7, many US Jews have expressed concern about what they see as declining support for Israel among Blacks and other minority groups, and even a tolerance for antisemitism.

“I think there’s a perception in the Jewish community that African-Americans are particularly antisemitic, and I’m convinced that that perception is wrong,” he told JNS. “The greatest predictor of one’s attitudes toward Israel is not race. It is age and educational attainment.”

“Young people are increasingly hostile toward Israel regardless of race,” he added.

Organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America have very few Black and Latino members, according to Torres. “It’s an overwhelmingly white organization,” he said.

In New York City, it is difficult to generalize about the state of relations between Black and Jewish communities, Torres said. But it is clear to him that there is a lot of de facto segregation.

“There are many Blacks who go through life without interacting with many Jews, and there are many Jews who go through life without interacting with many blacks” and that breeds a lack of mutual understanding, he believes.

“I would support initiatives that would break down those barriers of distance and segregation and bring blacks and Jews together in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel,” he said.

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WINE AND DINE Luxurious breakfasts for cold winter mornings Kosher Kitchen

JONI SChoCkEtt

Jewish Star columnist

T

he most rushed meal in America has to be the weekday breakfast. Instant drinks, instant oatmeal, cold cereal and toaster pastries are not on any list of the best way to start the day, and we have heard all the messages about the importance of breakfast. But … who wants to give up those extra minutes of sleep? While we should eat a better breakfast all the time, we can eat a better breakfast on weekends and then use some of the leftovers for the rushed morning when cooking is not an option.

My memories of weekend breakfasts are of my dad cooking up fabulous, newly created and invented dishes ranging from frittatas (which he had no idea he was making and didn’t have a name for) to berry filled pancakes, delectable muffins and breads, great citrus fruit salads in winter, and berries and melon salads in summer. He also made the most amazing home fries which I have never been able to duplicate (and probably shouldn’t).

Years later, I often made weekend breakfasts that we ate leisurely in our warm and cozy breakfast nook. I made pancakes and muffins and all kinds of oatmeal concoctions and turned out thousands of omelets through the years.

It was fun to share breakfast with the kids when we didn’t have to rush out the door. They were well-rested and completely charming and adorable (revisionist history to some degree, I am sure) on all those relaxed mornings — and now they have wonderful memories of “Sunday Morning Breakfasts.” Sometimes, movie nights became movie mornings as we all snuggled under a blanket sipping cocoa after a delicious breakfast. Filled tummies and Disney on the TV was fun and created many wonderful memories of those leisurely Sunday mornings.

Make some Sunday Morning memories soon and make enough to grab on Monday morning!

Berry Berry Pancakes (Parve)

• 1-1/2 cups unbleached flour (you can use whole wheat or a mix) • 2-3 Tbsp. sugar or agave syrup • 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder • 1/2 tsp. salt • 2 extra-large eggs • 1-1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk • 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract • 4 Tbsp. melted pareve, trans-fat-free margarine • 2 cups berries whole or gently, slightly smashed or sliced (Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries) Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk. Place the milk, eggs and vanilla in another bowl and whisk until blended. Place the margarine in a small, microwave-safe bowl and melt.

Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and whisk lightly. Add the melted margarine and whisk just until blended.

Heat a large skillet or griddle, add some margarine. When it sizzles, drop spoonfuls of batter onto the griddle. Cook until bubbles form on the top and the top looks a bit dry. Carefully flip the pancakes and cook until cooked through, about 35 seconds more. Serve immediately. Makes about 18 to 20, 4-inch pancakes.

Banana Nut Buckwheat Pancakes (Dairy or Pareve) • 3⁄4 cup buckwheat flour • 3⁄4 cup unbleached flour • 3 Tbsp. sugar or agave syrup

AI / Adobe

• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder • 1/2 tsp. baking soda • 1/2 tsp. salt • 1-1/2 cups buttermilk or unsweetened almond milk • 2 extra-large eggs • 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract • 4 Tbsp. butter or pareve, trans-fat-free margarine, melted • 1/2 cup chopped pecans • 1 to 2 large bananas, cut in half lengthwise and sliced Place the dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk. Place the milk, eggs and vanilla in another bowl and whisk to blend. Place the margarine in a small, microwave-safe bowl and melt.

Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and whisk lightly. Add the melted margarine and whisk just until barely blended. The batter should be thick but still flow. Add more milk, if needed. Add the nuts and bananas and mix gently.

Heat a large skillet or griddle, add some margarine and, when it sizzles, drop spoonfuls of batter onto the griddle. Cook until bubbles form on the top and the top looks a bit dry.

Carefully flip the pancakes and cook until cooked through, about 35 seconds more. Serve immediately. Makes about 14 to 18, 4-inch pancakes.

Baked Oats, Apples and More (Pareve or Dairy)

This is a great gluten-free breakfast • 2 cups old-fashioned or rolled oats • 1 tsp. baking powder • 3/4 cup chopped walnuts • 1/2 cup sunflower seeds • 2 tsp. cinnamon • 1/2 to 1 tsp. salt • 2 cups unsweetened vanilla or plain almond milk (soy, rice or regular milk will work) • 2 extra-large eggs • 2 Tbsp. pure vanilla extract • 4 Tbsp. pure maple syrup, grade B • 2 large apples, peeled and chopped • 1 cup raisins or dried cranberries • 4 Tbsp. butter or pareve trans-fat-free margarine, melted • Pure maple syrup for drizzling Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place the oats, baking powder, nuts, seeds, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Mix. Generously grease a deep, 9 or 10-inch casserole dish and set aside.

Place the milk, eggs, vanilla, and maple syrup in another bowl and whisk until frothy and well-blended. Pour over the dry ingredients and

mix. Add the chopped apples and cranberries or raisins and mix well. Add the melted margarine and mix well. Pour into the casserole and bake for 35 to 45 minutes.

Let cool a bit and serve, drizzled with some pure maple syrup. Makes 4 to 8 servings.

Eggs in a Muffin Cup (Dairy)

An easy, fun breakfast. Let kids tell you what they like in their egg muffins.

• 6 slices of whole wheat bread toasted • 6 slices of your favorite cheese • 6 extra-large eggs • Salt and freshly ground black pepper OPTIONAL: Salsa or other condiment you like; any of your favorite dried or fresh herbs Spray a 6 cup muffin tin with non-stick spray.

Set aside. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Toast the bread and when cool, press into the muffin cup. You can cut off the crusts if needed. Place a slice of your favorite cheese on the toast - you can also break that up as needed to fit.

Carefully break an egg into each muffin cup.

Sprinkle with your favorite herbs and salt and pepper. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until done as you like. Use a knife to carefully release each egg muffin. Makes 6.

13 THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784

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Unconventional opening for indigenous embassy

By David Isaac, JNS Wearing colorful traditional costumes, native peoples from around the globe made speeches, sang, danced, beat drums and, in one case, sounded a giant ram’s horn on Thursday to celebrate the inauguration of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem.

The embassy will serve as an antidote to false claims by Palestinians that there is no evidence of Jewish life in Israel prior to 1948, when Jews allegedly arrived as colonialist invaders.

The embassy is in part due to the efforts of the Indigenous Coalition for Israel (ICFI), a New Zealand-based group founded by native Maori to counter the false narrative about the IsraelPalestinian conflict that has “taken hold amongst indigenous peoples” and “has often bled into antisemitism,” its website says.

“We recognize that Jews are the indigenous people of this land, and we stand with you and your struggle,” ICFI co-founder Sheree Trotter told the 200-plus audience.

The Land of Israel is the place where the Jewish “nation was forged, its language and sacred literature developed, the beliefs, customs and traditions began,” Trotter said. “It is the most sacred place in the world to Jews. … This deep connection to a particular land and its ancestors are defining features of indigeneity.”

While not an embassy in the ordinary sense — it will not represent governments of the indigenous peoples’ host nations or the indigenous peoples themselves — it has been recognized as an embassy by the State of Israel. The audience cheered when they learned from Gil Haskell, Chief of State Protocol for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, that the Indigenous Embassy was the 100th embassy to be opened in the Jewish state.

The embassy will be hosted at the Friends of Zion Museum in the center of Jerusalem.

Many of the indigenous representatives present were motivated by religious belief.

Xami Thomas, a representative from the Khoi,

Some of the indigenous people represented at the opening of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem on Feb. 1.

Yossi Zamir

an indigenous people numbering some 15 million and divided into 20 or so tribes throughout southern Africa, Botswana and Namibia, told JNS, “Remember, G-d said to Moses, ‘Go tell Pharaoh that Israel is my firstborn,’ so we regard Israel as our big brother. And we love the Jewish people. … We don’t just see this as a way of coming to support Israel but also to make sure to let Israel know that her enemies are far fewer than her friends.”

Addressing the audience, Thomas apologized for “the horrible thing that the ANC [African National Congress] government did to this glorious nation. We are sorry. They do not represent all the Khoi or all the people of Southern Africa.

They did not consult us and the allegations are without any substance,” referring to the genocide case South Africa brought before the Inter-

national Court of Justice in The Hague.

“Anybody who says that Israel is not indigenous doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Because if Israel is not indigenous there is no indigenous nation on the earth,” said Thomas.

Greg Motu, a pastor of a Baptist Church in New Zealand and a member of the Maori tribe, also spoke of the spiritual influences that brought him to support Israel. When the British missionaries arrived, they taught the natives “the word that Hebrew men had written over centuries, over thousands of years.”

“Thank you for the culture and your history that you’ve preserved. It’s changed us,” he said.

Ate Moala, the representative from the Pacific archipelago of Tonga, described how in the 1700s Tonga’s king accepted the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. “And [the king] said, ‘I give you my

people for your protection.’ And he said, not only for him, but for every Tongan that comes after him,” she said.

Moala brought a message of comfort from the king and queen of Tonga, who said that the G-d of Israel who delivered his people before will do so again. “He will protect you during this difficult time in the war with Hamas and Hezbollah,” she said.

Among those in attendance were indigenous people from Tahiti, Hawaii, the Cree of Canada, the Hopi tribe in Arizona, the Arawak Taino from Puerto Rico, and the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee.

The event included a blessing by the indigenous representatives over the Jews present, and the unveiling of the embassy’s plaque. There was a festive atmosphere with plenty of spontaneous dancing. However, the significance of the moment was not lost on the attendees, who felt they were taking part in something historic.

Ateret Shmuel, director of Indigenous Bridges, a group dedicated to advancing indigenous communities globally, said, “Many years now I’ve worked in some capacity for the rights and wellbeing of indigenous peoples around the world.

But only relatively recently did I begin to work for the rights and well-being of mine.”

As a career activist, she continued, “I watched in horror as people that I have known for decades, people who claim to care about human rights and indigenous rights, saw the worst genocide against Jews since the Holocaust, and took to the streets to support it.” They chant slogans for Israel’s destruction claiming that it occupies someone else’s land, she added.

“It’s not about ownership — that’s a colonialist concept. It’s more about stewardship and responsibility,” said Shmuel. “We are responsible for maintaining the well-being and perpetuity of the lands that we are indigenous to.”

“It’s clear that something powerful and epic, I daresay biblical, is taking place here,” she said.

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February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

16

Jewish Star Torah columnists: •Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native •Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn •Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem Contributing writers: •Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l,

former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth •Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, OU executive VP emeritus •Rabbi Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi, Great Synagogue of Sydney •Rabbi Yossy Goldman, life rabbi emeritus, Sydenham Shul, Johannesburg and president of the South African Rabbinical Association.

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As He lays out the law, G-d gives us a nudge rabbi Sir JonaThan SaCkS zt”l

F

irst in Yitro there were the Aseret Hadibrot, the “Ten Utterances,” the Ten Commandments, expressed as general principles. Now in Mishpatim come the details.

Here is how they begin: If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. … But if the servant declares, “I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,” then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life. Ex. 21:2-6 There is an obvious question. Why begin here, with this law? There are 613 commandments.

Why does Mishpatim — the first full law code in the Torah — begin where it does?

The answer is equally obvious. The Israelites have just endured slavery in Egypt. There must be a reason why this happened, for G-d knew it was going to happen. Evidently, He intended it to happen. Centuries before, He had already told Abraham it would happen: As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the L-rd said to him, “Know for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country that is not their own, and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.” Gen. 15:12-13

If G-d does not want slavery, why did He not abolish it immediately?

It seems that this was the necessary first experience of the Israelites as a nation. From the very start of the human story, the G-d of freedom sought the free worship of free human beings. But one after the other, people abused that freedom: first Adam and Eve, then Cain, then the generation of the Flood, then the builders of Babel.

G-d began again, this time not with all humanity, but with one man, one woman, one family who would become pioneers of freedom. Still, freedom is difficult. We each seek it for ourselves, but we deny it to others when their freedom conflicts with ours. So deeply is this true that within three generations of Abraham’s children, Joseph’s brothers were willing to sell him into slavery: a tragedy that did not end until Judah was prepared to forfeit his own freedom so that his brother Benjamin could go free. t took the collective experience of the Israelites, their deep, intimate, personal, backbreaking, bitter experience of slavery — a memory they were commanded never to forget — to turn them into a people who would no longer turn their brothers and sisters into slaves, a people capable of constructing a free society, the hardest of all achievements in the human realm.

So it is no surprise that the first laws they were commanded after Sinai related to slavery. It would have been a surprise had they been about anything else.

But now comes the real question. If G-d does not want slavery, if He regards it as an affront to the human condition, why did He not abolish it immediately? Why did He allow it to continue, albeit in a restricted and regulated way, as described in this week’s parsha? Is it conceivable that G-d, who can produce water from a rock, manna from heaven, and turn sea into dry land, cannot call for this change to human behavior?

Are there areas where the All-Powerful is, so to speak, powerless?

In 2008 economist Richard Thaler and law professor Cass Sunstein published a fascinating book called “Nudge.” In it they addressed a fundamental problem in the logic of freedom.

On the one hand freedom depends on not overlegislating. It means creating space within which people have the right to choose for themselves.

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On the other hand, we know that people will not always make the right choices. The old model on which classical economics was based, that left to themselves people will make rational choices, turns out not to be true. We are deeply irrational, a discovery to which several Jewish academics made major contributions.

The psychologists Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram showed how much we are influenced by the desire to conform, even when we know that other people have got it wrong. The Israeli economists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, showed how even when making economic decisions we frequently miscalculate their effects and fail to recognise our motivations, a finding for which Kahneman won the Nobel Prize. ow then do you stop people doing harmful things without taking away their freedom? Thaler and Sunstein’s answer is that there are oblique ways in which you can influence people. In a cafeteria, for example, you can put healthy food at eye level and junk food in a more inaccessible and less noticeable place. You can subtly adjust what they call people’s “choice architecture.”

