The Perfect Nation

Posted on September 10, 2025 | 2 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Whenever Israelis sense that the world is unsympathetic to our case, we habitually lament our failure of hasbara – i.e., public relations, diplomacy, even propaganda in the most innocuous sense. If only we had the right people or the right message, the complaint goes, then we would be the darlings of the diplomatic set, the world would eagerly embrace our narrative, learn the facts, and support the justice of our cause. They would not be swallowing the “Gaza starvation blood libel” propagated by Hamas nor be quick to reward our murderers, rapists, and kidnappers with their own state.

What we fail to realize is that our futility is not due to the incompetence of our spokesmen, who do a credible job, but to the deafness of the intended audience. When talking to the deaf, with the speaker ignorant of sign language and the deaf person inept at lip-reading, it is simply impossible to be understood, no matter how persuasive or cogent. The bottom line is that much of the world is deaf to Israel, the Jewish state, the Jewish national idea, and even to a great extent, our moral aspirations. It is not at all a matter of what we say or how we say it; it is almost exclusively a question of who is doing the listening, and who we are trying to convince.

Forget our haters. If people are on the fence, unable to choose between the genocidal death cult of Hamas and its allies, and the Jews who bring so much good to the world, it is unclear that they can be convinced or that they are really fence sitters who await our explanation.

Nevertheless, there is one feature of our hasbara that we should abandon, and better yesterday. Israel is the only country in the world in which its officials and friends constantly preface their defense by saying “Israel is not perfect.” Search the archives and look for any official or patriot of the following countries beginning a sentence “well, Russia is not perfect,” “China is not perfect,” “France is not perfect,” “Greece is not perfect,” “Turkey is not perfect,” “The Emirates are not perfect,” the United Kingdom is not perfect,” etc. 

It is preposterous. Israel is the only country in the world where admission to imperfection is supposed to be part of its brief. We might add the United States during the apology tour of Barack Obama but even he only admitted to the past sins of others, not his own, and certainly no current sins.

To begin a jury summation with “my client is not perfect” is used usually when your client is guilty as sin – unless the concession is in an unrelated area. (For example, your client is on trial for homicide and you concede that he routinely parks in a handicapped spot.) But to concede “my client is not perfect. He has a terrible temper and is prone to violence, but in this case, it was self-defense,” well, that is a losing argument. Get ready for a conviction.

We should ask ourselves: which nation is perfect such that Israel has to use that preface? None, and so it is a mistake. Instead of explaining repeatedly when enemy civilians are killed during a battle that “Israel doesn’t intentionally attack civilians but a mistake was made,” we should be responding: “This is the nature of war, a war forced upon us. Who does attack civilians? Hamas on October 7 attacked civilians. Hamas is still brutalizing our civilians they hold hostage. If they care about the fate of their civilians, they will surrender. Until then, this is war, and we intend to end it with the complete vanquishing of our enemy.”

Instead of boasting how much aid we are giving to the enemy, we should be saying “there is real starvation – not in Gaza (except for our hostages) but in Sudan, in Syria, in Haiti. Five times as many people have died there in the last year than in all of Gaza in the last two years. Yes, we are not perfect. We are so imperfect that we are foolishly providing food, water, and fuel to the enemy and prolonging the war in the hope that a hypocritical world will recognize our goodness. But you won’t, ever – and therefore we intend to force a surrender by halting all aid. That is war.”

These are powerful assertions of our rights and should replace the groveling, begging the nations to appreciate and extol our morality. It should be obvious to all of us that they know it already. They just can’t admit it. They know that they have never conducted their wars as they expect us to conduct ours – not the United States, not Britain, not Germany, not France, not Spain, not Russia, not Belgium, not Australia, not China, not any Arab country, etc. Wars conducted on those terms can never be won.

So why play their game? Why give in to their farce? Rather than constantly note our imperfections, simply ask: which of you, nations, has ever fought a war in which you supplied food and aid to the enemy population before surrender? Correct answer: none. 

Even after World War II, millions (!) of Europeans died of starvation after the war, primarily but not exclusively in Eastern Europe. President Truman dispatched Herbert Hoover to deal with the famine problem (as Hoover had done so successfully after World War I). And when did Hoover go to Europe to investigate the problem and fashion a solution? It was not until the spring of 1946, almost a year after the war ended. By then millions of civilians were already dead. Food aid did not begin on a consistent basis until May 1946.

