Hochul sides with Mamdani, Cuomo scolds Israel on war, Adams vows not to quit race
•Apparently fearful of being primaried from her party’s left in next year’s gubernatorial election, Gov. Kathy Hochel endorsed its anti-Israel mayoral nominee, Zorhan Mamdani.
•Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, long a full-throated supporter of Israel and its Gaza war, softened his stiff posture and criticized the Jewish state, urging that it end its campaign against Hamas.
•Mayor Eric Adams, the Democratic incumbent running for re-election as an independent, found himself at the bottom of several polls, lagging far behind Mamdani as well as Cuomo and the improbable Republican choice, Curtis Sliwa. Adams, a solid supporter of Israel and the city’s embattled Jewish communities, discounted the polls during an interview with The Jewish Star and said
Hochul’s endorsement
Hochul’s endorsement came late Sunday evening in an online-only New York Times op-ed that referenced her and Mamdani not seeing “eye to eye on everything” but dodging specifics. She did not mention Mamdani’s refusals to endorse the existence of Israel as a Jewish state or to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada”; his frequently repeated support for the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions Movement; and his pledge to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli leader visits New York, saying only that “we discussed the need to combat the rise of antisemitism urgently and unequivocally.”
Hochul added, “I’ve been glad to see him meet with Jewish leaders across the city, lis-
in the
Weintrob, Editor and Publisher
See Jews are sidelined on page 9
By Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star Jewish voters were on the losing end of New York City politics this week on at least three fronts:
he would stay in the race. [A report on the Adams interview is on page 4.]
Jews sidelined in NYC mayor race
Israel says Jews face threat of holiday terror
By JNS Staff
Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) has issued a warning about possible terrorist threats during the holidays, urging Israeli and other Jewish travels to take preventive measures.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” according to the statement, issued through the Prime Minister’s Office.
As the Gaza war grinds on, there is also a worsening trend of antisemitism abroad, “to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews,” warned the NSC. The trend was driven at least in part due to an anti-Israel narrative and a “negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements,” the statement continued.
The trend is liable to “encourage and motivate” extremists to carry out terrorist acts against Israelis and Jews abroad, according to the NSC.
Iran remains the No. 1 source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews around the world, directly and through its proxies, the NSC said.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” it reported, referring to the 12day Israel-Iran war.
The statement went on to note that dozens of Iranian-directed terrorist acts had been thwarted over the past year, some of which had targeted Israeli missions abroad, former senior Israeli officials and various Israeli and Jewish targets.
Hamas, too, is expanding its activities to pro-
groups also pose a threat, including Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and Al-Shabaab, it warned.
The NSC noted an assessment from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center according to which Oct. 7, 2025, the second anniversary of the Hamas invasion, could motivate terrorists, both organized and lone wolves, to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad.
“The bottom line is that the various terror-
L'SHANA
to promote attacks against Israelis and Jews around the world,” the NSC said.
The NSC called on the public to act responsibly while traveling, to check for travel warnings before purchasing tickets and to follow NSC recommendations, including:
1. Becoming familiar with the destination country, its population composition, security situation, regime.
2. Refraining from exhibiting external Israeli
4. Not participating in large events that are not secure.
5. Avoiding traveling to isolated sites without the presence of security personnel.
6. Obtaining contact numbers with local security officials in advance.
7. Staying alert while staying at the destination, paying attention to the surroundings.
8. Staying away from demonstrations and protests.
9. Refraining from holding a dialogue about service in Israel’s security forces with unfamiliar elements.
The NSC stressed the risk of sharing content on social media, which can lead to the account’s owner becoming a target.
“We recommend that you do not upload to social networks in any way content that attests to service in the security forces, operational activity or similar content, as well as real-time locations,” it said.
JNS has reported on a new group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, based in Brussels, which has mounted a legal action campaign, identifying IDF soldiers traveling abroad via their social media accounts.
The NSC concluded its report with a list of countries to avoid, including Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Algeria, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.
It noted global jihad elements are prominent in some parts of Africa, including the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and Central Africa, and in Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Kashmir region in India, and Indonesia.)
The NSC repeated a Level 4 travel warning for the Sinai Peninsula, reflecting a high threat and stressing that the area should be
Anti-Israel demonstrators protest at a “Get Out The Vote” rally in New York in 2024. Yuki Iwamura, AFP via Getty Images via JNS
הבוט הנש !תובוט תורושבו
Wishing for a year of peace, endless opportunities, blessings & growth
ALIYAH INTEGRATION NATIONAL SERVICE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ZIONIST EDUCATION
Building a stronger Israel for today and tomorrow
Adams tells Jewish Star: He’s
By Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
Mayor Eric Adams slammed his opponents, the Campaign Finance Board and media outlets, during an afternoon interview with The Jewish Star on Friday.
The more people “learn about what Andrew [Cuomo] did to the city,” the less likely they’ll be to support him as the preferred choice against Zorhan Mamdani,” Adams said.
He cited “Andrew’s actions in Borough Park, in Williamsburg and Crown Heights during Covid — 15,000 nursing home deaths” and how his bail-reform led to “a revolving door in the criminal justice system.”
As for Mamdani, “the more people learn about Zorhan’s policies, his anti-police rhetoric, his anti-family rhetoric, his anti-business rhetoric,” the less support Mamdani will have.
Adams shrugged off polls showing him trailing not only Mamdani and Cuomo, but even Republican Curtis Sliwa.
“Let’s think about that for a moment. Seven weeks out from the primary, [a poll] had Andrew winning by 87% — he was beating Zohran by over 25% seven weeks out … and the day before the election, Governor Cuomo put out a poll that had him up by 12%,” Adams said. “He lost by 14%. So why would I trust his polls?”
While boasting that his campaign still has $3 million available, he conceded that his reelection effort “has been undermined” by the Campaign Finance Board which “has taken $4 million from me.”
And that’s where media coverage of pur ported deals that would remove Adams from the race make matters worse, he said.
“In order for me to raise money outside of the CFB, I have to go to donors — and I have been able to raise about $5 million dollars. But at the same time, every day, rumors are being reported that I’m leaving the race. First
they said I was going to HUD, then I was going to Saudi Arabia…”
“Talking about a deal undermines my ability to go to my donors and ask them to con
paign was undermined by government and by those in journalism, unfortunately.”
While Adams has plenty to say about his opponents in the mayoral race, he also wants
it to win it
being left behind; we had high unemployment, particularly in the black and brown community; antisemitism was growing, the Jewish community was being mischaracterized in coded language — the black hats, people used to say; I saw that public safety was a real issue in the city.”
“I am happy, and I was blessed to be the mayor of the city,” Adams said. “The voters will determine what direction they want to go in.”
Adams was asked whether the city did all it could to rein in unruly — sometimes threatening — demonstrations in the early days after Oct. 7.
“I don’t think there’s a Jewish New Yorker who would tell you that Eric was front and center,” he said. “There were many incidents where people were protesting and we apprehended them and made arrests. But this is still America, and you have a constitutional right to peacefully protest. Those who assaulted people, those who damaged property, we went after and we apprehended them.”
Regarding streets closed by demonstrators, Adams cited a legal finding that requires the city “to surrender the streets to peaceful protesters — that’s outside my scope.”
“I hated those protesters, hated some of the commentary, some of the statements that were made, but I have to operate within the law or it’s going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits that we saw in similar protests when we went outside the scope of the law,” he said.
Adams said that four years ago, he ran on public safety — and he brought crime down; he talked about housing — and built more affordable housing; and he talked about helping young people — and he did so.
“I made the promises and I kept the promises,” Adams said. “We have broken more records in all of these areas than any mayor prior to me.”
Adams
Arab imperialism: Colonies no one talks about
When Arab armies surged out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, they created an empire larger than Rome in barely a century. By 750 CE, they controlled 13 million square kilometers, ruled more than 50 million people and redrew the map of three continents. Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, North Africa, Persia and as far as Spain were absorbed into a vast imperial system built on conquest and domination.
However, when “colonialism” is invoked today, this empire is rarely mentioned. Only Europe and other Western nations are put in the dock.
This selective memory distorts history. It erases the suffering of entire peoples and presents conquest and subjugation as if they were merely cultural diffusion. The Arab-Muslim expansion was not a benign flowering of civilization, but a deliberate project of empire, motivated by religious and political ambition.
From its inception, Islam carried an imperial vision. Under Muhammad, the warrior-prophet, the early Muslim community saw expansion as a divine mandate. Conquest was central, creating a model of domination that endured for centuries.
The world was divided into Dar al-Islam, the “abode of Islam,” lands ruled by Muslims, and Dar al-Harb, the “abode of war,” lands yet to be subdued. Non-Muslims under Arab rule were tolerated only as dhimmis, second-class subjects compelled to pay the humiliating jizya tax and live under laws marking their inferiority.
The human toll of this imperialism was immense. When Arab armies conquered Egypt around 639 CE, Coptic Christians formed the
majority of the country. Within centuries, heavy taxation, social restrictions and pressures to convert reduced them to roughly 10% of the population. Churches were destroyed, and the administration was Arabized, leaving Copts politically marginalized for centuries.
Sassanid Persia, conquered by Arabs in 651 CE, was a fully Zoroastrian state. Arab rule brought the destruction of temples, forced conversions and an imposed Islamic administration. By the 10th century, Zoroastrians had become a tiny minority.
The Berbers of Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, indigenous polytheists, were gradually Arabized and Islamized. Their languages, religions, and cultural identities were replaced or suppressed under Arab rule, and many were incorpo-
rated into the Arab military as auxiliaries, losing their indigenous traditions.
The Arab slave trade, spanning from the 7th to the late 19th century, lasted more than 1,200 years, far longer than the Atlantic slave trade. Between 10 million and 18 million Africans were captured and transported along multiple routes across the Sahara, through the Red Sea into the Arabian Peninsula, and via the Indian Ocean to Persia, Arabia and India. Male slaves were often castrated, while women were assimilated into Arab households, leaving few Afro-descendant communities able to preserve cultural memory.
Yet Western academics and activists — eager to atone for Europe’s sins — speak of colonialism as if it were an exclusively European phenomenon. Mean-
while, Arab imperialism is celebrated as the “Golden Age of Islam,” highlighting contributions to science, philosophy and culture, while its legacy of conquest, forced conversion and subjugation is ignored. It is as if history itself began in the seventh century, with Islam’s spread erasing all who came before. Nations that thrived for centuries vanished into the shadows of Arab rule.
The legacy of Dar al-Islam is not confined to the past. Arab nationalism and Islamist movements still assume the Middle East “belongs” to Arabs and that minorities must submit.
The persecution of Copts in Egypt, the oppression of Kurds in Syria and Iraq, the near-erasure of Assyrian Christians and the Yazidi genocide by ISIS echo the imperial mindset of conquest. Jihadist groups such as Hamas, ISIS and the Taliban invoke the division between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb to justify perpetual war and terrorism.
Absurdly, Israel is routinely accused of “colonialism,” a grotesque inversion of reality. Zionism is not colonial but the most successful anti-colonial movement in history: The return of an indigenous people to their ancestral land after centuries of foreign rule.
The debate on colonialism remains strikingly one-sided. While Europe’s colonial crimes are scrutinized, the Arab conquests transforming North Africa and the Middle East are often celebrated.
