Tag Archives: Israel

Does Gaza Fall Outside Humanitarian Laws?

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International humanitarian law (IHL) has been established for decades, and many are principally designed to protect civilians during armed conflict. In the case of the Gaza war against Israel, it is questionable whether the laws can be applied to Israel’s actions in the war, not whether Israel is abusing such laws.

Principle of Distinction

The driving themes of IHL surrounds mitigating the harm to non-combatants during hostilities. The first driver is, therefore, to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. In most battles, this is easy to accomplish: during a clash on a battlefield, the only participants are soldiers. In urban warfare, this is much more difficult.

In the dense Gaza strip, this is virtually impossible.

The various military groups in Gaza are embedded and underneath almost every building and road. Hamas, the popular political-terrorist group that rules Gaza, built an entire infrastructure underneath the city with a maze of 500 kilometers of tunnels and storerooms. The hundreds of exit shafts for much of this infrastructure is located in houses and schools.

Hamas soldiers in Gaza tunnels

Additionally, Gazan combatants dress in civilian clothing and are members of groups which are touted to be neutral including the United Nations, the press and hospital staff.

UNRWA employees and Hamas militants

If civilians and related infrastructure are enmeshed by premeditated design with an active military, then the civilians have become integrated into the war effort and renounced protections of distinction.

Principles of Proportionality and Precaution

IHL’s Principle of Proportionality is designed to minimize collateral damage to civilians when attacking legitimate military targets. It calls for a review of the situation and reducing armaments to make any incidental civilian harm be aligned to the relative military gain achieved. The related Precaution principle is one step further, to try to prevent any military action, if possible.

Israel has taken many actions to limit the harm to civilians – which have been harshly criticized, nevertheless.

  • Withholding electricity and other aid. Israel has attempted to pressure Hamas and other militant groups – which seize all goods into Gaza – by withholding basic items like electricity so Israel would not have to use military force in the region. For those efforts, Israel is accused of causing a humanitarian catastrophe, rather than adhering to the Principles of Precaution
  • Move civilians out of the field of battle. Israel has moved and continues to urge civilians to leave “hot” areas, only to be accused of “ethnic cleansing”
  • Using ground forces. Israel could minimize its own casualties by only using air power against the terrorist enclave. Instead, it seeks a more targeted effort to eliminate combatants and protect civilians, for which it is criticized.

The vast majority of Gazans are in favor of killing Israeli civilians, voted for Hamas with its antisemitic genocidal charter, and supported the October 7 massacre. Gazans are part of the Hamas machinery, and the United Nations defends Hamas and demands that Israel not seek justice for its murdered civilians.

While Gazan authorities threaten to commit the October 7 barbarity over and again, Israel attempts to adhere to international law yet is criticized for it. Even though Israel left Gaza in 2005, and put in place a blockade only when Hamas took full control of the strip in 2007 to follow the Principle of Precaution, it is laughingly accused by international “human rights” groups of a “belligerent occupation.”

The terrorist enclave of Gaza has removed distinctions between civilians and militants, aid workers and terrorists, state and non-state actors, locals and international operators, and civilian infrastructure and military bases in a toxic brew. It defecates on all humanitarian norms while pointing both armaments and accusing fingers at Israel.

As the United Nations and Gazans have themselves destroyed all distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, and declared that Israel can never meet the standards of international humanitarian law, there is no basis to criticize Israel’s handling of its defensive war on such basis.

Related articles:

First Time In History, People Under ‘Genocide’ Reject Ceasefire. Repeatedly. (December 2024)

Palestinians Publicly Go Full Genocidal Jihadi (August 2024)

Ban Ki Moon Defecates on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 2016)

UN’s Confusion on the Legality of Israel’s Blockade of Gaza (July 2015)

Take Action To End “East Jerusalem”

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The New York Times is accelerating its attempt to redefine facts and U.S. policy, especially in regards to the State of Israel.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than attempts to educate its readers that “East Jerusalem,” is an actual city, even though it existed for only 18 years in its 4,000 year history from 1949-1967 because of war.

The Times wrote “East Jerusalem” no less than SIX times in an article on March 7 about a Hamas leader’s release from prison. Using the phrase repeatedly was meant to grant another victory to Hamas, in its “Al Aqsa Flood” war.

At the fifth mention of “East Jerusalem,” the Times wrote that “Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war in a move not recognized by most of the international community.” So what? Most of the “international community” considers homosexuality a disgusting offense and crime, yet the Times doesn’t append such comments when discussing the gay community.

