The Jewish Star 02-21-2025

Feb. 21-27, 2025

23 Shevat 5785 • Mishpatim

Vol. 24, No. 7

Reach the Star: Editor@TheJewishStar.com 516-622-7461 x291

Beware fake

You would be forgiven if this past week confused you about the state of antisemitism in America and what can, and what should not, be done about it. There was even a self-destructive reminder of how Jews themselves feel about what’s been happening around them — a crisis manifested in both the hatred of Jews, and Jewish self-hatred. It all unfolded with dizzying spectacles of visual misinformation. Some of it was, perhaps, well-intentioned. But I wouldn’t count on this surge in antisemitic fervor subsiding anytime soon — no matter the remedy. There’s far too much social acceptance of it since Israel began its war of self-defense after the massacre that was Oct. 7, 2023.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and his Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, spent $7 million for a thirty-second ad that aired during the Super Bowl. It featured his former quarterback, Tom Brady, and rapper Snoop Dogg, telling each other how much they hated one another, their voices rising with each declaration, the reasons for their respective disgusts sounding innocuous and silly.

That, it seems, was the ostensible point: all

Touro University has officially absorbed the New York College of Podiatric Medicine, the first college of podiatry in the United States.

Observers found the moment for this to be an auspicious one, given the continuing spread of antisemitism in the medical world and on college campuses.

Touro University is a private Jewish university based in New York, with 19,000 students on campuses and at affiliated schools throughout the United States, that’s been expanding its medical-education offerings, which also include the New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY.

hatred, the pitchmen eventually concluded, is “stupid.”

But those who hate Jews around the world are defiant in their belief that they have reasons to do so. They feel, passionately, that global Jewry deserves to be punished for a litany of sins — one in particular, as payback on behalf of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Regrettably, spiking antisemitism on city streets and college campuses is not the sort of thing that thirty seconds of ad time can easily cure. No one watching Kraft’s antidote for antisemitism, with its decidedly misguided messaging, would be persuaded to turn the channel to a different set of beliefs.

The depth of hatred is one thing. But the ad makes no mention of Jews, antisemitism, or the tragic events of October 7, which launched these latest menaces.

Kraft was obviously aiming for a more subtle, indirect approach. Focus on universal hatred, in the abstract. Ignore the particular, with its elephantine antisemitic dimensions. Viewers will get the point.

antisemitism

“Educating approximately 8,000 students annually in the health sciences, Touro is fast becoming one of the largest healthcare educational systems in the United States,” said Dr. Alan Kadish, Touro’s president. “Adding podiatric medicine to our existing network of medical and health-science schools and programs will serve to augment and strengthen our academic offerings.”

Touro was working with the podiatry college for a few years before the acquisition too effect. According to the American Podiatric Medical Students’ Association, NYCPM has “graduated more than 25% of all active

podiatrists in the nation.”

Kadish said that Touro’s mission is to “uphold the Jewish heritage, and more broadly to educate and serve ‘in keeping with the historic Jewish commitment to intellectual inquiry, the transmission of knowledge, social justice and service to society’.”

“Every school that Touro operates or starts is Sabbath-observant and has kosher food available,” Kadish told JNS. “It makes a more comfortable environment for Jewish students at any level of observance.”

“Students come here for those values, whether they view them as Jewish values or

humanistic values,” he said.

A recent study published in the Journal of Religion and Health concluded that more than 75% of Jewish medical professionals and students say they have been exposed to antisemitism. It also showed that since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, medical publications and social-media posts by medical professionals about Jew-hatred have increased by five times while posts actively promoting antisemitism by medical professionals have increased by some 400%.

Progressive Jews rally against Israel, deriding Zionism as apartheid, at Grand Army Plaza, which abbuts Brooklyn’s uber-liberal Park Slope, on May 21, 2021. Andrew Lichtenstein, Corbis

THANE ROSENBAUM

Fake Jews…

No, they won’t, and they didn’t. They either missed it entirely or simply chose to ignore it.

What’s worse, Snoop Dogg has had longstanding ties to world-class antisemite Louis Farrakhan, the lunatic cleric from the Nation of Islam. Perhaps that’s why the Super Bowl ad neglected to mention Jews as objects of hatred: The rapper didn’t want to deceive 126 million viewers. Abstract hate may be “stupid,” but animosity directed at Jews is positively righteous.

If Kraft had replaced Brady with Julian Edelman, a former Patriot who is also a member of the Jewish Tribe, Snoop Dogg might have been more forthcoming, wagging his tail, refusing to hold his tongue.

Yet another African-American rapper, Kanye West, or Ye as he now calls himself, also appeared in a Super Bowl ad. He, however, had no problem making his true feelings about Jews explicitly known.

He invited viewers to visit his website where his clothing line was selling just one item: a white T-shirt with the Nazi swastika. It was labeled HH-01, for “Heil Hitler,” and sold for $20 each. As a sign of the times, it generated $2 million in sales before the website that hosts his apparel took the store offline.

No surprise. Ye has over 20 million Instagram followers. There are only 15.7 million Jews in the world — a number that would have reached 32 million if not for the murderous ideology that Ye now purports to follow.

Before the week ended, Jews had apparently had enough. A video appeared on social media showcasing a number of Jewish celebrities — Sacha Baron Cohen, Drake, Steven Spielberg, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Zuckerberg and others — wearing their own white T-shirts, but this one featured a hand with a Star of David giving the middle finger to Ye.

It became an instant sensation among Jews who shared it countless times on social media. The very same Jews who have been petrified to speak out against antisemitism or support Israel’s war in Gaza finally broke their silence — all on account of a star-studded video that, apparently, emboldened them.

Except for one problem: the video was AI-generated. It was fake.

And what’s more, it featured Jews who have had their heads buried in the Hollywood sand — risk-averse A-listers squandering their self-respect. Natalie Portman, a sabra, once refused to accept an award from her motherland. The only two depicted in the video who had, fact, taken a public stance in support of Israel were Jerry Seinfeld and David Schwimmer. (Scarlett Johansson has done so in the past.)

Those who hate Jews around the world are defiant in their belief that they have reasons to do so.

Two millennia of defamation have taught Jews to live in reality. History compels them to do so. The world of makebelieve belongs to their enemies.

An AI-generated video intended to rebuff a bigoted rapper only plays into the delusions of antisemites everywhere. Beware attributing intelligence within the artificial.

When images are deliberately fake, it invites distorted truths. If one can’t trust what’s visible, then all kinds of falsehoods become plausible: Jews have no connection to the Holy Land; Israel is a “settler-colonialist enterprise”; an Arab nation called Palestine actually once existed.

Less renowned Jews had things to say last week, as well. This time, however, they were real people. Responding to President Trump’s proposal to relocate Gaza’s population to neighboring Arab nations, over 350 rabbis, writers and artists took out a full-page ad in the New York Times opposing the move, calling it “ethnic cleansing!”

I won’t dignify the signatories by listing their names. I have a low tolerance for social preening and gagging moral superiority. Jews who casually accept the torching of Israeli infants and gangraping of its girls are beneath contempt.

Notice how this costly advertisement made no mention of what happened on October 7. The fate of the hostages in Gaza

merited no mention, either.

No matter what they say, the signers of that petition are not Jews.

Go ahead: expose your circumcised member. Recite the Shema. Swear that a tree is planted in Israel in your family’s name. Pretend that enjoying a good bagel now and then is a sign of solidarity.

It doesn’t prove a thing.

If your name is on that list, you’re not a Jew — at least not one who deserves to be counted among the tribe. You have no awareness of Jewish history. You have desecrated the memory of millions. And you are without tender feelings for your people.

Worst of all, you lack the humility, common decency and gratitude of those who, very much unlike you, are unafraid to stand up for Jews, and have sacrificed something or someone to defend the Jewish state.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.” Originally published in JewishJournal.com

Touro… Jew-on-Jew terror in Florida

from page 1

At the same time, antisemitism on college campuses has skyrocketed, with a report by StopAntisemitism reporting a 3,000% rise in college antisemitism since Oct. 7.

Touro is helping to confront this through numerous means, Kadish said, noting that the university is “very careful” about antisemitism and “that Jewish students feel protected.”

While many institutions of higher learning are only taking “baby steps” to combat antisemitism, Touro is leaning on its laurels, said Kadish.

“We are engaged in creating our own antisemitism education program. We’re going to make it part of the orientation for all of our students, Jewish and non.”

The program is set to be rolled out within the next few months, he said.

The university is also working to make sure that all students understand aspects of Jewish life, whether it’s by taking Judaic studies classes or just being in a Jewish environment, absorbing the culture through “osmosis,” Kadish said. “By and large, they develop a positive view of Judaism based on the environment they’re in.”

JNS contributed to this report.

By JNS Staff

A 27-year-old Jewish plumber is accused of firing 17 times from a semiautomatic handgun at two vacationing Israeli tourists, whom he mistook for Palestinians, in Miami Beach at about 9:30 pm on Saturday.

Mordechai Brafman told Miami Beach Police Department officers “spontaneously” in custody that “while he was driving his truck, he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both,” per the incident report, which the police department shared with JNS.

“The victims and the defendant do not know each other.”

Contrary to what Brafman told the police, both victims survived, with one shot in the left shoulder and the other’s left forearm grazed, per the report.

The defendant, who was captured on surveillance cameras, shot the victims “unprovoked,” striking both victims, per the police report.

Brafman was arrested on two counts of attempted second degree murder.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom. I got hit in the shoulder. One of the bullets missed my father’s head,” Ari Rabi told

CBS News through his cousin, who translated his comments into English. (The victim’s name is spelled “Rabey” in other stories.)

“Some guy thought we were Palestinians and he just started shooting,” Rabi told CBS. “Seventeen bullets, only one hit.”

“The last thing I want to say is thank G-d for life,” Rabi added to CBS.

“A life shouldn’t just be taken away from anyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, what religion you are or where you’re from. People should just live in peace.”

Dustin Tischler, an attorney for the defendant, told the Miami Herald that Brafman “was experiencing a severe mental health emergency” when he began shooting.

“It is believed that his ability to make sound judgments was significantly compromised. We are fully cooperating with law enforcement officials and acknowledge the seriousness of the allegations,” Tischler told the paper.

“We are also committed to working with healthcare professionals to ensure Mr. Brafman receives the appropriate

and necessary treatment. Finally, we are deeply relieved that the victims are safe.”

“All forms of violence must be unequivocally condemned, and perpetrators of hate crimes should be held accountable,” stated Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, consul general of Israel in Miami. (JNS sought comment from the consulate.)

“I extend my gratitude to law enforcement officers for their dedication to safeguarding our communities,” the Israeli diplomat added.

“I am confident they will conduct a thorough investigation to uncover the truth behind this terrible incident and ensure justice is served.”

The Anti-Defamation League Florida office stated that it is “horrified to learn about this incident, in which an individual allegedly opened fire on two people in Miami Beach because he thought they were Palestinian.”

“Violence targeting people because of their perceived identity is never acceptable,” the ADL said. It urged the Miami Beach Police Department to investigate whether the incident was a hate crime.

Alan Kadish, president of Touro University.

Former quarterback Tom Brady and rapper Snoop Dogg tell each other how much they hated one another, in a $7 million Super Bowl ad.

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Iran shuls, schools, butchers, dining (matzah too)

By Mor Shpaier, Israel Hayom

Despite rising antisemitism and diminishing tolerance, Iran’s Jewish community maintains a strong sense of cultural pride and national identity, according to David Nissan, an Iran expert and former Israeli intelligence officer who was born and raised in Tehran.

“Jews in Iran face increased suspicion, yet they remain deeply proud of their heritage. It’s crucial to understand that Iranian Jews’ national identity is tied to Iran, not to any other country, including Israel,” Nissan explained, reflecting on the developments in his homeland’s Jewish community over the past 16 months.

When asked to shed light on Iran’s Jewish community, once the flagship of Middle Eastern Jewish communities, Nissan noted that despite significant emigration from the 1979 Islamic Revolution to the present day, the community still maintains a complete Jewish way of life.