Acknowledging Arab imperialism does not diminish Europe’s colonial crimes. It restores balance, reminding us that domination is not the monopoly of one continent or culture. It gives voice to forgotten nations such as the Copts, Berbers and Assyrians, whose suffering predates European ships in the Americas.
A real reckoning with empire means holding Arab imperialism to the same standard as Europe. Until then, colonial history is a half-truth, and politics built on it a dangerous fiction. This selective outrage twists history into a weapon instead of a mirror.
Jews are sidelined…
Continued from page 1 tening and addressing their concerns directly. I look forward to working together to make sure New Yorkers of all faiths feel safe and welcome in New York City.”
Regarding Mamdani’s potential impact on the city’s economy as a self-declared socialist, Hochul said that she “emphasized to him my belief in keeping and attracting businesses so that New York remains the center of the global economy and we create even more good-paying jobs for our residents,” but did not say how Mamdani responded.
“I didn’t leave my conversations with Mr. Mamdani aligned with him on every issue,” she said. “New York needs leaders who will put aside differences, stand up and fight back against Mr. Trump.
“Mr. Mamdani and I will both be fearless in confronting the president’s extreme agenda. … Anyone who accepts his tainted influence or benefits from it is compromised from the start.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with Bloomberg News, Mamdani reiterated his support for BDS and said that if elected he would stop using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which was embraced by the Biden administra-
the continued carnage that is happening and are deeply, deeply disturbed and want it over, and believe it has gone on way too long.”
Cuomo added: “It should end today. Return the hostages, end the violence. Today. I think it should have been over months ago. It is horrific.”
Putting Cuomo’s coments in context, the Times said this:
“Many Democrats, especially the front-runner in the mayoral race, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, have offered far harsher criticisms of Israel and its leader two years into the war in Gaza” but Cuomo’s comments are “notable because they marked one of the first times he has been willing to question the war effort at all, in the face of pressure from Mr. Mamdani and from voters who increasingly embrace the assemblyman’s position on the conflict.”
The Times recalled that after “Cuomo appeared to criticize Israel for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza back in August, he rushed to clarify his remarks, saying he had merely been representing the views of some, and that he did not hold Israel solely responsible for the starvation spreading throughout the enclave.”
The Times added that Cuomo, “a moderate, has spent much of the campaign attacking Mr. Mamdani’s views on the war, suggesting that
We can’t ensure this Rosh HaShanah will usher in a peaceful year. But with your support, Magen David Adom can continue to be a source of light, hope, and lifesaving care to all Israelis — no matter what 5786 brings.
Blakeman: Worst gov, worst mayor-to-be
Nassau’s Republican county executive said he was disappointed that Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul endorsed the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, Zorhan Mamdani, on Sunday.
“I thought our governor was better than that. I thought she would stand on principle and stand for American values and stand up for the Jewish people,” Bruce Blakeman told The Jewish Star during a pre-Rosh Hashana visit to honey cake-making kosher bakeries in West Hempstead on Monday.
He called Mamdani, a self-professed socialist who opposes Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, “probably the worst candidate for mayor
I’ve ever seen, and the fact that he may win is just shocking.”
“Zohran Mamdani is a virulent antisemite,” Blakeman continued. “He’s a communist. He is anti American values. He is anti Judeo-Christian principles.”
“So many politicians say they love Israel and then they stab us in the back, and I feel like we’ve been stabbed in the back,” he said of Hochul, calling her “the most unpopular incumbent governor we’ve ever had.”
Asked whether he thought Mamdani would moderate his views if elected, Blakeman quipped: “I don’t think a leopard changes its spots.” Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
NYC mayor’s race…
Continued from page 9 eliminated,” reported Jacob Kornbluth, The Forward’s senior political reporter.”
Ackman’s
with Cuomo
New York hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman said on Sunday at the University of Haifa that Cuomo has a “more than 50% chance” of winning the election in a head–to-head race against Mamdani.
He predicted that Adams will pull out of the race in the coming week, while Republican Sliwa is likely to follow him out.
The latest polls give Cuomo a theoretical path to victory, but only in a two-way race against Mamdani.
“He’s never run anything,” Ackman said of Mamdani, according to a JNS report. “He was a rapper, but not a successful one.”
He said the assemblyman benefited from a weak field of candidates and being a good speaker.
Ackman has been a staunch supporter of the Jewish state in the nearly two-yearold war against Hamas and a leading voice against antisemitism on US college campuses, including his alma mater, Harvard.
On Friday, President Donald Trump said Mamdani appeared headed to victory.
“I call him my little communist, he’s my little communist mayor,” Trump said on Fox & Friends.
HENRY IKEZI
FOR QUEENS BOROUGH PRESIDENT
It’s Time to Take Our Borough Back!
As we approach the November 4, 2025 election, I am excited to share my vision for a brighter future for Queens. My name is Henry Ikezi, and I am committed to making our borough a better place for all its residents.
We all know that Queens isn’t what it used to be. Many of us have witnessed the rise in crime, the struggles of small businesses, and a decline in the quality of life that we deserve. It’s disheartening to see our neighborhoods suffer due to failed leadership and misguided policies. But I want you to know: you are not alone in your concerns, and together, we can change the trajectory of our community.
I believe in a Queens where education is prioritized, ensuring that our children have access to excellent schools that nurture their potential. I envision a community where public safety is a top priority, allowing families to feel secure in their homes and neighborhoods. I am committed to fostering an environment where government actively supports small businesses, empowering individuals to become stakeholders in their community. This includes promoting homeownership and creating pathways for everyone to transition into prosperity.
Real change requires real leadership. I am not here to make empty promises. I am here to take bold action. My vision for Queens is one where we implement common-sense laws and governance that put people first. Together, we can reduce crime, support our small businesses, improve housing options and create genuine opportunities for all who call Queens home.
This election is a turning point for our borough. It’s our chance to reclaim our neighborhoods, to restore pride in our communities, and to build a future that reflects our values and aspirations. I invite you to stand with me in this mission. Let’s work together to revive the spirit of Queens.
Join me, Henry Ikezi, in the journey to restore our borough. Together, we can make a difference. Vote for leadership that truly cares about our community. Vote for a brighter future for Queens. **Election Day: November 4, 2025** *Your Voice. Your Vote. Your Future.*
Eating light when the daylong fast is over
Kosher Kitchen
JONI
SChOCKETT
Jewish Star columnist
There are more Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur food features this week in Section Two.
Lots of thought and preparation may go into planning a Yom Kippur break-fast, with some people planning celebrations with friends and family.
For many years we hosted a huge break-fast with tons of food, but soon homework dictated a different kind of evening, so we started participating in my synagogue’s break-fast. But standing around eating a bagel in a crowded room was not relaxing, so now we come home and have a quiet meal with just the family (however extended that may end up being).
We always break the fast with some cool (not cold) water or orange juice before sitting down to eat a light dinner. It may be a surprise at how little food is needed to fill you up after a fast. In fact, eating a huge meal can lead to a sleepless night and a food hangover the next day.
I have learned that a salad, maybe some simple vegetable soup, protein and whole-grain bread or rolls is the perfect post-fast meal. Top it off with a simple apple cake or honey cake and some herbal tea and then a short evening walk to aid digestion. I know that most people don’t agree with me, but you can eat well and satisfy your urgent hunger with delicious foods that will be kind to your stomach.
I hope you have an easy fast as we go into the autumn chagim and all the joy of decorating the Sukkah.
Have an easy fast!
Baby Spinach with Oranges, Raisins and Candied Pecans (Pareve)
Salad:
• 1 lb. baby spinach leaves
• 1/2 to 1 cup dried cranberries
• 1 can (11 oz.) mandarin orange slices, reserve liquid
• 1 small red onion, diced
• 1 cup candied pecans or walnuts
• Raspberry Vinaigrette Dressing:
• 2 Tbsp. seedless raspberry jam
• 1/2 cup raspberry vinegar
• 1 cup light olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, or canola oil
• 1 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice, to taste
• 1 tsp. orange juice, to taste
• 2 tsp. reserved orange liquid from the segments
Place the spinach in a large salad bowl, add the other ingredients except the orange segments and toss. Scatter the orange segments on top.
Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together in a small jar with a tight -fitting lid. Shake to emulsify and spoon over the salad. Toss gently and serve. Makes about 6 to 8 servings.
Sun Dried Tomato Dip (Pareve or Dairy)
I had a version of this at an Italian restaurant in NYC. I couldn’t stop eating it, it was so delicious, so I came home and made my own version. Great for break- fast.
• 1 jar (about 8 oz.) sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil
See JONI: Break-fast on page 16
Blakeman on honey cake tour of West Hempstead
Sun Dried Tomato Dip.
lemonsandanchovies.com
Baby Spinach with Oranges, Raisins and Candied Pecans.
Will Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s tasting some of Long Island’s best honey cakes on Monday be an omen for as sweet new year? Blakeman accompanied Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of NY (far left) on visits to two kosher bakeries
on Hempstead Avenue in West Hempstead — Riesterer’s (left) and Sunflower Bake Shop (center). Treyger paused from sampling honey cake at Sunflower (center) to discuss how bees turn bitter nectar into sweet honey. “That is a message to us about whatever challenges we might face, it’s
to
sweeter, it’s going to get better,
overcome. That’s been the story of the Jewish people,” he said. At right, Blakeman is greeted by Sunflower owner Elana Schondorf. Next to Blakeman at Riesterer’s is Mindy Perlmutter, executive director of JCRC-LI. Ed Weintrob, The Jewish Star
From our family to
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lemon juice pepper to
Pinch red pepper olives; 2 to 3 Tbsp. oregano
they were packed fitted with the S juice and pulse ingredients and proolive oil through running, until the consistency.
season with salt and Drizzle with 1 with the pine breadsticks, crackers, bread. Makes about
Savory: Veggie Couscous
Served hot for dinner and cold for the break-fast couscous, more
broth virgin olive
• 1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
• 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
• 1/2 cup diced zucchini
• 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes, seeded
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions
Season as desired with spices such as tarragon, oregano, sumac, salt and pepper.
Note: You can add other veggies and leave out some of these. I can’t add peppers, I am allergic, so I add some zucchini and some diced mushrooms to the veggies to be roasted.
Toss all the veggies except the parsley and scallions with olive oil and roast on a foil lined baking sheet at 425 degrees until charred in a few places and fork tender.
In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Turn off the heat. Add the couscous and cover tightly. Let stand five minutes. Fluff the couscous with a fork. Add all the vegetables to the couscous and mix well. Blend the oil, lemon juice, orange juice, and salt and pepper and mix well. Pour over the couscous and mix. Serve immediately or cover and chill overnight. Be creative with this recipe. Add the kinds of veggies your family prefers, such as peapods and water chestnuts or jicama and beets. Nuts and
seeds also mix well with couscous. This is really a very flexible recipe.
Sweeet: Couscous With Fruit and Honey (Dairy or Pareve)
This is delicious hot or cold and can be served pre-and post-fast.
• 1-1/2 cups couscous (uncooked)
• 2-1/2 cups water
• 1/2 cup apple cider or apple juice
• 2 Tbsp. butter or pareve margarine
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp. allspice
• 2 Tbsp. honey
• 2 to 3 apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
• 1/2 cup dried sweet cherries
• 1/2 cup dried currants or cranberries
• 1 cup mandarin orange segments, drained and cut in half
• 1/2 to 1 cup apple cider or juice
• 3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds (optional) Bring the water and apple juice to a boil. Remove from the heat and cool for a minute or two. Add the couscous, fluff with a fork and cover. Set aside.
