Author Archives: Rabbi

Personal Memories of a Young Congregant

Posted on August 29, 2025 | 4 comments

(First published in the Jewish Link of New Jersey)

I read with great interest and appreciation the sundry reminiscences of Rabbi Berel Wein z”l published but add one dimension that has not been adequately not addressed: Rabbi Wein as pulpit rabbi. I grew up in his shul and spent my formative years there. As Rabbi Wein’s history lectures originated in Congregation Bais Torah of Monsey (Suffern, for purists), it is quite possible that Rabbi Wein’s fame as a historian and popularizer of Jewish history – how most people knew him – would not have come about but for his being Rav of that shul. Indeed, the whole idea of taping these lectures only arose at lecture two, when a previous week’s participant asked that it be recorded because he could not attend. (The first lecture was not taped.) The rest, as they say, is history.

What did I learn from Rabbi Wein? Once, when we hosted him at Bnai Yeshurun, I introduced him by saying that I never took a course in rabbinics. (Some would claim, it showed.) “I learned rabbinics observing Rabbi Wein – how he managed a shul, how he dealt with members, how he handled the myriad tasks that are associated with the rabbinate.” It was true, and it was a remarkable education that I and others received. From 1974 until1979 (when I married and left Monsey; Rabbi Wein was our Mesader Kiddushin), just excluding my year in Israel, I just watched him, learned from him, and absorbed.

I was among those teenagers who trekked to Rabbi Wein’s house every Shabbat afternoon in shifts, according to age, to learn Mishnayot with him. And then later that day, he would give one, sometimes two shiurim, in shul. I don’t know when he prepared, and I know he didn’t sleep.

Because Rabbi Wein started Bais Torah from the ground up, he was able to place his stamp on the shul. In my years there, there was no hashkama minyan, youth minyan, Sefard minyan, etc. Everyone davened together. No one – not even the youth – would ever leave when Rabbi Wein spoke. For years, old Monseyites would tell me that my cadences when I spoke resembled those of Rabbi Wein, which stands to reason and which I took as a compliment. His derashot followed a pattern: a question, contradiction among commentators, or perplexity in the sedrah, followed by a story, usually humorous, often involving his travels for the OU, and then a resolution to the question raised. Listeners were guaranteed at least one laugh and a message that was mussar-oriented, pointed, intellectual, inspirational, and often all of the above. Interestingly, in those years, Rabbi Wein rarely addressed current events or hot topics, feeling those were dated or irrelevant within a week.

The influences were persistent but subtle. He had been an attorney and then a rabbi; I followed the same course (my father a”h had been a rabbi and then a lawyer, so it must have been in the genes). He gave a shiur after davening for which everyone stayed, and in my first pulpit, I did the same, to less than enthusiastic results. When I called Rabbi Wein to ask him where I went wrong, he asked what I taught that week. I answered, it was all about gaavah, haughtiness. He replied, “maybe that’s too heavy a topic for Shabbat morning.” I soon realized it was something else. That shul, unlike Bais Torah, had a kiddush every week after davening, and my shiur was just an unwelcome obstacle between Jews and their kiddush, not a good place to be.

In Bais Torah, Rabbi Wein taught the megillot – Shir Hashirim, Ruth, and Kohelet – on each of the holidays, and naturally, even instinctively, I did the same, fortunately to much greater acceptance than my aborted weekly post-Musaf shiur. It was then that Rabbi Wein would venture into current events, Israel, and analogies between our present day and Jewish history. He did the same on Shabbat Shuvah and Shabbat Hagadol, on which I later found myself unconsciously replicating his pattern: presenting a halachic topic, raising a series of questions, answering the halachic questions and then addressing the philosophical implications, followed by a peroration that related the theme to our lives, our place in the world, and in Jewish history. Oddly, I only remember one of his topics (even more oddly, I never addressed that particular topic – mitzvah haba ba’aveirah – on these occasions), but I do recall leaving profoundly uplifted, moved, and enlightened. Indeed, until I entered the rabbinate myself, I made sure to return to Monsey every year after marriage for Shabbat Shuvah and Shabbat Hagadol.

