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Oct. 27, 2023 12 Cheshvan 5784 • Lech Lecha • Vol 22, No 33

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Children from the Young Israel of Woodmere delivered to the White House letters thanking President Biden for his support of Israel. At far right (from left): Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff and YIW Rabbis Shay Schachter and Shalom Axelrod.

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Young Israel kids bring their thanks to Biden Boxes of letters covered a conference room table in the White House last Wednesday as 40 children from the Young Israel of Woodmere — the largest Young Island congregation in the United States — personally delivered 17,000 letters of thanks to the Biden Administration for its support of the Jewish state. The children discussed with Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff their connections to Israel. Emhoff offered words of encouragement. They were accompanied on their journey to the White House by YIW Rabbis Shalom

Axelrod and Shay Schacter. Afterward, YIW officials said, “We must take comfort knowing that the times have changed drastically, and that the highest elected officials in the United States are proactively doing everything they can to protect and support our people and our homeland.” While pro-Israel communities were elated by President Biden’s repeated explicit assurances of support for Israel, there was concern that the administration might be encouraging a “go slow” approach to a Gaza invasion.

Bronx battle: Haters cheer Hamas, Riverdale loves Israel and Torres Israel-boosters rallied in Riverdale’s Seton Park on Tuesday to thank the area’s congressmember, Rep. Ritchie Torres, for his long-standing vigorous support of the Jewish state. Pictured around the blue “thank you” sign (from left): Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, Rabbi Levi Shemtov of Chabad Lubavitch of Riverdale, Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (The Bayit), Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, and Bronx Boro President Venessa Gibson. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star

By Ed Weintrob While Hamas-lovers rallied outside the office of Rep. Ritchie Torres in the Bronx’s Fordham neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon, a larger proIsrael crowd assembled in Riverdale’s Seton Park. The Fordam protest denounced Torres, a Progressive Democrat, for his long-standing support of the Jewish state, displaying a wanted poster accusing him of aiding “genocide,” a blood-libel that radical haters of Jewish rights have been leveling at Israel. As the Riverdale rally, political leaders and students and a principal from Riverdale’s SAR See Riverdale on page 2

UN chief suggests Jews had it coming; furious Israel fires back Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen blasted UN SecretaryGeneral António Guterres on Tuesday for remarks in which he appeared to justify Hamas’s Oct. 7 murder rampage in the western Negev. “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres had told the UN Security Council on Tuesday, claiming that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced; and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing,” added the Portuguese diplomat. “Mr. Secretary-General, in what world do you live?” Cohen rebutted as he addressed the Security Council. “Definitely,

this is not our world.” Cohen canceled a private meeting with Guterres, he subsequently announced on X. “I will not meet the UN secretary-general. After Oct. 7, there is no place for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased from the world,” wrote the top diplomat. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan also denounced the secretary-general’s speech, noting in a post on X that Guterres spoke as Hamas bombarded central Israel with rockets. “The secretary-general is completely disconnected from the reality in our region and … views the massacre committed by Nazi Hamas terrorists in a distorted and immoral manner,” said Erdan. “His statement … expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder. It’s really unfathomable. It’s truly sad that the head of an organization that arose after the Holocaust holds such horrible views,” the ambassador said.

October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

Riverdale cheers Rep. Torres, Israel-backer… Continued from page 1 High School delivered full-throated support to Israel in the war Hamas launched on Oct. 7. Rabbi Tully Harcsztark, founding principal of SAR, recounted being “raised in a home that was shaped by the wretched memories and deep trauma of the Holocaust that haunted my father’s life and the lives of his brother and sister. “But I was borm into a new world, a world that witnessed the birth of a Jewish state that could protect its people in a tiny slice of world that is their homeland. Or so we thought. Eighteen days ago, my perception of this new world was shattered.” “Hamas is an authoritarian government that oppresses the people in the Gaza Strip, they oppress Palestinians,” Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said. “If you don’t agree with them, you’re probably going to be dead.” As he spoke, with an anti-Israel rally underway in Fordham, Dinowitz added, “I find it shocking that there are organizations that actually support them, that make excuses for them, that don’t condemn them.” Councilman Eric Dinowitz also voiced criticism of “the organizations and the elected officials who waited until the murders and the kidnappings were done — and they waited and waited until they call for a ceasefire.” Borough President Venessa Gibson said she was “thankful we have colleagues and leaders that understand this is personal. You attack one of us, you attack all of us. We are in this together. “I stand before you as your Bronx borough president, as an African-American woman who is deeply aligned with the Jewish community,” she said. “We are all children of G-d, we all have a responsibility. We cannot falter in the face of hatred and antisemitism and bigotry and discrimination and violence. So I am here as your ally, to stand with all of you in supporting our Jewish brothers and sisters, and the entire Jewish community during this time.” Ananya Silverman and Alex Wolf, two of the more than 600 SAR students at the rally, spoke. “We are living in a broken world,” said Wolf, “where Hamas commits genocidal atrocities, and yet Israel is accused of genocide … where terrorists are called legitimate freedom fighters, and legitimate armies trying to defend their people are called terrorists … where Islamic Jihad is to blame for a hospital bombing, and yet Israel is

Bronx Tuesday: SAR students Ananya Silverman and Alex Wolf took turns voicing support for Israel and appreciation for Rep. Ritchie Torres’ dependable enthusiasm in defending the Jewish state. Below: Outside Torres’ Fordham office, protesters said Torres was complicit in “genocide.” Gary Jean-Juste

blamed … where college campuses defend the murder of innocent civilians and children and failed to defend their Jewish peers and students.” “One constant in this broken world has been the unwavering support from Congressman Ritchie Torres,” said Silverman, who then referred to the rally in Fordham. “We gathered here today in a peaceful counterprotest against those calling Congressman Torres ‘wanted for genocide’ for his support of Israel. Despite death threats and aggressive opposition, Congressman Torres has stood steadfast in support of Israel and the Jewish people. It is crucial to stand up to tyrants to speak out against evil, and Congressman Torres has not stayed quiet.” Torres responded to Tuesday’s events with a Tweet that began, “My Congressonal District saw two rallies regarding Israel. “An astroturf anti-Israel hate rally with less than 100 people (mostly from outside by District) chanting ‘resistance is justified.’ “A grassroots pro-Israel rally with 1000 people form the Riverdale community, standing with me for speaking out forcefully against the barbaric terrorism of Hamas.”

Don’t ask Israel not to ‘overreact’ against Hamas PETER KING Retired LI Congressman

Peter King was a Long Island representative in Congress from 1993 to 2021. This column first appeared in the LI Herald newspapers. f ever there were a just war, it is Israel’s war against Hamas. If ever there were a war in which there is no moral equivalence, it is Israel’s war against Hamas. If ever there were a war with potential regional and global implications, it is Israel’s war against Hamas. That’s why I believe it is disgraceful and indefensible for so many in the media, in academia and in political circles to be suggesting, and acting as if, there were “two sides” to this war. As if Israel has to defend its military action, and somehow it is the Palestinians in Gaza who are victims. The war began when Hamas launched a terrorist attack targeting Israel’s most innocent noncombatants, murdering children, women and the elderly, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking more than 200 hostages. These noncombatants were not “collateral damage.” They were Hamas’ intended victims. This was the ultimate in depraved terrorism. Israel has not only the legal and moral right to retaliate against Hamas,

but the moral obligation to defend its citizens by doing all it can to destroy Hamas. Yet with each passing day, we see media commentators, student demonstrators and morally challenged politicians such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, anguishing over the plight of the Palestinians and the concern that Israel will “overreact” to a terrorist attack that resulted in the equivalent of 40,000 dead in the United States. Most shockingly, we saw the same cast of characters accept Hamas’ unsubstantiated claim that an Israeli rocket had destroyed a hospital in Gaza, causing more than 500 innocent fatalities. ome Americans are calling for a ceasefire. Unfortunately, President Biden added to the moral and strategic confusion when, during his meeting in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he referred to Hamas as the “other team” and cautioned Israel against overreacting. What has happened to our ability as a peo-

ple to make moral distinctions and judgments and recognize the difference between good and evil, victim and assailant? Would anyone have suggested in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor that President Franklin D. Roosevelt call for a ceasefire with Japan, or that he and Gen. Douglas MacArthur assure the world that the United States would not overreact? Would FDR, then Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, have been called on to ensure that they would observe the rules of war in combating Hitler? Would the media have felt obligated to give “both sides” of the story? To give equal time to Hitler and Japanese Emperor Hirohito? Would any American, let alone the president, have referred to Nazis or the Gestapo as the “other team”? Would the media have gone through the streets of Dresden, Hamburg or Berlin looking for civilian casualties, or taking at face value Nazi claims of American war crimes?

Would the media have felt obligated to give ‘both sides’ of the story in WWII, to give equal time to Hitler and Hirohito? Would the president have referred to Nazis or the Gestapo as the ‘other team’?

he reality is that there will always be unintended civilian casualties in any war. This will be especially true in any war with Hamas, which intentionally locates its fighters, rockets and artillery in densely populated civilian areas. Unlike Hamas, Israel will make every effort to avoid civilian deaths, and certainly won’t target noncombatants. Waging war against Hamas goes far beyond retaliation or revenge. Hamas must, to the greatest extent possible, be annihilated, to prevent future attacks on Israel’s citizens. Hamas is also a proxy for Iran, which is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world and an ever-growing military — and soon to be nuclear — threat to the region and the world. Hezbollah, headquartered just north of Israel in Lebanon, possesses over 100,000 rockets, and is also a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran. Israel is our strongest ally and the only democracy in the Middle East, the most volatile region in the world. This current war is not a battle for turf or bragging rights. It is a struggle that Israel is waging for itself and for all civilized peoples. Israel deserves our full, unqualified support for its own success and security, and the future of the world as we know it. It is also time for the United States to restore its sense of moral balance, and accept the reality that there can be no moral equivalence in this struggle between good and evil. Stand with Israel!

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THE NOVEMBER 9-10 POGROM WAS A STATE-SPONSORED AND STATEWIDE POGROM, ORCHESTRATED FROM ABOVE AND PERPETRATED BY THOUSANDS OF LOCAL GERMAN NAZIS ACROSS THE ENTIRE THIRD REICH DURING THE FALL OF 1938. BETTER KNOWN FOR THE NAZI EUPHEMISM “KRISTALLNACHT” (CRYSTAL NIGHT, OR NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS), THIS DARK NIGHT AND THE DAY THAT FOLLOWED IT BECAME A SYMBOL FOR THE TRAGIC END OF A MILLENNIUM OF JEWISH LIFE IN THE GERMAN LANDS AND A PRELUDE TO THE HOLOCAUST. A CATACLYSM OF UNPRECEDENTED TERROR AND VIOLENCE, KRISTALLNACHT SIGNALED TO JEWS IN BERLIN, MUNICH, VIENNA, FRANKFURT, AND NUMEROUS OTHER JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN CITIES AND SMALL TOWNS THAT A DARK ERA HAS BEEN USHERED IN AND THAT THE WORSE, FAR WORSE, IS YET TO COME.

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October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

Standing witness to Hamas’ depraved massacre

Destruction wrought by Hamas, pictured days later, in Kibbutz Be’eri.

By Israel Kasnett, JNS KIBBUTZ BE’ERI — Israel and a significant portion of the international community have been deeply affected by the events of Saturday, Oct. 7, when Hamas carried out a coordinated land, air and sea attack on multiple communities on the Israeli side of the Gaza border. This heinous act resulted in the loss of more than 1,400 lives, with thousands sus-

Oren Ben Hakoon, Flash90 (JNS)

taining injuries and at least 222 persons, including women, children, the elderly and soldiers, being taken captive. Disturbing footage of the massacre, captured on Hamas terrorists’ body cameras, has been circulated widely. There is recorded evidence of Hamas terrorists, apprehended by Israeli security forces, confessing to murder, acts of violence and sexual assault against civilians. Despite the undeniable evidence, there

Destruction caused by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri.

are those who, like Holocaust deniers, choose to dispute the atrocities committed by Hamas. To address these concerns, Israel’s Government Press Office took the initiative on Monday to convene a gathering of 200 journalists, primarily representing foreign media outlets. The GPO presented a 43-minute comprehensive compilation of videos that unequivocally demonstrate the extent of Hamas’s cruelty.

Erik Marmor, Flash90 (JNS)

Ten years old In one video footage sequence, recorded from both indoor and outdoor surveillance cameras in a home, a distressing scene unfolds. A father is seen hurriedly guiding his two sons, who appear to be about 10 years old, through their living room towards an outdoor shelter. They make their way into See Standing witness… on page 19

Hamas wipes out 3 generations in Kibbutz Be’eri Temporary resting place

By Etgar Lefkovits, JNS A 73-year-old grandmother, her 43-yearold son and barely 10-month granddaughter. Three generations of one Israeli family brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 were laid to rest Sunday side by side, the infant sharing the same coffin as her father. In ceremonies across the country, a nation in mourning was burying its dead from the worst assault on Israel in half a century, and the most deadly one-day attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. In many cases, the cemeteries were only temporary resting places, as ongoing fighting with Hamas made burial in their home communities impossible. On Sunday alone, there were 17 funerals for residents of a single kibbutz.