Melt the butter or margarine in a saucepan and add the spices. Mix thoroughly. Add the apples, honey and dried fruit. Sauté for about 5 minutes stirring frequently. Add the apple juice and the optional almonds. Simmer until the liquid is reduced to a thick syrup (about 5 to 6 minutes). Add the fruit, spices and the juices to the couscous and toss.
Cover and set aside for about 10 minutes. Fluff again and sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon and sugar before serving. You can be creative with this also by adding some fresh seasonal fruits such as sliced apples or pears or even peaches, fresh cherries or grapes Serves 4 to 8.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Sweet Couscous with Fruit and Honey.
mountsinai.org/southnassau
Jewish Star Torah columnists: Rabbi Benny Berlin, spiritual leader of BACH Jewish Center in Long Beach; Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native; Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem; Dr. Alan A. Mazurek, former ZOA chair, retired neurologist, living in Great Neck, Jerusalem and Florida.
Contributing writers: Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l, former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of British Commonwealth; Rabbi Yossy Goldman, president South African Rabbinical Association; Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, OU executive VP emeritus.
Five Towns Candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY
Scarsdale Candlelighting: From the Young Israel of Scarsdale, Scarsdale, NY
This is a good time to ask: Why be Jewish?
rabbi Sir JonaThan
SaCkS zt”l
In the last days of his life, Moses renews the covenant between G-d and Israel. The entire book of Devarim has been an account of the covenant — how it came about, what its terms and conditions are, why it is the core of Israel’s identity as an am kadosh (a holy people) and so on. Now comes the moment of renewal itself, a national rededication to the terms of its existence as a holy people under the sovereignty of G-d Himself.
Moses, however, is careful not to limit his words to those who are actually present. About to die, he wants to ensure that no future generation can say, “Moses made a covenant with our ancestors but not with us. We didn’t give our consent. We are not bound.” To preclude this, he says these words:
It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with whoever is standing here with us today before the L-rd our G-d, and with whoever is not here with us today. Deut. 29:13-14
As the commentators point out, the phrase “whoever is not here” cannot refer to Israelites alive at the time who happened to be somewhere else. That condition would not have been necessary since the entire nation was assembled there. Moses can only mean “generations not yet born.” The covenant bound all Jews from that day to this. As the Talmud says: we are all mushba ve-omed meHar Sinai, “foresworn from Sinai” (Yoma 73b, Nedarim 8a). By agreeing to be G-d’s people, subject to G-d’s laws, our ancestors obligated us all.
Hence one of the most fundamental facts about Judaism. Converts excepted, we do not choose to be Jews. We are born as Jews. We become legal adults, subject to the commands and responsible for our actions, at the age of twelve for girls, thirteen for boys. But we are part of the covenant from birth.
A bat or bar mitzvah is not a “confirmation.” It involves no voluntary acceptance of Jewish identity. That choice took place more than three thousand years ago when Moses said, “It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with … whoever is not here with us today,” meaning all future generations, including us.
But how can this be so? Surely a fundamental principle of Judaism is that there is no obligation without consent. How can we be bound by an agreement to which we were not parties? How can we be subject to a covenant on the basis of a decision taken long ago and far away by our distant ancestors?
The Sages, after all, raised a similar question about the Wilderness Generation in the days of
Moses who were actually there and did give their assent. The Talmud suggests that they were not entirely free to say “No”:
The Holy One, blessed be He, suspended the mountain over them like a barrel and said: If you say “Yes,” all will be well, but if you say ‘No’, this will be your burial-place. Shabbat 88b
On this, R. Acha bar Yaakov said: “This constitutes a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the covenant.” The Talmud replies that even though the agreement may not have been entirely free at the time, Jews asserted their consent voluntarily in the days of Ahasuerus, as suggested by the Book of Esther.
This is not the place to discuss this particular passage, but the essential point is clear. The Sages believed with great force that an agreement must be made freely in order to be binding. Yet we did not agree to be Jews. We were, most of us, born Jews. We were not there in Moses’ day when the agreement was made. We did not yet exist. How then can we be bound by the covenant?
This is not a small question. It is the question on which all others turn. How can Jewish identity be passed on from parent to child? If Jewish identity were merely racial or ethnic, we could understand it.
We inherit many things from our parents — most obviously our genes. But being Jewish is not a genetic condition, it is a set of religious obligations. There is a halachic principle: “zachin le-adam shelo be-fanav (you can confer a benefit on someone else without their knowledge or consent)” Ketubot 11a.
And though it is doubtless a benefit to be a Jew, it is also in some sense a liability, a restriction on our range of legitimate choices, with grave consequences if we transgress. Had we not been Jewish, we could have worked on Shabbat, eaten non-kosher food, and so on. You can confer a benefit upon someone without their consent, but not a liability.
In short, this is the question of questions of Jewish identity. How can we be bound by Jewish law, without our choice, merely because our ancestors agreed on our behalf?
In my book, “Radical Then, Radical Now,” I pointed out how fascinating it is to trace exactly when and where this question was asked. Despite the fact that everything else depends on it, it was not asked often.
For the most part, Jews did not ask the question, “Why be Jewish?” The answer was obvious. My parents are Jewish. My grandparents were Jewish. So I am Jewish. Identity is something most people in most ages take for granted.
We can live it. We can abandon it. But it is a choice we cannot avoid.
It did, however, become an issue during the Babylonian exile. The prophet Ezekiel says, “What is in your mind shall never happen - the thought, ‘Let us be like the nations, like the tribes of the countries, and worship wood and stone’.” (Ez. 20:32). This is the first reference to Jews actively seeking to abandon their identity.
It happened again in rabbinic times. We know that in the second century BCE there were Jews who Hellenised, seeking to become Greek rather than Jewish. There were others who, under Roman rule, sought to become Roman. Some even underwent an operation known as epispasm to reverse the effects of circumcision (in Hebrew they were known as meshuchim) to hide the fact that they were Jews.
The third time was in Spain in the fifteenth century. That is where we find two Bible commentators, Rabbi Isaac Arama and Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel, raising precisely the question we have raised about how the covenant can bind Jews today.
The reason they ask it while earlier commentators did not was that in their time — between 1391 and 1492 — there was immense pressure on Spanish Jews to convert to Christianity, and as many as a third may have done so (they were known in Hebrew as the anusim, in Spanish as the conversos, and derogatively as marranos, “swine”). The question “Why stay Jewish?” was real.
The answers given were different at different times. Ezekiel’s answer was blunt: “As I live, declares the L-rd, G-d, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out I will be King over you” (Ezek. 20:33).
In other words, Jews might try to escape their destiny but they would fail. Even if it were against their will, they would always be known as Jews. That, tragically, is what happened during the two great ages of assimilation, fifteenth century Spain and in Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In both cases, ra-
cial antisemitism persisted, and Jews continued to be persecuted.
The Sages answered the question mystically. They said that even the souls of Jews not-yetborn were present at Sinai and ratified the covenant (Exodus Rabbah 28:6). Every Jew, in other words, did give their consent in the days of Moses even though they had not yet been born. Demystifying this, perhaps the Sages meant that in their innermost hearts, even the most assimilated Jew knew that they were Jewish. That seems to have been the case with public figures like Heinrich Heine and Benjamin Disraeli, who lived as Christians but often wrote and thought as Jews.
The fifteenth-century Spanish commentators found this answer problematic. As Arama said, we are each of us both body and soul. How then is it sufficient to say that our soul was present at Sinai? How can the soul obligate the body? Of course the soul agrees to the covenant. Spiritually, to be a Jew is a privilege, and you can confer a privilege on someone without their consent. But for the body, the covenant is a burden. It involves all sorts of restrictions on physical pleasures. Therefore if the souls of future generations were present but not their bodies, this would not constitute consent.
“Radical Then, Radical Now” is my answer to this question. But perhaps there is a simpler one.
Not every obligation that binds us is one to which we have freely given our assent. There are obligations that come with birth. The classic example is a crown prince or princess. To be the heir to a throne involves a set of duties and a life of service to others. It is possible to neglect these duties. In extreme circumstances it is even possible for a monarch to abdicate. But no one can choose to become heir to a throne. That is a fate, a destiny, that comes with birth.
The people of whom G-d Himself said, “My child, My firstborn, Israel” (Ex. 4:22) knows itself to be royalty. That may be a privilege. It may be a burden. It is almost certainly both. It is a pe-
See Sacks on page 26
Covering the shofar: Hearing beyond the sound
Iremember as a child being in shul one year on Rosh Hashana and noticing for the first time that the Baal Toke’ah covered the shofar with a tallis while making the preliminary brachos
Why do we do this? Normally, we fully prepare a mitzvah object before making the blessing. We check the strings of tzitzis before reciting Al Mitzvas Tzitzis. We take the lulav and esrog in hand before saying the bracha.
The truth is that not everyone agrees with this practice. The Rivevos Ephraim (4:144:6) writes that the shofar should indeed be visible before making the Bracha. Yet the widespread custom is to cover it. Why then is the shofar concealed at the very moment of the blessing?
The Avnei Nezer teaches that this Minhag reveals the very heart of the mitzvah. The question turns on a classic debate: is the mitzvah of the shofar the act of blowing or the act of hearing?
At first glance, one might assume it is the blowing. Yet the Rambam is emphatic. He consistently rules that the mitzvah is lishmo’a kol shofar, to hear the sound of the shofar. The blowing is indispensable, but it is only the conduit. The true Mitzvah is the hearing, the
sound that enters the ear and penetrates the soul.
This distinction has powerful consequences. If the Mitzvah were blowing, then only the person holding the Shofar would truly fulfill it. But if the Mitzvah is hearing, then every person in the room participates equally the moment the sound reaches them. The Baal Toke’ah is not performing the Mitzvah alone but enabling the entire congregation to fulfill it together.
The Avnei Nezer compares this to another familiar custom. On Friday night, when making Kiddush, halacha would usually require us to use bread if it is on the table. Yet since Kiddush is ideally said on wine, we cover the challah so it will not be embarrassed that it is being skipped over. So too, the Baal Toke’ah could make a bracha on the tekiyah (the sound), but instead he makes the bracha on the shemi’ah (the hearing), which impacts the entire congregation.
So, we cover the shofar. We place it beneath the tallis as if to whisper: dear shofar, you are precious and holy, but you are only a tool. The real mitzvah is the sound that emerges, the trembling it causes, the shared
Looking for heaven? Look right here on Earth!
Just before he left this world, Moses brought the people into a covenant with G-d (Deuteronomy 29:9). And a few verses later, he adds, “Not with you alone do I forge this covenant and oath, but with all those standing here today and with those who are not here with us today.”
Rashi, quoting the Midrash Tanchuma, states plainly that Moses’ covenant was entered into with all Jews, including those yet unborn and of
future generations.
Rabbi Judah Lowe (the famous Maharal, the 16th-century chief rabbi of Prague) argues that Moshe and his Sanhedrin had the authority to do just that. It was the ultimate authority, and no future court could challenge it.
May I humbly add a rather simple idea — what we do and the choices we make will affect future generations. Will they be part of the Eternal Covenant? Our decisions will make the difference.
The education we choose to give our children will deeply affect their ability to participate in this covenant. And the example we set for them by how we choose to live our lives will undoubtedly affect them profoundly.