Rabbi Wein had a most laconic manner in personal interactions, almost Calvin Coolidge-like in his brevity, though never brusque. Like many others, I consulted him occasionally about shul matters. Once, when he was already living in Israel and I was in Teaneck, I called to ask him how to deal with a particular congregant issue which I thought needed a verbal protest or something. I spelled out my case in three minutes, and I concluded by asking “What do you think I should do?” Rabbi Wein responded, “do nothing.” Two words, nothing more, and the call ended pleasantly mere seconds later. “Do nothing” is not always the best advice but in this case it was. I did nothing, and the matter resolved itself spectacularly well, far better than if I had done something. (Memo to Bnai Yeshurun members: do not even try to speculate what it was!)

I also learned the value of multiple influences, of not joining any particular team but flying solo, thinking independently. Rabbi Wein was at home in every part of the Jewish world – the modern and the yeshivish, the Litvish and the Hasidish. It was a rare combination that I also witnessed in my Rebbe Muvhak, Rav Yisrael Chait shlit”a, who learned from Rav Henoch Leibowitz, Rav Aharon Kotler, Rav Moshe Feinstein, and Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, among others. “Ben Zoma said, who is wise? He who learns from all people, as it is said: ‘From all my teachers I gained understanding’” (Avot 4:1). The Torah has seventy facets. No one teacher can present all seventy and a broad perspective engenders a broader mind and a deeper understanding of Torah. Rabi Wein was also extraordinarily well read, something not always prevalent among rabbis, which led me to always ask my assistant rabbi candidates this question: “what is the last book that you read? Not sefer – but book.” To be at home in the world is a blessing, not a curse.

He took special pride in his congregants and students who became rabbis, something that I personally experienced. When Rabbi Wein first came to Monsey, we all davened in a shul that did not have a permanent rabbi so there was a Dvar Torah rotation after davening in which Rabbi Wein participated, as did I. At age 15, I gave my first sermon since my Bar Mitzvah. I must have said something worthwhile because immediately afterward, Rebbetzin Jackie Wein a”h approached me with a big smile and said, “you should become a rabbi!”

The thought lingered, germinated, and eventually came to fruition. And as at the beginning, so too many decades later, Rabbi Wein gave me his best advice as to when I should leave the pulpit and move to Israel, advice which I took. Uncannily, we each left our shuls and made aliya at roughly the same age.

Above all, I learned from Rabbi Wein that a pulpit rabbi can have enormous influence on people, especially young people. I have never been a big fan of segregating teenagers in their own minyan, away from the rabbi, notwithstanding that they do learn skills managing their own affairs. I am just one among dozens and dozens of young men who benefited from Rabbi Wein’s leadership, guidance, and encouragement to do something good for the Jewish people.

Rabbi Wein’s legacy is enormous and it should not be overlooked that it encompasses his books, lectures, yeshiva – as well as his shul in Monsey, where he shaped the minds and souls of countless individuals, for which we are eternally grateful.

Yehi Zichro Baruch.

4 Comments

Tagged , ,

False Prophets and Dreamers

Posted on August 26, 2025 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Just days after we read in the weekly haftarah, “your demolishers and destroyers shall go forth from you” (Yeshayahu 49:17), as if on cue, a group of rabbis – many of whose leftist credentials are more solid than their Orthodox ones – castigated the State of Israel for its conduct of the war in Gaza and held the government responsible for preventing “mass starvation” in Gaza. It was less a statement of “moral clarity” than a repulsive moral muddle.

 Their statement was released – again, with impeccable timing – just days before we read another suitable, and quite relevant, biblical passage, about those who distort the Torah’s message and bring harm on our people. “If there arises in your midst a [false] prophet or dreamer, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder of which he spoke to you comes to pass, saying, “Let us go after other gods” which you have not known “and let us serve them”, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of dreams, for Hashem your God tests you to know whether you love Hashem your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Devarim 13:2-4).