That is exactly what G-d does in the case of slavery. He does not abolish it, but He so circumscribes it that He sets in motion a process that will foreseeably lead people to abandon it of their own accord, although it may take many centuries.

A Hebrew slave is to go free after six years.

If the slave has grown so used to his condition

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that he wishes not to go free, then he is required to undergo a stigmatising ceremony, having his ear pierced, which thereafter remains as a visible sign of shame. Every Shabbat, slaves cannot be forced to work. All these stipulations have the effect of turning slavery from a lifelong fate into a temporary condition, and one that is perceived to be a humiliation rather than something written indelibly into the human script.

Why choose this way of doing things? Because people must freely choose to abolish slavery if they are to be free at all. It took the reign of terror after the French Revolution to show how wrong Rousseau was when he wrote in The Social Contract that, if necessary, people have to be forced to be free. That is a contradiction in terms, and it led, in the title of J. L. Talmon’s great book on the thinking behind the French Revolution, to totalitarian democracy.

G-d can change nature, said Maimonides, but He cannot, or chooses not to, change human nature, precisely because Judaism is built on the principle of human freedom.

So He could not abolish slavery overnight, but He could change our choice architecture, or in plain words, give us a nudge, signalling that slavery is wrong but that we must be the ones to abolish it, in our own time, through our own understanding. It took a very long time indeed, and in America, not without a civil war. But it happened.

There are some issues on which G-d gives us a nudge. The rest is up to us.

And the L-rd said, they shalt not do … what? rabbi YoSSY Goldman

S. African Rabbinical Assn.

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et’s begin with the old saying that reminds us: “It’s the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions.” This is more than a joke; it is the foundation of our moral behavior.

How about the Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet”? How can we be commanded to feel or not to feel emotions? That our behavior can be controlled is plausible, but

to control our emotions?

There is a very important theological and philosophical principle here. We subscribe to the belief that, if G-d commanded it, it must be possible to observe. The Creator understands human nature — He created us with all our strengths and weaknesses, our fortes and foibles. He knows us better than we know ourselves. If He tells us to do it, then He must know that we can do it. Otherwise, why would He waste our time and His? No one is born a saint or a sinner. We have freedom of choice and we must decide which inner voice we will heed. We really can go either way.

Faith needs nurturing. When we fulfill a mitzvah, we are feeding our faith; it gets stronger as

we go along. The faith is there, but it may be dormant. We just need to uncover it.

My friend and colleague Rabbi Dovid Hazdan of Johannesburg tells the story of how, when Dr. Mosie Suzman died in 1994, Rabbi Hazdan came to the family home to conduct the shiva prayers.

Dr. Mosie was a respected teacher, researcher and professor of medicine. His wife was the worldfamous South African parliamentarian and antiapartheid activist Helen Suzman.

As Rabbi Hazdan walked through the front door, Helen told him: “I just want you to know, rabbi, that I don’t believe in G-d.”

The rabbi responded, “That’s OK, Helen. I don’t believe in atheists.”

Indeed, we do not. Every one of us has a neshama, a soul that is a part of G-d above. He gave it to us and it vivifies us. If we’re not in touch with it, it may be because we weren’t brought up that way, but it is there and very much accessible.

As it is with faith, the First Commandment, so is it with not coveting what others may have, which is the final commandment. Most of us have much more than our grandparents ever dreamed of having. When we see someone with more than we have, do we covet out of need or greed?

Like faith, the Tenth Commandment is doable.

We must be aware of our own inner struggles and realize that we always have the power to choose correctly. We really do. Please G-d, we will.

Kosher bookworm

alan JaY geRbeR

Jewish Star columnist

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hroughout history, heads of state have served as the personification of their people and their civilizations. For some, their legacy was to be one of cruelty, for others of plunder and ruin.

The American Republic is fortunate to have had presidents who not only served well in their time, but who were able to extend their legacy of honest and effective governance beyond their time into eternity.

Such is the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, whose 215th birthday we celebrate on Feb. 12..

The Jewish people have experienced all kinds of

This first edition of “Abraham Lincoln: The Tribute of the Synagogue,” is available from Raptis Rare Books for $975.

rulership, from the benign to the macabre, and all variations in between. Lincoln set the marker for excellence, integrity and regard for equality that has yet to be equaled.

One of the many books that was gifted to me by my late father, Max Gerber z”l, was “Abraham Lincoln: The Tribute of the Synagogue,” by Emanuel Hertz, published in 1927.

Its 682 pages contain a cross section of sermons and essays written and delivered by America’s Jewish spiritual leaders marking the life of Lincoln from the weekend of his murder to the first decades of the 20th century.

This remarkable collection includes references to numerous encounters Lincoln had with American Jews, and describes their challenges as the Jewish faith emerged as an equal religious expression both in civilian life and in the military.

Gen. Grant’s infamous and bigoted General Order No. 11 is noted; Lincoln’s firm resolve in staunching this infamy is given high and favorable profile. uch of what we know of Lincoln’s regard for the Jewish people comes to us from those who were to play a part in his rise to power, such as Abraham Jonas and Simon Wolf. There was never even the faintest hint of any disregard both to our people or our faith by this president. He was our friend, and his legacy is further testimony to this.

This book also details the loving and affectionate regard that American Jewry had for the slain president both during his lifetime and in the decades that followed.

In his forward to this book, British Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz shares an incident related to him firsthand by his mentor, Rabbi Benjamin Szold z”l: See Gerber on page 26

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Reflections on empathy drawn from the Torah Rabbi dR. Tzvi heRsh weinReb Orthodox Union

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arly in my postgraduate training, I became familiar with the important role that empathy plays in successful psychotherapy. As the eminent psychotherapist Carl Rogers wrote, “Empathy is the accurate understanding of the other person’s world as seen from the inside.” In colloquial terms, a person possesses empathy if he can honestly say to another person, “I know where you’re coming from.” Borrowing from the language of Native Americans, empathy is the ability to “walk in the other person’s moccasins.”

Over time, I began to appreciate that empathy is an important ingredient in every area of human relations, and not only in the counseling profession. Furthermore, I came to learn that the dictionary definition of “empathy” goes beyond Rogers’ call for “accurate understanding” and transcends the capacity to “know” where the other person is coming from.

The second source of my interest in empathy is the Torah. That “empathy” is an important concept in the Jewish religion is amply demonstrated in this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, where we find sound evidence that besides “knowing” where the other person is coming from, it is important to, using another colloquial phrase, “feel his pain.”

Consider the following verses: You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress

Both the faithful Jew and the secular ethicist have valued empathy. him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me. … If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not act toward them as a creditor. … If you take your neighbor’s garment in pledge, you must return it to him before the sun sets; it is his only clothing. … In what else shall he sleep? Therefore, if he cries out to Me, I will pay heed, for I am compas-

sionate.” Exodus 22:20-26 These verses make it clear that it is not only decent behavior toward the needy that is expected of us. Rather, we must “know where they are coming from,” for after all, we too were once strangers. And we must “feel the pain” of the widow and the orphan and the poor, and we must appreciate how close they are to tears of desperation. ashi demonstrates how very well he understood the concept of empathy in his comment upon the phrase, “the poor among you, et he’ani imach.” Literally, this can mean “the poor person within you,” prompting Rashi to recommend that we “look well at ourselves and imagine that we too are poor.” Rashi thus urges us to “walk in the moccasins” of the unfortunate See Weinreb on page 26

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Just exactly what is meant by ‘Torat emet’ Torah

Rabbi david eTengoff

Jewish Star columnist

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he words na’aseh v’nishmah (we will do, and we will hear) are two of the most celebrated words that appear in our parasha, Mishpatim. When the Jewish people uttered this phrase during Kabbalat HaTorah, they acted like Heavenly Angels and transformed their relationship with Hashem.

This idea is found in a well-known statement in Talmud Bavli: Rabbi Simai taught: “When the Jewish

people accorded precedence to the declaration ‘We will do’ over the declaration ‘We will hear,’ 600,000 ministering angels came and tied two crowns to each and every member of the Jewish people, one corresponding to ‘We will do’ and one corresponding to ‘We will hear.’ (Shabbat 88a) In my estimation, na’aseh v’nishmah may be viewed as our ancestors’ proclamation of their undying belief in Moshe’s divine agency and the absolute truth of the Torah.

Numerous verses in Tanach support the notion that Moshe was the shaliach v’navi Hashem par excellence. Perhaps the two most famous are found in Bamidbar 12:7-8: “Not so is My servant, Moshe; he is faithful throughout My house. With him I speak mouth to

mouth; in a vision and not in riddles, and he beholds the image of Hashem.”

This is not the case regarding the phrase Torato emet, as there is only one pasuk in Tanach wherein these words are juxtaposed (Malachi 2:6). What does Torat emet denote?

I believe Torat emet signifies the eternality and unchanging nature of the Torah, a concept that the Rambam explicates in his Mishneh Torah. The Rambam explains the eternality of the Torah as being comprised of the following constitutive elements: •It is Hashem’s commandment.

•It exists “forever without change, addition or diminishment.”

•“A prophet can no longer add a new precept [to the Torah].”

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he Rambam’s formulation of the principle of the eternality of the Torah is in consonance with the following well-known Talmudic narrative: On that day Rabbi Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument [in a highly technical dispute regarding ritual purity and impurity], but they [the other sages] did not accept them. “[Said Rabbi Eliezer:] ‘If the halacha agrees with me, let it be proved from Heaven!’” Whereupon a Heavenly Voice cried out, “Why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the halacha agrees with him!” But Rabbi Yehoshua arose and exclaimed, “Lo bashamayim he!” What did he mean by this?

Said Rabbi Yirmiyah: “That the Torah had already been given at Mount Sinai; [therefore,] we pay no See Etengoff on page 26

Bringing Sinai back into our Jewish experience from heart of Jerusalem

Rabbi binnY fReedMan

Jewish Star columnist

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former chief rabbi accused and arrested for possible bribery and embezzlement, a rabbinic leader found guilty of inappropriate behavior with his students, and yet another rabbi accused of bribing senior police officers.

Even if one has to take what one reads in the press with a grain of salt, something is clearly amiss. Where have we gone wrong? How can we avoid these horrific pitfalls in the future?

This week, in the portion of Mishpatim we read, “Ve’eileh hamishpatim asher tasim lifneihem (And these are the statutes you shall place before them).” Exodus 21:1

We have been reading of the Exodus from Egypt, the splitting of the sea and, last week, the awe-filled Revelation at Sinai. This week, we come back down to earth, with a portion filled with laws, particularly the mitzvoth related to social justice and how we relate to and treat each other.

But there is an interesting detail at the beginning of the portion that makes this a little more interesting: Hashem does not actually command these laws, nor does He command Moshe to command these laws; He tells Moshe to place them before the Jewish people (tasim lifneihem). What is the meaning of this seemingly out of place verb?

Rashi points out that last week’s portion ends with the mitzvah of building an altar in the Temple, and wonders why the giving of the laws at Sinai is preceded by the mitzvah to build an altar on the Temple Mount. His response is that this teaches us that the Sanhedrin, the highest court that was responsible for dispensing law and jus-

tice, had to sit in proximity to the Temple (actually on the Temple mount itself.)

Why was this idea one of the first things we learn of immediately after the revelation at Sinai?

Perhaps the Torah is sharing a critical idea with us: What does it mean to be an ethical person? he first portion after the Revelation is all about human ethics, but what does it mean to be ethical? How does one determine what ethical behavior truly is?

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook suggests that all of the baggage people have in life stems from their relationship with Hashem; someone with a warped relationship with G-d will exhibit warped behavior in life.

Just because a person wears the right hat, studies the right books, or gives lots of tzedakah, does not guarantee they will be uniformly ethical.

At the end of the day, unless ethics stem from an Objective Source (G-d), they cannot be objective

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ethics, they remain the whim of the person and his or her worldview and there will be a potential gap in ethical behavior.

Perhaps this is why social ethics appear in the Torah immediately after the Revelation at Sinai — because the one absolutely influences and impacts the other.

And maybe this is why the Sanhedrin sat on the Temple Mount. The whole point of a Temple was that there be a space where one could experience a deep relationship with Hashem in such an intense and meaningful way, that it would have to inform our behavior down even to the most minute detail.

If you could really see that every human being was and is created in the image of G-d, and if in every moment one could feel the immanence of Hashem’s presence, it would be much more difficult to steal from or harm anyone.

See Freedman on page 26

THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784

In 1927 book, American Jews viewed Lincoln

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February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

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Intersectional myths split Black-Jewish allies JonaThan S. Tobin

JnS Editor-in-Chief

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or the 1,000 Black pastors who have joined a movement to pressure President Joe Biden to force a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, the issue is solidarity with the “oppressed.” As reports in the New York Times, NPR and other publications have made clear, this poses a potentially lethal threat to his hopes for re-election.

Why have so many African-Americans, especially church leaders who have real influence among their congregants as well as the general Black community, come to believe that the cause of the Palestinians is somehow linked to their own interests and beliefs?

The answer is clear. Intersectional myths, in which the Palestinian war to destroy the one Jewish state is somehow analogous to the struggle for civil rights in the United States, are no longer merely talking points of academic fashion;t hese toxic ideas have been embraced by the African-American community.

The teaching of critical race theory and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) divides the world into two immutable groups locked in a never-ending struggle: white oppressors and people of color who are always the victims. Black pastors have swallowed the neo-Marxist lies that Jews are “white” oppressors and that Palestinian Arabs are victimized people of color.

Racial myths about the Middle East

That the conflict in the Middle East isn’t about race — Jews and Arabs are the same ethnicity — and that about half of Israeli Jews are themselves people of color because they trace their origins to the Middle East and North Africa, is left out of the discussion about American Blacks’ opposition to Israel.

Black pastors are pressuring President Biden to save Hamas because they identify with ‘oppressed’ Palestinians.

A pro-Palestinian rally in Emeryville, Calif., on Nov. 24, 2023.

They seem equally ignorant or disinterested in the Palestinians’ consistent rejection of every compromise offer, including those that would have granted them independence and statehood provided they were willing to live peacefully alongside a Jewish state. That a ceasefire existed before Oct. 7 and that Gaza hadn’t been occupied since 2005 — or that Jews are the indigenous people in the place Americans call “the holy land” — is also omitted from these discussions.

The facts about the Palestinian Arabs’ century-long war against Zionism don’t matter if you believe that any struggle can be reduced to an intersectional equation of good people of color versus evil whites, with the “whites” always in the wrong no matter what either group does.

The language used by pastors in describing their campaign to bludgeon Biden, who knows that he won his party’s presidential nomination in 2020 and then the general election that year because of Black support, is not so much a reflection of political calculations as an attempt to frame their stand as an extension of civil-rights advocacy.

