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The Guardian lets down its guard

“First comes the hummus: studded with chickpeas, anointed with a little reservoir of olive oil, greedily smeared up with hunks of pitta [sic] bread and messy fingers. Then the tabbouleh, then some homemade falafels…”

Thus opened an article in The Guardian, the London daily that is considered Britain’s “paper of record,” like our country’s The New York Times. And, like The Times, it has a denied but evident bias against Israel and Jews.

The details of the sumptuous meal continued through several deliriously described courses and dessert (baklava and homemade chocolate, if you really must know). The writer, the paper’s sports writer and opinion columnist Jonathan Liew, was feasting at a successful North London Arab-run eatery called Cafe Metro.

He wasn’t writing a food column. It was, rather, a report on a controversy swirling around Cafe Metro and a new nearby branch of an popular upscale bakery called Gail’s.

The night before it was due to open, the bakery was vandalized with red paint. Less than a week later, all its windows were smashed in. Slogans reading “reject corporate Zionism” and various obscenities were scrawled on its walls.

Gail’s describes itself as “a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK,” but its parent company, Bain Capital, reportedly invests in military technology, including some Israeli security companies. Bad bakery!

Mr. Liew, after noting how Cafe Metro, “proudly blazons its Palestinian heritage” with a public display of flags, describes it lovingly as “a source of comfort and community in troubling times, resistance in its tastiest and most delicately spiced form.” And goes on to contend that “the very presence of [Gail’s] 20 metres away from a small independent cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.”

Gail’s, the writer seems to imply, has no business being a business.

Many people saw Mr. Liew’s description of the bakery’s opening, “an act of heavy-handed, high-street aggression” as, well, an act of heavy-handed Fleet Street aggression.

It was also an example of utterly corrupt journalism. Mr. Liew wasn’t quoting the Arab owners of Cafe Metro – who would be misguided enough to characterize Gail’s as an aggressor for simply existing. It was the columnist’s own ostensible statement of fact.

Making matters even more outrageous, the piece, which included no quotes from anyone connected to Gail’s, dismissed the window-smashing and paint smearing as “small acts of petty symbolism.”

A slew of complaints about the column was registered by, among many others, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who called the column “disgusting,” “appalling” and “ridiculous.”

With typical droll British humor. Senior Barrister Simon Myerson referenced the paper’s record of bias, writing: “I see the Guardian is having an antisemitic moment. Sorry, another antisemitic moment.”

The Guardian later edited the piece, “repositioning” the objectional “aggression” wordage “to clarify it meant to refer to the described fears about the chain’s impact on small traders.”

Also, “to avoid misunderstanding,” the paper removed the “small acts of petty symbolism” phrase, which, it explained, “was not intended to minimize local vandalism but rather to suggest its misdirected futility.”

All of which really misses the real point. It was the framing of the entire piece that was, and remains, journalistically objectionable.

After hundreds of words extolling the gustatory delights of Arab cuisine, Mr. Liew dwells for hundreds more on how the family of one of Cafe Metro’s operators “once lived in the city of Beit Hanoun in Gaza, and now lives out a precarious and hunted existence in one of Gaza’s many temporary refugee camps…”

And he contrasts that with how “Gail’s has long been feted as a purveyor of luxury baked goods and is an unmistakable barometer of local affluence.” Even though the chain is not currently owned by Jews or Israelis, the insinuation is as obvious as it is odious.

And Mr. Liew concludes with the observation that the two businesses “have found themselves on the frontline of a war. A deeply asymmetric war, defined by gross imbalances in power and resources and platforms.”

There is in fact a gross imbalance here. It lies in the shameless portrayal of a vandalized victim as an aggressor, opposite a reverent, adulatory portrayal of an imagined victim.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

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Although Mr. Kent was a Trump loyalist, even to the point of endorsing the discredited “stolen election” of 2020 claim and asserting that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was an FBI plot, he turned his back on Mr. Trump last week, resigning his position in protest of the current Iran war.

The content of his resignation letter should concern us all.

Mr. Kent is entitled to believe, as he wrote, that the current war was not warranted because there was no “imminent threat” to the U.S. that would permit an American president to order to attack another country.

It’s a risible stance, considering Iran’s “Death to America” drumbeat and accelerated ballistic missile and nuclear programs – not to mention the mullahs’ employment of proxies over years to kill American citizens. But people are entitled to be short-sighted, even myopic, even stupid.

The gist of Mr. Kent’s letter, however, was not an insistence on Congressional approval or some pacifist plea. It was contemporary blood libel. And aimed at such slanders’ perennial targets.

The former security official lays responsibility for what he considers an illegitimate war squarely at the feet of Israel and her American supporters. It was they, he asserted, who forced a helpless, impressionable President Trump to attack Iran. “It is clear,” he wrote, “that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

He blames the Iraq war, too, on Israel, which “cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”

That Mr. Trump might be vulnerable to outside pressure is a laughable notion. If there is anything that both supporters and detractors of the president agree upon, it’s that the man has a mind of his own and is about as pliable as a steel rod.

But Mr. Kent seems to harbor an unshakeable belief in the Jewish ability to… control things, including the president.

Mr. Netanyahu certainly made the case to Mr. Trump that Iran is an imminent threat not only to Israel, its “Little Satan,” but also to the U.S., its “Great Satan.” But Mr. Trump has regarded Iran as a threat for decades. Well before he first became president, he actually called for troop deployments to the country and seizure of control of Iranian oil. In 2018, he famously withdrew from the Obama-era JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran.

Sharing an interest with Israel – and acting in unison with her to head off the mullahs’ desire to Islamify the world – isn’t some dark conspiracy. It’s responsible leadership.

What’s more, Israeli leaders have lobbied every president in memory to go to war in Iran. That Mr. Trump decided to do so is not a sign of some gullibility but of his judgment that the time had come to remove a threat to the Western world.

Mr. Kent should never have been in a governmental position, much less a counterterrorism post. That should have been evident from the start. The evidence would have included his 2021 call to the odious white nationalist Nick Fuentes to get advice on social media strategy for a Congressional run. And his interview by neo-Nazi blogger Greyson Arnold. And his hiring of a member of the neo-fascist “Proud Boys” as a campaign consultant.

And then there’s the large tattoo on his arm, revealed in a relative’s innocent posting of him in a swimming pool, that reads: “Panzer.” The name, of course, of a famed Nazi tank.

Now, since his resignation, he has appeared on Jew-baiting Tucker Carlson’s podcast and has been lauded by the likes of Candace Owens, a reincarnation of rabid antisemite Charles Coughlin. “May American troops take [Kent’s] lead,” she posted on social media, “and look into conscientious objection to Bibi’s Red Heifer War. Goyim stand down.”

Birds of a feather…

While we can feel relief that Mr. Kent has left the NCTC, it’s deeply concerning that he was ever part of it. One has to wonder if other bigots may be lurking in government bodies.

(c) 2026 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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So does “Captain Ella,” about whom you can read here.

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But that good will is not shared by two self-promoting professed Christians who have been prominent in the public eye.

To read about the danger they represent, click here.

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Monsieur Barrot’s alleged misstep was his reaction to Signora Albanese’s comments on February 7, 2026 at an Al Jazeera forum in Doha, Qatar, on a panel devoted to “the Palestinian cause.”

True to loathsome form and to the great pleasure of her audience, the signora, like others on the panel, including a Hamas leader and an Iranian minister, railed against Israel.

Ho hum.

She accused the Western world of amplifying a “pro-apartheid genocidal narrative” and bemoaned the challenges that the “global community” faces today.

And she concluded that “We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms, and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy [italics mine].”

Monsieur Barrot called Signora Albanese’s remarks “outrageous and reprehensible.” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said her “behavior, statements and initiatives aren’t appropriate for the position she holds,” and Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said the lady’s position is “no longer tenable.” France, Austria, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom have also called for the special rapporteur’s dismissal.

Even U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, not known for empathy for Israel, said (through a spokesperson; he may have feared choking on the words) that “We don’t agree with much of what [Albanese] says, and wouldn’t have used the language that she’s using in describing the situation.”