Please check carefully: the victorious Allies never prefaced any statement with “well, the Allies are not perfect…”

There is a reason for this and a profound lesson to be taught, even to enemy civilians. You don’t want to suffer? Don’t aggress, don’t maraud, don’t murder, don’t kidnap, and don’t start a war you can’t win hoping that a duplicitous world will save you.

We will never win by being defensive, apologetic, or by loving our enemies and expecting them to love us. And feelings that are based on false information can never be assuaged. Far better to let the enemy and their supporters and even people across the world ponder this: “you attack Jews and the Jewish homeland? You murder, rape, maraud, and kidnap? This is the price you will pay until you surrender: death, destruction, devastation, suffering, and exile. And our response to your invasion is perfect – and perfectly Jewish.”

 And they will say to themselves – never aloud, except for a few good people – “hey, the Jews are right. This is how a government of murderers, rapists, beheaders, and kidnappers – and their voters and supporters – should be treated. Until they surrender.”

Is this Jewish morality? Absolutely. Unsophisticated Jews frequently hear the rabbinic maxim of the angels wanting to praise G-d after the elimination of the Egyptian enemy at the Red Sea, and G-d’s demurral: “My handiwork is drowning, and you want to sing before Me” (Sanhedrin 39b)? Indeed, let the angels lament the death of the enemy. But while the angels were being admonished for their attempt at praising G-d, the Jews were singing: “Let me sing to G-d for He has triumphed gloriously; a horse and his rider He has hurled into the sea…G-d is my strength and my song; He was for me a salvation. G-d is a warrior. G-d is His name” (Shemot 15:1-3). And we still sing that song every day. 

Unfortunately, most of our government does not yet operate with a Jewish head. Nor do most Jews. Thus, they will keep saying, “we are not perfect,” hoping that a partial admission will purchase us some good will. The nations, cynically but well aware of our confession, will just assume the worst about us, however false and fabricated. And we will continue to wonder why we cannot convince the world how moral we are. 

It says something good about our character that we like to boast about having the most moral army in the world but such is inapposite to the task at hand. It is nice and speaks well of us, but a greater boast would be having the most victorious army in the world. War is an immoral endeavor, and morality in war is on the margins, mostly in the exercise of self-restraint by soldiers who by definition are given a license to kill. The world’s attempt to civilize war beginning in the 19th century – i.e., the attempt to refine and regulate the process by which people try to kill each other – helped to forge the bloodiest century in all of history, the 20th century, in terms of raw numbers of combatants and civilians killed. And it still goes on and on. The attempt itself was good-hearted but ultimately counterproductive, encouraging the bad actors to wage war knowing the good guys will hamstring themselves. Rules of war that are not based on reciprocity are bound to fail and embolden the evildoers. 

And one way the evildoers are emboldened is by playing on the sympathies of liberal Jews, and Westerners who buy into the Hamas propaganda, or at least echo it as a possibility in an attempt to demonstrate their broadmindedness. This is the Hamas strategy. Note that Amalek in gematria equals 240, or safek, doubt. One of Amalek’s hoary tactics is to sow doubt among the Jews as to the justice of our cause, the morality of Torah, and our claims to the land of Israel. This is not new.

The truth is that if we win the war, utterly defeat Hamas, evacuate large numbers of Gazans to places in the world where they can rehabilitate themselves and live good, productive lives, all the enmity they feel will be channeled elsewhere. People move on. And those who hate Jews will still hate Jews. That’s not going away. 

But we should stop apologizing for not being perfect. No country on the planet has ever been given greater incentive or possessed a greater right to utterly extirpate a ruthless enemy than we have been given – and yet we have never acted on that impulse. Maybe that is as close to moral perfection as any nation has ever come.

The ideal should be awakening people to the reality of the utter devastation of war so that wars become too deadly to make any sense, and even evildoers stop waging war. We are closer to that than people think, as long as the good guys are allowed to win. And then we will realize the prophetic vision of the end of war when the nations see the light of divine morality and embrace a different, holier reality.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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