Social media sites like Facebook have enabled features for people to post whether they are safe when a particular crisis hits. It is meant as a quick tool to alert friends and families in real-time that one has escaped tragedy.
When war strikes Israel – especially on a holiday – Jews around the world await the pain of loss.
The popular Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group Hamas launched a massive attack against Israel while Jews celebrated the end of their holidays celebrating the Torah. This year, the two-day religious observance of Shemini Azeret/ Simchat Torah in the diaspora outside of Israel, coincided with the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Hamas deployed thousands of missiles and militants into Israel to mark the day in a new war.
As horrible news leaked into synagogues about the war in Israel over the holiday, many Orthodox Jews had to wait until Sunday night to learn about the status of friends and family inside the Jewish holy land, as they do not use any electronic devices over the holiday.
A friend’s son serving in the army killed.
A friend’s cousin taken hostage.
A friend’s best friend killed.
A friend’s child’s roommate killed.
Each frantic call and review of social media was one of trauma.
There are few Jews in the world. While there are 8 billion people who are at most six degrees of separation from any other person, the 15 million Jews are at most two degrees of separation for one another. When hundreds of Jews are murdered, everyone is touched. Everyone mourns.
The Hamas website, which operated openly for years proclaiming its war against the Jewish State, was blocked as it posted videos of its grisly operation killing and kidnapping civilians. Its effort to let Jews know that they are never safe was viewed as too cruel to be given air at this time.
Palestinians pose with the Palestinian flag on an Israeli tank that was destroyed in an attack launched by Hamas on October 7. Behind the tank, the fence separating Gaza from Israel can be seen as destroyed, allowing more inflitrations. Photo: Hani Alsahaer/Anadolu Agency)
But information slowly dribbles in. And it continues to be horrific.
In addition to the over 700 dead are over 100 who have been taken captive, spread throughout the terrorist enclave of Gaza. Children as young as three. Wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivors.
The scale of the loss of life is difficult to comprehend. The number of hostages taken means that the current dangerous situation will be present for a long time.
There is no hashtag for Jews to mark themselves safe, nor an emoji to relay the deep pain at the loss of life and trauma felt for friends trapped at the center of evil.
As Jews around the world wait for bad news, they assess the actions each can take to seize the day from the implacable foe.
ACTION ITEM
Write White House “Support Israel. Cut all funding to Palestinians immediately.”
The last book of the Jewish Bible, Deuteronomy, is both a recap of the origin story of Jews and a lesson plan for the Jewish nation as they readied to return to their promised land.
Chapters 27 and 28 of Deuteronomy lay out the positive blessings that God will ensure to the Jews if they listen to His commandments, and the curses should they abandon Him. Deuteronomy 28:25 speaks of a particular curse:
יהוה will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads; and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
This is the foundation of a cursed diaspora. While Jews had been slaves in Egypt and wandered the desert for hundreds of years, that situation was circumstantial. The Jewish forefathers of Jacob and his sons came to Egypt to avoid a famine and became trapped – together – in the land. As they were ending their time away from their promised land, God warned that they could be banished from the land of Israel, scattered and hated around the world, if they abandoned His charge.
This happened over thousands of years. While Jews had initially established their sovereignty and self-determination in the holy land, over time, invaders came and took the Jews to far away lands. As described in the Bible, they were often hated and persecuted in those lands, with many antisemites validating their persecution with verses from the Old Testament.
The middle of the 20th century brought change.
The Holocaust forced the Catholic Church to revisit their dogma. The horrors inflicted on European Jews with tacit or active support of many, caused the church to rewrite its rulings on the hated wandering Jews in the Second Vatican Council. Twenty years after the Holocaust, on October 28, 1965, the Church issued Nostra Aetate in which it reexamined its relationships with non-Christian faiths.
As it related to Jews, the declaration stated its “rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone…. The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion.”
The Church abandoned the inflamed zeal which served as a driving force against non-Christians in the Crusades and Inquisition – and front row spectator in the Holocaust – and replaced it with a foundation of love for people of other faiths. The Holocaust – the “horror to all the kingdoms of the earth” as described in Deuteronomy – compelled the largest faith group in the world to reverse course and begin anew with an attitude of love towards all people.
The Church was able to do this by focusing on the texts of the Old and New Testaments and facts of history. It did not rewrite history that Jesus and the apostles weren’t Jews. It did not pretend that the Holocaust did not happen. It did not deny that the land of Israel is that exact piece of land that God promised to the Jewish people.
The Catholic Church considered facts and extracted new meaning, especially in light of Jews returning to their homeland after nearly 2,000 years, inspired and directed by love and peace.
Alas, as the years 1936 to 1967 which brought the horrors of the Holocaust, the rebirth of the Jewish State, the Second Vatican Council and the reunification of Jerusalem under Jewish control, directed the Islamic world to turn to noxious antisemitism.