The United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and only Israel. When President Donald Trump issued his statement of official recognition, he specifically referred to holy sites in the Old City of eastern Jerusalem saying “Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs. Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Jerusalem has been reunited under Israel for decades and the U.S. embassy in Israel straddles the area that was considered “no man’s land” during those horrible years of 1949 to 1967. It is time to be explicit that the United States recognizes the unified city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and does not recognize any place called “East Jerusalem.”

Location of new U.S. embassy to Israel

The Trump administration can cement such understanding with blessing Israel’s expansion of Jerusalem eastward in an area known as “E1.”

ACTION ITEM

Write the White House comments@whitehouse.gov to clearly state that the U.S. recognizes all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and endorse construction of homes in E1.

Write The New York Times CORRECTION editors corrections@nytimes.com to stop calling a place “East Jerusalem” or to similarly change policy for all historically divided capitals referencing East and West Berlin as well as East and West Beirut and in its articles.

related articles:

Next Paradigm Shift In Israel-Palestinian Conflict (January 2025)

NY Times Manufactures “Palestinian East Jerusalem” Narrative (April 2021)

Trump’s “eastern Jerusalem” and Biden’s “East Jerusalem” (May 2020)

Abbas’s Harmful East Jerusalem Fantasy (September 2018)

The Arguments over Jerusalem (May 2015)

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel (July 2014)

Jerusalem, and a review of the sad state of divided capitals in the world (May 2014)

Palestinian Authority Whitewashes Hostage-Taking Torture

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The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, delivered her latest thematic report on torture which defined hostage-taking as a “cruel game” and definitely a form of torture. The lengthy report highlighted several examples of the practice, and specifically called out a number of countries – China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela – as particularly notorious state offenders.

Edwards called out non-state actors as well, including those backed by Iran, such as the Houthis in Yemen “holding at least 30 humanitarians,” and “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups” which abducted 251 people in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Calling out the obvious evil was controversial in the morally-bankrupt institution.

In a press conference after the release of the report to the Human Rights Council, Edwards said (5:55) that several countries and NGOs asked her to remove certain countries from the report and criticized the timing of the release, presumably because it is coming amidst the horrific reports emerging from captives held by the Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group, Hamas. Edwards was accused for bias for her actions but refused to be silenced as she believes that hostage-taking should be viewed as a critical component in discussing human rights.

Edwards criticized the draft document of international crimes against humanity for not including hostage-taking. She argued for the families of hostages to have a point person in governments and at the UN with whom to liaise.

Most significantly, Edwards called on those taking hostages, “and those that aid and abet them,” to be held accountable and punished severely, as hostage-taking has become a “low-risk high-reward crime” (15:20) on the global stage. She argued for compensation for survivors.

This seemed a bit much for the socialist-jihadi alliance which roams the halls of the UN. Almost no one attended the briefing and only two reporters asked questions of Edwards. Both featured whataboutery, asking about Israel’s treatment of captives, and whether the Jewish State was just as guilty as Hamas And Friends.

Edwards responded (24:19) that Gazans took hostages as negotiating leverage, while Israel took prisoners of war in the middle of the ongoing war. Those taken from Israel were done so for leverage and ransom, while those taken by Israel were placed in detention and removed from the war effort, and therefore could not be considered hostages.

This was all way too much for the Palestinian Authority.

The PA’s official media arm, WAFA, produced its own reporting of the UN report on torture. It claimed that the special rapporteur “report focused on torture during captivity” which criticized the “Israeli attacks on Gaza” and “ill-treatment endures by Palestinians detained by Israel.” Nowhere does the PA’s account explain that Palestinian Arabs held by Israel are not hostages, the main theme of the report, nor does the “news” summary review the axis of evil which supports the Palestinian Arabs, as the worst offenders of hostage-taking.

The Palestinian Authority, propped up by the United Nations, tolerates the terrorist activities of local Arab terrorist groups – including the taking of civilian hostages and sexual violence -because the armed jihadi groups are much more popular amongst the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). The puppet regime is either a worthless veneer or complicit, and should be held similarly accountable.

ACTION ITEM

Demand all officials condemn Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist groups which participated in the October 7 barbarity and demand that they face maximum justice.