What is our underlying motivation to do good? Some people obsess about because they want to insure that when their physical life comes to an end, they will go to heaven. But if we’re just looking after our own skin, then our priorities and values may need some repair and upgrading Otherwise, we may look like the fellow with the smelly chicken.
Sarah tells her husband that she thinks the
chicken in their fridge may be off. Abie smells it and says, “Yes, it does smell a bit, but why don’t you give it to our poor next-door neighbors? They really struggle to put food on the table.”
Sarah is uncertain. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’ll be fine,” says Abie convincingly.
So she gives the chicken to the neighbors.
A few days later, they hear that the fellow next door was taken to the hospital with food poisoning. The woman who gave them the chicken feels terrible. So they go and pay a visit to the man in the hospital. By this time, he was in the ICU.
Two days later, the man dies. Now the woman who gave them the smelly chicken is completely inconsolable. But she and her husband go to the
The leitmotif of these High Holy Days: Return!
We have all been brought up to believe in the importance of progress. For the past several centuries, the goal of philosophy, religion, culture, and certainly science has been to develop ideas and practices which advance humankind beyond its present state.
Poets have acclaimed the superiority of progress; one of them, Robert Browning, put it this way:
Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, Not G-d’s, and not the beasts’: G-d is, they are; Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.
So forceful has been the emphasis upon progress that any attempt to return to past ideas and methods is almost universally criticized as backward and primitive and, at the very least, old-fashioned. The antonym for progress, regress, is a word with strong negative connotations. No one wants to be seen as a regressive.
As Rosh Hashana nears, the theme of progress is in the air. We hope to progress to a better year, to a year of growth and development. Indeed, many synagogues conclude the old year and begin a new one with the refrain, “May this year and its curses be gone, and may a new year with its blessings begin!”
And yet, it is precisely “return” that our Torah promulgates, especially at this time of year.
This week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim, contains the following passage (Deut.30:1-10):
When all these things befall you — the bless-
As we are now in the midst of the yemei ratzon, with Rosh Hashana just around the corner, I would like to bring to your attention a book of divrei Torah from the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, zt”l.
“Teshuva and Yomim Noraim,” edited by Cedarhurst attorney B. David Schreiber, contains three drashot delivered in 1965, 1966 and 1972. The first two were originally given in Yiddish, and the third is a reconstruction of an English shiur. Taken together, they make for fascinating
reading and deal with several timely themes.
The first, “Teshuva and Bechirah,” presents various views on how our faith deals with freedom of will, absolution from sin, a person’s cognitive ability and his mental capacity, and what constitutes regret as a process in repentance as well as the element of introspection in this process.
The second, “Teshuva and Torah,” deals with themes that examine the origin and scope of teshuva, especially as it relates to the Talmud and related works. Here, the Rav provides an analysis of what constitutes the commission of sin and the defilement that follows this sinful conduct.
Among the chiddushim presented is the Rav’s perspective on the uniqueness of the second set of luchos which he presents here as having constituted a bris of Torah shebe’al peh, the oral legal tradition in Judaism. Herein is cited an extensive
ing and the curse. … And you take them to heart [literally, and you return them to your heart.]
… And you will return to the L-rd your G-d, and you and your children will heed His command. …
Then the L-rd your G-d will return your captivity.
… He will return you from all the nations. … You will return and again heed the voice of L-rd. …
For the L-rd will return to delight in your wellbeing. Once you return to the L-rd your G-d with all your heart and soul.
In the space of just several verses, the word “return” appears, in one form or another, at least seven times! It was in the writings of the great Nechama Leibowitz that I first learned the importance of a word that appears
repetitiously in the course of a single text. We are to think, she wrote, of such a term as a leitvort, a leading word, a word which gives us a clue and leads us to the deeper meaning of the text at hand.
Even my limited familiarity with the German language was sufficient for me to draw the comparison between leitvort, a word that identifies the theme of an entire passage, and the word leitmotif, which is a thought or melody that pervades a literary work or a musical composition.
The ten days that begin on Rosh Hashana and conclude on Yom Kippur are known as the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, which is usually translated as The Ten Days of Repentance. But teshuvah does not really mean repentance, and it certainly does not mean penitence, as it is fre-
citation from the Beis Levi, both in the text and highlighted further in the accompanying footnotes.
The last shiur, entitled “Yom Kippur and Creation,” analyzes the following four themes, each of which is presented as a separate subsection of this essay:
•The role of Yom Kippur in facilitating the creation and in enabling humanity to recapture its primordial kedusha
•G-d’s rulership over humanity’s faculties,
the forfeiture of a sinner’s ability to use those talents and the penalty which the sinner must pay to gain back those lost rights.
•A person’s dual components of spirituality and physicality, and G-d’s rulership over both components.
•G-d’s ultimate judgment of humanity, from his perspective of eternity.
Of particular note in this last shiur is the reference to the Rav’s take on sin being a reality which distorts the human personality. The Rav insists that we as Jews have to take the capacity and duty to repent at this time of year seriously and literally. Sin has to be regarded as a metaphysical reality and not just an error in judgment.
The Rav illustrates this with a most unusual example. Joseph Stalin was, by most estimates,
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OPINION COLUMNISTS
Mitchell Bard, foreign policy analyst, authority on USIsreal relations; Ben Cohen, senior analyst, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Stephen Flatow, president, Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi and father of Alisa Flatow, murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995; Yisrael Medad, Americanborn Israeli journalist and political commentator; Rafael Medoff, founding director of David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies; Fiamma Nirenstein, Italian-Israeli journalist, author of 13 books, leading voice on Israeli affairs, Middle Eastern politics and antisemitism; Melanie Phillips, British journalist; Moshe Phillips, national chairman, Americans for a Safe Israel; Thane Rosenbaum, Distinguished University Professor at Touro University (published by Jewish Journal); Jonathan S. Tobin, editor-in-chief, Jewish News Syndicate.
Jerry Seinfeld is right about ‘Free Palestine’
What Jerry Seinfeld said was considered so bad that the Hollywood Reporter compared it to his awful Netflix comedy movie “Frosted.”
The 71-year-old creator and star of one of the most popular shows in television history is probably too beloved by his fans to be canceled by the entertainment industry and too rich (last year Bloomberg estimated his net worth to be more than $1 billion) to care. But there’s no question that his latest comments are likely to make him extremely unpopular among those in the creative arts.
The comedian caused a stir with remarks he made during an unscheduled appearance at Duke University with Omer Shemtov, an Israeli who had been abducted by Hamas terrorists at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, 2023 and held hostage in Gaza for 505 days. According to the Chronicle, the university’s student newspaper, the event was sponsored by Chabad at Duke, as well as the Provost’s Initiative on the Middle East, university centers and Jewish student groups.
Honesty about bigotry
As the newspaper reported, Seinfeld, who spoke prior to Shemtov, said the following about the ubiquitous phrase chanted by supporters of Hamas and those opposed to Israel: Free Palestine is, to me, just — you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. Just say you don’t like Jews. By saying “Free Palestine,” you’re not admitting what you really think. So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here, because they can come right out and say, “We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.” Okay that’s
honest.
This is apparently an utterance so terrible that Duke felt compelled to disavow it, denying responsibility for his presence and words. According to the New York Times, various leftist and Muslim groups voiced their outrage and, using the standard language of academic cancellation, accused him of fostering “a hostile environment for Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and allied students, leaving many feeling unsafe and unsupported on their own campus.”
The pro-Hamas Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also weighed in and accused Seinfeld of “dehumanizing” Palestinians.
Though Seinfeld has long eschewed the conventional life of a star, this will also put him on the outs with what appears to be a majority of those working in movies and television. The most recent effort to organize a boycott of Israel has gained traction in the industry, with more than 1,300 filmmakers and actors, including some well-known names, signing a petition pledging to refuse to work with Israeli film institutions and companies that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people,” a category that is more or less defined as virtually anyone in the Jewish state or its Jewish supporters abroad.
Buzzword for Jew-hatred
The signers, as well as those condemning Seinfeld, all accept the blood libels that Israel is actually committing genocide and apartheid, though these are blatant falsehoods propagated by Hamas.
The conflict in Gaza is a just war against a genocidal terror group that committed the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust and has vowed to repeat the atrocity “again and again” at the first opportunity. And far from an “apartheid state,” Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East where Arabs and Muslims enjoy equality under the law.
But contradicting these toxic myths is bad enough. Seinfeld is in trouble with the chatter-
The comedian is being bashed for comparing those who wish to erase Israel to the Ku Klux Klan. It’s likely attacks on him will intensify, as he sticks to his support for the Jewish state.
ing classes because he denounced the slogan that sounds the most reasonable to those untutored in the realities of the Middle East. Unlike “From the river to the sea” or “Globalize the intifada,” which are easily understood to mean wiping Israel off the map and supporting terrorism against Jews wherever they live, “Free Palestine” sounds as if it just means wanting Palestinian Arabs to be free.
So, it’s likely that the attacks on him will intensify, with many denouncing him as a racist for sticking to his support for the Jewish state and open criticism of its detractors.
But not only was he right to say what he did about “Free Palestine;” he deserves enormous credit for saying it at a time when liberal public opinion has turned on Israel and antisemitism is back in fashion.
Disgust with PC
By Hollywood standards, Seinfeld has never been particularly vocal about his political opinions. While he contributed to both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election cycle and various Democratic candidates in 2004, in many ways he never stood out as anything other than a conventional liberal. Indeed, he joined with other actors and comedians to make a tribute video to
Barack Obama when he left the White House in 2017, and said that knocking on the Oval Office window to get the president’s attention in the film was “probably the peak of my entire existence.”
On the other hand, it’s also true that by 2015, he was beginning to voice his disquiet with liberal political correctness. And he no longer performed, as he often had done previously, on college campuses, because students who had been indoctrinated in leftist myths were increasingly offended by jokes at which they once laughed. His taking issue with what he called “that PC crap” earned him a rebuke from Rolling Stone magazine in 2024 for saying in an interview in the New Yorker what some on the political right had long been noting.
Still, the real turning point for him came with the Hamas-led Palestinian assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. While most entertainers joined in the denunciation of the Jewish state’s efforts to eradicate Hamas, Seinfeld, whose television show and comedy routines often played off his identity, loudly refused to do so. Ever since then, he has been dogged by anti-Israel protesters at his performances and public appearances. He’s been heckled by “Free Palestine” advocates at his shows, and last year when the
President
Jerry Seinfeld in Tel Aviv.
Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum
JONATHAN S. TOBIN
JNS Editor-in-Chief
We are watching Israel’s ‘Godfather’ moment
Distinguished
University Professor Touro College
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be the Michael Corleone of the Middle East. Fans of the “The Godfather” films know that there is no denouement without all family debts settled and enemies eliminated.
The difference is that movie audiences wait in anticipation for the demise of the Corleones’ enemies. Critics of Israel root for terrorists to live another day.
On October 7, 2023, a Hamas terrorist used the phone of an Israeli woman who he had just murdered to call his parents. He bragged: “Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews! Mom, your son is a hero!”
His mother was elated. “I wish I were with you.” Jewish mothers react this way when their sons get into medical school. Palestinian mothers, apparently, take a different Hippocratic Oath.
Surely this gleeful terrorist knew that given Israel’s “Godfather” ethos, his misguided hubris meant that his days were numbered. An Israeli airstrike paid him back in full. (Might the IDF have the address of his mother, too?)
