As we begin the new year, it’s important to reflect on not just all we have to be thankful for, but on those who still need our support — including the people of Ukraine who are nearing the end of their third year of war with Russia.
The conflict, which has cost the lives of roughly 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers and over 11,000 civilians, has put on display the very real threat authoritarianism is posing to democracies all around the world today. And the people of Ukraine, who spent decades under Soviet rule and centuries under czarist rule before that, know how important their right to self-determination is, because they know what it means to live without rights.
Here in America, where we’ve had the luck and privilege to live under a democratic government for our entire history, it can be easy to brush aside these kinds of conflicts by claiming that certain areas or certain cultures are used to conflict. We hear it about the Middle East all the time, with so-called “experts” asserting that the region has “always been at war.” I don’t buy it.
As our Founding Fathers knew too well, hu-
It is more than a local conflict. It is a global one, that of freedom vs. tyranny.
man beings are born with an innate desire, and a right, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While we may think of these words as uniquely American, I’ve always believed that they were written not just with our country’s population in mind, but as a fundamental fact of the human condition.
The people of Ukraine have shown their desire for these universal rights with a determination and tenacity that has allowed this country of only 37 million to face down, and frequently defeat, a richer and larger nation with nearly five times its population. They are the first line of defense against the deranged, ahistorical and plutocratic worldview that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchs are so desperate to spread.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chose to stay in Kyiv in 2022, when the capital city refused to fall, and every day since, his people have had one message for Putin and the world: We will not go quietly.
When our nation was in its infancy and fighting for its existence, we relied heavily on the support not only of foreign nations like France and Spain, but on the extraordinary efforts of individuals from around the world who recognized that our fight for independence wasn’t just a local conflict, but a global one, that of freedom vs. tyranny.
The analogy isn’t perfect. Ukraine isn’t fighting to win its independence from its mother country, but is fighting instead to maintain its sovereignty in the face of foreign aggression. But the fact remains that its people, who have seen the lives of family members, friends and loved ones destroyed by the aggression of a brutish dictator, deserve not only our respect and admiration, but our help.
Obviously, no one person can end this conflict overnight (except maybe Rocky Balboa). But there are plenty of ways to help.
Hundreds of international charitable groups that are on the ground in Ukraine providing humanitarian aid. There are also nearly 300,000 Ukrainian refugees now living in the United States, part of a diaspora of nearly 4 million Ukrainians, predominantly women, children and seniors, who have been forced to flee their homes in the face of ruthless Russian aggression. While many of these people have been kindly fostered by Americans, Europeans and people everywhere, there are always more people in need.
To learn more about how to host Ukrainian refugees, visit SupportUkraineNow.org.
Ukrainians are fighting not just for their own right to exist, but for the rights of people around the world struggling against conquest and the threat of extermination. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” — and we can all do more to help Ukrainians restore peace in the country they love.
This column first appeared in the LI Herald. Will Sheeline is a LI Herald editor covering Glen Head, Locust Valley, Oyster Bay and Sea Cliff. To reach him, write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale at a rally of Ukrainian nationals across the street from the Russian compound in Riverdale in February 2022. “I declare and I ask you to declare, ‘I am a Ukrainian’,” he told the crowd, which responded, “I am a Ukrainian.”
The Riverdale Press
UGHTS.
SPEAK OUT! SPEAK OUT! VERSATION. SHAPE T SPEAK UP! SPEAK UP! SHARE YOUR
AK UP!SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS U
THOUGHT LEADERS IN ISRAEL ARE LISTENING, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO SHARE YOUR OPINION.
Cathartic effects of war on Jewish life, identity
The last 15 months have been a tragedy for the individual and a triumph for the collective. History is rife with examples of this dichotomy. The tragedy of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing aftermath across the world created an earthquake that realigned world Jewry in profound ways. Israeli Jews and those in the Diaspora have gone through a type of catharsis and have regained a sense of purpose that was dangerously close to being lost.
Many American Jews had convinced themselves that they could blend into society and that their Jewishness was merely incidental. The last 15 months have shown that this belief was a thinly veiled lie. It revealed the truth: We are a persecuted minority who must always be on guard and vigilant to protect our rights and our freedoms.
For thousands of years, Chris-
Just as the 1929 Hebron massacre galvanized Jews in Israel to strengthen their defenses and solidify the foundation of Zionism, today’s challenges are sparking a similar resolve. DANIEL ROSEN
tian and Muslim societies have had no problem distinguishing us from them. In the United States, perhaps because of the multicultural society we live in or a few generations of material wealth that many have experienced, people developed a false sense of their “place” in society. This perhaps provided the space for this suspension of disbelief.
On a recent episode of the Call Me Back podcast, host Dan Senor interviewed Yardena Schwartz, author of “Ghosts of a Holy War,” about the 1929 massacre in Hebron. In the book, she described how the Jewish community in Palestine and, for that matter, throughout the world were not very in favor of Zionism for various reasons.
When the Haganah warned the Jews of Hebron what was about to happen, they rejected the group’s offer to help. After the massacre, the Jews of Palestine embraced the need for the Haganah to be an organized fighting force to defend the Jewish people. That tragedy allowed a new understanding and growth.
As Senor expressed on his podcast, the situation today is not dissim-
ilar. Just as the tragic events of the 1929 Hebron massacre galvanized Jews in the Holy Land to strengthen their defenses and solidify the foundation of Zionism, today’s challenges are sparking a similar resolve among Jews worldwide.
Adversity, while deeply painful, has a way of clarifying purpose.
For American Jews — particularly, for younger generations — this period of challenge has been a defining moment. On college campuses and in communities across the nation, Jewish students and families are confronting the harsh reality that they cannot afford to take their security or identity for granted.
Within this struggle lies an op-
portunity for growth. The notion that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” may be considered an oversimplification, but the principle holds true. Like muscles that grow stronger through strain and recovery, communities, too, can emerge reinvigorated by their challenges.
History has shown that resilience is born from hardship. The pogrom of 1929 was a painful catalyst for the reorganization of the Haganah into a much more formidable entity, which would eventually become a part of the Israel Defense Forces. Without that tragedy, who knows if the Jewish people in Palestine would have developed the strength and organization necessary to defend themselves?
This is a moment of catharsis — a chance for the Jewish community to re-evaluate its priorities and reconnect with its mission. It is a time to instill in younger generations a sense of purpose, resilience and pride in their heritage.
As leaders and parents, the responsibility must be to frame these challenges as opportunities for growth and to teach children that life is rarely black and white. It is equally important to send a message to our enemies that we are strong — and that we’re not going anywhere.
Daniel Rosen is co-chairman of Emissary, leading a new effort to fight antisemitism online. To reach him, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
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Following riots by Arabs in British Mandatory Palestine, Jews flee the Old City of Jerusalem with their belongings stuffed in bags, August 1929. US Library of Congress via WikiCommons
Connecting New Orleans and anti-Israel terror
JOnathan S. Tobin
JnS Editor-in-Chief
Mass killings in the United States tend to provoke very different kinds of reactions from the liberal political and media establishment.
Attacks that can be linked, however tenuous or unlikely, to the political right, are seized upon as an excuse to demonize conservatives and Republicans. Those that can’t be associated with the right but involve gun violence are used to promote gun control laws. But comments about slaughter linked to Islamist extremism are very different. They are primarily used to scold the country not to connect the dots between such incidents and a growing tolerance for antisemitism in the country, as well as support for antiWestern violence in the Muslim world.
This was demonstrated repeatedly in the aftermath of the New Orleans terrorist attack on the first day of 2025.
While caution is always a good idea when commenting about a crime before all the facts become available, that’s a rule that is never applied to those incidents that can be employed as political fodder for the left.
Officials in denial
In his initial remarks about the New Orleans terrorist attack on Jan. 1 by a person he already knew had declared that he was inspired by ISIS, President Joe Biden went out of his way to declare that “no one should jump to conclusions” about what happened.
Nor was the president alone in taking that attitude. Yet the car driven by Shamsud-Din Jabbar — the Texas-born assailant who was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police after he drove into a crowd of New Year’s celebrants on Bourbon Street, killing 14 and wounding dozens — contained an ISIS flag. The 42-year-old also planted explosives that fortunately did not go off.
Yet local police officials and a spokesperson for the FBI were still insisting that what had happened wasn’t necessarily an act of terrorism. While officials were soon forced to change their minds about that, the delay in labeling it as such was significant. So, too, was the fact that in the days since then, most of the national reporting and commentary about the event in the liberal corporate media has largely avoided any discussion of whether this is part of a global problem of Islamist-motivated terror. Absent from the same mainstream forums has been any reporting or analysis as to whether there is any connection between this and other acts of extremist Islamic violence, including the loud and virulent anti-Israel agitation on college campuses. Much of the same media sources have rationalized Islamist terror directed at Jews and the Jewish state, as well as demonized Jerusalem’s efforts to eradicate the perpetrators.
Indeed, the very suggestion that there is any link between what happened in New Orleans and the open antisemitism coming from pro-Hamas mobs on college campuses and in the streets of American cities has been dismissed as unfounded and irrelevant. That is true despite the fact that only hours after the Bourbon Street massacre, “pro-Palestine” demonstrators chanted in sup-
Partisanship, tolerance of antisemitism and worries about Islamophobia led the Biden administration and its media allies to look for domestic terrorism in all the wrong places.
port of terror — “intifada revolution” — in New York City’s Times Square. Instead, officials and their cheerleaders in the press have congratulated themselves that Jabbar was a “lone wolf” who apparently acted alone, without any help or connection to foreign terrorist groups.
This is nothing new. Even at the height of the “war on terrorism” being conducted by the United States in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks undertaken by Al-Qaeda on American soil on Sept. 11, 2001, the events were treated as having nothing to do with the deadly terror attacks of the Second Intifada from 2001 to 2005 that cost the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis. News outlets and even politicians refused to accept that 9/11 and similar atrocities in Israel, such as the bombings of a Tel Aviv nightclub or a Sbarro’s pizzeria in Jerusalem, were all part of the same global struggle that pitted Islamists against the West. Terrorism against Americans is something the media has been willing to deplore unreservedly. But when Israelis or Jews are the victims, the condemnations always come with caveats that seek to rationalize or justify criminal violence as an understandable form of “resistance” in a manner that would never be considered acceptable when applied to terrorism on American soil.
Forgetting about the threat
Though there has been a steady stream of incidents involving Islamic extremists over the last quarter century, Americans have largely forgotten about the threat of Muslim terrorism.
Fatigue and disgust about the ultimately unsuccessful U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had something to do with it. The identification of the “war on terror” — a phrase that never made any sense since the opponent wasn’t a generic description of terror but the widely shared worldview of Muslim radicals — with these endless and winnable conflicts caused many, if not most Americans to rethink the advisability of any such endeavor.
Another element was the concerted effort by the administrations of both President George W. Bush and his successor, President Barack Obama, to distance the very real struggle the United States was engaged in from any thought of a clash of civilizations with the Muslim world. Bush was so worried about the possibility of a backlash against Muslim countries that were American allies, in addition to Muslim citizens and those living in the United States, that his constant refrain about Islam being “a religion of peace” became something of a comic cliché.
The belief that there had been a post-9/11 backlash against Muslims in the United States was unsupported by any real evidence. For the past quarter century, FBI statistics have shown that Jews have been the victims of the largest number of religion-based hate crimes with the to-
tal consistently dwarfing those in which Muslims were targeted.
Bush’s willingness to downplay the fact that 9/11 and other acts of Islamist terror were rooted in a popular version of Islam was wrongheaded. Obama went further by signaling to the Muslim world that the United States owed it apologies while also prioritizing appeasing the Islamist regime in Iran.
Just as dangerous was the way official Washington treated organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as civil-rights organizations rather than an antisemitic political front group for apologists for Hamas and other terrorists. The myth of a post-9/11 backlash has now been succeeded by an equally false idea that American Muslims were put at risk in the aftermath of the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
That is the basis for the Biden administration’s decision to initiate a national strategy to combat Islamophobia, which essentially followed CAIR’s lead on a largely fictional issue. Bias against Muslims exists and all such prejudiced behavior is deplorable. But most of what groups like CAIR label as Islamophobia are nothing more than efforts to shine a spotlight on the antisemitism and support for Islamist extremism that is widespread in the Muslim community.
Politicizing justice
In the last four years, the Biden administration has sought to raise awareness about domestic terrorism. However, it did so in such a way as to avoid mentioning Islamists — something that would antagonize Muslims and left-wing groups that had embraced the misleading narrative about Islamophobia and the demonization of Israel.