Barbara Williams-Skinner of the National African American Clergy Network, a group that claims to represent 15 million Black churchgoers, told the Times that “Black clergy have seen war, militarism, poverty and racism all connected.” But she said that anger directed at Israel exceeded any protests heard from her members about the wars in Afghanistan

Daniel Arauz via Wikimedia Commons

and Iraq. She asserted that the images of Palestinians set off the sort of “deep-seated angst among Black people that I have not seen since the civil-rights movement.”

This was echoed by another pastor quoted in the Times, “We see them as a part of us,” said the Rev. Cynthia Hale, the founder and senior pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Ga. “They are oppressed people. We are oppressed people.”

Missing from these statements is any sense of context about the war. Also left out of the equation is what it is the “oppressed” Palestinians want, as well as how they are going about trying to obtain their objectives and whether that has anything in common with the objectives of the civil-rights movement. Indeed, the narrative of solidarity with the cause of the Palestinians has erased Israel, the rights of Israelis, their suffering or their efforts to ensure that the atrocities of Oct. 7 never be repeated.

It also should extinguish the last vestiges of support for something that many once took for granted: the alliance between African-Americans and Jews.

Erasing antisemitism

When pressed for any acknowledgment of how the current war started or about Israel, the pastors say that they are against terrorism and in favor of the release of the estimated 136 Israelis who continue to be held hostage in Gaza by Hamas. And they disclaim any connection with antisemitism. But the disconnect

is not on the side of Jews who are wondering how a group that they had resolutely supported has effectively abandoned them.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogroms against communities in southern Israel, there has been an unprecedented surge of antisemitism in the United States. This shocking increase in open Jew-hatred on the streets of American cities and college campuses, as well as in commentary in many mainstream outlets like the Times, is directly tied to efforts to demonize Israel and to treat its citizens and its American Jewish supporters as fair game for terrorism.

Yet the very people that liberal Jewish groups have always worked closely with — black spiritual leaders — are so obsessed with their alleged common ground with Palestinians that they are completely ignoring the way their former friends are besieged by antisemitic incidents and hate speech.

This is a shocking turnabout, especially when you consider how loyally legacy Jewish groups have stuck with the African-American community even as the evidence that the relationship wasn’t reciprocal mounted.

Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have endorsed the Black Lives Matter movement in spite of the fact that it was connected to and led by Jew-haters. They also remain determined to support DEI policies despite the way they provide a permission slip for antisemitism — something that has become obvious since Oct. 7 as colleges and universities failed to protect their Jewish students from the hate directed at them by anti-Israel mobs.

Truth about the Palestinians

The images that have pervaded the media about Palestinian suffering can explain some of the sympathy for their cause, but only if you don’t consider why that suffering occurred or the practical alternatives.

The population of Gaza has suffered terribly as a result of a war they started on Oct. 7 with an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and kidnapping that they initially cheered as a great “victory.”

Having sown the wind with terrorism, they then reaped the whirlwind as Israeli forces began a systematic attempt to root out Hamas terrorists from their Gaza strongholds. The devastation has been great as Hamas had dug itself into the Strip building a tunnel network underneath homes, mosques, schools and hospitals.

Gazans didn’t protest when billions in international aid money was diverted from humanitarian projects to turn the area into a subterranean fortress where terrorists can hide behind the civilians they deliberately expose to harm.

See Tobin on page 26

Daniel GreenfielD Jewish studies

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he Associated Press recently made headlines by falsely claiming that the Israeli campaign against Hamas “sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history” and was even worse than “the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II.” The Washington Post argued that “Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars,” while the Wall Street Journal contended that Israel was “generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.”

That’s all the more impressive since, even accepting Hamas’ recent casualty count of 25,000 (tainted and inflated numbers in which there are no terrorists, only civilians, and fighting age men are listed as children), this is still probably one of the least violent conflicts in the region.

In 2016, the Washington Post described the Syrian Civil War, with a possible 250,000 deaths, as “the most destructive conflict in the region.” In 2020, the United Nations called the Yemeni Civil War, with 150,000 deaths, “the most destructive conflict since the end of the Cold War.” And then there’s the current phase of the war in Sudan (which the media is currently uninterested in) in which 15,000 people have been killed over the course of last year, as part of a larger conflict that may have claimed as many as 2 million lives.

The Tigray War in Ethiopia over the last three years (which you may have missed because the media chose not to hysterically cover every single bomb dropped and protesters stayed home knitting instead of blocking traffic) may have cost the lives of between 80,000 and 600,000 people.

(El Pais, Spain’s newspaper, which did report on Ethiopia’s civil war, described it as “the deadliest of the 21st century” and then had to pivot to argue later that Israel’s Gaza campaign was worse.) n reality, every significant war and civil war in the region has had a much higher death toll than the Israel-Hamas war, including the IraqIran War with an estimated 500,000 to 2 million deaths. And in nearby Africa, the Congo War has been blamed for 6 million deaths since 1996.

How does the media justify arguing that 25,000 is more than 2 million?

There are plenty of statistical gimmicks available to anyone who wants to argue that two plus two is really five. As the author of every dubious research study knows, to get the results you want, you manipulate your parameters. Media analyses selectively compare Israel’s campaign to battles, rather than wars, narrowly focus on very specific timetables, attempt to estimate per capita rather than gross figures. But drawing a

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Israeli forces on patrol in the Gaza Strip on Feb. 3.

circle around a particular area and going per capita works both ways; The Hamas attack of Oct. 7 killed 10% of the population of Kibbutz Be’eri, making it far worse per capita than anything in Israel’s response to those atrocities.

Statistical fudging is all in where the line is drawn to achieve a particular agenda.

For example, a New York Times headline declares that, “Gaza Deaths Surpass Any Arab Loss in Wars With Israel in Past 40 Years.” Of course, the last major Arab-Israeli war took place 50 years ago.

The 40-year figure is based on the Lebanon War, but the actual numbers for that war vary wildly, from the thousands according to Israel, 10,000 according to the CIA, 18,000 according to Lebanon and 30,000 according to Arafat and the PLO.

A war’s morality is not measured in civilian casualties, but in deliberate civilian killings.

While the media at the time emphasized the highest estimates, in order to criticize the Israeli campaign against the PLO, they now use lower estimates to attack the Gaza campaign. he New York Times, after using the shaky Lebanon numbers to prop up the shaky Gaza numbers, admits that “as in Gaza today, researchers say the number killed in Lebanon may never be known with confidence because of the fog of war, even four decades later.”

The Times cites its own claim that “numbering the dead correctly is virtually impossible.”

That’s why the death toll for everything from the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars to the mass deaths in Sudan and the Iran-Iraq War are broad estimates with vast differences between them.

Aeschylus, the Greek playwright, warned that

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truth is the first casualty of war. And accurate casualty counts are the first and final casualty of every conflict.

The Lancet, the British medical journal, once courted controversy with its claims first that the Iraq War had killed 98,000 Iraqis and then over half a million, or 2.5% of the country. By 2007, a British data company claimed that 1 million Iraqis had been killed. These claims were quickly debunked and the claims are in the rearview mirror now that the debate over the war is over.

Now it’s politically convenient to accept casualty figures from a terrorist group whose main hope of survival lies in inflating civilian deaths while minimizing its own casualties.

The most troubling thing about the universal acceptance of the Hamas numbers is just that.

Estimated death tolls in the Syrian Civil War have varied wildly from the low six figures to over 600,000. Different organizations with different agendas have produced very different sets of numbers. And while many of those may be unreliable, there is at least a healthy debate.

When it comes to Gaza, the media cites no figures other than those of Hamas. And it insists at the same time that most of Gaza has been destroyed, its medical centers pulverized and its government shattered, and that this same system can not only be trusted but is also somehow capable of producing infallible statistics that don’t exist in any other regional conflict. he numbers for the Iran-Iraq War vary by 1.5 million, those of the Syrian Civil War and Tigray War by half a million, and yet somehow Gaza is the place where the numbers never vary and where a terrorist group got it just right. That’s something even America can’t do.

On Sept. 11, 2023, DNA testing identified two more victims of the original 9/11 attacks.

After 20 years, 1,000 human remains are still unknown. The exact number of deaths from when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017 is still being debated and it took months to nail down the death toll from the Maui wildfires. And yet

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somehow the medical experts at Hamas can produce better numbers in a shorter timespan in a war zone than we can while at peace.

How many died in Gaza? The real answer is that, like the other wars, nobody knows. Yet the media publishes absurd claims that a few months of fighting have somehow been more brutal than WWII or regional conflicts which claimed millions.

After the fighting there will be studies that will pump up the estimated total even higher by using excess-death statistics.

Surveys of empty houses, heat maps or satellite images will be used to estimate even higher losses without regard as to whether they reflect deaths or evacuations. Local research based on anecdotal accounts and statistical legerdemain will be used to bake a variety of faulty figures into a far more grandiose number than the current 25,000. Expect claims that will go as high as the low six figures to be reported on and treated as fact and history.

The end results will be deeply dubious but there will at least be some room for debate.

There is little point in even debating the current numbers coming out of an arm of a terrorist organization. ut what the debates will reveal is that, agenda or no agenda, we don’t really know. Wars and natural disasters are messy. People disappear, some uproot themselves and some it will turn out never existed but were a mistake in the records of an unreliable part of the world.

Palestinian Authority and Hamas numbers, including population figures and birth rates, have reflected political agendas, rather than reality. As have those of UNRWA, the UN agency dedicated to serving the “Palestinians” but locally staffed by Hamas, so there will be plenty of bad numbers to drown out the good ones.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,” Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once reportedly quipped. The media’s coverage has offered plenty of all three.

But what matters in war are outcomes of victory or defeat. The obsession with numbers in conflicts is an unhealthy distraction from the real issues.

The moral calculus between the Allies and the Nazis in WWII did not change based on how many German civilians were killed in the bombings and artillery shelling on the road to Berlin.

The morality of the American Civil War was not measured in civilian deaths, and neither is any other.

A nation is actively evil when it sets out to exterminate a civilian population. Whether it is WWII or the Hamas war, only one of the two sides was engaged in a war of extermination.

The morality of a war is not measured in civilian casualties, but in deliberate civilian killings.

On Oct. 7 and in the months since, Hamas has engaged in the deliberate killings of civilians. Israel has not. The number games are meant to be a distraction from that simple fact.

Morality is defined by intent, not statistics.

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This isn’t 1938. We don’t beg not to be killed. rabbi Warren GolDstein South Africa’s chief rabbi

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he International Court of Justice has delivered its interim judgment on the South African government’s “genocide” charge against Israel. Even this political body appointed by the UN General Assembly couldn’t bring itself to order Israel to accept a ceasefire in its war against Hamas.

But we should not be grateful for that. The ICJ had no moral right to order Israel to cease its just war of self-defense in the first place.

This is not 1938. It is 2024. The Jewish people do not have to go on their knees to beg for the right to defend themselves against those who seek

to exterminate us. With G-d’s blessing, we have a sovereign Jewish state for the first time in almost 2,000 years, protected by a powerful army that ensures Jewish blood is not spilled with impunity.

G-d has given us another blessing. While around half the Jewish world lives in the sovereign State of Israel, around 95% of the other half lives in free democracies, with the capacity to support and defend the interests of the State of Israel and the Jewish people in this just war of self-defense.

And unlike 1938, we are not alone. We have allies around the world: Fair-minded, decent citizens and free democratic governments who are fully behind Israel and the Jewish people at this moment of crisis. Our allies can see clearly the justice of Israel’s cause. Unlike the ICJ, they know who are the real genocidal forces.

We have seen this support manifest itself in many different ways. There is rock-solid support from the United States, United Kingdom, Euro-

pean Union and Indian governments, as well as from African countries including Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia. Other democracies around the world have joined them. Germany heroically pledged to stand by Israel in the dock at the ICJ proceedings. Moreover, the historic Abraham Accords with important Arab countries have weathered the storm of the Gaza war. Except for a handful of signatories, not one Arab nation sanctioned or joined the ICJ proceedings. he Jewish world is strong and we have allies in the fight against genocidal movements, who threaten not only us but the civilized world, exactly as the Nazis did.

We are not the Jews of 1938, the Roman expulsion or the Spanish Inquisition. We are not the Jews who were massacred in the pogroms of Europe. When confronted with fearsome enemies, Jews of previous generations had no choice but to take flight. This generation can and will fight.

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We will fight back with every measure possible — with dignity, strength, self-belief and a sense of justice for our cause.

In 1938, vulnerable and fearful, with nowhere to run and no allies in the world, we were sent to our slaughter. Today, with G-d’s blessings, we have risen from the ashes of the Holocaust.

We are a proud, great people with a long history that began when we were born at the foot of Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago. We have a presence stretching across the globe with an independent Jewish state in our biblical homeland, incredible resources and loyal allies.

G-d has blessed us. We need to believe in ourselves and send the message to all of our enemies that we will not be cowed, we will not be pushed around, we will not be slaughtered with impunity.

This is a moral charge. We will defend the survival of our people and, indeed, the free world, from the forces of barbarism.

THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784

Counting casualties and comparing wars

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February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

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360 degrees of hostility: The growing divide separating Biden’s administration and Israel caroline glick Israel Hayom

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he Mothers of IDF Soldiers group led a demonstration last week of army mothers, reservists in the Israel Defense Forces, bereaved families and others outside the US embassy in Jerusalem. They demanded that President Joe Biden stop leveraging American power to force Israel to resupply Hamas.

The following day, hundreds of Israelis, including parents of soldiers, families of hostages and terror victims gathered outside Ashdod Port. For hours, they blocked trucks laden with supplies for Gaza from exiting the port. Activists have been blocking trucks from entering Gaza via the Kerem Shalom and Nitzana border crossings for more than two weeks.

Speaking to the crowd in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, Shifra Shahar, who runs a nonprofit organization that cares for the needs of soldiers, addressed her remarks to Israel’s leaders: Government of Israel, defense minister, IDF chief of staff — get ahold of yourselves! No other nation feeds and sustains its enemy! …

We have sons in Gaza. We have sons fighting.

The entry of the trucks endangers them, prolongs the war, increases the number of casualties and delays the return of the hostages!

They tell me, “There are constraints.” He who is constrained doesn’t win the war. They tell me, “The Americans are threatening not to provide us with ammunition.” To this, I say, if we were besieging them, we wouldn’t need ammunition! The war would end. They’d be screaming for help, returning the hostages and the war would end!

The rising expressions of rage at the Biden administration from ordinary citizens are a testament to the shock and anger Israelis feel at what they perceive as a betrayal of Israel’s most basic interests by Biden and his top advisers.

Three and a half months ago, when Biden came to Israel, most Israelis couldn’t imagine his warm embrace would transform into a torrent of hostile actions. At the height of Biden’s emotional visit, he gave a speech to the people of Israel: “I come to Israel with a single message.