“There are 30 active synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher butcheries and restaurants, and even a matzah factory. Jews don’t suffer from persecution or harm and are permitted to maintain their Jewish lifestyle without interference. Their rights as an official religious minority in Iran are protected by law and constitution, and they even have a representative in parliament,” he said.

Nissa continued:

“As is known, Iranian law follows Islamic (Sharia) law, which inherently discriminates against non-Muslims. The main challenge for the Jewish community today is separating Zionism from Judaism.

“They must prominently demonstrate this separation and prove their loyalty to Iran, which views Zionism as illegitimate and reprehensible. The difficult economic situation in Iran also affects the Jewish community, most of which already belongs to a lower socioeconomic status.”

The Iranian Jewish community experienced challenging periods in the past, first after the

Muslim conquest in the 7th century, and again during the 16th century when Shi’ites became the dominant force there. During both periods, Jews suffered from pogroms and discrimination.

However, after Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s last shah, rose to power, Jews experienced a golden age, including integration into key positions in Iranian society and economy.

Following the revolution, the Jewish community, which at its peak included almost 100,000 members, shrunk to just 9,000 Jews currently residing in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan.

According to Nissan, many community members have no intention of leaving.

“Those who want to leave Iran can, but despite past attempts to incentivize Jews to immigrate to Israel, few accepted the offer,” he said.

“Most Jews living in Iran don’t see Israel as a better alternative worth leaving everything behind for, mainly due to cultural and economic reasons, but also security concerns.”

The ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv has opened a series of meetings titled “Perspectives on Iranian Jews.”

“In recent years, the whole world has been watching Iran due to its isolation, problematic regime to say the least, nuclear threat and lifestyle completely different from the West,” explained ANU head of content Rivka Aderet.

“The remaining Jewish community in this intriguing place isn’t very small, and I found it interesting to learn about the community’s character, how it’s organized, who its leaders are and how it integrates into Muslim society.”

Asked what makes Iran’s Jewish community so special, Aderet replied:

“It’s one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities. The most prominent example is the Book of Esther, which shows how the Jewish community in Iran influenced our history as a people.

“It was also interesting to learn about the hardships, restrictions and difficulties of Iranian Jews, and of course the big question: why they still remain there and don’t immigrate to Israel, Los Angeles, or London, despite all the difficulties. All these add a deep layer of mystery and curiosity regarding this community.”

ANU CEO Oded Ravivi added: “The story of Iran’s Jewish community is more relevant than ever and sheds light on fascinating and deep aspects about the story of the entire Jewish people.”

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Prayers in a Tehran synagogue on Feb. 13, 2020. Hossein Beris, Middle East Images, AFP via Getty Images via JNS

Reading from a Torah scroll during daily prayers in Tehran. Hossein Beris, Middle East Images, AFP via Getty Images via JNS

Devastating health impact of captivity revealed HEALTH, MIND & BODY

By Maytal Yasur Beit-Or, Israel Hayom

Hostages freed from Gaza are showing severe health impacts including dramatic weight loss of up to 55 pounds, significant muscle deterioration, and complex medical challenges that will require long-term rehabilitation, medical experts told the Knesset Health Committee.

Testimonies revealed disturbing details about the conditions of captivity and their lasting effects on physical and mental health.

Dr. Michal Mizrachi, director of medical treatment for returned hostages at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center’s Ichilov Hospital, provided a comprehensive update regarding four returned hostages treated at the facility.

The patients — Keith Siegel, Gadi Mozes, Iair Horn and Ohad Ben Ami — exhibited severe malnutrition characterized by at least 20% weight loss, alongside significant deterioration of both fat and muscle mass.

“While we fortunately did not observe refeeding syndrome, likely due to improved nutrition provided before release, the patients still face significant nutritional deficiencies requiring rehabilitation and ongoing care,” Mizrachi explained.

“We’ve documented substantial functional impairment, including dramatic decreases in physical capabilities resulting from prolonged inactivity.”

Pre-existing medical conditions received only intermittent and partial treatment during captivity, Mizrachi noted.

Professor Hagai Levine, who heads the Health Department at the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, emphasized the need for systematic monitoring of returnees’ health conditions.

“Consider dental health — poor nutrition and lack of dental hygiene could lead not only to dental problems but potentially to cardiac and other systemic health issues. We need comprehensive monitoring to develop appropriate responses.”

Dr. Levine further addressed emerging challenges: “We’re

preparing for casualty reception this week, requiring specialized protocols.

“The case of Ofer Kalderon, who contracted severe influenza upon return, highlights the need to reassess our infection control measures. We must consider vaccination protocols for both returnees and their families, and evaluate their immune status.”

Lee Gat, vice president of strategy at Sheba Medical Center at Tel

Hashomer in Ramat Gan, drew on the hospital’s extensive experience with returnees from multiple deals and rescue operations:

“The correlation between captivity duration and health deterioration is clear. Our medical teams are deeply concerned about the impact of each additional day in captivity on both physical and mental recovery potential. Time is critical, and we’re witnessing the severe consequences of prolonged captivity.”

Shimi Kalderon detailed Ofer’s conditions in captivity: “They began force-feeding him before release. His diet included rotten vegetables and occasional half-pitas with cheese. In 484 days, he saw daylight only once, during a three-hour period with his daughter Sahar. Showers were limited to once every two or three days.”

“The reality exceeds our worst fears,” said Einav Mozes Orbach, Gadi Mozes’s daughter-in-law. “While we’re immensely relieved to have him back and surrounded by care, hearing about his experiences is devastating. Beyond physical and cognitive trauma, he repeatedly expresses feelings of abandonment and betrayal by his country and government, emotions that burn as deeply as the abuse by Islamic Jihad.”

Carmit Palty Katzir provided a sobering account of her mother, Hanna Katzir, who died following her release:

“My mother entered captivity taking one blood pressure medication. After 49 days without it, she returned with severe cardiac issues, arrhythmias and respiratory failure. The contaminated conditions in Gaza — polluted water, air and deadly fungi — contributed to her decline. She lost basic functions — walking, standing, using the bathroom, breathing independently. She was sedated and ventilated for months before succumbing to these complications.”

Palti Katzir also highlighted the bureaucratic challenges facing families:

“I remain unrecognized as a victim of hostile actions, despite exposure to psychological terror and traumatic footage. The impacts extend beyond physical health — my mother lost not just her life, but in her final days had to process the loss of her husband, son, kibbutz and entire community.”

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Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades parade Israeli captive Eli Sharabi in Deir al-Balah, the Gaza Strip, before handing him over to the International Red Cross on Feb 8. Abed Rahim Khatib, Flash90

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NATAN marks 20 years of post-disaster aid

NATAN Worldwide Disaster Relief has reached 20 years of providing emergency medical, dental and psychological care to survivors of war and other natural and manmade disasters.

The Israeli humanitarian organization’s inaugural mission followed the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in December 2004. Over two decades since, NATAN has engaged in on-the-ground global relief efforts, treating hundreds of thousands of disaster survivors on five continents and in 15 countries.

NATAN assisted when natural disasters struck Haiti, the Philippines, Guatemala, Serbia, Mozambique, Nepal, Turkey, Morocco and more. It also worked with war survivors and refugees in Georgia during its war with Russia, in Serbia and Greece, in Jordan with the Syrian refugees, in Colombia with the Venezuelan refugees, and most recently and ongoing with Ukrainian survivors both in Poland and in Ukraine.

When the tragic need arose following Oct. 7, NATAN responded quickly and ably at home.

The organization’s contributions have been widely recognized, earning the Changing the World Award from the Knesset in 2022 and the Genesis Prize (the “Jewish Nobel”) for its work in Ukraine in 2023.

The heart of NATAN is its community of over 1,700 dedicated volunteers willing to deploy at a moment’s notice.

NATAN volunteers •consist exclusively of experienced, li-

censed professionals (doctors, nurses, dentists, mental health workers, logistics managers and more) who offer their valuable services strictly on a volunteer basis,

•represent the best of Israeli society. Both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs share a strong desire to help and are ready to “run towards the fire,”

•respond immediately when disasters occur. Often, they are the first to arrive at the site of a disaster,

•are trained to assist survivors in addressing both their mental and physical well-being.

Last May, the board announced the appointment of Alice Miller as its new CEO. Miller is well known in Israel as a trailblazer, the first woman to challenge the Israeli Airforce’s ban on female participation in its fighter pilot course, taking her case to the Israeli Supreme Court to do so.

Her victory set a precedent for women to serve in combat in the military and she served in the IAF for ten years as an aerospace engineer. Subsequently she became a successful entrepreneur, a renowned lecturer, and an esteemed icon in Israel.

NATAN is named Abie Natan, renowned pilot turned Israeli peace activist and humanitarian, who was born in Iran, raised in India, and moved to Israel in 1948 to fight with the Jewish state’s nascent air force. He gained international recognition with his illegal “Flight for Peace” from Israel to Egypt, attempting to hand-deliver to Nasser a petition with signatures from over 200,000 Israelis pleading for peace.

Abie Nathan used his fame to organize significant emergency humanitarian missions. Information supplied by NATAN.

Members of NATAN’s Ukraine and Poland Resilience Team in April 2022. NATAN has been responding to natural and man-made disasters since 2004.

NATAN CEO Alice Miller.

30 years ago, we united to free African slaves

TCHARLES JACOBS and BEN POSER

hree decades ago this week, a conflict erupted in Harlem, when reports describing an ongoing Islamic trade in black slaves in Mauritania and Sudan hit the newsstands.

While much of the black community was incensed, others — led by Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam — denied the stories and attacked the activists who brought the news. As this intra-communal clash intensified, a movement evolved that liberated tens of thousands of African slaves and, for the first time since the 1960s, united blacks and Jews in the long march for justice.

A generation ago, I, Charles Jacobs, a Jewish management consultant, discovered that slavery still existed 125 years after America’s Civil War. In the winter of 1990, flipping through a copy of the Economist, I stumbled across the short editorial that was headlined, “Slavery: By any other name,” way in the back on page 42. Its sixth paragraph took my breath away:

In Sudan chattel slavery is spreading fast, as a consequence of the civil war between the black Christian and pagan southerners and the Arab, Muslim north. … In February 1988, a [black] child could be bought for $90; so many slaves are available [nearly two years later] that the price has now fallen to $15.

A child was cheaper than a pizza.

I (who at 19 had attended the March on Washington in 1963 spurred on Martin Luther King Jr., and who spent my college years as a political activist) was horrified. After a few years of research, I co-founded the American Anti-Slavery Group in 1993 with a Mauritanian Muslim refugee named Mohamed Athié.

From the start, I thought that a campaign to liberate these slaves would be a natural extension of the previous decade’s antiapartheid movement, when major humanrights organizations and black leaders passionately took on the issue of racial discrimination. I soon realized this was a mistake when the be-

The jihad in Africa has gotten worse: Black Africans in more than 10 countries are being subjected to rape, slavery and murder.

hemoths, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, decided to treat blacks enslaved by Arabs as a “sensitive” topic.

Mohamed Athié and I broke the news of the modern-day trade in black flesh in the New York Times with an oped, “Bought and Sold,” which ran on July 13, 1994. Soon afterward, we were invited to appear on the only national news show with a predominantly black audience, Tony Brown’s Journal on PBS.

The editor of the City Sun — then the second-largest black paper in Harlem — saw the show and asked his part-time staff writer, Samuel Cotton, to investigate our claims. Cotton contacted me and I mailed him a package of documents that included chilling photographs of slaves. It changed his life.

Cotton spent months putting together a carefully documented series of articles describing the reality of Arab slavery in North Africa. His first piece hit the newsstands on Feb. 1, 1995. It’s blaring front-page headline was “Arab Masters, Black Slaves.”

Immediately, agents of the Nation of Islam went to war against us, declaring that there were no slaves in Sudan while making no comments on Mauritania.