Instead of worrying about mosques and imams throughout the country that spread hate or the way that CAIR sought to prevent scrutiny of such behavior, the Biden administration was focused on treating its conservative political opponents as terrorists.
Under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice and the FBI devoted a disproportionate amount of their resources to investigating dissent against liberal orthodoxies. In this way, it was opponents of abortion, parents who protested against school boards allowing divisive teachings about critical race theory and other toxic ideas into local schools and those who challenged the 2020 election results who were labeled as constituting the primary threat from domestic terrorism.
This was a dangerous misuse of federal power. Treating partisan disagreement as an imminent threat of terrorism politicized the justice system. It also distracted law-enforcement officials who were already more worried about being labeled
Islamophobic than in scrutinizing genuine extremists from the Islamist threat. This also helped to divert Americans from the growing support for anti-Israel terror that manifested itself in the wake of Oct. 7.
The belief that the long-running war against the one Jewish state on the planet is entirely separate from Islamist threats against the United States is a myth. To Iran, which is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, as well as the remnants of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, coupled with groups that have attempted to follow in their footsteps, Israel is the little Satan and America the great Satan.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly claimed that the views of Hamas apologists were legitimate and deserve to be heard. Their blatantly political motive for taking this stand is a testament to the strength of the intersectional and increasingly antisemitic left-wing of the Democratic Party.
View all threats seriously
It takes a prodigious leap of faith to accept the notion that the antisemitic protests on campuses that seek to legitimize Islamist terror against Israelis won’t eventually morph into support for violence against Jews and others in the United States. It has, after all, happened before, when leftist anti-war groups split into violent and nonviolent factions in the 1960s. The mainstreaming of radical ideologies, in addition to antisemitic narratives and smears, such as has been seen in the last 15 months, creates an atmosphere in which “lone wolf” supporters of ISIS and other terrorists may feel justified in taking the leap from sympathy for violent extremism to doing it themselves.
With so much of the media and law enforcement unwilling to take the risk of being falsely tarred with the Islamophobia label, it will be easy for Americans to move on from the New Orleans attack without drawing any conclusions about it. But efforts to keep tabs on a Hamas support network that has already exhibited a willingness to use violence and intimidation to get its way ought to be a priority for the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. That should involve a policy of defunding institutions that turn a blind eye to antisemitism and deporting foreign students who are advocates of terror.
If that happens, expect it to be attacked as Islamophobic and xenophobic, and for unfairly targeting Muslims and “critics” of Israel. But sensible persons will understand that the New Orleans massacre is a wake-up call. The threat that a chorus of support for hatred and violence could lead to Islamist terror in the United States is something that a rational government can’t ignore.
To reach Jonathan S. Tobin, write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
Memorial on Bourbon Street in New Orleans for the people killed in a car-ramming attack on New Year’s day. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, AFP via Getty Images
mountsinai.org/southnassau
Another year, another stab at healthy eating
SCHOCKEtt Jewish Star columnist
Statistics show that between 66 percent and 75 percent of the new year resolutions we make have to do with food, diet and fitness. Sadly, by the end of January, 77 percent of people who made resolutions have given up. It is hard to stick to those promises especially with all the advertisements for foods that are not healthy (ever see an ad for celery, spinach, cucumbers, carrots, or red cabbage?).
There is one statistic though, that is encouraging. It seems that if you tell a partner or a close friend about your resolution to embrace healthier eating and better fitness, and if your partner or friend participates with you, there is a far greater likelihood of success. So find a friend, spouse, sister, brother, cousin, neighbor or Facebook friend, resolve to make a few small changes and then stick to them. Remember the Beatles’ song lyrics, “I get by with a little help from my friends, I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends.” It works in so many ways. By the way, a recent study showed that exercise did not help much with weight loss unless it was accompanied by serious calorie watching and restrictions and strength training to build muscle mass.
In fact, while aerobic exercise increased calorie burning while exercising, it may slow calorie consumption after exercising. (Exercise did help with overall health, however.)
The old math still works — expend more calories and take in fewer calories and you will lose weight. Do the opposite and the pounds will creep up. However, if you can join a gym (and if you go), wonderful. Do it! If you do not belong to a gym, go to the mall and walk. It is safe (no uneven sidewalks) and warm and somewhat interesting. I go with my husband, and we usually walk for about a mile and then go home. And when we leave, it seems a lot warmer outside!
Walking is still one of the best ways to get a decent cardiac workout and if you do it five or six days a week, you will see the benefits. In addition, I try to do some weightlifting with hand weights and some stretching with Thera bands that I bought on Amazon. Try is the operative word here! My doctor has emphasized the need for muscle building as we age. I might try harder! I will try in these pages to post some healthful, easy recipes, good food practices and helpful
hints from things I have learned over the years from all the diet plans out there from Weight Watchers to Mayo Clinic, Keto, Mediterranean and more. I have lost quite a bit of weight since the pandemic and I have found lots of helpful hints out there.
But don’t worry! We simply cannot survive January without chocolate, a good choice since dark chocolate is a healthful treat that may help prevent type II Diabetes. Wow!
Happy New Year. I hope we can all enjoy good health and lots of happiness in 2025.
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup chicken broth (preferably homemade)
• OPTIONAL: Quartered, dried figs
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place the apricots in a deep bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Cover with foil and set aside for 15 minutes. Drain.
Chicken with Garlic and Lemon in Parchment (Meat)
This recipe is also great with fish like flounder or salmon. Adjust cooking times based on thickness of fish.
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, flattened to even thickness
• 2 tsp. flour
• 1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup chicken broth or stock or bouillon
• Juice from one lemon
• 1/2 tsp. oregano
• 1/4 tsp. salt and black pepper
• 4 to 8 cloves of garlic, finely minced
• 1 Tbsp. freshly snipped chives
• 4 shallots, very thinly sliced
• 2 yellow squash
• 2 zucchini
• OPTIONAL: 2 ounces baby spinach leaves
• Some grape tomatoes cut in half
• Asparagus cut into inch-long pieces
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Take 4 large sheets of parchment and fold in half. Cut each piece into a half heart shape with a flatter bottom. Open to a full heart shape. Set aside.
Scallions (Pareve)
White Bean and Garlic Hummus with
A friend gave me this recipe years ago and I still love it. Add chives or scallions, radishes or roasted red peppers. A great office lunch paired with fresh veggie sticks.
• 1 can white Cannellini or Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 to 3 garlic cloves, finely minced or pressed through a garlic press
• 1 to 2 scallions, chopped, white and green parts
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp. plain or roasted tahini
• 1 to 2 tsp, ground cumin (optional but recommended)
• 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• OPTIONAL: A pinch of cayenne pepper
Rinse and drain the beans and place in the bowl of a food processor. Add the garlic and chopped scallion and pulse until finely chopped, but still with some texture, about 15 pulses or about 20 seconds. Add the lemon juice, tahini and cumin and process until smooth. With the motor running, add the oil through the feed tube, processing until creamy. Scrape into a bowl and add salt and pepper to taste. Makes 1-1/2 to 2 cups.
Roasted Chicken with Apricots and Olives (Meat)
My family loves this! I often add prunes and Angelino Plums along with the apricots and olives.
• 1 cup dried apricots
• 1 cup boiling water
• 3 to 4 pounds chicken parts with skin, breasts, if large, cut in half, legs separated
• 3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup pitted olives (kalamata is best)
• 3 to 5 shallots, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary
Heat a large, oven to proof, deep skillet or frying pan. Add the olive oil and place some of the chicken pieces in the pan, skin down. Do not crowd the pan. Let the chicken pieces brown until they are easily moved, about 4 to 7 minutes per side.
Turn the pieces and brown another 2 to 3 minutes. Place on a plate and repeat with the rest of the chicken, adding more oil if needed. Place on a plate.
Add the shallots to the pan and sauté until golden, scraping up any browned bits. Add the chicken back to the pan and add the olives and apricots around the chicken. Add the herbs and place in the oven to finish cooking until the chicken reaches 165 degrees, 25 to 40 minutes. Remove the chicken, olives and apricots to a platter and add the wine and chicken stock to the pan. Heat over high heat, scraping up any browned bits and boil gently until reduced by half, 3 to 5 minutes. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve. Serves 4.
Pound the chicken breasts until uniform thickness, but not thin. They can be 1/2 inch thick. Set aside. Mix the olive oil with the flour until smooth. Pour into a large bowl and add the chicken broth and lemon juice. Season with oregano, salt and pepper. Add the garlic, chives, and shallots, mix well. Mix well and add the chicken breasts. Mix so that all pieces are coated. Let marinate for 15 minutes. Thinly slice the squashes and divide them evenly among the 4 pieces of parchment in an overlapping pattern in the center of one half of the heart. Place the chicken on top. Top with the spinach, if using, and then 1/4 of the remaining marinade.
Fold the other half of the heart over the chicken and roll up the edges, making creases like folding up a pie crust. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, longer if the chicken pieces are very thick. Remove from the oven, and check the temperature by carefully piercing the parchment. It should be 165 degrees. Let cool for 5 to 10 minutes. Make sure the temperature is 165 degrees. Pierce the packet carefully and be careful to avoid any steam that may escape. Serve with rice or quinoa. Serves 4.
Cut off the top of the garlic, place the head on a sheet of heavy duty foil and drizzle with 1 to 2 tsp, olive oil. Wrap in the foil. Roast at 350 degrees for 40 to 60 minutes. Let cool. Remove the cloves of garlic from the skin and place in a food processor. Discard skin. Add the vinegar and honey and process until smooth. Add the safflower oil, salt and pepper and pulse until smooth. If too thick, add a bit of water or lemon juice. Adjust seasonings. Makes about 1/3 cup.
To reach Joni Schockett write: Columnist@The JewishStar.com
White Bean and Garlic Hummus with Scallions. pinchandswirl.com
Roasted Chicken with Apricots and Olives. gypsyplate.com
Chicken with Garlic and Lemon in Parchment.
nomnompaleo.com
Proudly Jewish.
‘In the city of slaughter’
By Haim Nahman Bialik, 1904 (Excerpt)
Question the spider in his lair!
His eyes beheld these things; and with his web he can
A tale unfold horrific to the ear of man:
A tale of cloven belly, feather-filled;
Of nostrils nailed, of skull-bones bashed and spilled;
Of murdered men who from the beams were hung,
And of a babe beside its mother flung,
Its mother speared, the poor chick finding rest
Upon its mother’s cold and milkless breast;
Of how a dagger halved an infant’s word,
Its ma was heard, its mama never heard.
Descend then, to the cellars of the town,
There where the virginal daughters of thy folk were fouled,
Where seven heathen flung a woman down,
The daughter in the presence of her mother,
The mother in the presence of her daughter,
Before slaughter, during slaughter and after slaughter!
Turn, then, thy gaze from the dead, and I will lead
Thee from the graveyard to thy living brothers,
And thou wilt come, with those of thine own breed,
Into the synagogue, and on a day of fasting,
To hear the cry of their agony,
Their weeping everlasting.
Thy skin will grow cold, the hair on thy skin stand up,
And thou wilt be by fear and trembling tossed;
Thus groans a people which is lost.
Look in their hearts, behold a dreary waste,
Where even vengeance can revive no growth,
And yet upon their lips no mighty malediction
Rises, no blasphemous oath.
Speak to them, bid them rage!
Let them against me raise the outraged hand,
Let them demand!
Demand the retribution for the shamed
Of all the centuries and every age!
Let fists be flung like stone
Against the heavens and the heavenly Throne!
Take thou thy soul, rend it in many a shred!
With impotent rage, thy heart deform!
Thy tear upon the barren boulders shed
And send thy bitter cry into the storm!
As unchecked Jew-haters run wild on the streets of New York — calling for a forever intifada, cheering the Holocaust and Oct. 7, and pining for the death of all Jews — where are our elected officials (and Jewish communal leaders!), where are our hand-tied police and asleep-at-the-wheel woke district attorneys, where are those with the modicum of courage needed to speak truth to power and say: Enough! New York will not be Berlin 1938 redux!
Jewish Star Torah columnists:
•Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native •Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn
•Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem
Contributing writers: •Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l,
former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth •Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh
Weinreb, OU executive VP emeritus •Rabbi Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi, Great Synagogue of Sydney •Rabbi Yossy Goldman, life rabbi emeritus, Sydenham Shul, Johannesburg and president of the South African Rabbinical Association.