Thus my need to reread, with incredulity, the 151 former ministers’, ambassadors’, and diplomats’ and entertainers’ (always experts on foreign affairs) rush to the defense of the special rapporteur, claiming that the media had truncated and distorted her comments.

In an open letter, the group accused Monsieur Barrot of spreading inaccurate and manipulated information, and condemned its use to discredit the UN official.

“The dissemination of disinformation by senior officials,” they wrote, “undermines international law, weakens human rights protections, and threatens the credibility of the multilateral system itself.”

Signora Albanese herself fumed that “European governments accuse me – based on statements I never made – with a virulence and conviction that they have NEVER used against those who have slaughtered 20,000+ children in 858 days” – tellingly citing the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry’s death toll claim.

So how did the signora defend her words? She contended that what she had meant by humanity’s “common enemy” was not – G-d forbid! – Israel (the topic of her rant), but rather “THE SYSTEM [caps hers] that has enabled the genocide in Palestine.”

Oh.

Even in her attempt to “explain” her words, the signora felt it important to use the disgustingly deceitful word “genocide” for Israel’s war against Hamas. Hardly surprising, considering that, during the October 7 pogrom, she urged that the murdering of innocents be placed in its “context.” And that she dismissed reported acts of the invaders’ viciousness documented by U.N Watch and the ADL as “fabrications.”

With that background, and in a speech that was devoted entirely to besmirching Israel, the special rapporteur’s claim that it was only a “SYSTEM” she was identifying as humanity’s enemy and not the usual object of her animus (and the subject of her speech) is ludicrous.

Three cheers for Monsieur Barrot, who stuck to his guns, posting on his social media, in response to the risible “contextualizing” of the special rapporteur’s Hitlerian comment: “Stop fake news. I did not truncate or distort Ms. Albanese’s comments. I simply condemned them because they are reprehensible.”

In an even semi-sane world, Signora Albanese would be reassigned to flipping pizza dough. Back in 2024, former special envoy for combating antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt described remarks the signora made as “openly antisemitic.” And last year, she was placed under U.S. sanctions, with the State Department condemning her “unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.”

In some places, it’s customary to stage Purim shpiels where contemporary figures take the place of Megillas Esther’s protagonists. With Monsieur Barrot and Signora Albanese occupying space in my head, were I in charge of central casting for such a play, I have a good idea about whom I’d choose for Charvonah. And Vashti.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

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Say hi to the First Amendment.

Americans’ right to speak freely is, in most cases, something worth appreciating. Countries whose governments criminalize citizens’ ability to express opinions are generally not places where any of us would want to live. But, once speech is unlimited, anything goes.

Well not anything; there are exceptions. The Supreme Court has held that speech “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and “likely to incite or produce such action” is unprotected by the Constitution. Likewise, libel or slander, or – did you know? – threatening the life of the president or anyone in the order of succession to the presidency.

But Nazi marches, KKK rallies and angry mobs chanting “Globalize the Intifada” are all tolerated by U.S. law (if they don’t impede traffic). While that latter chant is in fact a threat – the intifadas were famously murderous affairs – the “imminent lawless action” isn’t present.

There are, however, cases where a “buffer zone” can legally be established, a police-enforced area off-limits to protesters. Where such zones can be created isn’t entirely clear. The Supreme Court has alternately upheld, struck down, or limited various buffer zones at places like medical clinics and residential neighborhoods or at funerals.

What about at a shul? Good question. And a pertinent one.

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin has introduced legislation to creat a 100-foot buffer zone to prevent “harassment” and “intimidation” around sensitive sites such as shuls, mosques, churches, and schools.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a statewide measure mandating a 25-foot protective zone around houses of worship. A coalition of New York lawmakers has introduced legislation to that effect.

Interestingly, when Ms. Hochul announced her plan last month, during her “State of the State” address in Albany,the audience applauded loudly, save one attendee, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who kept his hands in his lap.

“Progressive” groups like Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow oppose the proposed buffer zones. They want to preserve the right to, as has happened, shout slogans like“Globalize the intifada,” “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here” and “Death to the IDF” in the faces of Jews attending shul events that encourage the purchase of homes in Israel.

Those groups see such events as aiding “the dispossession of Palestinians,” and buffer zones as “unconstitutionally suppress[ing] political dissent.”

The fact that, according to the New York City Police Department, antisemitic incidents made up 57% of all hate crimes reported in 2025 (and that the trend has continued, with more than half of all hate crimes reported in January targeting Jews or Jewish institutions) would make buffer zones around shuls (and other houses of worship; the law cannot make distinctions based on religion) a reasonable thing. Jews these days feel (and often are) threatened with violence. Whether that reasonablity can pass legal muster will have to be seen.

If not, though, and hateful protesters are allowed to get in the faces of Jews interested in moving to Israel (something the protesters inadvertently bolster), perhaps a tactic successfully used in other contexts might prove useful.

Let the mob members shout and spit and threaten as they wish. Let the shul-goers ignore them (which will incense them even more) and just stoically walk into the building. And let a cadre of others photograph and video them as they are confronted by angry faces and endure verbal assaults.

There are archival photographs and film from 1930s Germany that show German citizens harassing Jews. Pairing those visuals with new ones showing contemporary haters similarly berating Jews in 2026 would make for a powerful set of images, easily shared widely with media and the public.

Maybe powerful images, of the sort that in other contexts have greatly affected public perception, can do the same thing here.

(c) 2026 Ami Magazine

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Tucker Carlson? Candace Owens?

Nope. Not even Ms. Rachel. It’s from an editorial in our friends the Saudis’ official government’s newspaper Al-Riyadh earlier this month.

If anyone thought that the Saudi charm offensive and seeming outstretched-in-peace Arabian arm were signs that the desert kingdom was moving toward rapprochement with Israel and an embrace of the Abraham Accords, some further thinking might be in order.

Recent months have seen imams’ sermons at the Grand Mosque in Mecca – which are seen as reflecting official Saudi messages – express sentiments like those of Sheikh Saleh bin Abdullah bin Humaid, who, in his drasha, emplored his misguided conception of the Creator to “deal with the Jews who have seized and occupied, for they cannot escape Your power. Oh… send upon them your punishment and misery.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted on a recent podcast that, whereas in the past, “you only got these crazy terrorist clerics, the al-Qaida types [who] would be inciting against the Jews,” of late, “the [Saudi] state-owned media” was engaging in incitement.

Barak Ravid, a correspondent for Axios, said that lately “the Saudi press is full of articles that include anti-Israeli conspiracies, anti-Abraham Accords rhetoric and even antisemitic language.”

Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. antisemitism envoy, said about the Saudi about-face: “If this is a real pivot, and not just a momentary detour… then it’s very disturbing.” She added that the shift “also has implications for the spread of hatred, Jew hate.”

It’s not clear what has driven the change for the worse. Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, suggests that one factor may be the Trump administration’s friendly relations with Islamist leaders in Turkey, Qatar and Syria, which, he contends, sends a signal to the Saudis that you could take more Islamist positions, and it won’t hurt you with the United States.”

Edy Cohen, of the Israel Center for Grand Strategy, told Jewish Insider that he sees the Saudi shift as a sign of panic in the wake of the mass protests in Iran.

Saudi leaders, he says, “heard [exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi] say the new Iran will normalize relations with Israel, and this drove the leadership crazy.”

“Imagine Iran and Israel together,” he explained. “The Shi’a and the Jews together; it’s their biggest nightmare.”

Others point to the increasing enmity between the House of Saud and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the new face of moderation on the Arabian peninsula.

Once, not long ago, the two nations were on friendly terms, even working together in Yemen to curb Houthi influence there. But lately, the UAE has been a target of Saudi ire. Prominent Saudi columnist Dr. Ahmed bin Othman Al-Tuwaijri, for instance, wrote an article on a Saudi site attacking the UAE as “an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab world … in betrayal of [G-d], His Messenger and the entire nation.”