Farrakhan was enraged because these African truths undermined, perhaps as nothing else could, his central mission: to bring American blacks to Islam by portraying it as their true path to freedom. Reports that Arab Muslims were raiding African villages, shooting the men and capturing women and girls as concubines hardly helped him paint Islam as “the black man’s religion.” For Farrakhan, the black Muslim, the case of Mauritania, where Arab-Berber Muslims owned black Muslims as chattel, was (and remains) even worse.

Meanwhile, the Sun and another black paper, The Daily Challenge, published story after story detailing black activists’ and African refugees’ contempt for the NOI’s denials.

Farrakhan’s main spokesman, Abdul Akbar Muhammad, went on Brown’s show to debate Cotton, whose well-reasoned arguments trounced Muhammad’s ramblings. Unsurprisingly, Muhammad blamed me for this communal uproar.

“Dr. Charles Jacobs is Jewish,” he reminded Cotton darkly, and the head of a Jewish “conspiracy” against “the religion of Islam.”

A disgusted Cotton replied that Muhammad’s comments about Jews were “primitive and anti-black” because they assumed “that blacks can only be led around with rings in our noses” and never work as equals with Jews.

As the months went by, we learned that there were fistfights in prisons between black

nationalists and Farrakhan followers. Eventually, one inmate wrote us and said that prison officials banned our newsletters from the jail to avoid the conflict the issue of black slavery unleashed.

Cotton, obsessed with the idea that black people were actually slaves — and black leaders were being quiet about it — embarked on a mission to Mauritania facilitated by an underground Mauritanian abolitionist group to see for himself. He spent two weeks there interviewing former slaves, runaway slaves and even current slaves. His resulting book, Silent Terror, published in 1998, is a heart-wrenching masterpiece.

On March 13, 1996, Cotton, Athié, myself and other South Sudanese living in America were invited to appear as part of a panel discussion at Howard University.

Farrakhan’s influence at Howard was apparent immediately: the moderator, opening the program, announced that “there are many different views” concerning slavery in Africa and that Howard University “does not take a position on any view.” One of the students who came asked about what could be done about the issue in the black community given that Farrakhan denied it was true.

Cotton answered perfectly. In what seems a spectacular irony, that student, contemporary footage confirms, was the young Ta-Nehisi Coates, today one of this country’s most influential black antisemites.

Later that same day, we testified before a special House hearing chaired by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey. Cotton presented the findings from his recent trip, and humiliated former Congressional Black Caucus chair Mervyn Dymally, a Nation of Islam ally and lobbyist for Mauritania, paid to deny that slavery existed there.

The next day, Farrakhan, also in DC, received an award from the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which had mostly ignored our press releases three years earlier. A journalist, likely aware of our congressional hearing, asked him about African slavery.

As The New York Times reported, Farrakhan bellowed at his questioner: “If slavery exists, why don’t you go, as a member of the press, and you look inside of the Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you have found!”

The Baltimore Sun took him up on his challenge, and, that June, published a Pulitzer Prize-nominated series documenting the redemption of enslaved African children. After the Baltimore Sun series, Farrakhan retreated and has not had much to say about his co-religionists enslaving his black “brethren.”

Later that summer, the Clinton administration blocked Farrakhan from receiving a gift of more than $1 billion from his “brother” Muammar Qaddafi. In Qaddafi’s Libya, subSaharan Africans, including black Sudanese, were enslaved regularly. In 2017, CNN obtained a video of an auction in Libya where two black men were sold for $400 each.

By the second half of the 1990s, the American Anti-Slavery Group was working with the Zürich-based NGO Christian Solidarity International, helping them raise money to buy back Sudanese slaves’ freedom. This interested the mainstream media. CSI’s John Eibner, an unsung hero, eventually helped free more than 100,000 slaves. The American Anti-Slavery Group raised money and garnered broad American support for our modern-day abolitionist cause.

I flew with Eibner illegally into southern Sudan twice, the second time on Passover with Rabbi Joseph Polak, then the beloved head of Boston University’s Hillel. The rabbi distributed matzah to the freed slaves and taught their Dinka tribal leaders the Jewish way of never forgetting one’s enslavement. The jihad in Sudan, declared by its Muslim Brotherhood junta, ended in 2005, defeated by brave Dinka soldiers who pushed the government’s armies back. President George W. Bush, who had learned about the Sudan campaign, forced Khartoum to allow the Christian south to decide its fate. In 2011, 98.83% of the southerners voted to secede and form South Sudan, the world’s newest nation. These were victories Cotton, my friend and a true hero, never saw. He died of brain cancer at the age of 56 on Dec. 20, 2003.

Cotton traveled to Mauritania, but never to Sudan. On my second trip in 2011, I recalled him describing in his book a childhood fantasy of freeing his ancestors from a slave ship’s stinking hold, and, as he wrote in Silent Terror, having “a big celebration when we landed back home on the shores of the motherland we thought we would never see again.” In Sudan, I felt that we were helping that dream come true.

Were Cotton alive today, he — the man who helped start a movement that freed tens of thousands — would be standing alongside us in our rekindled movement, the African Jewish Alliance.

The jihad in Africa has only gotten worse: Black Africans in more than 10 countries are being subjected to rape, slavery and murder. Sam Cotton would have been right at the front, showing that we, blacks and Jews united, can challenge and win against outrageous evil.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan delivers a speech at the Watergate Hotel in Washington on Nov. 16, 2017. Mark Wilson, Getty Images via JNS

WINE

AND DINE

Mishloach manot ready yet? Purim is coming!

Purim is near, arriving Thursday evening, March 13. It is an early sign of spring, time to bake a lot and begin to use up the flour and other hametz products in preparation for Passover.

Mishloach manot is a wonderful tradition that calls for us to bring prepared foods to our friends. One of the reasons for this tradition is that Haman spread nasty rumors that the Jews did not get along and were suffering from internal turmoil. The generous gesture of bringing food to neighbors showed that to be untrue.

Even in those days, misinformation was rampant! We continue this tradition today in gestures of friendship and, sometimes, even as a peace offering to make amends and repair relationships.

My grandmother used to bake for days, wrap her treats in layers of waxed paper and place them in round tins. She would give them to the people in her building and to her 11 grandchildren who adored her cookies and coffee cakes.

My mother would make her famous brownies and then supplement with cookies and raisins from the store. I used to set up bags, have my kids decorate them with stickers and art work, then they would fill them with granola bars, grape juice, candy and always some oranges and pretzels.

I had three kids, was working two jobs and had no time to bake. It worked. I only went back to baking once they were grown and I was working only one full-time job. So what if my students got their papers back a day later — as long as I brought in a tray of leftover brownies and cookies!

Today, many of us find ourselves too busy to bake or cook. Luckily, many synagogues and local institutions — as well as several Internet companies — will send baskets on our behalf to friends and family. Some of our schools have children decorate bags and fill them with prepackaged foods and deliver some to Jewish Senior living facilities and then to their own families.

Enjoy the holiday and bring something special to your friends to brighten the end of this dismal winter.

GF Chocolate Chip Cookies (Pareve)

• 1 cup (generous) almond butter

• 1 extra-large egg

• 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 1/4 tsp. (scant) pure almond extract

• 1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

• 1-1/4 cups semi or bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks

• OPTIONAL: 1/2 cup toasted chopped almonds

• 1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins or snipped apricots

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the almond butter, egg, extracts and sugar together until well-blended.

Mix in the chips and nuts and any optional ingredients. Drop by spoonfuls on two cookie sheets. Place in the oven and bake for 8 to 12 minutes. Let cool completely before moving. Makes about 2 dozen.

Almond Chocolate Chip Biscotti (Pareve)

You need to make these the night before, but they are delicious with tea or fruit for dessert

For an extra treat, dip each cookie halfway in melted chocolate and chopped, toasted almonds and refrigerate to harden. Wrap each piece separately or tightly wrap a few together so they won’t crumble.

• 2 cups plus 2 tbsp. unbleached flour

• 1 tsp. baking soda

• Pinch salt

• 1-1/2 cups mini chocolate chips or finely chopped semi-sweet chocolate

• 3 tbsp. softened butter or pareve margarine

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1 cup sliced almonds

• 2 eggs, room temp

• 2 egg whites room temp

• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

• 1/3 tsp. almond extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside. In a small bowl, mix the chocolate chips with 2 tablespoons of flour. Set aside.

In a larger bowl, mix the remainder of the flour, the baking soda and salt. Set aside. Place the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat to soften. Add the sugar and beat until blended. Add the almonds and beat for 30 seconds. Add the eggs and egg whites and beat until evenly colored and creamy. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and beat to blend. Remove the bowl from the stand and mix in the flour. Add the chocolate chips and mix to blend evenly.

Turn the dough out onto a clean, floured surface. Knead for about 2 minutes. Divide into two logs and place them, 4 inches apart, on the cookie sheets. Flatten lightly. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and cool for 15 minutes.

Make diagonal slices about 3/4 inches thick. Watch closely. Turn as soon as the biscotti look slightly golden. Flip the slices onto their sides and toast in a 325-degree oven for 8 to 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely. For a special treat, dip half the biscotti in melted chocolate and then in chopped toasted almonds, if you like.

Triple Fudge Cream Cheese Brownies (Dairy)

Chocolate brownie, chocolate cream cheese and chocolate chunks! These are a very special treat for

chocoholics and are best made and delivered within a day. Refrigerate, then cut and wrap individually in plastic wrap.

FILLING:

• 1 cup chopped excellent quality bittersweet chocolate or mini semisweet chips, divided • 1/4 cup heavy cream

8 oz. brick-style cream cheese, room

Coffee Toffee Crunch Bars.

Almond Chocolate Chip Biscotti. themondaybox.com

temperature

• 1 extra-large egg

• 1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 1 (scant) tbsp. unbleached flour

BROWNIE BATTER:

• 2 sticks plus 2 tbsp. unsalted butter, room temperature

• 1-1/4 cups sugar

• 1/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed

• 1-1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 5 large eggs, room temperature

• 1-1/2 cups unbleached flour

• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1/4 tsp. baking powder

FROSTING:

• 12 to 14 oz. semi or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

PREPARE THE FILLING:

Place half the chocolate and all the cream in a small microwave-safe bowl. Melt in 10 second intervals, stirring after each interval, until just melted. Set aside to cool.

Place the cream cheese, egg and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Pour the cooled chocolate into the cheese mixture and mix just to blend. Remove the bowl from the stand, add the remaining chocolate and the flour and mix well. Refrigerate to cool.

PREPARE BROWNIE BATTER:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter a 9x13 brownie pan. Set aside. Remove the chilled cheese mixture from the refrigerator. Set aside.

Place the butter, sugars and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well after each addition. Scrape bowl as needed.

Sift the cocoa, flour and baking powder together in a small bowl. Set aside. Remove the

bowl from the mixer stand and fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Set aside.

TO ASSEMBLE:

Spread half the chocolate batter into the prepared pan. Drop dollops of the cheese filling over the batter and gently spread as well as you can. When done, top with the remaining chocolate batter. Spread evenly. Bake for 35 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven and immediately sprinkle the chopped chocolate over the hot brownies. Let sit for 3 to 5 minutes, until the chocolate is melted. Spread gently and evenly. Let the bars cool completely before cutting. Makes 12 to 28 bars.

Coffee Toffee Crunch Bars (Dairy)

• 2 cups unbleached flour

• 3/4 tsp. baking powder

• Pinch salt

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened

• 1-1/3 cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed

• 2 Tbsp. Instant espresso powder

• 1-1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

• 1 cup semi or bittersweet chocolate chips, chunks or chopped chocolate

• 1/2 cup toffee candy or toffee bits

• 1/2 cup sliced almonds

• OPTIONAL: 3 to 4 oz. melted chocolate.

Preheat the oven to 325. Place flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and whisk. Set aside. Place the butter, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add espresso powder and beat 1 minute, scraping bowl as needed.