Five Towns Candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY
Fri Jan 10 / Teves 10
Friday: Fast of Teves • Vayechi Candles: 4:29 • Havdalah: 5:39
Fri Jan 17 / Teves 17
Shemos
Candles: 4:36 • Havdalah: 5:46
Fri Jan 24 / Teves 24
Shabbos Mevarchim • Vaera
Candles: 4:44 • Havdalah: 5:55
Fri Jan 31 / Shevat 2
BO
Candles: 4:53 • Havdalah: 6:03
Fri Feb 7 / Shevat 9
Beshalach
Candles: 5:02 • Havdalah: 6:12
Fri Feb 14 / Shevat 16
Yisro Candles: 5:10 • Havdalah:6:20
The last tears: Looking forward, looking back
rabbi Sir JonaThan
At almost every stage of the fraught encounter between Joseph and his family in Egypt, Joseph weeps. There are seven scenes of tears:
1. When the brothers came before him in Egypt for the first time, they said to one another:
“Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come on us.” ... They did not realize that Joseph could understand them, since he was using an interpreter. He turned away from them and began to weep, but then came back and spoke to them again. Gen. 42:21-24
2. On the second occasion, when they brought Benjamin with them and, deeply moved at the sight of his brother, Joseph hurried out and looked for a place to weep:
He went into his private room and wept there. Gen. 43:29-30
3. When, after Judah’s impassioned speech, Joseph is about to disclose his identity: Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it. Gen. 45:1-2
4. Immediately after he discloses his identity: Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him, weeping. And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Gen. 45:14-15
5. When he meets his father again after their long separation: Joseph had his chariot made ready and went to Goshen to meet his father, Israel. As soon as Joseph appeared before him, he threw his arms around his father and wept for a long time. Gen. 46:29
6. On the death of his father: Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him. Gen. 50:1
7. Some time after his father’s death: When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the G-d of your father.” When their message
came to him, Joseph wept. Gen. 50:15-17
No one weeps as much as Joseph. Esau wept when he discovered that Jacob had taken his blessing (Gen. 27:38). Jacob wept when he saw the love of his life, Rachel, for the first time (Gen. 29:11). Both brothers, Jacob and Esau, wept when they met again after their long estrangement (Gen. 33:4). Jacob wept when told that his beloved son Joseph was dead (Gen. 37:35).
But the seven acts of Joseph’s weeping have no parallel. They span the full spectrum of emotion, from painful memory to the joy of being reunited, first with his brother Benjamin, then with his father Jacob. There are the complex tears immediately before and after he discloses his identity to his brothers, and there are the tears of bereavement at Jacob’s deathbed. But the most intriguing are the last, the tears he sheds when he hears that his brothers fear that he will take revenge on them now that their father is no longer alive.
In a fine essay, “Joseph’s tears” Rav Aharon Lichtenstein suggests that this last act of weeping is an expression of the price Joseph pays for the realization of his dreams and his elevation to a position of power. Joseph has done everything he could for his brothers. He has sustained them at a time of famine. He has given them not just refuge but a place of honor in Egyptian society. And he has made it as clear as he possibly can that he does not harbor a grudge against them for what they did to him all those many years before. As he said when he disclosed his identity to them:
And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that G-d sent me ahead of you.
… G-d sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but G-d. Gen. 45:5-8
What more could he say? Yet still, all these years later, his brothers do not trust him and fear that he may still seek their harm.
This is Rav Lichtenstein’s comment:
“At this moment, Yosef discovers the limits of raw power. He discovers the extent to which the human connection, the personal connection, the family connection, hold far more value and importance than power does — both for the person himself and for all those around him.”
Joseph “weeps over the weakness inherent in power, over the terrible price that he has paid for it. His dreams have indeed been realized, on some level, but the tragedy remains just as real. The torn shreds of the family have not been made completely whole.”
On the surface, Joseph holds all the power. His family are entirely dependent on him. But at a deeper level it is the other way round. He still
Power may be a necessary evil. But it is an evil, and the less we have need of it, the better.
yearns for their acceptance, their recognition, their closeness. And ultimately he has to depend on them to bring his bones up from Egypt when the time comes for redemption and return (Gen. 50:25).
Rav Lichtenstein’s analysis reminds us of Rashi and Ibn Ezra’s commentary to the last verse in the book of Esther. It says that “Mordechai the Jew was second to King Ahasuerus, and was great among the Jews and well received by most of his brethren” (Est. 10:3) — “most” but not all. Rashi (quoting Megillah 16b) says that some members of the Sanhedrin were critical of him because his political involvement (his “closeness to the king”) distracted from the time he spent studying Torah. Ibn Ezra says, simply: It is impossible to satisfy everyone, because people are envious [of other people’s success].
Joseph and Mordechai/Esther are supreme examples of Jews who reached positions of influence and power in non-Jewish circles. In modern times they were called Hofjuden, “court Jews,” and other Jews often held deeply ambivalent feelings about them.
But at a deeper level, Rav Lichtenstein’s remarks recall Hegel’s famous master-slave dialectic, an idea that had huge influence on nineteenth century — especially Marxist — thought. Hegel argued that the early history of humanity was marked by a struggle for power in which some became masters, and others became slaves. On the face of it, masters rule while slaves obey. But in fact the master is dependent on his slaves — he has leisure only because they do the work,
and he is the master only because he is recognized as such by his slaves.
Meanwhile the slave, through his work, acquires his own dignity as a producer. Thus the slave has “inner freedom” while the master has “inner bondage.” This tension creates a dialectic — a conflict worked out through history — reaching equilibrium only when there are neither masters nor slaves, but merely human beings who treat one another not as means to an end but as ends in themselves. Thus understood, Joseph’s tears are a prelude to the master-slave drama about to be enacted in the book of Exodus between Pharaoh and the Israelites.
Rav Lichtenstein’s profound insight into the text reminds us of the extent to which Torah, Tanach, and Judaism as a whole are a sustained critique of power. Prior to the Messianic age we cannot do without it. (Consider the tragedies Jews suffered in the centuries in which they lacked it.) But power alienates. It breeds suspicion and distrust. It diminishes those it is used against, and thus diminishes those who use it.
Even Joseph, called “Yosef HaTzaddik: Joseph the Righteous” weeps when he sees the extent to which power sets him apart from his brothers. Judaism is about an alternative social order which depends not on power but on love, loyalty and the mutual responsibility created by covenant. That is why Nietzsche, who based his philosophy on “the will to power,” correctly saw Judaism as the antithesis of all he believed in. Power may be a necessary evil, but it is an evil, and the less we have need of it, the better.
Living with dignity, dying with dignity as well
By the time Yaakov dies at age 147, in parashat Vayechi, his sons range in age from 62 (Reuven) to 56 (Yosef, Zevulun, and possibly Asher), to around 48 (Binyamin).
As we know how old Yosef is at his death — 110 — and since Yosef is credited as being the first of the brothers to die, this means that the brothers lived together in Egypt without their father for another 54 years.
While we can argue whether Yaakov ever knew about the sale of Yosef and whether the
brothers told the truth to Yosef in 50:16, we can also say with near certainty that from the day they were reunited, Yosef was only gracious, showed only love, expressed only the desire that his brothers not feel guilt for having him sold, and continued to provide for them for the rest of his days, if not the rest of their days as well.
And then over the next 54 years of his life, beyond personal achievements of which we know very little, Yosef clearly puts his house in order.
1. He makes a clear and final peace with his brothers (50:21)
2. They live together and made a life in Egypt (50:22)
3. Yosef is blessed to truly “live” (like his father, he too is described as vayechi, living a meaningful life, in Egypt) (50:22)
4. He lives to be a great grandfather — this
too is acknowledged as an accomplishment. And not only that, but he is close to his descendants (50:23)
5. When he is about to die, he leaves a last will and testament that becomes Bnei Yisrael’s living legacy and a reminder that they will leave Egypt one day (50:25)
6. He makes a dying wish that he be reinterred in the Promised Land, that when they leave Egypt they are to take his bones with them for reburial in Eretz Canaan (50:24)
7. And finally, after dying and being embalmed, his body is placed in a box in Egypt. Of that box, Seforno says: “They put him in the same box where the embalming took place — that’s where his bones were. They did not bury him in the ground. This way his coffin[’s whereabouts] was known for generations, as it says,
‘And Moshe took Yosef’s bones’…”
In other words, the box served as a reminder for the next 139 years, until the moment of the Exodus, that a promise had been made that one day they would be leaving. And the promise was made by that man, in that box, the box we will take with us when we leave. What an incredible gift of hope and optimism Yosef gave them in preparing for his death! When people sense that their life is nearing an end, there is a natural concern about dying with dignity. I’m not going to go into the secular definition — of people who choose to end their lives to end the pain and the suffering, for people to only know them as they know themselves, before illness takes its toll. It’s not the halachic way. In Judaism, one can argue that achieving
Yaakov’s blessing was a message beyond nature
It was finally the day. After over a year of training, I was finally about to get my bars and join the family of IDF officers. My parents had flown in from the US for the occasion, along with my younger brother, and were on their way down for the ceremony in the desert on the Shizafon Armored Corps base.
We were being inspected by the base sergeantmajor an hour before the ceremony. The Army Chief of Staff, Moshe Levy, would be attending, so everything had to be perfect. The sergeant-major
stopped in front of me and, looking down, saw my tzitzit. He snapped an order: “Tuck those in immediately! I had better not see those hanging out during the ceremony!”
I don’t normally wear my tzitzit out. But in the army, the challenging environment had made me realize I needed to take an extreme position. So I started wearing my tzitzit out as a reminder to be careful not to cross any red lines. It was also an easy way to send the message to those around me that I was religious. His harsh command took me by surprise. I could easily have been detained and prevented from standing on the parade ground if the sergeant-major so decided. It would have been a simple thing to just tuck the tzitzit in for a few hours. But there was a principle at stake here much larger than my tzitzit: Was I an Israeli Jew,
or a Jewish Israeli?
At the beginning of this week’s portion, Vayechi, Yaakov takes ill and realizes his death is near. Hearing that his father’s life nears its end, Yosef brings his sons for a blessing. It is one of the strangest interactions in the entire Torah:
And Yaakov said to Yosef: “G-d appeared to me in Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me. And He said to me: I will make you fruitful and numerous; I will make you a congregation of nations, and I will give this land to your offspring after you as an eternal possession. And now, your two sons born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, shall be mine; Ephraim and Menashe shall be mine like Reuven and Shimon” (48:5).
This is the introduction to the famous blessing of Menashe and Ephraim. But it is strange that Yaakov at first seems to ignore them. And
one wonders about the significance of Yaakov reminding Yosef of the blessings he received from G-d long ago as he fled Esav. Why is this important right now, as he is about to bless these grandsons?
And then comes the strangest part of the entire story: after telling Yosef that both “Ephraim and Menashe shall be mine like Reuven and Shimon,” Yaakov suddenly sees the two boys: “Who are these?” he asks.
“They are my sons whom G-d has given me here,” Yosef answers.
“Take them to me, and I will bless them” (48:8-10).
What is going on here? How could Yaakov not recognize his grandsons — especially since he had just told Yosef that they were like sons to him!
See Freedman on page 22
What? How dare we criticize the Maccabees!
Chanukah is now behind us, so I figure that I can share with you some of the sequels of the Chanukah story. Sorry to say that even though we have all recently glorified the martial, spiritual, and political successes of the Chashmonaim, or Hasmonaeans, all did not go very well in the long run.
I do not intend to depress you, but just as the heroism of Yehuda the Maccabee and his brothers inspires us in many ways, and rightfully so, there is much about their behavior post-victory that is disappointing, to say the least. My goal is to help us all learn some lessons about failed
leadership that we must learn as a nation, especially at this moment in our complex and tortuous history. The largely untold “rest of the story” of the Hasmonaean dynasty deserves to be better known by us all, but especially by those whom we choose to lead us into a better future.
Furthermore, I hope to demonstrate that this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi (Genesis 47:2850:26), provides me with a basis to insist that several persons in the parsha play a major role in the ever-unfolding drama of Jewish history, down to this very day.
To accomplish this, I will call upon my second most favorite commentary on Chumash, after Rashi, and that is Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman or Nachmanides (born 1194, Girona, Spain/died 1270, Akko, Israel and buried in Jerusalem.)
