The Jewish Star 07-12-2024

Intersectionality

It’s not necessarily a bad idea

Intersectionality is the idea that victims of oppression should join together and support each other’s causes. It has become a driving force, spreading beyond academia and social justice circles into the broader American society.

There are good reasons why this idea has become taken up by so many: The notion of organizing victims against tyranny is a laudable goal.

There are, however, two serious flaws in intersectionality as it is currently conceived:

First, it assigns the labels “oppressors” and “victims” to groups, not individuals. This misses fundamental truths about human nature: Every individual has agency, can be moral or immoral, and does not automatically share the guilt of actions taken by his or her ancestors.

Second, as the great Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned, evil flows through every human heart and humanity’s progress comes as each of us struggles to do good and to resist the temptations of evil.

To condemn whole groups of people as evil,

Mourners in Zabarmari, Nigeria

terrorists, on Nov. 29, 2020.

especially when based on race — as intersectionality does — is clearly and inevitably racist.

Similarly, to exonerate every person in a victim class as innocent of every and any act because his group has been historically and is even presently victimized is to see that person as a cipher with no free will who has no possibility of being morally good or bad.

Given the realities of global oppression, there is perhaps an even graver concern:

Intersectionality is binary, its labeling of

For 30+ Years!

groups as either “oppressed” or “oppressor,” is illogically and destructively Western-centric.

This is particularly evident in the case of Arabs and Muslims who, as minorities in the West, may at times be victims of prejudice and mistreatment. Yet they are anything but minorities in their countries of origin, where not infrequently they are violent oppressors of non-Muslim peoples.

Western intersectionality makes it impossible for the victims of Islamic and/or Arab oppression in broad swaths of the Middle East and Africa

to have their voices heard and their plights addressed by exactly those people and organizations who have the most power to help them: Westerners of goodwill.

Here is the clearest example: There are nine countries in Africa where blacks today are victims of Islamist and Arab terror. Jihadist groups raid African villages and murder, rape and kidnap innocent villagers. Many of those captured are enslaved.

These black victims have not been able to get the attention and help they need from the people most naturally their allies due to the virtual taboo that intersectionality imposes on the topic of any oppression committed by any Muslim or Arab group, today or in the past.

Within the framework of intersectionality, the concept of “Islamophobia” is the shield that protects Arab and Muslim human rights violators from criticism by Westerners of goodwill. It functions as a rhetorical sword to slander and shame any who dare acknowledge the plight of the victims of jihad, even when those victims are Muslims, most notably in Darfur and Mauritania.

This is clearly a case of what philosophers call a “category error,” because Islamism and jihadism are not races or ethnicities but ideas and practices that are offered up as proper paths and strategies of human conduct.

In Western culture, these are precisely the sort of things that are supposed to be treated critically. Yet the power of “Islamophobia” is such that it has prevented decent people — indeed, the people who would most want to liberate others from human bondage and slaughter, especially if they are black — from doing just that.

Hitler, not Jews, caused Shoah

By Alan Zeitlin, JNS

Joe

Berlinger

says he was troubled when he read reports of a 2018 study from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which showed one in 10 millennial Americans thought that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust, and half could not name a single concentration camp.

So Berlinger, a two-time Emmy Award winner and Oscar-nominated film director who has covered serial killers like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy (in addition to world events such as the Armenian genocide, which he portrayed in the 2015 film, “Intent to Destroy”), decided to make “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a docuseries now showing on Netflix. It examines Adolf Hitler and the rise to power of the Nazi

Party, from pre-World War II through the Holocaust to the Nuremberg trials.

Berlinger said he was partly motivated by the erosion of truth and the spread of hate on social media.

“I think we’ve moved from Holocaust denial to Holocaust affirmation,” he told JNS. “The phrase ‘Hitler was right’ was posted 70,000 times on social media last year.”

The first season consists of six episodes: “Origin of Evil,” “Third Reich Rises,” “Hitler in Power,” “Road to Ruin,” “Crimes Against Humanity” and “The Reckoning.” What’s different about the series are certain visuals. Berlinger, 62, says he lit some interviews with people on a stage and used other techniques in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience.

See It’s good on page 22 See Netflix introduces on page 2

attend the funeral of 43 farm workers, who were killed by Islamist Boko Haram

Audu Marte / AFP via Getty Images

Charles Jacobs Jewish Leadership Project

Stephen S. Enada Int’l Committee on Nigeria

Dumisani Washington Black Solidarity with Israeli

Image from Netflix docuseries “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,“ Márton Kállai, Netflix

Netflix introduces Hitler to US know-nothings…

“I’m not being critical of how others make shows, but generally, there are talking heads intercut with crusty, grainy old footage and lack contextualization,” he says. “For older audiences who went through this, that approach is fine, but for a younger audience, I wanted to kind of use the language of cinema and bring William L. Shirer to life as an eyewitness to events.”

Shirer, who died in 1993, was an American journalist and war correspondent who covered the ascent of Nazism in Germany and wrote some of the seminal books on the topic, including “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”

Berlinger explains that colorizing archival footage and using artificial intelligence to have Shirer as a narrator were key aspects of his techniques. Another was to have dramatic re-creations, such as Hitler’s final moments in his bunker, with an actress playing Eva Braun holding a cyanide pill and an actor playing Hitler holding a gun to his head.

“I wanted to give it a present-tense quality,” he says.

He adds that AI “is a real hot-button issue in our business” with many objecting to it in any form, though he thought in this case, it was fitting.

“We were using [Shirer’s] radio broadcasts with a distinctive Midwestern accent, and this technology is available,” he says. “I thought bringing his voice to life with permission from his family made sense.”

Some have used AI to have Hitler speaking in English, but that would be inappropriate in a documentary, he states.

Still, viewers hear Shirer’s words that Hitler was flabby, ordinary and unimpressive. He later regrets that he got it wrong and that he didn’t fully understand Hitler’s power or ability to bring about the expanse of the Holocaust. Is Shirer too hard on himself?

“Yes and no,” Berlinger says. “It’s easy in hindsight to say what should have been done or uncovered. I don’t take it to be him beating

himself up. I just think the death camps were a shocking revelation. Anyone in a reporting function would naturally feel guilty for not catching the story sooner.”

He continues, saying those “who should be flogging themselves, as [director] Ken Burns points out so beautifully in his PBS series ‘The US and the Holocaust,’ are people in power who knew and didn’t do enough. We might think if more was known and there was a public outrage, it could have changed history. But that, too, may be wishful thinking because antisemi-

by Claus von Stauffenberg, who left a bomb in a briefcase under a table near Hitler, only to have it unwittingly moved by another officer.

Berlinger says one thought is often in his mind: What if Hitler had been accepted to art school? “I think the world would be a very different place. It shows the ripples of history.”

Berlinger says he’s not surprised that some are denying the atrocities that took place on Oct. 7 by Hamas and Palestinian operatives in southern Israel because of an environment of misinformation on social media.

“There is no longer a standard of truth,” Berlinger says. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle with how social media has eroded it.”

As a secular Jew from Westchester, with his father’s side from Germany and his mother’s side from Poland (his ancestors came to America in the 1850s), Berlinger was struck when at 15 he saw archival footage of Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps established within the German borders.

“It blew my mind, and I couldn’t get it out of my head,” he says.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it as a young man. Had I been born back then, I clearly would have been murdered, and I couldn’t believe that people could do that to each other.”

tism and quota systems were rampant then.”

He says that’s why he included the history of the St. Louis, a ship with 900 German Jews that made it to the outskirts of the Florida coast in June 1939 and was turned away by US officials. It returned to Germany, where nearly a third of its passengers were eventually murdered.

The documentary shows a foolish miscalculation by German Chancellor Franz Von Papen, who recommended Hitler to be named the next chancellor, thinking that he could control him, and also depicts the failed assassination attempt

Berlinger notes that he became a German major at Colgate University and embraced the positive aspects of German culture. He was fluent upon graduation, worked in the Frankfurt office for a New York advertising agency, and it was then that he realized he wanted to be a filmmaker. He notes that “35 years later, coming back and telling this history with Netflix with a budget to do it in the way that I did was a fulfilling moment for me.”

And yet, he adds, he is fearful of what may lie ahead.

“The way the world is lining up, I do think we are on the precipice of World War III,” Berlinger says. “I hope it doesn’t happen, but we are dangerously close.”

Filming “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial.“

Márton Kállai, Netflix

Image from “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial.“

Márton Kállai, Netflix

NY marches for hostages every Shabbat since Nov.

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

Michelle Sarna and her family were visiting Israel to celebrate her mother’s birthday last year when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

The psychologist at SAR Academy in Riverdale and her husband, Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, executive director of the Bronfman Center at New York University and senior religious adviser to the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue in the United Arab Emirates, found themselves “consumed, as was the rest of the country, with fear and sadness and rage,” she told JNS.

They also felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility to do something upon their return a few days later to Manhattan, where they have lived for 22 years, she said.

Sarna contacted Jewish communal leaders in downtown Manhattan at synagogues spanning religious denominations, as well as student and young professional groups.

The psychologist proposed that a group take a “quiet, respectful, solemn walk” every Shabbat on behalf of the hostages Hamas kidnapped on Oct. 7 and continues to hold in the Gaza Strip. The gathering would raise “awareness of the gravity of what is happening to these humans held in captivity,” she told JNS.

A community member donated large posters with photos of and information about the hostages and the word “kidnapped” in large letters.

“We considered that if people saw the faces of the hostages and their humanity—to literally and figuratively look them in the eyes—that that would raise empathy in a way that crossed political lines,” she told JNS.

Sarna planned the walks for Shab-

bat because New York’s Jewish community cannot rest—even on the Day of Rest — as something so unsettling and disturbing was taking place to their brethren in Gaza.

Since Nov. 4, a group of Manhattanites — ranging from 20 to 100 people, from young children to those in their late 80s—have marched in support of the hostages every Shabbat afternoon for around 45 minutes, in rain, sleet, snow and shine, away from the cameras and media attention that larger-scale protests have drawn.

“Most people go about their lives in New York, and they forget that there are hostages and or don’t care,” McBee, a painter and writer, told JNS. “Our job is to try to remind them that this is an ongoing tragedy.”

Every Shabbat afternoon, the group gathers at the Bronfman Center on E. 10th St., between Fifth Avenue and University Place. It walks along Fifth towards the always-busy Washington Square Park, which it circles twice before walking to University Place and then on to Union Square at 14th Street.

The group often circles Union Square twice as well, ending at the famous statue of George Washington on the south end of the eponymous Park. There, the group sings “Acheinu,” a prayer that refers to Jews who are captive, and the Israeli national anthem “Hatikvah,” meaning “The Hope.”

Made up of many kinds of Jews and Israel supporters, the group doesn’t photograph itself, per Shabbat restrictions. But passersby have offered to document marches and share their photos with McBee.

Some members, who don’t carry

anything in public on Shabbat despite an eruv in Manhattan—which many Orthodox Jews rely upon to bring items such as prayer shawls, house keys and snacks, and to push baby strollers or use a cane—opt to march without bearing signs.

New York City Police Department officers and those who work in community affairs for the department accompany the group, and interactions with others have been almost exclusively positive, according to McBee.

“We see a lot of people because it’s downtown Manhattan,” he said. “Many people don’t say anything. Some people say, ‘Am Yisrael chai,’” Hebrew for “the people of Israel live.”

“In all the months that I’ve been doing this, I think maybe we had negative

comments three times,” McBee said. “Even then, it’s not really even much of anything.”

At one point, with pro-Hamas encampments growing downtown, the group made a decision, in coordination with the NYPD, to go outside of its normal route past the New School and Fifth Avenue and 13th Street, an academic institution that has served as one of the more “provocative, offensive” encampment sites, according to Sarna.

There, Hamas supporters had taken over the lobby and vandalized the area with anti-Israel propaganda.

“We walked to those sites, and we just spent a moment kind of reclaiming that space,” Sarna said. The “reclaiming” included “singing

and reminding the world, and hopefully the citizens of New York City, that there is another voice that needs to be heard about Israel, about the hostages and about this war, and we are not going to be scared,” she told JNS.

Sarna insisted that “we’re not going to back down, and we are also going to do it with both dignity and with audacity.”

During one walk, the marchers crossed paths with family members of one of the hostages. The relatives were taking a break from a meeting that day, Sarna told JNS.

“They were so touched that we were doing this for them, thinking ‘What are the odds that a group in downtown Manhattan on Shabbat would be thinking about their relative and taking a moment to do something about it?’” she said. “That was very moving.”

An Iranian freelance journalist and former political prisoner sent an email to Sarna after seeing the Shabbat march condemning the Islamic Republic leadership for its support of Hamas.

The writer passed along “special thanks for your commitment to support the hostages,” Sarna told JNS. “I’m proud of you as a woman who strongly stands for the persecuted people.”