The “signs and wonders” of these modern distorters of Torah are their credentials, organizational affiliations, and popularity with the anti-Torah media. And their message? Love your enemy, a very Christian approach, at least in theory but never in practice, but not Jewish at all. Embracing the libels of our enemies, the fake starvation claims. Assuming – without a shred of evidence – that Gazans are mostly good people whose desire for a bucolic life has been hijacked by Hamas and imperiled by Israel. And warmed-over leftism, which they substitute for the truth of Torah in many areas of life but have now injected into our fight for survival against a brutal enemy whose war and Jew hatred they are aiding and abetting.

Does Israel – does any country – have an obligation to feed an enemy population in wartime? As columnist Marc Thiessen wrote recently in the Washington Post, “Far from deliberate starvation in Gaza, Israel is doing something no nation has ever done, or even been expected to do: Feed the population of the aggressor force that attacked it while the war is still going on. “There is no historical precedent for a military providing the level of direct aid to an enemy population that Israel has provided to Gaza,” John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, recently pointed out. The United States did not feed Germany and Japan while the war was going on; we forced their armies to surrender and then fed their populations.”

One will search the Torah and all of Jewish literature in vain for any notion that Jews are obligated to feed our enemy in wartime. Indeed, the book of Devarim – and subsequent works of the Bible – teaches us how to wage war: “you shall besiege the city” (ibid 20:12), which the Vilna Gaon explained to mean, “even to starve, thirst, kill, etc.” (Aderet Eliyahu). This is how wars end. That induces the vanquished to surrender. It defeats the purpose of a siege if we feed our enemies. So, which of their “deepest Jewish values” are they accessing in calling for nourishing our enemy? None, and that is the problem. It is not a Jewish value, and as Col. Spencer makes clear, it is not even a non-Jewish value. It is a leftist value, which has been mispresented and counterfeited as a Jewish value.

That distortion cannot be allowed to stand. The false prophets and dreamers of the Torah are those “who spoke perversions against God” (ibid 13:6), presenting as authentic something “that was never created and never existed” (Rashi), attributing to God things that He never said (Sforno). Good intentions do not excuse rank heresy and fabrications of Torah. How do we fight our wars? Actually, similar to how other nations have historically fought wars: “until submission” (ibid 20:20), until the enemy is completely subdued and docile. This is how wars end. If these rabbis do not like that, their “grumblings are not against us, but against Hashem” (Sh’mot 16:8) and His Torah.

The rabbis chastise Israel for our “blanket suspicion of the entire population of Gaza – children included – tarnished as future terrorists.” Yes, and on what basis do they assume that this is untrue? That has been Gaza’s history for almost eighty years, and terror emanating from Gaza was a constant from 1948-1967 while it was occupied by Egypt, from 1967-2005 after it was liberated by Israel, and from 2005 until today, when it had self-rule. Gazans are past terrorists, present terrorists, and future terrorists, and if there is evidence to the contrary – such as Gazans who accepted Israel’s offer of $5M and free passage out of Gaza to anyone providing information leading to the release of any Israel hostage – it should be proffered by these rabbis and other apologists. Yet, no Gazan accepted Israel’s offer. Many atrocities on October 7 were committed by alleged civilians, and many of our hostages were held for months by alleged civilians.

For what reason, therefore, are we expected to nourish the next generation of terrorists? Granted, the statement of “moral clarity” did not include even one Torah value, but if these “rabbis” were remotely sensible, and even slightly compassionate, they would be encouraging the evacuation of these Gazans to parts of the world that are not infested with terror and where they could have decent lives freed as much as possible from the Jew hatred on which they have been reared for generations. Rather, they willfully falsify the Torah, sentence these Gazans to a future of misery and Israelis to unending terror.

Worst of all, these “rabbis,” most of whom live outside of Israel, and some who arrived in Israel yesterday or the day before, have bolstered our enemies and endangered Jewish lives here and across the world by adopting our enemies’ propaganda and libels. Already, the “rabbis” statement has been picked up by the Arab press, by the European media, and by our global haters. When young Jews are harassed on campus, their tormentors will wave in their faces the declaration of the “rabbis.” It would have been disgraceful to adopt the enemy line if the accusations were true; it is truly contemptible when the accusations are false.