I will refer to three passages in his commentary, two in Sefer Bereshit, the first in Par-
As hopes rise and fall for the release of our hostages, it is easy to succumb to feelings of despair. Yet the lessons of last week’s, dramatic parsha, Vayigash, demonstrate how things can quickly change, k’heref ayin (as in the blink of an eye), if Hashem, wills it.
Considering Yosef‘s sale into captivity by his own brothers, his deceptive encounters with, and his low and high experiences in Egypt, we appreciate the dramatic story on a personal, national and religious level.
The two personalities most prominent of course, are Yosef and Yehuda. Two Titans. Yehuda, who advised his brothers to sell Yosef, (ma betza ki naharog et achinu — what profit [to us] if we kill our brother? … Lechu v’nimkerenu — Come let us sell him.) (Bereishit, 37:26,27).
Later, Rashi tells us (38:1) that had Yehuda told his brothers not to kill Yosef and not to sell him, but rather return them to their father, they would have listened.
Now Yosef holds all of Jewish and world history in his hands. He knows these are his brothers and has manipulated them into a deadly chess-like strategic trap, while the brothers have no clue they stand before Yosef — to them he is a powerful foreign leader who can crush them in a heartbeat.
shat Vayishlach, where, just a few weeks ago, we read of Yakov’s encounter with his estranged brother Esav, and the second in this week’s ParshatvVayechi,vwhere we study Yakov’s final blessings to his sons, particularly to Yehuda. I will conclude with reference to his commentary on Sefer Vayikra, Parshat Bechukotai.
First, let us recall the captivating narrative of Yaakov meeting Esav head on. Yaakov is deathly afraid and resorts to a triad of strategies: prayer, gifts, and battle. With prayer, he hopes to enlist Almighty’s assistance; with gifts, he hopes to soften Esav’s hostility; and with battle plans, he hopes either to escape Esav’s claws or, better still, to defeat him.
Now Ramban convincingly argues throughout his many works that the stories of Tanach are “precursors” for the rest of Jewish history. “The activities of our forebears are indicators for their descendants.” Thus, the narrative of Yaakov vs.
Esav is a prelude to every encounter between the Jewish nation and the nations of Esav. Esav is Edom, the Torah tells us, and Edom is identified by our sages as Rome, in all its transformations from the Caesars down the many generations of conflict between Judaism and Christianity.
Thus, writes Ramban, we are to face Rome as Yaakov faced Esav, with prayer for divine assistance, with battle through debate and resistance; but, he insists, not by appeasement and trying to win Rome over to our side with “gifts.” Ramban, based upon much earlier rabbinic sources, finds fault with our patriarch Yaakov for not avoiding Esav entirely, which was quite possible given the geography of Yaakov’s destination, Hebron, and Esav’s territory in what is today’s southwestern Jordan.
Ramban, out of respect for our ancestor Yaakov, reserves his ire for … Yehuda HaMaccabi,
Yosef wants to get Binyamin, his beloved full brother, to stay with him. Why don’t they just cut a deal?
The old Yehuda, who was willing to make a few bucks to sell Yosef (“what profit”), who didn’t think how it would affect his father, would have gladly taken a deal, taken Shimon, the food, make a few Egyptian dinars (he saw previously how despite paying for food, the money “mysteriously” returned to their sacks) and skedaddle out of their, thinking he won, big time. Ahh, but he promised his father he’d bring back Binyamin (43:9).
This is not the same Yehuda who sold Yosef. This is the Yehuda who after his encounter with Tamar realized the power of truth and righteousness. That was the beginning of Yehuda‘s teshuva.
Look at how Yehuda speaks to this “Egyptian” viceroy. The humble Yehuda pours his heart out, telling the tragic story of the loss of a brother (Yosef), that after endless mourning his father now faces the prospect of losing his remaining other son (Binyamin) from his beloved wife (Rachel). Yehuda now cares about other people; he is humbled and debases himself repeatedly, calling himself “slave” and addressing Yosef as “Adoni,” my master. He has done teshuva, he is a changed man.
This is not the Yehuda, Yosef was expecting. What began as the clash of two antagonists, became the reunion of two brothers, the baal-teshuva and the tzaddik! What a dramatic lesson for us today, so appropriate to our situation. Yehuda and Yosef, representing the conflict of the king-
See Weinreb on page 22 See Mazurek on page 22
See Billet on page 22
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Media mainstreams Israel ‘apathy’ blood libel
For 15 months, Israelis and Jews around the world have watched in horror as much of the international media flipped the narrative of the terrorist invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Even before the Israel Defense Forces launched its counterattack into the Gaza Strip to eradicate the forces that had brazenly assaulted the one Jewish state on the planet, much of the press coverage — egged on by “progressive” ideologues in academia, culture and politics — were portraying the side that started a war with barbaric atrocities as the real victims while Israelis were depicted as the aggressors.
But in recent weeks, this troubling trend has taken on a new and even more disturbing character. Liberal corporate media outlets have begun to platform a new variation on the theme in which Palestinians are lionized and Israelis are demonized. Instead of just concentrating on smearing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “authoritarian” who is pursuing a war to hold onto office, or accepting misleading and downright false accounts of casualties and atrocities suffered by Palestinians in Gaza that allege the campaign against Hamas is a “genocide,” a new variation on the theme is taking hold.
As articles in the New York Times, the New York Review and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz demonstrate, the Jewish state’s foes are moving on to a broader and even more insidious canard. Rather than concentrating their fire on Netanyahu or the IDF, the slander is now being directed at the Israeli people as a whole. Their accusation is that there is something deeply wrong with a population that is willing to acquiesce to the supposedly horrible things being done in their name in Gaza. By not adopting a bizarre and self-destructive forbearance, Israelis have failed the test of morality set for them by supposedly more enlightened Western liberals.
A new blood libel
The “deadly apathy” that these left-wing foes of Israel discuss is tone-deaf to the way that most citizens of the Jewish state have reacted to the post-Oct. 7 war.
Israelis are expected to give a pass to the Palestinians for the genocidal ideology that drove them to murder, torture, rape and kidnap Jews as part of their desire to end Israel’s existence. In the view of those blasting Israelis as lacking in a collective sense of morality, Israelis must accept the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians as their due.
Rather than advocacy for a humanitarian goal, this is a new form of an age-old blood libel in which the Jews are singled out for opprobrium for sentiments that would be universal in any country put in a similar situation.
Israelis are aware that terror groups like Hamas have proclaimed their genocidal goal of destroying their state and engaging in the sort of mass slaughter for which Oct. 7 was merely the trailer. And the release last week of a video of Liri Albag, a 19-year-old IDF soldier who has sat in Gaza for 450 days after being kidnapped on Oct. 7, is just the latest evidence that it is Hamas that is guilty of cruelty and brutality, not Israel.
The claim that Israelis are indifferent to the suffering in Gaza is false and manufactured. Its purpose is to demonize Jews while ignoring Palestinian support for genocide.
As such, the overwhelming majority of Israelis have come to the rational conclusion that any sane people would embrace — namely, that Hamas must not merely be defeated but prevented from ever having the opportunity to repeat their crimes, as they have promised they will if given the chance.
Yet to anti-Zionist Jews, such as the authors of many of these pieces denouncing Israeli “apathy” about Gaza, and other enemies of the Jewish state, this perfectly normal response to a horrific attack on their country and the brutal treatment of their fellow citizens is somehow proof that Israelis aren’t merely being misled but instead lack human decency or empathy.
This is just the latest example of how antiZionism is inextricably tied to hatred of Jews. Such arguments are not aimed at discrediting Israeli policies or tactics. It is a classic use of traditional antisemitic tropes whose purpose is to dehumanize Jews and justify the atrocities they are made to suffer. It is akin to the philosophy held by German Nazis who also sought the genocide of the Jews. In this way, a chorus of critics of alleged Israeli moral failure wishes to convince the world that those targeted for dispossession and death are less than human, and at the same time, the aggressors guilty of seeking the genocide of those attacking them.
A fake genocide claim
The widely held assumption that Israel’s war against its Iranian-backed foes has been more brutal than any other conducted in the modern era is a big lie. Israel responded militarily against a foe that infiltrated its border and criminally attacked its civilians; as such, responsibility for the ensuing ramifications lies with
the guilty party: Hamas and those Palestinians complicit in the attack.
All casualties from the war they started go back to them in one straight line. Hamas’s conduct of the war — in which they continue to attack Israeli civilians with rockets and missiles, and still hold on as many as 100 hostages — is also criminal because they deliberately endanger their own civilians. They do so by hiding behind Gazans in tunnels and secreting their strongholds, weapon caches and hostage prisons among them, and by causing damage from misfired projectiles that explode where they land.
As military historians and experts in the laws of war have pointed out, Israel’s army is more careful about trying to prevent civilian casualties that are inevitable in any war, especially one in which one side — the Palestinians — knowingly endangers their civilians to score propaganda points.
The obviously conflated Palestinian casualty figures produced by the “Gaza Ministry of Health” mix Hamas combatants (who likely make up about half of the total of those killed or wounded) with civilians to convince a credulous world that just about everyone impacted in Gaza is a woman or a child. But Israel’s conduct in the Strip has produced fewer civilian casualties in terms of the percentage of the population than any other modern example of urban combat.
Those who mimic the terrorists’ talking points in the media and at pro-Hamas demonstrations profess to be astonished that most Israelis reject their canards out of hand. Even those who oppose Netanyahu believe that Hamas must be utterly destroyed not only to protect their security but to lay a future groundwork if there is to be a chance for peace between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, however remote that may be.
The once-dominant Israeli political parties on the left were largely marginalized by the failure of the Oslo Accords and the peace process that was initiated in 1993. Rather than accepting the concept of “land for peace,” the Palestinians and their leaders dismissed such offers. They rejected Israeli and American peace plans that would have given them a state, answering them with a terrorist war of attrition known as the Second Intifada that lasted five years (2000 to 2005) and left more than 1,000 Israelis dead in its wake.
Israelis also remember that their nation withdrew every soldier, settler and settlement from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005. Instead of an incubator for peace, the Palestinians instead created an independent state in all but name there that immediately became a vicious Islamist tyranny. The Hamas government that ran Gaza from 2007 to 2023 used the many
JonAthAn S. tobin
JnS Editor-in-Chief
Family members of 1st. Sgt. Yuval Shoham, killed in battle in the Gaza Strip, leaving their home to his funeral in Jerusalem on Dec. 30. Chaim Goldberg, Flash90
Carter’s words: He hated Jews, not just Israel
Remembrances of former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on Dec. 29 at the age of 100, should keep in mind how America’s 39th president profoundly damaged the Jewish state, especially with his deceitful 2006 book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”
But the story of Carter’s attitude towards Israel goes deeper. He was not simply a modern-day anti-Zionist — an ignorant idealogue who wrongly believed that Israeli counter-terrorism policies harmed the “human rights” of the Palestinian people. Carter was, in fact, a traditional, old-fashioned Christian antisemite.
We know this because his many post-presidential activities included teaching Sunday school. In 2007, Simon & Schuster released a 13-disc CD boxed set of recorded sermons that Carter gave at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Ga., called “Sunday Mornings in Plains.”
The sermons contain a slew of chillingly pre-modern antisemitic prejudices. For example, he claimed that Judaism teaches Jews to feel superior to non-Jews, that Jewish religious practices are a sleazy “trick” to enhance personal wealth, and that current Israeli policy towards Palestinians is based upon these “Jewish” values and practices.
In the sermons recorded between 1998 and 2003, Carter attacked Israel by retreading antisemitic tropes dating back to the
In sermons recorded between 1998 and 2003, he attacked Israel with antisemitic tropes dating back to the patristic writings of the early church.
gospels and patristic writings of the early church. These anti-Judaic beliefs were formulated not in the 1960s or 1970s but between the first and fifth centuries C.E., ensuring well over a millennium of institutional, lethal Christian antisemitism.
Speaking of Jews’ supposed air of “superiority” to non-Jews, the former president said in one lecture, “… [T]his morning I’m gonna’ be trying to relate the assigned Bible lesson to us in the Uniformed Series with how that affected Israel, and how it affects us through Christ personally. … It’s hard for us to even visualize the prejudice against gentiles when Christ came on earth. If a Jew married a gentile, that person was considered to be dead. … How would you characterize from a Jew’s point of view the uncircumcised? Nonbeliever? And what? Unclean, what? They called them ‘dogs!’ That’s true. …
“What was Paul’s feeling toward gentiles in his early life [before his conversion] … ? Anybody? Absolute commitment to persecution! To the imprisonment and even the execution of non-
Jews who now professed faith in Jesus Christ. … We know the differences in the Middle East. But the differences there are between Jews on the one hand, who comprise the dominating force both militarily and also politically, and the Palestinians, who are both Muslim and Christians.”