After some backlash by American critics, the Saudi site took the article down. After further backlash, though, this from the Arab world, it went back online. Welcome to Arabia.

A surprisingly contrary voice was that of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, as stalwart a conservative supporter of Israel and enemy of Islamism as the chamber has ever featured.

After meeting last week with Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud and speaking by phone with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, he said “After having met with the Saudis today, I understand their concerns better. I don’t agree with everything they’ve done, but I fundamentally believe that the vision is still the same.”

 “To all those who think like me and have been upset by what you’ve heard,” he continued, “I understand why you’re upset, but I would just say this: If I feel good, you should feel good.”

Brings to mind Ben Shapiro’s maxim, that “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”

Is the kingdom choosing Islamism or peace? Coming weeks’ Saudi sermons and media musings will tell.

© 2026 Ami Magazine

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The paper even ran an “editor’s note” a few years back to clarify that “the headline and a passage” in an article had “implied incorrectly that questions among scholars about the location of the temples potentially affected Jewish claims to the site”; and that “unlike assertions by some Palestinians that the temples never existed,” there are no archeological findings that “challenge Jewish claims to the Temple Mount.”

Shkoyach. Chalk one up for history!

Unfortunately, the Beis Hamikdash doesn’t currently stand where it stood and where it will. And when the Har Habayis was captured along with the rest of Yerushalayim by Israel in 1967 during the Six-Day War, the Israeli government gave administrative control of the site to the Jordan-based Islamic trust known as the Waqf.

In keeping with the longstanding status quo that had prevailed until that point, Israel declared that only Muslim worship would be permitted on the Temple Mount. Israel’s leaders reasoned that changing the character of the site, where two Islamic edifices, the Dome of the Rock shrine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, have long stood, would be seen by the Muslim world as a blatant affront. And so, to keep the peace, Israel allows only Islamic worship on the mount.

From a purely reasonable perspective, of course, prohibiting Jews from praying at Judaism’s holiest site is an absurdity. Reasonable perspectives, however, are rarities when it comes to the Middle East, and absurdities abound.

Israel’s decision to not change the character of the Temple Mount, discomfiting as it was, and remains, evidenced sensitivity and wisdom.

Neither of which are evident in the ongoing attempts by some to assert a Jewish presence on the Har Habayis.

Increasingly, groups of Jews have ascended the Har Habayis and prayed there. They are motivated, no doubt, by fealty to history and Jewish pride, but their actions, nonetheless, are provocations. And gifts to Muslim extremists the world over who loathe Israel and Jews, and who are on constant lookout for any event, however tenuous, that they can portray as insulting to their faith.

And indeed, each time a group of Jews enters the compound, Arab media screamingly condemn what they laughably call “stormings” of the site.

No, they’re not stormings. But neither are they justifiable.

The “stormers” reject the opinion of gedolei Yisrael and the consensus view of Israel’s chief rabbis that Jews are barred by halachah from entering the compound. In 1967, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate ordered that a sign be posted at the Mughrabi Gate, the entrance to the Har Habayis for non-Muslims, warning that “According to Torah Law, entering the Temple Mount area is strictly forbidden due to the holiness of the site.”

But even those who rely on minority halachic rulings they say permit them to stand on part of the compound need to realize that not everything that’s permitted is necessarily wise. And asserting a Jewish presence on the Har Habayis today, in the context of raging global Israel-hatred, most certainly is not. The ascenders to the mount might feel inspired by standing on the holiest ground on earth, but there are 2 billion Muslims who, to put it delicately, don’t want them there.

Most recently, a small group of Jews entered the compound carrying a “Guide Page for the visitor to the Temple Mount,” newly published by the “Temple Mount Yeshiva.” Alongside instructions for visitors, the page pointedly includes the Shemoneh Esrei.

The man who heads the Temple Mount Yeshiva told Haaretz that he hopes the next stage will be the introduction of regular siddurim, and Jews wearing taleisos and tefillin.

To be sure, a new era of history will ensue when, in the navi Yeshayahu’s words, “a wolf and a lamb shall graze together,” when the entire world will recognize that Moshe emes viToraso emes.

But we’ve clearly not arrived there yet. And, in the interim, we are enjoined to not goad or incite other peoples or religions. That directive might be vexing, but doing the right thing often is.

(c) 2016 Ami Magazine

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But whether the future of the left wing of the Democratic Party is more accurately presaged by the election of a radical as mayor than by the downfall of a progressive governor is far from clear.

To read what I’m referring to, please click here.

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Rashi (Beraishis 42:8) quotes the Gemara that explains the reason Yosef’s brothers didn’t recognize him when they appeared before him in his role as second in command of Egypt: They had last seen him as a teen and now he was a grown man with a full beard. 

But Yosef, the Midrash says, looked just like his father Yaakov, whom the brothers knew as a grown man, if one considerably older than the Yosef facing them. And so, he must have resembled surely bearded Yaakov when his brothers came before him in Egypt.

Perhaps, though, there was another element at play here, too, the sort of cognitive dissonance that might explain the Australian aborigines’ lack of reaction to the sudden appearance of the large ship. It has been speculated that they had no model in their imaginations for a vessel like the Endeavour and so their minds blocked out what was before their eyes, rendering it, for all purposes, invisible.

The very last place Yosef’s brothers could have imagined him being was on a throne in a powerful country. They had left him in the hands of slave-traders and “knew” that he was, if he was even alive, toiling somewhere as a lowly servant.  Might that “knowledge” have been at least part of why his face didn’t register with them, why they couldn’t see him even as he was right before their eyes?

Even in our times, we see the incredible power of assumptions and preconceptions, how blinding they can be. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence for the truth of something, whether a fair election or the need for a country to destroy an enemy pledged to its destruction, the fact can still remain for millions of people an unthinkable thought, and render what is right in front of them effectively invisible.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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It would thus refer to the end of history, when the nations of the world will be dazzled by a clarity that eluded them until that point. And so harninu, “sing the praises,” is an imperative (or a prediction, in the sense of “they will sing the praises”).

Rav Hirsch and the Alshich read the pasuk differently (and perhaps in a more grammatically defensible way). In Rav Hirsch’s words (the English translation of the German original), the words refer to the ongoing present: “Therefore, nations, make the lot of His people a happy one.”

As his commentary on the pasuk expands: “The treatment accorded to the Jews becomes the graduated scale by which the allegiance accorded on earth to Hashem is measured…”

So the words, read that way, are not a prediction but rather a warning – an informing of the nations of the world that they will be eventually judged by how they treat the Jews. Rav Hirsch adds that “It was anticipated – as has actually occurred – that this Book of Hashem’s teachings would become the common property of the world, through the hands of its scattered bearers.”

And that its “principles of the equality and brotherhood of all men and the duties of respecting justice and the rights of man… [be] brought into practice.”

Even if the ultimate judgment of the nations of the world will take place only in the future, the passing into extinction of some of the world’s most Jew-oppressive regimes has already occurred. The ancient Romans and Greeks, and more recent oppressors like the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, all molder in history’s compost bin.

Today, unfortunately, there persist not only nations but also forces within otherwise benevolent countries, including our own, that seek to slander and attack Jews, both verbally and physically.

They are all warned.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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He explained that the Torah is predicting a time when some evils can be “complementary,” in the sense that addressing one will exacerbate the other, and vice versa.

The metaphor he cites is someone stung in the same place by both a hornet and a scorpion. The former sting’s pain is alleviated by a cold compress and intensified by a hot one; the latter’s, alleviated by a hot compress and intensified by a cold one. What can the stung person do? Whatever he chooses to do will leave him in greater pain.

To our anguish, we live in such times. The mortal danger that is Hamas, which is pledged to destroy the Jewish presence in our land, can only be “treated” by its utter destruction. And yet, seeing that goal to fruition is impossible without attacking the genocidal group’s forces, which are routinely embedded in hospitals and mosques, and among civilians.

Which means exacerbating world opinion, which chooses to see only the tragic but necessary wages of the war against Hamas and to ignore the terrorists’ declared goal.

