Parshat Eikev is about consequences. Love God and cherish the land, and there will be abundance. Turn away from them, and the blessings will vanish. It’s not just poetic scripture—it’s a binding principle embedded in Jewish destiny.
In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, handing the Strip to the Palestinian Authority. The move was framed as a step toward peace, but Palestinians internalized a different lesson from the Second Intifada: violence works. Within two years, Hamas was elected to a majority of the Palestinian parliament, seized power in Gaza, and rockets became Gaza’s chief export.
The same pattern played out decades earlier. In 1967, Israel reclaimed eastern Jerusalem from Jordan in a defensive war and reunified the city. Yet, instead of asserting Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism—Israel handed day-to-day control to the Islamic Waqf which banned Jewish prayer there. The Muslim world absorbed the message: Jews do not value their holy places as deeply as Muslims do.
These choices raise the uncomfortable question: do Jews truly love the land and God in the way Eikev commands? The Bible is not just a Jewish text. Billions of non-Jews around the globe read it. They know its covenantal clauses and its warnings. They understand—at least in their own terms—the consequences that befall Jews when we turn from God’s love and from the eternal heritage of the land. Some may even see themselves as agents in delivering divine justice.
God knows. The world knows.
It is time for Jews to internalize this truth. The Shema’s first line is often recited aloud with pride. But the second section (starting at Deuteronomy 11:13), with its stark outline of blessings for faithfulness and curses for betrayal, is whispered—if said at all. Perhaps it’s time to say it aloud, not just with our lips, but with our lives: affirming an unbreakable commitment to God and to the holiness of the land.
In Israel, that would be building homes in the area known as “E1,” cementing all of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount as integral to Israel. In the diaspora, it means putting mezuzahs on doorposts and wearing tefillin (11:18-20).
The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound
Consequences are not an abstraction in the Torah—they are the lived reality of Jewish history. Eikev’s message is as urgent now as it was on the plains of Moab.
The United States is experiencing the worst wave of antisemitism in modern memory. Jews are attacked in the streets of New York, vilified on college campuses, and shunned in social circles simply for being Jewish or supporting Israel. Synagogues and community centers are fortifying themselves like military outposts, while families weigh whether their children are safe wearing a Star of David in public.
The federation’s leadership points to precedent: they’ve sent funds abroad before—to Turkey after an earthquake, to Ukraine after the Russian invasion. But this is not Turkey. It is not Ukraine. It’s also not Canada and Australia undergoing horrible antisemitism.
Gaza is not a neutral disaster zone. Its people have elected and support leaders who openly call for the murder of Israeli Jews. Its ruling terror group, Hamas, slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023, and still holds hostages. Polling has long shown majority support among Gazans for killing Jewish Israeli civilians and to destroy Israel. This is not a passive bystander to tragedy; it is a society that has gone to war against the Jewish state again and again.
The difference matters. When the federation sends aid to a country struck by natural disaster, it’s an act of humanity. When it sends aid to a population whose political and militant factions seek Jewish extermination – while in the middle of a war – it’s an act freighted with moral confusion.
The leadership may believe that giving to Gazans proves Jewish compassion “even to our enemies,” or helps with global optics. But for Jews watching their own safety erode daily in the United States and in other communities around the world, it looks like a failure to stand with their own community. It risks alienating the very donors who built the federation in the first place.
Charity is not limitless. Every dollar has an opportunity cost. And while Jewish students are harassed on campus, Jewish businesses vandalized, and Jewish institutions desperate for security funding, this million-dollar gesture to Gaza sends a clear message: in our hour of greatest vulnerability, the suffering of those sworn to kill us will be prioritized alongside, or even above, our own survival.
The empathy swamp is drowning us, blessed by community leaders.
American Jewry had managed with peacetime leadership for decades but it is time to replace them as the environment has shifted, and leaders have proven that they are not up to the moment.
From nowhere they came — and now they’re everywhere. The spotted lanternfly, with its colorful delicate wings and destructive path, has infested the American landscape. It’s believed to have originated from China and, in just a few years, has spread across states, devastating crops and trees like the “tree of heaven,” its favorite host. The government seems incapable of containing it. Few natural predators exist. The infestation has become a symbol of bureaucratic failure and public resignation.