A national nightmare

Sandra and Ohad Cohen together with their three children, ages 9, 3 and 10 months, were awakened on Saturday, Oct. 7 in their home in Kibbutz Be’eri by the sirens warning of incoming missiles from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Like millions of other Israelis, they rushed into their safe room to take cover. The rockets were just the beginning of a national nightmare. Though the Cohens didn’t know it, thousands of Hamas terrorists had broken through the Gaza security fence in multiple locations and were converging on more than two dozen locations in southern Israel. From their sealed room, they heard the attackers shouting “get out, get out” in English as they broke into their home, Ohad Cohen’s cousin Shir Druker, 42,of Tel Aviv, recounted on Sunday ahead of the funeral procession. He began frantically messaging his brother and friends for help. “Save us,” he pleaded in a Whatsapp message sent at 11:29 a.m. “Where is the army?” “Are you at home?” his friend asked. “At home, locked in the safe room,” Cohen answered, followed by, “There is no army here.” Both he and his brother had already lost contact with their mother, Yona Cohen, who

Members of the Cohen family mourn at a cemetery near Petah Tikvah, on Oct. 22. Three generations of the family were murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7. Rina Castelnuovo (JNS)

lived at the edge of the kibbutz, and whose house, it would later emerge, had already been overtaken by the attackers. “Take care of yourself,” his friend texted back at 11:31. “We are pressuring the army [to get there].” “They are massacring residents,” Cohen replied at 11:47, followed by “they are burning homes” and “they are breaking into safe rooms” a minute later. “They are breaking into my safe room. Save us,” was his last message, at 12:49 p.m.

Mass murder

In those terrifying last moments, the family huddled together in their safe room as terrorists shot at the door, killing their 10-month-old daughter, Mila. Her nine-year-old brother was grazed in the head by shrapnel, and the threeyear old began vomiting, his cousin recounted. They put the baby on the rug in the safe room. “He said they were going to die either way

and better to die outside than inside,” said Druker. In a fateful decision, Cohen opened the window of the safe room to let fresh air in and went out to the porch, only to be captured and bound by the terrorists, and then shot dead. The terrorists took the mother, the two remaining kids, along with an elderly woman in a wheelchair and her Filipino caretaker Gracie, and started to walk them to the kibbutz gate, she said. Suddenly, Israeli security forces appeared and the old woman shouted “soldiers, soldiers!” In the ensuing shootout Sandra Cohen was hit four times in the lung and once each in the arm and leg, but called on her two kids to escape together to a neighboring house.The nine-year-old also wheeled the elderly woman into the house; her caretaker was taken captive by the terrorists. Later they would find the bound body of the grandmother at her home, shot dead.

On an unseasonably warm and sunny late October afternoon, the two coffins, draped with Israeli flags and covered with bouquets and wreaths, moved slowly along the processions of hundreds of mourners at the Yarkon cemetery near the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva. Minutes before, another bereaved family had just recited eulogies for their dead. This well-kept cemetery with its towering trees was to be only a temporary resting place until reburial was possible at the kibbutz, which is currently vacated and a closed military zone amid the war against Hamas in nearby Gaza. Before the ceremony got underway, an announcement was made that in the event of a rocket attack during the funeral, mourners were to lay on the ground and cover their heads in keeping with the instructions of the Israel Defense Forces’ Homefront Command. Among the crowd of mourners was 79-year old Yitzhak Miles, whose 81-year-old brother, Albert Ablume Miles, was murdered in the very same kibbutz — an estimated 10% of Be’eri’s 1,100 residents were killed and an equal number kidnapped — but who had not been buried yet. “I’m trembling all over,” he said, recounting how his brother, who moved to the kibbutz at age 13, had bled to death from gunshot wounds during the initial attacks, before medics could arrive. Although he did not know the Cohen family, he said he felt a need to be connected with members of his brother’s community. “I live not far from here and heard that they were from the kibbutz so I wanted to come,” he said. Amid a sea of tears, Israeli singer Ehud Banai sang two heart-wrenching songs as Sandra Cohen, who saved her remaining children, looked on from a wheelchair surrounded by loved ones. Family and friends delivered three eulogies — one each for the grandmother, son and grandchild. One recalled the matriarch’s words: “You once told me, ‘If I die, it will be here in my house and not in any other place.’”

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Did US taxpayers finance the massacre of Jews? NATHAN LEWIN Attorney

here is now little doubt that Iran planned and financed Hamas’s mass murder and kidnapping of Jewish civilians on Oct. 7. Whether the billions of dollars released to Iran by the Biden administration helped finance the massacre is still a subject of dispute in the United States. No one seems to be paying attention, however, to whether there is yet another source of financing on which Hamas relies for its terrorist activities: Tax-deductible contributions made by American benefactors. A startling decision by a federal court of appeals in Washington, DC, stifled an effort by three American families living in southern Israel to employ routine judicial discovery processes to ferret out evidence that tax-deductible money contributed to an organization that calls itself the “US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Education for a Just Peace in the Middle East” is circuitously funneled to Hamas. The organization boasts that it sends money to the “Palestinian National and Islamic Forces” and to the “Boycott National Committee.” These are foreign entities whose members include five US-proscribed Foreign Terrorist Organizations, including Hamas. They are also the coordinating bodies for the anti-Israel BDS movement The Goodman, Rosenfeld and Vaknin families include US citizens

who reside in southern Israel in an area called the Gaza Envelope. Incendiary balloons and kites designed to burn down Israeli homes and forests began being launched in March 2018 across the border from Gaza. By November of the following year, there had been more than 600 such launches during “Great Return Marches” in Gaza that were sponsored and supported by Hamas. n 2019, alleging that the destructive kites and balloons are criminal instrumentalities of international terror under federal law (18 USC. 2333), the American families sued the above-mentioned pro-Palestinian organization that solicits tax-deductible contributions in the United States and acknowledged sending the collected funds to the foreign entities that include Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The plaintiffs filed a detailed 271-paragraph complaint that specified the defendant’s promotion of the “Great Return Marches” and described, in 25 paragraphs, Hamas’s involvement and likely control of the “Marches.” The Israeli case was assigned to District Judge Richard Leon, who had previously dismissed an anti-terrorism complaint filed by the families of Americans who were killed and injured in Iraq by Hezbollah-controlled terrorists. The victims’ families had sued leading international pharmaceutical firms (including Pfizer), claiming that the companies had paid bribes to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which was controlled by Hezbollah. They alleged that these payments were a prohibited form of assistance to Hezbollah’s international

US Supreme Court building.

terrorism, thereby entitling the victims of Hezbollah terrorism to recover millions of dollars from the drug companies. Repeating his reasoning in the Iraq case word-for-word, Judge Leon also dismissed the terrorism claims filed by the Americans living in southern Israel. Judge Leon’s dismissal of both complaints effectively terminated the lawsuits. Both sets of plaintiffs were denied the opportunity to obtain admissible evidence to support their allegations through the federal-court “discovery” process in which a defendant must disclose documents and give sworn testimony. Both decisions were appealed. In the Iraq case, a unanimous panel of three judges ruled that Judge Leon’s dismissal was erroneous and that the plaintiffs were entitled to proceed with discovery. The court found “plausible” the complaint’s allegations that Hez-

Brandon Bourdages, Shutterstock (JNS)

bollah’s terrorism was aided and abetted by the drug companies’ bribes to the Iraqi Ministry of Health (allegedly controlled by Hezbollah). By contrast, the Court of Appeals rejected as “conclusory” and not sufficiently “plausible” the allegations of the victims living in Israel. The court’s opinion could have been written by the graduate of the City University of New York Law School who turned her commencement speech into a partisan attack on Israel and a call for support of Palestinian claims. he appellate judges declared that the detailed allegations of the victims of terror emanating from Gaza charged only “guilt by association” because they did not specify the “nature and extent” of the defendant organization’s donations to the Boycott National Committee, “how the Boycott National Committee spends its funds, or how donations to the Boycott National Committee are funneled to the

PNIF or Hamas.” These inadequately detailed subjects are customary subjects of discovery because they can be gleaned only from a defendant’s records or from uncooperative witnesses who have to be subpoenaed. The appellate court revealed its anti-Israel bias when it exculpated the Boycott National Committee because it “also engages in lawful civil resistance.” Its opinion characterized support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that aims to destroy Israel, and is contrary to public policy in many US states as nothing more than “engag[ing] in lawful advocacy.” When it was issued in May 2023, the appeals court ruling may have appeared minor. It foreclosed a courtordered damage remedy for the seemingly petty annoyance of fiery kites and balloons that caused property damage but had not resulted in physical injury or death. Now that Hamas has murdered more than 1,400 civilians (including 30 American citizens) and kidnapped as many as 200 hostages (including 13 Americans), the soliciting organization’s role in financing Hamas’s ventures is much more significant. Has it been funneling tax-deductible contributions solicited from American benefactors to Hamas? If so, American victims of Hamas’ sadistic international terrorism are legally entitled to recover from the organization the triple damages and attorneys’ fees that American anti-terrorism law prescribes. The Supreme Court should permit the plaintiffs in the currently pending case to proceed with the discovery that is routine in federal cases.

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7 THE JEWISH STAR October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784

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Sending my son to Israel taught me about love EVONNE MARZOUK Mother

e drove my son four hours to the airport this past August, even though for months I’d tried to find another way. Maybe he could fly or take a train? Maybe one parent in the car would be enough? But in the end, I consented to eight-plus hours in the car in a single day, simply because he asked me to. At 18, he had stopped asking me for much. I thought I was prepared. We spent all last year planning for him to leave for a year in Israel. Last fall, we went together to see yeshivahs. I followed him down winding streets with half-broken sidewalks to find the stop with the bus he said was coming soonest and told myself he was ready. I also told myself that I understood there might be some risk involved. At the airport, before I left him with his duffel bags, I gave him a keychain with a traveler’s prayer that had belonged to my mother. I guess I had the thought he might need something to hold on to. But, of course, it was impossible to expect that barely six weeks after he arrived, Hamas invaded the southern border with Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and wounding thousands. Those numbers are unthinkable. Now, as the reality begins to sink in, I’m left with a piece of my heart thousands of miles away and a lot closer to war than I’d ever imagined.

A ray of light is crossing thousands of miles.

My mother didn’t like it when I went to Israel. When I left for my first 10-day trip at 17, my parents consulted other trusted adults before deciding to let me go. They forbade me to ride the bus and — before the time of cell phones — begged me to call whenever I saw a phone. And yet, after that first magical trip, I went back again and again — if not ignoring, certainly discounting their fears. Now I am the mother who sends WhatsApp messages and waits for the checkmarks to turn blue as an indication that my son is typing a response. I am the mother who fears when there is a siren, who keeps her eyes peeled on the news, even though I know I would likely hear anything relevant from him first. Other times, I restrain myself from yet another text so he can stop talking to me and go back to his life. his past summer before he left home, an ocean of love for him seemed to rise up inside of me. I wanted to hug him every time I saw him. I wanted to ask, “Did I do enough?” and at the same time to promise him, “You are enough.” But I didn’t give him all the love I had because I knew he couldn’t really receive it. It would only have smothered him or pushed him away. I remember holding him when he was just a few weeks old, pleasantly wide awake in the middle of the night. Helping him with homework in elementary school. At his bar mitzvah, I hung on every word of the speech we crafted together. We practiced turns in the nearby parking lots as he began learning to drive. Now, I ask him: “Do you want to come home?” No, he says. At least for now, he wants to stay. Even though it would be infinitely easier for me if he were here, I get it. I feel pride as I watch him figure out ways to make the best of the situation — pride and terror at the exact same time. The mystics teach that in the process of cre-

Israeli flag.

ating the world, G-d withdrew some of His Essence to make an empty space for us. Were it not for that contraction, there would be no room for us to exist. I have understood this viscerally over the last several months, as I hold back my love for this young man so he can find his own way. When G-d withdrew and created a space for us in the universe, He didn’t leave us all alone. Jewish tradition teaches that He emanated a single beam of light back in: the soul content animating everything in our world. It is the

Maxim Studio, Shutterstock (JNS)

source of the light connecting all of us with each other and with the Divine. That single beam of light is what I picture now in my relationship with my son. Even in these heartbreaking times, it stretches across thousands of miles, sometimes very thin, but infinitely strong. It is love. Evonne Marzouk is an inspirational speaker, adult educator and author of the novel “The Prophetess.