We Jews in the U.S. are experiencing hornet and scorpion stings of our own. The polarization of American society leaves us with the impossible choice of supporting a political movement that largely has embraced us and Israel, which choice brands us as adversaries in the eyes of those who oppose that movement’s antidemocratic tendencies. And if we declare our fealty to the democratic institutions that have undergirded our security and prosperity for so long, we alienate those who have most strongly championed our rights and Israel’s.

To Americans who value respect for the rule of law and political propriety, the MAGA world is a dire threat. To the MAGA world, those upholders of law and liberal (in the best sense of the word) values are the hazard.

And Jews, who have always actively participated in the democratic system and who seek both security and respect for law and propriety, are viewed suspiciously by both camps. And utterly despised by the fringe of each.

We pray for the Divine intervention that alone can alleviate the pain born of galus.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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That would be Hamas, which called the attack “a heinous crime, a blatant aggression, and a flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.” Words that nicely describe the goals and daily diet of the lynch mob itself.

Second place in risibility went to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which condemned the strike as a “blatant criminal act.” This, from a group whose dozens of terrorist attacks include detonating a bomb in a Hadera market in 2005, killing seven people and injuring 55; another one the following year in a Tel Aviv eatery that killed eleven and injured 70; and a suicide bombing at an Eilat bakery that killed three.

Then, of course, were the expected words of condemnation from the usual pack of wolves, like Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Sudan, Kuwait, Egypt, Algeria, Oman, Turkey, the UAE and Libya. And let’s not slight Kazakhstan, Mauritania and the Maldives.

Joining the clamoring canines were Jordan, Spain, Italy, Germany, the European Union, the United Kingdom and France.

And, at least perfunctorily, the U.S. too. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” (We’ll leave the highly debatable description of the country unaddressed for now, due to space limitations.)

Ms. Leavitt did add, though, that “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. did join the other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning the strike.

Ah, such short memories some have. Does no one recall how, on May 2, 2011, the Obama administration violated the territorial integrity of Pakistan, in Operation Neptune Spear, when SEAL Team Six members shot and killed a man named Osama bin Laden? You know, the founder of al-Qaeda and orchestrator of the recently commemorated September 11, 2001 attacks? Three other men and a woman in the attacked compound were also killed in that operation.

Or the first Trump administration’s violation of Iran’s space on January 3, 2020, when an American drone strike took out Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful person in Iran at the time?

The world tut-tutting Israel for actions it has taken is, of course, nothing new. In fact, it’s become something of a new normal. But it goes back quite a long way, at least to 1960, when Mossad agents captured Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. (He was spirited to Israel, tried and found guilty of war crimes and executed in 1962.)

At the time, The Washington Post huffed that “anything connected with the indictment of Eichmann is tainted with lawlessness.” And The New York Times wrote that “No immoral or illegal act justifies another.”

And when, in 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad, cries of woe were heard around the world (though Iran was gratified, having tried, and failed, to destroy the same facility a year earlier).

The New York Times called the attack “an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.” The Los Angeles Times referred to it as “state sponsored terrorism.” The United Nations passed two resolutions rebuking Israel for its chutzpah.

The Reagan administration, too, voted in support of a U.N. Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the raid, and the president suspended the delivery of six F-16 fighter jets to Israel.

There are those who maintain that, justification aside, Israel’s attack on a perceived ally of the U.S. was a strategic mistake. Others claim that, in the end, the net result will be positive. I don’t claim the geopolitical savvy to make any judgment in the matter.

What I do claim, in light of history, is the right to point out that Western powers’ condemnations of the Israeli strike against Hamas members in Doha are somewhat (to employ a less charged word than the one that first occurs)… inconsistent.

© 2025 Ami Magazine

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To read more about that, please click here.

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One person who has successfully gotten aid to civilians has been rewarded with… death threats. Read why here.

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I am a Zionist. I am not a Zionist.

Both statements are true, because the word, something of a war cry these days, has lost its meaning. Or, better, has multiple meanings. And it’s worth the while of anyone who cares about the Middle East, antisemitism or religion to tease out the details of the multiplicity.

As a haredi, or “ultra-Orthodox” (we dislike that pejorative), Jew, I do not subscribe to the foundational principle of the movement created by Theodor Herzl in the late nineteenth century that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel.

Before Israel’s founding, in 1948, the religious leaders to whom most haredim like me looked for guidance opposed the establishment of a political state for Jews, even one self-defined as “Jewish.”

Theologically, they insisted, the return of Jews en masse to the Holy Land needed to await the arrival of the messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets of old (Herzl, an avowed secularist, didn’t quite fit the bill). And from a practical standpoint, they feared that a “Jewish state” would only serve to spur the hatred of Jews that forever lurks and seeks some excuse to express itself, often with violence.

So, as a Jew who believes that the Jewish religion, not any political state, is the essential expression of Judaism, I’m not a Zionist, at least not if one defines the word in its historical sense, as a believer in the Herzlian Zionist program.

At the same time, just as the religious leaders who did not back the creation of Israel in the end accepted the state once it became a fait accompli, and urged their followers in the Holy Land to participate in the country’s civil and political processes, I feel a connection with Israel and a deep concern for the welfare and safety of its citizens, many of whom are my friends or (closer or more distant) relatives.

So I am a Zionist, at least if one defines the word as a “accepter and supporter of Israel.”

There is, though, a third definition of Zionist, a new one, this one a slur, intended to refer to anyone who supports Israel’s current war against her enemies.

How Israel is waging that war is rightly open to criticism, but it is subject, too, to reasoned defense. When  “Zionist!” is angrily shouted at those who seek to offer the latter, the word is used to portray defenders of Israel as moral monsters – for the slurred’s conviction that Hamas and other terrorist entities need to be destroyed, the Israeli government’s goal.

When that government’s goal is characterized, instead, as genocide, the accusers have gone from righterous protesters to ignorant haters. And when they vent their animus by intimidating random Jews or attacking them or their synagogues or institutions, they expose themselves as nothing short of old-fashioned antisemites hiding behind kaffiyehs.

It is unfortunate – no, tragic – that a terrible toll on civilians is so often taken in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. And eradicating the engines of terrorism in Gaza necessitates attacking the places from which they operate (including, sadly, hospitals and mosques).

But, in the end, whatever one may think of Israel’s actions, if words are to have meanings, “Zionist” can only mean either a subscriber to Herzl’s vision or a rejector of the same  who nevertheless supports the security of Israel’s citizens. When the word  is twisted to mean murderers, the twisters reveal nothing about Israel, and much about themselves,

(c) 2025 WSJ

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In his lengthy lamentation about Israel’s ostensible descent into genocide, Omer Bartov somehow overlooks a most germane distinction between Israel’s war to vanquish an enemy bent on its destruction and murderous campaigns like those that took place in Bosnia, Darfur, Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia — and certainly the one carried out by Nazi Germany.

How Israel is waging its war against an enemy that has loudly declared its genocidal intentions is rightly open to criticism, and subject, too, to a reasoned defense. But it is a strange sort of “genocide” that can end immediately with the rulers of the attacked region simply laying down their arms, releasing those they kidnapped who are still alive and leaving the scene.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran

Staten Island

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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:

“The US… has committed a grave violation of… international law… by attacking Iran’s peaceful nuclear installations.”

Benito Mussolini, in 1936:

“[Our German alliance] is… animated by a desire for peace ….”

Peace, yeah.

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Yes, and in math class, an equation has a “Final Solution.”

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But it’s smooth sailing if you’re an anti-Jewish terrorist entity like Hamas, which, without official fundraisers, receives largesse from a number of eager sources. 

There’s Iran, of course. Any cause holding the promise of dead Jews is a shoo-in for the mullahs. And they go the extra mile, offering would-be killers not only cash (according to the State Department, up to $100 million annually to Hamas and other assorted such gangs) but also weapons and training.