Spotted lanternfly
But some wonder: does this pestilence reflect something deeper, more corrosive — a cultural infestation?
Many point again to China, not just for the lanternfly, but for feeding antisemitism into western culture, especially through TikTok — a powerful delivery system for ideological poison. Others blame Qatar, which has poured billions into American universities that now shelter hatred under the guise of “free speech.” The Gaza war may have triggered the firestorm, but the kindling was laid long ago — through foreign influence, academic corruption, legal systems reluctant to confront hate when it wears the right colors and intersectional culture intent on vanishing Jews.
The response has been toothless. Protesters shut down airports and bridges with impunity. Cities release vandals hours after they’re arrested. Politicians decry antisemitism in speeches while voting to defund the very police tasked with protecting vulnerable communities. Universities who once claimed to be safe spaces now protect the mob instead of the beleaguered minority.
Like the lanternfly, antisemitism has become endemic. And just as officials tell us to stomp on the bugs as a civic duty, people now post videos taking down “protest” signs and washing off graffiti — not to eradicate the hate, but to vent helplessness.
We’ve reached a tipping point. Many have chosen to watch the wave rather than swim against it.
But Jews are not trees. Unlike the “tree of heaven,” the Jews have a history of moving, surviving, rebuilding. As America shrugs at the firebombs and broken windows, and as elected leaders dismiss Jewish fear as overreaction, a quiet migration begins. New York, Toronto, and Melbourne may look the same in ten years — but they will feel different. Not because the skyline will change, but because of the absence. The absence of a people whose presence once animated these places with faith, culture, and conscience.
Vienna was no longer Vienna after the Jews were rounded up and slaughtered, and French leaders know that France will no longer really be French if Jewish frustration and fear makes them move. But America has no such institutional memory. And as Americans elect younger and more inexperienced radical politicians, the destruction will accelerate.
Jews were forced to wear distinctive clothing in the Middle Ages and in Nazi Germany, and were tattooed in concentration camps before the annihilation was manifest. But it’s the moral corruption of the cities themselves that marks Jews for extinction; black sooty mold as the lanternflies feast and kill.
The last Jews will be those who see fellow Jews’ fears as fantasies, constellations drawn from a few distinct points like ancient mariners and pagans lost in heavenly thoughts. Perhaps those survivors will be the only Jews the West wants anyway: hearty crops which withstood the plague may have more in common with the new natural order.
A friend recently attended a Shabbat dinner in New York City and came away shaken by the politics. Somewhere between the challah and the halva, she realized that nearly everyone at the table planned to vote for Zohran Mamdani for mayor. The same Democratic Socialist Mamdani who whitewashes slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” who supports defunding the police, who has floated ideas about taxing “white neighborhoods” and redistributing wealth based on racial and ideological lines.
She was dumbfounded. How could fellow Jews support someone so openly hostile to the Jewish state, so enamored with radical ideologies, and so completely without experience?
I pointed her to the recent conversation between Peter Beinart and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Two progressive Jews—one secular (Stewart), the other traditional (Beinart)—discussed Beinart’s new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. The 18-minute segment is deeply revealing. The entire interview should be watched here, but allow me to share some essential lessons—before and after viewing—that help explain why so many Jews, especially young urban progressives, are drawn to voices like Mamdani and Beinart.
Lesson 1: Empathy Above All
To understand the progressive worldview, you must begin with its North Star: empathy.
Numerous studies (one in Israel, from Pew Research and the Cato Institute) have shown that liberal parents prioritize teaching their children empathy far more than rules or tradition. In contrast, conservative parents emphasize justice, law, and the preservation of custom (hence more prevalent among Orthodox and older Jews.)
This foundational difference creates radically divergent outlooks on society. A progressive might prefer to risk letting many guilty people roam free than to wrongly incarcerate one innocent person. A conservative accepts that, tragically, some mistakes happen but that a functioning justice system must deliver accountability and deterrence.
That lens helps understand how different people see the Hamas War from Gaza. The progressive Jewish instinct is not to ask how such barbarism could happen on October 7, but to imagine what life must feel like under Israeli rule, or how starvation affects a child in Khan Younis.
So when Hamas raped and tortured Israelis, when they slaughtered entire families and burned babies alive, Stewart and Beinart give it a passing nod… then quickly pivot to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, who—in their view—are the true victims, regardless of what many of them supported or elected.