At the end of the walk, “we often will take a moment and have everybody look into the face—the name that they’ve been carrying—and to feel connected to that person just for a minute,” said Sarna.

McBee has sent notices to local synagogues and Jewish community groups in Manhattan, looking to drum up more support and consistent march attendance.

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Every Shabbat afternoon since Nov. 4, pro-Israel Manhattan residents have marched for about 45 minutes carrying signs drawing attention to the hostages whom Hamas holds in Gaza. Phillip Maier

By Nadav Haetzni, Israel Hayom

A few weeks ago, Shabbat in Washington was an extremely pleasant one. The crowds thronged the National Mall lined with its many museums, extending from the Capitol grounds to the Washington Monument, while downtown was the scene of a vibrant, multicolored gaypride march that snaked its way across the hub of the city, in an exuberant atmosphere of celebration and fun.

But at the same time, opposite the obelisk in memory of George Washington, a completely different march was slowly crawling along — a march of hatred, ignorance and evil. Thousands of protesters in red costumes, keffiyehs and PLO flags proceeded along the heavily protected sidewalk:

“No to a two-state solution — we want 1948,” “From the River Jordan to the Sea,” “Free, Free Palestine,” “Intifada — Revolution.”

Later, not far away from there, the annual conference of the American Jewish Committee, the large and senior representative organization of US Jewry, which has assumed an even broader function as the “global advocacy organization for the Jewish people,” opened at the Marriott Hotel.

More than 2,000 representatives gathered here, fueled by a profound sense of emergency. The war in Israel has become intertwined with a sense of battle for their own home, manifested by the demonstration of hate that marched a mere stone’s throw away.

The discussions were replete with experiences similar to those on the daily news. Most of those attending the AJC forum were Jewish Americans, staunch supporters of Israel — not Orthodox Jews but those, who for more than 100 years until last October, firmly believed that their strong connection with the liberals would guarantee both their rights as Jews and their lives.

Something was undermined in the wake of Oct. 7. Although US opinion polls show that support for Israel remains widespread and unflagging, many Jews have experienced trauma that has undercut their sense of personal security, alongside their confidence in their existence in America.

No longer in family

The situation in the universities — the demonstrations, the hatred, the treachery of many lecturers took center stage at the conference.

But nobody made any attempt to sugarcoat the situation. On the contrary, it was evident that we have gone back 100 years in time, to a time of frightening antisemitism.

In an AJC survey of US Jews published earlier this week, 64% of those questioned testified that the events since October have had an impact on their relationship with their fellow Americans. Worrying statistics were revealed regarding the impact of these events on their daily lives.

Many Jews avoid engaging strangers in a conversation broaching issues connected to

events on the news. Some actively conceal their Jewish identity, while many testify to an underlying sense of a lack of security.

Two elderly Jewish women from Los Angeles told me over dinner that they had severed relationships with several friends and acquaintances, due to their accusations against Israel. One of them no longer speaks with her 22-yearold grandson after he provoked her by saying that the very existence of the State of Israel is what led to the establishment and existence of Hamas.

A former Israeli woman who lives in Jersey City shared with me the profound sense of shock that has taken hold of her. She discovered that a teacher at her 10-year-old daughter’s school handed out to the students a Palestinian book that erased the existence of the State of Israel.

Double shock

A key figure who is well connected to the heart of the matter is Alexandra Herzog, the niece of both Israel’s President Herzog and Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog.

She lives in Boston and serves as the AJC’s national deputy director for contemporary Jewish life. Herzog monitors educational material at schools and universities in the United States and has been seeing an anti-Israel/anti-Zionist connection develop for years.

“The largest problem in the universities,” she said, “is that many of the heads of the universities do not assume responsibility and fail to enforce their own rules for protecting the students against antisemitism. This modern incarnation of antisemitism is new to many American Jews.”

She continued, saying “the Jews thought that they would be completely safe here. Now, all of a sudden, they understand that they are not as safe.”

This is a double shock; it encompasses the

threat against Israel, which was always perceived as a potential haven, and, of course, the feeling that America itself is no longer as safe as Jews thought it was.

Another disappointment was the result of the efforts to forge ties with the large Hispanic community in the US, which encompasses more than 60 million people. The person in charge of this effort on behalf of the AJC is Dina Siegel Vann, a native of Mexico City and director of the AJC’s Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs.

Vann invested considerable effort in linking up with Hispanic organizations and even brought a delegation of Hispanic American leaders to visit Israel a year ago, including visiting the Gaza border communities. However, all of them disappeared following Oct. 7 — not a single one of them stood beside Israel and the Jews, and their silence is deafening.

“We have changed since Oct. 7,” said Vann. “Our expectations have changed. We at the AJC have always believed in the struggle for all ethnic minorities, as indirectly this is something that should work for us too, but in hindsight, it now appears that this effort has not worked at all.”

Daniel Schwammenthal is the director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute, AJC’s E.U. office in Brussels. He says that “the problem is that a new threat has emerged that goes beyond social media and terrorist threats, against which your government protects you. Now, as a Jew, you are threatened on the streets, on campus and at work, and antisemitism is being thrust in your face.”

Then, he continued, “add to this the fact that a number of governments, like the government in Belgium, are engaged in efforts to demonize the Jewish state, thus fanning the flames of antisemitism. The whole situation is simply intolerable.”

Opening for hope

Born in Germany and now resident in Belgium, Schwammenthal closely monitors the social and political trends in Europe. He noted a positive change that had occurred in recent years in Israel’s relationship with Europe, a marked improvement that simply collapsed several months after the outbreak of the war, with a growing negative trend sweeping across European governments and the decisions of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. However, Schwammenthal believes that overall, the public in Europe is not against us, a claim that has gained support from the results of the elections to the European Parliament held last week, and the ensuing impressive rise in power of right-wing parties in Europe.

This paradox has been reflected, for example, in the staunchly pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli state of Florida, where this writer flew immediately after the conference in Washington. In those states with dominant support for the Republican Party, especially where strong Republican governors exist, such as Ron DeSantis in Florida or Greg Abbott in Texas, the situation is different.

DeSantis crushed the initial appearance of the antisemitic demonstrations at the University of South Florida in Tampa, with police officers firing rubber bullets and detaining 130 protesters. Abbott declared the demonstrators at the University of Texas in Austin to be supporters of terrorism and in breach of the law, and he then sent the police to detain them and choke this antisemitic protest the moment it began. That dissonance and confusion are all too apparent among many of the people I spoke to. However, the contempt for and fear of Donald Trump makes it difficult to arrive at any conclusions as to its impact on internal US politics. A poll published by the AJC last week shows that 61% of Jews questioned intend to vote for President Joe Biden. This is a considerably lower percentage than those who voted for him in the previous presidential elections, 85%.

At the AJC forum, senior speakers stressed and reiterated: “Now of all times, we are especially proud to be Jews,” expressing their unwavering support for the State of Israel.

In this spirit, the poll conducted by the organization has established the trend: 57% of the Jews questioned in the poll said that they feel more connected to Israel and their own Jewish identity, and 17% said that they had begun to attend synagogue services since the Hamas attack.

Avital Leibovich, director of the AJC Jerusalem office, summed up the situation: “There can be no doubt of the strong desire of Diaspora Jews for unity. Oct. 7 marks a new era for them — an era of closeness to the State of Israel coupled with a greatly enhanced sense of their Jewish identity, each individual acting in his or her own way.”

American actor Michael Rapaport, who also appeared on the central stage, managed to sum up the basic message to all our enemies in a nutshell, with two words: “F— them,” duly earning rapturous applause from the crowd.

A view of protesters demonstrating outside the campus of Columbia University on April 25. Evan Schneider

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Analysis: Can int’l law cope with today’s terror?

By Alan Baker Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Aquestion emerging from the war between Israel, Hamas and other terror organizations is this: Is today’s international law capable of addressing armed conflict between a state and terror organizations?

How is a sovereign state, obligated by the customary and conventional rules of international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict, expected to engage in asymmetrical war with terror organizations that do not consider themselves bound by such rules?

The laws of armed conflict have been updated from time to time — including in 1949 following World War II, and in 1974-77 after the Vietnam War.

Non-state terror has existed since the late 1960s when plane hijacking and hostage-taking became prevalent as an effective and brutal tool to use against states and their populations.

More recently, terror organizations, under the guise of “national liberation movements” or “freedom fighters,” and with the political, legal and financial support of some states and groupings of states, as well as international and regional organizations, have gained international recognition and standing as semi-legitimate actors in the international community.

As has been demonstrated in the current conflict, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi terror regime in Yemen are equipped, principally by the regime in Iran, with unmanned aerial vehicles, drones and long-range rockets, some equipped with precision-guided capabilities.

International law attempts to address such developments as they occur in a piecemeal manner [but they fail to] address the immediate legal, moral and practical dilemmas inherent in the actual confrontation with terror organizations that openly violate international humanitarian norms.

Terror groups defining themselves as “national liberation movements” or “freedom fighters” have been acknowledged as legitimate belligerents with an element of international status, acceptability and protection within the permissible framework of international law.

As such, under the guise of international legitimacy, they can abuse the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions by glibly and openly violating the accepted humanitarian norms.

They proudly consider themselves to be immune and absolved from internationally accepted obligations. They celebrate and delight in the fact they continue to enjoy impunity and need not abide by accepted rules of warfare.

In any normal legal system — both civil and international — the individual components within the system can live and conduct themselves within the orderly parameters of the system on

the assumption that the other elements of the system will comport themselves in the same way. Departure from such parameters and behavior in violation of such a normative system undermines and threatens the system’s very existence.

While the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court provided the international community with a vehicle for preventing impunity by individuals, including terrorists, the extent to which this court is capable or willing to exact justice against such terrorists has yet to be proven.

Nowhere is this factor more evident than in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Iranian-supported Hezbollah terror organization in Lebanon and Syria, and the Houthi terror regime in Yemen.

These terror entities, together with others such as the Islamic Jihad terror organization and an Iranian terror offshoot in Iraq, have openly and blatantly abused, violated and continue to violate all accepted humanitarian norms.

Nevertheless, through skillful manipulation of information and propaganda, they appear to enjoy support within the international community, in the international media, and, sadly, among large population groups on campuses and the streets of capital cities in North America and Europe.

The brutal massacre committed on Oct. 7 saw multiple crimes of rape, murder, torture and kidnapping — all of which not only violate basic norms of humanity but also violate accepted principles of international law and specific conventions prohibiting such acts and guaranteeing the rights of women, children and the elderly.

The mass targeting of Israel’s towns and villages by more than 10,000 missiles and rockets violates principles of international humanitarian law set out in the Geneva Conventions requiring the protection of civilian populations not involved in fighting.

In clearly willful and open violation of international humanitarian law, as well as the customary principles enunciated in the laws and principles of armed conflict set out in the 1907 Hague Rules, the terrorists indiscriminately targeted civilians in a distinct, deliberate and concerted means to demoralize and terrorize the civil population and to pressure organized governments and society. This is their tactical modus operandi.

The use by both Hamas and Hezbollah of their own civilian population and public facilities as human and civilian shields to protect their weapons storage, command facilities and operatives, and to imprison hostages, constitutes a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.

The burrowing of hundreds of kilometers of tactical underground tunnels under homes, public thoroughfares, population centers and hospitals for use solely for their fighters and not for the protection of the general public is no less a violation of international humanitarian law.

The use by terrorists of civilian ambulances; the standard use of hospitals, mosques, churches and schools as storage space for weapons and explosives; the location of militia offices and tactical headquarters in dense residential areas, are illustrative examples of the abuse and violation of humanitarian norms by Hamas.

Above all, the cruel, cynical use of hostages — including babies, women, children and the elderly — parading them in the streets of Gaza, abusing their dignity, holding them in inhumane conditions underground, and sexual abuse are all violations of international conventions.

Through misleading media reporting, circulation of falsified statistics, and cynical use of video footage of casualties, Hamas assumes correctly that a naïve international community will quickly accuse Israel of using disproportionate military force against groups of apparently unorganized civilians.

The irony is that the accepted rationales of terms such as “combatant,” “legitimate target,” “defended locality” and “human shield,” as well as the situation of “military necessity,” have become blurred in the context of a war on terror.

The tendency is to view combat against the terrorists as if they are actions of conventional warfare against states. In so doing, the international community overlooks the criminal nature of the terrorist acts that gave rise to the critical need for response.

This dilemma is compounded by a situation in the UN and other international political forums in which automatic majority resolutions are adopted condemning those that fight terror while naively or deliberately giving encouragement and carte blanche to those supporting and perpetrating the terror.

Conclusion

In light of the biased reaction of the international community and its automatic accusations against Israel of committing war crimes and even genocide, it is high time that responsible states come to terms with the fact that modern-day terror undermines and abuses accepted humanitarian norms and standards. This must be dealt with both militarily and legally. To do so requires addressing several unique issues that characterize the various components of terror, including:

•Religious ideology and motivation driving and glorifying terror, whether this be in the form of incitement by religious leaders or educational materials aimed at children and students encouraging hatred.