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JoNI SChoCKETT

Jewish Star columnist

had my first cold weather cup of hot tea the other day as I stood in the kitchen and tried to will summer to stay for just a while longer. The sun blazed in my kitchen, the sky was that robin’s egg blue that indicates a warm day, but the thermometer staring me in the face said 54 degrees. I could not argue with that, so I gave in and brewed some delicious white peach tea and poured it into my favorite winter mug — all the while trying to talk myself into appreciating the cold that will eventually settle in. It’s true. Winter is coming and I have to adjust. Tea helps. Whenever I have a cup of tea in the afternoon, usually while grading papers or doing some other paperwork, I always think of the tea my grandmother drank. She made it in a glass with a long spoon. She took a cube of sugar into her mouth and sipped the tea, making it sweet in her mouth. I tried to do the same thing, but always ended up crunching the sugar cube before I ever got to the cooled and diluted tea she let me drink. I also remember the tea cakes my grandmother used to make to have with her glass of tea. They were always made in a loaf pan or her old, beat up, aluminum tube pan. No matter the flavor, every cake would be drizzled with a honey and sugar-infused glaze that I loved. The cakes were often not very sweet. I guess the sweetened tea was sweet enough. And they often were a bit dry which made them perfect for dipping. She would cut finger sized pieces and dip them quickly so as not to absorb too much liquid. Sometimes her cakes contained bits of ginger or apricots or dates. Sometimes, chocolate or bananas. I loved her tea cakes and the times I sat with her at the kitchen table and talked. I have no memory of those discussions except she often asked me to read to her or tell her about the books I was reading. I only remember that I read a book to her called “Gerald McBoing Boing,” which was Dr. Seuss’s first published book and the first book I ever read by myself! I can still see her sitting there with a long spoon in the glass that she held to the side while she sipped her tea through a sugar cube she held in her teeth. And then, decades later, I discovered that I had been the victim of a cake delusion. The cakes my grandmother and then my aunts and mother made, were not “tea” cakes at all. Authentic “tea” cakes are actually, by definition, sugar cookies! It seems my ancestral family bakers made coffee cakes which they served with tea. My aunt made delicate, light cakes with snipped apricots and prunes or apples, pears or cranberries and walnuts. She made them in fall and winter and

Homemade loaf of apple bread.

Adobe

called them tea cakes. My dad made amazing blueberry cakes as soon as the blueberry bush in our yard was ready for harvesting and called them coffee cakes. In my family, the name of the cake was season dependent. This is the beginning of the season that calls out for a late afternoon cup of tea and a bite of a delicious cake, no matter the name. Have it in your living room while reading a good book or in your busy office while you juggle, well, everything! Have coffee or tea; it really doesn’t matter. There is just something so relaxing about this ritual, and I think we very much need a bit of relaxation these days.

Brown Sugar Tea Cake (Pareve or Dairy)

This is delicious with or without the toasted pecans. • 3 cups unbleached flour • 1 tsp. baking powder • 1-1/2 sticks trans-fat free pareve margarine or unsalted butter, softened • 2 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed • 3 extra-large eggs • 1 Tbsp. pure vanilla extract • 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk or buttermilk • 1/4 cup toasted chopped pecans for garnish OPTIONAL: Brown Sugar Glaze Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan and set aside. Place the flour and baking powder in a bowl and whisk to blend. Set aside. Place the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on medium until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well after each addition, scraping down the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and beat well. Turn the mixer to low and add the flour and

almond milk alternately, beginning and ending with the flour. Beat just until combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and tap the pan on the counter to release any air bubbles. Place in the oven and bake for about 50-60 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes, then run a thin knife around the edge to loosen the cake. Let cool another 10 minutes and turn the cake onto a wire rack or a serving platter. Glaze with Brown Sugar Glaze and sprinkle with chopped pecans or dust with powdered sugar to serve Serves 10.

Brown Sugar Glaze (Pareve)

• 1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar • 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract • 2 Tbsp. almond milk • 1-2 cups confectioners’ sugar Place the sugar, extract and milk in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until the sugar melts and the mixture is liquid. Let cool. Whisk in enough confectioner’s sugar to create a glaze consistency. Drizzle over the cooled cake and sprinkle with toasted, chopped pecans.

Cinnamon Apple Tea Cake (Dairy)

Streusal topping: • 1 cup unbleached flour • 1/2 firmly packed light brown sugar • 3 Tbsp. dark brown sugar • 1/2 cup melted butter • 2 tsp. cinnamon OPTIONAL: 1/2 to 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans Cake: • 2 cups unbleached flour • 1/2 cup sugar • 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar • 2 tsp, baking powder

Lemon loaf with poppy seeds, white icing and citrus zest. Nata Bene, Adobe

• Pinch salt • 2 large eggs • 1/2 cup butter, melted • 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract • 1/2 cup whole or 2% milk, or almond milk • 2 or 3 large apples, Granny Smith, Cortland or Northern Spry, peeled, cored and thinly sliced. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a loaf pan with non-stick spray. Set aside. Mix the ingredients for the streusel in a medium bowl. Set aside. Place the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and whisk until blended. Break the eggs into the bowl of an electric mixer and mix well. Add the melted butter, vanilla and milk and mix. Add to the flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula just until combined. Peel, core and slice the apples. Cut the slices into half-inch pieces. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 tablespoon sugar. Set aside. Spoon one-third of the batter into prepared pan. Spread with half the apples and one-third See It’s the season for tea on page 12

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It’s the season for tea, and for cakes as well… Continued from page 10 of the streusel. Spoon another third of the batter over the apples and spread to make sure the batter reaches the sides of the pan. Sprinkle with remaining apples and half the remaining streusel. Top with the remaining batter and the rest of the streusel. Place in the oven and bake 60 to 90 minutes until a tester comes out with just a coating of cinnamon specks. Let cool. Remove carefully from the pan. Serves 8 to 10.

Sour Cream Butter Berry Tea Cake (Dairy)

• 6 Tbsp. melted butter • 1/2 cup granulated sugar • 2 large eggs • 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract • 2/3 cup sour cream • 1 cup unbleached flour • 1/2 tsp. baking powder • 1/2 tsp. baking soda • 4 oz. softened brick-style cream cheese • 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar • 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract • 1 cup blackberries • 1/2 cup blueberries Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9-inch springform pan and set aside. Place the butter and granulated sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. Add one egg and the teaspoon of vanilla and beat until thickened, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the sour cream and beat until blended. Add the flour, baking powder and baking soda and beat until smooth, scraping the bowl as needed. Scrape into the prepared pan and bake until the cake is lightly golden and springs back when lightly touched, about 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile, Wash the electric mixer bowl and dry thoroughly. Add the cream cheese, powdered sugar, teaspoon of vanilla extract, and the

remaining egg. Beat until smooth and creamy, scraping the bowl as needed. Spread the topping over the cake and arrange blackberries and blueberries on top, pressing in gently. Bake until the topping is set and lightly brown but still jiggles a bit when the pan is gently shaken (20 to 30 minutes). Cool on a rack. Loosen the edges with a knife and remove the rim. Slide the cake off the bottom and onto a serving plate by sliding a thin knife under the bottom. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and more berries. Serves 8 to 12.

Lemon Glazed Lemon Poppy Tea Cake (Dairy)

• 3 large eggs • 1-1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract • 1/2 tsp. pure lemon extract • 1/4 cup whole milk (you can use 2%) • 1-1/2 cups unbleached flour • 3/4 cup sugar • 1 tsp. baking powder • 1 Tbsp. grated lemon zest • 3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice • 3 Tbsp. poppy seeds • 1-3/4 sticks unsalted butter, softened (14 Tbsp.) • Lemon Syrup: • 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice • 2/3 cup granulated white sugar Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x4 or 8x5 loaf pan. Line the bottom of the pan(s) with parchment paper so that the paper overhangs the two short sides. Grease and flour the parchment. Set aside. Break the eggs into a large bowl and add the sugar, extracts, and milk. Whisk together until well-blended. Set aside. Place the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, lemon zest, and poppy seeds in the bowl of an electric mixer and blend with a clean whisk or a fork. Add the softened butter and half the egg mixture. Turn the speed to low. Add the lemon

Classic pound cake with powdered sugar glaze dripping over.

juice and blend, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. When blended, increase the speed to medium and beat for one minute. Scrape the sides of the bowl and add the rest of the egg mixture in two additions, beating for 30 seconds after each addition. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean and the top is golden. Do not overbake. While the bread is baking, place the sugar and lemon juice in a small saucepan and bring to a boil until all the sugar is dissolved, 1 minute. Let cool, stirring often. When the bread is done, remove it from the oven and place on a wire rack. While still in the pan, pierce the cake

Fahrwasser, Adobe

with a skewer or chopstick, making holes an inch apart. Gently spoon a little more than half the hot syrup over the cake. Let the bread cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, run a knife around the sides, invert the bread, remove the paper and re-invert onto a serving plate. Brush some of the remaining syrup onto the sides and top of the loaf. Let the bread cool completely before wrapping. Store the bread in a cool place, loosely covered, for a few hours or overnight, before serving, to allow the syrup to completely infuse the bread. Use any leftover syrup for iced tea or lemonade. Garnish with slices of candied lemon or just fresh lemon slices.

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Justifiable rage expresses the wrath of Israel Y

Benjamin Kerstein

n the two weeks since “Israel’s 9/11,” I have moved beyond sadness, which has been replaced in recent days by something else: An utter, inchoate, primordial, primeval rage. It is difficult for me to think of anything but vengeance. My rage is only exacerbated by what I knew was coming: the blithering of the apologists, the cowards and the acolytes of slaughter. While I have been comforted by the immense outpouring of support from President Biden, the American people in general, and especially my non-Jewish friends — some of whom tell me that acquaintances previously hostile to Israel have had their minds completely changed by the atrocities — I cannot but stare into the face of the manifestations of pure evil that have raged through this society. There have been statements by the likes of TaNehisi Coates and Rashida Tlaib that can only be described as indicating the emergence of a kind of Neo-Nazi Left. The media has decided to erase the Jewish victims and engage in a chorus of frenzied weeping on behalf of Hamas and a vaguely defined “people of Gaza,” there being no need, apparently, for coercion to convince them to promote terrorist propaganda. Indeed, the New York Times disseminated a blood libel and has yet to apologize for the antisemitic violence it incited as a result. Major publications are writing pieces weeping over the predicament of “pro-Palestinian” activists on campus such as members of the unremittingly racist Students for Justice in Palestine, as if those “activists” have not been intimidating and attacking Jewish students for years while advocating genocide.

es I feel rage. Rage at all of them. Rage at their atrocities. Rage at their arrogance. Rage at their racism. Rage at their impunity. Rage at their redolent narcissism and selfregard. Rage at their empty pretensions of moral superiority. Rage at their dehumanization of my people and our martyrs. I take comfort that I am not alone. Jews are usually inept at expressing their anger, but when we are driven to the extreme, we excel at it. And our rage has only just begun to be expressed. We are a people with long memories. We are still annoyed with Pharaoh and despise Haman. We did not forget then and we will not forget now. The face of every one of those who committed, celebrated or justified these atrocities is etched forever on our memory, and we will see to it that they are made aware of this. The reckoning is already underway. The IDF is fighting back and will only intensify its mission of compensatory justice. American Jews are beginning to guard and patrol their own communities. They are confronting “progressive” politicians who, we now discover, have forged an alliance with barbarism. American Jews have begun to withdraw their support — political and financial — for institutions and individuals who have defamed and degraded them for years without consequence. They are thinking very hard about who their real friends are. have it from a trusted friend that the Jews of her city are beginning to purchase handguns at an accelerated rate. For a community as liberal as the Jewish community, this represents a sea change, though the community may not know it yet. So, the fiends should know this: We are about to see to it that the perpetrators’ bones are ground to dust. As for their apologists, we are about to see to it that their careers are over, their candidacies defeated, their reputations annihilated, their pro-terrorist antisemitic activism banned and

Thousands attend an Oct. 19 “Bring Them Home” rally hosted by Israeli-American Council in Times Square.

canceled, their universities defunded and sued into oblivion, their bank accounts drained paying settlements and their job prospects nonexistent — their names erased. If they physically attack Jews, I think it very likely they will be repaid in kind twice over. They are about to know fear, just as we have for centuries. They made the terrible mistake of forgetting that those centuries are over. The line was drawn in 1945 and they have now crossed it. They will face the consequences and they have earned them. Know this, barbarians of Hamas and the “Arab street”; know this, you of the “day of rage”; know this, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib; know this, every one of you bullies and cowards who contemplates antisemitic violence; know

this, Ta-Nehisi Terrorist and all who sail in you; know this, you “professors” who profess genocide; know this, Students for Terrorism in Palestine and your accomplices; know this, imams who preach racist murder and those among the faithful who follow you; know this, “protesters” who chant “from the river to the sea”; know this, you who consider yourselves beautiful souls and a caste of saints even as you cry onanistic tears for the murderers; know this, all of you who guzzle upon the blood of babies and worship at the feet of swine and demons — the wrath of all Israel is upon you, from every corner of the earth. So, I say to you: You are done, over with, finished. You just don’t know it yet. I do not think you will have to wait for long.