Lesson 2: Virtue Signaling as Moral Currency
Empathy doesn’t just sit as a value; it becomes a performance.
Among progressive Jews, virtue signaling is a sort of social currency. The more you publicly condemn your “privilege,” the more you highlight your efforts to engage the suffering, and the more elevated you become to your audience.
Beinart models this in the interview. He talks about how well his family is doing, how comfortable his life is in New York, and then contrasts that by expressing concern for Gazans. The clear message: Look how aware I am of my privilege, and how much I care about the “Other.” He is not just the model of progressive Jewry, but a self-anointed saint of Tikkun Olam, “repairing the world.”
But this empathy becomes hollow when it’s divorced from context. Where is his concern for the Israeli mothers whose sons are still buried beneath Gaza? Where is the recognition that Gazans elected Hamas and would do so again today? Where is the acknowledgment that Israel lives under constant threat from genocidal neighbors, that Israeli civilians are routinely targeted, and that Hamas has vowed to repeat October 7 “again and again”?
This isn’t empathy—it’s performative pity, practiced in the safety of a Manhattan studio. And it is toxic.
Peter Beinart and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
The Problem of Projection
Beinart and Stewart approach Israel through the lens of American liberalism. They treat it as if it should behave like the U.S.—a country of immigrants with separation of church and state, with no ethnic identity at its core. A massive country with only two neighbors, each of which is no threat.
But Israel was not created to be an echo of America. It is the reestablished homeland of the Jewish people, in a region dominated by theocratic regimes. It’s not just a democracy—it’s an ethnic democracy, forged out of centuries of persecution and built in response to repeated extermination campaigns. It is a small country surrounded by hostile neighbors with ever-present security threats.
Israel cannot survive if it mimics U.S. norms. It has different rules because IT IS DIFFERENT and faces existential threats the U.S. does not. Yet Beinart and Stewart project their own experiences as comfortable, wealthy New York Jews onto a situation they cannot fully grasp—and then fault Israelis for not aligning with their fantasy of liberalism. It is an impossible liberal standard in the Middle East, and they fault the Jewish State for coming up short.
Progressive Jews Are Winning the Narrative—But At What Cost?
Beinart wants to be the prophet of the next generation of Jews—disillusioned, skeptical of Israel, obsessed with universal empathy. He’s the aspiring Grand Rebbe of Tikkun Olam. Stewart plays the court jester to the progressive tribe on his popular show, delivering cathartic lines that avoid hard truths.
Together, they are shaping a Jewish worldview in which Israel is an embarrassment to be shunned, and October 7 is a short footnote to be ignored. The primary directive is to lead with empathy, which is always directed away from oneself, and towards those perceived as underdogs. Whether those weaker individuals intend to do harm can ideally be rationalized. Better still, the AsAJew credentials provide a get-out-of-jail free card, absolving the sin and sinner by the highest authorities. If Hamas cannot or will not change, then Jewish victims must forgive the wicked party, grant their wishes, and risk their lives again as the pathway towards peace and coexistence. They are modern-day Jesuses delivering the sermon on the Mount – via cable TV.
That’s why voting for someone like Mamdani doesn’t feel like a betrayal—it feels like moral progress ensconced in a Jewish-like religion. Accept abuse as the toxic cleanse of particularism and embrace the abuser in the spiritual bath of universalism.
In the name of empathy, they abandon solidarity. In the name of justice, they ignore murder. In the name of virtue, they vote for those who vilify their own.
“Being Jewish after Gaza,” for progressives is a swamp of guilt, seeing Gaza as a killing field by right-wing Israeli Islamophobes. For conservatives, “after Gaza” means freedom, recognizing Gaza as a terrorist enclave steeped in a profound moral “deformity.” Both may have elements of truth, but neither side can imagine the validity of the other.
In the Middle East, progressive like Peter Beinart see Jews as supremacists. In New York, progressives like teacher union boss Randi Weingarten see city Jews as the “ownership class,” and WESPAC’s Howard Horowitz visualizes Jewish Zionists as racists. These progressives portray Jews around the world as rich, capitalist victimizers who cannot claim the mantle of victimhood, even after the October 7 massacre.