•The tendency of the Western world to view such fanatic religious glorification of terror through spectacles of “political correctness” or to overlook it out of fear of incitement, threats, violent reaction or accusations of Islamophobia.

•Media and social networking often cynically and deliberately manipulate the public through false reporting and circulation of false and inaccurate video footage and statistics.

•Transfer by states of weaponry, ammunition, technology and funding enables terror despite international conventions prohibiting and criminalizing such transfer.

•Terror groups and their state sponsors manipulate and abuse the UN, its related organs, human rights and international humanitarian law bodies. Such organizations serve to give respectability and acceptance to the terror groups, which in turn is interpreted by them as a green light and carte blanche for continued terror.

The essential question still remains as to whether today’s highly politically polarized international community has the capability and will to overcome its limitations, ignorance, naivete and misguided political correctness to adapt international humanitarian law to the urgent and vital needs of today in dealing with modern terror.

Parents of hostage launch ‘Week of Goodness’

By Amelie Botbol, JNS

The parents of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin will launch on Sunday a “Week of Goodness” to bring global attention to the plight of the remaining 120 captives held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“Jews and non-Jews all over the world can join or do their own thing simultaneously and post about it,” father Jon Polin told JNS. Hersh‘s left arm was blown off at the elbow by a grenade while trying to evade capture after fleeing the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7.

“We are saying that even if you are people who do good in the world, do more and do it with extra intention. There is something for everybody,” Jon Polin added.

The campaign, from July 14 to 21, will include an evening of communal singing at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, a Torah study session (accessible to the public via Zoom) and various volunteer activities.

An effort will be made to stage 120 minievents, each one focused on an individual hostage, featuring the Jewish ritual of hafrashat challah, in which portions of bread loaves are separated before being baked.

Jon and his wife, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, are also commissioning the writing of a new Torah scroll and will participate in a Kabbalat Shabbat at the hostage families’ tent in Jerusalem on July 19.

“We live in such a fractured world, in such a dark chapter, that we thought now is the time to repair with goodness to try to improve the situation,” Rachel said.

With Hamas holding citizens from 23 countries and five religions, Rachel said the initiative should remind interfaith leaders and global decision-makers to join their effort.

On Monday, she took part in a march at the Knesset marking nine months since Hamas’ invasion and massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel.

Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, with Hamas terrorists before their “humanitarian” release on Oct. 23, 2023. Screenshot

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of the American-Israeli hostage Hersh Golderg-Polin (pictured), in Geneva, calling for release of the hostages. Nathan Chicheportiche, Permanent Mission of Israel in Geneva.

Envoy: West faces a ‘radical Muslim occupation’

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

Why would Ofir Akunis, a popular Likud figure serving in his 15th year in the Knesset, with little history of activity in the Diaspora, accept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to become the consul general to New York?

“I think that this is the right place to be these days. Especially these days,” he said.

While Akunis generally hews close to Netanyahu in principle, he has carved out his own path, and while he rarely contradicts Netanyahu, he has avoided being sycophantic.

While Akunis, 51, may lack diplomatic bona fides, his appointment was largely viewed as one of a professional, technocratic hand coming on to steady a ship that’s been rocking since Hamas’s massacre.

“I think that the very main issue here is the attacks on the Israeli and Jewish students in the universities and among the campuses. This is unacceptable,” Akunis said of his top priority since taking over in May.

His very first meeting, he told JNS, concerned the attacks on Jews and Israelis at Columbia and New York University.

“This is urgent, because we are a few weeks before the new year on the campuses, and I’m calling from here to the American people and to the American leaders to do whatever they can to stop” the violent antisemitic protests that took place in the spring.

“If someone wants to protest against the State of Israel or against the Jewish communities, he can do it,” Akunis said, but not by waving Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS flags, as was seen at a number of campus protests.

“To scream and shout, ‘Oct. 7 was only the beginning,’ this is unacceptable,” he said. “This is not freedom of speech. It’s freedom of hate.” Akunis went so far as to say last week that New York City was in danger of falling under “radical Muslim occupation,” similar to European cities that have succumbed to violent Is-

lamist riots and so-called no-go zones that are essentially off-limits to non-Muslims.

“I think that radical Islam, influenced by Tehran and the Axis of Evil, is a huge problem, not only to the State of Israel, not only to the Jewish communities. It’s the Axis of Evil versus the Western world,” Akunis told JNS.

“How do I know it? I can hear from here, from this office — the screaming of ‘Death to America, to Israel, glory to Palestine.’ So it’s not about us anymore,” said Akunis, describing protests that have taken place outside the consulate.

He warned again of “a lot of neighborhoods” around Europe under “radical Muslim occupation,” citing London, Paris, Brussels and Malmö as examples.

“I didn’t know that such a thing would happen here in the United States,” Akunis said. “We

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can see it in the streets. It’s not my imagination.”

It is critical that Americans understand that the issue has gone far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, morphing into a broader antiAmerican bent, he said.

“I think that I need to send this message to my American friends. I think that this is the right message,” asking people to open their eyes to the support for terrorism taking place on New York’s streets.

And it’s happening during a broader time of political uncertainty and upheaval in the United States.

Akunis arrived in the midst of a critical election season. Asked who on the political battlefield he has found to partner with and who he is still trying to bring on board, Akunis said, “I’m trying to bring everybody to support Israel. I think that

the American administration, American people, American leaders, must stand with Israel.” He was quick to note, though, that “the Israelis are not part of the election campaign. The American people will choose the president and their administration. And we, of course, respect any result we’ll see here on Nov. 5. This is the main idea of democracy — the will of the people.

Perhaps getting in a delicate shot at those who have opined on Israel’s domestic political affairs, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who called for Netanyahu to stand down as premier, Akunis said he was “sure that you, the Americans, will respect the will of the people in Israel.”

Regarding his early dealings with American Jews, Akunis stressed the unity he’s seen in the community members that he’s been dealing with on the street level.

“This unity reflects strength and not the opposite. We will not be victims anymore,” he said, adding that “in the darkest days, you can see the light.”

In turn, the Jewish community looked for unity from its supposed partners and allies in other American minority and religious communities in the aftermath of Oct. 7, but largely encountered “radio silence.”

While American Jewish leaders have been quick to note their deep disappointment, worry and anger on that front, Akunis inferred to JNS that those concerns are overblown by the media, which he said tends to amplify the negative.

“I’m talking with them all the time,” he said of those erstwhile partners. “Beyond the big headlines, I think that most Americans, including the communities that you just mentioned, support Israel. There’s a lot of voices for Israel.”

While Akunis said he has not received a straight answer on why those communities went silent during Israel’s darkest hour, he is “asking them to reflect on their solidarity with Israel,” and he expects attitudes will change soon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on May 1, 2023. Yonatan Sindel, Flash90

High Performing in Ten Areas of Care

mountsinai.org/southnassau

WINE AND DINE

It’s time to slice (and smell) the garlic!

Kosher Kitchen

JoNI SchocKETT Jewish Star columnist

Garlic will soon be ready to harvest all over the country, but nowhere more than in Gilroy, California, the town known worldwide for its garlic. In fact, Christopher Ranch in Gilroy supplies America and the world with more than 100 million pounds of garlic each year, about 50% of the garlic grown in the US, most of which goes to Gilroy for processing.

But even those millions of pounds do not make the US the leading grower of garlic. That title belongs to China, which producees 73% of the world’s garlic — or 23 million tonnes. Which each tonne being 2,200 pounds. that translates to about 50 BILLION pounds! The world really does love Garlic.

Garlic festivals can be found everywhere from Massachusetts to California and many places in between — including at Waterdrinker North Folk in Riverhead in mid-September. There are also garlic festivals in England, France, Estonia, Finland, Japan and more. But, the largest garlic festival in the world is held each year in California and attracts more than 100,000 people over two days.

I recommend attending one of these festivals, even though there won’t be much to eat (they tend to be heavy with meat and more treif, but there is always garlic ice cream, plus packaged treats that are certified kosher). There are also beautiful local crafts, fun games and activities for kids. (In addition to the garlic festival, the venue on Long Island has activities throughout the summer, including hay rides, a corn maze, pumpkin and sunflowers picking, baby animals, face-painting and more.)

Most people love garlic and use it often. It can be used raw, roasted, fried, boiled and pickled, minced or whole, sliced or grated, the “stinking rose” adding a distinctive pungency to the food. We know that garlic is common to Italian foods, and everyone has made “chicken with 40 cloves of garlic,” but what exactly is the Jewish connection to this versatile non-herb?

The use of garlic goes back 5,000 years, to ancient Egypt. It was used as a medicinal food and was often fed to the slaves for strength, virility, and to cure ailments from pain to parasites. Thus, the Jews developed a taste for garlic and when they left Egypt, it is said that they mourned the loss of six foods, one of which was garlic.

But garlic was also a food that was believed to have mythical powers and was often buried in Egyptian tombs to help the dead live well in the afterlife. In fact, garlic bulbs were found in the sarcophagus of King Tutenkaman.

Garlic also has biblical connections. According to Gil Marks, in his “Encyclopedia of Jewish Food,” Ezra the scribe decreed that men should eat garlic on Shabbat night as an aphrodisiac.

The Babylonian Talmud stated that five things were said about Garlic: It satiates, it warms the body, it brightens one’s face, it increases semen, and it kills intestinal parasites.

Garlic was also believed to have magical and powerful qualities. Sephardim believed that garlic could ward off the evil eye because the Ladino word for garlic is ajo, which is very close to the word, ojo, which means eye. Ashkenazim also believed that garlic held some magical powers and often put a bulb of garlic on a tray near a baby boy during the bris or pidyon haben to bring the baby a long, strong, and virile life.

In a less positive note, both cuisines used garlic in their cooking in large amounts, especially on Shabbat, and at times, antisemitic people would use the smell of the cooking garlic to identify Jewish homes.

During the past few decades, garlic’s popularity as an integral ingredient in infinite numbers of recipes has increased so much that significantly increasing acres of land have been given over solely to growing garlic to meet the worldwide demand for this allium.

Did you know that garlic is neither a spice nor an herb? It most closely resembles the onion family, and is an allium, but does not grow in layers like onions, shallots or leeks. However, it does grow underground and is ready to harvest, like onions, when the green tops turn brown and fall over. And, if you grow it, make sure to cut off and save the garlic scapes, those long curling flower stems that must be cut off the garlic to ensure large bulbs, but are delicious in their own right.

Garlic is not eaten like onions; you cannot dice and fry it, or cut it into rings. It is a marvel unto itself, defying definition except to call it a heavenly addition to so many recipes.

Some people even make garlic part of dessert dishes, including ice cream! I have not yet tried that, but maybe this summer.

Summer Garlic, Leek, and Spinach Soup (Pareve or Dairy)

This is a light soup that is great on a cool summer night for a light dinner. You can leave out the flour for an even lighter, brothy soup. I like to process this until it is smooth before I add the spinach. If you do not like spinach, leave it off.

• 4 large heads garlic

• 6 to 8 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, divided

• 2 to 3 leeks, about 4 to 8 inches long, white and light green parts

• 1 onion, diced

• 2 quarts vegetable broth

• 4 tbsp flour

• 3 cups baby spinach leaves

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

OPTIONAL: dollop of sour cream for each bowl

GARNISH: Snipped Fresh Chives, crispy croutons

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove any loose papery skins from the garlic and trim each clove so about a quarter-inch of the top of the head is exposed. Take a large square of aluminum foil and place the heads of garlic in the foil. Drizzle the exposed tips with 2 to 3 Tbsp. olive oil and bring up the corners of the foil to make a leak-proof pouch. Place on a rimmed baking dish and roast for 40 to 50 minutes, until fragrant and golden brown. The garlic will be soft. Let cool and then open the pouch.

When cool, squeeze each garlic clove into a small bowl and discard the skin. Set aside. Slice the leeks in half lengthwise. Thinly slice each half crosswise, place in a bowl of cold water, swish to wash, and drain. Set aside.

Heat the broth in a pot until it comes to a strong simmer. Continue to simmer to reduce a bit.

Heat a large soup pot and add the remaining olive oil. Add the onions, and leeks and cook until slightly golden, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the roasted garlic and mix well, 4 to 6 minutes. Add the flour and mix constantly for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the hot broth and whisk to blend. Heat until simmering and let simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Add the baby spinach leaves and cook for another 5 minutes or until the spinach is wilted. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Serve with chives, crispy croutons and/or a dollop of sour cream. Serves 8 to 10.

NOTE: You can process this with an immersion blender before you add the spinach.

Gazpacho with a Twist (Pareve)

The twist here is the bread with adds texture and thickens the soup. For a very different flavor, try using seedless rye bread or even black bread. Make this soup a few hours before serving to preserve the tart ripe flavor and crisp texture.