It is actually Jesus, incidentally, not “the Jews,” who refers to non-Jews as “dogs” — in Matthew 15:26. Why then should Jews today, let alone Israelis, be held responsible for this decontextualized Gospel insult?
In another rant, he characterized Temple-era Jewish ritual sacrifice as a kind of tax fraud that relieved a person of filial responsibility. As Carter said, “Korban was a, uh, prayer that could be performed by usually a man in an endorsed ceremony by the Pharisees — that you could say in effect, ‘G-d, everything that I own — all these sheep, all these goats, this nice house, and the money that I have — I dedicate to you, to G-d.’ And, from then on, according to the Pharisees’ law, those riches didn’t belong to that person anymore. They were whose? G-d’s!
“So, as long as those riches were, belonged to the person, that person was supposed to share them with needy parents, right? But once it was G-d’s, it wasn’t theirs, and they didn’t have anything to share with their parents.
“So, with impunity, and approved by the Pharisaic law, they could avoid taking care of their needy parents by a trick that had been evolved by the incorrect and improper interpretation of the law primarily designed by religious leaders to benefit whom? The rich folks! The powerful people! Because the poor man wouldn’t have all of this stuff to give to G-d. He would probably — in fact, he might very well have his parents in the house with him or still be living with his own parents.”
And, in a sermon recorded in January of 1998, Carter took this supposed Jewish racism and religious malevolence and tied them to modern-day Israeli policy, saying that “one reason” that Israel embodies the idea of Jewish superiority is because the government is headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has to depend “on the ultra-right or fundamentalist Jews” to give them a majority in the parliament, and “the ultra-conservative Jewish leaders demand always that they have total control over anything that relates to religion inside Israel, in particular in Jerusalem. Well, I’m not here to condemn anyone but to point out that, even
See Jacobs on page 23
Carter was anything but a saint to the Jews
Mitchell Bard
Forgive me if I don’t join in the rush to canonize Jimmy Carter. He deserves respect for serving as president and for some meritorious accomplishments, but he was also one of, if not the most, anti-Israel president in history. Though hailed as a peacemaker, his actions and statements, particularly after leaving office, show a much darker side steeped in antisemitism.
Carter said in 1977 that his strong stand against the Arab League boycott “was one of the things that led to my election.” His position had been drafted by Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal’s (DNY) office to attract Jewish voters. The strategy paid off. If only one in nine New York Jews who voted for Carter had gone for Gerald Ford, the president would have been re-elected.
After his election, however, Carter backed away from his campaign commitment to fighting the boycott, undermining the trust Jews placed in him. He was more concerned with America’s dependence on Arab oil and his messianic vision of bringing peace to the Middle East. Anti-boycott legislation was seen as having the potential to upset the Arabs, and thereby endanger US oil supplies and his peace efforts.
Still, momentum for legislation had grown since it was introduced in the Ford administration, and the pro-Israel and business lobbies negotiated a compromise that led to its passage. The legisla-
He was not the honest broker his supporters claim.
tion outlawing cooperation by US companies with the boycott is one of Carter’s enduring contributions to Israel. Still, he didn’t view it as important retrospectively, devoting just one paragraph in his memoir to expressing his outrage towards the boycott and claiming credit for the outcome.
One of his early decisions that drew the ire of Israel was linking aid to the cancellation of Ford’s sale of concussion bombs and his approval of the sale of Israeli-built Kfir jets to Ecuador. Under pressure, he agreed to allow Israel to receive arms needed for its security but refused to reverse his decision on the bombs and jets.
Far more problematic for most Jews was his attitude towards the Palestinians. He saw Palestinians as being in a similar situation to American blacks. He believed the treatment of Palestinians in the disputed territories was contrary to the moral and ethical principles of the United States and Israel.
Carter was the first president to call for a “Palestinian homeland.” He later became determined to leverage Israeli peace with Egypt to force Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to agree to make concessions to the Palestinians, a strategy like the one unsuccessfully employed by the Biden administration to achieve Saudi normalization with Israel.
The Israel-Egypt peace treaty is rightly lauded as Carter’s greatest foreign-policy accomplishment. What is less remembered is how much he did to impede the negotiations. Carter wasn’t interested in a bilateral agreement; he had a misguided vision of a comprehensive Middle East peace that he believed could be reached at an international conference in Geneva.
When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin came to the White House, Carter told him US support for Israel would be damaged if he refused to accept the Palestine Liberation Organization’s participation and was the first president to call Israeli settlements illegal. Carter insisted that the Jewish states accept only “minor adjustments” to the 1967 borders, causing an uproar because it was
inconsistent with Israel’s determination to maintain “defensible borders.”
Carter pressured Israel to “accept the situation that we think is fair.”
Carter tried to enlist the help of Syrian President Hafez Assad with the PLO. Despite finding Assad “extremely antagonistic” towards Israel, he praised the dictator as a “strong supporter in the search for peace.”
After the election of Menachem Begin, Carter said his call for a Palestinian homeland didn’t imply the creation of a Palestinian state, which he said would be a threat to peace, but he envisioned an entity associated with Jordan.
Whatever goodwill that statement gained was offset by the subsequent revelation that the administration was in contact with the PLO and that it agreed to negotiate with Yasser Arafat if he accepted either Israel’s right to exist or UN Security Council Resolution 242. This violated Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s agreement with Israel that the PLO must meet both conditions.
Meanwhile, Israel and Egypt had begun secret talks in Morocco. President Anwar Sadat recognized that Carter’s idea of an international conference would allow his rivals to veto a deal with Israel and took matters into his own hands by making his historic trip to Jerusalem in November 1977. Carter and his advisers were furious that Sadat had undermined their Geneva gambit. Morton Kondracke of the New Republic wrote that Carter’s unwitting “freshman-year ineptitude scared Sadat into dramatic independent action.”
To his credit, Carter reversed course and convened the talks at Camp David. He was hardly the honest broker his supporters claim. After the 1978 congressional election, he said he was willing to sacrifice re-election because of alienating the Jewish community. Still, Carter believed it was necessary to side with Sadat and pressure the Israelis. His effort to leverage the Palestinian issue, however, failed because he recognized Sadat “did not give a damn about the West Bank.”
Carter was desperate for an agreement as his political standing deteriorated. Failure was seen as a potential death knell to his re-election. He realized he had little influence over Israel and consequently accepted an agreement that did not resolve what he considered the major issues.
Carter later used Israel to sell America’s most sophisticated fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. Israel objected because it threatened its qualitative military edge.
Carter packaged the sale with jet transfers to Israel and Egypt to win approval, and said it was all or nothing. AIPAC objected, saying “by placing Israel in the same category as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the administration is obviously trying to make the Arab sales more acceptable to Congress, but the administration is also abandoning America’s traditional special relations with Israel.” As would happen in subsequent arms fights, AIPAC lost. The fight added to the Jewish perception of Carter as an unreliable ally.
As the election approached, Carter was embarrassed by his UN ambassador, Andrew Young, who was forced to resign when it was revealed that he had arranged secret meetings with representatives of the PLO. It was the last straw.
In 1980, Jewish voters abandoned Carter — first for Sen. Edward Kennedy in the primaries, and then for Gov. Ronald Reagan and Illinois Rep. John Anderson in the general election. Carter won only 45% of the Jewish vote (compared to 66% this past November for Vice President Kamala Harris); Reagan got 39%. This was the worst showing among Jewish voters for a Democratic presidential candidate since James Cox in 1920. Jews voted against Carter for the same reasons as other Americans, but his policy towards Israel undoubtedly led to the drop in his share of the Jewish vote from 71% in 1976. Carter’s disdain for Israel’s leaders is a recurring theme in his diary, referring to them as “obstinate and difficult,” “recalcitrant” and “intransigent.” For example, Yitzhak Rabin was “in-
See Bard on page 23
Former President Jimmy Carter puts on a yarmulke before meeting with the religious leader of the Jewish Sephardic community, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in Jerusalem on Aug. 25, 2009. Abir Sultan, Flash90
charleS JacOBS and BeN POSer
Blinken’s stunning eleventh hour confession
Liri Elbag, one of five female IDF soldiers still being held hostage in Gaza, was the subject of Hamas’s most recently released video. The video of Liri alive was filmed on Jan. 1. Available online on pro-Hamas websites, it shows the 19-year-old in emotional distress, shaking at times, as she begged for her life.
The hostages have been held in Gaza for 457 days. And the question of why they are still there, why has Israel been unable to bring them home, gets asked with increased frustration and alarm every day from all quarters.
On Saturday, we received an answer to that question. Shortly after news broke of the release of the video of Liri Elbag, the New York Times published an interview with outgoing US Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Blinken said that Hamas has refused to agree to release the hostages in exchange for a ceasefire for two reasons.
In his words, “There have been two major impediments, and they both go to what drives Hamas. One has been whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel, we’ve seen it: Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a ceasefire and the release of hostages.
“The other thing that got Hamas to pull back was their belief, their hope that there would be a wider conflict, that Hezbollah would attack Israel, that Iran would attack Israel, that other actors would attack Israel, and that Israel would have its hands full and Hamas could continue what it was doing.”
Under harsh questioning from the Times’ anti-Israel reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Blinken revealed that US pressure on Israel began immediately after Oct. 7, 2023, and became a central feature of US policy in relation to the war from its very earliest days. From the outset, the provision of unlimited supplies to Gaza — euphemistically referred to as humanitarian aid — has been the constant focus of US pressure on Israel.
Almost immediately after the Oct. 7 invasion, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a siege of Gaza. The move was self-explanatory. The Gazans had taken 256 Israelis hostage to Gaza. So long as they weren’t released, Gaza would remain under siege. Siege warfare has long been considered one of the most humane, least destructive forms of warfare, and it is legal under the laws of war.
The Biden administration would have none of it. Blinken described how he compelled Israel to resupply Hamas from day one of the war.
“We’ve said from Day 1 that how Israel does that matters. And throughout, starting on Day 1, we tried to ensure that people had what they needed to get by. The very first trip that I made to Israel five days after Oct. 7, I spent with my team nine hours in the IDF’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, six stories underground with the Israeli government, including the prime minister, including arguing for hours on end about the basic proposition that the humanitarian assistance needed to get to Palestinians in Gaza.
“And that was an argument that took place, because you had in Israel in the days after Oct. 7 a totally traumatized society. This wasn’t just the prime minister or a given leader in Israel. This was an entire society that didn’t want any assistance getting to a single Palestinian in Gaza. I argued that for nine hours.
“President Biden was planning to come to Israel a few days later. And in the course of that argument, when I was getting resistance to the proposition of humanitarian assistance getting in, I told the prime minister, I’m going to call the president and tell him not to come if you don’t allow this assistance to start flowing. And I called the president to make sure that he agreed with that, and he fully did. We got the agreement to begin assistance through Rafah, which we expanded to Kerem Shalom and many other places.”
So, to fend off an assault from an anti-Israel reporter, Blinken explained that President Joe Biden wouldn’t visit Israel until Israel capitulated to Blinken’s demand that it feed and water the people of Gaza who supported Hamas’s decision to take 256 Israeli children, babies, women and men hostage. Blinken also admitted that the reason that the 100 hostages are still in Gaza is that Hamas perceives the administration as pressuring Israel to capitulate to Hamas. Blinken could have added that by demanding that Israel feed the people of Gaza, he and Biden removed any fear Hamas leaders might have had that the people would overthrow them. Unconcerned with that prospect, Hamas felt no pressure to release the hostages.
It bears noting that when Blinken arrived on Oct. 12, 2023, Israel still didn’t know how many of its citizens had been taken hostage. It still didn’t have a clear assessment of how many people were dead. Hundreds of victims had yet to be identified due to Hamas’s mutilation and destruction of their bodies. Just last week, Israelis learned that half of the 1,200 Israelis butchered that day were beheaded.
What was most notable about Blinken’s admission is that he didn’t appear to believe that there was anything wrong with the policies he imposed on Israel. Many military leaders have argued persuasively that had Blinken and Biden left Israel to pursue its siege strategy, combined with airstrikes, Israel could have fomented Hamas’s capitulation, or at least its surrender of the hostages, by the end of 2024. While Blinken’s statements indicated that he is at least in partial agreement with that as-
Whenever there was public daylight between the US and Israel, Hamas pulled back from a ceasefire and release of hostages, Blinken said.
sessment, he gave no indication that he felt remorse for the devastating impact his policies have had on the hostages or for the fact that those policies are a primary reason that the war is still ongoing.