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Ceasefire advocates are Hamas’ useful idiots Jonathan S. tobin

JnS Editor-in-Chief

t’s been more than two weeks since the atrocities of Oct. 7 shocked the world with the deliberate cruelty and barbarism exhibited by Hamas terrorists as they conducted what has been aptly described as pogroms inside Israel. The death toll in the largest mass slaughter of Jews — 1,400 in a single day — since the Holocaust continues to rise as more bodies are discovered and identified. Added to that are those victims yet unaccounted for, in addition to the more than 4,000 wounded and as many as 200 others dragged captive into the Gaza Strip. But for most of the world, the narrative about this conflict has already flipped. The Israel Defense Forces continues airstrikes on Hamas targets inside Gaza. The focus of most of the discussion about the conflict is now on the plight of Palestinian civilians and how — in the words of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof — a desire for revenge and futile quest for Israeli safety had led to a campaign to “kill Gazan children.” Enlightened liberal opinion that opposes Hamas terrorism and doesn’t want to see Israel destroyed is now making common cause with ideologues who openly cheer for the murderers in the streets of the world’s leading cities and on the campuses of American universities. Both seem to agree that the priority now is to force Israel to accept a ceasefire with Hamas in order to prevent a humanitarian crisis inside the Islamist-ruled coastal enclave. But there is one thing that needs to be understood as the toll of Palestinian casualties

grows, even if the numbers bandied about come from the Hamas propaganda machine and many, if not most, of those killed are actually terrorists. It’s that everyone who is now focused on stopping Israel from carrying out a decisive military attack inside Gaza that will terminate the terrorist regime that has existed as an independent Palestinian state in all but name since 2007 are, despite the differences in their views, pushing for a common goal: ending the fighting so as to enable the survival of Hamas. n this way, well-meaning humanitarians and critics of Israel’s government who are nevertheless supporters of the Jewish state are essentially on the same side as the antisemites demanding its elimination. They must all be considered Hamas’s useful idiots. The predictable one-sided calls for Israel to stand down in its efforts to defend itself against Hamas coming from the United Nations are easily dismissed by the Jewish state’s supporters, who fail to understand the ability of the international community to help undermine the Jewish state. Also troubling are calls for a ceasefire coming from American legal scholars, the professors who teach in elite schools turning out the legislators and judges

of tomorrow, treating every Israeli measure of self-defense as immoral. Even those not openly demanding that Israel not strike back at the terrorists are warning that the anticipated ground invasion of Gaza is a mistake that will backfire on Israel. That’s the position of CNN host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, who remains the most reliable source for whatever conventional wisdom is being peddled by the same foreign-policy establishment that has been wrong about everything in the Middle East for more than 30 years. Times columnist and inveterate Israel critic Thomas Friedman, who seems to have President Joe Biden’s ear, is also among those who believe that an invasion is wrong. He thinks that the United States should force Israel to promise in advance of any further ill-advised fighting that when the guns fall silent, they will withdraw from Judea and Samaria, so as to enable the creation of another independent Palestinian state in addition to the one that Hamas has ruled in Gaza since 2006. That is a formula for another Islamist terror state, not peace. Still others — like Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, whose banal observations on the past and contemporary life have given

him something of the status of an intellectual icon — are appalled by the demonization of Israel. But he writes in the Washington Post that he considers the Israeli consensus that Hamas be wiped out as a mirror image of the terrorist group’s own absolutist view of the world. He believes that the quest for dealing out “justice” to the Oct. 7 criminals is no different from Hamas’s apocalyptic worldview. He feels Israeli actions that would prioritize the safety of Palestinian civilians, even if it means letting them live inside Israel and even if that helps Hamas, will be better for Israel in the long run. ven Biden, whose statements of unabashed support of Israel and condemnation of Hamas have so heartened Jews there and in the United States, seems to be doing everything possible to delay the Gaza offensive or to push for it to be so restricted in nature that it’s hard to see how it can accomplish the objective of destroying the terrorists’ hold on Gaza. US military assistance that is vital to resupply the Israel Defense Forces and hopefully deter Iran from widening the war seems also to be coming with conditions and advice that may be aimed at limiting the campaign. Part of this may be related to American efforts to free some of the hostages being held by Hamas, even if this may, as such ransom deals always do, only strengthen the terrorists. It is unlikely that most ordinary Israelis are listening to any of them. The Israeli public and its deeply shaken political, military and intelligence establishments have rightly come to the conclusion that the only way to prevent more such criminal assaults is to invade Gaza and put an end to Hamas rule once and for all. The kind of campaign to wipe out Hamas that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Continued on next page

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Standing witness… Continued from page 4 the shelter, only to be met with horror: a terrorist hurls a grenade, killing the father. The two boys, injured and in shock and anguish, emerge from the shelter, returning to their home. They are crying in fear and agony, fully aware that they have lost their beloved father. They sit down, one on the living room couch and the other at the dining room table, severely wounded and bleeding. One of the boys laments that he can only see through one eye, while the other boy, in tears, asks, “Why are we still alive?” A terrorist nonchalantly enters the house, paying little attention to the desperate boys, and calmly opens the refrigerator. He retrieves a bottle of cola, takes a sip, and walks out. Subsequently, we witness the two boys leaving the house, seeking refuge, just as their mother returns in search of them. She finds her husband’s lifeless body at the entrance to the shelter. Overwhelmed by grief, she collapses. Kibbutz security personnel swiftly usher her indoors as the peril persists with Hamas terrorists still roaming the area. In a separate audio clip, a terrorist calls his parents. He is heard explaining that he is calling from the phone of a woman he just killed in Kibbutz Mefalsim on the Gaza border. “I killed 10 Jews with my bare hands!” he exclaims. “Now, are you proud of me, father?” The joyful parents shower blessings upon their terrorist son. Numerous clips taken from terrorist bodycams, dashcams, victims or first responders, showed victims who had been bound, shot and burned. One video showed a terrorist trying to kill a foreign worker with a hoe to the neck. Another video showed first responders pouring water on a smoldering corpse. Other videos showed families murdered in their bedrooms. Footage from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im showed groups of corpses smoldering. One girl lay dead, her pants pulled down. According to at least one report, some male corpses had their genitals cut off and put in their mouths. Other videos show terrorists rampaging through the city of Sderot and several kibbutzim in the area, murdering as they walk and causing destruction everywhere. Sderot was one of the first communities to come under attack by Hamas terrorists who rampaged through it shortly after dawn on Oct. 7. The city is now mostly quiet save for the constant Red Alert sirens as Hamas in Gaza continues to rain rockets on it. The 30,000 residents have mostly been evacuated. One can still see cars with bullet holes, buildings damaged by heavy gunfire. The place where the Sderot police station once stood is now a ruin. It was razed to the ground in the fighting after terrorists killed 20 police officers there and barricaded themselves inside. Throughout the city, there are signs of battle. Brick sidewalks are torn up and street signs and advertising posters are riddled with bullet holes. A parked truck has a gaping black hole in the back after being hit with an RPG missile. A minivan with shattered windows sits on the side of the road, silent witness to the murders that took place when terrorists attacked a group of pensioners on their way to a vacation. They fled the van to enter a nearby shelter only to find the door was locked. They were all murdered on the spot.

Bound and burned 1232944

forces recaptured Mosul from ISIS with the assistance of the United States, as many as 11,000 civilians were killed in the fighting inside the city. And some 800,000 German civilians were killed during the Allied bombings of Germany. On top of that, perhaps 150,000 civilians were killed during the 1945 invasions of Germany that ended with, in addition to the fighting elsewhere, a brutal house-to-house battle in Berlin. We know that in neither of those cases did those seeking the end of those regimes take as much care in avoiding civilian deaths as Israel does now. Yet those casualty numbers were not terrible enough to render the wars to destroy ISIS and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi murder machine immoral undertakings. The same moral calculus must be applied to the war in Gaza. ontrary to Kristof’s despicable attempt at moral equivalence, Israel doesn’t seek to kill Arab children to make Israeli kids safe. He should know that a regime that murders and beheads Jewish infants cannot be allowed to hide behind the Palestinian children that they have endangered by launching this war. And those who would let it do so are not demonstrating wisdom or superior morals to those correctly demanding Hamas’s elimination. Western minds raised on moral relativism are uncomfortable with the concept that some movements and governments are evil rather than merely misguided or mistaken. That is why they find a war that can only end in the complete defeat of Hamas — no matter the cost — to be in conflict with their understanding about how the world works. Still, it’s much simpler than all that. If, despite condemnations of terrorism, you advocate for policies that will enable Hamas to emerge alive and well from the murderous rampage it undertook on Oct. 7 — and which started this war — then you are their unwitting accomplices and as reprehensible as those who cry in the streets for more Jewish blood to be spilled.

Farther south lies Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Here, terrorists broke through the fence surrounding the kibbutz and attacked the first rows of houses before moving farther inside and slaughtering 70 men, women and children. Many of the victims were found with their hands tied.

The bodies of some of the terrorists still lie on the ground where they were killed. One terrorist is prone on the living room floor of a family home, a rope attached to his leg after an Israeli bomb squad had checked to see if he was wearing explosives. The smell of smoke and charred houses mixes with the stench of the terrorists’ decaying corpses. It is impossible to walk around without treading on dried blood from both victims and terrorists as well as the burned remains of the contents of many of the houses. Some of the terrorists’ weaponry remains on the ground after sappers had checked them. Fire-damaged Kalashnikov assault rifles lie near bullet magazines the terrorists brought with them in black knapsacks with pockets and tabs to hold ammunition and supplies. They also brought thick, black zip ties to take hostages. The firefights and explosions that took place in the kibbutz are evident everywhere. Black explosion scars and bullet holes are imprinted on houses and buildings. Belongings of victims lie strewn on the grass and pathways after being blown out of the houses by the grenades the terrorists tossed inside. Bullet holes cover entire walls and ceilings, with some corners untouched; mugs are still perched on shelves where they had been placed by their dead owners. In one house, two girls were found bound and burned. In another house, an entire family of five was butchered. Other houses were burned to the ground. At least one house was blown apart by an explosion. On the main road, the remains of one of the terrorist hang gliders lie smashed on the ground, next to a Toyota truck the terrorists used to drive into the kibbutz.

Unimaginable

Like Kfar Aza, Kibbutz Be’eri was one of the hardest-hit areas. Here, Hamas terrorists also committed unimaginable atrocities against the civilians caught by surprise. Thirty percent — 300 of the 1,000 or so inhabitants — were murdered or taken hostage by the terrorists. Yossi Landau is the commander of the southern region for ZAKA, a rescue and recovery organization. He described what he saw during the first few days when he and other ZAKA volunteers were called in to remove the bodies from multiple locations where they had been found. Entire families were killed together, babies were shot, beheaded and burned. Women were tied up and raped; at least one had her breast cut off. The terrorists tortured their victims, many of them children. Some of the terrorists were carrying manuals with explicit instructions on what to do with hostages, and they had precise maps containing the smallest details. The level of intelligence the terrorists had is astounding and it is clear that many of the thousands of workers from Gaza Israel allowed in for humanitarian purposes over the last few years were gathering information for the massacre. Today, Be’eri appears serene in some areas, but many parts of the kibbutz are completely destroyed. Smashed cars lie on the side of the road, the stench of death still permeates some spots, burned houses stand ruin, bearing witness to what occurred just a few weeks ago. Many other houses stand empty; bullet holes on the walls and personal belongings strewn about inside after Palestinian civilians came to loot. Now, silence. No one is home. House after house remains empty. The doors are open and the lights are on for security. The inhabitants have been evacuated. The terrorists are dead or arrested. Kfar Aza and Be’eri will forever stand as monuments to the massacres that took place there. Never again.