Add flour mixture in thirds, beating on low after each addition, just until blended. Scrape bowl as needed. Remove bowl from stand and

stir in chips, bits and almonds. Use clean hands and spread the dough into a 12-inch square onto a large, ungreased, rimmed baking sheet. Prick thoroughly with a fork. Bake until edges look golden, about 30

to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and carefully cut into 48 pieces. If desired, drizzle with melted chocolate. Transfer to a rack or plate to cool. Makes 48.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Triple Fudge Cream Cheese Brownies.

Jewish Star Torah columnists:

•Rabbi Avi Billet of Anshei Chesed, Boynton Beach, FL, mohel and Five Towns native •Rabbi David Etengoff of Magen David Yeshivah, Brooklyn

•Rabbi Binny Freedman, rosh yeshiva of Orayta, Jerusalem

Contributing writers:

•Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks zt”l,

former chief rabbi of United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth •Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh

Weinreb, OU executive VP emeritus

•Rabbi Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi, Great Synagogue of Sydney •Rabbi Yossy Goldman, life rabbi emeritus, Sydenham Shul, Johannesburg and president of the South African Rabbinical Association.

Contact our columnists at: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Five Towns Candlelighting: From the White Shul, Far Rockaway, NY

תבש לש בכוכ

Fri Feb 21 / Shevat 23

Shabbos Mevarchim • Mishpatim

Candles: 5:18 • Havdalah: 6:29

Fri Feb 28 / Shevat 30

Rosh Chodesh Adar (Fri and Sat)

Shekalim • Terumah

Candles: 5:27 • Havdalah: 6:37

Fri March 7 / Adar 7

Tetzaveh • Shabbos Zachor Candles: 5:34 • Havdalah: 6:44

Fri March 14 / Adar 14

Ki Sisa (Fri is Purim, Sat is Shushan Purim)

Candles: 6:42• Havdalah: 7:52

Fri March 21 / Adar 21

Shabbat Parah • Yayakhel)

Candles: 6:49 • Havdalah: 7:59

Fri March 28 / Adar 28

Shabbat Hachodesh

Candles: 6:57 • Havdalah: 8:07

Slavery would eventually end … but slowly

rabbi Sir JonaThan SaCkS zt”l

In Parshat Mishpatim we witness one of the great stylistic features of the Torah, namely its transition from narrative to law.

Until now the book of Exodus has been primarily narrative: the story of the enslavement of the Israelites and their journey to freedom. Now comes detailed legislation, the “constitution of liberty.”

This is not accidental but essential. In Judaism, law grows out of the historical experience of the people. Egypt was the Jewish people’s school of the soul; memory was its ongoing seminar in the art and craft of freedom. It taught them what it felt like to be on the wrong side of power.

“You know what it feels like to be a stranger,” says a resonant phrase in this week’s parsha (Ex. 23:9). Jews were the people commanded never to forget the bitter taste of slavery so that they would never take freedom for granted. Those who do so, eventually lose it.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the opening of the parsha. We have been reading about the Israelites’ historic experience of slavery. So the social legislation of Mishpatim begins with slavery. What is fascinating is not only what it says but what it doesn’t say.

It doesn’t say: abolish slavery.

Surely it should have done. Is that not the whole point of the story thus far? Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. He, as the Egyptian viceroy Tzofenat Paneach, threatens them with slavery. Generations later, when a pharaoh arises who “knew not Joseph,” the entire Israelite people become Egypt’s slaves. Slavery, like vengeance, is a vicious circle that has no natural end. Why not, then, give it a supernatural end? Why did G-d not say: ‘There shall be no more slavery’?

The Torah has already given us an implicit answer. Change is possible in human nature, but it takes time: time on a vast scale, centuries, even millennia.

There is little doubt that in terms of the Torah’s value system the exercise of power by one person over another, without their consent, is a fundamental assault against human dignity. This is not just true of the relationship between master and slave.

It is true, according to many classic Jewish commentators, of the relationship between king

Change is possible in human nature, but it takes time: centuries, even millennia.

and subjects, rulers and ruled. According to the Sages it is even true of the relationship between G-d and human beings.

The Talmud says that if G-d really did coerce the Jewish people to accept the Torah by “suspending the mountain over their heads” (Shabbat 88a) that would constitute an objection to the very terms of the covenant itself.

We are G-d’s avadim, servants, only because our ancestors freely chose to be (see Joshua 24, where Joshua offers the people freedom, if they so choose, to walk away from the covenant then and there).

So slavery is to be abolished, but it is a fundamental principle of G-d’s relationship with us that he does not force us to change faster than is possible of our own freewill. So Mishpatim does not abolish slavery, but it sets in motion a series of fundamental laws that will lead people, albeit at their own pace, to abolish it of their own accord. Here are the laws:

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

What is being done in these laws? First, a fundamental change is taking place in the nature of slavery. No longer is it a permanent status; it is a temporary condition.

A Hebrew slave goes free after seven years. He or she knows this. Liberty awaits the slave not at the whim of the master but by Divine command. When you know that within a fixed time you are going to be free, you may be a slave in body but in your own mind you are a free human being who has temporarily lost their liberty. That in itself is revolutionary.

This alone, though, was not enough. Six years are a long time. Hence the institution of Shabbat, ordained so that one day in seven a slave could breathe free air: no one could command him to work:

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the L-rd your G-d. On it you shall not do any work, neither you … nor your male or female servant … so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the L-rd your G-d brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. That is why the L-rd your G-d has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. Deut. 5:12-14

But the Torah is acutely aware that not every slave wants liberty. This too emerges out of Israelite history. More than once in the wilderness the Israelites wanted to go back to Egypt. They said, “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” (Num. 11:5).

As Rashi points out, the phrase “at no cost” [chinam] cannot be understood literally. They paid for it with their labor and their lives. “At

no cost” means “free of mitzvot,” of commands, obligations, duties. Freedom carries a highest price, namely, moral responsibility. Many people have shown what Erich Fromm called “fear of freedom.” Rousseau spoke of “forcing people to be free” — a view that led in time to the reign of terror following the French Revolution.

The Torah does not force people to be free, but it does insist on a ritual of stigmatization. If a slave refuses to go free, his master “shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl.” Rashi explains: Why was the ear chosen to be pierced rather than all the other limbs of the body?

Said Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai: “The ear that heard on Mount Sinai: ‘For to Me re the children of Israel servants’ and he, nevertheless, went ahead and acquired a master for himself, should [have his ear] pierced.”

Rabbi Shimon expounded this verse in a beautiful manner: Why are the door and the doorpost different from other objects of the house? G-d, in effect, said: “The door and doorpost were witnesses in Egypt when I passed over the lintel and the two doorposts, and I said: ‘For to Me are the children of Israel servants,’ they are My servants, not servants of servants, and this person went ahead and acquired a master for himself, he shall [have his ear] pierced in their presence.”

A slave may stay a slave but not without being reminded that this is not what G-d wants for His people. The result of these laws was to create a dynamic that would in the end lead to an abolition of slavery, at a time of free human choosing. And so it happened. The Quakers, Methodists and Evangelicals, most famous among them William Wilberforce, who led the campaign in Brit-

ain to abolish the slave trade were driven by religious conviction, inspired not least by the biblical narrative of the Exodus, and by the challenge of Isaiah “to proclaim freedom for captives and for prisoners, release from darkness” (Is. 61:1). Slavery was abolished in the United States only after a civil war, and there were those who cited the Bible in defense of slavery. As Abraham Lincoln put it in his second Inauguration: Both read the same Bible and pray to the same G-d, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just G-d’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

Yet slavery was abolished in the United States, not least because of the affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, among them “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson, who wrote those words, was himself a slave-owner.

Yet such is the latent power of ideals that eventually people see that by insisting on their right to freedom and dignity while denying it to others, they are living a contradiction. That is when change takes place, and it takes time.

If history tells us anything it is that G-d has patience, though it is often sorely tried. He wanted slavery abolished but He wanted it to be done by free human beings coming to see of their own accord the evil it is and the evil it does.

The G-d of history, who taught us to study history, had faith that eventually we would learn the lesson of history: that freedom is indivisible. We must grant freedom to others if we truly seek it for ourselves.

Challenges and opportunities of emunah, bitachon

Whenever I am in Israel, I’m always struck by the fact that the word bitachon in modern Hebrew means security or defense (as in Defense Minister is Sar HaBitachon), while in Torah-speak it means trust or faith. It’s even pronounced differently — in modern Israeli Hebrew, the former is pronounced bitaCHON, with the accent on the last syllable, while in typical Ashkenazi Hebrew, the latter is pronounced bi-TA-chon, with the emphasis on the middle syllable.

Then there’s the word emunah. It is usually translated as faith, while trust in modern Hebrew is usually translated as emun or aminut. Confusing isn’t it? Do the words emunah and bitachon mean the same thing or different things? Does it matter? This is not a new question.

The great Chazon Ish, Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, great leader and posek of Lithuanian Jewry in Israel and the world over, who died in 1953, wrote an incredible sefer of mussar (ethics and morality) entitled Sefer Emunah U’bitachon. It was published a year after his death and always remained an opaque tome, difficult to understand, given its flowing, poetic and sometimes ambiguous language and deeply complex concepts.

In 2024 a new more approachable English translation was composed by Rabbi David Na-

kash. Clearly his translation adopted the idea that emunah is faith and bitachon is trust.

Practically speaking, the Chazon Ish indicates that emunah is “contemplating the ways and works of Hashem.” He describes himself sitting and contemplating the stars at night, as if in a “trance,” visibly moved with tears streaming down his cheeks”. Another time he had to have a flower removed from his room, because as he inspected it, he was so overwhelmed by the wonder of creation that he “felt faint“. Regarding bitachon, this is the knowledge that all comes from Hashem, and we must trust in Him no matter what. For that reason, the Chazon Ish was against excessive hishtadlut (human effort). That had practical application when the question arose in the yeshiva to raise much needed funds, and whether the school

should purchase a lottery ticket.

The Chazon Ish was firmly against it saying, “one does not need to help Hashem and show Him which pipeline he can use to send money.”

While one could certainly object to this line of reasoning, as is illustrated by the old joke about the Jew, who weekly begged Hashem for a financial windfall, and that he should win the lottery, only to be told by a Bat Kol, a Heavenly Voice, “Reb yid, buy a ticket!“

Still I believe what the Chazon Ish is saying is that emunah is an incredible faith that all we see around us is not happenstance , but the incredible work of Hashem and we should appreciate it, while bitachon is the belief in absolute trust in Hashem, and no matter what the result this is what Hashem wants.

Eye for an eye? Literally, it’s not the Jewish way

Ihad an aunt who was a kindergarten teacher for many years. She once told me about a child who would bite other children. No amount of persuasion seemed to work. Then one day, when he was caught biting a fellow kindergarten classmate, my aunt promptly took his arm — and bit him back!

After a moment of shock the boy burst into tears, but as she described it to me, it was the last time he bit another child! I wonder what such an act would lead to today. Would she have been

summarily terminated? Disciplined? Put on trial? In fact, the boy’s mother actually appreciated her action as it finally put an end to what had been a very difficult and embarrassing dilemma for her as a parent.

A decade ago, my men and I were attached to a paratrooper unit for a few weeks of reserve duty in the Gush Etzion and the Hebron region.

Part of an IDF experiment during the “knives intifada” of 2013–14, the idea was to insert seasoned commanders with younger reservists the better to marry the wisdom and calm of older commanders with the physical prowess and high motivation of younger soldiers.

For the most part this experiment worked well, although as a 50 year old, keeping up with 25-year-olds proved to be a bit more than some of us had bargained for.

During the hafsadim (hafarot seder, or Palestinian riots), we were sent to El Aroub, a nasty little Arab village on the Northern end of Hebron. Teens would often throw rocks, bottles, and iron bars at Jewish civilians driving along the highway, and army units would be called in to protect the roads and clear the way so civilians could drive safely. On this day, two rockthrowing teenagers were caught after a Jewish mother and her two children had been severely injured; the culprits were taken to the local army base for processing.