Related articles:

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials (May 2021)

The United Nations’ Adoption of Palestinians, Enables It to Only Find Fault With Israel (March 2016)

The Shadow Of Trump’s Ukraine On The Middle East

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The two major wars grabbing world attention for the past couple of years has been Russia-Ukraine and Iranian Proxies led by Gaza-Israel. While Russia invaded Ukraine and the two have largely faced off with Russia maintaining about 20% of Ukraine, Gazans invaded Israel and got decimated.

President Trump’s recent interaction with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy this week has made some in the pro-Israel community nervous. If Trump will side with the aggressor (Russia), will he also back Gazans and Iran against Israel?

Devolution of exchange starts at 40:00, when Zelenskyy challenges ability to have diplomacy with Russia which does not abide by agreements

I believe that it is a misreading of Trump’s policy of America First.

Trump likes winners. Winners have the strength and position to negotiate deals, whereas losers ask for handouts. If Russia is declared the winner in the midst of the war and able to annex large chunks of Ukraine, the United States will negotiate important mineral deals with Russia rather than with Ukraine.

Gaza has nothing to offer America other than real estate. The region is in shambles and will require billions of dollars to redevelop. The political-terrorist group Hamas still rules the strip and Gazans have proven themselves morally bankrupt in supporting the massacre of innocent people in Israel. Why would Trump want to engage with the initiators of a war which they completely lost? His inclination would be to side with the Israeli victors who have a thriving liberal society and economy with leading technology to trade with the United States.

President Trump just approved nearly $3 billion in arms sales to Israel to help replenish its arsenal over the multi-front war with Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Gaza and the West Bank. Those arms should help neuter various terrorist groups and position the United States to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Kibbutz Be’eri burned by Gazan invaders during massacre on October 7, 2023

People think such action is based on short-term thinking but it is about long-term planning. If the parties in conflict have assets and relationships which the U.S. covets, it will engage with those in charge who can deliver. If they are the more moral and ethical as is the case for Israel, so much the better.

Jason Greenblatt, who worked for Donald Trump for decades in his real estate office before working in the first Trump administration developing a new roadmap to peace between Israel and its neighbors made clear that Zelenskyy butchered a chance to help Ukrainians by not understanding how Trump operates, tweeting “Whoever prepared President @ZelenskyyUa for the Oval Office meeting with @POTUS & @VP did an absolutely terrible job! Zelenskyy did not pay attention to the messaging that was coming out of @WhiteHouse for a while now. President Trump is interested in protecting interests 1st & foremost. That’s his job, no matter how people feel about Ukraine. He also wants to end the death & destruction in Ukraine if a logical deal can be made. Hard to believe how Zelenskyy let this devolve instead of taking the cues. What a shame for Ukraine.”

In 2017, during Trump’s first term, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas failed to understand and capitalize on Trump’s efforts for Palestinian Arabs and let the relationship completely devolve. Abbas is trying to play catch up now by trying to arrest terrorists east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL / “West Bank”). It is unclear if that will be enough to impress the administration that has watched Israel be a strong partner.

Trump’s “America First” policy may sometimes run against the wronged party, as in Ukraine. In the Middle East, Americans will have comfort that Trump has an ally which is strong, moral, has much intellectual property to benefit Americans and deeply appreciates the relationship with the U.S.

Related articles:

First Time In History, People Under ‘Genocide’ Reject Ceasefire. Repeatedly. (December 2024)

Naked Trades in the Middle East (September 2020)

Israel, the Liberal Country of the Middle East (March 2015)

Only Corpses For Corpses

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The story of the Bibas children from October 7, 2023 until now has been horrific on every level, at every turn.

First, the four year-old and nine month old were ripped from their homes by the military of the ruling political-terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, along with the children’s terrified mother. They were abducted to the terrorist enclave of Gaza, murdered by Palestinian Arabs weeks later.

Their bodies were then held by the Palestinian Arabs without burial for over a year. They were not returned to Israel for proper, respectful burial.

Instead, they were held for ransom. The small Jewish corpses were ultimately paraded on stage before a crowd of hundreds of cheering Gazans – alongside their children – with a Gazan woman who was not their mother despite Hamas assurances, to be shipped to Israel.

The tiny innocent children were exchanged for dozens of Palestinian Arab terrorists convicted of murder, per Hamas demands. These released terrorists are alive and ready, willing and capable of slaughtering Jews once more.

The media falsely portrays this as a “prisoner exchange,” as though the two sides were swapping living adult prisoners of war. A blasphemy.

Every level of the story is a horror. Yet, there is only so much that Israel can do on its own to change the deep “deformity” in Gazan culture.