• 3 lbs. ripe tomatoes

• 1 green bell pepper

• 1 small Vidalia or sweet onion

• 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped

6

12,

It’s the season to slice (and smell) the garlic…

Continued from page 12

• 2 stalks celery, chopped

• 1 small red onion, chopped

• 2 to 4 slices French bread, crusts removed, lightly toasted

• 4 to 6 cloves garlic, finely minced

• 4 Tbsp. olive oil

• 3 Tbsp. garlic wine vinegar

• 1 tsp. sugar (scant)

• 1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

• Pinch salt

• Pinch white pepper

• 3 cups tomato juice

• 1 cup tomato puree

• 1 cup water

• For Garnish:

• 1 cup garlic croutons

• Scallions

• 1 red pepper, seeded and chopped

Place the pepper, onion and garlic in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Remove to a large pot. Chop the other veggies to a consistency you like and add them to the large pot.

Peel the tomatoes by dropping them, a few at a time, into a large pot of boiling water. When the skin splits, remove them with a slotted spoon and drop them into ice water. They will peel very easily. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the core and some, but not all of the seeds, if you like. Otherwise, just cut the tomatoes; add them to the processor and process until they reach a consistency you like; chunky, smooth or somewhere in-between.

Transfer most of the tomatoes to the pot. (Leave about a cup or so.) Add the bread and process until smooth. Add the oil, vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, salt and pepper and process again until you have the consistency you like. Pour into the large pot and mix. Add the juice, puree and water to the pot and mix well. Chill for several hours.

Garnish with crispy garlic croutons and cut up veggies. Makes about 2 quarts.

Garlic Chicken One-Pot Meal (Meat)

• 4 chicken breast quarters, leg quarters, or boneless, skinless chicken breasts

• 1/2 cup flour seasoned with 1/2 tsp. each, salt, pepper, garlic powder

• 2 to 3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

• 8 to 10 red bliss potatoes cut in half

• 1/2 cup scallions, chopped

• 6 to 10 cloves garlic, chopped, up to 1/2 cup

• 2 Tbsp. flour (additional)

• 1-1/2 cups dry white wine

• 2 cups chicken broth (homemade is best)

• 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

• 1 large can artichoke hearts (not marinated) drained

• 1 cup freshly shelled peas, or snow pea pods, cut in half

OPTIONAL: 1 to 2 tbsp capers, rinsed well

Heat a large Dutch oven and add the Olive oil.

Mix flour, salt pepper and garlic powder in a bowl. Dredge chicken in it and place in the Dutch oven. Cook until golden, turning once to brown each side. Remove the chicken to a plate. Add the potatoes, scallions, garlic and a bit more oil if needed. Cook the potatoes, cut side down, until golden, 4 to 10 minutes. Stir often. Add the two tablespoons flour and mix constantly until the flour is no longer white and is mixed with the garlic and scallions. Add the wine and the broth and stir constantly until smooth and bubbly, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the Chicken to the pot, cover and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes (longer for breast quarters). Add the artichoke hearts and the minced parsley and mix well. Cover and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the chicken is completely cooked through. Serves 4.

Double Garlic Pasta with Summer Veggies (Pareve or Dairy)

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

• 6 to 10 cloves garlic, finely minced

• 6 to 10 cloves roasted garlic

• 1 zucchini, diced

• 1 yellow squash, diced

• 1 cup broccoli florets cut into small pieces

• 1 small eggplant, peeled and diced

• 2 cups grape tomatoes cut in half

• 1/4 cup basil, chopped

• 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

• 1 pound pasta, your choice (I love fettuccini)

• Red pepper flakes, to taste

• Grated Parmesan cheese, to taste

Roast the garlic by cutting off the tips of the cloves and brushing the tops with canola oil. Place in a shallow roasting dish and roast, covered with g foil, at 350 to 375 degrees, for about 40 to 60 minutes, until golden and softened. Let cool then squeeze the cloves out of the skins and discard the skins. You need about 2 heads for this.

Dice the veggies and place them in a large bowl.

Place the olive oil in a small saucepan and add the minced, fresh garlic. Heat until the oil begins to simmer, and then turn off the heat. This is the oil you will use for the rest of the recipe.

Heat a large skillet and add 2 to 3 tablespoons of the olive oil to the skillet. Add the broccoli and stir until it is bright green. Add the rest of the veggies and stir until crisp-tender, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.

In a small bowl or cup, mix the cloves of roasted garlic with about 3 to 4 teaspoons of the olive oil until a paste forms. Set aside.

Heat a large pot of water and bring to a boil. Add salt and cook the pasta until al dente.

Drain the pasta, reserving about 1 cup of the water.

Place the pasta in a large bowl, add the roasted garlic paste and about half of the pasta water and mix well. Add the veggies and the rest of the garlic oil. Add more of the pasta water if needed. Serve with grated cheese and red pepper flakes. Serves 4 to 6.

Broccoli and Garlic (Pareve)

This is a favorite gastronomical pairing in Italian kitchens. It is simple and delicious with the fresh, just picked broccoli of summer. It is great hot or cold.

• 2 lbs. fresh broccoli or broccolini

• 10 to 12 cloves garlic, finely minced

• 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

• Salt and pepper, to taste

OPTIONAL: Red pepper flakes, a bit of finely grated lemon zest

Heat a large skillet. Add the olive oil and the garlic and stir constantly until fragrant, 1 minute. If you are using red pepper flakes, add them now and stir for 30 seconds more. Add the broccoli florets and stir-fry until the broccoli turns bright green and softens a bit. If you like your broccoli softer, add a tablespoon of water, cover and steam for 45 seconds. Uncover, mix and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add a bit of grated lemon zest and mix for 30 seconds. Serves 6 to 8.

Garlic, Lemon, Herbs, and Spices Rub for Chicken (Pareve)

This makes enough for about 2 chickens cut into pieces.

• 1/4 cup minced garlic

• 1/4 cup grated lemon zest, yellow part only

• 1/3 cup minced parsley, dry is fine

• 2 Tbsp. minced thyme

• 2 Tbsp. minced rosemary

• 1/2 tsp. freshly cracked black pepper

• 1 tsp. kosher or smoked salt

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Mix all the ingredients except the oil in a small bowl. Let stand for about 15 minutes to blend flavors. Take half the mixture and add the oil. Mix well. Rub the paste over pieces of chicken and place in a non-reactive baking dish (stainless or glass) Cover and refrigerate for about an hour. Cook over a low flame, indirect heat on a grill, or in a 350- degree oven. Keep remaining rub in an airtight container. Mix with oil just before using.

Roasted Garlic and Shallot Salad Dressing (Pareve)

This is great as a salad dressing or brushed on chicken, burgers, salmon, or garlic bread before heating. It is really made to taste, so taste and adjust often.

• 10 large cloves garlic, peeled

• 1 to 2 large shallots, peeled

• 6 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, divided

• 2 to 4 Tbsp. red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, to taste

• 1 tsp. to 1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard, to taste

• 1 Tbsp. honey, to taste

• 1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste

• 1 to 2 tbsp water, if needed to cut acidity

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil or Canola oil

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the peeled garlic on a doubled sheet of foil and drizzle with 3 tablespoons olive oil. Fold the foil over and make a sealed pouch. Place on a rimmed baking sheet. Roast for about 30 minutes. Cut the shallots into lengthwise halves or quarters and place on another sheet of foil. Pinch the corners to make a rim to hold the oil. Add the remaining olive oil and place in the oven. Roast for 10 to 15 minutes, until some of the edges are brown. Turn the shallots and roast for another 15 minutes or until the shallots are softened and golden at the edges.

Remove the garlic and shallots from the oven and carefully open the foil covering the garlic. Make sure the cloves are golden and very soft. If not, cover and return to the oven. Let the garlic and shallots cool.

Add all the ingredients, including the oil from cooking the garlic and shallots, but excluding the 1/2 cup olive oil, to the food processor. Process until smooth. Slowly add the olive oil and process until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasonings. Makes 3/4 to 1 cup.

Pasta with broccoli and tomatoes.

ADOBE AI

Garlic soup.

Daniela Baumann, ADOBE Roasted broccoli with garlic.

ADOBE

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.

contact our columnists at: Publisher@TheJewishStar.com

Five towns candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY

תבש לש

Fri July 12 / Tamuz 6

Chukat

Candles: 8:07 • Havdalah: 9:16

Fri July 19 / Tamuz 13

Balak

Candles: 8:03 • Havdalah: 9:11

Tues July 23 / Tamuz 17

Fast of Tamuz

Fri July 26 / Tamuz 20

Pinchas

Candles: 7:57 • Havdalah: 9:05

Fri Aug 2 / Tamuz 27

Matos-Masei • Shabbos Mevarchim

Candles: 7:50 • Havdalah: 8:58

Fri Aug 10 / Av 5

Devarim

Candles: 7:41 • Havdalah: 8:49

Anger check: Acquiring or losing the world

rabbi sir jonathan sacks zt”l

There are some, say the Talmud, who acquire their world in an hour and others who lose it in an hour. No example of the latter is more arresting and bewildering than the famous episode in Chukat, this week’s parsha. The people have asked for water. G-d tells Moses to take a staff and speak to the rock and water will appear. This follows:

He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?’ Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the L-rd said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in Me enough to honor Me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them. (Num. 20:10-12)

“Is this the Torah and this its reward?” we are tempted to say. What was Moses’ sin that it merited such punishment?

In previous years I expressed my view that Moses did not sin, nor was he punished. It was simply that each generation needs its own leaders. Moses was the right — the only — leader capable of taking the Israelites out of Egypt. They needed another kind of leader, and a different style of leadership, to take the next generation into the Promised Land.

In considering the ethics of the Bible, it seems more appropriate to look at a different explanation, the one given by Maimonides in Shemoneh Perakim (the Eight Chapters) that form the preface to his commentary to the Mishnah, Tractate Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers.

In the course of these chapters Maimonides sets out a surprisingly contemporary account of Judaism as a training in emotional intelligence. Healthy emotions are essential to a good and happy life, but temperament is not something we choose. Some people just happen to be more patient or calm or generous-spirited or optimistic than others.

Emotions were at one stage called the “passions,” a word that comes from the same root as “passive,” implying that they are feelings that happen to us rather than reactions we choose. Despite this, Maimonides believed that with sufficient training it is possible for us to overcome our destructive emotions and reconfigure our affective life.

In general, Maimonides, like Aristotle, believed that emotional intelligence exists in striking a balance between excess and deficiency, too much and too little. Too much fear makes me a coward, too little makes me rash and foolhardy, taking unnecessary risks. The middle way is courage. There are, however, two exceptions, says Maimonides: pride and anger. Even a little pride (some Sages suggested “an eighth of an eighth”) is too much. Likewise even a little anger is wrong.

That, says Maimonides, is why Moses was punished: because he lost his temper with the people when he said, “Listen, you rebels.”

To be sure, there were other occasions on which he lost his temper — or at least appeared to lose it. His reaction to the sin of the Golden Calf, which included smashing the Two Tablets, was hardly eirenic or relaxed. But that case was different. The Israelites had committed a sin. G-d Himself was threatening to destroy the people. Moses had to act decisively and with sufficient force to restore order to a people wildly out of control.

Here, though, the people had not sinned. They were thirsty. They needed water. G-d was not angry with them. Moses’ intemperate reaction was therefore wrong, says Maimonides.

To be sure, anger is something to which we are all prone. But Moses was a leader, and a leader must be a role model. That is why Moses was punished so heavily for a failure that might have been more lightly punished in someone less exalted.

In addition, says Maimonides, by losing his temper Moses failed to respect the people and might have demoralized them. Knowing that Moses was G-d’s emissary, the people might have concluded that if Moses was angry with them, so too was G-d. Yet they had done no more than ask for water. Giving the people the impression that G-d was angry with them was a failure to sanctify G-d’s Name.

Thus one moment’s anger was sufficient to deprive Moses of the reward surely most precious to him, of seeing the culmination of his work by leading the people across the Jordan and into the Promised Land.

The Sages were outspoken in their critique of anger. They would have thoroughly approved of the modern concept of anger management. They did not like anger at all, and reserved some of their sharpest language to describe it.

“The life of those who can’t control their anger is not a life,” they said. (Pesachim 113b)

Reish Lakish said, “When a person becomes angry, if he is a sage his wisdom departs from

Moses was punished heavily for a failure that might have been more lightly punished in someone less exalted.

him; if he is a prophet his prophecy departs from him.” (Pesachim 66b)

Maimonides said that when someone becomes angry it is as if he has become an idolater. (Hilchot Deot 2:3)

What is dangerous about anger is that it causes us to lose control. It activates the most primitive part of the human brain that bypasses the neural circuitry we use when we reflect and choose on rational grounds. While in the grip of a hot temper, we lose the ability to step back and judge the possible consequences of our actions. The result is that in a moment of irascibility we can do or say things we may regret for the rest of our lives.