Since human nature never changes, it would not surprise me if there were French rabbis who supported the French military and joined the attacks on Alfred Dreyfus. After all, Dreyfus was convicted (twice), it was dutifully reported in all the newspapers of the day, and newspapers always just fairly report the news that is fit to print, and perhaps they wanted to be seen as good Frenchmen. “Rabbis Against Israel” is no different than “Rabbis Against Dreyfus.” In each case, the “rabbis” accept the words of our enemies and blame the Jew, or Jews. Same with the repetition of the enemy libel against the settlers of Judea and Samaria. Shameful, and truly the fulfillment of the rabbinic dictum that “he who is merciful to the cruel will eventually be cruel to the merciful” (Kohelet Raba 7:16).

Calling “rabbis” destroyers, false prophets, and dreamers is unpleasant, especially as the month of Elul is upon us. Yet, we are also taught (Berachot 19b), “wherever there is desecration of God’s name, one does not show respect even to the Rabbi.” When “rabbis” can proclaim that “our traumatic history of being victims of persecution” demands compassion and support for our enemies, their cheapening of Jewish suffering deserves no respect. Were Jews ever persecuted because we wantonly slaughtered innocent Gentile civilians? Raped women? Beheaded the elderly? Threw babies in ovens? Is that why we were persecuted, such that those experiences should inform our response to being invaded, massacred, and kidnapped? Such a statement is outrageous, insulting, absurd, and unworthy of anyone who would call himself (never mind, literally, herself) a “rabbi.” Shameful.

The line from shameful to despicable is crossed when we realize that the statement of these “rabbis” made no mention – NONE! – of the only people known to be starving in Gaza – our hostages. These are “rabbis”? It says everything we need to know that their exclusive concern is the wellbeing of our tormentors and their fake claims of starvation and not all our emaciated and tortured brethren being held against their will by a cruel, barbaric, and savage enemy elected to power by the very people they are demanding we feed.

And when the Chillul Hashem is compounded by the danger these rabbis have inflicted on the Jewish people, silence is impossible. Yes, they are “dreamers,” dreaming of a world of peace, brotherhood, and wealth for all, but we are not there, and only fools presume to act upon their dreams in a hostile world. I don’t doubt for a second that these “rabbis” were among the dreamy supporters of Oslo and the Gaza Expulsion, which helped foist these nightmares upon us.

The harm they inflicted on Israel and the Jewish people is incalculable, but here is some advice to these “rabbis.” You feel for the poor Gazans? Go feed them yourselves! Talk is cheap. If you really care, grab some boxes of pitot, and bottles of water, and go to Gaza. Go every day. But don’t go to the distribution centers – more food is in Gaza today than before the war. No, that would be too easy. Go to the encampments, go house to house, go tent to tent. Even better – go from tunnel to tunnel, bring food to our enemies, and maybe give some nourishment to our hostages whose plight – and absolute innocence – you ignore.

Certainly, no harm will befall you, because the Gazans, as you see it, are good and decent people who only want peace and tranquility, and who love everyone, and especially Jews. We will arrange safe passage for you into Gaza. As for getting out, you can rely on your kind hearts, your belief that all people are basically good, and your dreams of a better future. If you are confident in your moral standing, go to Gaza!

It might work, especially because our enemies love Jews who turn on Israel, always have, and unfortunately there is no shortage of them. Sadly, the people who will most notice your attacks on Israel are those who hate us. As for good Jews, and those trying to win a war against a pitiless, inhumane enemy to better protect our future, let us pray that they just ignore you. Enough with “rabbis” so farcically concerned about our souls that they cavalierly jeopardize our bodies.

The good news, as always, is that these types of “rabbis,” leaders, and thinkers have always existed, and we have survived their musings, their foolishness, and the damage they cause. In a world where every Tom, Dick, and Harriet claims to be a rabbi, we just have to choose our spiritual guides with caution and always assess their words through the prism of the Torah, whose divine values are eternal and unchanging.

1 Comment

Tagged , , , ,

On Libels and Libelers

Posted on August 21, 2025 | 1 comment

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

The Jewish people are unfortunately no strangers to blood libels. From the Middle Ages until quite recently, Jews were routinely and falsely accused of murdering Christian children for their blood. To say that there was never a shred of evidence is an understatement. The motivations were simply Jew hatred and occasionally the attempt to cover up the crimes of others. So too with today’s blood libels of genocide, starvation, etc.