Then there is Qatar, which has covered salaries of government (i.e. Hamas) employees in Gaza. And there’s no lack of private groups and individuals in places like Algeria, Sudan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates who are more than happy to aid evildoers. And don’t forget the lucrative smuggling of weapons, chemicals and electronics. And income from sham “humanitarian” charities in Western countries.

Like the U.K., at least according to a recent investigation by Israel’s Channel 12. The Brits? Who knew? Not many, it seems, at least until now.

Hamas is banned in the U.K. as the terrorist organization it is. And no one is accusing the country’s government or official entities of intentionally funding it. The problem is that it may be enabling aid to Hamas, by supporting efforts with nefarious connections. By taking, in other words, the famed road of good intentions to an unexpected but not uncommon terminus.

The U.K. and, to be fair, Canada and the European Union, as well as Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and others, have sponsored a project of UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Emergency Fund, whose beneficiaries are designated by a Hamas-run office, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).

The program provides monthly cash payments to 546,000 Gazans the MSD deems needy.

The MSD’s head is Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ politburo. The U.S. Treasury Department identifies him as a “senior Hamas official.”

NGO Monitor, a group that investigates non-governmental organizations, found a document from back in 2022 that shows how the U.K. Foreign Office was aware even then of the involvement of Hamas, “a proscribed group,” with the program. The office was concerned about “severe reputational damage” that revelation of the connection might cause Britain.

All respect is due to traditional British fussiness about appearances, but blimey, there’s a rather larger issue here, namely handing funds over to a member of a terrorist movement and allowing him to disburse them as he sees fit. 

And the U.N. agency “is just the tip of the iceberg,” according to NGO Monitor’s legal advisor, Anne Herzberg, “because 13 U.N. agencies are operating in Gaza. There is very little information into how these other U.N. agencies are operating.” 

What’s more, there are also Hamas operatives active in the U.K., including Zaker Birawi, a head of the Palestinian Return Center, who has helped organize weekly anti-Israel protests in London. A former member of the Hamas politburo, Issam Yusef Mustafa, a U.K. citizen, is the biggest fundraiser for Hamas in Europe.

In response to a query from Jewish Insider, the British Embassy in Israel insisted that “Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.K., and funding or supporting it is a crime.” The embassy, moreover, “categorically reject[s] the false and irresponsible allegations in the Channel 12 investigation,” and maintains that “No U.K. funding was provided to the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza.”

That, though, wasn’t the investigators’ allegation. It was that UNICEF funds the MSD, with cash provided by the U.K. It’s the old “I didn’t give the killer a gun, I just left it on his nighttable” excuse.

The U.K. claims that its Foreign Office monitors where funds provided to UNICEF  end up. But allowing a Hamas honcho to be a conduit doesn’t inspire confidence in the effectiveness of that supposed oversight.

Recently, the U.K., along with France and Canada, threatened Israel with “concrete actions” if it does not lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and work with United Nations agencies. 

Humanitarians, heal thyselves.

(c) 2025 Ami Magazine

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You can read about it here.

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To read what evoked that thought, please click here.

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There’s a way, though, to prevent future such releases. You can read about it here.

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Much else is nervous-making about the situation in Israel. To read about what I mean, please click here.

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Moshiach’s arrival seems imminent.

To read about those media’s accomplishments, please click here.

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And, at least in one recent case, counterproductive.

To read about it, click here.

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You can read what I mean here:

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Something the celebrants didn’t know was that some bad news (at least for them) lay on the horizon. To read what it was, please click here.

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But they’re there, and, in a way, more threatening. You can read about some of them here.

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But the proposed-in-some-circles annexation of Yehudah and Shomron (the “West Bank”) raises an issue that needs to be carefully thought through.

To read what, click here.

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To read of what set off some recent beeps, please click here.

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Yet, even as Moshe speaks about Eretz Yisrael, he adds: “Pay attention and listen, Yisrael! This day, you have become a people to Hashem, your G-d” (27:9). 

A people. This day.

Comments Rav Shamshon Refael Hirsch:

“Today, before you get the impending possession of the Land, the possession of the Torah is what makes you into a nation. You can lose the land, as indeed you may, but the Torah, and your everlasting duty to it, remains your everlasting unloseable bond which united you as a nation.

“This fundamental fact, deeply buried in Yisrael’s being, differentiates it sharply from that way all other nations have been formed, the secret of the national immortality of the Jews, with all the consequences for Israel’s future that are attached to it.”

That echoes Rav Saadia Gaon’s declaration: “Our nation is only a nation through its Torah.”

It’s a timely thought, when the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael is threatened from multiple directions. A merit for preserving the safety and security of Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael lies in commitment to what makes us a nation.

Rav Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev noted how the assurance that “the peoples of the earth… will fear you” (Devarim 28:10), which R’ Eliezer Hagadol ties to our wearing “tefillin shebirosh” (Berachos 6a), doesn’t seem to work.

He explained that shebirosh isn’t the same as al harosh. It isn’t the fact of wearing tefillin that protects us from our enemies. It is our internalization of the words and message that inhabits the tefillin. It has to penetrate “into our heads.”

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The U.N. informs us that “Acts of terrorism propagating a wide-range of hateful ideologies continue to injure, harm and kill thousands of innocent people each year,” and that the international body “has an important role in supporting Member States to implement the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy by standing in solidarity and providing support to victims of terrorism.”

And, indeed, the visitors’ welcome area’s display of large photographs of such victims includes tributes to victims of 9/11 and of terrorist attacks in Boston, Indonesia and Kenya, among other places.

Conspicuously missing, though, is any mention of the countless Jewish victims of Islamist terror over so many years. And this, less than a year since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israelis, the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Many have long judged the U.N. as a hypocritical, corrupt and useless institution. Ample evidence for that contention is displayed at the U.N. today.

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Emphasis is on the word “some.”

To read about some other, more perceptive, indigenous people, please click here.

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I don’t mean what motivated him. That is clear in the Torah’s text: 

“And now, please come and curse this nation for me, for it is too mighty for me, perhaps it will enable us to strike at him, and banish them from the land; for I know, that whomever you bless is blessed, and whomever you curse is cursed.” (Bamidbar 22:6).

Why, though, not ask for that blessing rather than that curse? Why not just ask the sorcerer for an assurance of victory in warring with the Jewish nomad nation? 

The question, though, is its own answer. Nations are motivated by self-interest; their enemies are simply those who stand in their way. But when it comes to those who see Jews as adversaries, self interest isn’t the first priority; cursing Jews is. Their foremost desire is not to enhance their own welfare but to deride and attack the object of their irrational hatred.

To take a current example, were it not for such paramount animus,  there would have long been a thriving Palestinian state. In 1947, in 2000 and in 2020, Arab leaders opted not for blessings but for curses against Jews, even though it deprived them of peace and prosperity

Chants across the globe of “Death to Israel” are commonplace. Cognoscenti know well what “From the river to the sea…” really means, and it’s not peaceful coexistence with Jews. To Iran’s Führer, Ali Khamenei, Israel is a “cancerous tumor” and its leaders “untouchable rabid dogs.” 

Maledictions against Israel are regularly hissed from the snake den of Middle-Eastern terrorist groups. Part of the Houthis’ slogan is “Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews.”

In imams’ sermons, Muslim children’s lessons and high school textbooks, calls for the destruction of the state that Jews founded in 1948 are regular menu items. Poisonous entrées.

In the end, though, cursing Jews today won’t work, any more than those planned by Balak. In the future, as then, one way or another, a Higher Authority will prevail.

© 2022 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The Evil of Jew-Hatred’

To the Editor:

Re “My Son Is a Hostage. Comparing Hamas to the Nazis Is Wrong,” by Jonathan Dekel-Chen (Opinion guest essay, June 24):

Professor Dekel-Chen misses the point. The parallel indeed fails if all that is analyzed are the particulars of the Third Reich and the Hamas movement. But focusing on the trees here obscures the ugly forest: antisemitism.

The evil of Jew-hatred is a shape-shifter. It may come from political entities on the right or on the left, from one religion or another, from governments and from societal movements. And the ostensible reasons for the hatred vary wildly with time and place. But the target is the same: the Jews.