After assassinating the primary leaders of Hamas in both Gaza and Iran (and Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon), Israel took to the skies once again and bombed a building in Qatar where the remaining leader-
Israel is playing a zerosum game. It’s not a popularity contest.
ship of Hamas had convened — ostensibly to discuss another runaround about ending the war. Six were killed.
Qatar, it must be remembered, not only finances Hamas, but also has feted its leadership in luxury hotels while Gazans are denied safe harbor in tunnels that Qatar paid for and that terrorists occupy. After this week’s airstrike, Qatar angrily denounced the breach of its sovereignty. But Qatar is no innocent, and they are surely no friend of Israel. The Houthis in Yemen are receiving appropriate levels of IDF attention, too.
In true “Godfather” fashion, Netanyahu knows what debts must be settled. Those who either participated or were complicit in the bloody orgy of October 7 must be made dead.
Speaking of movies, the Toronto Film Festival at first refused to screen an Israeli documentary unflattering to Hamas. They laughably claimed they could not showcase the film without Hamas’ permission. When it came to their cowardice and Hamas’ barbarism, nothing, apparently, was left on the cutting room floor.
Meanwhile, at the Venice Film Festival, Israeli actress Gal Gadot refused to attend when 1,500 signatures were collected demanding that she be disinvited. A pro-Palestinian documentary co-produced by notorious Jewish selfhaters Joaquin Phoenix and Jonathan Glazer — and the latest gentile entry into the antisemitic jet set, Brad Pitt — received a 24-minute standing ovation.
Simultaneously, an organization, Film Workers for Palestine, collected 4,000 signatures, including usual suspect antisemites Mark Ruffalo, Ava DuVernay, Yorgos Lanthimos, Javier Bardem, and Cynthia Nixon, and newcomer Emma Stone, who all pledged not to work with Israel’s film industry.
The bandwagon of detractors continues to grow while Israel fastidiously attends to its enemies list. Ignoring the outside noise. Realizing that winning hearts and minds is belied by
the world’s oldest prejudice. No matter how Israel would have conducted this war, the world would have found fault. The plotline was morally twisted from the outset. Israel was blamed for what happened on October 7. By October 8 there were already chants of a Palestinian genocide and demands for a ceasefire.
The world downplayed October 7 from the jump: “It didn’t happen”; “There were no rapes or torched babies”; “It’s all Israeli propaganda”; “There’s a context to the killings.”
Israel-bashing is reaching a crescendo. The European Broadcasting Association, which produces Eurovision, the annual song contest, is deciding whether to exclude Israel from this year’s competition. Ireland has already threatened it will boycott if an Israeli singer appears. Coldplay’s Chris Martin publicly humiliated two Israeli teenage girls on his stage in London by condescendingly acknowledging that they might actually be human beings.
The Italian soccer coaches’ association is calling to have Israel suspended from FIFA, the entity that governs global soccer. Israeli chess
players withdrew from a tournament when Spain banned Israel’s national flag. Spain also tried to ban Israeli cyclists when throngs of pro-Hamas agitators threatened to disrupt the race. The same thing happened to Israeli cyclists in Canada, who were compelled to abbreviate their name from Israel-Premier Tech to IPT.
Dozens of European universities have severed academic affiliations with Israeli counterparts. Israeli doctors are being barred from internships.
The Hind Rajab Foundation takes to social media to reveal the names of IDF soldiers and Israeli students on gap years. Kosher restaurants in Paris, Berlin and New York continue to be vandalized.
With blinders securely affixed, Israel presses on to finish the job. The rogues’ gallery of Palestinian apologists and political opportunists can’t be placated anyway. France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Belgium are set to formally recognize a Palestinian state. Germany is withholding arms exports to Israel. The Dutch parliament is losing its mind over Gaza. Spain’s prime minister shockingly lamented that his country is without nuclear weapons to launch at Israel. The country that in 1492 mass murdered and expelled its Jews now wants to spearhead another Holocaust. So much for the collective gasp of Never Again. Hordes of European Islamists frighten the natives and dictate the Jew-hating rhetoric.
Israel is playing a zero-sum game. It is not trying to win a popularity contest. Not when its right to self-defense is purportedly conditioned on the Catch-22 of not killing Palestinians. No matter what precipitated the conflict or how much Gazans deserve payback, Israel’s hands are perpetually tied while Palestinians remain, paradoxically, untouchable.
If you have a problem with Israel’s settling this score, you should have all along denounced Palestinian violence and rejection-
Octopus tentacles spread: Jew-hate in Britain
British Jews have generally been a patriotic bunch. Those of us who grew up there were frequently served reminders as to why we should be proud to be both British and Jewish.
•Ours was the country that bravely repelled the Nazi invasion while the rest of Europe found itself under German occupation.
•Ours was the country where politicians of all stripes — from the great wartime Conservative Party Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the distinguished Labour Party Speaker of the House of Commons Richard Crossman — not only declared their sympathies with Zionism but understood the historical and moral impulses behind it.
•Ours was the country where, as George Orwell put it, “antisemitism as a fully thought-out racial or religious doctrine has never flourished.”
None of this meant that Britain was perfect. As is the case in every country with a Jewish community, as well as many without one, there were plenty of far-right antisemites, Arabist Israel-haters and far-left anti-Zionists to keep an eye on.
But in the post-war era, public expressions of antisemitism were largely frowned upon and therefore saved for private encounters. As Orwell provocatively observed in the same essay, “Thanks to Hitler … you had a situation in which the press was in effect censored in favor of the Jews while in private antisemitism was on the upgrade, even, to some extent, among sensitive
and intelligent people.”
That overarching point no longer holds true. Indeed, it hasn’t been true since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — whose 24th anniversary the world just marked — ushered in an era of confrontation between the West and significant elements of the Islamic world, with the issue of Israel among those at its core.
In a sign of this shift, two days before the 9/11 commemorations, the House of Commons was treated to a blatantly antisemitic speech by one of its members. That was Shockat Adam, a Labour parliamentarian allied with the extreme
left who represents a constituency, Leicester South, where nearly 40% of the population is composed of Muslims.
Addressing last week’s targeting of Hamas leaders in Qatar by Israel, Adam invoked “the blood-soaked tentacles of the Israeli army.”
The metaphor is a tired and familiar one, but deadly nonetheless. In the fevered imaginations of antisemitic conspiracy theorists, Jews play the role of an octopus, slyly wrapping their multiple tentacles around the media, the global economy and our political institutions.
Look through the archive of antisemitic posters or illustrated covers of publications like the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and you will see it plainly — an octopus crowned by a Star of David clutching the globe in an everfirmer grasp. It is precisely this sinister vision of Jewish power that animates politicians like Adam and their acolytes in the pro-Hamas protest movement.
In the Britain that I was brought up to believe existed, a statement like Adam’s — in the hallowed halls of parliament no less — would have led to hoots of disdain and disapproval among the assembled legislators. In this case, however, it was greeted by a thundering silence.
That silence was all the more striking given the results of a poll conducted by YouGov for the Campaign Against Antisemitism organization. More than one-fifth of respondents agreed with four antisemitic statements put to them, marking an increase of 10% in just four years.
•Nearly half the population (45%) believes that Israel treats the Palestinians as the Nazis treated the Jews, a statistic that reveals a shocking ignorance of both the industrialized exter-
mination that distinguished the Nazi Holocaust, as well as the origins and nature of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. What it also reveals is an almost visceral desire to insult Jews in the most wounding way possible by comparing the Jewish state that emerged from the Holocaust with those who sought to annihilate the Jewish people in their entirety.
Britain exited the European Union, but the continent’s oldest form of political and social poison did not depart alongside it.
•Other findings in the poll are similarly alarming. One-fifth of the young voters surveyed believe that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state. In the same demographic, 58% believe that Israel and its supporters “are a bad influence on our democracy.” Some 19% believe that the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was justified.
Real-world consequences accompany these views.
In the space of a little more than a week, eight antisemitic incidents have been recorded in the North London neighborhood of Golders Green, which has long had a significant Jewish population. Seven of those incidents were likely carried
See Cohen on page 27
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Michael Corleone, in an AI-generated mash-up.
Nazi antisemitic propaganda cartoon by Seppla (Josef Plank), a political cartoonist, Germany, date uncertain though probably during World War II. US Holocaust Memorial Museum
GLOBAL FOCUS BEN COHEN
See Rosenbaum on page 27
THANE ROSENBAUM
World reaps what ‘Palestine’ born in blood sows
Every day seems to bring a new, deluded world leader pushing a flawed framework on the Middle East, a region they do not understand. Countries worldwide, even unexpected ones like Japan, Canada and Australia, continue to say they may conditionally recognize such a state in the near future. But do they realize what they are endorsing?
Almost two years ago, I was forced to flee my homeland of Egypt at the hands of the radical Islamists, the same chauvinist fanatics who once vowed to “sabotage Western civilization from within.” As a liberal Muslim scholar of the Middle East, who cherishes the values of classical liberal democracy, and who owes the United States my education, my professional growth, and, most recently, my very life, I feel an obligation to sound the alarm against the Muslim Brotherhood and its most dangerous offshoot: Hamas.
Hamas, the Palestinian faction of the Muslim Brotherhood — designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — has run Gaza with an iron fist after it violently seized control from the rival Fatah party in June 2007 following a series of armed clashes. It was the mastermind behind and key perpetrator of the barbaric Oct. 7 massacre in Israel in 2023.
Hamas leaders purposefully exposed innocent civilians in Gaza to war so they could use their blood to gain legitimacy for their acts of terrorism, as well as win the sympathy and approval of the international community.
These facts are crucial to recall as several world leaders, under the deception of the Gaza war narrative cleverly crafted by Hamas’s propaganda machine in Qatar, seek to reward terrorism with the premature recognition of a Palestinian state.
Such a move will not bring the peace we all wish for. It will only serve to entrench Hamas, empower the Islamic Republic of Iran, deepen the region’s most chronic geopolitical conflicts and strip the Palestinians of the only real hope they deserve: a future free from Hamas’s tyranny.
Born in blood, this offer will give rise to more blood. The particular rotten proposal being of-
fered would end the prospects for any final settlement short of violence because it essentially demands that Israel sign its own death warrant.
The declaration approved by sponsoring world governments calls on “the Israeli leadership to issue a clear public commitment to the two-state solution, including a sovereign and viable Palestinian state,” but it never demands that the Palestinian leadership recognize the State of Israel and its right to exist.
The declaration also calls for economic warfare against Israel as long as it has any presence in the contested West Bank or Gaza Strip, calling on all signatories “to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel con-
cerning the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Parts thereof … to take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel.” Countries “that have established diplomatic missions at Jerusalem” are urged “to withdraw such missions from the Holy City.” This would remove Israel’s right to designate its own capital, which has been Jerusalem since the early days of the state and has always been the symbolic center of the Jewish religion.
Extraordinarily, the document calls for increased funding and full immunity for all staff associated with the United Nations, especially that of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), riddled with Hamas members, whose staff and even buildings have been implicated in Hamas’s hostage-taking efforts. The parties to the agreement even volunteer to protect UNRWA’s media narrative, demanding that they “act to counter mis- and disinformation campaigns and attacks against the U.N., including UNRWA, health workers and humanitarians.”