By the time we got there a few hundred people had gathered including rock throwers and masked Palestinians riling up the crowd, alongside women and children. The fear we felt as soldiers (bear in mind we were not allowed to use live fire unless we could later prove our lives

were in danger, and many of us did not even have live ammo in our guns) was in large part due to a story that we had been told about from the reserve unit serving in the area the month before we arrived.

Some of the Palestinian kids had become expert in the use of slings and would regularly use large marbles in their slingshots, aiming them with an impressive degree of precision at the IDF soldiers. A deputy commander in an exactly similar situation had been hit in the knee by such a marble. It completely shattered his kneecap and ended his military career, to put it mildly.

We had been warned what such a marble might do to us in the event we were hit and many of us had stuffed wads of thick newspapers into our pants to protect our groins; not exactly a

See Freedman on page 22

These were among the sundry sins of my youth

Famous men have said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” There are various opinions as to whom to attribute this wise saying, but it seems quite clear that it originated with the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw.

Even though I was born in the early years of the Holocaust and grew up in its aftermath, I was fortunate to have benefitted from safety and security. My family was intact, I was blessed with both sets of grandparents and one great-grandmother, and I had an excellent Jewish and secular education.

My Jewish education was enriched by several

of my rabbinic teachers, all of whom survived the Holocaust and each of whom had their own stories to tell. They certainly had a lot of Torah to impart to us, having all been products of the famed Lithuanian yeshivot. Some had even been children or grandchildren of famed Talmudic scholars and spiritual guides.

However, while my classmates and I tried our best to relate to these gentlemen, we found it difficult to do so. We followed their curriculum, which was essentially limited to Talmud study, but our American upbringing created a barrier between us, so that we could not really appreciate what they had to teach us.

Only as we entered adulthood did it dawn on us that we had missed a golden opportunity by dismissing or ignoring the precious life-lessons and perspectives upon authentic traditional Judaism that they possessed and were eager to pass on to us.

Indeed, youth proved to be wasted on the young. We were simply too young to accept the treasures we had missed.

One of these teachers was a man named Rabbi Simcha Zissel Levovitz, of blessed memory. Long after we had lost touch with each other, I discovered that he was the son of the very wellknown Reb Yerucham Levovitz, the mashgiach ruchani or spiritual guide of the Mirrer Yeshiva where he served for close to forty years before his death just prior to the Holocaust. I do not recall his mentioning his great father during the year that I was among his seventh-grade students.

Much more recently, but still some time ago, I learned that Rav Simcha Zissel had collected and edited and eventually published a collection of his father’s many lectures. I immediately recognized the possibility of rectifying the missed opportunity that I had “wasted” in my youth.

At this point in my life, I keep a volume or two

of this collection with me wherever I travel. It is entitled Sefer Daas Chochmah u’Mussar, “Book of Knowledge, Wisdom, and Ethics,” and it contains material which is relevant to our lives to this very day.

One of these lectures connects us in a remarkably timely fashion. For one thing, it was delivered on the Fast of Esther, the 13th of Adar, 1935. This Shabbat, we anticipate the month of Adar that is fast approaching — together with Purim and the Fast of Esther which precedes it. More striking is the fact that this lecture deals with the problem of antisemitism, which has become frighteningly prevalent and evermore threatening in our current difficult times.

The Book of Esther, which we read twice on this happy holiday, is a study in antisemitism. The villain Haman strives to eradicate the Jewish people — man, woman, and child. His hateful pro-

Mishpatim’s mitzvot are at center of Jewish life

Mishpatim is one of the more prolific parshiot in terms of mitzvot. Close to 10 percent of the mitzvot of the Torah are in Mishpatim. What sometimes gets lost in translation is the mitzvot’s focus. Since we view shul as essential to our daily and weekly existence, we somehow get the impression that shul ritual is where most of our day-to-day mitzvot are observed. In that sense, owing to how we conduct synagogue ritual in the Orthodox community, sometimes the

feeling is that our community is more male than female-centered in terms of religious obligation. This would certainly be a valid argument if Judaism were all about the wearing of a tallis and tefillin, and the reading of the Torah and leading the prayers in a minyan.

But here is the secret: Judaism is not centered or focused on the shul. The shul is a means to fulfill a small number of mitzvot in a more special atmosphere, in the presence of a minyan.

It helps elevate davening, but one can pray almost anywhere. It gives those who go daily a mini-structure to the day, but having set times for tefillah can give anyone structure. It gives us a forum to fulfill our mitzvah of reading from the Torah, but full-blown Torah study is available to everyone with a Chumash.

Beyond that, shul is not where the center of Judaism and Jewish practice lies.

It lies in the home. It lies in the world. It lies in how people deal with one another. It is in the settling of disputes that inevitably rise.

When two people get married, we don’t bless them that they have a great shul life. We say, “You should build a bayis ne’eman b’Yisrael.” A house of faith, of trustworthiness, where G-d is placed on a pedestal, and how people behave and act defines our values.

That’s the difference between middot (model behavior) and mitzvot (fulfilling commandments) as well.

Some mitzvot contain in them good middot.

Consider the following mitzvot: Sharing with the needy, standing for the elderly, loving your

neighbor, loving the stranger. Mitzvot in general are meant to help us develop our middot, to have awareness of our surroundings, our goals in life, our relationship with G-d, and how that relationship is supposed to inform our development as a good person.

And Parshat Mishpatim is a great example for this. How many of the mitzvot in Mishpatim deal with shul? Maybe one. “Three times a year all your remembrances shall appear before the Master, Hashem.” This refers to going up to Jerusalem during the holidays, when there is a Temple. But there is no Temple today.

What follows are mitzvot many of us can relate to on a regular basis.

•Not to strike or curse our parents.

Parsha of the week

Rabbi avi billet Jewish Star columnist

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Jews against Trump Gaza plan: ‘Useful idiots’

It turns out there are some people who still believe in the symbolism and power of fullpage advertisements in the New York Times. Among them are a great many Jewish celebrities and spiritual leaders who think the institution that remains the most important forum for left-wing journalism is the right place to feature their views about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and President Donald Trump’s policies.

So it was to the print edition of the Times that these quintessential “as a Jew” types turned to vent their anger about Trump’s proposal to send Palestinian Arabs out of Gaza. To them, the idea of taking a population primarily composed of people who claim to be refugees out of an area that has been devastated by war and giving them an opportunity for a new and better existence represents “ethnic cleansing.”

It was signed by a variety of “a,” “b” and “c” list actors and celebrities, as well as a few hundred liberal rabbis. You’ve heard of some of them: actors Joaquin Phoenix, Wallace Shawn and Debra Winger and playwright/screenwriter Tony Kushner. The names of others, like Jonathan Glazer, who got his 15 minutes of fame by denouncing Israel at last year’s Oscars ceremony when accepting an award for a movie about the Holocaust, may also ring a bell.

Still others have attained a degree of notoriety by being inveterate Israel-bashers and antiZionists like writers Peter Beinart, Judith Butler and Naomi Klein.

The rabbis are a mixed lot. Some are still trying to maintain a line between what we used to call “liberal Zionism” and the intellectually fashionable stance of those who are explicit about favoring the destruction of Israel. Some of them gave up that pretense and are among those who seek to give a dubious religious endorsement to a position opposing the defense of the one Jewish state on the planet against genocidal terrorists.

But wherever they fall on that spectrum, they are the contemporary public face of those

It’s time to tell these ‘as a Jew’ renegades we will not accept their claim to the moral high ground.

who seem to think that the essence of Jewish identity is to be found in that disreputable stance.

They are the “as a Jew” Jews.

Full-page ads in the Times may still cost a lot of money, even in an era when the overwhelming majority of those who read news outlets do so digitally rather than in print or only on social-media platforms. But the choice to go that route is more about serving notice to the leftwing political ecosphere that many prominent Jews take the side of those who oppose Israel’s existence and against those, like Trump, who have made it clear that they wish to eradicate Hamas terrorists rather than the Jewish state.

Can Trump succeed?

The feasibility of the president’s idea is debatable. It’s not clear how it will be implemented, or if any Arab or Muslim nation is prepared to take in and absorb anything more than a token number of Palestinian Arabs, as Jordan’s King Abdullah was strong-armed by Trump to do in a visit to the White House this week.

And there’s no doubt that Hamas and its many enablers in the West, as well as among nations in the region, are bitterly opposed to it. They’re against anything that will reduce their ability to use civilians as pawns in their ongoing efforts to turn back the clock to a point in time when the modern-day State of Israel didn’t exist.

If it is to happen, it would be predicated on a

resumption of fighting in the Strip, presumably after the ceasefire-hostage release deal inevitably collapses. Despite the green light he received from Trump this week to return to the effort to eradicate Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prefers to stick to the terrible deal he was forced into accepting if it means that more of the remaining Israeli hostages are released.

But given that Hamas will never agree to give up power in Gaza or its goal of returning the conflict to where it was on Oct. 6, 2023 — meaning that it would be free to make good on its pledge to launch more Oct. 7-style atrocities — the war is bound to resume sooner or later.

The existential nature of the battle against Hamas is clear to almost all Israelis, including those who oppose Netanyahu. But it is of no interest to the “as a Jew” Jews, be they film industry figures, anti-Israel scribblers or liberal rabbis.

Their effort is spearheaded by a group calling itself “In Our Name.” Its website states a goal of raising money to help “organizations that support Palestinian-led efforts to build safety, dignity and self-determination in Palestine, and that support solidarity and other organizing among Palestinian and other Arab and Muslim communities in the United States.”

Ignoring reality of Oct. 7

The language it employs is an effort to distinguish itself from the allegedly more avowedly anti-Israel groups like Not in Our Name, Jewish

Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Even in the first days after the attacks on Jewish communities in southern Israel, members of this group were already fundraising and organizing to oppose Israel’s efforts to defend itself against those who had committed mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction on Oct. 7.

But any spin of In Our Name supporters as being somehow more principled or humane than those extremists is a distinction without a difference. Like those who have been demanding a cease-fire from the moment Hamas’s invasion of Israel was turned back, all of these people remain, at best, Hamas’s “useful idiots.”

Those who are raising funds to be employed in Gaza for the purposes stated are, whether they fully understand it or not, essentially propping up what is left of the rule of Hamas over the Palestinians.

To speak of Palestinian “self-determination” in the context of the current war or to help bolster the network of pro-Hamas organizations that have spread the message of hatred for Israel in the United States should not be mistaken for neutrality about the terrorist movement that launched this war and seeks to keep it going until Israel surrenders or collapses.

While the supposed stated purpose is merely “humanitarian aid,” the world has seen in the last 16 months that most, if not all, of the money sent into Gaza is used in one way or another to bolster Hamas.

See Tobin on page 22

JOnaThan S. TObIn

JnS Editor-in-Chief

Pro-Palestinian protesters, including American Jews, demonstrate near the White House in Washington on Feb. 4. Hanna Leka, Middle East Images, AFP via Getty Images via JNS

US Jews back Israel. Let’s act on that fact.

GLOBAL FOCUS BEN COHEN

Reading the results of a poll of American Jews demonstrating that a strong majority of the community believes that antiZionism is antisemitism, frowning harshly upon the tiny minority of their number associated with the global movement expressing solidarity with Hamas, it struck me that the only reason we pay attention to anti-Zionist Jews is because there are anti-Zionist non-Jews.

The poll, commissioned by a newly formed advocacy organization called the Jewish Majority, reveals that a full 70% of American Jews regard anti-Zionism as antisemitic by definition. An even greater number, 76%, said that the various campus demonstrations and protests in support of Hamas and its Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom in Israel were antisemitic. Asked whether Hamas wanted to commit genocide against Jews and Israelis, 85% answered yes. Between 73% and 79% said they were either members or supporters of mainstream Jewish organizations like the Jewish Federations of North America, the AntiDefamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish National Fund.

Surveys in other countries where there is

Every Jewish institution should declare that Jewish anti-Zionists are no longer considered part of our community.

both a sizable Jewish community and a coruscating wave of antisemitism have delivered similar results.