19 THE JEWISH STAR October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784

Continued from previous page Benjamin Netanyahu has promised will be difficult to accomplish. It may be that what Israel is planning will take weeks or even months to carry out. The toll in casualties on both sides may be terrible. And the longer it goes on with the Hamas propagandists and their accomplices at mainstream corporate media outlets hyping Palestinian casualties and treating Israel as morally equivalent to the Oct. 7 criminals, the harder it will be for Israel to stay the course. But contrary to the moral relativism of people like Kristof, Zakaria, Friedman and Harari, the option facing Israel and the world in Gaza is not one that can be characterized as morally complex or one in which the truth lies somewhere in the gray area between the absolutist claims of either Palestinians or Israelis. he choice between Hamas and Israel is not complex. It is one between an Islamist tyranny and a democratic state, between a group whose Western ideology isn’t merely alien to Western thought but steeped in what can only be described as evil. The comparison between Hamas and ISIS is apt; they are both modern-day Nazi movements that share an eliminationist mentality when it comes to Jews and the Jewish state. The destruction of the Hamas regime is not merely a difficult policy option that will generate criticism from Western humanitarians, as well as hysteria on the “Arab street” and throughout the Muslim world. It is a moral imperative and should be treated no differently from the implacable determination of the West to wipe out the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria, or the Allies goal to destroy the regimes of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II. In neither of those examples did the toll of civilian casualties, however tragic it may be, serve as a deterrent to pursuing the goal of victory over those evil entities. In Mosul in 2017, when Iraqi and Allied

October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

‫כוכב של שבת‬ 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

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Avraham models our role as Jewish parents rabbi sir jonathan sacks zt”l

he most influential man who ever lived does not appear on any list I have seen of the hundred most influential men who ever lived. He ruled no empire, commanded no army, engaged in no spectacular acts of heroism on the battlefield, performed no miracles, proclaimed no prophecy, led no vast throng of followers, and had no disciples other than his own child. Yet today more than half of the billions of people alive on the face of the planet identify themselves as his heirs. His name, of course, is Abraham, held as the founder of faith by the three great monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He is not described as unique in his generation, as in the case of Noah. The Torah tells us no tales of his childhood, as it does in the case of Moses. We know next to nothing about his early life. When G-d calls on him, as He does at the beginning of this week’s parsha, Lech Lecha, to leave his land, his birthplace, and his father’s house, we have no idea why he was singled out. Yet never was a promise more richly fulfilled than the words of G-d to him when He changed his name from Abram to Abraham: “For I have made you father of many nations.” Gen. 17:5 There are today 56 Islamic nations, more than 80 Christian ones, and the Jewish state. Truly Abraham became the father of these many nations. But who was Abraham and why was he chosen for this exemplary role? here are three famous portraits of Abraham. The first is the Midrash we learned as children. Abraham, left alone with his father’s idols, breaks them with a hammer, which he leaves in the hand of the biggest of the idols. His father Terah comes in, sees the devastation, asks who

The great scenes in Abraham’s life — waiting for a child, the birth of Ishmael, the tension between Sarah and Hagar, the birth of Isaac, and the Binding — are all about his role as a father.

has caused it, and the young Abraham replies, “Can you not see? The hammer is in the hands of the largest idol. It must have been him.” Terah replies, “But an idol is mere of wood and stone.” Abraham replies, “Then, father, how can you worship them?” This is Abraham the iconoclast, the breaker of images, the man who while still young rebelled against the pagan, polytheistic world of demigods and demons, superstition and magic. The second is more haunting and is enigmatic. Abraham, says the Midrash, is like a man travelling on a journey when he sees a palace in flames: He wondered, “Is it possible that the palace lacks an owner?” The owner of the palace looked out and said, “I am the owner of the palace.” So Abraham our father said, “Is it possible that the world lacks a ruler?” G-d looked out and said to him, “I am the Ruler, the Sovereign of the universe.” Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 38:13 his is an extraordinary passage. Abraham sees the order of nature, the elegant design of the universe. It’s like a palace. It must have been made by someone, for someone. But the palace is on fire. How can this be? Surely the owner should be putting out the flames. Yet the owner of the palace calls out to him, as G-d called to Abraham, asking him to help fight the fire. G-d needs us to fight the destructive instinct in the human heart. This is Abraham, the fighter against injustice, the man who sees the beauty of the natural universe being disfigured by the sufferings inflicted by man on man. Finally comes a third image, this time by Moses Maimonides: After he was weaned, while still an infant, Abraham’s mind began to reflect. Day and night, he thought and wondered, “How is it possible that this celestial sphere should continuously be guiding the world and have no one to guide it and cause it to turn, for it cannot be that it turns itself?” He had no teacher, no one to instruct him in anything. He was surrounded, in Ur of the Chaldees, by fool-

ish idolaters. His father and mother and the entire population worshipped idols, and he worshipped with them. But his mind was constantly active and reflective, until he had attained the way of truth, found the correct line of thought, and knew that there is one G-d, He that guides the celestial spheres and created everything, and that among all that exists, there is no G-d beside Him. Maimonides, Hilchot Avodat Kochavim 1:3 This is Abraham the philosopher, anticipating Aristotle, using metaphysical argument to prove the existence of G-d. hree images of Abraham; three versions, perhaps, of what it is to be a Jew. The first sees Jews as iconoclasts, challenging the idols of the age. Even secular Jews who had cut themselves adrift from Judaism were among the most revolutionary modern thinkers, most famously Spinoza, Marx, and Freud. Thorstein Veblen said in an essay on “the intellectual pre-eminence of Jews,” that the Jew becomes “a disturber of the intellectual peace … a wanderer in the intellectuals’ no-man’s-land, seeking another place to rest, farther along the road, somewhere over the horizon.” The second sees Jewish identity in terms of tzedek umishpat, a commitment to the just society. Albert Einstein spoke of the “almost fanatical love of justice” as one of “the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.” The third reminds us that the Greek thinkers Theophrastus and Clearchus, disciples of Aristotle, speak of the Jews as a nation of philosophers. So these views are all true and profound. They share only one shortcoming. There is no direct evidence for them whatsoever in the Torah. Joshua speaks of Abraham’s father Terah as an idolater (Josh. 24:2), but this is not mentioned in Bereishit. The story of the palace in flames is perhaps based on Abraham’s challenge to G-d about the proposed destruction of Sodom and the cities of the plain: “Shall the Judge of all the earth not

do justice?” As for Abraham-as-Aristotle, that is based on an ancient tradition that the Greek philosophers (especially Pythagoras) derived their wisdom from the Jews, but this too is nowhere hinted in the Torah. hat then does the Torah say about Abraham? The answer is unexpected and very moving. Abraham was chosen simply to be a father. The “Av” in Avram/Avraham means “father. In the only verse in which the Torah explains the choice of Abraham, it says: For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the L-rd by doing what is right and just, so that the L-rd will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” Gen. 18:19 The great scenes in Abraham’s life — waiting for a child, the birth of Ishmael, the tension between Sarah and Hagar, the birth of Isaac, and the Binding — are all about his role as a father (next week I will write about the troubling episode of the Binding). Judaism, more than any other faith, sees parenthood as the highest challenge of all. On the first day of Rosh Hashana — the anniversary of Creation — we read of two mothers, Sarah and Hannah, and the births of their sons, as if to say: Every life is a universe. Therefore if you wish to understand the creation of the universe, think about the birth of a child. Abraham, the hero of faith, is simply a father. Stephen Hawking famously wrote at the end of “A Brief History of Time” that if we had a Unified Field Theory, a scientific “theory of everything”, we would “know the mind of G-d.” We believe otherwise. To know the mind of G-d we do not need theoretical physics. We simply need to know what it is to be a parent. The miracle of childbirth is as close as we come to understanding the-love-that-brings-new-life-into-the-world that is G-d’s creativity. There is a fascinating passage in Yossi Klein Halevi’s book on Christians and Muslims in the See Sacks on page 26

Rabbi DR. tzvi heRsh weinReb Orthodox Union

here are moments in life when we must start all over, when we have no choice but to begin again. Such moments seem to typically follow tragic events. Sudden loss, especially the loss of those closest to us, forces us to begin again. Our only other options are lifelong despair and depression. There are times when even good fortune demands that we begin again. Acceptance into a new professional career, or a move to a new community, or marriage, all require a new response, and often an entirely new way of life. I write these words little more than a week after one of the most horrible catastrophes in recent Jewish history, Hamas’ invasion into Israel’s homeland and its consequent massacre, torture and kidnapping of well over a thousand civilians and soldiers.

I leave it to those who have the expertise to describe and record details of the terror. I am not sufficiently astute to even speculate upon the military decisions that lie ahead, nor am I remotely qualified to suggest political responses to this complex predicament. hat I can do and will do is to ask that you consider, if not immediately then as the way forward becomes clearer, that we now have a responsibility to begin again. As individuals, as communities, and as a Jewish nation, we must start over. We must reconsider old habits, past strategies, former relationships, and long held ideologies and beliefs. In short, borrowing from an old Yiddish adage which Naomi Shemer used as the title of one of her poems, we are all now challenged to “begin anew from Bereshis.” Ironically, the day that Hamas struck, the Shabbat that shall live in infamy, was Simchat Torah in Israel. The core ritual of this sacred day is to read the final passages of the Chumash from one Torah scroll, and then open another Torah scroll to “begin again from Bereshis.”

We return to Bereshis again, readjusting our understanding to conform with the lessons we have learned earlier in our lives. How apt it is that this column is dedicated to Parshat Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1-17:27), which begins with the L-rd’s instruction to Abram to begin again, to start all over. We know almost nothing about Abram’s life until this point. We know his father’s name, his brothers’ names, and his nephew’s name. We know that his father took some of his family on the journey from the land of Canaan, but never quite made it there until the father died. All that was recorded in last week’s parsha. This week’s parsha begins: “The L-rd said

to Abram, ‘Go forth from your native land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. …’ Abram went forth as the Lord had commanded him…” Abram began anew. He started over. He readied himself to face the various challenges, nisyonot, that lay ahead. Beginning again was just the first of these challenges. e, the Jewish people, are all descendants of Abraham. Even converts to the Jewish faith typically adopt the name Abraham for themselves or refer to themselves as ben Avraham, a son of Abraham. Like our forefather, we all are called upon, at critical moments in our long history, to begin again, to start anew. I am not sufficiently arrogant, however, to offer direction to an entire nation or even to any one specific community. I will instead confine myself in this column to guidance for those interested in, resorting to a psychological terminology that I picked up in graduate school, the “developmental task” of lifelong Torah study. This is a task incumbent upon us See Weinreb on page 26 all.

Tower of Babel and its totalitarianism tradition Kosher bookworm

alan Jay GeRbeR

Jewish Star columnist

ith the world swirling around us with the turmoil of violence and murder, all at the behest of governments and their terrorist surrogates, it behooves us to take a close look at the biblical saga of the Tower of Babel and its role as the harbinger of the totalitarian rule that has become commonplace today. This week’s essay will be devoted to reviewing several works that deal with this theme from our religious perspective. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in “From Adam To Abraham” that appeared in “Abraham’s Journey” (Ktav, 2008, edited by Rabbi Reuven Ziegler, Dr. David Shatz, and Dr. Joel Wolowelsky), goes into deep theological detail regarding the role that the Tower of Babel saga played in the development of totalitarianism in human history. The Rav noted the following concerning that generation: “This society is ruled by power-hungry

men who want to possess and own the individual — or rather to deprive the individual of his soul, to depersonalize him and convert him into a machine, into an object. It is out to organize and convert mankind into an army and to introduce uniformity. It does not believe that each individual has his own approach to life and his own unique talents.” He notes further: “The builders of the Tower of Babel depersonalized man so thoroughly that they would ignore a man who fell off the building, but

would cry when a stone or a brick fell.” Prof. Israel Laulicht of Bar Ilan University, in an essay titled, “The Generation of the Tower of Babel, A New Era in World Management,” observes: “Let us pause for a moment to consider, what would have happened if all mankind had been under a proletarian dictatorship such as the communist regime in the former Soviet Union or in China. We may reasonably assume that such a regime would not have disintegrated so quickly; rather, it would have become more and more corrupt and rotten. “The communists, like the generation of the Tower of Babel, truly worshipped materialism, technology, and public strength, while taking lightly the life of the individual and waging a battle of annihilation against faith in G-d. Both regimes were alike in that their ideological platform appeared benign and positive.” In a footnote, the author adds: “The parallels between the views on society and faith held by the generation of the flood and those held by the communist regime was noted some 25 years ago by Rabbi Menachem Ben-Zion Sacks in his book, ‘Me-

nachem Zion’.” Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, in his work, “Torah Lights: Bereishis — Confronting Life, Love, and Family” (Maggid, 2009) makes note of this same brick falling incident by stating: “Hence, the Almighty decides to ‘confuse their speech, so that one person will not understand the language of the other.’ Such a punishment perfectly fits the crime; after all, a totalitarian state, united in order to establish a collective name, has neither the energy nor the motivation to empathetically hear or sensitively internalize the individual needs of anyone else. … And such an inhuman and godless society must be stopped in its tracks before it does even greater damage.” Rabbi Riskin gives an even more contemporary image to this incident quoting the following verse, and observing: “And the earth was corrupt before G-d, and the earth was filled with violence. “The picture which emerges is that of godlessness which leads to lawlessness, and anarchy which breeds giants, children of ‘the lords’ or ‘demi-gods,’ who seize whatever goods or good-looking people they wish, a situation of See Gerber on page 26

Follow Avraham’s example and build people up! Parsha of the week

Rabbi avi billet Jewish Star columnist

n this week parsha, Lech Lecha, we read about how when Avraham and Sarah embarked on their journey to the Land G-d would show them, they brought with them the “souls they made in Charan.” Who these people were is unclear, although the Midrash and commentaries advance a number of possibilities which depend on how they define the word asu (they made). They might have been people converted by Avraham and Sarah to monotheism. Or people who had been taught to do what is right. Rashi suggests they were Avraham’s and Sarah’s servants because asah (to make) can be understood to mean “an acquisition.” Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch notes how their “souls were created” (people whose lives lacked spirituality had a fire lit inside them by Avraham and Sarah. Each “soul” was truly “cre-

ated” by their mentors). The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 9a) says that the world is supposed to last 6,000 years from Adam until the Moshiach. The first 2,000 years were emptiness, the next 2,000 years were years of Torah, and the final 2,000 years are called Y’mot Hamoshiach (the Days of the Moshiach). The Talmud suggests that Avraham was 52 when these souls were “created,” since he was born in the year 1948 from the creation of Adam — 1,948 plus 52 equals 2000 — and at that age the 2,000 years of Torah began. idrash goes into specific detail as to how Avraham brought these people in and showed them love (Midrash Rabba 84, Vayeshev): “Avraham would bring them into his home, feed them, give them drink, bring them close, and enter them under the wings of the divine.” So what happened to these people? Why is this the only reference to them in the Torah? Where were they in all of Avraham’s adventures (maybe they make an appearance in the war to save Lot). Some of them might have been circumcised when Avraham circumcises himself, but otherwise they disappear. We don’t hear about this group in