For that reason, rules Maimonides, there is no “middle way” when it comes to anger (Hilchot Deot 2:3). Instead we must avoid it under any circumstance. We must go to the opposite extreme. Even when anger is justified, we must avoid it.

There may be times when it is necessary to look as if we are angry. That is what Moses did when he saw the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf, and broke the Tablets of stone. Yet even when we outwardly display anger, says Maimonides, inwardly we should be calm.

The Orchot Tzaddikim (a 15th century commentator) notes that anger destroys personal relationships.

Short-tempered people scare others, who therefore avoid coming close to them. Anger drives out the positive emotions — forgiveness, compassion, empathy, and sensitivity. The result is that irascible people end up lonely, shunned, and disappointed. Bad tempered people achieve nothing but their bad temper (Kiddushin 40b). They lose all else.

The classic role model of patience in the face of provocation was Hillel. The Talmud (Shabbat 30b-31a) says that two people

once made a wager with each other, saying, “He who makes Hillel angry shall receive 400 zuz.”

One said, “I will go and provoke him.”

It was Erev Shabbat and Hillel was washing his hair. The man stood by the door of his house and called, “Is Hillel here? Is Hillel here?” Hillel robed himself and came out, saying, “My son, what do you seek?”

“I have a question to ask,” he said.

“Ask, my son,” replied Hillel.

He said, “Why are the heads of the Babylonians round?”

“My son, you ask a good question,” said Hillel. “The reason is that they have no skilled midwives.”

The man left, paused, then returned, crying out, “Is Hillel here? Is Hillel here?”

Again, Hillel abandoned his bathing, robed, and came out, saying, “My son, what do you seek?”

“I have another question.”

“Ask, my son.”

“Why are the eyes of the Palmyreans bleared?” Hillel replied, “My son, you ask a good question. The reason is that they live in sandy places.” He left, waited, then came back a third time, calling, “Is Hillel here? Is Hillel here?”

Again, Hillel dressed and came out, saying, “My son, what do you seek?”

“I have another question.”

“Ask, my son.”

“Why are the feet of Africans wide?”

“My son, you ask a good question. The reason is that they live in watery marshes.”

“I have many questions to ask,” said the man, “but I am worried that you might become angry.” Hillel then sat and said, “Ask all the questions you have to ask.”

See Sacks on page 22

Chukat tells the many songs of our leadership

Rabbi DR. tzvi HERsH wEiNREb Orthodox Union

Everyone has his or her own voice. Some express it loudly and clearly, some mumble or whisper. Our voices can be expressed through speech, the written word, postures and gestures, and song.

In a book he wrote for managers of organizations coping with the complex challenges of the 21st century work environment, Stephen Covey makes the following statement: “There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within

each one of us to find our voice in life.”

That statement is the basis for his book, “The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness,” designed to help organizational leaders find their voices and inspire others to find theirs.

Each of the great leaders of the Jewish people, from biblical times to the present, had his or her own distinctive voice. The voice of Abraham was heard throughout his world; the voice of Isaac was almost silent in comparison. Moses described his own voice as defective, yet he was capable of supreme eloquence. Joshua’s voice is never described as wanting in any way, yet we have few examples.

Some of our great leaders, including Moses, expressed their voices in song. We have the Song of the Sea in which the voice of Moses domi-

nates; his sister Miriam responds to Moses’ song in her own voice; the prophetess Deborah and King David are exemplary in their ability to use

Each of our Jewish leaders had his or her own distinctive voice.

the medium of song to express their unique and distinctive voices.

All of the above are examples of how individual Jewish heroes and heroines found and expressed their voices. This week’s Torah portion,

Chukat, provides an example of an entirely different kind of a voice: not the voice of one person but that of an entire group,of an entire nation. It is the Song of the Well, of the Be’er: The well where the L-rd said to Moses, ‘Assemble the people that I may give them water.’ Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well — sing to it — The well which the chieftains dug, Which the nobles of the people started With the sceptre, and with their own staffs. And from the wilderness to Mattanah, and from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to Bamoth.”

(Numbers 21:16-19)

This is much briefer then the song Moses led See Weinreb on page 22

Parah aduma and intertwining of life and death

From Heart of Jerusalem

Rabbi biNNY

FREEDMaN Jewish Star columnist

How important is it for us to comprehend what we do? Where lies the balance between pure faith and our need to understand?

This week’s parsha, Chukat, provides the ultimate example of that which is impossible to comprehend: the, the red heifer. (Bamidbar 19:1-2).

Rashi, quoting the Midrash, explains that this law is impossible to comprehend, and therefore one should not, perhaps even may not, attempt to fathom it. It is G-d’s decree.

When a person comes into contact with a dead body, he is rendered tamei, or spiritually

contaminated. To again achieve a state of ritual purity, he must undergo the ritual of the parah aduma.

Paradoxically, while the ashes of the parah aduma purify the person who is impure, they also cause the pure person who gathers the ashes to become impure. It is this incomprehensible phenomenon — that the parah aduma purifies the impure while contaminating the pure — that causes the Talmud to declare that even King Shlomo could not fathom this mitzvah.

Rashi seems to suggest that we are not allowed to attempt an understanding of this type of mitzvah: “It is a chok, a decree from before Me, and you have no right to ponder it” (Rashi, Bamidbar 19:2).

Maimonides on the other hand, openly espouses the value of attempting to understand: “Even though all the chukim in the Torah are de-

crees … it is worthy to explore them, and everything to which you can assign a reason, give to it a reason” (Hilchot Temurah 4:13).

So which is it? Should we be attempting to understand that which Hashem asks of us, or are we perhaps better off relying on pure faith?

This week’s portion is actually a bridge between the first generation that left Egypt, and the second generation, born largely in the desert, who are about to enter the land of Israel. Both Miriam and Aaron die (20:1; 22-29), and in the infamous incident at Mei Merivah, Hashem decrees that Moshe too, will not enter the land.

As such, it is strange that the laws regarding a person who becomes impure through contact with death are only mentioned now, on the eve of entering the land of Israel. Indeed, the Talmud suggests (Gittin 60a) that this mitzvah was given

nearly 40 years earlier, and yet the Torah chooses to place it here!

In fact, the theme of Chukat is the quintessential experience we can never comprehend: death.

It’s about coming into contact with death — the deaths of Miriam and Aaron, and the decree of Moshe’s approaching death. The verses even share with us some of the wanderings of the 40 years, during which the entire generation of Egypt dies out as well. Ultimately, there is no portion more fitting for a mitzvah we cannot understand than Chukat, which is all about death, the ultimate mystery.

It is similarly no accident that this week we encounter the concept of the righteous who suffer, when the three leaders of the Jewish people (Moshe, Aaron, and Miriam) are not allowed to enter the land.

The mysterious giants of Torah, Sichon and Og

In the battles that round out the end of Parshat Chukat, Moshe and the Israelites defeat Sichon and Og and their respective nations. Before the battle with Og, Moshe is told by G-d not to fear for “I have given him into your hands.” The Torah describes both kings as “giants,” though the nature of their actual size is never discussed in the Torah itself. The Talmud (Niddah 64a) further tells us that the two kings were brothers, and the rabbis talked about their individual stories, including discussions about how

they each merited the longevity they enjoyed in their lives.

Some accounts indicate they may have been living since the time of the flood (around 800 years) while others say they were living from the time of Avraham (500 years).

The one with greater merits was Og, who is attributed with being the palit or refugee from the Sdom war of Bereishit 14, who came to tell Avraham about his nephew Lot’s capture. It was the merit of helping Avraham save Lot that caused Moshe to fear Og’s infallibility (Niddah 64a). Moshe was more concerned with Og’s merits than his size.

The Talmud (Brachot 54b) describes the battle encounter of Moshe against Og. “Og uprooted a mountain of three parasangs and placed it on his head [to cover the Israelite camp with it]. G-d

set grasshoppers upon it, and they burrowed a hole in the mountain and it fell round his neck. He tried to pull it off his head with his teeth but could not. … How tall was Moshe? Ten cubits. He grabbed hold of an axe ten cubits long, leaped ten cubits, struck Og in the ankle and killed him.”

On a simple literal level, Moshe was no slouch himself. A height of ten cubits would be somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet tall. While such a height is not something we see as likely, it is almost in the realm of the explainable.

At the same time, if Og’s ankle was 30 cubits high, we can only imagine how big he was — a few hundred feet tall! He would make King Kong (25 feet) look smaller than a teddy bear in his eyes.

In a 2005 article in Forbes.com entitled “The biology of King Kong,” the author quotes John

Hutchinson, a researcher of large animals, who estimated Kong would weigh anywhere from 20 to 60 tons. He would not be athletic and would barely be able to move, supporting such weight on two legs.

In his book “Sacred Monsters,” Rabbi Natan Slifkin indicates a giant of such magnitude (skyscraper height) would weigh in the millions of pounds.

Given that the indicated height of Og as suggested in the Talmud is likely not meant to be taken literally due to the biological improbability, how then are we to understand the Talmud?

In an essay that appeared in “Professors on the Parashah,” Bar Ilan Prof. Admiel Kosman quotes the Rashba, who explains each image as a metaphor to merits.

Pulitzer hid from the prize of his religious past

No name in journalism is as emblematic of the profession itself as Joseph Pulitzer. This is not on account of talented reportage, scandals uncovered or a gifted personality. Rather, the name earned its longevity through its bearer’s endowment of a much sought after journalistic prize, the crown jewel of the American writer’s craft, bar none. So much for Pulitzer, the name. The man behind that name is another story.

A recently published biography, “Pulitzer: a life in politics, print, and power” (Harper Collins, 2010), by James McGrath Morris, offers a detailed study of the life and times of this complicated personality, studded with misery, and dysfunctional personal, family, and professional relationships. Most intriguing to this writer was the relationship and regard as well as disregard that this distinguished personage had toward Judaism, the faith of his birth.

Joseph Pulitzer was born in Mako, Hungary in 1847. Most previous biographies gloss over, or ignore one major

fact of his background: his birth faith. Pulitzer was born into a Hungarian Jewish family, though this in no way was to neither play a role in his religious life nor govern his moral standards.

While such behavior was not unique among European Jews of that era, Pulitzer’s life story and notoriety made his assimilatory behavior rather strange. Unlike previous biographers, Morris delves deep into Pulitzer’s religious affiliations, tracing them back to childhood and then working their way to adulthood. Family tragedy is given due regard, noting the pos-

sible influence of the deaths of all but one of his siblings, and the early death of his father, upon his resolute desire for independence that took him to these shores. That desire led him to join the US military during the Civil War, and to determinedly master the English tongue and thus make a name for himself in American journalism. In all these efforts his distance from his Jewish background seemed deliberate. He intermarried and raised his progeny as Christian Protestants. Unlike Disraeli, Pulitzer was never to identify with nor involve himself in anything remotely related to the faith of his ancestors. Nevertheless, just like Disraeli, according to Morris, this in no way prevented bigots from attacking him on the basis of his Jewish birth.

See Gerber on page 22

Kosher bookworm

alaN JaY GERbER Jewish Star columnist

See Freedman on page 22

See Billet on page 22

Parsha of the week

Rabbi avi billEt Jewish Star columnist

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Witnessing a jihadi-leftist convergence

Younger readers may not have heard of Carlos the Jackal and older readers may have forgotten (because sometimes that’s how it goes, as we were reminded last week). So, let me tell you his story.

Ilich Ramirez Sanchez was born in Venezuela in 1949. His father, a wealthy Marxist lawyer, gave him his first name in honor of Vladimir Ilich Lenin.

From 1968 to 1970, young Ilich studied at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.

He then went for training with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was — and remains today — a secular Marxist-Leninist anti-Israel terrorist organization.

His PFLP mentors nicknamed him “Carlos.” Journalists added “the Jackal” after he became established in the terrorism business. By his own count, some 2,000 people were killed in more than 100 bombings, assassinations and other attacks carried out under Carlos’s “coordination.”

Among the plots in which he was involved was the 1974 occupation of the French embassy in The Hague by members of the Japanese Red Army, a militant communist organization.

In 1975, French detectives tracked Carlos to a Paris apartment. He invited them in, offered them drinks, then pulled out a machine pistol and opened fire, killing two and wounding a third.

Later that year, he and five colleagues stormed an OPEC meeting in Vienna, killing three people and taking more than 60 hostages.

An adept negotiator, he arranged to be flown to Algeria, where he was warmly received. He collected millions of dollars in ransom for his hostages.

To make a long story a little shorter, in 1994 French agents captured Carlos in Sudan and transferred him to France, where he was tried and convicted of multiple homicides and sentenced to life in prison.

While incarcerated, Carlos converted to Islam. At the time, that seemed like a curious twist.

The terrorist Carlos the Jackal was an early

In 2003, he published a book titled “Revolutionary Islam,” in which he expressed admiration for both the Islamic Republic of Iran and Osama bin Laden. He called the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 a “lofty feat.”