You are not alone. You are not alone. As long as the United States stands — and we will stand forever — we will not let you ever be alone.”

For the overwhelming majority of Israelis, Biden’s declaration sounded like a bankable guarantee. But for the few with more sensitive ears, it sounded like a threat — that he and his administration would never leave Israel alone to fight the war to victory.

As the weeks and months passed, it turned out that the latter had it right. At every turn, the United States is constraining, undermining, subverting and coercing Israel to make moves that, as Shahar said, are “against the interests of the citizens of Israel.”

Ceasefire agreement

The details of the hostages-for-terroristsand-ceasefire talks that CIA director William Burns has been overseeing appear to involve Israel releasing from its prisons to Judea, Samaria and Gaza hundreds or perhaps thousands of Palestinian terrorists, including mass murderers. The initial reports asserted that the terms for the deal were 100 to 250 terror-

Why is the US continuing to hamper the ability of the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza?

Parents of Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip and other activists protest near the Kerem Shalom border crossing in southern Israel against trucks of humanitarian aid that Hamas takes for its own use, on Jan. 9.

Flash90

ists for each of the 136 hostages.

These terrorists can be expected to ignite Judea and Samaria and Israel’s major cities in a terror conflagration that would make the Oct. 7 slaughter look like a walk in the park. Terrorists released to Gaza can be expected to rebuild Hamas’s terror empire in the area.

The released terrorists and their comrades on the ground will be able to do these things because, in addition to requiring Israel to free them in exchange for at least some of the 136 Israeli hostages Hamas has been holding since Oct. 7, Burns’ deal requires Israel to end its military operations in Gaza for between one to two months.

Based on interviews with Egyptian and Qatari officials involved in the hostage talks, both the Wall Street Journal and Qatari media have reported that the United States is telling Hamas through Egypt and Qatar that the deal is a trap for Israel. By compelling Israel to end its operations in Gaza for such a long period, Burns expects that the Netanyahu government will be unable to reinstate Israel’s operations when the hostages-for-terrorists swap is concluded.

The US is intent on reaching a ceasefire because the Biden administration remains committed to its strategic objective of appeasing Iran at Israel’s expense. Over the past several days, US media has reported claims by US intelligence officials that Iran is not responsible for the war being waged by its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Iranian-controlled Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. US intelligence officials insist these terror armies are attacking the United States and Israel because Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza. If Israel were to stop fighting, all the troubles would end.

From an Israeli perspective, the prospect of ending the war without dismantling Hamas is an unacceptable outcome. If Hamas is able to survive after conducting its one-day Holocaust in southern Israel, not only will Hamas be able to proclaim victory but Iran and its terror proxies surrounding Israel will be emboldened to strike Israel even more aggressively on multiple fronts.

Humanitarian aid

On Jan. 23, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar informed Israel’s security cabinet that 60% to 70% of the so-called humanitarian aid entering Gaza daily either goes directly into Hamas’s hands or is commandeered by Hamas terrorists for their use.

Bar’s admission bolstered eyewitness testimonies

by Palestinians claiming that Hamas seized the aid trucks and footage from the Egyptian border with Gaza showing Hamas terrorists shooting at civilians seeking access to the supplies.

Under such circumstances, it is clear that the Biden administration’s pointed and ever-escalating demands that Israel permit more or less unlimited entry of supply-laden trucks to Gaza amounts to a demand that Israel resupply its enemy in the midst of war. As Shahar said, the constant supply of food, water, and, most critically, fuel to Hamas has enabled the terror group to maintain its presence in its underground warren of terror tunnels and continue to hold the Israeli hostages. The resupply also endangers Israel’s soldiers, who are forced to fight inside tunnels where Hamas has a tactical advantage.

From a strategic perspective, requiring Israel to resupply Hamas enables Hamas to retain its governing control over Gaza. So long as Hamas controls supplies entering Gaza, it controls distribution of those supplies. This compels the population to remain beholden to Hamas and not work with Israel to end the war by turning in Hamas terrorists or helping IDF forces locate and rescue the hostages.

Egyptian border

The only way to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza without assisting Hamas is to provide them with the same right afforded to those in war zones worldwide: The right to leave the war zone for third countries. From the outset of the war, the Biden administration has strongly opposed Israel’s efforts to persuade the Egyptian government to permit the people of Gaza to leave the area through the Rafah border crossing. In a speech last month in Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reasserted US op-

position to permitting Gazans to leave the area.

“The United States unequivocally rejects any proposals advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza,” he exhorted.

It isn’t that the Gazans have nowhere to go.

Since Oct. 7, multiple countries, including Chechnya, Turkey, Scotland and Canada have stated their willingness to permit Gazans to seek refuge in their countries. Qatar, which serves as Hamas’s state sponsor, is another option. Rafah is a short drive from El Arish International Airport, where these refugees would be able to fly to third countries.

According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Gazans are currently forced to pay $10,000 in bribes to Egyptian border guards to cross into Egypt for refuge. Moreover, as of Feb. 4, the IDF assesses that Hamas has changed its tactics.

Rather than fight IDF forces primarily from tunnels, Hamas is increasingly attacking Israeli units in Gaza and bombing Israel with rockets from within humanitarian safe zones where hundreds of thousands of Gazans are now sheltering.

Given the circumstances, the US position requires Israel to choose between defeating Hamas at a profound cost to civilian lives or being defeated itself.

Weapons supply

On Jan. 28, NBC News reported that the administration is considering slowing supplies of various weapons, including 155 mm artillery rounds and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) to Israel to compel Israel to scale back its ground operations in Gaza and permit more supplies to enter the area.

Although the White House denied the reports, the IDF has been compelled to conserve its ammunition on the ground due to shortages in supplies, indicating that the United States is slow-walking its supply of key armaments to Israel. This is of major concern, particularly given the near certainty of escalation along the northern front, where Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon is moving quickly towards a full-scale war with Israel.

Continued on following page

Continued from previous page For Israelis, Oct. 7 was an illusion-shattering event. One of the primary illusions shattered was the two-state paradigm. Hamas, which won the 2006 Palestinian elections — the last elections held by the rival Fatah faction’s Palestinian Authority — has maintained the support of the majority of Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria throughout the intervening years. On Oct. 7, it was Hamas that initiated and led the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, but thousands of Gaza civilians followed them into Israel and were full participants in the atrocities; including murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and looting.

Avida Bachar survived the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, which saw Palestinians murder 130 people, including his wife and son, who were murdered next to Bachar and his daughter in the family’s safe room. Crews who recovered the bodies of the victims in Be’eri reported that 80% of the bodies showed signs of torture.

Be’eri is a kibbutz identified with the secular far-left. Its members included prominent peace activists. The surviving members have been forced to come to terms with the atrocities they suffered.

In an interview last month with Israel’s Channel 14, Bachar explained, “We need to ask if we are capable of coexisting there. The 7th of October showed that the level of evil there means that coexistence is apparently impossible. We can’t do it anymore. Because we gave them everything. They even worked in our community. And in the end, we were proven wrong. …

“We reached the point where their children burned us alive in our shelters. The older ones shot us through the doors. And anyone who tried to jump out the window — they shot him again. Their elderly, on wheelchairs, and their handicapped arrived at Kibbutz Be’eri, and they looted us and kidnapped us as hostages. We need to understand this situation. And when a person has infinite demands at negotiations, apparently, either we won’t be here or they won’t be here. We mustn’t leave.”

The overwhelming majority of Israelis agree with Bachar. Polls taken since Oct. 7 show that three-quarters of Israelis oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. 70% of Israelis who voted for opposition parties, which include parties on the center and far-left, the Arab nationalist party and the Islamist party, believe that there is no chance of peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians.

This position places the Israeli people, rather than simply the government, at odds with the Biden administration, which since the outset of the war has insisted that its strategic goal is to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza and Judea and Samaria under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. The PA, for its part, not only refuses to condemn the Oct. 7 slaughter but seeks to form a unity government with Hamas. Fatah forces in Gaza participated alongside Hamas terrorists in the slaughter of Oct. 7 and posted videos of themselves killing Israelis on their Telegram pages.

Biden and his advisers state regularly that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.

But the Palestinian people disagree wholeheartedly. According to Palestinian pollsters, 75% of Palestinians support Hamas.

Last week, it was reported that the State Department is considering unilateral US recognition of a “State of Palestine.” Such a move would not merely be an act of hostility against Israel. It would constitute a material breach of the Oslo Accords, of which the US is a signatory. The agreements signed in the 1990s by Israel and the Palestinians under US aegis barred the Palestinians from unilaterally forming a state or using the international arena as a means to settle the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Under the Oslo Accords, all agreements between Israel and the Palestinians must be reached through bilateral negotiations.

At a point in the notso-distant future, Netanyahu will need to say ‘no.’

THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784

Palestinian statehood

possible violations of the Leahy Law. The Leahy 21 Law requires militaries receiving US military aid to abide by the same human-rights standard that the US military applies in its operations.

The constant allegation made by US officials, spurred by members of the so-called progressive “Squad” of progressive, anti-Israel lawmakers in Congress, is that IDF operations in Gaza are inherently suspect. According to the reports, the State Department sent a letter to the Foreign Ministry a month ago threatening to deny military equipment to several individual units operating in Judea and Samaria.

Israel has two months to submit its response to the State Department’s accusations.

The underlying assumption at the base of the accusations is even more dire than the allegations themselves. The United States demands that Israel account for every operation posits that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria is inherently illegitimate, and that so are its counterterror operations in the areas.

This view, which accords with the administration’s demand that no Palestinian leave Gaza and that Israel seize no buffer zones in Gaza to protect the Western Negev, stands at the base of the administration’s refusal to reconsider the strategic logic, viability and morality of its demand that Israel support the formation of a Palestinian state in its heartland, whose leaders and citizens are unified in their commitment to Israel’s annihilation.

Practically speaking, Washington’s wielding of the Leahy Law against IDF units in Judea and Samaria intimidates IDF commanders, who now need to be concerned that they will be sanctioned for their efforts to defend their country and its citizens against Israel’s enemies.

Photos of Israeli civilians kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 and taken into the Gaza Strip, on display at the Jewish National Fund-USA annual conference in Denver.

Carin M. Smilk

Foreign workers

As Bachar noted, among the participants in the Oct. 7 slaughter were workers who had been employed by the assaulted kibbutzim, in some cases for decades. Those workers provided precise intelligence on the kibbutzim down to the number of people per household, the location of communal weapons stores, and the homes of soldiers and security forces, among other things.

Polling of Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria found that more than 80% of the Palestinians support the massacres of Oct. 7. Due to the massive levels of public support for the massacres, and the service Palestinian workers provided Hamas as intelligence gatherers, the Israeli government passed a decision barring Palestinians from working in Israel. To replace the Palestinians, the government decided to permit foreign workers from friendly countries, including India, to enter Israel on work permits. Economy Minister Nir Barkat finalized an agreement on the entry of Indian workers with his Indian counterpart.

Last week, Israeli media reported that the Biden administration has intervened to block the replacement of Palestinian workers with Indian and other foreign workers. According to a report in Israel’s Calcalist, Cindy Dyer, the US Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons wrote a letter to her Israeli counterpart and the Justice Ministry insisting that the use of manpower companies to import foreign workers risks breaching bans on human trafficking and exploitation, and demanded that Israel not import laborers through manpower companies.

Since these companies are the primary means to bring in foreign laborers, the impact of the State Department intervention has been to place an insurmountable obstacle in Israel’s path to replacing Palestinian workers who overwhelmingly support the genocide of the Jews of Israel.

The determination of who to sanction appears to be informed entirely by unsubstantiated allegations presented by Palestinian advocacy groups that do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. All the same, fearful of US sanctions, Bank Leumi and Israel’s postal bank informed two of the sanctioned individuals that they had frozen their bank accounts.

Visiting Yinon Levy, a rancher whose accounts in Bank Leumi were frozen on Sunday, MK Zvi Succot said, “There is no evidence to the allegations, there is no indictment, criminal record or a record with the Shin Bet. All it is is that leftists don’t like that Jews are building a farm.”

Commentator Stephen Leavitt put it succinctly: “Biden cancelled sanctions against Iran and shifted them over to Israel.”

It is worth noting that the Biden administration has placed no comparable sanctions on either Palestinian individuals who engage in actual acts of terrorism against Israelis or on the PA, which incites, finances and sponsors terrorist attacks against Israel. It has not placed sanctions on the PA’s security services whose members have routinely engaged in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. To the contrary, the administration stopped enforcing the 2018 Taylor Force Act, which bars the United States from funding the PA so long as it maintains its “pay-for-slay” policy of paying salaries and annuities to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists.

This Jews-only Executive Order works to turn sanctioned Israeli Jews who live in Judea and Samaria into pariahs in their own communities and to criminalize the half-million Israeli Jews who live in Judea and Samaria. But it does something much bigger as well: It advances the slander that Israelis are the moral equivalent of Hamas terrorists and the civilian lynch mobs that accompany them in their slaughter of Israeli Jews.

Judea-Samaria sanctions

Application of Leahy Law

According to Israel police data from the Samaria and Judea District, in 2023 Palestinians carried out 5,600 terrorist attacks against Israelis. During the same period, Israelis carried out 60 acts of violence against Palestinians. IDF data indicates that violent incidents involving Israelis and Palestinians in October 2023 were down 31% from the same month in 2022 and violent incidents involving Israelis and Palestinians were down 55% in November 2023 from the previous November.

All the same, last Thursday, President Biden issued an Executive Order that imposes sweeping economic sanctions on Israelis deemed by the secretary of state or secretary of treasury to be engaging in so-called “settler violence.”

The sanctions, which obviously represent a flagrant violation of Israeli sovereignty and an expression of utter contempt for Israel’s criminal justice system, not only freeze the assets of those accused of acting in a prohibited manner. It bars anyone from having any economic transactions with those sanctioned individuals. The Executive Order was issued against four Israeli citizens who have not been accused or convicted of any felonies.

The week after the Oct. 7 atrocities, ahead of Friday prayers, the PA’s Religious Affairs Ministry distributed guidance to PA-controlled mosques throughout Judea and Samaria calling for worshippers to attack Israeli communities.

Last week, the IDF killed four Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in Jenin who were planning just such an operation. Their planned attack was one of many the IDF has prevented at the last moment since Oct 7.

Since the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel, IDF units in Judea and Samaria have killed more than 500 terrorists and arrested thousands more. And they are just a drop in the bucket. The number of active terror cells continues to grow.

Despite the acute danger this terror nexus poses to the lives of the 500,000 Israelis who live in the areas and millions more in Jerusalem and central Israel, the Biden administration is acting to intimidate Israel into ending its counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria.