Yitzchak’s time and they certainly don’t accompany Yaakov down to Egypt. In his Pardes Yosef, Rabbi Yosef Pazanowski quotes the Alexander Rebbe who says that after Avraham died, Avraham’s converts did not want to learn from Yitzchak. They never saw him as an Avraham. They stayed in their homes, “until their [souls] became cold and they returned to their old ways.” Rav Chanokh Henikh Alexander said, “This teaches us that a person should never say that the righteous person of today is not like the tzaddik of previous generations. A person must glean what he or she can out of the tzaddik of the current times.” This is a very important lesson about perspective. We know there are no Rav Moshe Feinsteins today, no Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbachs, no Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchiks, no Rav Ovadiah Yosefs. But there are people we can learn from and who can inspire us today. If we only pine for yesteryear, we can never grow in the times in which we are living. here is another important lesson as well — that we should look past the negative things we see in others, embrace our commonali-

ties, and even embrace our differences. Political discussions should be a space in which people can respectfully express their views and, when necessary, debate, without having their character assaulted just because they have such a view. The inability to see past a difference in worldview and to find common ground is what caused the souls Avraham and Sarah brought with them to be lost to their ways once they were gone. This is also the danger of a cult of personality we often see today, where people attach themselves to a rabbi or charismatic leader, and become hopeless and helpless when that leader dies, leaves the spotlight, or turns out to be corrupt. So let us make a commitment to be like Avraham as described in the Midrash (and not like Yitzchak, who dropped the ball on Avraham’s people) to embrace people no matter where they are, and bring them up, whether religiously or in general, and not put them down. And with the new leadership which will be upon this nation come January, may G-d bless the United States of America. We’ll need all the divine help we can get. Originally published in 2016.

THE JEWISH STAR October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784

Bereshis: After the horror, we must begin again

October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

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3 tragedies: Even in fog of war, truth matters HOwARD BReSSleR

ne hopes that the offspring of travail is wisdom. If we must endure horrible things that try our faith and the limits of our emotional and physical stamina, at least, we hope, we emerge having learned things that will be valuable. It is a poor salvage, but sometimes we must realize value where we can. Back in May of 2022, during IDF clashes with terrorists in Jenin, reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was killed. Because of her prominence and ready identity as a member of the press, there was a great rush to assign blame, with Palestinians claiming she had been shot by an Israeli soldier and Israelis claiming she had been hit by Palestinian gunmen operating in the town. Forensic details and emerging evidence was dissected and debated. I wrote an article in The Jewish Star (Death of a journalist in Jenin: Untruths and no consequences) that set out my perspectives — colored by my admitted hopes and biases — about what the evidence showed, stating that, if I was wrong, I, along with a lot of people on the Israeli side, would be eating a particular black, non-kosher bird (crow). And we did, as several investigations concluded that Abu Akleh was likely hit by Israeli fire and the IDF admitted that, while it could not be sure based on the forensic evidence, it was likely she had been killed by an Israeli-fired bullet. Back in September 2000, at the inception of the Second Intifada, a gun battle between Israeli troops and Palestinian forces led to the death of Muhammad al-Durrah. The image of the boy, crouched in terror behind his father,

Too late, these media have realized their rush to judgment and are now reporting what the evidence actually shows.

was splashed all over the media, as was the claim that Israeli forces had killed him. Israel, at first, accepted blame and issued an apology for his death. Later, after more complete forensic analysis revealed that al-Durrah was not and could not have been hit by Israeli fire, Israel retracted its acceptance of blame. But to this day Muhammad al-Durrah remains an icon of Palestinian “resistance” and the accepted — if erroneous — narrative is that he was killed in cold blood by the IDF. o when, this week, as the war against Hamas raged in Gaza, and Israel is still reeling from the Simchat Torah Massacre on Oct. 7 (what many people in Israel are referring to as the “Black Sabbath”), the Al-Alhi Baptist Hospital was reported to have been hit by some sort of ordinance, resulting in the deaths of what was claimed to be “hundreds” of people, I held my verbal fire. I wanted to see what the evidence would show, and how Israel would respond, before launching into attacks on or defense of anyone. Israeli authorities had too often and too recently screwed up in its initial claims in response to particularly bad events. I waited in the hope that Israel had learned from its previous hamhanded, rushed efforts to cover its tachat, and that its investigation would be both swift and, excuse the pun, bullet-proof. Unfortunately, others were not as cautious. Of course, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and their henchmen immediately claimed that Israel had deliberately struck the hospital, killing hundreds of doctors, nurses and patients – i.e., that the Jewish state had targeted one of the few places where Gazan civilians believed they could find a safe haven. People online started posting videos of failed rocket launches or Israeli strikes purportedly showing the Al-Alhi strike, which turned out to be false or reflected other incidents. And, unfortunately — I cannot say incredibly — many in the media jumped on that loaded bandwagon. A BBC reporter, reporting almost immediately after the strike (before any actual evidence was in) boldly and baselessly stated: “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.” The BBC followed with a story headlined, “Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli air strike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian officials say.” Reuters led with a headline that, “An Israeli air strike killed hundreds of Palestinians at a

Rockets are fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel on Oct. 16.

Gaza City hospital crammed with patients and displaced people,” although, like the BBC, it tepidly qualified that “health authorities in the besieged enclave” made that claim. And the New York Times, the “Gray Lady” that purportedly reports “all the news that’s fit to print,” led with its own bitter eye-candy: “Breaking News: An Israeli airstrike hit a Gaza hospital on Tuesday, killing at least 200 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which said the number of casualties was expected to rise.” The Wall Street Journal (whose editorial page has been refreshingly supportive of Israel’s fight against an ISIS-like enemy), the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera (naturally), all joined in on the pile-on. The list is long, exasperatingly so. Those media organizations took the word of a terrorist group — that for months planned an attack deliberately targeting civilians, in which women were raped, infants were shot in their cribs, entire families were tortured and executed, concertgoers were slaughtered, people were burned alive and beheaded and hundreds taken hostage — as gospel. And of course the world exploded in yet more fury directed at Israel and Jews worldwide (a ripple-effect that is still spreading).

Abed Rahim Khatib, Flash 90 (JNS)

ut this time Israel got its response right. It marshalled the evidence (and there is plenty) and within hours presented it cogently, coherently and convincingly to show that the strike at Al-Alhi was definitely not from Israeli ordinance and was instead from a rocket fired within Gaza that fell short, in the parking lot adjacent to the hospital (giving lie to perhaps the central part of the narrative — that the hospital itself was targeted and hit). Video evidence (recorded, paradoxically, by Al Jazeera), showed a rocket launch from Gaza gone awry, falling and hitting what was determined by geolocation to be the site of the Al-Alhi blast. Intercepted audio showed two Gazan operatives (Hamas or Islamic Jihad) discussing the fallen rocket, including that shrapnel from the projectile did not match Israeli ordinance and that Islamic Jihad had been firing missiles from a cemetery located near the hospital. Satellite footage showed launches of rockets right over the hospital’s path. And footage from the ground showed a tiny impact crater, some burned out cars and blown out windows in adjacent buildings — the kinds of things that would result from the explosion of a relaSee Bressler on page 26

BEN COHEN

verall, I’ve been heartened during the last week by the response of key NATO leaders to the blood-drenched Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7. From President Joe Biden to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to French President Emmanuel Macron, the tone has been consistent in its condemnation of the slaughter, supportive of Israel’s right to self-defense and, crucially, sensitive to the discordant historical echoes resonating in the minds of Jews and Israelis. I am thinking in particular of Biden’s invocation of the Holocaust during his visit to Tel Aviv last week, and of Sunak’s deliberate use of the word “pogrom” to describe the atrocities in an address to the House of Commons. But there is one aspect of this current discourse that troubles me — and that is the assertive separation of the “Palestinians” from Hamas. “The Palestinians are not Hamas, Hamas does not speak for them,” Scholz declared during his visit to Tel Aviv, while Biden, Macron and Sunak have all made the same point in similar language. Is it true? It’s worth pointing out that we’ve been faced with a similar conundrum before. After the 9/11 atrocities in 2001, some commentators drew a straight line between the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur’an, the Islamic faith and

Hamas continues to rule in Gaza, despite its brutality and fanaticism, with a sufficient degree of popular consent.

Buy the Brooklyn Bridge or buy this: ‘Palestinians are not Hamas’ Al-Qaeda; Islam itself was the problem, they said. In response, many Western politicians, including then-President George W. Bush, went out on a limb to depict Islam as a “religion of peace,” charging Osama bin Laden and his cohorts with desecrating the core tenets of a noble faith. The truth, as ever, lay in between. t’s ridiculously simplistic to reduce an entire faith to a single element — be it relentless jihad or eternal peace. Islamic holy texts certainly do not eschew violence nor are they particularly liberal, but neither are they a straight-out manifesto for genocide against nonbelievers. Islam can give succor to both warlike and peaceful approaches to international relations; the twists of human history mean that the former interpretation has achieved much greater visibility than the latter one. Could similarly opposing observations be made about the Palestinians as a people and Hamas as a terrorist organization? Are the Palestinians largely a peaceful lot, ill-served by the murderers and rapists who rule them? Or is there a straight line, when all is said and done, connecting the Palestinian polity with the genocidal intentions of Hamas? If Scholz is right, then we might conclude that the infiltrators who carried out the slaughter were professional operatives, living separate lives from ordinary Palestinians and not consulting with them on key matters of war and peace. Now, when you recall the manner in which Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, killing and torturing supporters of the rival Fatah faction, the argument might seem to carry merit. But that leaves out the fact that in the pre-

Palestinians march during a pro-Hamas protest in Hebron on Oct. 13.

vious year’s Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas won a victory deemed free and fair by international observers. In other words, the Palestinian people handed Hamas a mandate to rule which Fatah could not stomach; hence, the civil war that followed in Gaza. Sixteen years later, the Palestinians are still ruled by Hamas in Gaza, as well as by the corrupt, Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Hamas

Wisam Hashlamoun, Flash90 (JNS)

enjoys much greater support among Palestinians than does the West’s preferred partner, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas. During a decade of unprecedented protests across the Arab world, there were occasional outbursts of dissatisfaction with both Hamas and Fatah, but there was no “Palestinian Spring.” Nothing has happened to challenge the notion that Hamas continues to rule in See Cohen on page 26

Just how ‘innocent’ are the civilians of Gaza? MitCHEll Bard

et’s state a few things at the outset. •Many Palestinians oppose Hamas and violence. •Every possible effort should be made to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip. •No one residing in Gaza would be in danger if Hamas had not launched rockets into Israel and committed a massacre of Jews not seen since the Holocaust. Is there any doubt that Gazans know who Hamas is and what it stands for? They can read the Hamas Charter, which contains a passage that is often found in textbooks and sermons: The Prophet Allah, bless him and grant him salvation, has said: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, “O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” The charter says: “There is no solution for the Palestine question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. Palestine is an Islamic land.” Given the dictatorial rule of Hamas, which quashes dissent, it is difficult to know how many Palestinians oppose their rule. We know that when there are rare protests, as earlier this year, they were not over Hamas terrorism but the supply of electricity and gas. They also object to the diversion by Hamas of millions of dollars of Qatari money meant for humanitarian aid for its purposes. Have there been protests when the terrorists fired any of the thousands of rockets into Israel even though Gazans knew the attacks

would provoke Israeli airstrikes that would worsen their lives? Did mothers, now wailing, condemn Hamas for slaughtering Israeli children on Oct. 7? How many ensure that their children stay home instead of joining the terrorists? How many praise their children when they murder Jews? Do you remember ever seeing a peace demonstration in Gaza? I remember the rallies cheering the terrorists on 9/11. alestinians and their supporters justify Hamas terrorism as resistance to “occupation.” Except Israel does not occupy one inch of Gaza. And why is it that Christians who live in the same circumstances in Gaza and the West Bank never engage in terror? All the Hamas murderers were children once. How did they turn into monsters? Could it be from the steady diet of antisemitic indoctrination they have received from imams in mosques, from teachers and textbooks at UNRWA schools, and from summer training camps? Take the Hamas-affiliated imam who said, in a sermon at Deir Al-Balah Mosque broadcast by Al-Aqsa TV, the Hamas TV channel, on Friday, July 25, 2014: “Our doctrine in fighting you [the Jews] is that we will totally exterminate you. We will not leave a single one of you alive, because you are alien usurpers of the land and eternal mercenaries.” UNRWA schools “regularly call for the murder of Jews and create teaching materials that glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite antisemitism,” according to the latest report by UN Watch and IMPACT-se. Gaza parents send their children to summer camps where this summer’s theme was “Jerusalem Shield.” Palestinian scholar Bassam Tawil reported that campers in Gaza are given military training, “such as practice with knives and firearms, hand-to-hand combat,