They are teaching young, progressive and non-Orthodox Jews to lead with select and projected empathy. In New York City, they can create a manifest destiny with votes for the alt-left, far more tangible than prancing with placards about something thousands of miles away.
Young New York Jews are picking up the “intifada” chant – Arabic for “shaking off” – of the Jewish State and pro-Israel Jews. At this moment, they may not recognize the jihad they have joined. Time will tell whether they will care when it inevitably turns violent on the most persecuted minority-minority.
And that’s how the show is supposed to end anyway, right? Jesus on the cross. But the epilogue has a pivot, seeking empathy-squared: Jesus was a Jew. Now the Jews are Jesus.
The grand rebbes of Tikkun Olam are the new apostles for Zohran Mamdani.
When IsraelAnalysis.com first reported an act of anti-Israel vandalism on the streets of White Plains, it pointed to the possibility of WESPAC—a long-standing left-wing activist group with a record of anti-Israel rhetoric—as being behind the hate-fueled attack. While no individual has been arrested or charged, the suspicion is not without reason. The question arises: why WESPAC?
Let’s start with timing. The graffiti appeared around 5:00 p.m. on the Ninth of Av, the somber Jewish fast day that mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. WESPAC planned a “urgent vigil for the children of Gaza” at the same time the next day in Peekskill. That city lies further north in Westchester, while many of WESPAC’s most vocal “activists” live in southern Westchester, including White Plains. “Solidarity” for these comrades in southern Westchester may have brought them out on a sunny Sunday.
WESPAC ad for a vigil for Gaza in northern Westchester
Moreover, the vandalized site itself—a street decorated with American and Israeli flags—was an obvious magnet for anti-Israel agitators. What better canvas for those hoping to make a statement on a Jewish day of mourning than one visually celebrating the very state they protest?
But the context runs deeper.
WESPAC has long used the veneer of social justice to cloak its deeply anti-Israel agenda. In neighboring Hartsdale, the group confronted Jews filled with virulent anti-Israel rhetoric. And the current chair of WESPAC, Howard Horowitz, isn’t just a local—he’s a paradoxical figure leading the Israel Action Committee at Temple Israel of New Rochelle, even while aligning publicly with radical anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow.
Horowitz’s own writings are telling. He lashed out at Jewish residents of New Rochelle who had the temerity to run for school board seats, accusing them—and by extension the broader Jewish community—of racism against people of color. He has taken aim at “the vast majority [who] repeat the “I stand with Israel” declarations, disregarding the horrific facts on the ground” in Gaza, making the banner-lined street in White Plains a perfect target for his vitriol. He further believes that such pro-Israel proclamation “denigrates the Jewish tragedies” like the Ninth of Av, making the fast day an appropriate moment to attack Israel supporters.
Horowitz makes no bones about mocking Jewish “nationalism” as evil and “antithetical to Yiddishkeit,” even while he advocates for Arab nationalism. That’s his right, but it doesn’t put him or his group beyond the sphere of suspicion.
As reported by Lohud, the media site covering the lower Hudson Valley, ADL reported that in 2024, Westchester was unique among the suburbs of New York City, to have an increase in antisemitic incidents, a rise of 22% from 2023. Rockland, Nassau and Suffolk counties had declines of 11%, 36% and 26%, respectively. The disparity had much to do with anti-Israel groups including JVP, Palestinian Youth Movement and Democratic Socialist of America – all groups aligned and supported by WESPAC.
To be clear: no direct evidence has emerged tying WESPAC—or Horowitz—to this act of vandalism in White Plains. But in a county like Westchester, where anti-Israel rhetoric has become increasingly normalized in certain activist circles, and where groups like WESPAC operate openly with impunity, the suspicion is understandable.
This wasn’t random graffiti. It was a calculated message, timed for maximum symbolic effect. It struck at a street display of solidarity, and a people commemorating thousands of years of trauma.
And when neighbors ask: Who would do something like this?—it’s not hard to see why eyes turn toward the radical group operating, quite literally, just down the street.