The document also calls for the resettlement of generations of Palestinian refugees within the borders of Israel, demographically inundating the Jewish state and leading to its dissolution — an intentional “poison pill” that makes any peace agreement impossible.
Israel’s war against Hamas and radical Islamism in the broader Middle East region should be backed by the international community. Israel is fighting this war on behalf of the free world, including moderate Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East.
If the free world tries to impose a Palestinian state upon Israel in these circumstances, Israel will be forced to fight for its survival against it. Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, who seek
Israel survives war slanders, will emerge a hero
Israel’s reputation has taken a horrible beating over the last two years, thanks to a constant drumbeat of egregious lies and false accusations by the media, NGOs, Western nations and other members of the “international community.”
Nevertheless, Israel’s cause and conduct during the war have been righteous and exemplary. The fact that Israel stands on the side of truth and continues to defeat forces of the global Islamist jihad — including, shortly, Hamas — positions the Jewish state to emerge soon as a hero despite libelous efforts to discredit and delegitimize it.
We can trust that Israel’s eventual victory over one of the world’s most evil foes will silence many, if not most, of its critics. But if not, it will at least continue the 3,000-year survival of one of the world’s most successful peoples, an achievement in itself with sufficient rewards.
Media, NGOs, the United Nations and Western nations have attacked Israel relentlessly with five vicious lies:
•Israel is committing genocide. Fact: Israel’s war is with Hamas, not the Palestinians of Gaza. It has shown no intention or any effect of exterminating the Palestinians.
•Israel is intentionally starving the people of Gaza. Fact: Israel has allowed 2 million tons of humanitarian aid since the war started, an un-
precedented largesse for a country to provide an enemy population. If Gazans go hungry, it’s because Hamas steals food deliveries.
•Israel is committing ethnic cleansing by forcibly transferring Gaza’s population. Fact: Israel issues warnings to civilians to evacuate to safer areas where they are less likely to be harmed by combat operations.
•Israel intentionally targets civilians. Fact: Israel targets terrorists, and only terrorists. Actual death toll numbers confirm Israel does not attack innocents and has achieved an astoundingly low civilian-to-fighter ratio of 1.5 to 1, historically low for modern urban warfare.
•Israel intentionally targets journalists. Fact: Journalism in war zones is inherently dangerous and life-threatening. Israel does not target journalists — but also does not spare terrorists masquerading as journalists. Many of the journalists killed in the Gaza war were affiliated with Hamas or other terrorist groups.
Slanderous lies have their cost: Israel has suffered severe damage to its reputation.
Israel has been referred to the International Criminal Court, accused of genocide and war crimes. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Nine countries, including Canada, Germany, Italy and Spain, have imposed arms embargoes on Israel. Ten more countries have recognized “Palestine,” and more countries, including France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Belgium, are planning to follow suit at the UN General Assembly later this month.
In addition, polls show many people believe the lies: One poll conducted last month showed that 50% of registered voters in the United States believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Likewise, globally, a Pew Research survey done in 24 countries earlier this year showed 62% of respondents had negative views of the Jewish state.
Despite fighting genocidal monsters, Israel’s military has maintained high ethical standards.
Not only has Israel decapitated Hamas’s command and control, in the words of British war veteran and military expert Richard Kemp, “Israel is meticulous in following the laws of war while Hamas brazenly violates them.”
Indeed, while Hamas uses human shields to maximize civilian casualties, Israel has taken un-
precedented steps to protect civilians, including warnings in advance of attacks, evacuation warnings, the use of precise munitions and delivering abundant humanitarian aid.
As Israel prevails militarily against the global jihad, its morale and economy remain world-class.
In less than two years, Israel has laid waste to Iran’s network of jihad proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis. It has also laid waste to Iran itself, destroying much of that country’s missile and nuclear infrastructure. Israel has done all this with the steadfast support of the US government, and recent polling shows 74% of Americans backing the Jewish state against Hamas. Likewise, Israel’s morale remains strong, with
Members of Al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas “military“ wing, stand guard while Palestinians wait to hand over the bodies of four Israeli hostages to the Red Cross in Khan Yunis on Feb. 20. Saeed Mohammed, Flash90
See Sinkinson on page 27
See Ziada on page 27
Israel Defense Forces soldiers during recent operations in the Gaza Strip, July 2025. IDF
Munich, Tehran, Doha: Israel’s unbroken justice
In September 1972, the world watched in horror as Palestinian terrorists stormed the Olympic Village in Munich, taking members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage. By the time the ordeal ended, 11 Israeli athletes were dead.
The world’s reaction was predictable: outrage, speeches and hand-wringing, but little action. The International Olympic Committee hurried to resume the Games. West German officials bungled the rescue attempt and then quietly released three of the captured terrorists.
Israel drew a very different conclusion. Then-Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized the Mossad to pursue every member of the Black September network that had orchestrated the Munich attack. The message was unmistakable: Those who spill Jewish blood will never be safe. Over the following years — in cities from Paris to Beirut to Cyprus — the long arm of Israeli justice reached the perpetrators of Munich.
More than 50 years later, that same doctrine is alive in the aftermath of the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The world again saw Jews butchered in cold blood in their homes and at a music festival. The world again expressed sympathy … and then moved on.
Israel, however, has not moved on. And just as in the 1970s, the masterminds of mass murder are discovering that safe houses in Tehran or
luxury hotels in Doha are no refuge.
Targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders in Tehran and now Qatar’s capital city, Doha, are not improvisations. They are the continuation of a policy rooted in Munich: Israel will reach its enemies wherever they hide.
The parallels are striking.
In both 1972 and 2023, the murderers believed that distance, politics and foreign patronage would shield them. Black September operatives slipped across European borders, confident that they could disappear. Hamas leaders today rely on Iranian sponsorship and Qatari hospitality. Both miscalculated.
Munich taught Israel — and the Jewish people — that international institutions could not be relied upon to protect us. Oct. 7 reinforced that lesson with painful clarity.
Critics call these killings vengeance. That is a fundamental misunderstanding. Israel’s targeted operations are not revenge; they are justice, deterrence and self-preservation.
Justice, because the blood of murdered Jews cannot be brushed aside with a UN resolution or a “peace process” that drags on indefinitely. Deterrence, because future terrorists must learn that planning atrocities against Jews means that they will spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder. And self-preservation, because allowing terror leaders to live freely and plot the next massacre is to invite repetition of Oct. 7.
The world often prefers Israel to “move on.”
After Munich, the International Olympic Committee didn’t even pause the Games for long. Today, the international community demands ceasefires and concessions, as if Hamas were a legitimate negotiating partner rather than the butchers of men, women, children and babies. In both eras, Israel answered with action, not platitudes.
It is also worth remembering who these terror leaders are. The Munich plotters were not impoverished freedom fighters; they were operatives of a well-funded, politically connected terror machine. Likewise, those Hamas leaders who reside in Tehran and Doha are not struggling refugees; they live in opulence while ordinary Gazans languish under their misrule. Their deaths do not deprive their people of leadership; they liberate them from tyrants who profit from endless war.
Israel will reach its enemies, wherever they hide.
The principle behind Israel’s campaign is both ancient and modern. The Bible teaches, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?” Israel has taken that imperative into its national security doctrine. The long arm of justice, whether carried out by Mossad agents in the 1970s or Israeli operatives today, tells the world that Jewish lives are not cheap, Jewish dignity is not expendable, and Jewish sovereignty has meaning.
When the Munich terrorists struck in 1972, they aimed to humiliate Israel on the world stage. Instead, they birthed a doctrine of deterrence that outlived them all. When Hamas struck on Oct. 7, they sought to terrorize Israelis into paralysis. Instead, they reawakened Israel’s determination to ensure that Jewish blood is never spilled without consequence.
From Munich to Tehran, from 1972 to today, Israel has demonstrated that the Jewish people will not rely on others to secure justice. If the international community cannot — or will not — prevent the murder of Jews, then Israel will act alone. That is not vengeance. It is the meaning of sovereignty.
The names change — Munich, Black September, Hamas, Tehran, Doha — but the principle remains constant: If you slaughter Jews, your day of reckoning will come.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
African Christians falling to a globalizing jihad
While the world’s eyes are on Gaza, people who would otherwise care have been made blind to the plight of black Christians persecuted across Africa. There are approximately 15 African countries where jihadists — ideological cousins of Hamas — oppress indigenous Christian populations.
In countries like Nigeria, jihadist assaults by Boko Haram and Fulani are almost exact analogues to the Hamas pogrom in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Armed groups storm African villages there, slaughter, torture and burn innocent villagers, and rape and kidnap women and girls as sex slaves.
Americans know a bit of this because Michelle Obama, in an instinctive reaction to a mass kidnapping of Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram jihadists in April 2014, created a campaign, “#BringBackOurGirls.” Sadly, she suddenly abandoned the effort soon after she launched it (likely for political reasons), though her decision was never explained. Nigerians suffer Oct. 7-like attacks almost weekly.
The case of Eritrea is particularly instructive, as it demonstrates what can happen to the freedom of religion, conscience and expression when the far-left comes to power, enabled by an Islamic majority. In Eritrea, an Islamist alliance with Communists may mirror what many fear may come to pass in Europe as the “Red-Green Alliance” menacingly grows.
The case of Eritrea is particularly instructive.
The area of what is today Eritrea has a long history of Christianity, which remained the dominant religion in the country despite the arrival of Islam in the seventh century. Islamic invasions in the 16th century — conducted by Ahmad Gragn, the Muslim leader of the sultanate of Adal, which is modern-day Somalia — resulted in the death of thousands, including many Christian church leaders.
The International Christian Concern reports that following these attacks, Islam grew significantly in the region, leaving the population in the following years split nearly half Christian and half Muslim.
Eritrea had been a federal component of Ethiopia, a majority-Christian country, when the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), a Muslimled guerrilla force, launched a “holy war” that lasted for 30 years. The ELF then combined with Marxists and formed the Marxist-Leninist Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF).
In 1993, Eritrea voted for independence in a referendum and has been run by the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), which replaced the EPLF.
Since its independence from Ethiopia in 1993, the dictatorial regime of Eritrea has ruled with an absolute authoritarianism, arresting, harassing and murdered Christians who are considered to be “agents of the West” and a threat to the government.
Hundreds of Eritreans are detained without charge or trial in detention sites across the country, often in horrific conditions. Some die in prison because of torture and the denial of medical care. Pastor Ghirmay Araya, one of the founding fathers of the Full Gospel Church in Eritrea, died in prison in May 2024. He was arrested in 2021, though never charged with a crime.
Though Western rights behemoths like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch mostly ignore the plight of Africans under jihad assault, Christian rights groups
have stepped into the gap.
On Aug. 22, several Christian rights groups in various countries proclaimed “The International Day Commemorating Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief” and called on the international community to take action by means of demonstrations, processions and prayer meetings on behalf of seven Eritrean Christians (including Orthodox priests) who have been imprisoned for more than 20 years without charges. Advocates gathered outside of the Eritrean Embassy in Washington to protest their detention in the majority-Muslim nation.
Pastors and priests are typically the main target for persecution and arrest in the country.
“Eritrean church leaders — the Rev. Haile Naizge, Dr. Kuflu Gebremeskel, Rev. Million Gebreselassie, Dr Futsum Gebrenegus, Rev. Dr. Tekleab Menghisteab, Rev. Gebremedhin Gebregiorgis, Rev. Pastor Kidane Weldou — have been detained arbitrarily for at least 20 years,” says Tiffany Barrens, Open Doors’ international global advocacy director.