The question is whether his assessment will impact his actions in his last two weeks in office.
Last week, Michael Doran, senior fellow and director at the Hudson Institute and a former member of the US National Security Council, told Dr. Gadi Taub on their Israeli Update podcast that the Biden administration intends to use its allegation that Israel is not providing sufficient supplies to Gaza to permanently undermine Israel’s international position. Doran explained that the administration intends to use Section 620(i) of the Foreign Assistance Act, which asserts “that any country that is blocking US humanitarian aid will have its military assistance cut off,” against Israel.
Seemingly backing up Doran, in his interview with the New York Times, Blinken alluded to a letter that he and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent their Israeli interlocutors in early October alleging that Israel was in violation of Section 620(i).
Doran said, “The January surprise is that there will be an official finding by the State Department that Israel is in violation of 620(i). It’s blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, and then what will happen is that the president will waive the penalties for blocking of the humanitarian aid, but there will have been an official American finding.”
That finding, Doran explained, will be used as the basis of a UN Security Council resolution put forward by Algeria or Slovenia. It will also be used by the International Criminal Court, the European Union and other bodies to strike out at Israel.
Later last week, Channel 14 reported that the administration is enabling a resolution to be put forward at the UN Security Council that would require Israel to withdraw from Gaza, and perhaps from Lebanon and Syria. The idea is that other Security Council members would put forward the resolution and the US will permit it to pass by abstaining, as the Obama administration abstained from Resolution 2234, which passed in the Security Council in December 2016, after President-elect Donald Trump was elected to his first term in office. That resolution declared all Israeli communities in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria illegal.
Doran shared that there are two camps in the administration regarding the planned move. Many senior officials support moving forward. But several senior officials oppose the move. He said that the ultimate decision will be made by Blinken.
Towards the end of his interview with the Times, Blinken lashed out at the international forces that have not held Hamas responsible for the suffering it has caused and continues to cause.
In his words, “One of the things that I found a little astounding throughout is that for all of the understandable criticism of the way Israel has conducted itself in Gaza, you hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas. Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender — I don’t know what the answer is to that. Israel, on various occasions, has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza. Where is the world? Where is the world, saying, ‘Yeah, do that! End this! Stop the suffering of people that you brought on’!”
The obvious answer is because Blinken himself has devoted most of his energies to pressuring and castigating Israel.
Perhaps Blinken’s interview was a signal that he will not go forward with the plan that his subordinates have developed to subject Israel to a Security Council resolution and to further criminalization it at The Hague. Perhaps it was nothing more than an effort to rebuild his ties to the anti-Israel camp as he leaves office. Time will tell.
In the meantime, and not knowing how Blinken will act, the only way to avoid what Doran referred to as a “January surprise,” and facilitate the speedy release of Liri Elbag and the other 99 hostages, is for the incoming Trump administration to apply massive pressure on Britain and France to veto any such resolution in the Security Council and to threaten Slovenia and Algeria with sanction if they advance the resolution in question.
Liri Elbag’s video, like others that Hamas has released in recent weeks, is a reminder (if one was necessary) of why Hamas must be eradicated. Blinken’s interview was proof that the Biden administration has been the single greatest obstacle to the hostages’ release and to Hamas’s eradication.
Caroline Glick hosts the “Caroline Glick Show” on JNS.org. To reach her, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com caroline
Israel Hayom
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Doha, Qatar, on Aug. 20, 2024.
Chuck Kennedy, US State Department
Again, there’s a New Yorker in the White House
PETER KING
When Donald Trump is inaugurated as our 47th president the week after next, he will (once again) be the only president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt who is a born-andbred New Yorker. Despite his recent relocation to Florida, where he has presided from Mar-a-Lago like an overlord, Trump has never escaped his New York roots. This is important to New York and Long Island. I say this not because of any native-son pride, but because downstate New York has unique issues and challenges that can be best understood and addressed by a true New Yorker. Like me, Trump grew up in Queens, but that’s where the geographic comparison ends. He was raised in very upscale Jamaica Estates. I grew up
‘Intifada’
Win very blue-collar Sunnyside. Same time; different stations. Of course, that didn’t stop Trump from implying to people in Washington that he and I grew up together. So much so that non-New York members of Congress would ask me, “What kind of guy was he growing up?” And my misleading nonanswer would always be, “Same as he is today.”
Despite the very different economic aspects of our upbringings, Trump and I, in many ways, spoke the same language. I distinctly remember when he invited me to the White House in February 2017, a few weeks after his inauguration, for a routine bill-signing ceremony. As we spoke for just a few minutes, he gave a big smile and said, “It’s great to hear that New York accent down here.”
Several times when I was talking with him on Air Force One, when he was flying to Long Island to address the MS-13 murder spree, I felt as if I were speaking with just another guy on a Queens street corner, and had to keep reminding myself that I was talking to the president of the United States. (His anti-MS-13 efforts succeeded
in crushing the gang’s reign of terror in Nassau and Suffolk counties.)
Probably the most relaxed I ever saw Trump was when he invited me to join him at ringside for a night of UFC fights at Madison Square Garden in November 2019. The loud fullhouse crowd chanting “USA!” and giving him thumbs ups was a stark contrast to the Ukraine impeachment proceedings against him that were under way at the same time in Washington.
This year, his giant rallies at Madison Square Garden and the Nassau Coliseum were major parts of his winning campaign.
Trump also had friendships with Long Islanders such as former U.S. Sen. Al D’Amato, from his years in Washington, and Joe Mondello, who was Trump’s attorney in several business transactions and was later appointed ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago by Trump. More recently, the president-elect has formed close friendships with County Executive Bruce Blakeman, county Republican Party Chairman Joe Cairo and former
Congressman Lee Zeldin.
Trump’s brother Robert lived in Garden City for many years until he died in 2020. On a somber note, I was there last March when Trump came to the funeral home in Massapequa to comfort the family of murdered NYPD hero Jonathan Diller. Over the next several years, New York will need the support and cooperation of President Trump to address critical issues, including illegal immigration, crime and drugs, health care for those who continue to be affected by the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, aging infrastructure, congested traffic and high taxes. We will especially need him to fight off anti-New York elements in the Republican Party who have too often in the past clearly demonstrated their geographic bias. Together, whether Republican or Democrat, New Yorkers should work to find common ground with the president to make New York great again. This column first appeared in the LI Herald. Peter King is a former LI congressman, and a former chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
doesn’t mean what they say it means
hat was this intifada that protesters on college campuses and in the streets of American cities keep screaming about?
According to a recent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the first intifada — lasting from late 1987 to 1993 — was “when Palestinians took part in boycotts, and hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers.”
Well, that doesn’t sound so awful, does it?
After all, it wasn’t really terrorism — just some rocks and Molotov cocktails. And the targets weren’t defenseless civilians; they were Israeli soldiers who had guns and armor. Sounds like it was some bold rebels challenging their oppressors. Just some boycotting — like the Boston Tea Party, perhaps? — with a few rocks thrown in. Nothing to be too alarmed about.
Except it wasn’t that way at all.
The wave of Palestinian Arab violence that raged from December 1987 to the autumn of 1993 — the intifada today’s campus extremists idolize — featured constant murderous bombings, shootings and stabbings.
Perhaps a few examples will suffice to refresh the memory of an international community that always seems to be afflicted with amnesia when Jewish victims are involved:
•In 1988, Palestinian terrorists threw hand grenades inside a Haifa mall, wounding 25. Near Beersheva, intifadists hijacked a bus full of Israeli women traveling to work and murdered three of them. They also murdered an Israeli teenager in a Jerusalem park and hid bombs in loaves of bread in a Jerusalem supermarket; three children were injured.
•In 1989, an intifada terrorist steered an Israeli bus into a ravine, killing 14 passengers (including U.S. citizen Rita Levine) and wounding 27 (five of them Americans). Also that year, Palestinian Arabs bombed a Tel Aviv market, injuring four, and went on a stabbing rampage in a Jerusalem shopping area, murdering two and wounding three. On Purim day in Tel Aviv, an Arab terrorist stabbed two Israelis to death with a commando knife and severely wounded a third. One of the victims was an elderly scientist who had been delivering holiday treats to the poor.
•In 1990, intifada terrorists carried out bomb attacks in a Jerusalem marketplace (one dead, nine wounded), the Tel Aviv beachfront (one dead, 20 wounded) and the Ein Gedi springs (four wounded). In Jerusalem, a Palestinian Arab terrorist stabbed three Israelis to death. Another
Retired Congressman See Phillips on page 23 MOSHE
The view from Ireland: Welcome to ‘Paddystine’
The other day, during a discussion with a colleague about the wave of pro-Hamas, antisemitic hysteria sweeping the Republic of Ireland, I unthinkingly quipped that the people of Eire should rename themselves “Paddystinians.” I immediately regretted doing so because the term “Paddy” is an aging pejorative, con-
Dublin’s goal: Undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself by launching lawfare to chip away at its sovereign rights.
juring up images of Irish drunkenness, the supposed Irish proclivity for casual brawling, and ingrained Irish idiocy — stereotypes any decent person should reject.
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.
A couple of days after that exchange, I discovered that the hashtag “#Paddystinian” was being eagerly adopted on social media by Irish supporters of Hamas. The accompanying posts were variously obnoxious or downright stupid, with many of those mocking the assertion that their country is antisemitic seemingly unaware of the immortal line spoken by a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses that Ireland “has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the jews (sic)” because “she never let them in.”
(There has, in fact, been a minuscule Jewish presence in Ireland for centuries, numbering the current president of Israel among its offspring, and there have been several episodes of antisemitism during that time, including the present. Sill, but Ireland is more or less an instance of the “antisemitism without Jews” phenomenon.)
One might say that Ireland is little different from the rest of Europe when it comes to the volume and the venom of its antisemitism: France, Germany and the United Kingdom, among others, are current examples of a similar trend. But
Ireland stands out because of the role of its government in stoking these poisonous sentiments, as well as the fact that antisemitic depictions of Israel sit comfortably in its major political parties across the spectrum. That perhaps explains why Israel has closed its embassy in Dublin.
To my mind, the most grotesque offender in this regard is the Irish president, Michael Higgins. An 83-year-old poet who has carefully cultivated an avuncular image with his three-piece tweed suits and swept back, thinning white hair, Higgins’ high-handed manner is at its most infuriating when he articulates — as he has done on a few occasions since the Hamas atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — conspiracy theories about Israel that lean heavily on the theme of shadowy, unaccountable Jewish power.
Early last year, for example, he blamed a covert Israeli intelligence operation for leaking his fawning letter of congratulations to the Iranian regime’s newly installed President Masoud Pezeshkian and was subsequently too pompous to issue an apology when it was pointed out that the Iranians themselves had publicized his message first. Then, last week, as he accepted the credentials of the new Palestinian ambassador in Dublin, he waxed lyrically about Israeli assaults on the sovereignty of three of its neighbors: Lebanon, Syria
and Egypt, where the Israelis apparently “would like, in fact, actually to have a settlement.”
In Egypt? Given that Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, not even the most seasoned supporter of Hamas could find actual material evidence that this is Israel’s intention. Higgins had met with his Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, earlier that week, and it’s quite possible that el-Sisi told him something along these lines or had referred to the dispute between Jerusalem and Cairo over the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the border between Egypt and Gaza.
Whatever the content of their conversation, what is absolutely clear is that Higgins has a disposition to believe the most outlandish lies about Israel and that he will respond to any criticism by saying that opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies is not the same as antisemitism — encouraging his audience to think that his beef is with Israel’s leadership and not the Jewish state itself.
But as Dana Erlich, Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, pointed out in a recent interview with an Irish broadcaster, Dublin’s goal has been to undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself by launching lawfare against the Jewish state to
GLOBAL FOCUS
BEN COHEN
Palestinians take part in anti-Israel protests and preparation for a third intifada in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Oct. 13, 2015. Abed Rahim Khatib, Flash90
Billet…
Continued from page 17
Death with Dignity comes from living Life with Dignity. It means setting goals. It means having no regrets when life is over. The Yosef way.
It means I live a life in which I make peace with family members. Sometimes it’s a strain. But imagine the regret of an estranged relationship, when children don’t care about their parents who have died, when siblings — either those sitting shiva together, or those who should be sitting in mourning for one another — don’t see the point of feeling loss, because they didn’t care about the deceased at all?