This slice of history has been on my mind as I’ve watched woke leftists join with Hamasniks and other self-proclaimed jihadis to demonstrate, often violently, on campuses, by the White House, outside the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in New York City, and many other locations against Israel, Zionists, Jews, America and the West.

There’s more: China, ruled by the most powerful communist party in history, has been forging closer relations with the Tehran regime.

In March, Wang Kejian, a Chinese diplomat, met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar and, according to Hamas, said, “The Hamas movement is part of the Palestinian national fabric and China is keen on relations with it.”

TikTok, the popular social media platform owned by Bytedance, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has been using its significant algorithmic powers to propagandize against Israel, not least among young Americans.

There’s also this: Guermantes Lailari, a retired US Air Force officer, now a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, reports that the Israel Defense Forces have found large amounts of advanced Chinese military equipment and weapons technology in Gaza. Moreover, tunnel engineers from China’s People’s Liberation Army helped Hamas build the sophisticated, extensive and expensive fortress under Gaza, a key strategic component in the ongoing war against Israel.

Why would atheist Communists support Islamists who shout “Allahu Akbar!” as they murder and rape?

Part of the answer, I think, is that Israel is seen, with justification, as America’s loyal ally and, beyond that, an outpost of Western values in the Middle East — despite efforts over the years by Israeli leaders to maintain amicable relations with Beijing, including by hiring Chinese firms to (can you guess?) bore Israeli highway tunnels.

In other words, anti-Zionism coincides with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s broader goal: to diminish America as a serious superpower in a world that will be dominated by Xi’s CCP.

As America goes, so goes the West — and both Islamists and leftists want the West gone or at least made to submit. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was candid, calling the 1979 Islamic Revolution that he led in Iran a fight “against the Western world.”

Now recall that, in 1987, Jesse Jackson led 500 protestors at Stanford University chanting:

“Hey hey, ho ho, Western civ has got to go.” Their complaint, or so they claimed, was that courses on Western civilization implied Western superiority that didn’t comport with “multiculturalism.”

University administrators — compliant then as now — replaced Western civ with courses on “Cultures, Ideas and Values,” and “Western imperialism and colonialism.”

These courses have stressed the ostensible sins of Europe and America, questioning the West’s foundational values of open inquiry, free markets, constitutional democracy and human equality.

Scant attention has been given to the empires of the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa and their abhorrent practices (e.g., the Ottoman and Arab slave trades and Aztec child sacrifice).

Middle East studies departments were trans-

formed into centers of “anti-Orientalist” activism, especially against Israel.

Meanwhile, ignored on most campuses, are the contemporary empire builders in Tehran, Moscow and Beijing.

Are there contradictions between jihadism on the one hand and the ideologies of the CCP and the woke left on the other? Carlos and his acolytes apparently think not.

In “Revolutionary Islam,” Carlos called on “all revolutionaries, including those of the left, even atheists” to accept the leadership of Islamists because they represent the only “transnational force capable of standing up against the enslavement of nations” given the collapse of the Soviet Union. (China’s relations with Washington were amicable 20 years ago.)

He predicted: “From now on terrorism is going to be more or less a daily part of the landscape of your rotting democracies.”

An illustrative image of the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez aka Carlos the Jackal. Deep AI

For America’s Jews, every day is October 7

Phyllis Chesler

American Jews are experiencing our own version of Oct. 7 every hour of every day in every city.

Like many Israelis, American Jews are only just now realizing the extent to which the world may actually want us dead — and we find this somewhat unbelievable. However, we cannot deny it any longer.

So many of our old alliances, colleagues, friends, favorite athletes, musicians, celebrities — even some of our family members — genuinely believe that Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre was justified or at least “understandable” given Israel’s alleged “occupation” of Arab/Muslim lands and that Israel’s war of self-defense in Gaza amounts to a “genocide.”

What’s new is the intensity and non-stop flooding of our daily, waking lives by lethal, antisemitic/anti-Zionist lies funded by Iran, Qatar and many “woke” American foundations.

Similarly provocative outrages have steadily occurred throughout the 21st century. Israel

How do Americans, especially but not only Jews, demilitarize the hate propaganda against Israel and against America?

Apartheid Weeks were never stopped or punished on campuses; rather, they were defended as avatars of free speech and Academic freedom. However, they never led to months-long encampments or building takeovers or to so many upclose and personal attacks on visible Jews and Jewish students.

In a sense, just as Israeli leaders “managed” Hamas, so too have American Jews, including most of our large Jewish organizations, “managed” all the dangerously biased coverage, UN resolutions and anti-Israel curricula: “It will go away; it could be worse; it won’t do that much harm; they may have a point.”

Wrong! Post-Oct. 7 — just as the IDF discovered the extent to which presumably civilian Gaza was, in fact, a completely militarized labyrinth of hidden tunnels — American Jews have realized that all the “manageable” propaganda and campus and street activism was waiting beneath the radar to explode into a global expression of hatred for Jews and the only Jewish state.

Since Oct. 7, Americans (as well as Europeans) have been subjected to an almost non-stop and very public anti-Israel campaign: letters, resolutions, petitions, DEI curriculum initiatives, all of which condemn Israel for daring to exist. They are supported by celebrated artists, “thought leaders,” academics and legislators. Simultaneously, as this flood of infamy rolled over the land, Israeli professors, scientists and diplomats were being disinvited, defamed and increasingly isolated by their Western counterparts.

At the same time, every week, sometimes daily, ominously masked and keffiyeh-bedecked demonstrators have blocked traffic and shamelessly interrupted sports and music events and even major holidays. This happened most recently during the July 4 celebrations in America. Apparently, American independence is less important than “freeing” Palestine “from the river to the sea.”

In unison — almost as if they have taken a page from the 9/11 hijackers who excelled in choreographed, simultaneous attacks — Israelhaters, often individuals and sometimes mobs, continued to tear down posters of Israeli hostages. When their actions and faces were caught on video, they smirked, cursed and seemed very pleased with themselves.

Someone, alone or with collaborators, tore down such posters on Capitol Hill outside Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.)’s office over the July 4 holiday. For good measure, a masked band of 50 protestors with drums and horns demonstrated in front of his home in the middle

of the night. His crime? He has favored sanctioning Iran, led visits to Israel and (gasp!) is a Jew.

Last week, a Jewish cemetery in Cincinnati and a kosher bagel shop in Miami were vandalized. Many restaurants in my own once-fair city have been splashed with red paint meant to appear as blood and covered with jihadist graffiti. Every day, we discover how many pro-jihadist Jew-haters are legislators, city council members, university administrators, professors, psychologists, publishers, etc.

How do Americans, especially but not only Jews, demilitarize the hate propaganda against

See Chesler on page 22

Key to Zionist success: Assuming responsibility

Zionism is one of the most successful political movements in human history. Early Zionist leaders aimed to create a Jewish state. In this state, Jews would always be able to find refuge in times of trouble. Its citizens would act as a light unto the nations and exemplars of moral values. The Jewish people could build a prosperous nation that offered its citizens the opportunity to achieve their dreams.

The Zionists’ dream of a Jewish state seemed impossible. Yet within a comparatively small amount of time in relation to the Jews’ 2,000-year exile, they succeeded.

More than any other, the factor that led to Zionism’s and Israel’s great success was G-d’s help. But G-d helps those who help themselves. The early Zionists’ insistence on taking responsibility for their own destiny was key to their success.

Zionism was built on the principle that the Jewish people need to take responsibility for their own future. As a result, Zionists focused on growth and development. With few resources, early Zionists did whatever they could with whatever they had. They advocated politically and began building the infrastructure for a state years before they could declare independence.

The Jews didn’t want to wage war against any enemies but were left with no choice.

Zionists refused to look to others to secure their own future, making self-determination the priority for the Jewish people. As Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion said, “Our future does not depend on what the Gentiles will say but on what the Jews will do.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog echoed Ben-Gurion’s comments at the event celebrating the 125th

anniversary of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.

“From the moment of its establishment, Zionism was a movement that championed shared responsibility for our destiny,” Herzog said. “And today, now that the mission rests on our shoulders, we must bear it together. Only together. Together shall we follow the path of the visionary of our state and Zionism’s founding generation; together shall we believe in Zionism and be proud of it; together shall we choose responsibility every day and keep our country and our people safe.”

Zionism and the State of Israel have always sought to move forward by taking responsibility.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was the Palestinian drive to wipe Israel off the map by refusing to take their destiny into their own hands. They preferred to blame others for their situation. Their refusal to take responsibility for their own destiny has been key to their failure. Playing the victim card as an excuse impedes growth. Zionism did the opposite. It used the historical victimization of the Jews to inspire the Jewish people to take responsibility and move forward.

In an absurd perversion of rationality, the Palestinians and their Arab allies refused the United Nations’ 1947 offer of an independent state and chose to wage war against the Jews. Upon losing the war, they didn’t reverse course and sign a peace deal with the Jews. They waged more unsuccessful wars and a 75-year campaign of terrorism against the Jewish state.

Instead of recognizing the foolishness of their ways, they combined playing the victim and using violence.

Palestinian nationalism is characterized more by demands for the Jewish people’s land and the destruction of the Jews themselves than the Palestinians’ own advancement. As Hamas states in the preamble to its own charter: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

It further states: “[Peace] initiatives and so-

called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. … Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam. …

“There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility. … The day the enemies usurp part of Muslim land, jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of jihad be raised.”

Unable to achieve their objective of destroying Israel and the Jewish people, the Palestinians have attempted to galvanize public sympathy for their cause by blaming the Jewish state for their constant

failures. This has doomed them to eternal failure.

The contrast between Zionism’s ideal of taking responsibility and the Palestinians’ refusal to take responsibility is the primary reason Western nations sympathize with the Palestinians but engage with Israel. The nations of the world pity the Palestinians and admire the Israelis.

To understand Zionism, the value of taking responsibility for one’s destiny must be understood. After the Holocaust, it would have been easy for the Jewish people to blame the Western world for either conducting, supporting or ignoring the genocide. The Zionist leaders understood that playing the victim card would earn the world’s pity but not their support, and to achieve their own state, the Jewish people needed support, not pity.

Anti-Israel and anti-police demonstrators gather outside a police gala at the Intrepid Museum in New York on June 6. Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Israeli founding father and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion declares independence beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl, on May 14, 1948. Zoltan Kluger, GPO

Uri PiliChOWsKi

Netanyahu’s bright red lines for ‘the deal’

caroline glick

Israel Hayom

srael’s media is laser-focused on the prospect of “the deal” with Hamas. Will “the deal” come to fruition or will Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scuttle it?

The premise of the discourse is that “the deal,” is objectively desirable. Anyone who tells you otherwise — particularly, if his name is Netanyahu — is a liar acting solely out of personal, political and morally corrupt considerations.

The leaders of the security establishment, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and Mossad director David Barnea, support “the deal” and insist that Israel can live with the concessions it requires Jerusalem to make to Hamas.

Ahead of a new round of discussions about “the deal” this week in Qatar and Egypt, Netanyahu convened Israel’s negotiating team led by Barnea and Bar on Sunday. Following the meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office published five “red lines” for a deal ahead of the talks.

Broadly, “the deal” involves a six-week ceasefire during which Hamas would release 20 live, predominantly female hostages. Hamas is currently holding around 120 hostages, of whom some 80 are presumed alive. Israel would be required to release hundreds of terrorists from its prisons, including murderers, to secure the release of the 20 women.

Netanyahu’s first red line is for Israel to retain its freedom to resume offensive operations after the six-week ceasefire. Hamas long demanded that Israel concede that position and agree that the ceasefire would be permanent. Hamas is now willing to give up that demand. But it replaced it with a demand that the US guarantee that Israel will not reinstate military operations in Gaza. Hamas’s reasonable assumption is that Israel will not defy the United States.

Netanyahu’s first red line makes it impossible for the administration to accept Hamas’s demand.

Netanyahu’s second red line requires Hamas to be blocked from smuggling arms from Egypt during the pause in fighting.

His third red line requires a mechanism to ensure that no armed men are able to return to northern Gaza from southern Gaza.

These two red lines come in response to Hamas’s demand that Israel withdraw its forces from the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors during the six-week ceasefire (which Hamas, and its international supporters, seek to render permanent).

The Philadelphi corridor controls Gaza’s border with Egypt. On Oct. 7, Israel was stunned by the expanse of Hamas’s arsenal and realized that Egypt—far from acting as Israel’s partner in its effort to prevent Hamas from expanding its military power — was enabling it.

Since Israel seized control over the Philadelphi corridor, it has exposed dozens of cross-border underground tunnels. One, in particular, is a massive, three-story highway. Speaking to Amit Segal of Channel 12 news, IDF commanders said on Monday that what Israel has exposed to date is less than half of what Hamas has built yet to discover. So the situation remains threatening, and Egypt is not helping to remedy it — to the contrary.