May the professor’s hostage son, and all those being held by this generation’s Jew-haters, soon be able to rejoin their families.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
New York
The writer is the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

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Moshe reassures Edom that the Jewish desert-wanderers will not encroach on its fields or vineyards, that they will happily purchase food and water (which they didn’t even need, as they had the mon and the be’er).

The request is tersely rebuffed. And Moshe and his people are threatened by Edom’s king with the words: “I will come against you with the sword” (Bamidbar 20:14-18). 

Rashi (based on Midrash Tanchuma, Bishalach) fleshes out the response: “You pride yourselves on the ‘voice’ your father bequeathed you…  I, therefore, will come out against you with that which my father bequeathed me when he said, ‘And by thy sword you shall live’.” 

These troubled days, under the pressure of contemporary enemies’ murderous designs, many Jews are less than fully sensitive to the fact that our “voice” – our prayers and Torah-study – are our most powerful means of undermining those who wish us harm. There may be superficial acknowledgment of the value of our “voice,” but less than full investment in the truth of that value.

We have witnessed colossal failures of physical means intended to protect Jewish lives. That should make us all the more cognizant of the truth of “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says Hashem” (Zecharia 4:6). 

Military might, to be sure, is necessary. But what ultimately empowers and protects both those on the front lines and Jews worldwide are our “voice.” 

That, and our true, honest and complete conviction that Torah and tefillah are indeed key to effecting victory.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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Like the saga of the ma’apilim, the “insisters,” those Jews in the desert who repented of having spoken negatively of Eretz Yisrael and insisted, even against Moshe’s warning, on short-circuiting (pun intended) the prescribed years of desert wandering and “going up” into the Holy Land immediately.

Some, like the Munkatcher Rebbe Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, a fierce opponent of nascent religious Zionism during the early 1900s, saw in the ma’apilim a precursor of “those sects that went up to Eretz Yisrael by force to establish colonies and wage war against the nations.”

Rav Tzadok HaCohein, who died in 1900, had a very different approach. He wrote that the ma’apilim felt that, despite the warning against going directly into the land, it was a case of “Whatever the host tells you to do, heed him, except when he says ‘leave’” [Pesachim 86b].

Although the provenance of that text’s final phrase – “except when he he says ‘leave’” – is questioned by some commentaries, the idea Rav Tzadok means to convey is that the ma’apilim felt justified in disobeying the Divine order, that their plan was in fact ultimately consonant with the Divine will. 

But, while they had a point, Rav Tzakok continues, it was not the right time for such brash action. Noting the first word in Moshe’s admonition that “it [the plan] will not succeed,” Rav Tzadok writes: The word ‘it’ is often interpreted by Chazal to mean ‘it, but not another,’ [here] implying that at another time [in history] ‘it will succeed’.”

And, he concludes, “that is our time, the era leading to Mashiach.”

That era has proven prolonged. And the state of Israel is a reality. The question of whether its establishment was a wise endeavor or a dangerous one is moot today. We can only hope that the redemption Rav Tzadok saw implied by the pasuk – even if it didn’t take place in the 1900s – will happen soon, speedily, in our days.

© 2014 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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The inclusion of even infants in the Levi’im count is particularly striking, considering that the role of those counted is “mishmeres mishkan ha’eidus” – the guarding, or protection, of the sanctuary. A baby can’t protect anyone; he himself needs protection.

The most compelling explanation, offered by, among others, the Avnei Azel (Alexander Zushia Friedman, the author of the Ma’ayana Shel Torah compendium), is that the guarding here is not born of physical strength. The very existence of viable Levi’im is itself what offers protection. The security is sourced in the spiritual.

In Rabbi Friedman’s (loosely translated) words: “It is a common mistake that some make by assuming that the interests of the Jewish nation can be protected through martial and political means. Only the holiness and spiritual power of the guardians can actually offer protection… ‘If Hashem will not guard the city, for nought does the guard stand vigil’ (Tehillim 127:1)”

Rav Aharon Feldman, shlit”a, the Rosh Hayeshiva of Yeshivas Ner Yisrael in Baltimore, recently penned a heartfelt, elegiac essay about the security failures that allowed the tragedy of October 7 to happen, and how the future fate of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael (and everywhere) is dependent on the nation’s embracing its role as Hashem’s chosen people. 

Based on the warnings and lamentations of the nevi’im, Rav Feldman  imagines Hashem saying: “I… decided to wake you up with a powerful shock. I wanted you to realize that hitherto you were successful in your wars and in building up My land, not because of your cleverness or your army, but because I watched over you and granted you success. I wanted you to see that when I removed my support for you for a moment, your cleverness disappeared and your army fell to pieces.”

The essay shocked some in its straightforwardness. Stark truths are often shocking. But the Rosh Yeshiva’s rumination should not have surprised anyone. It was only the echo of Dovid Hamelech’s declaration above, and of the implication of the fact that even a baby among the Levi’im can be a conduit of Divine protection.

© 2024 Rabbi Avi Shafran

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My thoughts are here.

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Who—other than any mentally uncompromised listener to National Public Radio—knew?

To read what made that revelation newsworthy, click here.

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What chills those cockles, though, is that we’ve seen this play before. In 2005, 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza were unilaterally dismantled and the strip was rendered Judenrein. With the Gazan populace’s approval, Hamas quickly took charge and, well, the rest is tragic history. 

Today, six months since the merchants of murder demonstrated the depth of their hatred and barbarism, Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed. Hospitals (aka military arsenals), schools (aka missile bases) and countless homes (some of which were just homes). Roads, sewage systems and the electrical grid – are in ruins. 

Whether the unprecedented death, destruction and displacement Hamas has brought upon Gazan civilians has convinced them that supporting evil doesn’t pay can’t be known at this time.

But, embracing hope, the U.S. has called for a revitalized Palestinian Authority to administer postwar Gaza ahead of eventual statehood.

The P.A.? Please.

In Mahmoud Abbas’ kingdom of corruption in Yehudah and Shomron, government jobs  are doled out to supporters; international aid enriches officials; basic services are spotty; elections haven’t been held for nearly twenty years. 

Mr. Abbas, of course, was elated by the U.S. endorsement of even a “reconstituted” Palestinian Authority. And, in March, he announced the formation of a new cabinet, to demonstrate his readiness to step up to the reconstruction plate.  

Tapped for prime minister is Mohammad Mustafa, a longtime Abbas adviser. He pledged to form a technocratic government and create an independent trust fund to help rebuild Gaza. 

The U.S. National Security Council welcomed the development, contending that “a reformed Palestinian Authority is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people and establishing the conditions for stability in both the West Bank and Gaza.”

The key word there is “reformed.”

The signs are hardly encouraging. According to Palestinian Media Watch, the new Palestinian Authority’s minister of women’s affairs, Muna Al-Khalili, offered praise in 2018, for Dalal Mughrabi at an event honoring the terrorist, who in 1978 led a group that hijacked a bus and murdered more than three dozen riders, including 12 children. “A quality resistance operation,” Al-Khalili gushed, proclaiming that the attack “proved that Palestinian women are capable of carrying out the most difficult missions.” The most heinous ones, at least.

And, mere weeks after the Shemini Atzeres massacre, Ms. Al-Khalili hailed the “right to resist the occupation” until Palestinians achieve “self-determination, freedom, independence in its sovereign state whose capital is Jerusalem…” 

An equally disturbing member of the “revitalized Palestinian Authority” is its minister of religious affairs, Muhammad Mustafa Najem. He has called Jews “apes and pigs” who are full of “conceit, pride, arrogance, rioting, disloyalty, and treachery.” He sermonized that Muslims should “afflict the Jews with the worst torment.”

No, neither the old P.A. nor its “new and improved” version – as a bard once put it, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” – is a path forward for Gaza. Any respectable government there will have to be something truly novel, an administration whose focus is on the wellbeing of its citizens, not on murdering citizens of a neighbor.

Could that happen? 