But it must try to dissuade at least some of the depraved actions.

Israel should commit to never holding onto any corpses of any Palestinian, whether soldiers, terrorists or anyone else UNLESS Palestinian Arabs are holding dead Israelis. As soon as Palestinians take a dead Israeli, every Palestinian killed should be retained by Israel. A future exchange will only have a single swap: all corpses for all corpses. It removes any bargaining power of killing people and holding the dead.

The Bibas story is pure torture. The Bibas Rule of only corpses for corpses might alleviate some death and pain in the years to come.

Related articles:

Israelis Targeting Terrorists, Palestinians Targeting Civilians (January 2023)

Every Picture Tells A Story: Palestinian Terrorists are Victims (November 2020)

On Killing Terrorists (May 2018)

Alternatives for Punishing Dead Terrorists (November 2014)

The Issue Is The UN’s Gaza, Not Trump’s Gaza

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The media is going crazy about President Donald Trump’s social media post of an AI-generated video of what a “Trump Gaza” might resemble. The imaginary future isn’t the problem: it’s the United Nations policies which have produced the current reality of Gaza.

  • Gaza is led by Hamas, a deeply antisemitic jihadi group which is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Israel and many other countries. The UN thinks it’s a legitimate government, as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
  • The UN’s stated mission is to move at least 73% of Gazans into Israel (the UNRWA wards), making Gazans indifferent to the local situation as they think they are just waiting to move into towns where grandparents used to live in Israel
The entrance to Aida Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem with a key on top to let Arabs know that the ticket to enter Israel is via the UN
UNSG Guterres comments on February 24, 2025 about human rights

The United Nations has long legitimized an antisemitic genocidal jihadist group next door to Israel and has protected it from facing justice. It has reared generations of Gazans to only know hatred for Jews and deny their history and rights in their homeland. It has systematically inverted victim and perpetrator by using an approach that the best defense is a good offense, to vilify Israel and its supporters, rather than put pressure on Palestinian Arabs to disarm and accept the Jewish State.

Gaza under Hamas and UN
Hamas under Hamas and UN leadership

The AI-generated fiction of a Trump Gaza is producing wild attacks, while the real tragedy of Gaza’s bankrupt morality and devastation under the banner of the United Nations is never considered.

Related articles:

The United Nations Welcomes “Peace-Loving” Palestine (September 2024)

Sue The United Nations For Supporting Terrorism (February 2024)

The Grave Humanitarian Crisis In Gaza Is About Values (January 2024)

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials (May 2021)

Meet The New [United Nations] Boss, Same As The Old Boss

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The United Nations has a Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (SCMEPP), a role so seeped in lofty goals and ineptitude, it sums up the farce and tragedy of the UN’s biased and pathetic involvement in the Muslim Arab- Israel conflict.

The “peace process” has long been hampered by a UN that teaches the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) that they will all move into Israel, that Jews cannot live in their holiest city of Jerusalem nor pray at their holiest site on the Temple Mount. The UN schools teach only Arab students, vile propaganda that Jews are invaders with no history in the land, interlopers to be despised.

It is, therefore, not a surprise that the new UN Coordinator is not an impartial party but one long dedicated to the SAPs’ narrative and goals.

Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands took over for Tor Wennesland in January 2025. Her European appearance masks her affiliation with the Palestinian cause.

Sigrid Kaag, new UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process

Kaag was a Dutch politician and involved in foreign affairs which soon brought her to get involved with UNRWA, the long-standing temporary UN agency tasked with tending to the descendants of Arabs who left Israel at its founding, as well as UNICEF. Soon after she took on UN roles in Syria and Lebanon. This background seemingly made her an ideal choice in January 2024 to become UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza.

With such pro-Arab bona fides (and a Palestinian husband), UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed her his Personal Representative of the Secretary-General to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in January 2025 when Wennesland’s term expired.

Guterres also appointed Kaag to be UN’s SCMEPP, even though such role is meant to be – theoretically – an unbiased party to bring peace to all parties in the Middle East conflict. How can the SCMEPP be a party who is deeply enmeshed with only one side?

Kaag addressed the UN Security Council on February 25, 2025 and her comments repeated the same inanity spoken at the global chambers: no Palestinian Arabs are terrorists, cannot be condemned nor brought to justice, even if they commit the most barbaric atrocities.