This week, the Israeli media reported that the State Department has begun investigating IDF units operating in Judea and Samaria for

Undermining Israel’s political stability

Speaking last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Blinken insisted that the key to peace in the Middle East is the establishment of a Palestinian state. Despite the fact that Palestinians are near-universal in their desire to annihilate Israel and their rejection of the US goal of a two-state solution that would see the formation of a Palestinian Arab state living in peace with the Jewish state of Israel, Blinken insisted that “Arab leaders, Palestinian leaders” have prepared their people for Palestinian statehood.

“I think the challenge now, the question now is: Is Israeli society prepared to engage in these questions? Is it prepared to have that mindset?”

Israelis, of course, have engaged in the question of Palestinian statehood. After the atrocities that the Palestinians carried out on Oct. 7 — and the full mobilization of Palestinian society in Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, on behalf of Hamas’s war of genocide — Israelis recognized that there was no prospect for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians. As Direct Polls revealed last month, 81% of Israelis, including Arab Israelis, say there is no prospect for peace with the Palestinians. A whopping 88% of Israelis do not trust the Palestinian leadership.

Blinken, however, has no interest in Israeli public sentiment. He places the blame for Israel’s unwillingness to accept a Palestinian terror state in its heartland not on the genocidal nature of Palestinian society, but on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Since Netanyahu opposes the transfer of Gaza to the Hamas-supporting PA in any postwar scenario and opposes Palestinian sovereignty, Blinken, the president and the administration as a whole are keen to see Netanyahu ousted from power.

On Jan. 7, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that an administration official told him that Netanyahu has to choose between his coalition partners from the nationalist Religious Zionism and Jewish Power parties led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, respectively, and his ties to President Biden and the United States.

This leak is simply a restatement of Biden’s remarks to Jewish donors on Dec. 12, in which he excoriated Ben-Gvir for his opposition to Palestinian statehood and implied that Netanyahu needs to choose between Ben-Gvir and likeminded ministers in his government and US support for Israel.

See Growing hostility on page 25

February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

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Public Notices

LEGAL NOTICE PUBLIC NOTICE OF COUNTY TREASURER’S SALE OF TAX LIENS ON REAL ESTATE

Notice is hereby given that I shall, commencing on February 20, 2024, sell at public on-line auction the tax liens on real estate herein-after described, unless the owner, mortgagee, occupant of or any other party-ininterest in such real estate shall pay to the County Treasurer by February 15, 2024 the total amount of such unpaid taxes or assessments with the interest, penalties and other expenses and charges, against the property. Such tax liens will be sold at the lowest rate of interest, not exceeding 10 per cent per six month’s period, for which any person or persons shall offer to take the total amount of such unpaid taxes as defined in section 5-37.0 of the Nassau County Administrative Code. Effective with the February 20, 2024 lien sale, Ordinance No. 175-2015 requires a $175.00 per day registration fee for each person who intends to bid at the tax lien sale. Ordinance No. 175-2015 also requires that upon the issuance of the Lien Certificate there is due from the lien buyer a Tax Certificate Issue Fee of $20.00 per lien purchased.

Pursuant to the provisions of the Nassau County Administrative Code at the discretion of the Nassau County Treasurer the auction will be conducted online.

Further information concerning the procedures for the auction is available at the website of the Nassau County Treasurer at: https://www.nassaucountyny.gov/526/County-Treasurer Should the Treasurer determine that an in-person auction shall be held, same will commence on the 20th day of February, 2024 at the Office of The County Treasurer 1 West Street, Mineola or at some other location to be determined by the Treasurer.

The liens are for arrears of School District taxes for the year 2022 - 2023 and/or County, Town, and Special District taxes for the year 2023. The following is a partial listing of the real estate located in school district number(s) 15, 7 in the Town of North Hempstead, Town of Hempstead only, upon which tax liens are to be sold, with a brief description of the same by reference to the County Land and Tax Map, the name of the owner or occupant as the same appears on the 2022/2023 tentative assessment roll, and the total amount of such unpaid taxes.

IMPORTANT THE NAMES OF OWNERS SHOWN ON THIS LIST MAY NOT NECESSARILY BE THE NAMES OF THE PERSONS OWNING THE PROPERTY AT THE TIME OF THIS ADVERTISEMENT. SUCH NAMES HAVE BEEN TAKEN FROM THE 2022/2023 TENTATIVE ASSESSMENT ROLLS AND MAY DIFFER FROM THE NAMES OF THE OWNERS AT THE TIME OF PUBLICATION OF THIS NOTICE. IT MAY ALSO BE THAT SUCH OWNERS ARE NOMINAL ONLY AND ANOTHER PERSON IS ACTUALLY THE BENEFICIAL OWNER. TOwN OF HEMPSTEAd SCHOOL:15 LAwRENCE UFSd Name Parcel Group Lot AMERICAN TOWER 1010015079 40030 0079C1000010000 GOLDSTEIN TSVI & ALYSSA 39 A 05190 403 BARNARD AVE LLC 39090 00770 77-80 LEVY RONNIEL & CAROLINE 39105 00410 41-44 BACHANA YITZHAK H 39138 00140 14-15,116 MITLITZKY STEVEN R 39153 00010 1-4 FRIED OSNAT 39153 00770 77-80 TZIVIN GUTEL 39157 00360 36-38 TOIV PERETZ & TZIPORA 39170 00540 WEISMAN MICHAEL I & MAIDA 39171 00060 6-10 WEG ELIYAHU Y & JASMINE 39172 01660 DIMEN GERALDINE LILA TRUST 39176 00710 RAFAILOV ARIEL & KHAIMOVA SONYA 39177 01000 BILLER STEVEN & CAROLYN 39184 00710 COHEN MARK & ANNE 39185 00360 36-38 WEINBERG NOAM & NECHAMA 39187 01510

Amount 1,522.59 1,883.32 3,602.22 8,085.53 15,286.25 6,275.40 9,242.56 16,808.99 2,606.56 3,051.86 13,672.56 11,781.13 2,893.65 6,145.87 5,841.44 2,752.47

645 CARLYLE LLC 39190 00390 39-41 645 CARLYLE LLC 39190 01370 FRUCHTER MICHELLE 39197 00580 HOFFMAN L E NATHAN 39202 00240 24-26 BAUMEL SHEILA 39234 01770 BAR ELY & SHIRLEY 39237 00690 JEAN-PIERRE FAMILY TRUST 39245 01080 LOUGHMAN KATHLEEN MARIE LIFE ES 39259 00140 14,229 PIFKO MARC & AVIVA 39260 03230 323 RAAK REALTY CORP 39263 01200 120,122 137 CEDARHURST AVENUE LLC 39263 03120 PD CENTRAL LLC 39264 01030 FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT LLC 39299 00380 38-39 MINDICK MOISHE & GOLDA 39305 00070 7-8 LOVE ALBERT 39309 01130 113-114 NAUMAN SAZIA & MAICK KHURRAM 39312 00010 BROWER CHRISTOPHER & LINDA 39312 00160 APPLEBAUM IRENE 39314 01430 BALZANO FRANK JR. 39316 00040 OBRIEN MARY LOU 39317 00050 ANAND VIDYA ANAND TEJINDER& 39320 01160 TEPER HERMAN & ANN 39321 00010 1-2 CAPONE CONCETTA LIFE ESTATE 39326 00030 MASTRONARDI AMELIA LIFE ESTATE 39327 00360 36-38 SVERDLIK IRVING & FLORENTINA 39328 01660 JHJ ENTERPRISES LLC 39336 00040 4-5 466 ROCKAWAY TURNPIKE LLC 39336 00060 6-10 LANG LINDA TAYLOR 39336 00780 DELOSRIOS HENRY & MURIEL 39336 00910 MY HOLDINGS INC 39336 00920 KARRAM KHALIL & SALWA 39336 00960 430 ROCKAWAY LLC 39337 00040 4-5 BONGO STEVEN 39337 00220 22-23 LERNER LAZAR 39341 03060 EMBERLY CAPITAL LLC 39344 02070 DLJ MORTGAGE CAPITAL INC 39344 02220 WALSH JAMES 39347 01120 YANNETTI GEORGE & YANNETTI GEOR 39347 01140 JHJ ENTERPRISES LLC 39351 00310 JHJ ENTERPRISES LLLC 39351 00320 JHJ ENTERPRISES LLC 39351 00360 STEIN DEIRDRE & PERRY 39421 00310 445 CENTRAL LLC 39421 00420 42-43 TOOMEY COLM & MACKEY BRENDAN 39424 00030 PEARSALL ROCK LLC 39424 00140 PEARSALL ROCK LLC 39424 00360 508 LONGACRE AVE LLC 39462 00160 16-18 FRIEDMAN ALAN & ELISSA 39464 00210 KHODAK GUENADI & ANNA 39465 00690 GUTMAN JUDITH & ZVI 39563 00210 GLASS CHANA & GABRIEL 39568 00400 BONETTI THERESE 39586 00110

8,473.78 972.71

2,766.63 4,503.48 7,531.93 5,472.02 4,606.56 6,489.04 19,011.75 55,671.48 11,537.18 48,433.70 3,363.94 9,117.94 10,271.22 5,921.02 5,239.75 9,206.53 5,516.56 1,694.61 16,948.00 3,298.22 14,404.29 12,197.24 9,947.50 10,220.49 17,714.71 3,170.32 9,077.49 8,369.32 1,778.68 12,448.94 8,571.73 19,578.26 15,329.35 19,800.83 8,435.60 1,718.66 11,559.82 17,750.70 15,363.30 14,783.11 190,300.19 2,136.03 11,120.99 4,687.03 1,678.18 5,703.63 3,852.39 6,767.94 3,529.34 2,908.49

HOFFMAN MELVIN & CHARLOTTE 39592 00100 MERMELSTEIN JOSEPH 39594 00010 CARR J KULANSKI & M 39595 00070 BATALION DOVID & TAMARA 39596 00010 NIR R 39597 00060 FEINTUCH BERNARD LIFE ESTATE 39600 00090 KRAMER RAPHAEL ASHER & KRAMER S 39602 00110 MATOS MANUELA 39602 00240 COHEN STEVEN A & GAYLE E 39604 00290 STEVENSON TYRONE & TERRIE D 39605 00050 KLEIMAN S ASSOULINE & H 39610 00320 ROSEN JUNE 39613 00190 WENGER JEFFREY & CINDY 39616 00090 LEVINE HARRIET E TRUST 39627 00730 GOLDBERG NEIL & MARSHA 39627 01220 230 CENTRAL AVENUE OWNERS CORP 40 B 00260 PIETRZAK LEONORE 40 B 01790 PHOENIX ACQUISITIONS LLC 40 B 0227UCA02600 GOLD MIRIAM 40 B 0227UCA02600 MELOHN ELIZABETH & POLLAK MELIS 40 E 03420 ZITO LENA LIFE ESTATE 40 L 25930 OJEDA SAMUEL 40 L 25960 ARZ GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT LLC 40002 00240 24-25 29 EAST AVENUE LLC 40003 01010 101-102 ZIC LLC 40003 01070 107-108 GONZALEZ LUCIA 40008 00660 66-67 MEADOWMERE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 40008 00780 78-79 HANCE DAVID 40010 00150 15-16 GORIS B DIAZ & HERMINO 40010 00270 27-28 691 BURNSIDE LLC 40012 02270 611 BURNSIDE AVENUE CORP 40012 02350 RAMOS MANUEL & DINA 40014 00120 12,24 HANCE DAVID 40015 01260 HANCE DAVID 40015 01820 HANCE DAVID 40015 01840 BILL GROUP HOLDINGS LLC 40021 00070 7-10 MMDK GROUP LLC 40022 00120 12-14 RINALDI PATSQUALE 40023 01200 120,130 SARRO CARMINE 40032 00270 TROTTA LE T TROTTA ETAL,F&M 40033 01590 CLOVER PROPERTIES LLC 40034 02340 WIDBY HESTER ESTELLE LIFE ESTA 40039 01050 VETERE DIANE 40039 01430 INWOOD PROPERTIES LLC 40045 00260 INWOOD PROPERTIES LLC 40045 00440 44,140 ESCOBAR LEONEL 40045 00550 55-57 73 JOHN STREET LLC 40046 01380 SCHUSTER NATHAN & NAOMI P 40046 01410 CREDIT SHELTER TRUST 40046 01440 RIZZO THOMAS P & LINDA 40052 02060 RODRIGUEZ JOSE 40054 00040 4-7 JAWITZ GLENN & RIVKA 40054 00130 13-15

15,225.84 11,400.28 13,626.33 16,941.29 12,252.77 6,609.95 2,889.95 14,485.73 5,831.95 2,793.82 17,904.62 4,753.83 3,093.83 4,496.17 6,275.40 21,076.15 3,730.06 8,601.80 3,575.58 668.76 15,095.73 4,851.51 2,620.97 7,381.26 3,217.71 2,273.34 8,890.88 10,804.18 9,513.99 5,677.59 37,997.05 2,918.12 834.26 9,196.66 3,874.78 12,917.40 8,917.14 3,108.16 834.59 12,170.11 8,987.94 10,508.71 1,768.23 3,410.97 9,290.66 2,970.39 9,595.11 7,112.09 20,403.98 6,048.59 4,343.59 9,438.76

DAVIS WILLIAM 40054 03110 HANCE DAVID 40056 00060 33 ABRAMOV LLC 40057 02020 SIR FLEX LLC 40061 00030 5 MOTT AVE CORP 40062 00330 75 LAWRENCE AVE LLC 40062 00410 MOTT INWOOD CORP 40063 00740 P GALDAMEZ INC 40063 01760 MOTT INWOOD CORP 40063 01880 BROWN LUNETTIE 40064 01050 SILBER HARRY & EVA 40068 01040 SILBER HARRY & EVA 40068 01210 PERONE RICHARD A 40070 00130 ROBESON & BROWN FUNERAL HOME IN 40072 00320 HEALY EDWARD G & REGINA 40074 00100 TWO HUNDRED 2 WANSER AVENUE COR 40074 00190 HANCE DAVID 40074 01090 FUTERSAK RIVKY 400840200020 MIRZOEFF ADAM & CHAVI 400840200250 25-30 LIPTON HERRICK & GAIL 400840201220 SCHWARTZ SIDNEY & JUDITH 40085 00290 CARDENAS ELIAS & ELIZABETH 40086 00010 STEED RICHARD 40088 00260 26-28 GARFINKEL MENACHEM & REBECCA RI 40088 03670 MACHON BASYA ROCHEL INC 40090 00140 14-15,105 ALTER STEVEN & TAMARA 40092 07190 USHER YURI & GAIL 40097 00230 JACOBWITZ MICHAEL & ELIZABETH 40097 00370 DAVIS TRUST 40108 00030 ENGEL ADELE 40108 00110 PALMER JAY & RACHEL 40109 00360 LIPTON HERRICK & GAIL 40110 00300 RUBIN MARK & NAOMI 40110 00360 BERKE HOWARD & CORINNE 40111 03020 HENRY ETAL WILLIAM 40113 00110 11,14 BOWDEN JR WILLIAM P 40119 00060 6,104 BORRIELLO TRUST 40124 00180 ABARCA YOLANDA 40124 00490 LEFF JACK & GERTRUDE LIFE ESTAT 40125 00300 30-35 UMVORECH BURECH TRUST 40133 02510 251-252 PLAYER CRAIG D & KAREN F 40134 02830 283-285 99 BAYSWATER LLC 40134 02880 288-289 ABRAMOV RAHAMIN 40136 00010 1,3 HICKS CATHERINE 40136 00020 PADRO JOEL & ALMA 40136 03520 YUENGLING JUDY 40136 03530 BOYLE JAMES F 40138 03900 390-391 DUIGNAN A E 40140 04630 463-465 SHUCHATOWITZ SHMUEL S & RACHEL 40140 04680 468-469 JARVIS CAPITAL GROUP INC 40140 05110 BEGUM FARIDA 40141 00040