Palestinian supporters of Hamas pass out sweets in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 17, 2019, after a terrorist attack in which a Palestinian man killed a 19-year-old IDF soldier, stole his weapon and used it to shoot two others near Ariel, in the West Bank. Abed Rahim Khatib, Flash90 (JNS)

and marching and foot drills. The children also stage plays and enact scenes of fighting and capturing Israeli soldiers or firing rockets at Israel.” They learn to assemble and disassemble weapons, tromp on Israeli flags and see pictures of terrorists who murdered Israelis as examples to look up to. Given this upbringing, what would the children of Gaza do to the Jews if they had the opportunity? We don’t have to guess, thanks to a Hamas video of Palestinian children terrorizing a kidnapped Israeli child.

srael tries to avoid civilian casualties, but what do the Gazans do? They allow Hamas to use their schools, mosques and hospitals for headquarters, arsenals and rocket-launch sites. Paradoxically, the reaction in Gaza to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket falling with deadly effect on a hospital last Tuesday may best illustrate their complicity. Instead of blaming the terrorists for this atrocity, they immediately point to Israel. They didn’t need sophisticated technology See Bard on page 27

23 THE JEWISH STAR October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784

Viewpoint

October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784 THE JEWISH STAR

Gaza, where revenge’s moral math has no equal THANe ROSeNBAUM Distinguished Univ. Professor Touro College

ake out your calculators. While you’re at it, a set of blinders, too. Israel’s imminent Gaza campaign is going to get ugly. The moral and mathematical problem has already been revealed. As the Israel Defense Forces accelerates its Hamas manhunt, going house to house will invariably include collateral damage, more Palestinian civilians will be killed. There will be calls for Israel to exercise “restraint.” The word “de-escalate” was uttered by progressives even before Israel began to retaliate. “Ceasefire” was the operative word on American college campuses last week, along with “Intifada!” — words otherwise irreconcilable in their meanings. Another phrase will enter the national conversation: “proportionate response.” Is the death toll lopsided with a far larger Palestinian body count?

All these words mean the same thing: “Israel, put down your weapons. You are disqualified from pursuing justice for the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. A terrorist can’t be touched if it might result in a civilian death.” No other nation, especially the United States (with its atomic bombing of two Japanese cities, bombing of Dresden and Vietnamese villages, post-9/11 War on Terror against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and allied coalition forces removing ISIS from Mosul, has ever been held to such an exacting standard of precision while responding in self-defense. I know about this topic. During Israel’s last war with Gaza in 2014, I wrote what became a widely decried op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, in which I examined the crazy-making moral position Israel finds itself in. That dilemma in Gaza is present still. “An eye for an eye,” found in the Old Testament and Hammurabi’s Code, is often mistaken for blood vengeance when, in fact, it’s a call for proportionate justice. The loss of an eye creates a debt for the repayment of the monetary value of the wrongdoer’s eye — no less, and no more. See Rosenbaum on page 26

Israeli counter-terror forces patrol in Kibbutz Be’eri, near the Israeli-Gaza border in southern Israel, on Oct. 22.

Chaim Goldberg, Flash90 (JNS)

The deadly nature within psychological warfare IRWIN MANSDORF

Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs

t did not take long. Recently, in an article published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, I wrote that the “psychological asymmetry” that Palestinian terrorists use “includes embellishing and sometimes falsifying scenes of civilian damage and suffering and intentionally creating these scenes to generate opportunities to use them.” Now here we are, in the middle of a war, and the international media again falls victim to the manipulative use of civilian deaths and unwittingly becomes a pawn in the hands of terrorists, as shown by the recent false reports of Israeli responsibility for a missile strike on a Gaza hospital. Psychological warfare is real and it can be as lethal a weapon as the deadliest missile aimed at innocent people. It fans the flames of incitement, handcuffs those who defend against terror and

ing the darkest passions of those who could easily turn to violence against innocents. he purpose of psychological warfare is to gain an advantage without fighting for it. When an Arabic-language Palestinian newspaper publishes the headline “The Baptist massacre turns the tables on Israel,” you know all you need to know about the goal of psychological warfare: To win even though you are losing. The danger of incitement on the Arab street will remain despite the evidence of Israel’s innocence. Those who do not believe that there really was a massacre against Jewish communities and those who support bloodthirsty terrorists who commit wanton atrocities are not likely to be swayed by evidence. But this incitement goes further, enabling extremist pro-terrorist demonstrators in Western countries to take to the streets and engage in riots that disrupt public order and encourage acts of blatant antisemitism that threaten local Jewish communities. False reports also allow legitimate Arab leaders to take actions that endanger lives. The goal of any war is for the good guys to win and to save ciSee Mansdorf on page 27

New York Times headquarters at night.

reinforces the murderous plans of terrorists, who are given a pass while the media competes with itself to gain “eyeballs” by presenting scenes of what is described as “disproportionate” Israeli aggression. The rush to judgment after the self-inflicted attack by Gazan terrorists on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital is but another example of how the rules of reporting are no less important than the much-

Osugi, Shutterstock (JNS)

touted rules of war. Basic journalistic integrity includes verification, and that is precisely what the media outlets involved did not do. While some media sources “protected” themselves by adding “Palestinians claim” or “according to Palestinian sources” after describing the attack, many did not. The first impression provided by the premature reports not only placed blame on Israel, but also contributed to inflam-

Moving beyond vengeance to win this just war HARvey e. BINeS

hose opposing a Gaza ground invasion aimed at the terrorist group’s destruction cite humanitarian concerns. Such appeals will only preserve a criminal regime. Destruction of the Hamas regime is a moral imperative and should be treated no differently from the implacable determination of the West to wipe out the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria, or the Allies goal to destroy the regimes of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War II. In neither of those examples did the toll of civilian casualties, however tragic, serve as a deterrent to pursuing the goal of victory over those evil entities. In the face of the unspeakable brutality of the events of Oct. 7, all Jews of conscience and decent people the world over expect Israel to exact a vengeance that will “blot out” Hamas, the modern Amalekites, “from under heaven” (Exodus

17:14). Consistent with the biblical injunction, Israel’s political leadership has stated its war aims bluntly: The total destruction of Hamas. But what if Israel is seen to be seeking to “blot out” Hamas vengefully? et’s be clear-eyed: Anything short of Hamas’s total destruction will be portrayed as a Hamas victory, emboldening Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, the Houthis and other asserted jihadis, accelerating their preparations for the next round. Moreover, the precedent will have been established that the war crime of targeting children, women, the elderly and the disabled is not a war crime when the victims are Jews. There are already hordes of people making the case that Israel’s conduct (and very existence) justified Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities as an act of vengeance. Friends of Israel reject this proposition, of course, but does Israel really want the external political debate to be about whose vengeance is more just. (“Vengeance is mine,” Deut. 32:35). I strongly urge the Israeli government to leave notions of exacting a just vengeance to the hearts of its citizens and its friends. Instead, the

Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem. Israel should begin the process of putting Hamas war criminals on trial. Israel GPO

government should make the case with repeated public displays of the evidence and human testimonies that Israel is prosecuting a perpetrator of abominable war crimes and will bring all Hamas elements that survive the coming battles to trial and justice under international law based on the American-led Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. The venue for such trials is all important. Regrettably, despite scrupulous adherence to process, Israel is the primary victim and cannot successfully and credibly try surviving Hamas perpetrators. True, the Nuremburg trials were conducted by the victorious Allies, but the proceedings were led by the Americans, whose civilian population was not subject to the Nazi crimes suffered by the British, French and Russian civilian populations. Accordingly, Israel should urge that the venue for such trials be the United States. To be sure, defenders of Hamas will demand equal rights to prosecute. Although responding to specific charges will require superior legal work by Israeli lawyers, such efforts by Hamas apologists will not succeed even as a diversion. For one thing, apart from the fact that the IDF See Bines on page 27

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Sacks... Continued from page 20 land of Israel, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden. Visiting a convent, he is told by a nun, Maria Teresa: “I watch the families who visit here on weekends. How the parents behave toward their children, speaking to them with patience and encouraging them to ask intelligent questions. It’s an example to the whole world. The strength of this people is the love of parents for their children. Not just the mothers but also the fathers. A Jewish child has two mothers.” Judaism takes what is natural and sanctifies it; what is physical and invests it with spirituality; what is elsewhere considered normal and sees it as a miracle. What Darwin saw as the urge to reproduce, what Richard Dawkins calls “the selfish gene”, is for Judaism high religious art, full of drama and beauty. Abraham the father, and Sarah the mother, are our enduring role models of parenthood as G-d’s gift and our highest vocation.

I continue to wear the same size garment that I wore then.” Rabbi Kamenetsky then drove home his point to me. Just as a grown man cannot wear a child’s clothing, so must a grown person’s understanding of Torah grow as he matures. The Rabbi’s pedagogical lesson was cogent and forceful and remains so. A ten-yearold must be taught Torah at his or her level. So must the twenty-year-old and thirty-yearold and fifty-year-old and eighty-year-old approach Torah anew as he or she advances through life’s stages. Each year of our lives requires us to return to the beginning. To return to Bereshis again. To readjust our understanding to conform with the lessons we have learned earlier in our lives. At this tragic juncture in the history of our people, we must be prepared to begin anew to ascertain where we have gone wrong in all aspects of our behavior, in our faith, in our prayers, in our understanding of what the Almighty expects of us, and especially in our relationships with others. Pray for true and total peace. Shabbat SHALOM!

Weinreb... Gerber...

Continued from page 21 In the future, however, I will endeavor to bring to your attention themes from future parshiot which detail ways in which the Jewish nation as a whole must “begin anew. For now, let me introduce you to a wise old rabbi whom I was privileged to learn from in his later years, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky, of blessed memory. He was born and educated in pre-Holocaust Lithuania and spent the last decades of his life as the head of the Torah Vodaath yeshiva in Brooklyn. Toward the end of his life, he lived with family in Baltimore, where I then resided. From time to time, I was invited to keep him company, and I used that opportunity to interview him on subjects of interest to me, especially Torah education. Once he initiated our conversation by exclaiming in Yiddish, “Menn darf vaksen in lernen Torah (One must grow in one’s Torah study).” He went on to portray just how comic it would be for a 30-year-old to cling to the Torah lessons he was taught in kindergarten. “As a five-year-old,” he would explain, “he was excited to learn what the world calls ‘bible stories.’ As he matures, so must his understanding of Torah so that those stories become the basis of profound lessons of theology, Jewish history, ethics, and morality.” e continued with a delightful tale about his childhood friend, Asher, with whom he grew up in the old shtetl in Lithuania. Their paths diverged when Asher, then no more than eight years old, emigrated with his family to the United States. Seventy years later, their paths again crossed. It was the day before Yom Kippur and, as is the custom, Rabbi Kamenetsky went to the mikvah, the ritual bath house, to “cleanse” himself before the Day of Awe. How surprised he was to encounter Asher there! They joyously reunited, trying to catch up with all that had transpired in their long lives. Then, in the dressing room, Rabbi Kamenetsky donned his arba kanfot, his under garment with ritual fringes, or tzitzit. His garment extended from his neck down to his knees, in accordance with Jewish custom. He was stunned to observe that Asher too had donned a similar garment. But his merely extended from his neck to his chest. As the Rabbi explained to me, “it was like a baby’s bib!” When the Rabbi asked Asher to explain why he wore such an inadequate garment, Asher responded: “You must remember my old Zaidi, my grandfather. He did not accompany us to the United States. He felt that our religious observance would be compromised there. But he did call me over to him and pointing to my arba kanfot — I was then only eight years old — instructed me to always wear this garment. And so, although I am now 6 feet tall,

Continued from page 21 ‘whomever is more powerful, triumphs,’ a society of ‘might makes right.’ “The giants and demi-gods are reminiscent of the Aryan Ubermenschen, the Nazi ‘supermen’ who believed it was their right to rule the world. The ancient society evoked by the biblical text is remarkably similar to the society of Nazi Germany which — as a fascist, totalitarian state — enslaved and murdered those non-Aryans they considered inferior, especially the Jews.” Rabbi Riskin’s teachings on this extends itself to other totalitarian ideologies, including Islamic fundamentalism, that have to be read completely in context to be fully appreciated. They foreshadow times that have yet to disclose their purpose. He truly demonstrates that the events at the tower surely serve as a harbinger for our own days, today, and in the many days to come. I would like to conclude with the teachings of Rabbi Michael Hattin, who, in his essay “Rejecting Totalitarianism,” from his recent work, “Passages” (Urim, 2012) writes: “The massive building projects that have always typified totalitarian regimes, whether ancient or modern, are all quite similar in program and in form to the ‘tower that reaches to the heavens.’ The awesome expenditures of human effort and capital used to realize these grandiose schemes have been matched only by a corresponding indifference to the value of individual human life and to its inviolability. “In radical forms of totalitarianism, such as communism or Nazism, an individual is meaningless and his personal creativity is a crime. Value of the person is calculated solely according to collective needs and national goals. Obviously, under such a regime, the state-sponsored service of G-d, the gods or even the lack of gods, is going to be superficial, manipulative, and harsh.” Rabbi Hattin cites in contrast: “In the Torah’s vision, every person and every nation has a special role to play in the unfolding saga of human history, and each one is called upon to forge their unique relationship with G-d. We may not surrender our individual identities or national cultures in the name of an overwhelming unity which cannot save.” Please re-read these words very carefully. Consider seriously their total relationship to the title of this week’s essay and consider the events around us, both domestic and foreign. An ancient Chinese curse states, “May you live in interesting times.” We indeed live in interesting times. However, in our religious tradition, these times are not a curse, for they represent an opportunity and a foreshadowing of the salvation that awaits us all. Originally published in 2012.