The latest poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, on March 20, showed that Gazans’ support for continued Hamas control over the Gaza Strip showed a 14-point rise over the prior three months to more than 50%.

If that reflects Gazans’ true feelings, no sane, responsible government will emerge in the territory. The only grounds for hope are the many reports of Gazans who quietly admit that they hate Hamas but are afraid to speak up. 

Their fear is understandable. Hamas has warned Gazans that anyone seeking to undermine its administration of  the territory will be treated as a collaborator – which, of course, means execution. 

Are there enough Gazans who prefer peace to endless bloodshed and who will vote that preference in some future election? 

I’m not taking bets.

(c) 2024 Ami Magazine

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That succinctly describes a cartoon published by a Libyan news organization on this past October 20. 

The next month saw a Bahrain news outlet depicting Mr. Netanyahu driving through Gaza in a blood-soaked tank while pulling the Statue of Liberty and President Biden behind him.

Yet another cartoon, featuring a frocked Jew with a large microphone in place of his nose, is captioned: “The Lie of Zionist Media.” 

That’s rather like the pot calling the glass of milk black. For decades, Arabic-language newspapers and websites have crawled with anti-Israel and antisemitic images and sentiments. And since the October 7 Hamas massacre, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the ugliness has only increased.

A report from the organization cites examples from Palestinian publications as well as in media based in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Some also appeared in UK Arabic-language news outlets.

Welcome to the warped world of Arab media.

It’s not only the Arab world’s cartoons that evidence hatred for Jews. What passes for actual news reportage in that realm also regularly promotes incendiary falsehoods, claiming, for instance, that Israel wishes to kill Gazan civilians; and provides ample space to opinion writers whom Goebbels would have been overjoyed to have had on hand.

Among the best examples of such propaganda posing as reportage is Iran’s PressTV, which is nothing more than the malignant mullahs’ mouthpiece. It regularly traffics in Holocaust denial and spreads an assortment of antisemitic conspiracy theories. (Iran isn’t an Arab land, but its rulers share their Arabian coreligionists’ sentiments when it comes to Jews.)

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station, based in Lebanon, is another contender. Its director let his less-than-journalistic sentiments show when, speaking about Mr. Netanyahu, he explained that “We want to get close to him, not to interview him, but to kill him.”

And then, of course, we have Qatar’s Al-Jazeera network. It does a good job of pretending to be a neutral, objective medium. But not good enough.

Recently, a laptop belonging to an Al-Jazeera reporter, Muhammad Washah, was found at one of Hamas’ bases in Gaza. It contained photos and intelligence materials linking him to Hamas.

“In the morning a ‘journalist’ on the Al-Jazeera network and in the evening a terrorist in Hamas,” was IDF Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee’s comment on a social media platform.

Apparently, according to Mr. Adraee, Mr. Washah is a senior military operative in Hamas’ anti-tank missile system and has worked in the research and development of aerial weapons for the terror group. Photos show him with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and weaponized drones.

On October 7 itself, it eventually came to light, at least two Al-Jazeera journalists entered Israel with Hamas terrorists and photographed atrocities. Ahmed Najjar accompanied some of the terrorists and filmed several kidnappings. Ismail Abu Omar filmed the Hamas slaughter in Kibbutz Nir Oz, even sharing a video in which he is heard saying: “The comrades have progressed, may Allah bless.”

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, a cleric who praised Hitler, condoned Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and appealed for people to “kill Zionists and Jews, down to the very last one…” was, until his death in 2020, a frequent guest on Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel. 

As to moderate Arab voices, Jordan Cope, of the think tank Middle East Forum, asserts that “Other than in Israel… freedom of expression in the Middle East is limited.” There must be some prize for understatement.

And need we even mention Hamas’ own Al-AqsaTV? Renowned for its children’s programming, a medium in its own right, its broadcasts have featured cute furry characters like “Nahoul,” a giant bee, who encouraged his young fans to “punch” Jews and “turn their faces into tomatoes”; and his co-host, an actual little girl, responded to one of her pint-sized peers who expressed the wish to grow up and “shoot the Jews” – “all of them” – with: “Good!”

When some of the cuddly creatures suddenly disappeared from the program, the kiddies watching were solemnly informed that their beloved friends had been “martyred” by Israelis.

That particular “educational” program aired back in 2014. I find myself wondering if any of the young people who watched it back then might have been, ten years later, in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel on October 7.

© 2024 Ami Magazine

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Don’t think too hard. Just click here for the answer, provided in my Ami column last week.

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To read about his idea, and my thoughts about it, please click here.

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If you’re intrigued by what I meant by that provocative phrase (and it’s something most timely today), please click here.

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Re “For Gaza’s Babies, War’s Effects Will Never End,” by Alice Rothchild (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 11):

The effect of the Israel-Hamas conflict on expectant mothers and on babies is horrific, as is all the death and destruction in Gaza today.

It must end immediately.

Hamas must do what Germany and Japan did in 1945: surrender — and, here, release the kidnapped Israelis it hasn’t yet murdered.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
New York
The writer is the director of public affairs at Agudath Israel of America.

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Thus Spake Students for Justice in Palestine. To read about the group and some responsible colleges’ treatment of it, click here.

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But you can read about it here.

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Want to know more about the woman referred to in the headline, a new definition of chutzpah and something you might not know about the Hamas leader in Gaza? Well, just click here.

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Until now, that is. To read about a recent escapade of mine and what it yielded, please click here.

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To read about my fantasy, and more, click here.

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As I point out here.

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Didn’t their mothers ever tell them not to meddle in the affairs of others?

To read why their resolution is objectionable, click here.

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In an irony as rich as premium full-fat ice cream, Ben & Jerry’s, the frozen confection company that objected last year to its product being sold in indigenously Jewish land, found itself melting under consumer heat for asserting the rights of Indigenous Americans.

On the Fourth of July, the company posted a video on social media to celebrate “National Ice Cream Month.” (Now, that one’s definitely going on my calendar, though I’ll opt for a cholov Yisrael brand.)

But Ben and Jerry’s seized the opportunity, in line with its declared exquisite social conscience, to inform ice cream aficionados that “it’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land, and commit to returning it.”

The campaign was elaborated upon on Ben & Jerry’s website, which explained that its “land back” stance was about “ensuring that Indigenous people can again govern the land their communities called home for thousands of years.” It focused mainly on the taking of land, including Mt. Rushmore, from the Lakota tribe in South Dakota.

Oddly, though, Messrs. Cohen and Greenfield – the Ben and Jerry who founded the company in the 1970s – seemed less enamored of indigenous rights last year when they blasted the brand’s parent company Unilever for selling the franchise’s operations in Israel to a local licensee, which allowed the stuff to be sold in Yehudah and Shomron, in the ice cream kings’ view, “occupied territories.” 

Those territories are “occupied,” in their view, by the evil colonizer Israel. But, whatever one’s thoughts about the future political status of those areas, from the standpoint of actual history – which seems important to Ben and Jerry – it is myopic to see them as indigenously Arab. 

On the contrary, the only readily identifiable people today who have true historic claim of descent from the land’s most ancient inhabitants are Jews. 

There are no Cna’anim left today. They were vanquished in Yehoshua’s time. With all due respect (what little is due) to P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas, who told the U.N. Security Council in 2018 that “we are the descendants of the Canaanites that lived in the land 5,000 years ago,” not only is his claim nonsense, but it’s also one that, tellingly, no Palestinian Arab (himself included) ever made over centuries. Mr. Abbas was trying to invent an imaginary indigenousness. Nice try, Mahmoud.

When the Jews who lived in the land since Yehoshua’s time were forced to leave it, something that we Jews have lamented for all the centuries since and focus on in particular these days every Jewish year, those who subsequently took up residence in Eretz Yisrael were the occupiers.

That includes the “Palestinians,” many of whom are in reality descended from successive waves of people who came to the area only at the end of the 18th century from places like Egypt, where famine and persecution fueled emigration; and, in the 19th century, from Algeria, Transjordan and Bosnia. So much for Arab indigenousness in Eretz Yisrael.