8,447.34 10,204.22 9,267.21 15,423.06 2,853.75 3,960.70 3,872.87 6,573.31 4,460.24 4,719.27 9,535.56 339.87 8,798.70 4,166.12 2,828.30 20,463.37 11,984.48 20,139.87 23,969.51 9,570.71 19,553.45 9,805.98 4,304.57 1,792.01 3,684.88 5,445.20 3,365.77 8,526.67 6,227.23 11,626.80 2,951.09 6,769.81 29,991.81 3,831.30 4,973.23 3,000.70 6,694.22 1,754.01 12,991.77 6,713.91 3,965.45 5,519.22 8,377.05 5,967.57 10,274.45 646.87 20,623.04 11,281.73 1,612.63 1,045.08 3,482.24

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Public Notices

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HANCE DAVID 40146 01320 HANCE DAVID 40146 01380 ZEPEDA JUAN & MANZARO WENDY 40148 00040 105 SHERIDAN REALTY LLC 40154 01490 MOULTRIE ISAIAH 40157 00020 PELEG SHARON 40157 00110 11 & 21 MOTT AVE REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS L 40157 02120 MOULTRIE EULAH 40157 06150 DAVIS JONATHAN 40157 06230 GUTIERREZ ETAL ANGEL 40164 00050 183 DOUGHTY BOULEVARD LLC 40164 00060 MAZZITELLI JAMES & CARMELA 40165 00230 ENHANCED HOLDINGS, INC. 40165 00260 LIVINGSTON SAM 40166 00030 LIVINGSTON SAMUEL 40166 00040 BENNETT WINSTON & DAWN 40166 00150 20 MADISON AVENUE PROPERTIES LL 40175 01100 Jaffa Chava 401790300050 NEUBERG CHILDREN’S TRUST 401810100080 8,11,112 DRANG ETAL MELVIN 401810204810 YOUNG LAWRENCE & W 40184 00350 35-36 GARDNER ANNIE 40184 00390 39,240 RIVAS IDEL 40184 00590 59,358 RAMOS JUNIOR 40184 00600 60,261 WYSOCKI CRAIG J 40184 02760 276,277 421 DOUGHTY REALTY LLC 40187 00810 KREISMANN THOMAS & KREISMANN BA 40188 00060 NEWMAN GITTA 40190 00470 HANCE ETAL DAVID 40191 00100 HYMAN JUDAH & YAEL 40193 00070 HANCE DAVID 40193 00190 1 SPAULDING LLC 40195 00120 FRUENTE CIRO & FLORA 40200 00180 LICHTER ALFRED & CLAIRE 40206 00960 SCHWARTZ JOSEPH & SUZETTE 40206 00970 LOWINGER BEN & RHONDA 40208 00030 BENZAKEN DAVID & ORNA 41 F 01600 HAIN MARCIA 41 F 02010 201-205 LEOFER MICHAEL & ASTRID 41 F0101160 COOPER GAYLE S TRUST 41 G 00070 7,135 SOLOMON GERALD & MARLANE 41 H 01130 SOLOMON GERALD & MARLANE 41 H 01550 155,204 ABEHSERA JOSHUA M & NAOMI S 41 H 04930 SOLOMAN GERALD & MARLANE 41 H 05180 SOLOMON MARLANE 41 H 05190 235 BRIARWOOD LLC 41052 00230 VERSCHLEISER ELI & JULIE 41067 00020 2,14 BLUMENTHAL R & GALE 41085 00190 SCHWARTZ ABRAHAM B & RONIT 41086 00370 LEVINE MORTON 41086 01680 WALDORF PLBR 41086 04470

7,322.89 7,158.97 857.69 33,289.02 10,860.12 2,186.98 11,512.65 17,668.32 9,173.49 2,400.21 13,296.27 4,402.23 13,460.24 3,894.88 11,216.98 3,768.32 9,548.32 9,849.74 12,328.18 22,715.89 9,805.99 1,506.88 904.55 8,564.45 7,658.46 16,206.65 32,789.49 3,869.04 18,683.98 2,267.15 10,087.05 8,564.45 1,887.55 3,876.13 5,697.88 54,298.04 43,399.80 13,058.16 29,627.11 2,979.45 405.20 6,651.43 1,092.16 9,511.56 4,724.95 707.64 24,400.18 4,453.86 4,149.05 6,233.33 3,004.25

ZEIDMAN ESTHER 16,689.22 41089 08250 825 EAV YIN & KIM PUNG LAM 18,336.94 41092 04080 SINGER ALIZA & ELIEZER 4,186.36 41093 04050 LEVITT EYAL & JENNIFER 3,648.98 41093 04140 LEIMAN REGINA 2,077.63 41097 0230UCA00860 230 CA 86 UNIT 105 PADNOS ELEANOR 2,091.66 41097 0230UCA00860 230CA 86 UNIT 108 TUROK ABRAHAM & ZYPORA 1,395.59 41097 0230UCA00860 230 CA 86 UNIT 204 SLOUCHOWSKY MICHAEL & SLOUCHOWS 2,815.67 41097 0230UCA00860 230 CA 86 UNIT 214 2 BERKLEY PLACE LLC 6,804.78 41099 00090 LEIFER JONATHAN & JAMIE 29,541.12 41100 00040 4-5,210 SCHWARTZ DAVID & ELANA 8,897.69 41100 03150 WASHER JOAN 3,235.92 41116 00210 SLOCHOWSKY MICHAEL 13,721.47 41117 00070 DERE TRUST 3,551.37 41117 00120 BOARDWALK EMPIRE LLC 9,249.59 58 E 02280 BOARDWALK EMPIRE LLC 2,890.59 58 E 05080 AZOSE JACK I 7,754.88 58004 00520 52,55 METZGER ALEXANDER & JUDITH 11,622.21 58005 00510 51,58 MCMAHON CHRIS 2,193.44 58012 00110 11-13 MCMAHON CHRIS 424.04 58012 00140 14-16 THORMANN ERICH 3,316.50 58013 00150 15-17 MAZZA MICHAEL & DOLORES FERRENT 6,500.59 58019 02320 ALVARADO SR JOSE & CARMEN TRUST 1,656.48 58022 00030 3-4 BOARDWALK EMPIRE LLC 28,425.05 58031 00090 9-18 66 WAYNE AVENUE LLC 17,822.21 58037 00010 1-4 ROMANO ALBERT & SANDRA 3,454.88 58037 00300 30-33 GASPAR NINA 2,487.74 58038 00200 20-22 & 219 SOKOL ADAM 13,930.38 58042 00700 TORTORICI FRANK 11,698.95 58049 00630 63-64 WOLF MILDRED 4,115.80 58055 00290 29-31 88 DUTCHESS LLC 15,029.27 58056 00010 1-2 METZ NEIL & BARBARA 2,683.17 58057 00010 1-5 BEACH & BROOME LLC 722.46 58059 00100 M A SALAZAR INC 5,370.91 58060 00010 1-4 GIACOMARRA ANTHONY & ANTOINETTE 6,996.78 58073 00540 SHAPIRO AMY & BURSKY DANIEL 879.06 58083 01070 1560 BAY BLVD LLC 5,722.23 58085 00190 19-21 SIEGAL GAIL S 37,825.81 58085 00500 50-53 CHERNYY VITALIY & CHERNAYA IRIN 4,762.34 58154 00070 HUTTON SANFORD & RHONA 19,247.01 58157 00200 POLSINELLI THOMAS & DONNA 5,154.43 58157 00400 Town of norTh hempsTead school:7 GreaT neck Ufsd

Name Parcel Group Lot SHAUL YOSEF & FRIDMAN BIATA 01013 00060 6-8 WANG JERRY & LU WEI 01040 00400 GRAYSON LE S CEWZAN, MYRA 01042 01290 SOLEIMANZADEH JOSEPH 01054 02160 216-218,319 STARZ PROPERTIES LLC 01063 00880 39 REMSEN ROAD LLC 01066 00140 STEBELSKY NADESCHDA 01077 00200

Amount 6,913.72 3,589.22 4,110.58 16,743.48 25,670.07 24,980.16 7,979.63

23

ZHU CHUANNING & WU YIJING 01077 01360 KHALILY EDNA 01077 01370 GOLYAN JOSEPH TRUST 01077 01580 FISKUS RACHEL C 01078 00100 SARSFIELD JAMES B & MARY 01081 00090 GUAN KEZHONG & WEI RONG Q 01082 00410 41,348 PAOLINO PAUL & YAGHOUBI ELI 01088 02180 218-219 MOTTAHEDEH MERHDAD & TANYA 01092 00110 11-14 YACOBI ARIEL & KARINE 01097 01450 145,147 HSU B M CHEN & AI HUEI 01099 01360 SUFFOLK H2 LLC 01111 01390 COHANIM ELHAM & POTTER NOAH 01114 00600 KASHANI MORDECHAI 01128 00040 KASHANI MORDECHAI 01128 05480 SACHMECHI ISSAC & FARAH 01129 03550 SILVER H 01137 00140 DOUBLE SIX HOLDING LLC 01138 00010 RAD TRUST 01138 00070 5 HORIZON WAY LLC 01140 00420 42 RUBENSTEIN RITA 01142 00050 HOLSTEIN MERLE 01142 01080 AMIRIAN TURAN & ELYAHOO TRUSTS 01145 00040 DORVILIER HARRY 01148 00810 RAD JACOB & SANDY 01150 00070 HSBC BANK USA NATIONAL ASSN 01164 00340 NASSI BIJAN & MINOO 01175 00300 EBRAHIMZADEH BABAK 01175 00860 MOINIAN MOIN 01178 00400 MOINIAN MOIN 01178 00520 SIVAN REGINE 01179 00230 HOLLANDER MILTON M 01179 00310 ZENG ZHENG & 01179 00330 33,36 PAPAGEORGIOU SPYRIDOULA & 01182 00240 ALON AMIR 01182 00320 BAMDAD BABAK 01186 00090 ZARABI PARVIZ & EVON 01187 00100 BRAND OSCAR & KAREN 01187 00190 BALAZADEH FARID & SOORI ELHAM 01189 00490 MITCHELL BARBARA 01199 00040 ARTEM VAYNMAN TRUST & 01201 00020 CLASSIC MANAGEMENT LLC 01201 00900 CLASSIC MANAGEMENT LLC 01201 0091A SCHMUELIAN ELANA & NATANIEL 01202 00080 SCHMUELIAN ELANA & NATANIEL 01202 00090 YERUSHALMI JOSEPH & MALKA TRUST 01202 00310 ELIAS SARIT & SHLOMO 02017 00180 YAGHOUBI LEAH & YAGHOUBI TOVA 020400101360 NISSIM ALBERT 02041 00430 PULVER RISA 02045 01270 ISRAELI DAVID & SARA 02048 00680 GARCZYNSKI R A 02050 00130 13-14,252 103 GREAT DEVELOPMENT INC 02050 02670

13,326.77 26,211.16 6,057.00 22,195.66 3,295.48 8,089.66 3,456.46 12,839.91 8,312.77 2,243.49 7,031.49 5,763.51 10,580.29 8,238.58 2,888.73 3,539.83 2,192.02 4,496.30 24,510.04 3,238.23 2,486.34 21,409.34 26,611.42 3,514.20 8,310.48 22,570.81 77,634.23 1,345.60 140,482.62 10,699.69 39,052.68 4,728.44 21,084.98 2,413.83 18,279.16 3,172.25 3,394.27 12,292.75 4,486.93 15,878.14 463.91 308.63 88,017.94 1,594.44 44,474.59 14,516.32 19,031.47 30,612.23 5,342.70 8,952.29 8,727.78 36,749.49