Hamas and its international cheerleaders are widely detested, and Israel is regarded supportively and affectionately, while tempered, proportionate criticism of Israeli policy — sadly, almost invisible these days — is seen as entirely acceptable and not deserving of the label “antisemitic.” Additionally, these surveys show that many Jews in America and abroad are feeling scared and rejected to the point of hiding their identities, and again, they blame Hamas and its supporters for this wretched situation.

So why do Jews who oppose the overwhelming majority get so much attention? Why can’t we just — as the survey data indicates we should — ignore them?

The answer is that the anti-Zionist non-Jews won’t let us.

Even though, as I argued recently, the use value of Jewish anti-Zionism is dramatically declining, and even though antisemitic barbs are far more acceptable now on the anti-Zionist left than they used to be, Jewish anti-Zionists can still provide cover for Hamas advocates when they want to push back against the Jewish community’s concerns.

For example, the weekly hate marches mounted by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) in the United Kingdom usually feature a tiny section of demonstrators who call themselves the “Jewish Bloc” (incidentally, so as not to indulge Jewish “privilege,” the Jewish Bloc has now been joined by a Christian Bloc!)

When the PSC tried to organize a demonstration last month in central London on a Saturday — planning to gather in a location two minutes from a synagogue where Shabbat services would be in full flow — the Jewish Bloc was wheeled out as evidence to counter the protests of Jewish leaders that such an assembly risked intimidating those attending the synagogue and

even degenerating into antisemitic violence.

The presence of these Jews also helps to enable antisemitism by diverting the wider public from perceiving the myriad connections between obsessive hatred of Israel and the classical antisemitism many of them learned about in school.

Pro-Hamas marches invariably feature signs and placards — invocations of the Holocaust, accusations of Jewish media and financial control — that make the slogan “From the River to the Sea” seem mild by comparison.

But if you have a photo of a handful of Jews standing alongside looking unperturbed, then where’s the problem?

By the same token, if someone unschooled in these issues sees the name “Jewish Voice for Peace” above a graphic declaring that “death to Israel” is a “moral imperative,” and adding, “may the entire colony burn to the ground for good” (as posted by that organization’s University of Michigan chapter last year) will they grasp that the message is antisemitic and genocidal?

And when these groupings refuse to condemn the antisemitism of a Kanye West or a Yahya Sinwar — but not Elon Musk, and only then because he sits at Donald Trump’s right hand — then isn’t it reasonable to assume that their silence equates to acceptance?

See Cohen on page 23

Moral bankruptcy, hypocrisy of Intl Red Cross

ALAN BAkEr

The 1986 foundational statutes of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Red Crescent Movement proclaim that: International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies together constitute a worldwide humanitarian movement, whose mission is to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found, to protect life and health and ensure respect for the human being, in particular in times of armed conflict and other emergencies.

On issues of impartiality and neutrality, the statutes similarly proclaim:

•Impartiality — It makes no discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinions. It endeavours to relieve the suffering of individuals, being guided solely by their needs, and to give priority to the most urgent cases of distress.

•Neutrality — In order to continue to enjoy the confidence of all, the Movement may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.”

That the Red Cross failed the Israeli hostages is not just unforgettable. It is unforgivable.

Specifically, the statutes require the ICRC:

To endeavor at all times — as a neutral institution whose humanitarian work is carried out particularly in time of international and other armed conflicts or internal strife — to ensure the protection of and assistance to military and civilian victims of such events and of their direct results.

For an organization whose sole acknowledged purpose and mission is to help victims of wars and human rights violations, it is patently obvious that the ICRC has totally failed in its mission, as reflected in its mishandling of Israel’s hostage crisis.

The ICRC’s abject failure in its most basic responsibilities to the more than 250 people from some 20 nations kidnapped and taken hostage by the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group on Oct. 7, 2023 is tragic in and of itself. There are even worse ramifications: The ICRC’s reasoning for its malfeasance, and more far-reaching, the evident lack of capability, willingness, seriousness, or even perhaps willful and deliberate apathy, neglect and laxity of ICRC staff.

This historic dereliction is not limited to the ICRC and its staff. Moral and legal responsibility lies chiefly with the Swiss government, under whose auspices the ICRC functions, together with the state parties to the Geneva Conventions, who finance its very existence and are in the position to monitor, direct and influence the ICRC’s functioning.

One may indeed ask where the Swiss government has been, with its unique international stature, in the context of the Israeli hostage situation?

HWhy have they not leveraged their historically renowned international reputation and stature to impress upon those elements influencing the Hamas terror organization, chiefly Qatar, Egypt, the United Nations and other Arab elements, that Israeli victims of terror and kidnapping are entitled to humane treatment?

This is particularly evident in light of the remarks by Swiss Federation President Karin Keller-Sutter in her Feb. 10, 2025 Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony address. There, Keller-Sutter emphasized the crucial remembrance and lessons of the Holocaust and its commensurate total civilizational breakdown, especially now that antisemitism is reemerging in Switzerland, in some cases openly. She noted: There can be no tolerance of Jews being intimidated, discriminated against or threatened. Our democratic values of tolerance, mutual respect and coexistence are not compatible with signs of hatred based on race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

ow is it conceivable that the Swiss government and the ICRC have sat idly for more than 16 months while being openly manipulated and abused by the Hamas terror organization? Rather, they have passively accepted Hamas’s refusal to allow the transfer of medications, and medical and humanitarian visits, to the sick and wounded and all illegally held hostages, and to allow humane and respectful treatment of the dead — all this without taking requisite and vital international action in light of their unique international status.

Given the celebrated constitutional impartiality and neutrality of the ICRC, it challenges

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs See Baker on page 23

Red Cross vehicles wait at the spot where Hamas terrorists are expected to hand over Israeli hostages in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Feb. 15. Bashar Taleb, AFP via Getty Images

Progressive Jews rally against Israel, deriding Zionism as apartheid, at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn on May 21, 2021. Andrew Lichtenstein, Corbis via Getty Images via JNS

Terrorism still pays, PA is simply rebranding it

For Palestinians, terrorism quite literally pays. While the international community continues to debate so-called obstacles to peace between Israelis and Palestinians (and even considers the Palestinian Authority as a potential governing body for Gaza, despite its deep unpopularity) one of the most glaring and dangerous barriers to the PA’s legitimacy is its systematic financial incentivization of terrorism. This policy, commonly known as “pay for

Those

who suspected Mahmoud Abbas’ decree was too good to be true, were likely right.

slay” or “the Martyrs Fund,” rewards those who commit acts of violence against Israelis, ensuring that terrorism remains a profitable path rather than a deterrent to peace.

The PA hands out more than $300 million annually in stipends to terrorists and their families, a program that has been enshrined in Palestinian law, requiring 7% of the PA’s budget to be allocated to these payments.

Terrorists who murder Israelis receive higher salaries than Palestinian teachers and doctors. A terrorist serving a life sentence earns four times the average Palestinian salary and eight times the minimum wage. The more blood spilled, the greater the financial reward.

Headlines broke last week over PA President Mahmoud Abbas issuing a decree revoking the Martyrs Fund payments, leaving many shocked and surprised by the move. But for those who suspected it was too good to be true, they were likely right — because Abbas’s so-called restructuring of these payments is nothing more than political theater.

The decree, which allegedly transfers these payments to a new “Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment,” does not

dismantle the terror stipend system; it simply rebrands it under a different name. Abbas still appoints the leadership of this new entity, and there is no transparency to ensure that payments will now be based solely on economic need rather than rewarding violence.

This latest maneuver is a desperate attempt to placate international donors while continuing the same heinous practice through alternative means.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry dismissed this announcement as a “fraudulent exercise,” and American lawmakers from both sides of the aisle remain highly skeptical. Sen. Tom Cotton (RArk.) pointedly stated, “It would be naive to think that after years of facilitating terrorism against Israelis and Americans, the Palestinian Authority would suddenly have a change of heart.”

The PA has a long history of defying international pressure and refusing to end “pay for slay.”

The United States attempted to curb the policy with the 2018 Taylor Force Act, cutting U.S. aid to the PA unless these payments ceased.

Abbas openly defied the law, increasing the terror stipends instead. Former Jenin Gov. Akram Rajoub doubled down in a recent interview, stat-

Trump plan v. Qatari’s Al Jazeera-jacked power

For years, and long before Oct. 7, Gaza has languished as one of the most troubled enclaves on Earth. Now, President Donald Trump has announced a bold — some would say quixotic — plan to “take over” Gaza, turn it into a glittering American “Riviera of the Middle East,”

If

Trump is serious about forging a solution in Gaza, he must address the contradictions in Washington’s relationship with Doha.

and provide alternate homes for Gazans in Egypt and Jordan.

A glaring obstacle stands in the way: Qatar.

If Trump expects Arab leaders to help solve the Gaza crisis, he must also pressure Qatar to rein in its propaganda networks and ongoing alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. These networks, notably Al Jazeera, have long used the Palestinian quagmire as a cudgel to hammer other Arab regimes, portraying them as complicit in Israel’s siege or indifferent to Palestinian suffering. In so doing, they undermine rival governments that are already wary of a backlash from their own citizens and the broader Arab street.

Qatar’s posture in the Middle East has always involved a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, Doha flaunts its relations with Washington, hosts a major US military base and positions itself as a modernizing, business-friendly emirate. On the other, it funds and gives shelter to Islamist groups, from the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to more extreme jihadists. That same duality extends to its media empire. Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel regularly lambasts the region’s monarchies and strongmen for failing to support the Palestinians, all while the Qatari

monarchy cultivates cordial ties with Western powers like the United States, having thousands of American technocrats and professors on its generous payroll.

This duplicity is not lost on the region’s leaders. They know that if they so much as nod in the direction of a US plan for Gaza, Al Jazeera’s cameras will magnify every perceived betrayal or shortfall, labeling them traitors who capitulate to American imperial designs.

Domestic opponents in Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, for instance, could seize on that narrative — weaponizing Al Jazeera’s coverage to rouse popular outrage. No leader wants to face the wave of condemnation that might stem from a 24/7 news cycle painting them as complicit in the final displacement of Palestinians.

If Trump is serious about forging a solution in Gaza, then he must address the contradictions in Washington’s relationship with Qatar. Historically, the United States has treated Doha with kid gloves. Qatar invests heavily in American real estate, business ventures, universities, and, not least, lavish lobbying campaigns in Washington. Over the years, an array of Beltway insiders, think tanks and political influencers have found themselves on Qatari payrolls, enjoying lucrative consulting contracts that often hamper scrutiny of Doha’s double-dealings.

See Mansour on

Recollections of the 10 presidents I have met

PETER KING

Retired Congressman

As we celebrated Presidents’ Day this week, I thought back on presidents I’ve had the opportunity to meet over the years. Except for my first meeting with Richard Nixon in 1967, before he was president, all of those meetings resulted from my involvement in politics.

During the summer of 1967, between my second and third years of law school, I worked as an

I was always struck by Reagan’s presence, sense of dignity and leadership. He never disappointed.

intern in Nixon’s Wall Street law firm. (The fellow intern I was assigned to work with that summer was Rudy Giuliani — who was then a liberal Democrat.) In addition to the chance encounters we had with Nixon in the hallway or elevator, the other interns and I had an almost two-hour-lunch discussion with him, during which he demonstrated his expansive knowledge of foreign and domestic issues. Surprisingly, he also displayed a certain shyness.

A quarter-century later, in 1993, the then former president was in Washington to address Republicans in Congress, where I told him how much I appreciated the long-ago internship. He was no longer shy, but seemingly at peace. The following year, I attended his funeral in California.

President Gerald Ford was in the closing days of his 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter when he spoke at a massive rally at the Nassau Coliseum. At a reception afterward, I found Ford gracious and friendly. A class act. The next time I saw him was in 1998, at Sonny Bono’s funeral in California.

I had just two brief encounters with Jimmy Carter, the first an introduction at Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral in Jerusalem in 1995. The second was about 10 years ago, when I was on a Delta Shuttle,

waiting to takeoff for Washington, when Carter got on the plane, recognized me, shook my hand and gave me a warm hello and a big smile — an awkward moment for me, since I had attacked him for something on national TV just the day before!