Kaag began her comments in her new capacity as UN’s point person for Middle East Peace with “It cannot be repeated enough; nothing justifies the appalling October 7 terror attacks executed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. I welcome the implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire including the release of 34 hostages. I echo the Secretary-General’s condemnation of the public parading of hostages released by Hamas, including statements made under duress, and the appalling display of the coffins of deceased hostages.” Nowhere in her comments was there a condemnation of the October 7 massacre nor calling for all those SAPs to be held accountable.

Not surprisingly, Kaag would go on to tell the Security Council that Gazans need relief, Israeli actions are bad and the Palestinian Authority is good. She concluded her remarks declaring that the UN has already determined the correct borders of two states and that they are not a matter of negotiations between Israel and the PA, and that Israel must leave Gaza even though nothing is mentioned about Hamas.

Kaag comments before UN Security Council on February 25, 2025

The United Nations has been one of the primary causes of the Middle East conflict, masquerading as the champion for human rights and peace. Its new point person to address the conflict is once again a tool of the global body to defend local Arabs at all costs, regardless of their actions and intentions.

Related articles:

UN Secretary General Prioritizes Hamas And PLO Over Israelis (October 2024)

The Deep Flaws In The UN’s “Peace” Coordinator (August 2024)

UN “Peace Coordinator” Before And During Hamas Massacre (October 2023)

UN Lies About Palestinians Favoring Two States (December 2022)

This Purim’s Only Costume Is Bibas Batman

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The latest Batman movie franchise focused on his arch-villain Joker. The deranged psychopath had a restless fan club who relished Joker’s “resistance” and rejection of societal norms. The masses donned their own clown masks to feel empowered alongside their hero who took on authority in an attempt to unleash anarchy to redistribute wealth and power to the horde on the streets. Their affiliate masks also enabled themselves to remain anonymous to carry out mayhem without consequences.

The comic world is playing out in the real world as the genocidal jihadists of Hamas are celebrated in the West Bank and Gaza as well as several cities around the world. The depraved slaughtering of Jewish civilians inside Israel on October 7, 2023 was greeted with wide support in Gaza and east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL). Hamas enthusiasts outside the Middle East have likewise donned masks and attack and harass Jews and Jewish institutions around the world in support of a “global intifada” against Jews and their supporters.

Masked pro-Hamas people at Columbia University

Batman also wore a mask but for different reasons. He sought to protect society from the dark underbelly of man’s worst tendencies. He chose to remain anonymous so that he could work for society as a businessman, as well as to protect the people he loves from attack. He wanted his anonymity to be a motivator for the public, that anyone you saw on the street could be the secreted protector of peace.

Bruce Wayne explains why he wears a mask during The Dark Knight Rises

Jews have a tradition of wearing costumes during the holiday of Purim which commemorates when a genocidal lunatic sought to kill the Jews in Persia (modern Iran) 2,400 years ago but failed to do so. The Persian Jews were able to turn the genocide on its head, first killing the evil instigator, his family and 500 associates, before wiping out 75,000 enemies in the provinces. These days, some Jews dress up like characters from the story as conveyed in the Scroll of Esther, while others dress in costumes to comment on current events.

For Purim 2025, I suggest that people honor the memory of the Bibas children, Ariel and Kfir, who were four years old and nine months, respectively, when they were seized by members of the political-terrorist group Hamas and other Gazans on October 7, 2023. The children’s bodies were returned in coffins to Israel this week.

The Bibas boys loved Batman. Many pictures have circulated online of the two redheads wearing Batman masks as well as their parents wearing Batman attire when they enjoyed a peaceful life in their small kibbutz in Israel.

Putting on a Batman mask with a bright red wig for Purim will not just show solidarity with the murdered small innocent boys, but declare that one stands for justice, peace, family and civility. It also highlights our determination to eradicate evil and those who wish to destroy the world behind the masks of madmen.

Related articles:

Palestinians Publicly Go Full Genocidal Jihadi (August 2024)

Palestinians And Their Supporters Hate America (August 2024)

Hamas Is The Very Definition Of A Genocidal Group (November 2023)

Deformity Of Palestinian Culture In America’s Youth (October 2023)

DSA’s Dehumanization of Bibas Babies Is Coming For You

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The popular Palestinian Arab government of Gaza returned the murdered bodies of two Jewish redhead children and their mother to Israel today. The Bibas Babies were Ariel, aged four years and Kfir, aged 9 months, when Palestinian Arab terrorists kidnapped them on October 7, 2023.