AY ASLIHAN 12,260.58 02051 00880 88-89 BURKE JR & SF & HC B TJ 12,702.94 02056 00070 KRAUSE RICHARD & 20,672.40 02082 00110 11-13 12 SOMERSET DRIVE NORTH LLC 17,476.61 02085 00220 KIONE ENTERPRISES INC 8,153.03 02085 00350 ROSS INA M TRUST 4,338.80 02104 03080 308,333 THOMAS KATIE RAY 2,476.72 02112 00350 35-37 JOHNSON EUGENE LIFE ESTATE 6,181.80 02114 00120 12-17 BEAN FREIDA O LIFE ESTATE 14,263.49 02115 00190 19-21 BECK ESTHER L 18,360.93 02115 00470 47-49 JACKSON ETAL ALBERTINE 2,408.85 02121 00060 6-7 KAT-V FAMILY LIMITED PARTNERSHI 5,709.54 02133 04340 SIMKOVIC NEAL & DEBORAH 20,058.87 02147 00010 1-2 ADERET FARSHID 5,108.69 02148 00310 31-34 CHANNEL EQUITIES REALTY 15,762.37 02172 00390 KUNG SEAN C & JESSICA Y 7,117.99 02174 01520 152-154 251 EAST SHORE ROAD REALTY LLC 16,928.25 02181 02370 NEDD AUDREY P & PATRICIA A & CH 23,897.77 02189 01110 5-9 GRACE PLAZA LLC 14,469.63 02195 00210 21-22 HASSAD-BOND STREET LLC 7,605.06 02195 0222UCA00700 222 CA 70 UNIT 17 BPARC LLC 1,840.54 02195 0222UCA00700 222 CA 70 UNIT 55 FROELICH WILLIAM & GABRIELLE 3,072.63 02206 00050 233 HOLDING LLC 3,999.39 02229 0510UCA01140 510 CA 114 UNIT 206 LIU CAI YING 38,084.22 02237 00060 6-7 415 NORTHERN BLVD REALTY CORP 90.01 02242 02090 KRAKAUER MARK W LIFE ESTATE 31,110.08 02244 00010 THE LAUREN INVESTMENT CORP 23,497.85 02248 01400 TAO HUI & WEN LONG 9,081.68 02249 00090 SHAMOULIAN E SHEMUILIA & SAM 7,869.90 02260 04260 SEA KEVIN & ZHAO CONNIE HONG TA 8,815.12 02261 01330 LIPMAN HEATHER & ABISH JAMIE 17,430.55 02271 00230 XU HUI & SHI DANNII JIN 8,413.53 02273 00400 PEIREZ DAVID H & ELIZABETH W 47,003.93 022800200260 F & Z 88 LLC 3,513.87 022830101720 MIZRACHI ESTHER 8,228.64 022830300140 SHAGALOV VIKTOR & VALENTINA 8,437.41 02284 00400 40-41 HIGGINS MICHAEL S & RODRIGUEZ N 6,404.34 02284 04010 GUO XINGXI & HUANG XIAOQIAN 3,712.39 02285 01190 772 HUMBOLDT REALTY CORP 4,950.97 02286 00210 772 HUMBOLDT REALTY CORP 1,846.45 02286 00220 GOL ROZITA & YITZHAK 22,255.66 02298 00080 KAFASH PAYMAN & NEDAPOURAT 26,965.87 02300 03750 BEECHWOOD DEVELOPERS LLC 15,079.98 02301 00220 CHANG HUI & TSUNG 4,149.92 02308 00020 COHEN R C 9,592.27 02321 00050 STEBELSKY NADESCHDA 20,967.11 02333 00060 FRANCO NATHAN JOSEPH & 9,651.02 02348 00010 1 SAMEYAH GEORGE & GILA 9,638.35 02348 00540 54 BLUM WALTER E (TRUST) & 30,739.82 02354 00250 GROSS JULIE & GROSS MICHAEL DOV 9,073.17 02354 00590 59 YOMTOBIAN CYRUS 2,794.58 02354 00810 81

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THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784

LSTA 2-4 0208

February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

24

LSTA 3-4 0208

Public Notices

2,260.58 Continued from previous page YANG YONG & YANG GUOHUA 9,814.53 2,702.94 02357 0031UCA01620 31 CA 162 UNIT 103 HE GUITING 9,676.91 0,672.40 02360 00180 18 HAKIMIAN ELAN A 6,216.49 7,476.61 02376 0053UCA01600 53 CA 160 UNIT 304 KHAZZAM ETAL ALFRED 8,417.21 8,153.03 02376 0053UCA01600 53 CA 160 UNIT 400 ONE HUNDRED CUTTERMILL ASSOC 1,107.56 4,338.80 02376 0053UCA01600 53 CA 160 UNIT 628 KHAZZAM ALFRED & RODNEY 1,107.56 2,476.72 02376 0053UCA01600 53 CA 160 UNIT 636 HAKIMIAN ELAN A 1,107.56 6,181.80 02376 0053UCA01600 53 CA 160 UNIT 681 MAHGEREFTEH MOUSA,MAHGEREFTEH R 690.81 4,263.49 02376 0053UCA01600 53 CA 160 UNIT 695 GOLDBERG DANIEL 865.33 8,360.93 02376 0055UCA01870 55 CA 187 UNIT 14 GOLDBERG DANIEL 865.33 2,408.85 02376 0055UCA01870 55 CA 187 UNIT 15 LAYLA LLC 349.12 5,709.54 02376 0055UCA01870 55 CA 187 UNIT 76 LAYLA LLC 349.12 0,058.87 02376 0055UCA01870 55 CA 187 UNIT 78 LAYLA LLC 1,189.78 5,108.69 02376 0055UCA01870 55 CA 187 UNIT 207 NERAYOFF STEVEN 5,065.08 5,762.37 02376 0056UCA02320 56 CA 232 UNIT 412 MOMIL201 LLC 15,703.42 7,117.99 08 A 0901UCA02720 REN JINBIAO 5,934.23 6,928.25 08 A 0902UCA02720 RXR NORTH HILLS PHASE II OWNER 10,985.68 3,897.77 08 A 0907UCA02840 RXR NORTH HILLS PHASE II OWNER 21,812.67 4,469.63 08 A 0909UCA02840 ZHU CHUAN 22,788.44 7,605.06 08 A 0909UCA02840 PAPA DORA 14,868.84 1,840.54 08 K0300020 GIANNOPOULOS DONNA M LE 4,246.00 3,072.63 08 K0400170 PICA GENE V & SADIE 7,039.09 3,999.39 08228 00020 HAN MEI 15,748.98 8,084.22 08229 00220 LANZILOTTA SALVATORE & WENDY 21,212.77 90.01 08278 0014A 14A,14B

1,110.08

3,497.85

6,965.87 The County Treasurer reserves the right, without further notice and at any time, to withdraw from sale any of 5,079.98 the parcels of land or premises herein listed.

4,149.92 The rate of interest and penalty which any person purchases the tax lien shall be established by his bid. Each 9,592.27 purchaser, immediately after the sale thereof, shall pay to the County Treasurer ten per cent of the amount 0,967.11 from which the tax liens have been sold and the remaining ninety per cent within thirty days after such 9,651.02 sale. If the purchaser at the tax sale shall fail to pay the remaining ninety per cent within ten days after he has 9,638.35 been notified by the County Treasurer that the certificates of sale are ready for delivery, then all deposited 0,739.82 with the County Treasurer including but not limited to the ten per cent theretofore paid by him shall, without 9,073.17 further notice or demand, be irrevocably forfeited by the purchaser and shall be retained by the County Trea2,794.58 surer as liquidated damages and the agreement to purchase be of no further effect.

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Furthermore, as to the bidding,

• The bidder(s) agree that they will not work with any other bidder(s) to increase, maintain or stabilize interest rates or collaborate with any other bidder(s) to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the random number generator in the event of a tie bid(s) on a tax certificate. Bidder(s) further agree not to employ any bidding strategy designed to create an unfair competitive advantage in the tiebreaking process in the upcoming tax sale nor work with any other bidder(s) to engage in any bidding strategy that will result in a rotational award of tax certificates.

• The tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) bid, will be arrived at independently and without direct or indirect consultation, communication or agreement with any other bidder and that the tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) to be bid, have not been disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder, and will not be disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder prior to the close of bidding. No attempt has been made or will be made to, directly or indirectly, induce any other bidder to refrain from bidding on any tax certificate, to submit complementary bids, or to submit bids at specific interest rates.

•The bids to be placed by the Bidder will be made in good faith and not pursuant to any direct or indirect, agreement or discussion with, or inducement from, any other bidder to submit a complementary or other noncompetitive bid.

•If it is determined that the bidder(s) have violated any of these bid requirements then their bid shall be voided and if they were the successful bidder the lien and any deposits made, in connection with, said bid shall be forfeited.

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This list includes only tax liens on real estate located in Town of Hempstead. Such other tax liens on real estate are advertised as follows:

TERMS OF SALE

Such tax liens shall be sold subject to any and all supe9,081.68 rior tax liens of sovereignties and other municipalities and to all claims of record which the County may have 7,869.90 thereon and subject to the provisions of the Federal and State Soldier’s and Sailors’ Civil Relief Acts.

8,815.12 However, such tax liens shall have priority over the 7,430.55 County’s Differential Interest Lien, representing the excess, if any, of the interest and penalty borne at the 8,413.53 maximum rate over the interest and penalty borne at the rate at which the lien is purchased.

7,003.93 The Purchaser acknowledges that the tax lien(s) sold 3,513.87 pursuant to these Terms of Sale may be subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/or may become 8,228.64 subject to such proceedings which may be commenced during the period in which a lien is held by a successful 8,437.41 bidder or the assignee of same, which may modify a Purchaser’s rights with respect to the lien(s) the proper6,404.34 ty securing same. Such bankruptcy proceedings shall not affect the validity of the tax lien. In addition to 3,712.39 being subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/ or the Federal and State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil 4,950.97 Relief Acts, said purchaser’s right of foreclosure may be affected by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery 1,846.45 and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), 12 U.S.C. ss 1811 et. seq., with regard to real property under Federal Deposit 2,255.66 Insurance Corporation (FDIC) receivership.

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Time is of the essence in this sale. This sale is held pursuant to the Nassau County Administrative Code and interested parties are referred to such Code for additional information as to terms of sale, rights of purchasers, maximum rates of interest and other legal incidents of the sale.

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MINEOLA AMERICAN NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY WESTBURY TIMES MINEOLA AMERICAN NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY WILLISTON TIMES, WILLISTON PARK EDITION MANHASSET PRESS NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY ROSLYN NEWS ROSLYN TIMES MANHASSET TIMES NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY PORT WASHINGTON NEWS NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEW HYDE PARK HERALD COURIER NEW HYDE PARK ILLUSTRATED NEWS NEWSDAY MANHASSET PRESS MANHASSET TIMES NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY PORT WASHINGTON NEWS GREAT NECK NEWS GREAT NECK RECORD JEWISH STAR NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY MINEOLA AMERICAN NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY WILLISTON TIMES, WILLISTON PARK EDITION MINEOLA AMERICAN NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEW HYDE PARK ILLUSTRATED NEWS NEWSDAY MINEOLA AMERICAN NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY WESTBURY TIMES FLORAL PARK BULLETIN NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY THE GATEWAY GLEN COVE RECORD PILOT LOCUST VALLEY LEADER NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE

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Growing hostility… otices HERALD

BETHPAGE NEWSGRAM NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY PLAINVIEW/OLD BETHPAGE HERALD BETHPAGE NEWSGRAM BETHPAGE TRIBUNE NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY BETHPAGE NEWSGRAM BETHPAGE TRIBUNE NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY FARMINGDALE OBSERVER MASSAPEQUA POST NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY MASSAPEQUA POST MASSAPEQUAN OBSERVER MID-ISLAND TIMES NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY GLEN COVE HERALD GAZETTE GLEN COVE RECORD PILOT NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY LONG ISLAND PRESS NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY ROSLYN NEWS ROSLYN TIMES FARMINGDALE OBSERVER MASSAPEQUA POST MASSAPEQUAN OBSERVER NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY CiTy of Glen Cove

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JERICHO NEWS JOURNAL NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY SYOSSET JERICHO TRIBUNE

Nassau County does not discriminate on the basis of disability in admission to or access to, or treatment or employment in, its services, programs, or activities.

JERICHO NEWS JOURNAL NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY SYOSSET JERICHO TRIBUNE

Upon request, accommodations such as those required by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) will be provided to enable individuals with disabilities to participate in all services, programs, activities and public hearings and events conducted by the Treasurer’s Office. Upon request, information can be made available in braille, large print, audio tape or other alternative formats. For additional information, please call (516) 571-2090 ext. 13715.

HICKSVILLE ILLUSTRATED NEWS HICKSVILLE/LEVITTOWN TRIBUNE NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY BETHPAGE TRIBUNE NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY PLAINVIEW/OLD BETHPAGE

LONG BEACH HERALD LONG BEACH TRIBUNE NASSAU COUNTY WEBSITE NEWSDAY

Dated: February 07, 2024

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THE NASSAU COUNTY TREASURER MINEOLA, NEW YORK

Legal Notices are everyone’s business

READ THEM

Continued from page 21 A week after Tapper’s report, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported that, in light of Netanyahu’s rejection of the administration’s efforts to end the war with a Palestinian state, “Three senior US officials say the Biden administration is looking past Netanyahu to try to achieve its goals in the region.”

Mitchell wrote, “The Biden administration is trying to lay the groundwork with other Israeli and civil society leaders in anticipation of an eventual post-Netanyahu government. In an attempt to work around Netanyahu, [during his visit to Israel] Blinken also met individually with members of his war Cabinet and other Israeli leaders, including opposition leader …

Yair Lapid.”

Forcing Netanyahu to choose between his governing coalition and ties with the United States is a recipe for political chaos and military defeat. If Netanyahu betrays his coalition partners and accepts the US demand for appeasement and defeat in war, then his government will fall and Israel will find itself in an unprecedented national security crisis at the height of a pre-election period of political turmoil and domestic rancor.

Given the threat level, the administration’s effort to dismantle Israel’s government endangers Israel’s very existence.

Lebanon

This week, presidential envoy and US interlocutor with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon Amos Hochstein arrived in Israel in yet another bid to prevent Israel from removing Hezbollah forces and missiles from Southern Lebanon, where they pose an existential threat to Israel through military means.

For the past four months, Hochstein has been seeking to force Israel to accept a “diplomatic solution” to Hezbollah’s military threat.

Hezbollah, with its tens of thousands of battlehardened terrorists perched along Lebanon’s border with Israel and its arsenal of 150,000 missiles, rockets, drones and mortars poses such a clear and urgent threat to Israel that immediately after Hezbollah began shelling northern Israel without provocation on Oct. 8, the government rightly removed 80,000 Israeli residents from border communities in the north.

They have been living in hotels ever since.

Israel demands that Hezbollah abide by the terms of the ceasefire set out in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 at the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. 1701 requires Hezbollah forces and missiles to be located north of the Litani River, 30 km north of the border with Israel.

Rather than join Israel in insisting on Hezbollah compliance with the US-sponsored resolution, Hochstein is offering Israel an unenforceable deal that would see Hezbollah remove its forces to just a handful of kilometers north of the border.

In its latest iteration, Hochstein’s “deal” would be implemented in two stages. In the first stage, Hezbollah would move its forces 8-12 km from the border and be replaced by UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).

Israeli residents of the border communities would then return to their homes.

In the second phase, Israel would agree to discuss the surrender of its sovereign territory along the border with Lebanon to Hezbollahcontrolled Lebanon. The areas under discussion include strategic points from Rosh Hanikra on the coastline in the west to Mt. Dov along the Syrian border in the east.

There are three fundamental problems with the deal the US is demanding that Israel accept.

First, the LAF is completely beholden to and operates in the service of Hezbollah. UNIFIL does nothing without Hezbollah’s permission. This is the reason Hezbollah has been able to operate in complete breach of Resolution 1701 since 2006. As a consequence, it is absurd to believe that they would be in a position to enforce the agreement or would have any interest in doing so.

Given the weakness and complicity of UNIFIL and the LAF, the only party capable of en-

forcing the deal is the IDF. And the US offer precludes an Israeli military operation or presence in Southern Lebanon. Since the proposal cannot be enforced under its terms, the 80,000 Israeli refugees from the border communities will not be able to return home with even a modicum of safety.