Here are a few lessons from Yosef.
1. He makes peace with his brothers. They are all at his deathbed. And they all make the promise that his bones will be taken out of Egypt. For us, this means that even if we don’t live nearby, we can still be in touch, not lose that connection. Even if it takes a lot of work and effort.
2. A dignified life is one defined by meaningful choices. Whether it’s an elevated life of Torah and mitzvos, a thoughtful life of constantly growing, having and sharing new experiences, a life of learning, or a life of a consistent schedule that gives a person a sense of purpose — this is what it means to live a life of dignity.
3. Yosef lived to see generations. Not everyone does. Some die young, some don’t have children. These are realities. But those realities don’t mean people can’t have good relationships in the time they are allotted.
4. Yosef leaves a will and testament to his family, in which he talks about G-d, what he believes G-d has in store for his family in the future, and that they should never forget that G-d is there.
5. And finally, Yosef knows he is in exile, but in the end he wants to be buried in the Holy Land. He taught his children to be mindful of a future redemption.
Many who lived with dignity died with the ultimate dignity, having made all the necessary plans and arrangements for their families, so they too left no regrets, except the only we always feel: “I wish we had more time to spend together.”
Avi Billet, who grew up in the Five Towns, is a South Florida-based mohel and rabbi of Anshei Chesed Congregation in Boynton Beach. This column was previously published. To reach Rabbi Billet, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Freedman…
Continued from page 17
And what is the meaning of Yosef’s response? What is he trying to communicate by saying that “They are my sons whom G-d has given me here”? Does he have other sons? Why the need to remind Yaakov that the boys are Egyptian-born? Why not just say: ‘This is Menashe, and this is Ephraim’?
What is hidden here beneath the surface?
Rashi, who normally helps us make sense of these questions, offers a rather puzzling comment quoting the Midrash Tanchuma, which suggests that Yaakov temporarily lost his prophetic vision “because in the future Yeravam and Achav would descend from the tribe of Ephraim, and Yehu and his sons from Menashe.”
These three individuals (Yeravam, Achav, and Yehu) were all kings of Israel who led the Jewish people astray by spreading idol worship throughout the kingdom. Which, of course, leaves us wondering what these sorry periods in Jewish history have to do with Yaakov’s blessing some five hundred years earlier.
The story of Yeravam is particularly fascinating, and may help to shed some light on this puzzling Midrash.
When Shlomo, the heir of King David, died, his son Rechavam inherited the throne. Unfortunately, Rechavam seems not to have been a chip off the old block. Choosing not to listen to his father’s older advisors, he heeded the advice of a younger group of confidants, committing a classic error in raising taxes.
Coming so soon after the completion of the Temple, which saw heavy taxes levied on the Jewish people, his actions ultimately allowed Yer-
avam to mount a rebellion, resulting in the secession of ten tribes to a northern Kingdom of Israel. Yeravam crowned himself king of the new kingdom, opposite the southern tribes of Yehudah, Binyamin, and Levites who remained loyal to the rightful king from the House of David. Jerusalem and the Temple remained under the control of the southern kingdom.
In the first year of his reign, Yeravam was faced with a dilemma: at Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot, the Jewish people would come up to Jerusalem to fulfill the Biblical command to visit the Temple three times a year on the festivals. No one save a rightful king from the House of David was allowed sit in the courtyard of the Temple. This would mean that while Rechavam, the grandson of King David, would sit, Yeravam, who was from the tribe of Ephraim, would stand like everyone else.
Realizing that this would be a reminder that he was not the rightful king, he had golden calves placed at central locations in the kingdom and discouraged the people from going up to Jerusalem, causing the people to fall back to their idolatrous ways. In Jewish history, Yeravam has come to represent the epitome of a good idea gone bad.
Indeed, this is the essence of the idolatry of ancient Egypt.
Paganism is the worship of nature in all its power and beauty. The pagan, more than anything else, immerses himself in the physical world of nature. In the end, in the world of nature, might makes right, everything inevitably dies, and there is no purpose beyond the here and now. Judaism, however, suggests that there is a world of difference between one who eats to live and one who lives to eat. Ultimately, nature is not the goal; it is a vehicle to a higher purpose. Ancient Egypt, however, was all about the worship of nature, which is why its gods were symbols of nature. It was this that prompted Yaakov’s question to Yosef.
After 22 years in Egypt, Yaakov’s real question was who Yosef had become. Was he still the dreamer of dreams? Could he still see the creator of the sun, moon, and stars, even from the darkness of the pit, or was he now the ruler of Egypt immersed in the here and now?
Before blessing the next generation, he wanted to know where this generation stood. Was Yosef a Jewish Egyptian, or an Egyptian Jew? Had he become so immersed in the land of the Nile that he had forgotten that it was simply a vehicle to something greater?
The more powerful one becomes, the more challenging it is to recall that power is simply a tool of the source of all power: Hashem.
This is why Yaakov recalls the original blessing he received when running from Esav all those years ago. For the first time, he had confronted the world of the field and the hunt, of cruelty and nature. He had of necessity taken on the hands of Esav, and he struggled with who he himself had become.
On his way down to Lavan, Yaakov swore, “If G-d will be with me and watch over me on this journey, and He will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I will return in peace to the house of my father, then Hashem will be for me a G-d” (28:22-21).
Essentially, as he left the tents of study, Yaakov recognized that his challenge was to remember, even when herding the flocks of Lavan, that bread comes from G-d, and that everything in the physical world is a means to achieve a higher purpose.
And perhaps this was Yaakov’s question regarding Menashe and Ephraim: who are these two young men? Are they Jews growing up in a palace, ever aware of their roles as vehicles for some great and wonderful destiny, or are they princes of Egypt, focused only on the here and now?
Indeed, this was the great tragedy of Yeravam, as well as Achav and Yehu. They were kings of Israel, with the potential to change the course of history, yet became so immersed in the trappings of kingship that they lost sight of the purpose behind it all.
Yaakov wanted to build a family into a nation that would change the course of human history and fulfill the mission of the Jewish people: to bring G-d into the world, to make the world a place full of all that G-d represents.
This is what we are doing when we bless our children on Friday night, invoking the names of Menashe and Ephraim. We run through the week, so immersed in the world of nature that we forget what it is really all about. On Shabbat, we get back in touch with our purpose.
What do we think of while we bless our children? Perhaps the greatest challenge in raising children is teaching them to become vehicles for increasing G-d’s presence in the world. We cannot expect them to get the message if we do not live it.
Which may well have been Yaakov’s challenge to Yosef: Living in the palace as ruler of Egypt, have you succeeded in teaching your children who really rules the world? Who are these? Are they princes of Egypt, or sons of Yaakov?
And this, indeed, is Yosef’s response: “They are my sons whom G-d has given me here.” Even here in Egypt, in the palace, they are still my sons, and they, like me, are still aware that all of this comes from Hashem as a gift with a higher purpose than filling the storehouses of Egypt.
Perhaps this Shabbat, as we bless our children, we can use the moment to think about where we are headed and whether our children, our ideas and our accomplishments are really contributing to a better world.
Rabbi Freedman is rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem. To reach him, write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
Weinreb…
Continued from page 17
the major hero of the Chanukah story. He too faced a bitter enemy, the Esav of his time and place, and he prayed and certainly waged war. For that, he deserves great praise. But he also attempted the strategy of “gifts.”
Quoting from the Book of the Maccabees, Ramban demonstrates that after vanquishing the Greeks, Yehuda sent two delegates on a mission to Rome to form an alliance with this new power on the world’s geopolitical scene. Yehuda. the brave and charismatic leader of the Jews of his time, turned to Rome for its support, a move which led to Rome’s eventual occupation of the Land of Israel and, ultimately and tragically, to the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of the people of Israel from our land, an exile which largely persists to this very day.
Let us proceed to this week’s parsha. There, throughout chapter 49, Yaakov delivers his blessings to his sons. Ramban sees Yaakov’s words as his last will and testament, as his instructions to his sons and their descendants down all the generations. Look at verse 10: “The staff of authority shall not be removed from Yehuda, nor shall the rod of leadership be taken from him, until the Messiah arrives, with the assembly of nations” (my translation, following Rashi).
Ramban understands this verse to be Yaakov’s last will and testament, instructing his descendants until the “end of time.” Royalty, kingship, majesty, governance — all belong to Yehuda and his descendants from King David until the arrival of the Messiah, himself a descendant of David.
Here, Ramban is eloquent and forceful: The sons of Matisyahu, Yehuda HaMaccabi and his brothers, were priests, descendants not of Yehuda son of Yaakov but of Levi son of Yaakov. Their role was the Temple service and its broader spiritual mission. In a moment of desperation with Jewish lives and Jewish tradition at stake, they could wage war, and they did so with great persuasion, with religious zeal, with guerilla tactics.
We celebrate their efforts. But when the battle achieved its mission, they had no right to remain the kings and rulers of the Jewish people for well over two hundred years. The tools of royalty, the throne itself, were reserved for the tribe of Yehuda. The Hasmonaeans usurped the kingdom, invited Rome into the Holy Land, corrupted the very institution of kingship, and eventually brought about religious catastrophe, mass casualty, bondage into slavery, and the Diaspora experience which endures.
Strong words. I refer to even stronger words which Ramban reserves for Sefer Vayikra, Parshat Bechokutai, chapter 26:16. There, Ramban argues at length and with great conviction that whereas the dark predictions of the passages in Bechukotai refer to the first exile, subsequent to the destruction of the First Temple, the even darker passages in Parshat Ki Tavo allude to the second exile, which both Ramban’s generation and succeeding generations have experienced.
He accuses the Hasmonaean kings, who proved to be so incompetent, of a failed leadership so disastrous that we suffer its consequences to this very day.
Mazurek…
Continued from page 17
I hope to dedicate the next many weekly parsha columns to happier themes, but I am tempted to return to Ramban’s so very cogent and apt analysis in my Person in the Parsha column for Parshat Bechukotai, now many months away, with the help of the Ribbono shel Olam To reach Rabbi Weinreb, write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com dom of Yehuda (Beit David) and the kingdom of Yisrael (Beit Ephraim/Yosef) that splintered the Jewish people, but will come together once again, b’acharit hayamim, at the end of days (Yechezkel 37), fittingly the haftarah for parshat Vayigash.
For us today, we need the ahavat achim, the coming together of the dati (religious) and nondati, the right and left, brothers all, as one family. You want to bring the kidnapped hostages home? Just as Yosef was brought “home” to his brothers through ahavat achim, through teshuva (Yehuda), tefilla (Yosef) and tzedaka (both of them), our hostages can be brought home, and we will be mevatlim et hagezerah kasha (annul the harsh decree) of Oct. 7 and bring about the ultimate geulah. Shabbat Shalom.
Dr. Alan A. Mazurek is a retired neurologist, living in Great Neck, Jerusalem and Florida. He is a former chairman of the ZOA. To reach him, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Tobin…
Continued from page 18
billions of dollars in foreign aid they received to build a fortress that featured a terrorist tunnel network underneath Gaza that is the moral equivalent of the New York City subway system, instead of helping its Palestinian residents. That is why to all but a small minority of Israelis, the events on Oct. 7 and the widespread support it received from Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere remains a conclusive argument that a two-state solution is a formula for endless war and the slaughter of Jews. That is also why — whether or not they wish to replace Netanyahu as prime minister — they are fully in favor of the war against Hamas in Gaza. In adopting such an attitude, Israelis are behaving no differently than any country that has been assaulted by a deadly foe led by extremists like the fanatics that run and fund Hamas would have done.
Yet contrary to the “apathy” argument that portrays them as indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians sacrificed by Hamas, the Jewish state has demonstrated great humanity with respect to their foes.
From the beginning of the current war, Israel has allowed a steady stream of supplies of food, fuel and other essential goods to be shipped into Gaza, including those areas where Hamas still prevails. The difficulty in getting food to Gazans is not due to hard-hearted Israelis obstructing the flow of aid but to the fact that Hamas and criminal Palestinian gangs have stolen the majority of the aid brought in by humanitarian groups, most of which are compromised by their connections to the terrorists.
What country would be expected to feed and aid those trying to kill their citizens while those enemies were still in arms and “resisting” its existence?
Hamas could have ended this war at any point since October 2023 by releasing the hostages and accepting Israeli offers in which the terrorists would be allowed safe passage out of Gaza. They hold on because they believe that their propaganda will convince the West to turn on Israel and someday hand it to them on a silver platter.