In truth, the Israeli government does itself no favors by arguing in the alternative, sometimes forcefully declaring that “there is no starvation in Gaza” and other times asserting equally forcefully that “if there is starvation in Gaza, it is all the Hamas’ fault.” Both might be true but taken together are unpersuasive, dramatically affects Israel’s standing in the world, and bolsters our worst enemies. “Arguing in the alternative” is a legitimate legal tactic but a public relations nightmare. Which is not to say that truth has any currency in the global marketplace.

Consider the case of the infamous New York Times front page photograph of the mother holding what she alleged to be her starving, scrawny son. Certainly, it is disgraceful but not atypical that the NYT cropped out this child’s healthy, slightly older brother, which should have raised immediate questions to any honest reporter. It is not even surprising that it was later revealed that the gaunt child actually suffered from cerebral palsy and looked that way even before the war, that other such phony pictures were similarly disseminated, or that the NYT issued a mealy-mouthed clarification (although not an apology).

Two points are surprising. Did any enterprising journalist even think of returning and asking the mother why she lied so brazenly? And has anyone noticed that this is a recurring pattern?

In August 1982 during the First Lebanon War, an irate Ronald Reagan was shown a photograph of a Lebanese child who had lost both arms, allegedly in an errant Israeli airstrike on a residential area in East Beirut. He called Menahem Begin, demanded an immediate ceasefire, and even termed what was happening in Beirut a “holocaust.” He noted in his diary how profoundly affected he was by the image of the wounded child.

Except that the picture was also fake.

As the Washington Post – no friend of Israel, then or now – reported three weeks later, the Lebanese child had actually suffered fractured wrists as the result of Palestinian shelling of Christian neighborhoods in East Beirut. No lost arms, no fault of Israel. The camera angle was manipulated to make it look as if the arms were amputated. But never mind, mission accomplished: Israel was impugned.

The “starvation” in Gaza is of a similar nature and recalls another Lebanese War libel. In September 1982, Lebanese Christian Phalangists entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut and killed anywhere from 700-1500 Muslims, mainly civilians, in order to avenge the assassination just two days earlier of their leader, newly elected Lebanese Christian president Bashir Gemayel. That this was the culmination of mutual massacres between Lebanese Muslims and Christians going on for at least a decade was of no concern to those who wanted to blame Israel for the atrocity. As Menahem Begin expressed it quite pithily, “Gentiles murder Gentiles, and they want to hang the Jews.”

That sentiment has not changed. Succinctly, in Gaza, Hamas starves its people, and they want to hang the Jews.

Except that no one is starving in Gaza, and to the extent that there is “food insecurity,” which is quite common in any war zone, it is part of the Hamas pattern that consistently and repeatedly utilizes its own people as human shields, revels in their victimization, and enjoys their martyrdom.  What we do not seem to internalize is that this is not happenstance. This is the Hamas strategy. Hamas cannot defeat Israel or directly achieve its fantasy of Israel’s destruction and elimination. What it can do – and they have quite willing accomplices across the world and many useful idiots among the Jews – is gradually weaken us through demoralization, loss of faith in the justice of our cause, and playing on the natural compassion Jews have for all sufferers – even when those sufferers are our tormentors.

Thus, just like in the First Lebanon War, Israel’s leftist media and their adherents are again trying to cause us to forget Hamas’ invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, the role played by thousands of “innocent civilians” in raping, murdering, pillaging, and capturing and holding hostages, and the reality of Hamas’ defiant insistence on destroying Israel and murdering every Jew in the world. Most of this comes from their intense hatred of PM Netanyahu, which by now has far exceeded what was then the left’s intense hatred of Menahem Begin, which today is seemingly overlooked. But some of their reaction is undoubtedly influenced by the government’s meandering path to victory, its overpromising and under-delivering, and the falsified images of injured children that has unleashed Jew hatred across the world or at least brought it out of hibernation.