Second, Hezbollah’s territorial demands are completely frivolous. The areas in dispute were never Lebanese territory. The administration’s adamant insistence that Israel concede to Hezbollah’s demands for its sovereign territory, including Mount Dov, which controls all of northern Israel, is a hostile position. Israel cannot accept it.

Finally, just as the administration’s positions vis-à-vis Gaza foresee and indeed require Israel to accept defeat in war, so its “diplomatic solution” for Lebanon requires Israel to accept strategic defeat at the hands of Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.

Iran

Since Oct. 7, the Biden administration has been insisting that it has no evidence that Iran had prior knowledge of Hamas’s attack. As Iran’s other regional proxies — Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iranian-controlled Shi’ite militia in Iraq — have joined the war against Israel and the US, the Biden administration has maintained its stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Iran is the head of the snake. But facts are stubborn things.

Iran controls all of its proxies. Ahead of Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists received training for their mission of slaughter in Iran and Lebanon. In the months before the Oct. 7 invasion, Hamas terror-masters met in Beirut at least twice with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders and their Hezbollah counterparts. Iran funds, arms and trains all of its proxies. An Iranian spy ship in the Red Sea is directing all the Houthi missile and drone attacks against Israel and commercial shipping in the Red Sea. While directing its proxies’ operations, Iran itself is sprinting towards the entrance to the nuclear club. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has massively expanded its near-bomb-grade-level uranium enrichment and has effectively become a threshold nuclear state.

These realities present Israel with an unacceptable threat environment that it must counter militarily or risk its physical destruction. For the Biden administration, these realities present an opportunity to force Israel to agree to lose in Gaza and Lebanon and establish a Palestinian state or lose US support and be compelled to stand up to Iran and all of its proxies on its own with insufficient weapons and no diplomatic backing from Washington.

Addressing his government at its weekly meeting Sunday, Netanyahu noted the discord with the Biden administration.

“Israel is a sovereign state,” he began.

“We greatly appreciate the support that we have received from the Biden administration since the outbreak of the war: In weaponry, at international institutions, in sending forces to the region and more. This is not to say that there are no disagreements among us but as of today we have succeeded in overcoming them with determined and balanced decisions.”

He went on, “As a sovereign state that is fighting for its existence and its future, we make our own decisions; even in those instances where there is no agreement with our American friends.”

Seemingly with each passing day, the Biden administration announces a new initiative aimed at undermining Israel’s ability to defend itself, either by limiting its military options, constraining its diplomatic maneuvering room, empowering its enemies or inducing domestic discord and social cleavages.

At a certain point in the not-so-distant future, Netanyahu will need to say “no” to the administration. It can only be hoped that the vast majority of Americans, who stand with Israel against its enemies, will stand with Israel when we arrive at that point.

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Gerber…

Continued from page 17 “He had occasion to accompany a poor Jewish woman to the White house and beseech the President to pardon her wayward son, who had deserted. She told her story in Yiddish, of which the President did not understand a word. But Abraham Lincoln only saw before him a mother imploring him for the life of her child; and as he listened to her unintelligible and yet agonizing plea, the tears coursed down his cheeks.”

Needless to say, mercy won out over a harsh judgment. Such was the President of the United States, even during war time.

Rabbi Hertz, further commenting on Lincoln, states: “Few public men possessed his mastery of speech, his wonderful mother-wit and rare eloquence. Several of his utterances are among the most perfect things in the language. His Gettysburg Address stands unparalleled since the days of Pericles; while in his stand for national righteousness and his absolute belief in the irresistibility of right, he has the accent of Israel’s Prophets.” mong the many sermons and essays within this large book was one that stood out not only for what was uttered in its message, but for who said it. Among the ideas and opinions expressed were the following: “Like Joshua, Lincoln lived to see the cause of the nation triumph, to behold the Union victorious and peace and tranquillity prevailing in the land.”

“Moreover, in Lincoln himself were fused all the essential elements of Judaism. If he can justly be called the first typical American he can more justly be said to represent the summation of all the noblest qualities of Judaism.”

“And when the day will come and the American nation following its great prophet, Lincoln will become a model of justice, and through justice a pattern of peace to the world; when the American nation, led by the spirit of its great savior and preserver, will add its share to the realization of the day which the Jewish prophet’s inward vision foresaw thousands of years ago; when there will be universal peace growing out of universal justice and the American nation will show itself worthy of this, its greatest son, then the birthday of Lincoln will be the greatest holiday of a happy, progressive humanity and will represent a milestone in a new era of mankind’s history.”

These are the words of Rabbi Bernard Revel, the founding president and the first Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University, delivered at the Centenary Celebration of Lincoln’s Birthday, in New York City, on Feb. 12, 1909.

It is in this spirit that I would like to bring to you attention the works of one of the great Lincoln scholars of our time, Harold Holzer.

His works are many, but I commend to you for starters his essay titled “Lincoln and the Jews: The Last Best Hope of Earth” (2000).

Within this essay you will find not only fine scholarship from a world class interpreter of history, but the fine hand and pen in use on behalf of American Jewish History.

We live in troubled times. Even as children we were taught that we study history so as not to repeat its mistakes. We hear that admonition every day, on the news, from the pulpit and in daily conversation. Our economic situation drives us to review the past and to evaluate the lessons that should be learned from past errors.

In order for us to hold our public leaders accountable we in turn must be informed.

Now is as good a time as any to crack open those history books again. What better subject to begin with than Lincoln?

A version of this column was published in 2009.

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Weinreb…

Continued from page 17 impoverished person. For Rashi, the Hebrew word imach is synonymous with einfuhlung, “infeeling,” or empathy.

There is a nuance in the Hebrew text of the first verse quoted above which is typically lost in translation. Literally, the verse reads, “If you do mistreat, mistreat him, then if he cries out, cries out to Me, I will heed his outcry.” That is, the verb “mistreat” is doubled, as is the verb “cry out.”

There is a passage in a Midrash known as Yalkut Shimoni, which comments upon the repetition of the verb “cry out.”

I quote from the Yalkut on Psalms 62: “A human being, mere flesh and blood, cannot hear the cries of two individuals who are crying simultaneously. However, the Creator can. Even when all of the world’s inhabitants cry out at once, He hears every individual cry, as it is written, ‘All mankind comes to You, You who hear prayer.’

(Psalms 65:3)” This passage implies that, whereas a person’s auditory capacities allow for two or more voices to register, no man can feel the pain of two different individuals at the same moment. The emotional effort needed to truly empathize with one other person is all-consuming, and there is no room left within us to feel the pain of yet another person at that same time. Only the Almighty Himself can “multi-task” empathy.

Both the faithful Jew and the secular ethicist have traditionally valued empathy in interpersonal affairs. However, a contemporary philosopher has recently expressed his opposition to empathy. refer to Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom, whose book “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion” is a scathing critique of empathy as a moral guide. Among other things, Bloom feels that empathy wrongly prioritizes the sufferings of specific individuals over those of nameless multitudes. For example, he writes that it is easy to empathize with a baby who’s fallen down a well but hard to feel the pain of the billions of people whose lives will be ruined by climate change.

Bloom’s book forces us to think deeply about the limits of empathy. It is interesting to me that in some ways, his argument is in tune with the Midrash that I just quoted. Since the empathic response of the human being seems to be limited to one individual at a time, passionately caring for one unfortunate person may indeed blind us to the pain of the many who are otherwise suffering.

How relevant here is another passage, this one from the Talmud, which modifies the position taken by the Midrash. This second passage encourages us to transcend our empathic limitations, and in the spirit of imitatio dei, imitate our Creator and expand our empathic capacities to include the larger community.

This passage reads: When the community is suffering, a person should not say to himself, “I will go to my own home, and eat and drink, and imagine myself at peace.” But rather, he should share in the community’s pain. So we find that Moses our Master shared in the pain of the community, as is written: “But Moses’ hands grew heavy; so they took a stone, and put it under him and he sat on it.”

Did Moses not have a cushion or pillow to sit upon?

No! Moses insisted, “Since Israel is in pain, I will be with them in their pain.” Babylonian Talmud Tractate Taanit 11a Nachmanides, or Ramban, supplements this passage by noting that Moses positioned himself on a hilltop, “so as to better observe the people in their suffering, and so that he could direct his heart toward them.” Clearly Moses exemplified the ability not only to “know” but to “feel” the pain of a multitude of others. Moses demonstrated that empathy is not merely a helpful moral guide. It is an indispensable prerequisite for a leader and, quite possibly, an obligation for us all.

How telling it is that Moses understood the power of empathy even at the very beginning of his leadership career.

As we read some weeks ago in parshat Shemot, “Moses grew up and went out to his breth-

I

ren and saw their suffering”. Rashi is apparently troubled by the following question: “If he went out to his brethren, do we need to be told that he saw their suffering? Obviously, he had eyes and he saw their suffering!”

To which Rashi responds, “He directed his eyes and his heart toward them so that he would suffer along with them.”

In this, the very first step that Moses took along his path of leadership, he used his eyes to “know” what his people were experiencing, and he used his heart to “feel their pain.”

Etengoff…

Continued from page 17 attention to a Heavenly Voice because You [Hashem] have long since written in the Torah at Mount Sinai” (Shemot 23:2), “After the majority must one follow.” (Talmud Bavli, Baba Metzia 59b) This Talmudic passage is nothing less than amazing. In relatively few words, it denies the possibility of a post-Sinaitic revelation. Moreover, it demonstrates that human reason, in conjunction with the accepted principles of Torah exegesis and majority rule, are the sole determinants in any halachic dispute.

As Rabbi Aryeh Leib HaKohane Heller, one of the major halachic authorities of the past two centuries, opines: The Torah was not given to the ministering angels, but rather to humankind who is limited to sechel enoshi (human logic and reason). And the Holy One blessed be He gave us the Torah out of the abundance of His mercy and kindness to be adjudicated according to sechel enoshi, even if it never achieves emet on the level of HaSichlayim Hanivdalim (that is, Hashem and His ministering angels).

Freedman…

Continued from page 17 It is certainly important to fulfill the letter and the spirit of Jewish law. Indeed, one of the ways Jewish and Christian ethics may diverge is that Judaism is not social action espoused, it is social action demanded.

That being said, it is equally important to bring G-d back into the dialogue. sk any yeshiva high school graduate how to put on a pair of Tefillin, or what to do when reciting the Shema, and they will have no trouble at all. (I have on occasion seen “Tefillin races” wherein high school students race to see who can put on or take off Tefillin faster!)

But ask them if putting on those same Tefillin was part of a meaningful relationship with Hashem and you will get a very different type of answer.

Ask a yeshiva high school student whether they believe in G-d and the answer you will generally get is “yes.” Then ask them what they think G-d is, and they will have no clue how to even begin to respond to that question; you will witness a very long pause.

The Sanhedrin needs to sit on the Temple mount, and we need to reinvest our Jewish practice with Jewish meaning. Hashem will place the laws before us, but we have to decide how we will relate to them.

Perhaps it’s time to bring a little Sinai back into our Jewish experience.

A

Tobin...

Continued from page 18 The notion that Israel has no right to attack Gaza after Oct. 7 is a novel theory of war.

If terrorists are now granted the right to use populations as human shields while fighting a war — Hamas has shot more than 15,000 rockets and missiles at Israeli civilian targets since Oct. 7 — then murderers will, in essence, be granted immunity for even the most barbaric crimes. And if a ceasefire is imposed on Israel before Hamas is eradicated, that’s what will happen.

At no point do Black civil-rights activists who believe the Palestinian cause is no different from theirs acknowledge why Hamas started the fighting on Oct. 7. The terrorist organization based in the Gaza Strip is explicit about the fact that it aims to destroy Israel and slaughter its people.

Contrary to some of Biden’s disingenuous statements about the issue, voting and polls have consistently shown that Hamas and its genocidal platform are widely supported by Palestinians.

This suffering for the Palestinians began when Hamas launched its murderous attacks on Israel. It could have been ended at any point

by Hamas’s surrender and the freeing of all hostages. But Hamas and its allies don’t care about Palestinian suffering. On the contrary, they wish to maximize it in order to garner more foreign sympathy. Black pastors claim to oppose the “occupation” without understanding that to the Palestinians, that term refers to any land that Israel controls. These clergy leaders may claim to oppose everything Hamas stands for, and yet they support it because they have accepted the lie that the Jews are intrinsically evil by seeking to defend their homes and families.

How does that differ from the American civil-rights movement? African-Americans fighting against Jim Crow laws didn’t seek to kill whites or establish a principle that Blacks must rule as the Islamists of Hamas do about Muslims. They wanted equal rights and an end to legal segregation. The goal of Martin Luther King Jr. was coexistence and a society where his children would be judged by “the content of the character rather than the color of their skin.”

Morally bankrupt pastors

The upside-down world of intersectionality and critical race theory turns that hope on its head. For the American Black community, which claims to be a champion of civil rights, to consider a cause rooted in genocidal intent and intolerance of any notion of coexistence with other faith or ethnic groups as seeing themselves in the actions and fate of the Palestinians, is absurd.

It is shocking that people like the Black pastors, who pretend to have moral authoritym would identify with a cause that would benefit the killers of Hamas. It’s equally astonishing that they stand with the mobs chanting for the destruction of Israel (“from the river to the sea”) and terrorism against Jews wherever they live (“globalize the intifada”), rather than with their former Jewish allies as they suffer from prejudice and violence. But in this brave new intersectional world, that is what passes for civil-rights advocacy in the Black community.

This is all the more disturbing when throughout the world, atrocities are being carried out against Black Africans in countries like Nigeria, Mauritania or Sudan by Islamist forces, including mass killings, rape and even a modern-day version of slavery. Why aren’t these atrocities being spoken about by pastors to their congregations? Having accepted intersectionality, they are now prepared to ignore crimes committed against people with whom they ought to have a natural affinity — Black Africans — because the perpetrators are Muslim or Arabs, while claiming to see Palestinians who want to slaughter Israelis as worthy not just of sympathy but the expenditure of their political capital.

It is long past time for the Jewish groups that have slavishly stuck to the pretense that these pastors and the organizations that they represent are allies to stop putting their heads in the sand. Those who enable antisemitism and wish to assist those who slaughter Jews are enemies, not friends.

When it comes to support for Hamas and indifference to antisemitism, there is no middle ground. Black pastors who seek to demonize Israel and are silent about the Jew-hatred that is inherent in their intersectional stands embracing the cause of Israel’s destruction should be under no illusions about the choice they’ve made.

For all of their high-flown rhetoric about compassion and the oppressed, these pastors are morally bankrupt. And American Jews who have long stood by their side in the struggle for civil rights should bluntly tell them that they are finished with such antisemites dressed in clerical garb.

27 THE JEWISH STAR February 9, 2024 • 30 Shvat 5784

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