“Not one has been charged or brought before a court,” she continues. “They have had no legal representation, and their families have not been permitted to visit them. … We are calling for their immediate release.”
To oppose the regime is to risk arrest, torture and the denial of legal protection. Today, more than half (53%) of the Eritrean population is Muslim. Christians constitute 44%. Eritrea ranks No. 6 in the “World Watch List” of Open Doors, which monitors international Christian persecution. Dictatorial paranoia, plus Islamic oppression, makes for Christian persecution.
According to the Freedom House, “Eritrea is a militarized authoritarian state that has not held a national election since independence from Ethiopia in 1993. … Arbitrary detention is commonplace, and citizens are required to perform national service, often for their entire working lives. The government shut down all independent media in 2001.”
Eritrea is often called the “North Korea of Africa” due to its extreme censorship. Phone calls are monitored, bandwidth is kept slow, and a network of citizens is tasked with spying on neighbours. Eritrea tops the list of the most censored countries by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The country is also targeted by Islamist groups, such as the Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement (EIJM). EIJM’s goals include jihad against the Eritrean government and to create an Islamic Eritrean State.
Meanwhile, the Eritrean regime stands accused by many reports issued by the United Nations, as well as by neighboring countries, of supporting and sponsoring Islamic insurgents in the Horn of Africa, such as Al Shabaab and Hizbul-Islam.
Westerners should take note: Acting now on behalf of African victims is not simply just and moral; it may also prepare them to take the measures they need that can guard their democracies against a similarly destructive fate. Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist formerly based in Ankara. She is a senior researcher of the African Jewish Alliance. Charles Jacobs is president of the African Jewish.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
A 2018 map of Eritrea regions and the country’s neighbors. Skilla1st
A member of the Arab Commando group that seized members of the Israeli Olympic Team in the Olympic Village in Munich on Sept. 5, 1972. AP, Russell McPhedran via WikiCommons
stephen M. Flatow
ChaRles JaCoBs and UZaY BUlUt
TOBIN: Seinfeld and meaning of ‘Free Palestine’
Continued from page 21
Queens College graduate gave a hilarious comedic commencement speech at Duke (which both of his children attended), some students booed, waved Palestinian flags and walked out in protest. Luckily, the overwhelming majority stayed and laughed along with everyone else at his advice, which centered on the importance of not losing one’s sense of humor — something he called “essential” to survival amid the vicissitudes of life in the real world.
Yet his comparison of the pro-Hamas mobs to the KKK is likely a bridge too far for most in the entertainment world, since by extension, he’s claiming that most of the people in his business are Jew-haters but afraid to admit it openly.
There will likely be pressure on him to apologize and concede that those who say “Free Palestine” are, as most liberals claim them to be, merely idealists supporting an oppressed people yearning to be “free.”
Except Seinfeld was, as he often is with his wry observations about the small things in life that have always been the core of his comedic schtick, right on target with his calling out of those who use the phrase.
Anti-Zionism is antisemitism
It’s possible that some of those American students who say “Free Palestine” may just mean they want equality and self-determination for Palestinian Arabs, just as some of them may have no idea of the meaning of “From the River to the Sea” or are able to identify either of the bodies of water in question.
But those words have a very different meaning in the context of Palestinian politics and the groups that represent the Arabs living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Moreover, those pro-Palestinian organizations, like Students for Justice in Palestine and CAIR, for that matter, make no bones about what the phrase
Sacks…
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culiar post-Enlightenment delusion to think that the only significant things about us are those we choose. For the truth is that we do not choose some of the most important facts about ourselves. We did not choose to be born. We did not choose our parents. We did not choose the time and place of our birth. Yet each of these affects who we are and what we are called on to do.
We are part of a story that began long before we were born and will continue long after we are no longer here, and the question for all of us is: Will we continue the story? The hopes of a hundred generations of our ancestors rest on our willingness to do so. Deep in our collective memory the words of Moses continue to resonate. “It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with … whoever is not here with us today.
We are each a key player in this story. We can live it. We can abandon it. But it is a choice we cannot avoid, and it has immense consequences. The future of the covenant rests with us.
Berlin…
Continued from page 20
moment when an entire people hears together. By covering the shofar, we remind ourselves that the blessing is not on the object, but on the sacred experience that is about to unfold. The Torah articulates this experience as kol shofar, the sound of the shofar (Bamidbar 29:1). Unlike words that can be explained or debated, a voice simply enters you. It bypasses the intellect and touches something more profound, more primal, more real. That is the
symbolizes: the eradication of Israel by, as they also say, “any means necessary.”
For them, “Palestine” does not mean just Gaza or even the “West Bank” where the Palestinian Authority autonomously rules the Arab population. It constitutes all of the territory of what from 1922 to 1948 was the British Mandate for Palestine and all of the land on which the State of Israel exists.
As such, it is not advocating for a two-state solution in which Israel and a putative state of Palestine would exist side by side in peace. It is the catchphrase of anti-Zionists who oppose the existence of the one Jewish state on the planet, no matter where its borders might be drawn. It is an echo of the consistent position of the Palestinian Arabs, who have repeatedly rejected a separate state so long as it would mean accepting the legitimacy of a Jewish one next to it.
Like Hamas, whose objective is the genocide of the Jewish people as well as Israel’s destruction, those who say “Free Palestine” are saying they don’t think the Jews ought to have a state in their ancient homeland, and are tacitly endorsing the “any means necessary” used by the terrorists to advance that goal.
This is not a stretch or a misinterpretation of their positions. Most of those who have either newly embraced or reaffirmed the above position, did so only in reaction to the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of Israelis that took place on Oct. 7. There is no better proof of the fact that anti-Zionism is antisemitism than this brutal fact.
It’s a hard truth that even many Jewish organizations whose job it is to defend the Jews and Israel either don’t understand this or refuse to say it, out of deference to the feelings of many of their erstwhile allies in liberal political or minority groups who have abandoned Israel and the Jews since Oct. 7. They
Avodah of Rosh Hashana: to quiet the noise, to peel away the layers, and to truly hear.
This Rosh Hashana, as the Baal Toke’ah first hides the shofar beneath its covering, take note of the gesture. Remember the Avnei Nezer’s teaching:
•The shofar itself is not the goal.
•The mitzvah is to hear, to listen deeply, to let its raw cry pierce your heart.
And if we can truly listen, to the shofar and to the still small voice within, then we are already walking the path of renewal and return.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Goldman…
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funeral. And the next day, they visit the house of mourning to pay a condolence call.
When they come home, the wife unburdens herself. She is weeping uncontrollably, feeling responsible for the poor man’s passing.
Her husband comforts her. “Sarah, just look how many mitzvahs we accomplished with that one chicken. We gave charity. We visited the sick. We accompanied the deceased on his final journey. We comforted the mourners! So many mitzvahs from one chicken!”
Tell me: Who’s the smelly one here? The chicken or the “donor”?
If going to heaven is your only concern, then you may not care if someone else goes to hell. There is much more to why we are here than just to go to heaven. After all, we were in heaven as pristine souls before we were born. What was the point of it all, if we’re only destined to go back where we came from?
Clearly, we have a job to do down here, each of us. Heaven will be a natural outgrowth of lives that are lived meaningfully, purposefully and productively.
seem to fear that calling the “Free Palestine” crowd by their right name as Jew-haters will offend too many people and further isolate the Jewish community.
But whether the antisemites or the fearful mainstream Jewish leaders are willing to admit it, what Seinfeld said was the truth.
Fashionable toxic myths
How did this euphemism or buzzword for Jew-hatred that none save the uncancellable like Seinfeld or conservative commentators fear to denounce become part of the politically correct lexicon?
It happened in the same way that the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), which enshrines racial divisions as permanent and is the opposite of equal opportunity, became a sacred cow of the academy, the arts, the corporate world and even government.
Progressives captured the culture and began the indoctrination of generations of students in toxic left-wing myths. These include critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that denounced America and the West as irredeemably racist and also branded Jews and Israel as “white” oppressors.
But just as the Trump administration has begun the herculean task of rolling back the grip of woke ideology on the nation, so, too, is it necessary to tell the truth about the antisemitic nature of the mantras of what some have called the new leftist religion of “Palestinianism.”
While all comparisons to the KKK are invidious by definition, the comedian was entirely correct to assert that the eliminationist and prejudicial goals of the “Free Palestine” movement are just as despicable as the racism and bigotry of the Klan.
The only difference between them lies in the fact that, like the antisemitism of European intellectuals of the early 20th century
All of us have a mission and a mandate for why we were brought into this world by G-d, over and above the responsibilities common to all Jews. But regardless of our personal talents and expertise — where we can offer our contributions to making the world a better place — there is the fact that we create a legacy and that we perpetuate the covenant to our children and grandchildren down the generations.
As we read towards the end of Nitzavim: Ubocharto bchaim … l’maan tichyeh atoh vzarecha! (Choose life so that you and your descendants will live).”
The choices we make in life are critical in answering the question of why we are here. Future generations depend on us. One single decision may well determine the quality of future generations.
Will they be part of the Eternal Covenant? One single act, one correct choice, impacts generations.
Rosh Hashana is upon us. May we resolve to choose life, to choose wisely and to choose correctly. And may our good decisions reverberate down the generations.
Wishing all my readers, together with the whole House of Israel, a Shana Tovah, filled with all the Almighty’s bountiful blessings.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Weinreb…
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quently rendered. Rather, it means return.
The leitmotif of this entire season is the Torah’s call for us to engage in profound introspection and to return to a place which we have lost, forgotten, or abandoned. It is not progress that is demanded of us during the next several weeks; it is, oddly enough, regress.
that led to the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust, the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel mobs are largely made up of the educated and chattering classes, not the lower and middle-class thugs that joined the Klan. It is, as the eminent historian Niall Ferguson aptly noted, a case of “The Treason of the Intellectuals.”
It’s long been clear that many of those Jews in pop culture, publishing and the arts that are sympathetic to Israel fear to say so publicly lest they be ostracized. The shunning of people like Israeli actor Gal Gadot, whom the New York Times reports has suffered a downturn in her once successful career since Oct. 7, provides a sobering example of how the efforts to boycott artists, if not Israel’s economy, is gaining support.
It’s hard to say what impact this bout of truth-telling will have on Seinfeld, who is no longer dependent on Hollywood fashion to continue his career. We can only hope he will inspire more Jewish entertainers to speak out on behalf of their own people, rather than joining the “as a Jew” crowd to denounce Israel along with their “enlightened” colleagues. Whether they do or not, Seinfeld’s stanceis not merely praiseworthy; it’s vital to rolling back the tsunami of antisemitism that has been sweeping over the globe in the last two years. We shouldn’t be afraid of labeling a phrase that is nothing but shorthand for Jewish genocide as what it is.
The way to combat the effort to isolate Israel and to silence and intimidate Jews who might speak up for Jewish rights — and against the Marxist, Islamist and even some far-right extremists who are united in their antisemitism — is to tell the truth about them. Pretending that they are just well-meaning idealists merely legitimizes that which should be denounced as hate.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
It can legitimately be asked, return to what? I would like to provide an answer or two to that question, inspired by the book that I find so personally meaningful at this time of year. It is “The Lights of Teshuvah,” by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
Rav Kook emphasizes that over the course of time, we each develop as individuals, and in that process isolate and alienate ourselves from others, from our families, from the people of Israel. To return means to return from our selfcenteredness to the collective, from the prat, or single unit, to the klal, or all-encompassing group.