In that spirit, a small group of leftist Orthodox rabbis – mostly, the old and unrepentant Oslo and Gaza Expulsion crowd, and mostly American – circulated a letter decrying the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza” as “one of the most severe in recent history” for which the Israeli government is not “absolved” from “sharing responsibility for the profound suffering of Gaza’s civilian population.” They will get the usual suspects to sign, signal their virtue to the world, feel good about themselves, and accomplish nothing. They are also completely oblivious to the fact that they are playing Hamas’ game. In their misguided mercy for evildoers, they are aiding and abetting the enemy, which of course would not spare them when Hamas came for them, either in Israel or overseas, just like Hamas did not spare the leftist denizens of the Gaza envelope on October 7. Sadly, among many Jews, this is what passes for rabbinic leadership.

Similarly, the New York UJA Federation announced this week a donation of $1,000,000 to a Gaza relief fund run by Israel. I am not certain that will impress our enemies. As one of my astute rabbinic colleagues suggested, it is a shame that UJA did not have that much money in 1945 or they might have donated it to rebuild Dresden. And I do not doubt that many among their donors are quite gratified that UJA is contributing to the rehabilitation and wellbeing of these modern Nazis.

The world delights in the libels against Israel because its enmity against Jews is largely latent but chronic. It loves believing the worst about us. Consequently, every faked picture, every doctored statistic, every wild accusation – the wilder, the better – is believed because they want to believe it. Genocide, mass murder, mass starvation, concentration camps, torture, ethnic cleansing – say that the Jews are doing it and there is a ready market for it.

What we don’t ever seem to realize is that Hamas is simply employing taqiyya, an ancient Muslim doctrine that permits, even encourages, lying to your enemies in order to further the cause of Islam. (Ironically, part of taqiyya is denying that it exists and defining it as “the concealment of religious beliefs in order to avoid persecution,” quite similar to the way we are supposed to understand jihad, not as a holy war against infidels, but “as a personal religious struggle.” Sure.) That is why the Gazan mother could blithely lie about her son’s “starvation” and not be challenged on it, the Gaza Health Ministry casually fabricates its statistics, and Hamas can level any accusation against Israel that will further its objectives. The tendentious world might buy it, but that does not excuse Israelis, rabbis, or good people anywhere for falling for the enemy narrative. And make no mistake – when Jews bewail the “suffering” in Gaza, they are advancing the narrative of Hamas and strengthening them in their war against Israel.

Add to that the notorious canard about “extreme settler violence.” Aside from the fact that statistics say otherwise, every attack on any Arab in Judea and Samaria is attribute to “settler violence.” This includes Arab terrorists killed by the IDF, Arabs who attack Jews who then defend themselves, or any Arab who suffers any injury even if another Arab causes it accidentally. It is always “settler violence,” arrests and indictments first, details and facts later, if ever.

We would do well to utterly discount any Arab report on any matter that relates to Israel or Jews. Just assume it is false until proven otherwise. This would strike a much-needed blow for truth as a value – and it should also give pause to our “destroyers and demolishers from within” (Yeshayahu 49:17) who in their misguided pursuit of what they perceive as justice and mercy have made themselves promoters of our enemy’s narrative and accomplices to its agenda. We should not be propagating their libels or abetting the libelers.

It would be far better if we understood the madness around us as the expected enemy counterforces to the process of redemption that is underway, which we all (and certainly rabbis) should not be impeding but encouraging. Then we will merit the continuation of the Heavenly assistance that has sustained us until today and will bring redemption in the near future.

1 Comment

Endless Enmity

Posted on August 8, 2025 | 2 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Why does so much of the world hate us so much?

It is a question for the ages. The most superficial and disingenuous of our detractors claim that today it is because of the war in Gaza, the (outrageously false) allegations of genocide, starvation, and torture, all of which blithely and maliciously ignores that Hamas attacked us on October 7, 2023, raped, murdered and ravaged our people and homes, holds and tortures the hostages, and still clings to its fantasy of destroying Israel and murdering every Jew in the world.