This brings us to the Netzarim corridor, which IDF forces began constructing several months ago. The Netzarim corridor runs east to west in central Gaza. It enables Israel to control the traffic of Gazans from south to north, as well as prevents Hamas’s reconstitution of its political and military power in northern Gaza by blocking the return of its forces to the area.

Given the strategic significance of corridors, the imperative for Israel to maintain Netanyahu’s red lines is self-evident.

Netanyahu’s fourth red line requires Israel to “maximize the number of living hostages freed during the initial ceasefire.”

Hamas took 250 men, women and children on Oct. 7, and still holds 120 of them nine months later because it rightly views the hostages as its strategic trump card. Since 1985, when Israel agreed to swap Palestinian terrorists for Israeli hostages for the first time, every time that Iran’s terror armies have held Israeli hostages, they have successfully used them to achieve strategic gains.

If Israel removes its forces from Gaza, including from the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors, and releases hundreds of terrorists from jail to secure the release of 20 hostages, what will it have to give to receive the release of the other 100, including 60 people presumed to still be alive?

Without troops on the ground, without the ability to reinstate combat operations, the cost of negotiating their release would be utterly prohibitive for Israel. As a result, either Israel will capitulate and start the countdown for its destruction to get them released, or it will leave the rest of the hostages in Gaza indefinitely with scant military or diplomatic prospects for their rescue.

Netanyahu’s final red line requires that “the deal” not undermine any of Israel’s war goals. This sounds redundant. But actually, it is important because it includes aspects of the deal that he doesn’t mention explicitly. One of the deal’s components being presented as “pro-Israel” stands out in particular. This component would see an “Arab force” take over security responsibility in Gaza. The idea is that forces from moderate Arab states at peace with Israel would be in charge.

There are two problems with this. First, as has been discovered regarding Egypt, ostensibly moderate and friendly Arab regimes are not necessarily moderate or friendly when it comes to Israel’s war against Hamas specifically or in relation to the Palestinian goal of annihilating Israel more generally. Bringing Arab forces into Gaza effectively merges the existential Palestinian conflict with the all-but-resolved Arab conflict with Israel. Since most Arabs support the Palestinians against Israel, this would undermine the peaceful relations Israel has built with Arab regimes across decades.

Netanyahu’s final red line would reject a deal that in any way undermines Israel’s war goals— and that includes preserving Israel’s peaceful ties with its moderate Arab neighbors.

These red lines need to be viewed as an all-ornothing package. Either the negotiators secure all of them, or there is no deal. Their implication is

obvious. Israel will accept a hostage deal. Indeed, it is willing to pay a massive price to achieve one. But it will not undermine its position strategically. It will not enable Hamas to win this war. It will not abandon the rest of the hostages. It will not sign its national death warrant.

Given the near-unanimous support of the public for the goals of the war, we should pay attention to the actors that have condemned Netanyahu’s red lines.

Aside from leftist politicians and activists, who can be expected to condemn him, Netanyahu’s red lines have also been sharply criticized by senior officers in the Mossad and the IDF. Channel 12 quoted two security sources who castigated Netanyahu’s decision to publish his red lines. “Netanyahu pretends that he wants a deal but is working to torpedo it,” one said. That source insisted that Netanyahu was acting for personal reasons.

Given the strategic significance of corridors, the imperative for Israel to maintain these lines is self-evident.

A second source insisted that Netanyahu refuses to see the half-full side of the cup. Netanyahu, he said, “emphasizes the gaps” between Hamas and Israel, rather than the agreements they have reached to date.

Statements like these and others raise the disconcerting sense that Israel’s General Staff and its other security services reject the government’s decision to fight for victory in the war. Ynet news reported that the generals, including Gallant, believe that securing the release of 20 hostages is more important than maintaining control over the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors. This means that they aren’t committed to the government’s war goals of defeating Hamas militarily and politically, and to preventing the terror group from rebuilding its military and political power.

Halevi’s spokesmen made the case all but explicitly in an interview Monday with ABC News.

“Will you and me be talking five years from

now about Hamas as a terror organization in Gaza? The answer is yes,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the IDF.

Asecond source of criticism of Netanyahu’s red lines is the Biden administration. President Joe Biden himself presented the broad outlines of “the deal” last month and insisted that it was Israel’s offer. In intervening weeks, it became clear that Biden was speaking for himself and not for Israel. True, Israel agreed to “the deal.” But it agreed to “the deal” with Netanyahu’s red lines.

The administration has been pushing full throttle for Netanyahu to accept “the deal” without his deadlines. It is reportedly threatening sanctions against Netanyahu if he rejects it.

According to a high-level source, the International Criminal Court’s declared plan to issue international arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant was not an ICC initiative. Rather, it was the brainchild of Maher Bitar, senior National Security Council director for the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community. Bitar, one of the most powerful officials in the administration, is a former UNRWA employee and views Israel as an illegitimate state. He also serves as special counsel to the president.

Chatter is now being heard that the White House is threatening Netanyahu, saying the ICC will issue the arrest warrants if he refuses to accept “the deal.”

Rhetoric aside, given the strategic consequences of “the deal,” the administration’s clear position is that it supports Hamas’s victory over Israel in this war.

Netanyahu has long insisted that he is willing to pay an enormous price to achieve the release of the hostages. The fact that he supports “the deal” with his red lines is proof that he is telling the truth. His red lines—minimal as they are—place him on the opposite side of the fence of his detractors. They are willing to accept capitulation. He is not.

The media, the administration and the security establishment refuse to discuss the strategic implications of “the deal,” as proposed, for Israel. Instead, they harshly and hysterically condemn Netanyahu and accuse him of behaving selfishly for refusing to abandon Israel’s war goals. Given the actual stakes, it is clear that the media is distorting events. Netanyahu is the only actor on the stage who isn’t behaving politically. He is the only one acting to protect Israel from strategic catastrophe.

Mothers of Israelis still being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, along with activists and Knesset members, protest for their release at the Knesset on July 8. Yonatan Sindel, Flash90

Heroes showing flip-flops, laughter and tears

It’s Friday morning in Ramat Gan. A large hangar in the soccer stadium of the Tel Aviv-district city is beginning to fill up with families.

Mothers with infants in baby carriers, holding hands of toddlers; fathers pushing strollers, lugging older kids on shoulders.

The anteroom, more like a tent under the beating sun, is set up with buffets. Shawarma on a rotating spit, pita bread, salads, tahina, fried eggplant. Drinks are on the opposite wall. Bottles of cola and juice on a bar, next to vodka and beer.

One machine churns out slushies. Another spews popcorn into party bags. Cotton candy is on a constant spin.

Trays with macaroons pass around. Lollipops, jelly snakes and marshmallows occupy their own corner, as does the table laden with age-appropriate gifts for every child.

The main venue is indoors, thankfully airconditioned. To the left are massive bouncy houses, with slides and trampolines.

To the right are stations manned by volunteers. The massage table is popular. So is the rug with beads and threads of all shapes and

In Gaza, they’re battling Hamas. In Israel, they’re changing diapers. The contrast is both charming and jarring.

sizes, where little girls sit cross-legged stringing jewelry.

Most were already treated to sparkly floral face paint. It goes with their flouncy princess skirts and tiaras.

Boys play ping-pong, pool and shuffleboard with their dads. Dads in flip-flops. Half are wearing kippot on their heads and tzitzit dangling from their denim cutoffs.

Some have ponytails and piercings. All share a bond that’s immediately apparent from their mutual bear hugs.

The only thing giving away the theme of this makeshift amusement park — organized for weeks and funded by the attendees and donors — is an incessant loop of photos projected on two screens adjacent to a stage on which a live band is performing. The pictures show the above guys in full military gear: dusty helmets, ceramic vests and weapons.

These comrades-in-arms from a particular IDF company are in various poses, separately and together, alternately at a base in the south and in the Gaza Strip. There, they are battling Hamas. Here, they’re changing diapers. The contrast is both charming and jarring.

A master of ceremonies takes the mic, flanked by his young daughter and son. As he introduces the company commander, the men in the audience, children in their laps, burst into a chant familiar only to them. Like a secret handshake. But noisier.

“This is a different crowd from the one I’m used to addressing,” he says, referring occasionally to text he has written on his cellphone. “I’m used to talking to exhausted reservists questioning why they can’t postpone certain tasks until later, complaining, ‘We haven’t slept; we haven’t eaten.’ So, it’s moving to speak to this audience, all bright and beautiful.”

He goes on, “It’s important for me to begin by telling the women and children here, ‘Your husbands and fathers are heroes.’”

He then defines a hero as “someone who on

Oct. 7 got up, left his house and headed south, putting on his gear and saying, ‘Here I am. What should I do’?”

But, he qualifies, “a hero isn’t only someone who arrived on Oct. 7; it’s someone who showed up for training in 2022, and in 2021 and in 2020 and in 2019 and in 2018 and in 2017 and in 2016. Even when it caused problems at home and at work. Even when it was hot and inconvenient. That’s what a hero is. Everyone in this company is a hero. And it was a privilege to have been called up on Oct. 7 to lead this company.”

Allowing the renewed cheering to subside, he continues: “I’m sure there are people present who’d be happy to report that I’m not an easy person. It’s true. I made life difficult for everybody in this room. But all you people did was ask what more you could do. That’s why this company earned the respect of the entire brigade.”

Turning to the wives, he says, “Now it’s time to mention the other heroes in this room — you women who took care of your households by yourselves with great strength of spirit, despite living in a state of major un-

certainty. From our point of view, you fought alongside us against the enemy. Without you, we couldn’t have done any of it. And with you, we will keep winning.”

He concludes with a reminder and a request.

“There are still many challenges ahead,” he says somberly. “The fighting isn’t over. We’re preparing for the next phase of the war. So, I’m asking you to allow us to borrow your loved ones for another round.”

The battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel in a T-shirt and sandals, gets up to punctuate the speech with a similar sentiment about the importance of the home front and the inevitability of a third tour in Gaza. When he’s done, the M.C. announces that there is a Shabbat challah and bouquet of flowers waiting for everyone at the exit.

The reservists-on-furlough shuffle out, waving and slapping one another on the back. They know they’ll be summoned soon to replace their flip-flops with combat boots yet again. These heroes of the IDF laugh as they leave the premises. I try not to let them see me crying.

Their bias helps sink the anti-Israel media

Many major American media are in a death spiral. News outlets like CNN, NPR and the Washington Post are losing audiences in droves, hemorrhaging cash and laying off staff.

At the same time, the media is experiencing the lowest public trust rating in history. Indeed, a Gallup poll showed that nearly four in 10 Americans have zero confidence in the media — a new record in distrust. Little wonder: So many former bastions of “objective coverage,” like the New York Times, have abandoned balanced, fact-based reporting for journalism that blatantly pushes a biased, political agenda.

Nowhere is this bias more obvious than in the reporting by leading media on Israel in general and its war against Hamas specifically. Even today, media like CNN, the New York Times and NPR persist in trumpeting the lie that Gaza faces imminent famine — a myth they’ve been promoting hysterically for nearly nine months.

Amazingly, just last week, the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) issued a report stating there is no famine in Gaza: “The available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.”

Almost since the Israel-Hamas war’s begin-

The real weapon of Israellovers against biased media is the truth.

ning, the media have parroted the claim made by various aid organizations that famine is imminent or actually taking place in Gaza. Back in January, a CNN headline falsely claimed, “Hundreds of thousands are starving in Gaza as famine arrives at ‘incredible speed.’”

Even today, despite the UN’s admission that no data supports these famine fears, major media have continued to perpetuate unverified claims of starvation. Two weeks ago, NPR’s Hadeel al-Shalchi reported, “In Gaza, which aid groups say is on the brink of famine, food is hard to come by.” This is despite reports of overflowing Gaza markets.

If the media want to regain Americans’ trust, they would be well-advised to return to the tradition of balanced, fact-based journalism. They should abandon coverage that promotes

strictly “progressive left” (especially anti-Israel) narratives that avoid offering facts and opinions that challenge their biases.

Major news organizations suffer from anti-Israel bias. Uri Berliner, NPR’s former senior business editor, noted his former employer’s anti-Israel bias, saying NPR highlights “the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of Oct. 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.”

Coverage of Israel at the New York Times is also famously biased, consistently using libelous terms to describe the Jewish state. According to a study by Israeli journalist Lilac Sigan and Bar Ilan University Professor Eytan Gilboa, the pejorative combination of “Israel” and “apartheid”

appeared together 39 times in the Times during 2022, while the words “Israel” and “colonialism” appeared together 16 times. In contrast, the words “Hamas” and “terrorist organization” appeared together only 13 times.

At the Washington Post, at least six members of the foreign desk formerly wrote for Qatar-based Al Jazeera, including the paper’s Middle East editor, Jesse Mesner-Hage. Al Jazeera is financed by the Qatari government, which gives financial support to Hamas. An Israeli court described the network as an “intelligence and propaganda arm” for Hamas and it is now banned in Israel.