In Parshat Devarim, Moses begins his final speech to the Israelites. He does not begin with the Creation of the world or the stories of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs. The Book of Genesis — with its grand universal themes and personal family journeys — is set aside. Instead, Moses focuses on the collective journeyhe himself witnessed: the liberation from Egypt, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the rebellions and reckonings in the wilderness. It is as though this is where the Jewish people’s national story truly begins.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that Deuteronomy is not just a repetition of laws — it is Moses’ personal testimony, his urgent effort to pass on memory, meaning, and mission. As the Israelites stand poised to enter the Land, Moses knows he will not go with them. What he offers instead is the one thing only he can give: the lived truth of experience.
This resonates today more than ever. We are witnessing the passing of another generation of eyewitnesses: the survivors of the Holocaust and the founders of the modern State of Israel. Like Moses, they saw the journey with their own eyes — from slavery and destruction to sovereignty and rebuilding. They walked from Auschwitz to Jerusalem. They built a state out of the ashes, defended it in war, and gave it the infrastructure of a living, breathing nation.
Their stories — of suffering and survival, of faith and fortitude — are not just history lessons. They are testaments. And they come with a charge: to remember, to be vigilant, to defend our people and our land, and to carry forward the values of Torah and the reality of Jewish nationhood.
Just as Moses recounted the past to prepare the people for the future, so too must we internalize the legacy of those who came before us. Their firsthand accounts are not simply about what was, but about what must be. A people grounded in memory is a people prepared for destiny.
If we listen to their voices — and not merely archive them — we gain strength to resist the deniers, the revisionists, and the haters. We reaffirm that we are not just a people with a past, but a people with a purpose — a covenantal mission that stretches from Sinai to today.
In the Book of Numbers, chapters 32 and 34, we find a powerful and enduring lesson for Jews living outside the land of Israel. The tribes of Reuben and Gad, later joined by half of the tribe of Manasseh, approached Moses with a bold request. They asked to settle on the east side of the Jordan River, outside the boundaries of the Promised Land, because the land there was suitable for their abundant livestock. Moses was skeptical: was this another rebellion, like the spies who had refused to enter the land decades earlier?
But the tribes made a solemn vow. They would not only join the conquest of the Land of Israel—they would be on the front lines. Only after the land was secured for their brethren would they return to their homes across the Jordan. They could live outside the Promised Land, but they could not abandon their people or their mission.
Wallis’s New map of The Holy Land (1815)
Fast forward thousands of years, and the question still echoes: Do Jews living in the diaspora bear a similar responsibility toward Israel today?
The modern State of Israel, reborn in 1948, has been under near-constant threat. From surrounding Arab nations launching wars to terrorist regimes like Hamas slaughtering civilians, Israel’s security is never guaranteed. The battlefield has expanded beyond the physical: anti-Israelism masquerades as social justice in Western institutions, and Jewish students face intimidation on campuses from New York to London to Sydney.
And yet, many diaspora Jews seem detached from the fight. Some claim that Israel’s policies are the cause of antisemitism. Others go further, actively criticizing the Jewish State in public forums – leading with “AsAJew” credentials – hoping that distancing themselves will spare them from scorn.
The lesson of Reuben and Gad was clear: you can live outside the land, but not outside the mission.
Reuben and Gad did not ask to be exempt from the battle. In fact, they pledged to be the vanguard. Likewise, Jews living in the diaspora, particularly those in free and prosperous nations, must recognize their role. They may not carry rifles in the IDF, but they must arm themselves with truth, courage, and commitment.
They should defend Israel in public discourse. They must call out antisemitism cloaked as “anti-Zionism,” a calling card demanding the destruction of Israel. They ought to support accurate Israel education, advocate with elected officials, and give generously to causes that strengthen Israel’s security and society. It is the price of living across the river.
Moses demanded a commitment from the tribes outside the land. Jewish history demands one now.
Weekends in the Hamptons Synagogue are times to hear from politicians but infrequently a political war room. That changed on July 20. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, political veteran and bruised warrior of Albany, came down from the bleachers and into the pit—this time, to describe the battle with far-left ideologue who had somehow captured the heart of New York City’s radical alt-left: Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.
Cuomo stood before a predominantly older, anxious crowd—not in his home borough, but in the summer home of hundreds of Manhattan’s Jewish residents. Rabbi Marc Schneier introduced him warmly, a gesture that symbolized more than courtesy. It was a call for a lifeline from a community watching its city slip into madness.