There can be no teshuvah unless the person reconnects with larger components of society. We all, in our heart of hearts, know the ways in which he has cut himself off from significant people in his life, and each of us knows how to reconnect to those individuals.
My experience as a psychotherapist has taught me that there is another destination to which it would pay for us to return. I speak of our childhood.
As we mature and develop in life, we grow in many positive directions. But we also move away from our innocence, from our childish enthusiasm, from the hope and sense of potential that characterizes the young, but which older individuals eschew cynically.
People find it rewarding to return (if only in their imaginations) to their youth and recapture some of the positive qualities that they left behind as they made their adult choices. Finally, we all need to return the Almighty, to His Torah, and to His Land.
No matter how intense our worship of Him during the past year was, we can return to Him for an even stronger connection.
No matter how studiously we explored His Torah, we can return to even deeper levels of its impenetrable depth.
No matter how loyal our faithfulness to the
It’s Rosh Hashana, time for real accountability
DR. ALAN MAZUREK
Jewish Star columnist
My wife and I just returned to our home in Jerusalem after spending the summer in Great Neck. Our incredible joy of returning, however, was overshadowed by the dreadful news of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Kirk was both a soldier who fell in battle and a victim of terror. He was a soldier — fighting for freedom of speech and religion — and a victim of a terrorist murder.
• • •
We inhabit two worlds, as an American and Israeli but also as a citizen of the classical western world imbued with faith-based righteousness as a way of life.
It is well known that America’s founding fathers were aware of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible in all its facets — from the separation of powers into executive, legislative and judicial branches (based on the Jewish model of a King, Kohen, Levite, Rabbinical class and Sanhedrin) to the capital of Washington being shared by multiple states (based on the same for Jerusalem, shared by two tribes), to a written body of law (the Constitution, based l’havdil on Judaism’s precious Holy Torah).
(I say l’havdil because Judaism and Christianity are quite different, but America was founded on the idea of freedom of religion and Charlie Kirk, as a man of faith and American patriotism, embodied the best of both, just as I hope we Jewish-Americans do.)
America was founded on the idea of freedom
Continued from previous page land of Israel was, we can return to even greater loyalty and more courageous faith.
And no matter what our relationship was with others in our lives, we can draw upon our own inner sources of generosity and compassion and enhance those relationships in a spirit of genuine teshuvah, of returning to those others, and, in the process, to our truer selves.
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Gerber…
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one of history’s cruelest dictators, but he even topped those expectations. After his demise, those who succeeded him tried to distance themselves from some of his excesses by doing a form of teshuva. The Rav cited the example of Soviet leader Khrushchev’s offered “confession” on behalf of Stalin, three years after Stalin’s passing.
“In that confession, Khrushchev never mentioned the word sin. He related how Stalin had executed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. But he never employed the word ‘sin.’ He used a substitute word. He wrote that Stalin had committed an ‘error.’ There is a substantive difference between error and sin. Error is a practical mistake; sin, on the other hand, is a theological metaphysical reality. Sin has an adverse negative impact upon the spiritual personality, defiling, crippling and distorting it.”
This is the essence of the Rav’s take on the subject of sin and teshuva, which is an important lesson for all of us to learn and practice.
The Rav continues with this shitah, elaborating further on this theme and reinforcing his concepts of what constitutes true and meaningful teshuva Utilizing such an evil example as Stalin and his communist ideology puts a face upon the Rav’s thesis, giving it greater credibility. The concept of teshuva permeates much of the Rav’s writings. Previously published.
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of religion. But for many in America today, this phrase has been changed to freedom from religion.
The days leading up to Rosh Hashana is a time for deep introspection, reflection and taking accountability for one’s actions.
As the Talmud and our machzorim tell us, it is the birthday of the world’s creation,”hayom harat olam.” It is also Yom Hadin, day of judgment (masechet Rosh Hashanah 8a). That is because although the universe was actually created five days earlier (Rabbi Eliezer, ibid 11a), this day — 1 Tishrei — marks the creation of humanity, the pinnacle of Hashem’s creation.
All humanity, every nation, Jews and nonJews, are held to account on this day, Rosh Hashana. Even the goyim are judged, although they may be unaware of it (ibid 16a). Be it here or in Israel, for things large and small, everyone is held accountable.
(It is important that we recognize that the word goy or goyim is not necessarily a pejorative, although it has become one in modern usage. It means nation; even the Jewish people are called a goy — “U’mi K’amcha Yisrael, goy echad ba’aretz (and who is like you Israel, one nation in the Land)” (2Samuel 7:23)
Taking accountability is useful, because it can lead to correction and ultimately to teshuva, repentance. This is important not only for Jews but non-Jews as well, and they must be reminded of this.
Teshuva is essential in our relationship with Hashem, what is called the relationship bein adam la’Makom. But in the relationship between adam la’chavero (between human and human), teshuva is not enough. One is required to request forgiveness from those we’ve wronged.
It is time for us to request — to demand — ac-
Rosenbaum…
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ism. You should have registered moral disgust over what happened on October 7. You should have shredded those checks written to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley and Brown. Instead, Emma Stone never said a word about teenage girls gangraped by Hamas. Brad Pitt never bothered to condemn the beheadings. John Cusack did not call for the return of the hostages. Mark Ruffalo was silent on the torching of Israeli babies.
Joaquin Phoenix, Jonathan Glazer and Andrew Garfield are the kind of “Jews” that real Jews can do without.
And as for Chris Martin, must you be reminded that your two children have a Jewish mother? Rest assured, philo-Semites like Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger would have welcomed them onto their stage with more decency and respect.
First published in JewishJournal.com.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Cohen…
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out or orchestrated by the same person — a man in a hoodie caught on CCTV smearing excrement on Jewish community buildings. His latest target was a synagogue and its adjoining infant nursery. As is the case in France and other countries on the European continent, many British politicians, including Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, routinely give voice to their horror when faced with incidents like these. And, as in France and those other countries, those condemnations sound increasingly stale because the noble, high-minded intentions behind them are not shared by those who enforce the law.
Instead of implementing the right of Jewish citizens to live free from harassment with conviction and determination, the British
Accountability can lead to correction and teshuva.
countability from the world. They should beg for our forgiveness!
•We demand accountability from those who have verbally, viciously attacked us in the streets of every major country and city, from our so called allies and friends, from every government, university administration, faculty and student, every person who supported the libels of genocide, famine, ethnic cleansing, the worst lies on the planet, from day one after October 7, even as our loved one’s bodies were still bleeding and smoldering. They should get on their knees and beg our forgiveness.
•From our government officials, regardless of party who were too feckless and cowardly to stand up for what is right, and by their silence or worse contributed to the climate of fear, hatred and danger to our people.
•From our media managers, opinion makers and reporters, who found ways to apply double and triple standards to the Jews and Israel but excused and exonerated the true perpetrators of evil.
•And yes, we also demand accountability from our leaders, in Israel who failed us on October 7 and let it happen, despite ample warnings.
•Finally, we demand accountability from ourselves for allowing our hatreds for one another, our sinat achim, to spin out of control and bring this catastrophe upon us.
•From our enemies who have killed, tortured and maimed, and continue to do so, the only accountability we demand is their demise, and that
authorities have assessed the situation as “Jews vs pro-Palestinian demonstrators,” a doctrine of equivalence that all too often ignores the blatant antisemitism on display at the pro-Hamas rallies that take place in nearly every major British city, as well as in smaller towns where many residents have never even met a Jew.
In a famous article in which he expressed support for Zionism and warned Jews against the attractions of Bolshevism, Churchill approvingly quoted Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century prime minister born into a Sephardic Jewish family, opining that “the L-rd deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.”
As evidence, Churchill cited the “miserable state” of Russia, pointing out that it was no accident that of all the countries in the world, this was where “the Jews were most cruelly treated” and expressing relief that Britain had not followed the same path.
Yet such exceptionalism is no more. Britain may have exited the European Union, but the continent’s oldest form of political and social poison did not depart alongside. If it is to retain its Jewish population — throughout the centuries, a loyal and tiny community that eschewed any form of violence or extremism, always looking to the political establishment for solutions — it should heed Disraeli’s insight. And before it’s too late.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Continued from page 23
to destroy Israel, will not stop their aggression if they somehow succeed in their goals. In fact, they will get much closer than ever to their objective of destroying the West and building their sought-after global caliphate on its ruins.
Dalia Ziada is an award-winning Egyptian writer and senior fellow for Research and Diplomacy at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA).
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
they be wiped from the face of this earth.
At the same time, accountability demands hakarat hatov, a recognition of the absolute goodness and self-sacrifice displayed by so many.
•First among these are the young men and women who’ve been fighting, serving, repeatedly, for hundreds of days on end to defend the Jewish people.
•The hostages both in the past two years who have, Baruch Hashem, been released or freed, and sadly to those still in captivity who’ve fought the urge to give up, and are courageously fighting on.
•To the soldiers who’ve fallen, Hashem Yikom Damam
•To the victims of October 7 who were murdered, the hostages who could not or were not allowed to survive, Hashem Yikom Damam
•To the wounded physically and emotionally.
•To all the spouses and children, those who’ve been displaced, in fact all the brave, resilient citizens of Israel and elsewhere, through acts of limud Torah, chesed and tzedakah have sustained us all.
•And to all the many individuals, institutions, policy makers, government officials, social media and otherwise, news commentators, celebrities and plain everyday people who’ve stood by us, our nation and our people, despite at times great risk or monetary loss to themselves, we must say “thank you.”
Thank you for something as simple and powerful as telling the truth and standing up for it.
Charlie Kirk, in his faith and belief and his support for Israel and Jews, understood this and it may have cost him his life. May his memory be blessed.
Shabbat Shalom u’ketivah v’ chatimah tovah!
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Sinkinson…
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a survey by the Institute for National Security Studies showing 75% of the Israeli public continues to express high trust in the Israel Defense Forces, and 66% of Israelis believe that the IDF will win the war in Gaza.
Israel’s economy has also shown tremendous strength. For example, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has soared, emerging as the top-performing stock market in the Middle East, climbing an impressive ~80% in dollar terms since October 2023. Furthermore, the OECD forecasts 3.4% GDP growth in 2025, accelerating to 5.5% in 2026, noting Israel’s economic resilience and strong fundamentals.
All signs are that Israel will emerge a hero.
The Jewish state has been vindicated (and later cheered) in the past after unpopular actions and global censure. For instance, after Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, to prevent Iraq from obtaining nuclear weapons, it was almost universally denounced by the “international community.” The UN Security Council, including the United States, condemned the move, and President Ronald Reagan even suspended the delivery of F-16 jets to Israel. Later, however, especially after the 1991 Gulf War revealed Iraq’s nuclear ambitions, many reinterpreted the strike as a strategic success that prevented additional threats from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Similarly, the same “international community” that now scolds Israel for its actions against Islamist forces in Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen will likely later praise the Jewish state for almost single-handedly vanquishing the global jihadists.
While tarnished reputations and demoralization can be difficult to repair, Israel’s global fortunes will be driven by decisive geopolitical victory over evil, its superior military prowess, its righteous war conduct … and the power of truth over unconscionable slander.
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
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