Bressler... Continued from page 22 tively small projectile still carrying much of its rocket fuel. An Israeli JDAM would have left a huge impact crater and likely caused extensive structural damage to nearby buildings, which did not happen here (and, of course, if Israel intended to hit a building the size of Al-Alhi hospital — which its operational restrictions do not allow — its precision-guided munitions would not have missed it and would likely have destroyed it). Several of the news organizations that rushed to lay the blame on Israel have since rerouted, even if they have not recanted with a complete mea culpa. The BBC, for example, has begrudgingly admitted that experts it spoke to have concluded, like Israel did, that it is likely that an Islamic Jihad rocket aimed at Israel fell short and struck the hospital compound and that the evidence is inconsistent with an Israeli strike. oo late, these media have realized their rush to judgment and are now reporting what the evidence actually shows. They had little choice, as the evidence presented thus far all leads toward one conclusion and the Palestinians and their supporters (including some of the more malignant members of the United States House of Representatives) have provided nothing more than ipse dixit rhetoric to substantiate their version of events. President Biden’s wartime visit to Israel, at which he publicly stated that American intelligence supports the Israeli version of events, helped a great deal. Yet the fires of reckless, hasty, knee-jerk, “blame Israel” reporting continue to burn in cities throughout the world. The deaths of civilians at the Al-Alhi hospital, and other places in Gaza, give me no joy. But I have the relief of knowing that Israel has, perhaps, at least gained some wisdom from its prior travails.

Cohen... Continued from page 23 Gaza, despite its brutality and fanaticism, with a sufficient degree of popular consent. he “Palestinians are not Hamas” argument is one that the West is forced to make, regardless of its veracity, as without it, its commitment to providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza becomes that much harder to justify. There is a strong moral case that any aid to the coastal enclave should be conditioned on the immediate release of the nearly 200 Israelis languishing in Hamas captivity, some of them with physical injuries sustained during the terrorist pogrom. Initially, the European Union surprised us when one of its commissioners, Oliver Varhelyi, announced an immediate suspension of aid following the Oct. 7 invasion, but he was swiftly undercut by most of his colleagues. In the subsequent days, the resolve on the aid question among EU governments, along with the US administration, which has pledged an additional $100 million, has only hardened. We should be in no doubt that the ongoing flow of aid is a gift to Hamas, allowing them to sustain their campaign for the annihilation of the Jewish state and the grotesque falsehoods accompanying it — most recently, the lie that an Israeli airstrike, and not a misfired terrorist missile, was responsible for the explosion at the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. That, perhaps, is the price of the West’s support for Israel’s counteroffensive, in that some concession to the Palestinians needs to be made … and must be seen to be made. On a deeper level, the stance on aid is a potent symbol of the West’s failure to grasp the nature of the Palestinian war on Israel. For nearly a century, secular nationalists and Islamists alike have focused far more on diminishing the Jewish connection to the land and depicting Zionism as racism than they have on a political solution for the people they represent. Not every

Palestinian is a supporter of Hamas, but very few of them subscribe to inclusive, democratic ideas; if they’re not supporting Hamas, then the main alternatives are Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a slew of other leftist and Islamist factions, and the occasional “independent” candidate — none of whom have succeeded in breaking the mold of Palestinian politics. In such an environment, peace, at best, can only be understood as the absence of an active war. Whether and how that environment changes is now largely dependent on Israel’s next moves on the military front. The primary challenge there will be maintaining Western support for Israel during the many difficult days ahead. Jerusalem’s declared goal of destroying Hamas will likely clash with the aid commitments made by Western countries, who will keep up the mantra of the “Palestinians are not Hamas,” despite any evidence to the contrary

Rosenbaum Continued from page 24 engeance and justice are really the same. Too much of the former is unjust, but there is no justice if victims are not made to feel vindicated. That’s why the language of revenge is always framed in mathematical terms: “measure for measure,” “settling the score,” “evening the debt,” “demanding payback.” It is the handiwork of CPAs, not lawless vigilantes. It has worked all throughout the world to keep the peace long before courtrooms were introduced to resolve disputes. This kind of rational, proportionate revenge fails in the context of warfare, however. Measurements are invariably inexact — the nearly 3,000 murdered on 9/11 were surely dwarfed by the number of dead Iraqis and Afghanis. Got a problem with that? Should the War on Terror have come to an end when we killed 3,000, or the moment Osama bin-Laden was assassinated? Most Americans would not have felt satisfied, I suspect. These disparities in body count are especially present in Fourth Generation Warfare, where enemy combatants wear no uniforms, hide behind civilians and shirk the laws of war. Exploiting these asymmetries is Hamas’s specialty. For nearly 20 years, Hamas has launched tens of thousands of rockets at Israel. Fortunately, most either landed harmlessly or detonated in the sky, courtesy of Iron Dome. Until Oct. 7, relatively few Israelis were killed by Hamas. Does proportionality require Israel to not deploy its missile defense system so it can achieve a more balanced body count of dead Jews? amas is seeking the annihilation of all Jewry. Should their intent not matter simply because, in the past, their aim was off? Making matters worse is that Hamas chooses to fight Israel on a battlefield that looks exactly like its home turf — because that’s what it is: A war inside the homes of its fellow citizens, or in mosques, hospitals and schools. Because Hamas places no value on human life — whether it be Jewish or Muslim — it regards this theater of war as a home court advantage. The rules of engagement are discarded in favor of a civilian death strategy that culminates in the global condemnation of Israel. What this all means is that Gazan civilians are going to die — and a lot them. But the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the targeting of civilians, was not written with Gaza in mind — both the necessity of urban warfare, and a complicit civilian population that offers homes as command centers and children as human shields. Hamas knows the West suffers from shortterm memory lapses. The Iran Hostage Crisis? 9/11? Munich Olympics Massacre? London Subway Bombing? Boston Marathon Bombing? Ring a bell, anyone? Hamas also knows that the West faints at Continued on next page

Bard... Continued from page 23 or radar to know that Israel was not responsible because they could see with their own eyes that there were no Israeli jets or drones to drop a bomb. They also know from experience that Israeli airstrikes are precise and that the air force would not bomb a parking lot, let alone one next to a hospital, with no warning. Reporters ignore the fact that hospitals and ambulances are often used by Hamas, which makes them legitimate targets according to international law. Though few Western outlets reported it, it was well-known that during “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014, Hamas used the Shifa hospital in Gaza as an operations base/ bunker. The hospital continued to see patients as the Hamas operatives congregated in the bunker underneath. A Finnish reporter was reporting from the hospital when she witnessed a rocket launched from the parking lot. Still, Israel did not bomb the hospital. The Shifa Hospital had been a Hamas headquarters for many years, and in 2006, PBS aired a documentary that showed terrorists roaming the hallways and offices of the hospital. In the past, the Palestinian Health Ministry (as distinguished from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry) accused Hamas of taking control of areas in Shifa Hospital and using rooms for interrogation, torture and imprisonment. No one, least of all Israelis, wants to see noncombatants harmed, but let’s not make the mistake of considering all the people of Gaza “innocent.”

Continued from page 24 vilians from suffering. Clearly, Israel is the “good guys” and Gazan terrorists are the “bad guys.” The planned four-way summit between President Joe Biden and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority was designed to help ordinary Gazans. But wary of the Arab street, the Arab leaders, who are savvy enough to know what is really happening in Gaza, make statements blaming Israel and then cancel a meeting that could have helped relieve civilian suffering. he terrorists of Gaza in the south are not the only issue. Both the terrorists of the north and the terrorists of the east lie in wait. Hezbollah and Iran cannot be trusted any more than Hamas and they will undoubtedly try to provoke the Muslim world if and when they decide to enter the war. Journalistic responsibility goes much further than just getting information “out there.” As long as there are those who describe terrorists as “militants” and reflexively rely on reports by people whom Biden said make ISIS look “more rational,” the psychological war will continue. As the war continues, there are likely to be more cases in which civilians will suffer and there may be cases in which unintentional mistakes are made. Nonetheless, in a psychological war, accurate reporting is more important than quick reporting. In this psychological war, the hostages are journalists. Let’s all hope they free themselves sooner rather than later.

SO CLASSY &

Bines...

Continued from page 24 is responding to Hamas’s commencement of a hot war, Hamas’s defenders will not be collecting and preserving evidence of specific events causing injury or death to civilians — who, in any event, have been told by the IDF to leave the combat zone — that could be used against IDF soldiers. ore generally, the IDF code of conduct is recognized as the gold standard for justified conduct under the laws of war. As Col. Richard Kemp, a British Army officer who commanded troops in Afghanistan, has written, the IDF “does more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.” If Israel cannot successfully defend itself against phony charges of war crimes in an American court of law, what does Israel think will happen to it in the international courts that may soon charge the IDF and Israel’s political leaders with war crimes? Israel should not wait for the end of hostilities to move on the legal front. Israeli lawyers versed in international law affecting combatants should, beginning now, indict Hamas perpetrators with detailed charges and supporting evidence, whether the perpetrators are in custody, likely to be apprehended or dead as a result of IDF operations. Finally, Israel cannot ignore the inevitable decline in support that it will experience in international circles. If Israel persists in characterizing or permitting others to characterize its mission as vengeance, it should be realistic about a fearful prospect: A decline in American support. The longer the IDF operation against Hamas, the more likely it is that American support will wither. To gain time to finish the job, Israel must show that its aim is justice (“Justice, Justice shall you pursue,” Deut. 16:20), not vengeance. If Israel does so, buttressed by issuing near-daily factual, evidence-based indictments that demand trial of the Hamas perpetrators, American support — and perhaps even Western tolerance — will remain much firmer for far longer. And, not to be ignored, Hamas will be destroyed as a viable political entity on both the battlefield and under adjudicated international law. Harvey E. Bines is a former member of US Navy Fighter Squadron 84 and a partner in the Boston law firm of Sullivan & Worcester.

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27 THE JEWISH STAR October 27, 2023 • 12 Cheshvan 5784

Continued from previous page the first sight of blood. The New York Times, MSNBC and BBC view dead Palestinian children as Pulitzer Prize-worthy material. Dead Israeli children merit not even a footnote. Public sentiment is worsening by the day — especially on the Arab street, which, as Europeans have come to learn, gravitated to their streets — replete with death chants and flag burning. Until last week, Americans didn’t realize how much Muslims enjoy gathering in large mobs and calling for the death of another country and its people. “Death to America!” will be heard in Detroit, “Intifada!” in Brooklyn, and American flags will be burned in Pico-Robertson — all protected by the First Amendment and the protocols of political correctness. n a less antisemitic world, the evil handiwork of Hamas would have generated enormous sympathy for Israel and a judgment that Hamas is a menace to humankind — like Nazis and ISIS. Instead, we have Jewish students afraid to walk around campus and rallies around the country glorifying Hamas as heroes. Given the grisly crime scene in southern Israel, justice is an unsolvable equation. When you chop the heads off infants and gang rape and mutilate scores of teenage girls, there is no equivalency in “eye-for-an-eye” parlance, no precise number for getting even. The proportionate response is infinite. IDF soldiers are in a war, but more accurately — they are on a mission. Setting anguish and hesitancy aside, they know they must kill all who are responsible for these monstrous crimes. Human shields are tragic, but the world should be denouncing Hamas for using them, not Israel for trying to avoid them. Israel is now justifiably guided by a moral imperative, and they will not be denied. For those shouting “ceasefire” and “proportionality,” would they prefer to see IDF soldiers getting even by slitting the throats of Palestinian infants and then raping Palestinian teenagers? Sorry, Jews won’t oblige, and no moral principle in Judaism would excuse it — for any reason. Besides, the people demanding Israel’s surrender are the very same ones who refuse to even acknowledge the depravity of what Hamas did. A mammoth debt was created on Oct. 7, and satisfaction is owed. Settling this score won’t be easy. The wrongdoers committed unspeakable acts. Numbers can’t be assigned. In Gaza, the math of revenge will have no equal.

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