From Apology to Attack
Cuomo opened with an apology for his lackluster primary campaign, acknowledging what everyone in the room already knew: Mamdani’s young, radical left had shown up to vote, and Cuomo hadn’t shown up at all. But that was going to change. Cuomo pledged to fight between now and November—and then made a pledge to follow the suggestion of former New Jersey Senator David Paterson, that if trailing Mayor Eric Adams in the fall polls, he would step aside in September to avoid splitting the anti-Mamdani vote. He implied Adams should do the same.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo addressed crowd at the Hamptons Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, on the dias with Rabbi Marc Schneier, on July 20, 2025 (photo: First One Through)
“fueling antisemitism”
In responding to a direct question, Cuomo refused to label Mamdani an antisemite because “I cannot see into his heart,” but was clear that the 33-year old very much “fuels antisemitism,” and further “engages in hate speech.”
Mamdani’s platform is a direct threat to Jewish safety.
Eli Beer, founder of Hatzalah in Israel, asking a question of Andrew Cuomo at the Hamptons Synagogue on July 20, 2025 (photo: First One Through)
A Plan for the City
Cuomo laid out his blueprint:
Enforce the law and prosecute hate crimes.
Hire 5,000 new police officers.
Build housing in a supply-starved market.
Attract businesses and jobs to the city.
He didn’t let the crowd forget what they lost: 15,000 jobs from Amazon’s Long Island City project—killed, he reminded them, by Mamdani’s comrade-in-ideology, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cuomo said that he had worked hard to win that competition, only to be foiled by a Democratic-Socialist. When the city and state were not blocked by terrible ideologies, Cuomo was able to accomplish a lot, including the Second Avenue subway, a new Laguardia Airport and a replacement to the Tappan Zee Bridge.
He was a Democrat who accomplished tangible results, while the Democratic-Socialist wing of the party impeded any progress with “stupid ideas.”
Desperation and the Wounded Gladiator
When Cuomo finished, the crowd didn’t roar—it exhaled. One person whispered into the microphone that the speech needed to be given in every synagogue in the city. Cuomo responded that he will do what he can but you need to get and be messengers. If you don’t organize, Mamdani wins.
Cuomo offered data: Mamdani won the primary because the activist class under 30 turned out en masse. But the general electorate was different: 70% Democrats, 15% Independents, and 15% Republicans. With Adams or Sliwa out of the race, Cuomo insisted, the math would work and recent polls show he is correct. He could win. If the others dropped out.
The audience, mostly over 70, carried the unease of people who had seen this movie before. Socialist cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago—were crumbling under the weight of their ideology and policies. New York had put its toe in the water in the past with Bill de Blasio and the results were terrible. A Mamdani mayoralty, Cuomo warned, could bury the city for two decades.
They wanted to believe Cuomo could win. But they also saw the crowded field ahead and Cuomo’s primary loss behind. It was like watching a wounded gladiator try to rise as the coliseum gates opened and the lions approached.
As the Israelites were about to enter their Promised Land, the Bible relays stories of a series of conflicts.
After the spies delivered a bad report on the land in Parshat Shlach, we read the story of Korach who tried to launch a mutiny against Moses and Aaron. Then Chukat describes a war with Amorites, and Balak shares the story of a prophet trying to curse the Jewish people. At the end of Balak (Numbers 25:1-9), we read about Moabite women engaged in profanities with Jewish men. Pinchas, son of Elazar son of Aaron, took a spear and impaled the couple having sex in front of the Ohel Mo’ed, the tent Moses used to communicate with God.
Illuminated manuscript miniature from the 15th-century Alba Bible
And that is where Parshat Balak and the story seemingly end. With the murder of the couple and 24,000 others engaged in similar acts.
But it doesn’t really.
Parshat Pinchas continues the story with a pivot. Rather than highlighting the sins and the deaths, Numbers 25:10 begins with God appreciating the defense of holiness and His blessing Pinchas and his descendants. While the story may appear as a single episode, the Torah divides the parshas – and the narrative – between the violent and the holy, even when the violence was in the name of the holy.
The theme of separation can similarly be seen immediately after this in chapter 26, where God calls for another census of the tribes. Here, God counts the tribes and their families to allocate land for their inheritance. This is in contrast to the census of Numbers chapter 1 in which God wanted to account for how people would assemble in their journey and combat enemy forces. In the case of the journey and battle-readiness, there was a single head of each tribe; when they entered the land, each tribe’s family was specified.