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Those who participate in pro-Hamas demonstrations are not just engaging in antisemitism with their “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” chants. Like the journalists who accept the false narrative in which Israel is branded as the villain in the war that began on Oct. 7, they are helping to prolong the war.
Progressives believe they can turn America against Israel. Through their dominance of the education system, culture and much else, they have tried to indoctrinate a generation of youth to accept the toxic myths of intersectionality and critical race theory. In doing so, they have sought to convince the country that not only was America an irredeemably racist nation but that Israel and the Jews were “white” oppressors.
Those who accept this false ideology wrongly believe that Israel is a “settler-colonial” and “apartheid” state that has no right to exist. That leads them to ignore the truth about the conflict and to think that Israel is always in the wrong and the Palestinians are always right, no matter what either side actually does. That is a prime factor in enabling the slanders of Israel as well as the whitewashing of Palestinian brutality and intransigence.
Antisemites are frustrated
Israel’s foes are not only deeply frustrated by the military success of the IDF against the Iranian-sponsored terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah as well as the defeat that Tehran has suffered (largely as a result of the Jewish state’s actions against its proxies in Lebanon) in Syria. They are also unhappy about the victory of Presidentelect Donald Trump. The prospect of Trump and a host of other ardent supporters of the Jewish state taking office in two weeks is a decisive defeat for those who seek to isolate Israel.
But as another Times article recently noted, Palestinians and their foreign cheerleaders have not lost hope. This doesn’t mean that they are ready to live in peace with Israel or reject a vision of their national identity that is firmly linked to endless war on the Jews. Rather, they believe that sooner or later their victories in a propaganda war in which Israel is delegitimized will ultimately allow them to fulfill their fantasy of extinguishing the one Jewish state on the planet. Corporate media and other outlets that spread the claim that Israelis are immoral for supporting their country’s defensive war against genocidal terrorists are engaging in antisemitism. But they are also helping to perpetuate a self-destructive mindset that means more bloodshed and suffering for both Jews and Arabs.
To reach Jonathan S. Tobin, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Jacobs…
Continued from page 19 within ourselves, there is an inclination for, I’d say, a feeling of superiority. Wouldn’t you think so? Would you agree? I know I have it.”
It’s not clear whether the audience for the former president’s lectures — either in the classroom at the time or around the CD player — were adult theology students, children or both. Even if these were “adult” lessons that young minds were never intended to hear, such statements demonstrated a deep-seated theological hatred of the type many Christians (including the Vatican, in its “Nostra Aetate” declaration of 1965) have disavowed since the Holocaust. Hatred, which, when taught to children century after century, was a crucial condition for Europeans wishing their continent cleansed of Jews.
When people first scrutinized the recordings in 2007, the supremely insightful Phyllis Chesler wrote in an article for PJ Media:
“Anyone familiar with Middle Eastern realities will understand that it is Muslim fanatics who view Christians as unclean infidels, and it is Muslims who persecute, exile, lynch and behead Christians,” she wrote curtly. “Palestinian Islamists have desecrated churches and murdered Christians. The very Israeli Jewish government that Carter is railing against in his Bible classes has protected the holy sites of all religions. And
it is ethnic Arab Muslims who have been murdering black African Christians and Muslims in Darfur. Jewish Israelis have not mass-murdered Palestinian civilians or even those Palestinians who have been waging a fierce terrorist and propaganda war against them.
“President Jimmy also presents the allegedly great power of Roman-occupied Jews in Jesus’ time as the emblem for the contemporary cabal of power wielded by Jewish and Israeli Zionists today. In his teachings, the stench of messiahmurder clings to every possible Jewish deed,” she pointed out. “Yes, it is true: Jews did not and do not accept that Jesus is the messiah or even the son of G-d. But so what? This should not be the source of resentment and enmity between Jews and Christians. Has Carter learned absolutely nothing from the Holocaust? Ah, maybe he has learned everything he needs to know: That the Jews were vulnerable, that their slaughter (in the Holy Land) might occasion no outcry until it is too late.”
Finally, she wondered, “Maybe the crime of the Jew is that of having been there first, of being both the mother and father of religious monotheism. Maybe our descendants, whether they are rebellious followers or detractors, need to get out from under our looming parental shadow. But a true Christian is not supposed to hate. In fact, he is supposed to forgive even those who torment him. To demonize and scapegoat an essentially innocent people is so un-Christian that we might not only ask whether Jimmy Carter is a Jew-hater but whether he is really a good Christian.”
Carter’s was not a “new antisemitism,” it was the old. And it explains plenty. There’s more. In her piece, Chesler wrote of how Michael Miller, then a student at Columbia University, was one of the first Jews to acquire the CDs, listen to them and produce a transcript of the relevant parts. “Miller told me that he was so alarmed by what he heard that he tried to interest many major Jewish organizational leaders and journalists. For whatever reason, no one got back to him.”
In more recent years, the Jewish establishment has been beset with charges that it protects the Democratic Party more than its own people. In the case of the Anti-Defamation League, at least, there’s some evidence that this might be changing.
Students of antisemitism, most notably the late, beloved Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, described Jew-hatred as “the mutating virus,” explaining that Jews are hated in every era according to the reigning ideology of the time. When Christianity was normative, the Jews were hated for murdering Jesus, and, in our time, when globalism is the reigning virtue, Jews are hated for their state.
Carter was just more inclusive. He found no need to morph. He just added the defamatory stages together.
Charles Jacobs is president of the African Jewish. Ben Poser is executive editor of White Rose Magazine and research director for the African Jewish Alliance. To reach them, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Bard…
Continued from page 19 effective,” “timid, stubborn and also somewhat ill at ease.”
Begin, who he initially believed was “congenial, dedicated, sincere and deeply religious,” became “a small man with a limited vision.” Carter wrote after one meeting at Begin’s home that he had “rarely been so disgusted in all my life.” By contrast, he found Sadat “charming,” “strong and courageous.” After the three men received the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter wrote: “Sadat deserved it; Begin did not.”
Carter partly blamed his electoral defeat on the Jews, and his animus was reflected in his post-presidency statements and writings. His attitude towards Israel was also influenced by his conviction that Begin lied to him (he didn’t) about freezing settlements.
While he is rightly lauded for his humanitarian work, his antisemitism tarnished his legacy.
His book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, was filled with falsehoods and the misrepresentation of history. He even contradicts the calumny in the title when he says, “The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa.”
Even though he helped facilitate Israel’s peace with Egypt, which included the evacuation of Sinai, Carter repeatedly asserts that Israel does not want peace, is stealing Palestinian land, and refuses to trade land for peace.
Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said when he reviewed the book that he was shocked by Carter’s “not-so-subtle antisemitism.” Oren also noted that Carter was a Hamas apologist.
Professor Deborah Lipstadt criticized his insinuations about Jewish control of media and government. Carter was angry about the negative comments about his book, and even as he was making the rounds promoting the book in the press, he complained about the “tremendous intimidation in our country that has silenced” Israel’s critics.
Sadly, the former president became one more anti-Israel propagandist, demonizing the Jewish state at every opportunity and spouting the onesided narrative of the antisemites.
As I wrote in a review of the book, few, if any, Jews realized just how nefarious Carter’s views were until he left office. In retrospect, their votes against him may have saved Israel.
Mitchell Bard is a foreign-policy analyst and authority on US-Israel relations who has written and edited 22 books. To reach him, write: Columnist@ TheJewishStar.com
Phillips…
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knife-wielding terrorist murdered an Israeli and wounded three more on a Tel Aviv bus.
•In 1991, intifadists stabbed and wounded two Israelis in Jerusalem; bombed a Beersheva market, injuring two shoppers; and ambushed a bus north of Jerusalem, killing two and wounding six (five of them children). Palestinian Arab terrorist atrocities in 1992 included the murder of 15-yearold Helena Rapp in Bat Yam, the kidnapping and murder of Nissim Toledano and a stabbing rampage in Jaffa (two murdered, 19 injured).
•The bloodshed continued in 1993 with stabbing attacks in Tel Aviv that left one dead and four wounded in one instance, and two dead and seven wounded in another. There was also a car bombing at the Mehola Junction that killed one person and injured 21; and the murder of 11-year-old Chava Wechsberg in an attack on an Israeli automobile near Karmei Tzur.
And those are just a few examples from each of those years.
During the first four years of the intifada, there were some 600 bombing or shooting attacks on Israelis, and another 100 hand-grenade attacks, not to mention more than 3,600 attempts to burn Israelis to death with Molotov cocktails. Altogether, 27 Israelis were murdered and 3,000plus wounded during that period. Twenty-five more were murdered in 1992 and 65 in 1993.
Far from being a spontaneous uprising — as Palestinian advocates portray it — the intifada was carefully orchestrated. A PLO department called the Unified Leadership of the Intifada issued daily instructions on how much violence should be used and against whom.
So the question is: Why do The New York Times and other media outlets never explain what took place during this time period that the campus radicals are so loudly applauding? Why do they deliberately downplay the extent of the Palestinian Arab violence?
The answer is that it’s all politics, of course. Major media outlets sympathize with the Palestinian Arab cause and its campus cheerleaders. Acknowledging the extent of Palestinian atrocities makes their cause look bad.
That’s why that Times Sunday Magazine article emphasized the “boycotts” and rock-throwing, and omitted the bombings and shootings and hijackings. That’s also why the Washington Post and CNN never mention that the rocks can be fatal — and that 16 Israelis have been murdered
by Arab rock-throwers. That, in short, is why they rewrite the intifada. Because telling the truth would make readers stop and ask: Does it really make sense to give these intifadists a sovereign state in Israel’s backyard? To reach Moshe Phillips, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
Cohen…
Continued from page 21
chip steadily away at its sovereign rights.
Ireland is supporting South Africa’s false claim of Israeli genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to the point of seeking a redefinition of the term “genocide” in which to shoehorn Israel’s actions against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and their Iranian backers. It has promoted anti-Israel measures both domestically and within the European Union. And it has either ignored or mocked the concern that its actions are encouraging the spread of antisemitism in Ireland, including the revival of racial tropes reminiscent of the Nazis.
Two fundamental questions remain.
Firstly, why has Ireland adopted this stance? In part, as Irish commentator John McGuirk recently pointed out, because Ireland is essentially peripheral in geopolitics.
“We have, for most of our existence, pretended that we can say or do what we like on the international stage because everybody loves us,” he wrote. “The truth is that we’ve been able to be liked because we are irrelevant. Nobody has ever had to choose between Ireland and a powerful ally.”
Even then, as McGuirk argued, this moral grandstanding against Israel has its limits. It was Israel that closed its embassy and not the other way around “because the Irish government knew full well that a formal break in diplomatic relations with Israel would send a signal to the US and the EU, and Israel’s other powerful allies around the world, that Ireland is a fundamentally unreasonable place that cannot be trusted to be an honest broker when it comes to the world’s only Jewish state.”
Secondly, why the obsession with Israel alone? Not a peep has been heard from the Irish about the revelations coming out of Syria regarding former dictator Bashar Assad’s machinery of murder — something unseen, according to Stephen Rapp, the former US envoy for war crimes — “since the Nazis.” According to my old friend, the Irish writer Eamann Mac Donnchada, both “narcissism,” emanating from Ireland’s belief that the Palestinian war against Israel is a mirror of Ireland’s own struggle against the British, and “ennui,” the lack of purpose that has accompanied Ireland’s growing economic prosperity in recent decades, are key factors here. “Adhesion to [the Palestinian] cause makes many Irish people feel great about themselves while running no physical or economic risks, and that’s what it’s really about,” he wrote.
How should the rest of the world respond, given that, to cite McGuirk again, “not one single thing that the Irish Government has done since Oct. 7, 2023 has impacted Israeli policy one way or another.”
Israel, as the offended party, has done what it needs to do. Many Jews have reacted with disgust, but that probably won’t extend to anything more than the odd prohibition on Jameson’s whiskey being served at a synagogue kiddush or bar mitzvah.
As for the United States, traditionally a great friend of Ireland, relations will likely worsen under Donald Trump’s incoming administration because Trump and his team are convinced that Ireland — in the words of future Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — “runs a trade surplus at our expense.”
Israel has nothing to do with that battle. But because Lutnick is a Jew and a noted supporter of Israel, you can rest assured that voices inside and outside the Irish government will eventually draw a connection where none exists. That it’s all so predictable is probably the grimmest joke of all. Ben Cohen is a senior analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. To reach him, write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