While Nazi Germany gained power from 1936 to 1939, the Muslim Arabs in Palestine waged a war against Jews. They killed hundreds and successfully petitioned the British who were administering Palestine to block the entry of Jews back to their homeland, just as hundreds of thousands were fleeing the Holocaust.
During World War II, Palestinian leaders conspired with the Nazis as they had a “shared recognition of the enemy,” as Heinrich Himmler wrote to the Palestinian Grand Mufti in Jerusalem about the Jews. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, Arab Muslims from Palestine and the surrounding countries invaded the new Jewish State in the hopes of a second Holocaust, to destroy the country and wipe out the Jews.
Palestinian Arabs are the most antisemitic people in the world according to polls. They are the center of Muslim antisemitism as noted in the same ADL poll that “while Muslims are more likely to hold antisemitic views than members of any other religion (49% Index Score), geography makes a big difference in their views. Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa (75% Index Score) are much more likely to harbor antisemitic attitudes than Muslims in Asia (37% Index Score), Western Europe (29% Index Score), Eastern Europe (20% Index Score), and Sub-Saharan Africa (18% Index Score).”
Ultra Orthodox Jews in the Me’a She’arim section of Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
While Christians looked at the text of the Old Testament and saw the rebirth of the Jewish State as an affirmation of Jews being good and blessed by God’s love, Muslims were compelled to cast the Jews as evil and unworthy of the land and God’s love.
The conclusion of the Jewish Bible has stories of blessings and curses for Jews as it relates to their behavior and presence in the land of Israel. Over the last few decades, Christian Zionists have come to view the Jews as good and worthy of the promised land, while Muslims attempt to portray Jews as irredeemably evil and unworthy of of the holy land. Muslim Arabs then also fabricate stories that Jews don’t even have history in the land to further undermine any potential Jewish claim.
Muslim vilification of Jews is not simply antisemitism; it is a tool for ethnic cleansing.
Far left extremist Rep. Jamaal Bowman who represents the moderate lower Westchester County District 16 in New York State is a liar who lies a lot. More importantly, he’s very dangerous and doesn’t represent the values of his district.
Jamaal Bowman’s Fire Alarm & Nazi Lies
The current controversy of whether Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Congress is a small part of the story. He either pulled the alarm because 1) he’s an idiot who can’t read the word “FIRE” or doesn’t know what a fire alarm looks like despite years as a middle school principal, running dozens of fire drills; 2) did it on purpose and put thousands of lives at risk both in causing the evacuation of the building and pulling firefighters from actual emergencies, so he can delay a House vote to give Democrats more time to assess their strategy; or 3) was simply “confused” as he’d like you to believe.
Bowman’s staff then tried to protect their master by swearing allegiance to him and calling Republicans “Nazis” to distract attention from the episode – sort of like calling “fire over there!”. After decent people complained at using the genocide of Jews as a political fig leaf, Bowman said that he hadn’t approved of the use of the word Nazi and “I condemn the use of the term Nazi out of its precise definition. It is important to specify the term Nazi to refer to members of the Nazi party & neo-Nazis.”
That’s a lie as Bowman has called Republicans “Nazis” including conservative pundit Michael Knowles. He underscored the point saying that the Conservative Political Action Conference “support[s] a future run by Nazis.”
Jamaal Bowman’s Infrastructure Bill Lie
Bowman took to the airwaves with political theater lambasting Sen. Joe Manchin voting against the infrastructure bill, then Bowman himself voted against it. Not satisfied with hypocrisy, Bowman then lied to his constituents that he backed the bill.
Jamaal Bowman’s Small Donation Lie
Bowman likes to make himself sound like he’s in the fight for the every day worker, a populist in the model of x-President Trump. He’s claimed that the “average donation [to his campaign] is about 40 bucks,” but in fact it was $607, fifteen times as much.
But Bowman is not just a liar and hypocrite. He’s dangerous.
Jamaal Bowman Is Dangerous
The garden variety liar says that they weigh less than they actually do or maybe are a few inches taller. An average political liar would say that they were in the line of fire visiting a foreign country, when in fact they were quite safe. Bold-faced political liars make up their entire background in order to get elected.
But pulling a fire alarm to put thousands of lives at risk? Concealing the act by belittling the genocide of Jews while Jews in his district and his state are suffering from terrible antisemitism? Pushing to have the rap music of antisemites who sing about violence into school curricula?
Jamaal Bowman is only concerned with a narrow slice of his constituents: Black people, Muslims and radical leftists. He has utter contempt for moderates, a point he makes every day.
The question is whether a moderate Democrat who speaks for the entire district will oppose him in the primaries. We can only hope.
The antisemites of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan continued their evil ways in condemning Jews visiting their holiest location on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, even during the Jewish pilgrimage holiday of Sukkot. The Jordanian foreign minister “denounced the continuous break-ins by Israeli settlers [meaning Jews] at Al Aqsa Mosque” and “that the 144-dunum Al Aqsa Mosque is solely an Islamic holy site” and is completely off-limits to Jews.