It is a metaphor for how Jews assemble and coordinate today: there are wars that are fought in Israel and the diaspora against those who want to harm Jews and the Jewish State. Global Jewry understands the us-versus-them dynamic and the role for every Jew in the battle. It is related yet distinct from the interaction amongst Jews regarding our common heritage. We each have a part to play living together as a community.
Individuals fight with a common purpose. Families live under a societal umbrella.
We have tribes and borders and homes. We coexist with each other while understanding our peaceful lines. The separations today may be between synagogues or religious denominations. Between schools and political affiliations. Each aspiring for peace and holiness.
Those lines are very different than the battle lines between us and “them,” those who mean to harm us physically, morally and spiritually.
Upon entry into the Jewish holy land, Jews migrated from an army with legions to a people with property. While there were still wars to be fought inside the Jewish Promised Land, the muscle memory of understanding who is within the holy communal tent and those outside forces, was taught over the trials in the desert.
It is a lesson for our time as well: to clearly identify our allies and foes, and wage war and peace accordingly.
Nothing seems to animate Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as much as attacking America, Israel and Jews. Perhaps with the exception of defending those who do.
On July 15, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives Education & Workforce Committee held a hearing on antisemitism at universities. Rather than show concern for Jewish Americans facing harassment, intimidation and persecution – the point of the hearing – Omar went on the attack against those who called out the Jew hatred.
Ilhan Omar at House hearing to address antisemitism at universities, July 15, 2025
At (2:28:09) of the hearing, Omar took the microphone and started to bash Canary Mission as a nefarious, shadow organization that worked in concert with the government to “dox” students and “repress speech” of those who spoke up on behalf of SAPs, the Stateless Arabs from Palestine. She called it “McCarthyism” in which the group denied “due process” to individuals, as though this group was an arm of the government, looking to silence dissent.
It was a wild and crazy display of her hypocrisy and lies.
First, some plain facts. Canary Mission is an independent group and not part of the government. It posts public information about what people say and doesn’t share personal information like home addresses or phone numbers (the definition of doxxing). It is all covered under free speech – sharing other people’s “free speech.”
Second, Canary Mission does not silence anyone the way Omar charged. It does not intimidate. It simply compiles the vitriol of those who intend to harm America, its citizens and its allies.
Here is one clip from the site about a 2024 conference where “Palestinian” radicals threatened to tear down “empire,” the code name for the United States.
Omar doesn’t want you to see this: Canary Mission video about jihadists looking to destroy the United States
Here is a review of CM’s profile of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, one of its longer highlights as he has long been attacking Jews and the Jewish State. It includes a long list of links to HIS comments. Nowhere does it provide his personal information.
Canary Mission video about those celebrating the October 7 massacre and seeking the destruction of Israel
Omar wants free speech for anti-American and anti-Jewish voices but not those who call out the haters. She doesn’t want there to be any ramifications for people calling to “tear down empire,” but only for those who showcase those shrill voices. She claims small private groups have power while she uses her powerful position in government to attack them.
Omar is the embodiment of hypocrisy and anti-American views, which she’s proud to broadcast while people are gathered to consider how to protect the most vilified minority-minority in America.
Omar has made her career out of playing both the victim and the defender of so-called marginalized voices—so long as those voices align with her political narrative. In Omar’s worldview, free speech is sacred when it targets America or Israel—but it’s dangerous harassment when used to expose her ideological allies.
Omar demands impunity for those who cheer jihad, but censorship for those who expose them.
Omar’s double standard is not just hypocritical—it’s dangerous. By shielding radical voices from criticism, she normalizes antisemitism and delegitimizes the right of Jews to call out hatred. Worse, she uses her platform to chill lawful speech, by mislabeling documentation as “doxxing” and criticism as “violence.”
This isn’t about protecting the vulnerable; it’s about protecting the radical. Her priorities are crystal clear:
Defend Hamas sympathizers
Smear Jewish watchdogs
Turn antisemites into victims
Turn their critics into villains
If Ilhan Omar were genuinely concerned about threats and intimidation, she would condemn the harassment of Jewish students, the glorification of Hamas, and the calls for violent uprising on American soil. But she won’t—because those voices are her own echo.
First One Through 