In the end, Unilever sold its Ben & Jerry’s division to another company that has rights to sell products in Israel and the territories overseen by the Palestinian Authority. Ben and Jerry were not happy. “We continue to believe it is inconsistent with Ben & Jerry’s values,” they tweeted, “for our ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” They got licked.

And aren’t likely very happy now, either. Because many American consumers were apparently less than enthusiastic about the boys’ recent proposal that the nation be transferred to descendants of Native American tribes and go from being the United States of America to the Disunited Tribes of America. Ben and Jerry’s parent company lost nearly $2 billion in market capitalization in the wake of their July 4 message. 

And adding sprinkles to the rich ice cream irony is an inconvenient fact of American history. 

Before the establishment of the Republic, the Abenaki – a confederacy of various Indigenous tribes that united against a rival tribal confederacy – controlled an area that stretched from the northern border of Massachusetts in the south to New Brunswick, Canada, in the north, and from the St. Lawrence River in the west to the East Coast.

Ben & Jerry’s headquarters are located in a business park in southern Burlington, Vermont. Well within the western portion of Abenaki territory.

Delicious.

© 2023 Ami Magazine

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With one exception. No less repugnant than it was predictable.

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Or, for an example of a well-earned misstep, any better than Palestinian activists’ ill-fated demand that Ms. Mohammed’s diatribe, which had been livestreamed on the school’s YouTube account but then removed, be reposted. Which it was, on the 25th. 

The overheated orator praised CUNY Law’s faculty and students for endorsing the BDS movement (that endorsement an ugliness of its own), and accused Israel of “indiscriminately rain[ing] bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old and young, attacking even funerals and graveyards, encouraging lynch mobs to target Palestinians, as it imprisons their children and continues the project of settler colonialism…” And so on. You know the litany of lies.

She also used the occasion of her graduation (as a future lawyer – the thought boggles) to lambaste the New York Police Department and the U.S. military as “fascists”; to allege that “daily, brown and black men are being murdered by the state”; and to defend five leaders of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation who are serving time for providing material support to Hamas.

“May we rejoice,” she righteously declared, “in the corners of our New York City bedroom apartments and dining tables, may it be fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world!”

On the 26th, a CUNY representative soberly explained that “Members of the Class of 2023 selected student speakers who offered congratulatory remarks and their own individual perspectives on advocating for social justice. As with all such commencement remarks, they reflect the voices of those individuals.” One had to wonder if the rep would have been as sanguine had the commencement speech attacked blacks or Arabs. 

Then came the richly deserved backlash. 

New York Congressman Ritchie Torres tweeted: “Imagine being so crazed by hatred for Israel as a Jewish State that you make it the subject of your commencement speech at a law school graduation. Anti-Israel derangement syndrome at work.”

Former New York Republican congressman Lee Zeldin called for CUNY’s taxpayer funding – its 2023 budget amounted to about $ 4.3 billion, most from the state, some from the city – to be revoked “until the administration is overhauled and all Jewish students and faculty are welcome again.”

World Jewish Congress head Ronald Lauder called for the law school’s dean, Sudha Setty, who applauded the ungracious graduate’s speech, to be fired.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams condemned the diatribe, as did New York governor Kathy Hochul and a host of other elected officials.

Eventually, CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez and the Board of Trustees issued a statement asserting that, while “free speech is precious…. but hate speech… should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation. The remarks by a student-selected speaker at the CUNY Law School graduation, unfortunately, fall into the category of hate speech, as they were a public expression of hate toward people and communities based on their religion, race or political affiliation.”

To be sure, rushing predictably to Ms. Mohammed’s defense were anti-Israel groups, including, sadly, Jewish ones. CUNY Law’s Jewish Law Student Association called the reactions to the hater “pander[ing] to the most cynical reactionaries (ie. @NYCMayor).” 

“Jews for Racial & Economic Justice” tweeted that its heroine was being thrown to “the wolves. Utterly shameful.” Well, something was, anyway.

As it happens, with her commencement address, Ms. Mohammed was following in her own muddy footsteps. In a May, 2021 tweet, she expressed her wish that “every Zionist burn in the hottest pit of hell.” And the next day, she referenced the fact that she “pray[s] upon the death of the USA.”

In the wake of the uproar over her repulsive remarks, Ms. Mohammed was reached by a reporter at a relative’s home. She told the journalist, “I do not want to speak to anybody.”

It was a little late for reticence. She had already spoken more than enough, and revealed a thickly sullied soul.

© 2023 Ami Magazine

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You can read about the sadly all-too-typical misreportage here.

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Things like Siddur and Chumash presentations accompanied by song and verse. There are plays about historical events and uplifting stories. And depictions of Jewish concepts like tefillah or brachos. This grandparent enjoyed a wonderful one last year that was focused on Shmitta and bitachon. (You and your schoolmates were great, Hadassah!) 

And then there are the end-of-school-year “Ummah Day” productions at the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia, or “MAS.” They are somewhat different from their Jewish counterparts.

In 2017 and 2019, the children in MAS, as per videos posted on its Facebook page, sang “Chop off their heads!” about their perceived enemies, and expressed their eagerness to become “martyrs” in the cause of liberating “Palestine.” One little girl warbled, “I am a revolution that shakes the occupier. I am a wave on the calm sea. I hold my head high, and I will not be humiliated.”

The 2019 production, a joint venture between MAS Philadelphia and something called the “Leaders Academy,” received some 2 million views. After groups like the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and the ADL, along with some American lawmakers, called attention to the issue, Facebook shut down the school’s page.

Subsequently, MAS Philadelphia and Leaders Academy released a statement expressing sadness over its “mistake” and contending that “antisemitism or other forms of bigotry are foreign concepts to us and we are especially saddened that our beautiful children and community continue to face these accusations [of hating Jews].” The groups pledged to “pave a positive future for our community and increase our work with people from all walks of life.”

Somewhat nonreassuring was the groups’ proud announcement at the time that they had “enlisted CAIR-Philadelphia to help us with a number of [sensitivity] trainings.” CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, has publicly called Israel a “terrorist state” that targets innocent civilians and declared that Israel “is the biggest threat to world peace and security.”  

Which might explain why the sensitivity trainings didn’t work (or, perhaps, depending on the nature of the training, did). Because earlier this month, the little darlings at MAS were at it again.

This time, the children at the school weren’t chopping off heads. But – in a video posted  on May 6 by the Leaders Academy and exposed by MEMRI – they celebrated “One Ummah Day” with a song and performance praising “brave” Palestinian girls who support their “real men” as fighters against Israel. 

One song describes a girl sending her brother off to battle and telling him: “I will saddle up your horse, and I will tie a dagger to your belt – enhance your resolve.” The video was also posted to the Facebook page of the Alhidaya Islamic Center in Philadelphia, another name for MAS.

Last week, a bill to address the problem of endemic anti-Jewish incitement in Palestinian Authority textbooks was unanimously passed in the United States House Foreign Affairs Committee. 

California Democrat Brad Sherman, who introduced the bill, lamented the fact that the PA’s incitement contradicts American values of tolerance and peace, and noted that “For decades, the United States and the American people have been the top donor to the Palestinian people, including to the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine] – but this is not a blank check.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, “instead of envisioning a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the current Palestinian curriculum erases Israel from maps, refers to Israel only as ‘the enemy,’ and asks children to sacrifice their lives to ‘liberate’ all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

In April 2021, the Biden administration defended its decision to restore financial aid to the UNRWA with the claim that the United Nations agency was committed to a “zero tolerance” policy regarding antisemitism. Unfortunately, that may have been pleasantly hopeful but it was patently false. 

As a report at the time released by the IMPACT-se research institute revealed, schools run by UNRWA continued to teach hatred against Israel.

Incitement against Israel and Jews in Palestinian textbooks is reprehensible. 

It’s even more reprehensible in an American school.

And irony is added to reprehensibility when such hatred sets down roots in the City of Brotherly Love. 

© 2023 Ami Magazine

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