Except for a White House briefing for New York Republicans in 1987, my dealings with President Ronald Reagan consisted of handshakes and pho-

tos at political events in Nassau County and Manhattan. I was always struck by his presence — his sense of dignity and leadership. He never disappointed.

President George Bush 41 was the last of the old-school presidents, in the best sense of that term. He was very knowledgeable and always respectful of his office. In addition to greeting him at political events before and after his presidency, I was invited, along with other newly elected Republicans, to meet with him in the Oval Office in his final days as president in January 1993. It was inspiring and memorable. He didn’t have a word of regret or complaint. True stature.

Though President Barack Obama offered to appoint me ambassador to Ireland, my dealings with him were infrequent and businesslike. He was always polite, and always “no drama Obama.”

My contacts with Joe Biden were when he was senator and vice president, primarily at social events in Washington. He was invariably cordial and humorous. Always greeted me with a big smile and grin, and would kid me that Irish guys should always be Democrats. He was sharp; very different from how he was as president.

ing unequivocally, “The Palestinian Authority will not stop funding the families of our martyrs even if we are down to the last penny.”

Despite this, Western countries continue

President George W. Bush shakes hands with Rep. Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, after signing the SAFE Port Act on Oct. 13, 2006. Paul Morse, WikiCommons

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. JCPA

The now shuttered Al Jazeera offices in Jerusalem in 2017. Yonatan Sindel, Flash90

See Rakhamilova on page 23

Mazurek…

Continued from page 17

Rabbi Yoseph Dov Soloveichik of Brisk, the Beis Halevi (1820-1892), great grandfather of the “Rav” (1903-1993), had a somewhat different take on these two concepts. He authored an incredible essay on Bitachon, published almost 100 years after his death, with an English translation recently put out by ArtScroll.

Basing it on principles expressed by the Rambam in his 13 Principles of Faith, (Perush Hamishnayot, Sanhedrin 10), emunah is the faith that Hashem created, orchestrated, and continues to orchestrate ALL activities in the universe, from large to small (with exception of our freedom to believe — hakol bidei shamayim, chutz miyirat shamayim. Bitachon on the other hand is the trust that no matter what, we can rely on Hashem, even if to our small human minds, it seems like the outcome is the worst thing that could happen. It is a trust, that Hashem is interested in my welfare, watching out for me because He is kind, loving and merciful. And while I must do my Hishtadlut, efforts, Hashem is the final arbiter of the results, sometimes not to our liking. But believing that Hashem knows best what is right for us is bitachon. The Beis Halevi goes even further stating that this trust in Hashem is an imperative mitzvah, and failure to do so is a violation of the negative commandment “not to forget Hashem” (Devarim 6:12). He gives the example of the young inexperienced doctor who was instructed to ask for help if he had a question, but he was uncomfortable doing so, and the patient succumbed. His professor angrily told him “I didn’t give you the option of asking for help. You must ask for help!”

Some say that emuna is the limud, the learning or understanding, while bitachon is the ma’aseh, the performance of the event or activity in question. While I think this is somewhat of an over generalization, the analogy has some merit.

As we watch some of the hostages being released and take some comfort and joy in their familial jubilation, at the same time, we are consumed with anxiety, anger and fear but also hope at the fate of those still held by the Hamas murders.

Are the others alive? If so, in what conditions are they? Will we ever get them all out? What will be the consequences to those released and to their loved ones and families, who have been impaired so physically and emotionally?

Our emunah and bitachon is tested every day. Let us try to internalize the lessons and definitions above to help us get through these profound challenges. For ultimately, despite our long history of challenges “lo yitosh Hashem et amo (Hashem will never abandon His people) (Shmuel 1, 12:22) and Tehillim 94:14). Am Yisrael Chai.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dr. Alan Mazurek is a retired neurologist, living in Great Neck, Jerusalem and Florida. He is a former chairman of the ZOA.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Continued from page 17

high-tech solution but better than nothing. So the men were tense and quite nervous as we arrived on site.

It was then that I noticed one of the guys, who looked to be no more than 22, had a very non-regulation pistol in his belt. When I asked him about it he grinned and showed me it was a lethal B-B gun that held steel pellets. I had never seen anything quite like it and he showed me it even had a laser site with a movie-like red dot that would allow him to hit a target at 50 yards, or so he claimed.

“Anyone I see with a slingshot is getting one in the knee,” he said. “Only way to put a stop to these guys.”

But he had picked the wrong commander to share this with. I confiscated the gun, unloaded it, and left it in the command car with the driver. A lively debate ensued on the way back to base

(fortunately we were able to disperse the riot with tear gas and a few arrests and no one was hurt), with my position being I might well have saved him from a court martial — and from doing something really stupid (imagine if a child got hit with one of his steel pellets).

His position? Quite simply: “There is only one language they will understand, and it’s in the Bible: an eye for an eye.”

So: Who was right?

This week’s parsha of Mishpatim is famous for many of its laws, one of which is, indeed, the famous exhortation (Shemot 21:24): “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand and a foot for a foot.”

Saudi Arabia appears to have a very low crime rate, perhaps as a result of its policy that thieves caught in the act may be sentenced to the cutting off of their right hand. Maybe if every teenager caught throwing a rock at a moving car was lined up against a wall and a Major League baseball pitcher was employed to fire a 90 miles per hour fastball shattering their elbow, there would be significantly fewer incidents of rock throwing at civilians.

Jewish tradition, however, does not see it this way.

As Rashi famously notes (based on the Talmudic discussion in tractate Baba Kamma, perek Hachovel), we are really speaking of monetary compensation — specifically, how much less worth would such a person (minus an eye or a tooth etc.) fetch on the job market.

Maimonides makes very clear (Hilchot chovel u’mazik 1:2-3) that this is a law of monetary compensation, pointing out in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishna that this is a tradition given to Moses at Sinai, which is why there is no debate about it in the Talmud: everyone agrees one cannot literally take an eye for an eye.

Which begs the question: Why didn’t the Torah simply describe it as monetary compensation? One possibility, mentioned by the Rambam (ibid. chovel u’mazik1:3), suggests that it is important that everyone concerned, and particularly the transgressor, understand that it is not possible to compensate the person who has been hurt. No amount of compensation will ever make up for the loss of an eye, so the Torah tells us that even though the tradition and the law will only extract monetary compensation, he will forever be owed an eye.

We live in a world where we think we can fix everything; it’s just a question of how much it costs. But some things cannot be bought and paid for and can never be fixed. In the world of “me too,” a person who has been violated or abused will never fully be compensated for the pain and suffering they have endured. Long after the perpetrator is sentenced and the media has moved on, the victim will still be leaving with the demons of that abuse.

There is, however, a second approach, possibly based on a Tosafot in Sanhedrin 58b who suggests that in the event the rabbis feel crime is not being deterred, the Torah actually leaves open the possibility of cutting off a person’s hand to deter crime.

Think about it: If the Torah had just written that a person must be compensated for the loss of a hand or an eye, then a wealthy person might decide to cut off a person’s hand and simply pay what the hand was worth! Indeed, this might eventually mean that the poor would be terrified to offend the wealthy for fear of such retribution.

So the Torah leaves this opening so that any corrupt and wealthy individual would know that if monetary compensation is not enough of a deterrent, the Beit din  has more painful options available.

And while this is a radical suggestion, when looking at the world stage, it is worth considering the value of deterrence. For 50 years, through the cold war, serious deterrents prevented either superpower from doing the unspeakable, keeping the world safe from a possible nuclear Holocaust.

Indeed, this seems to be a major part of Israel’s military strategy, and the reason they respond with significant force every time an errant Syrian mortar shell lands in the Golan, or a Hamas missile lands in an open field in the South.

Perhaps we would do well to create our own deterrents in our search for success in overcom-

ing our own personal challenges. Imagine if every time you spoke in anger, you had to do the dishes, take out the garbage or (horror of horrors) wash the floor?

Something to think about.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem.

This column was previously published, before the Oct. 7 war. Rabbi Freedman is rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Weinreb…

Continued from page 17

paganda convinces the King, the royal court, the local populace, and eventually the entire kingdom which spans the vast area from India to Ethiopia. Shades of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing worldwide Jew hatred from which we suffer today.

Reb Yerucham bases much of his thesis about the origins of antisemitism upon the question raised by our Sages in Tractate Megillah 12a: “Why did the people of Israel deserve to face utter extinction? Because they joined and enjoyed the King’s feast!”

The Jewish people believed that the best way to alleviate the hatred they were experiencing would be to draw close to, and to establish friendly relationships with, their oppressors. They sought to mitigate antisemitism by merging with the enemy politically and culturally.

“This was a mistake,” argues Reb Yerucham. “And,” continues Reb Yerucham, “it was the mistake of our own time [remember that he spoke these words in 1935] when we sought political acceptance from our host countries, particularly Germany, which led to assimilation, the diminishment of Jewish self-identification, and eventually the rise of Hitlerism” (and we can now add, the Holocaust!).

Besides the similarities to the Purim story, and besides the resemblance to aspects of the current rise of antisemitism, Reb Yerucham’s argument also refers to two verses in this week’s Torah portion,Mishpatim (Exodus 21:1-24:18).

He quotes and explicates these verses (Exodus 23:32-33); I translate loosely: “Do not join in a covenant with them, nor with their G-ds. Do not permit them to dwell in your land lest they mislead you and provoke you to sin against Me, for they will eventually tempt you to worship their G-ds. They will entrap you!”

Reb Yerucham describes the effect that affiliation with the German nation and its culture had upon German Jewry. It was drastic assimilation, mass conversion to Christianity, and total rejection of Jewish identity by many Jews.

He observed this decay personally, and in his final years became an eyewitness to the extent to which the yearning for welcome to German society eroded and became transformed into the most vicious antisemitism ever known to mankind.

How I would have appreciated hearing such teachings from my seventh-grade teacher, the son of Reb Yerucham. Truth to say, he may very well have delivered these words to our class, but we were deaf to them. After all, youth is wasted upon the young.

I will grant you that the antisemitism of our current time may be fundamentally different from the antisemitism that Reb Yerucham knew and predicted.

But one aspect of his thesis remains relevant, and that is this: The focus of our reaction to antisemitism is not to be found in political activity, publicity in the media, or searching for allies among non-Jewish entities. It does not lie upon supposedly supportive governments and politicians, however we may trust and put our hopes in their promises.

It resides instead in the deepening of our Jewish identity, in our knowledge and fidelity to Torah and mitzvot, and above all with pride in our Jewishness, and expressing this pride in every arena of discourse.

I close with my own response to the question, “Does George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote about wasted youth have any basis in Torah?” To this, I reply, “Yes!” It is encapsulated in these excerpts from Tehilim, psalm 25:

O L-rd… be not mindful of my youthful sins and transgressions; in keeping with Your faithfulness, consider what is in my favor. … He guides the lowly in the right path, and teaches the lowly His way. … See how numerous my enemies are, and how unjustly they hate me. … May integrity and uprightness watch over me, for I look to You. O G-d, redeem Israel from all its distress.

And let us say, Amen!

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Billet…

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•Not to hit anyone in a manner that may lead to their death. The responsibility to compensate people for injuring them. If your property causes someone else damage, you must pay for it.

•Don’t oppress the stranger, or widow or orphan — these are, in some cases, the most vulnerable people in our society. They need to be treated warmly, welcomed as a part of things.

•Not to tell stories about people — lashon hara, slander, true or false — aimed at bringing people down.

•Distancing from falsehood — midvar sheker tirchak. The pasuk doesn’t say not to speak falsehoods, which we are told elsewhere in the parsha, but to distance from falsehood. Sometimes people say things, do things, believe things, talk about things that are untrue. Maybe they live a lie, maybe they create an image. You have two choices: investigate to find truth, or recognize that without that investigation, you don’t know what the truth is.

•Respect for the ger — the person who joins the Jewish people.