A good question to ask these detractors – including those nations like France, Britain, Spain, Canada, and others now jumping on the derailed train of Palestinian statehood – is: when Hamas avows to destroy Israel, what part of that do you not understand? This recognition of something non-existent – should we condemn Britain for shielding the Loch Ness monster? – is both farcical and cynical. It recalls Arafat’s vacuous declaration of statehood in 1988. There was a Palestinian state in Gaza, run by Hamas. They did not use the instruments of statehood to better the lives of their voters but used the billions of dollars provided them by Qatar, Turkey, and Western countries to construct a complex terror infrastructure that can murder Jews and advance Hamas’ desire to obliterate the Jewish state.

For all their sophistication, these nations today reflect the modern face of Jew hatred. They do not hold Israel to a double standard but to impossible standards, standards fabricated only for us. These standards include the unprecedented obligation to feed your enemy during wartime, the directive to conduct a war without killing enemy civilians, the utter disregard of Hamas’ use of civilians as shields including embedding their terror infrastructure within the civilian population, the rejection of the use of disproportionate force (the typical way wars are won is by the application of disproportionate force by the eventual victor), the refusal to evacuate Gazan refugees to safer habitats (as is their right under international law), the distinction made between a government and the people who elected it, and the lack of any demand that Hamas surrender, which is often the way a defeated party concedes a lost cause.

Instead, these countries, which deem themselves cultured, refined, and in the vanguard of Western civilization, create impossible standards that no sane country would follow, and then seek to reward our enemy with statehood. And if a Palestinian state would then use its newfound independence to attack Israel, I can hear the world faintly (and cynically) saying “oops.” And if G-d forbid Israel is overrun, they will say “double oops,” and veer to a one-state delusion in which Jews live under Arab rule.

That is genuine, unvarnished hatred of Jews and Israel, regardless of their empty protestations of good will and love of peace. Every time the world cries “starvation” and “genocide,” our leaders would do well not negotiating, explaining, or conceding, but just  keep reiterating “free our hostages,” “let Hamas surrender,” and “Europe, admit Gazan refugees.” We should be saying that over and over, rather than weakening our war effort and strengthening our enemies and their supporters. And if we won the war, and Hamas was utterly defeated in Gaza, the entire dialogue with these countries would change.

Still, what is the source of this relentless hatred? It is not the existence of Israel, because as the Holocaust reminds us, they also hated us when there was no Israel. They hated us when they called us “rootless cosmopolitans,” a danger to civilization, and hate us now that there is a Jewish state, and still call us a danger to civilization. What gives?

A number of reasons present.

First, the Muslim takeover of Europe. Europe as a civilization is dying, besieged by Muslim immigrants with a culture and value system that is unassimilable, condescends to Europe’s self-image as enlightened, and perceives Europe as ripe for Islamizing. Every country now supporting the creation of a Palestinian state has been victimized by mass Islamic terrorist attacks. Their leaders are scurrying to save their societies, but time and numbers are against them. A Britain where for years the most popular boy’s name is Mohammad will not for long be a supporter of Israel or benevolent to its own Jewish population. France, Germany, Spain, and other countries are not far behind.

Second, all these countries that are suddenly advocating for a Palestinian are governed by leftist parties. France, Spain, Britain, Canada (even Germany, which has a right-leaning government but whose leftist party gives it a majority in the Bundestag) are all ruled by leftist, secular, progressives. Several of those countries had right-wing, pro-Israel governments until recently. Who is not jumping on this tendentious bandwagon? Poland and Hungary (also, neither of whom admit Muslim immigrants), Greece, Italy, and other countries that are ruled by right-wing governments. Canada’s last right-wing government supported Israel, Italy’s last left-wing government was antagonistic. It is as simple as politics.

And make no mistake about it: if Kamala Harris had defeated Donald Trump, the United States would be standing alongside Europe in its effort to carve up and dismantle the Jewish state. Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, opined recently that the United States committed itself to a Palestinian state in 1947 (!), and has failed to deliver on its promise, obviously oblivious to the Arabs’ rejection of that Partition Plan including the war launched against Israel in 1948 and several times thereafter.

What is it about left-wing, secular, progressive governments that they find such fault with Israel? The answer is that Israel stands for everything they reject. They reject nationalism and they repudiate religion, and Israel is a Jewish state, indeed the Jewish nation-state. Double whammy. They reject the Bible as a source of anything, they reject truth as a fixed concept, they reject morality as an objective entity. Everything about Israel will bother them. Then, throw in their embrace of the fallacy that Israel is a white, colonialist state – Israel is actually majority non-white as these racial bean counters would see it and one cannot possibly colonize its own land – and this endless, unsatiable enmity persists and grows stronger.