Shiri Bibas and her two sons Ariel and Kfir

The far-left extremist group Democratic Socialists of America applauded the abduction and murder of these and other Jewish Israelis as part of “Palestine Liberation.” The day after the kidnapping, they held a rally in support of the massacre in Times Square. Weeks before the massacre the group tweeted that no Israeli Jews could be considered “civilians,” marking each a target for just violence.

The DSA’s genocidal rationale for abduction and murdering toddlers and infants is under the guise of the perceived crime of “settler colonialism,” despite the fact that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel.

If the DSA can endorse killing babies who are in their ancestral homeland, how much more will they embrace the slaughter of non-Native Americans in the United States? Even while members of the DSA themselves are settler colonialists, they have anointed themselves the guardians of good and generals of justice to mete out punishment like Nazi guards sending Jews to the right or left.

The DSA is not just deeply immoral, antisemitic and anti-American but a dangerous group of terrorist supporters. While mourning for the Bibas Babies ripped from their home, honor their memory and fight for your life by working to ban and discredit the DSA everywhere you can.

ACTION ITEM

Write members of Congress to strip the DSA of any tax-exempt status, declare the group “domestic terrorists,” place their leadership on “no fly lists” and deny their right to assemble and protest.

DSA Goes Full Antisemite (July 2024)

Hamas, CAIR, DSA, Within Our Lifetime, SJP Are All Gunning For Jews (May 2024)

Gazans Have Always Wanted To Kill Jews Inside Of Israel (October 2023)

The DSA Is Systematically Coming For Zionist Jews (August 2023)

Standing Divided

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J.D. Vance’s 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, began with a short story of how everyone in his small town would come to the street and stand when a funeral hearse passed by. When he asked his grandmother the reason for the tradition she replied “because honey, we’re hill people. And we respect our dead.”

It was an interesting device to educate readers that they were about to be introduced to a subset of society. They may know Americans and people from Kentucky, but the “hill people” in Vance’s life had a special bond. Whether living or dead, old or young, they stood together and apart from others, even while a casual eye might miss the divide.

Rabbi Scott Kahn, a Jewish American-Israeli podcaster of a show called Orthodox Conundrum, posed a similar story as a question while he was on a tour in the U.S. from his home in Israel, in the fall of 2024. He provocatively asked a gathering of Orthodox Jews whether a cleft had opened between the American and Israeli Orthodox communities over the current war from Gaza. He observed that while U.S. Orthodox Jews remained the most committed to Israel in terms of visiting, moving and supporting Israel, he felt that support waning as the latest war extended past one year.

When some from the audience protested that many of the people present had children who volunteered for the Israeli army, Kahn paused to admit that while true, American Jews simply no longer understood the pain of Israeli Jews who get up and go to funerals and shiva houses week after week, for so long.

The global modern Orthodox community in which Kahn felt completely at home for so long seemingly was fracturing before him into distinct Israeli and diaspora communities.

Some weeks later, Kahn shared the story on his podcast with three panelists – Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, Dr. Logan Levkoff, and Shira Katz Shaulov – the first two from the U.S. and last from Israel. Halfway into the talk (38:30) he shared the conversation above to get reactions from the panel. Shaulov observed that the gap was more of a distinction between expecting sympathy and empathy. While the American Orthodox community may continue to have sympathy with their brothers and sisters in Israel, the local toll of the war made empathy virtually impossible.

The panel noted that Israelis often go to a wedding and a funeral on the same day in the same community for people the same ages. It has been brutal and exhausting, and they have been doing so for over a year. Every day they fear a knock at the door or observe their neighbors getting terrible news and gather together as a shaken community for mutual support.

That huddle is physical, local, tangible. And creates lasting and specialized bonds.

And many Israeli Jews feel that Jews in the diaspora are not present in the circle, and cannot comprehend the anguish.

The fatigue and emotional strain of this war has adjusted the contours of the Orthodox community in ways Kahn may well understand and appreciate but is despondent over as well. While the values and ritual practices may remain very similar, Diaspora Jews remain thousands of miles away from Israel during this massive pivot in history.

Respecting the dead alongside the living reinforces community. It remains true after shiva.

When Hostages Square in Tel Aviv gets dismantled – hopefully sometime soon when everyone returns home – Israel cannot only be left with the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Har Herzl national cemetery. The country must consider how the Jewish diaspora can properly engage with the fallen and injured, as well as their families and communities in the years ahead.