This false narrative was inserted by Muslim and Arab nations into the United Nations which has subsequently used it for decades.
United Nations map showing the 1949 Armistice Lines between Israel and Jordan through Jerusalem and highlighting the “principal holy places”
As seen in the United Nations’ map above, the The Temple Mount (in red dotted lines) is not marked correctly as a Jewish holy site. The “Haram esh-Sharif (Mosque of Omar and Mosque of Aksa” is only listed as a Moslem holy place, a deliberate insult to global Jewry.
The United States has sometimes taken offense at the erasure of Jewish heritage in Jerusalem. In response to a United Nations vote on Jerusalem in December 2021, Ambassador Richard Erdman, Area Advisor for Near Eastern Affairs issued a statement: “I want to highlight one specific issue of serious concern, which is the reference to the holy sites in the Jerusalem text. The text only references “Haram al-Sharif,” rather than “Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount,” which is agreed terminology that recognizes the shared and diverse history of the holy site. The omission of this inclusive terminology is of real and sincere concern. It is morally, historically, and politically wrong for the members of this body to support language that denies both the Jewish and Muslim connections to the Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif.“
Yet despite condemning the lack of LANGUAGE showing Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, the United States supports antisemitic ACTIONS against Jews praying at their holiest site.
On September 28, 2023, Linda Thomas-Greenfield said “I also want to reiterate that the United States firmly supports the preservation of the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem [banning Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount]. And we oppose actions that depart from the historic status quo, or otherwise disturb the sanctity of these sites. Such action is unacceptable.”
It is a disgrace that the United States can acknowledge the centrality of the Temple Mount to Jews and Judaism, while simultaneously supporting banning Jews from praying at the site. The United States is aligning with antisemites on the wrong side of history, supporting outright discrimination in a Muslim religious war against Jews.
Why is the Biden Administration so determined to spread anger, division and hate? Why is it supporting policies in which Jews are targeted for attack at their holy site? To gain support against the Iranian nuclear weapons program or lowering the price of gas a few cents?
It is past time for decent governments to support an honest telling of history and abolish the inequity Jews continue to face in Jerusalem.
ACTION ITEM
EMail Senator Gillibrand “It is a disgrace that the US can acknowledge the centrality of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for Jews yet support banning Jewish prayer at their holiest site.”
It is a disgrace that the US can acknowledge the centrality of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for jews yet support banning Jewish prayer at their holiest site.
Disgraced Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) has now admitted to pulling a fire alarm in the halls of congress. Fearing that his apology would be viewed as insufficient, he has instructed his staff to defend his actions by redirecting the question towards Republicans which he calls “Nazis“.
Memo from Bowman’s office directs staffers to call Republicans “Nazis” if asked about the congressman pulling a fire alarm
The internal memo specifically calls on staffers to swear loyalty to the radical congressman and say “I believe Congressman Bowman when he says this was an accident. Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.”
What kind of inanity is this? It makes a mockery of the entire concept of an apology to hurl insults at the other political party and minimizing the Holocaust as simple fodder for political cover.
It is insufficient for Bowman to only apologize to fellow politicians for causing a dangerous situation in congress; he must ask forgiveness from the entire country for trivializing the genocide of Jews as a red herring to conceal his own stupidity.
ACTION ITEM
EMail Senator Gillibrand “Condemn Rep. Jamaal Bowman for using the Holocaust as a shield for his own stupidity.”
It is insufficient for Bowman to only apologize to fellow politicians for causing a dangerous situation in Congress. He must ask forgiveness from the entire country for trivializing the genocide of Jews to conceal his own stupidity
Far-left extremist Rep. Jamaal Bowman was caught on video pulling a fire alarm in the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C., as members were getting ready to vote on a bill to avoid a government shutdown. The building needed to be evacuated and people were only able to return once it was determined that there was never any risk.
Disgraced Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) pulling the fire alarm in Congress for no reason
Bowman later apologized “for any confusion this caused.” Members of Congress are questioning the sincerity, as Bowman recorded a rap song seemingly lifted from some of his favorite rappers, called ‘Burning Down the House’. The lines seemingly parrot phrases from the congressman’s favorite rappers including 2Pac, Nas, Jay-Z, KRS One and Rakim.
“More pure than raw, much more above the law I don’t go on tour, I go to war Scorching, I’m torching cause that’s how we do The arson, this pason, is coming for you Set your entire empire on fire So give me a mic without a wire Cause every dose is highly explosive Your government is fully corrosive
“Tell me, how many of you motherf*ckers feel me? I smoke a blunt and freak the funk until these jealous motherf*ckers kill me Cause I could give a f*ck about you, you better duck Go or I’ll be forced to hit yo’ ass up, I give a f*ck Open fire on my adversaries, don’t even worry Better have on a vest aim for the chest and then you buried I hear the sirens, run for cover Over the fence and open fire
First One Through 