If you ask, what about the dozens of Muslim countries in the world that are founded on their version of religion and nationalism, why doesn’t that bother these progressives? The answer is, see reason one.

This secular progressive ideology afflicts many leftist Israelis as well and they struggle to articulate what right we have to this land. And many of these are the same Jews who – for the first time in Jewish history – have joined the blood libel against their own people and parrot the accusations of genocide and starvation.

Third, Europe is in the last stages of purging itself of any residue of Holocaust guilt. Germany may have been the prime mover of the Holocaust but there is no European country that is not stained with the blood of six million Jews, either through acts of commission or omission. That is why Holocaust imagery is so rampant in discussing the war in Gaza. Israel is committing “genocide,” the word coined to describe the murder of Jews during the Holocaust; Israel has turned Gaza into a “concentration camp; Israel is intentionally “starving” innocent Gazans, you know, like the Nazis did to the Jews in the ghettos and concentration camps; and any attempt to relocate Gazans out of the war zone in which they live – out of the territory which has now been mostly reduced to rubble – is termed “ethnic cleansing,” you know, like the Nazis did to the Jews.

The Holocaust weighed heavily on European consciences. That burden started to lighten after the Six Day War, and when the Palestinian statehood movement was created shortly thereafter – a way of destroying Israel not through war but through “human rights, self-determination, freedom” and other fine-sounding nostrums – Holocaust guilt swiftly receded. Of course, combining those worthy values with terror and violence, they assumed, would make an unstoppable winning combination. That is where we are today – we are expected to provide every possible human right to our enemies in order to facilitate their murdering us.

Holocaust guilt is gone, and it is aided by Europe’s unquenchable thirst to see Israelis as Nazis, which not only assuages their guilt but leads many to conclude that we had it coming to us. Thus, they want to believe that Jews would wantonly starve and murder innocent people, which is why Hamas’ blood libel has gained enormous currency across the world, and so rapidly.

Fourth, and probably most importantly, we are living the biblical notion of “a people that dwells alone and is not reckoned among the nations” (Bamidbar 23:9). We are different, a nation apart. As a nation, we too are unassimilable but we do not spread mayhem and violence across the globe. This hatred of us is irrational because it is self-destructive to the haters, but it is also ultimately inexplicable. It wells up from some unknown source in order to remind us that while we are set apart in order to better mankind, to bring G-d’s truth and morality to all, we nevertheless have our own destiny. Our history has a purpose.

What bothers them most – and they could not articulate it – is that we are experiencing the realization of all the biblical prophecies. The prophets warned frequently about our impending exile and destruction because of our sins but then assured us repeatedly of our eventual return to the land of Israel and Jewish sovereignty thereon.

That is what we are living through today with all the vicissitudes, the wars, the terror, the hatred, the miracles, and the rebirth. This must confound them and give them no rest because it undermines every progressive idea and shatters every secular shibboleth. It should not be surprising that Operation Rising Lion – the swift and miraculous reversal to Iran’s nuclear program designed to destroy us – was quickly followed by accusations against us of genocide and starvation and the desperate need for a Palestinian state. It does not matter which terrorist thugs lead it or what they want to do with it. Its most important feature is that it can function as a brake on the fulfillment of Jewish destiny.

We have so much to offer the world, which in fact is starving. As Amos the prophet intoned (8:11) several millennia ago, “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord G-d, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of G-d.” Western culture is decadent and Western societies are collapsing, disinclined to reproduce, unwilling to fight for its survival. And so, they hate us and attack us, and find therein some purpose, a cause, however corrupt and venal.

That will be to their everlasting shame. As for us, proud of our heritage and confident in our destiny and the divine promises to us, we should not falter or fumble, hesitate or stumble, but march enthusiastically to our destiny, reclaiming and rebuilding every part of our land, from the river to the sea, imbuing it with holiness and Torah, and awaiting the final redemptive act from Above.

2 Comments

Tagged , ,