Nevertheless, the Post sees nothing wrong in hiring a clique of staffers who worked there. The media have for nine months falsely reported starvation and now distort the UN report to cover their lies. Yahoo News, for instance, published a headline last March saying “Gaza’s catastrophic food shortage means mass death is imminent.” In April, Yahoo said, “US Government Believes Famine Is Occurring in Gaza.” The IPC report proves these headlines dead wrong.

But instead of admitting to their audiences there is no famine in Gaza, the media emphasize the report’s speculation: “A ‘high risk’ of famine persists across the whole of the Gaza Strip, as long as conflict continues.” No mention that Hamas started and could instantly end the conflict by surrendering.

Rather, on June 25, CNN published an article with the headline, “Gaza population at risk of famine as it continues to face emergency levels of hunger, report finds.” While the article ultimately mentioned the IPC’s conclusion there was currently no famine in Gaza, it buried this fact in paragraph 10. Worse still, the Instagram version completely omits this inconvenient truth.

See Sinkinson on page 22

A family visiting the Ramon Crater in southern Israel, Nov. 2, 2018. Illustrative photo by Hadas Parush, Flash90

The New York Times building on Manhattan’s 8th Avenue during a rainy night on Jan. 24. Craig T. Fruchtman, Getty

It’s good…

Continued from page 1

We propose to break this imposed, immoral, racist silence and to build a movement that addresses the virulent and lethal oppression of African blacks in at least nine African countries. They are oppressed by groups whose Western cousins may indeed need the support of human rights groups but whose identity as minorities in the West should not in any way block the most natural human rights feelings and actions of decent people on behalf of those who are suffering in Africa.

This is, we believe, a call to fight tyranny that should be formed by an alliance of the victims and their friends. It is a better and non-racist intersectionality.

Charles Jacobs is co-founder of the Jewish Leadership Project; Stephen S. Enada is executive president and co-founder of the International Committee on Nigeria; Dumisani Washington is founder and CEO of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel.

Sacks...

Continued from page 16

“Are you the Hillel who is called the nasi [leader, prince] of Israel?”

“Yes,” said Hillel.

“In that case, said the man, “may there not be many like you in Israel.”

“Why so, my son?” he asked.

“Because I have just lost 400 zuz because of you!”

“Be careful of your moods,” said Hillel. “You may lose 400 zuz, and yet another 400 zuz through Hillel, yet Hillel will not lose his temper.”

It was this quality of patience under provocation that was one of the factors, according to the Talmud (Eruvin 13b), that led the Sages to rule almost entirely according to the School of Hillel rather than of Shammai.

The best way of defeating anger is to pause, stop, reflect, refrain, count to ten, and breathe deeply. If necessary, leave the room, go for a walk, meditate, or vent your toxic feelings alone.

It is said that about one of the rebbes of Lubavitch that whenever he felt angry, he would take down the Shulchan Aruch to see whether anger was permitted under the circumstances. By the time he had finished studying, his anger had disappeared.

The moral life is one in which we grapple with anger but never let it win. The verdict of Judaism is simple: either we defeat anger or anger will defeat us.

Weinreb...

people responsively. That is, Moses said the first phrase, which the people said after him. He proceeded then to the second phrase, and the people echoed him. Moses was an authoritative leader, and the people were obedient followers. Moses was the active composer of the song, the choirmaster as it were, and the people were but the choir.

In our parsha, two of the leaders pass from the scene, and Moses learns that his leadership authority is waning. The Song of the Well is an entirely different leadership song from the Song of the Sea. In this week’s song, the entire people sing as one. It begins not “Then Moses sang this song,” but rather “Then Israel sang this song.” The leadership passes from one Divinely chosen charismatic leader to the people as a whole.

The people find their voice, and it is the voice of song. How beautifully this is expressed in the Midrash Yalkut Shimoni (Chukat Note 764):

After 40 years, the people finally matured and began to sing a song on their own accord, saying, “Master of the Universe, it is now incumbent upon You to do miracles for us and for us to sing, as it is written: ‘It has pleased the L-rd to deliver us and that is why we sing our song all the days of our lives’.” (Isaiah 38:20)

Jewish history has known epochs in which there were clear leaders, gifted and often charismatic individuals who, by virtue of their wisdom or heroism, seemed ordained by the Almighty Himself to lead our people. But we have also known times, such as the present, when such prominent leaders are not apparent. It is at times such as these that we all must assume leadership responsibilities. It is at times such as these that we cannot afford to humbly refrain from acting as leaders in our own families and communities. It is at times such as these that we must, each of us, find our own voices and sing the songs of leadership. Previously published.

Freedman...

Continued from page 17

The Jewish people here begin the transition from life in the desert, where everything was clear, to the entering the land of Israel, where the great questions of life abound.

It would be absurd to imagine that we can ascertain the reason for a mitzvah. A reason is essentially causation; something caused something else. But G-d is not caused to do or command anything; G-d is the cause. If the Torah comes from G-d, the mitzvot cannot have a cause; they are the cause. Thus, we can only consider the purpose and/or implications of a given mitzvah.

This, then, is the paradox of the red heifer — the intertwining of life and death, and the impossibility of understanding why it so often seems that the pure become impure (the righteous suffer) and the impure become pure.

Perhaps this was why King Shlomo viewed this as the ultimate mystery, because we are not meant to understand the purpose of experiences beyond our comprehension. And yet King Shlomo does try, because we are, as the Rambam suggests, meant to try. We can at least draw implications from even these most difficult mitzvot.

We live in a world full of mysteries, with realities impossible to comprehend. But the decision is in each of our hands to find meaning in every moment and every piece of every mitzvah, and it will be the determining factor between grabbing life and being reborn every minute, or losing life and dying day by day, one slow second at a time.

Previously published.

Billet...

“The “mountain” that was Og’s weapon alludes to the merits of our patriarchs,” in his case Avraham, whom he had helped to save his nephew. “The grasshoppers, an allusion to the prayers of the Israelites, caused the merits of this “mountain” to disintegrate.

Moses joined in the fray, countering the merits of Og with three other merits: the merits of the patriarchs (ten cubit leap into the past) Moses’ own personal merits (ten cubits tall); and the merits of the people of Israel as a whole (ten-cubit ax)…. All these formed the weapon that Moses wielded against the merits of Og, and through them Og was ultimately vanquished.”

The Maharsha (Brachot 54b) wonders why Moshe would be concerned that the merit of the forefathers would work more strongly for Og than for Moshe himself. He suggests instead that Og carried with him “Kochot HaTumah” (strength of impurity) that could come head to head with Moshe’s spiritual powers.

He suggests that the 10-cubit ax represents the merit of the 2 tablets which contained the 10 Commandments. The 10-cubit jump represents the Mishkan which was 10-cubits tall, and had been erected by Moshe all by himself.

Not everything we read in the Torah and Midrashim is meant to be taken absolutely literally. While some things can be rationalized and explained as a supernatural creation or act of G-d, not everything must be explained in such a manner.

less, Pulitzer was as much a target of such antiSemitism as if he were the chief rabbi of New York.

Nobody would ever give Pulitzer a prize for a charming personality. He had none. He was crude and rude. He was primitive in his interpersonal relations and easily antagonized his journalistic and political adversaries.

Nevertheless, whatever the criticism he deserved, anti-Jewish attitudes should not have been among them. The lesson to be learned from this should be easy to absorb. Antisemitism can and will be found and practiced in many diverse venues. We may lower our heads in disgust at the experiences that our fellow Jews experience until this day with this bigotry. However, history teaches us, daily, that you can’t teach common sense. It is a trait that comes with intelligence, and this too cannot be taught in a classroom.

After reading this most engaging, well-written biography, the next time you read or hear of the presentation of the Pulitzer Prizes, you’ll know that there was more to the prize behind that distinguished Hungarian-Jewish name.

Originally published in 2010.

Continued from page 17 Continued from page 17 Continued from page 19

when the people of Israel miraculously crossed the Sea. But part of this passage too, at least in the synagogues with which I am familiar, is chanted melodically.

I have long been impressed by the fact that this week’s Torah portion, in which the Song of the Well appears, describes a critical transition in the leadership of the Jewish people. From the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people essentially have had three leaders: Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. In this week’s parsha, Miriam dies and is buried; Aaron too is “gathered unto his people” and is mourned; and Moses learns that his leadership role will come to an end sooner than he had thought, before the Jewish people enter the Promised Land.

This is indeed a story of transition, of the end of an era, of the passing of the mantle of leadership to a new generation.

No wonder then that the song sung in this week’s parsha is so very different from the song sung by Moses at that triumphant moment near the beginning of his leadership career.

Our Sages tell us in the Talmudic tractate of Sotah that the Song of the Sea was sung by the

Sometimes, Hashem allows us to tap into the purpose of a mitzvah, either by stating it explicitly, as with Shabbat, or by creating us with the faculty to hone in on what a particular mitzvah accomplishes for both individuals and the larger society. But sometimes, we are not privy to the purpose of a mitzvah, and this may be what chukim are about. The purpose of fulfilling such a mitzvah, and how the world changes as a result, may be beyond our grasp, but this does not mean we cannot consider its implications.

By definition, the lessons I glean from a closer examination of anything in life will inevitably make it more meaningful and further study may cause me to reassess my understanding.

This would seem to be the Torah’s approach to all of life’s paradoxes and mysteries, death chief amongst them. To imagine that we as limited human beings could ever understand death and human suffering would be supreme arrogance. Yet the process of grappling with the challenge of death, and attempting to learn from the process, can be a valuable one, within these parameters.

Tumah, often translated as “impurity,” represents contact with death. Every instance of tumah in the Torah is the result of it, be it a dead lizard (a sheretz), or the loss of potential life after the breakdown of the uterine lining (niddah). And taharah, purity, which comes after immersion in a ritual bath full of water that represents life, is the reemergence of the individual into the mainstream.

We are challenged to find satisfactory explanations for the Aggadic tales that are difficult to explain on a simple level. Only when we have sought the depths of Torah and its lessons to the point we are happy with the explanations can we truly say we have fulfilled our obligation of Torah study. Previously published.

Gerber...

Israel and against America? How do we get people to understand that today, anti-Zionism is the most toxic form of antisemitism? How do we convince them that America, however imperfect, is still by far the best country on earth?

What’s new is that suddenly, for the first time, more Jewish-American donors are pulling their funds from Ivy League universities. More Jewish parents are reconsidering where they want to send their children to high school and college. What’s also new is the amazing young college students who are pro-Israel and filled with energy and purpose. I met with some of the Columbia students who wrote a most excellent letter for which they obtained 500 signatures.

Is this really enough? Is it too little, too late? Aren’t we coming from too far behind? Hasn’t our government fatefully refused to stop Iran — in fact, unleashed Iran — which is now close to becoming a nuclear power?

In any event, as Pirkei Avot teaches us: We are not obliged to complete the work, but neither are we free to neglect it.

from page 21 Continued from page 17

The author goes to great lengths to demonstrate the rabid, and at times cruel nature of these attacks. Consider the following example taken from the writing from a disgruntled former employee, Leander Richardson. It appeared in the reputable trade publication, The Journalist.

“In all the multiplicity of Nature’s freaks, running from Albino Negroes to seven-legged calves, there is one curiosity that will always cause the observer to turn and stare. This freak is a redheaded Jew.”

Pulitzer is further described by this person as “combing his hair with talons,” “rubbing the sores around his eyes,” and remaining in the shadows “in order to escape turning rancid in the hot sun.”

Examples from other publications are given as well, pointing to an era when such race-based vituperation was not uncommon, even in legitimate journalistic venues. The irony here is that the target was one who was as far from a Jewish ethnic identity as one could ever get. Neverthe-

Israel supporters alone cannot defeat corrupt media but we can defeat their lies. The American people support Israel because they get their information from more reliable, alternative sources. We can be thankful for hundreds of proIsrael media and advocates that report the truth, as well as millions of Israel-supporters on social media.

Ultimately, the marketplace will decide the fate of the failing “legacy media.” Some are even seeing the error of their ways.

At the Washington Post, for example, editor Sally Buzbee resigned due to disputes with publisher Will Lewis over, among other issues, the outlet’s skewed Israel coverage. Buzbee was reluctant to investigate the financing of anti-Israel protests on American college campuses and later revealed that her daughter was participating in those protests. Perhaps the jihadi foreign desk will be next to go.

The real weapon of Israel-lovers against biased media is the truth. It’s spread by millions of individuals who speak up at work, on social media and at the dinner table. It’s also spread by hundreds of small media and organizations that fight media lies against Israel and spread the truth to Americans.

We need our media to stop pushing political agendas and return to the honored tradition of balanced, fact-based journalism. Certainly, a majority of Americans — who support Israel’s brave fight against Islamist terrorists — would be grateful.

Proudly Jewish. Proudly Zionist.