The parsha also mentions resting on Shabbos, observing the holidays, and not mentioning other gods by name.

There are many more mitzvot in the Torah that relate to our relationship with others and with G-d. This list includes the rules surrounding whom we may and may not marry, the rules to not eat non-kosher food, not to murder, not to be a false prophet, not to worship idols.

Our lives are meant to be guided by a thoughtfulness and mindfulness, recognizing and understanding that there’s so much to learn. Too many distractions take us away from fulfilling our mission to learn.

May we be blessed to find incredible ways to fill the precious time we have, as we grow in knowledge and in our connection to G-d. Rabbi Billet, who grew up in the Five Towns, is a South Florida-based mohel and rabbi of Anshei Chesed Congregation in Boynton Beach.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

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The signers of the letter might disavow any connection to antisemitism. But their willingness to stand behind the anti-Israel movement that has flourished on college campuses and in the streets of American cities is nothing less than an endorsement of the surge of Jew-hatred that has been mainstreamed on the left since Oct. 7.

Woke antisemitism

At the heart of this form of activism is more than the unrelenting hostility to Trump felt by many Jewish liberals and left-wingers. It’s also rooted in the toxic myths of critical race theory and intersectionality, as well as the associated woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Trump is successfully opposing these terrible ideas as he seeks to roll back the hold that these leftist beliefs, which fuel antisemitism, have had on American society and governance.

The “pro-Palestinian” movement on the left isn’t a philanthropic effort to help Palestinian Arabs who have been used as props in the futile century-old war on Zionism. If it were, they’d be cheering Israel’s efforts to get rid of Hamas or the concept of resettling the descendants of the 1948 Arab refugees just as the even more numerous Jews who fled or were forced out of their homes

in the Arab and Muslim world were long ago resettled.

This was made explicit by their statement in which they specifically support “Palestinian liberation.” They made clear that they don’t believe that working to destroy the Jewish state — something that could only be accomplished by the genocidal plans of Hamas — is antisemitic. They think that liberal Jews can only demonstrate their virtue by joining the left’s crusade to delegitimize Israel’s self-defense.

The push for Palestinian “self-determination” is a thinly veiled version of the idea that Israel is an illegitimate “settler-colonial” and “apartheid” state that should be dismantled. The notion that the conflict can be solved by a two-state solution is a myth that has been debunked repeatedly since 1948 as the Palestinian Arabs have rejected every offer of statehood and independence. They have told us again and again that they refuse to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn. To continue pushing for Palestinian statehood after those rejections is tantamount to acquiescence or endorsement of the struggle to destroy Israel, and has absolutely nothing to do with wanting peace.

Real ‘ethnic cleansing’

Moreover, the irony of Jews who think expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews in Judea and Samaria from their homes to create a Palestinian state is a virtuous cause expressing horror about “ethnic cleansing” is lost on the political left.

Equally important, those who claim the Palestinians must stay forever in Gaza aren’t interested in their welfare. Suffice it to say that the real “ethnic cleansing” movement is not the idea of resettling people who claim to be refugees someplace other than one run by terrorists whose only goal is to use it as a launching pad for unending war on the Jews.

Ethnic cleansing of Jews from their ancient homeland isn’t just the goal of Hamas. It is inextricably tied up with Palestinian national identity and also backed by other supposedly more “moderate” Palestinian factions.

Post-Oct. 7, to refuse to see this isn’t just a matter of ignorance or deliberate blindness to the nature of a conflict that even most left-wing Israelis understand is about their existence. At this point, to ignore the truth about the political culture of the Palestinians is tantamount to supporting Jewish genocide.

The Times ad doesn’t express the views of a significant number of American Jews or even most liberal Jews. But it does provide a degree of intellectual cover and legitimacy to the antisemitic movement that seeks to label Israel as a pariah state. As such, it is part of the effort to complete the transformation of the Democratic Party into a bastion of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, as well as boost efforts to enshrine it as the orthodox position in left-wing outlets like the Times.

Line must be drawn

That is why the response of American Jewry to this latest iteration of the “as a Jew” phenomenon should not be complacency or ignoring it as insignificant.

As much as many Jews regard Trump as beyond the pale, they need to understand that whatever their feelings about him, opposing his pro-Israel policies and realism about the Palestinians isn’t routine partisanship or liberal idealism. We’ve come to the point that it must be seen as an expression of neutrality or even tacit support for a Nazi-style war against Jewish existence being waged by a bizarre red-green alliance of leftist ideologues and Islamists.

It’s time to tell these “as a Jew” renegades that we will not accept their claim to the moral high ground against Israelis or even Trump. Functional support for Palestinian “self-determination,” which means backing Hamas and its war, isn’t morally neutral or an expression of liberal Judaism’s universalist and humanitarian ideals. It is an immoral stance that puts its supporters on the side of 21st-century Nazis. Such persons deserve to be held up for opprobrium, not lauded for their supposed “courage” for opposing Trump, conservative Jews or Israel. It is they — and not Netanyahu or Trump — who must be treated by all decent persons, no matter their political affiliations, as pariahs who richly deserve our contempt.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Cohen…

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Jewish anti-Zionists like to say that the “Jewish establishment” — i.e. anyone who doesn’t share their toxic opinions about Israel — doesn’t represent Jews. It’s past time for the rest of us to retort, “You don’t represent us,” and reflect that sentiment in the manner in which we run our communities.

Every synagogue, every community center, every charitable foundation, every college Jewish association and every communal representative body should declare that Jewish anti-Zionists are no longer considered part of our community. They should do so on the basis of a definition of anti-Zionism: an ideology that prescribes the elimination through violence of the State of Israel; that traffics in antisemitic messages and imagery in pushing its case; and that willfully distorts the meaning of the term “Zionism” beyond recognition, which is why I prefer to write the term “antizionism” without the hyphen.

Some Jews will bristle at this suggestion because we are a people who enjoy debate and disagreement. But there is debate, and there is incitement. Jewish anti-Zionists actively assist our mortal enemies in the most underhand and insidious way. They are the modern equivalent of the Yevsektsiya, the Jewish department of the Soviet Communist Party, whose role was essentially to crush all expressions of Judaism and Zionism alike.

If we don’t banish them from our ranks, they will continue, despite their small number, to dangerously undermine our community and confuse non-Jews who might otherwise be sympathetic.

I should be clear that I am not speaking here of excommunication, which is a religious matter. I am addressing the problem in civic terms, arguing that one of the conditions for participation in privately funded, communally run Jewish institutions should be agreement with the proposition that Israel is a central and valued component of Jewish life after the Holocaust.

Eighteen months after the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust by Islamists who murdered and raped and kidnapped in the name of destroying the “Zionist entity,” that shouldn’t be controversial.

By publicly disowning and dissociating from those Jews who have joined the enemy camp, we will send a signal to the pro-Hamas movement — overwhelmingly composed, after all, of non-Jews — that their cover is blown, and that we see them for what they are: not critics of Israel, not even merely as “anti-Zionists,” but as die-hard, uncompromising Jew-haters with whom we will never be at peace.

Ben Cohen, a senior analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Baker…

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all semblance of logic and moral clarity that the ICRC can countenance images of armed, masked terrorists sitting and standing on ICRC vehicles displaying the Red Cross emblem and flag while such vehicles transport tortured, suffering and ill Israeli hostages.

By the same token, how can the ICRC permit its representatives, its status, dignity and presence to be manipulated into participating in staged “release ceremonies,” sitting with masked, armed terrorist leaders, signing bogus “release certificates” and exchanging handshakes?

Where is the dignity of the ICRC, the Red Cross Movement, the Cross Emblem and the Red Cross Flag?

The enormity of this intolerable and inexcusable lacuna, of this utter failure by Switzerland and the ICRC, really cannot be explained in terms of inability or incapability. It begs the obvious question: How could this happen?

This huge lack of any genuine, serious and sincere action by Switzerland and the ICRC is not just glaring in its enormity but defies all logic.

Furthermore, and no less pointedly, it cannot but lead to the implication and assumption that such inaction has been and continues to be beyond mere negligence or unintended error. It raises the question as to whether it emanates from a sinister and ulterior motive, something that tragically in historical context appears to be all too familiar.

The Swiss and ICRC’s failures in ensuring the provision of humanitarian succor to the Israeli hostages are not just unforgettable. They are unforgivable.

•The credibility of the ICRC as a humanitarian organization is in tatters. It cannot recover from this.

•The reputation of Switzerland as the worldwide bastion of moral rectitude and dignity is ruined.

Switzerland can no longer claim any element of international moral high ground. It has lost the little stature that it might have had.

Amb. Alan Baker is director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

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to funnel money into the PA’s coffers. Just this week, the European Union announced an increased funding package of €296 million ($310 million) to the PA — money that will inevitably support terrorism.

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That same scenario looms large over the Trump administration. On one side, Trump champions a new Middle Eastern order — cracking down on extremism and ending the endless tragedies. On the other, Qatar remains an ostensible ally, never facing real pressure to restrain Al Jazeera’s incendiary narratives or break from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Meanwhile, Qatar continues to project an image of progressive diplomacy and philanthropic generosity to the Palestinians while effectively controlling the narrative that defines how other Arab states are judged on the issue.

Ultimately, the dissonance arises from the United States wanting to champion stability and oppose extremist narratives yet refusing to confront an ally that skillfully plays both sides.

Trump’s grand vision to transform Gaza may sound like a pipe dream or a cynically choreographed move to corner Arab leaders. In either case, a crucial piece is missing: a determination to hold Qatar accountable. If that piece is absent, any talk of radical change in Gaza will only feed the region’s vicious cycle, wherein politicians float grand ideas, Qatari media tears them down, and the Palestinians remain in tragic limbo.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

King… Rakhamilova Mansour…

Meanwhile, the PA spends more on terror stipends than on healthcare for its own citizens, further proving that its priorities do not lie with improving Palestinian lives but with sustaining a culture of violence and martyrdom.

The ramifications of “pay for slay” extend far beyond the financial aspect. This system has deeply embedded terrorism into Palestinian society.

In schools, Palestinian children are indoctrinated with martyrdom culture, learning that attacking Israelis is a noble path rewarded both in the afterlife and by the PA’s bank account. The celebrations that erupt in Gaza and Judea and Samaria after terror attacks are not spontaneous, they are the result of decades of systematic glorification of violence backed by financial incentives.

The international community cannot continue turning a blind eye. So long as the PA actively rewards terrorism, peace will remain an illusion.

Real peace requires the dismantling of this blood-soaked economic model. Words and decrees from Abbas mean nothing without verifiable, transparent action.

The US and its allies must hold the PA accountable and ensure that “pay for slay” is truly abolished — not just rebranded.

Until then, the PA’s empty gestures should not be mistaken for progress.

Zina Rakhamilova is co-founder and CEO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm that specializes in geopolitics.

Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

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The presidents I spent the most time with were Bill Clinton, George Bush 43 and Donald Trump, all of whom are within two years of me in age. I worked closely with Clinton on the Irish peace process, traveling with him on his historic visits to Northern Ireland. I stood with him during his impeachment. He couldn’t have been more gracious and friendly to my family. He and Hillary were the first to call the night my mother died. We remain friends.

I saw up close how dedicated the younger George Bush was to helping New York and defeating Islamist terrorism following the horrific Sept. 11 attacks. I was with him in the ruins of the World Trade Center three days afterward, and over the succeeding months and years was at numerous meetings he had with cops, firefighters and 9/11 victims’ family members. A true patriot. Great sense of humor.

Donald Trump was and is one of a kind. He and I grew up in Queens at the same time. Though we lived in different Zip codes, one on one he was like the guys I grew up with, totally down to earth. Despite his public persona, he could be caring and concerned, like when he reached out to my daughter when he heard she was sick, or when he invited my grandchildren to the White House. Most significantly, I’ll always be appreciative of his visits to Long Island, where he led the effort to crush MS-13.

These are just some of the recollections from my front-row seat of the 10 men who led our nation over the past six decades.