Say Something

Say Something!

In these days of violence unleashed, tenuously subdued, and barely restrained – what is a human being to do?  In these days of flagrant public antisemitism intertwined with virulent anti-Zionism – what is a friend of Israel to do?  How do we honor our dead and embrace our survivors – whoever we are, whatever side of the conflict we find ourselves on?

While it’s hard to figure out what productive actions can be taken in today’s environment, it’s easier to spot what’s truly unhelpful.

Enter Linda Sarsour, executive director of MPower Change who recently passionately told an audience of zealots in Washington DC that God was not testing the Palestinians in Gaza.  “ALL those who died in Gaza got a ticket straight to heaven . . .bGod is testing you!” She told her audience. “Those people in Gaza did more Dawah than any of us have ever done.”

What is Dawah? It is an invitation, a summons to join Islam through the sharing of faith. Sarsour asked her audience what Dawah they were willing to do, and that was God’s true test.  But sharing of the faith how? By what means? For whom? For the innocent civilians, mothers and children alike who died by indiscriminate Israeli bombing, or the Hamas terrorists who raped, beheaded, and murdered mothers, babies, and grandparents. For the victims of Israeli brutality, or those ‘freedom fighters’ who set them up as human shields? For the innocent children playing in the rubble of their bombed-out homes, or the Hamas ‘freedom fighters’ who steal their food and hijack their medicines?

All Palestinians in Gaza went straight to heaven? Allah welcomes the hostage takers, slashers, murderers, and rapists along with the mothers and the infants killed or maimed by missiles? All are Shaheeds – martyrs – regardless of their actions? Whatever Linda Sarsour’s intentions are; whatever her wishes are for the Palestinian people – her path is a path of devastation and untold misery. Her way is the way of darkness, denial, and death – for her people, above all others.  For the Palestinian people, Linda Sarsour and her ilk are a guarantee of vengeance and suffering ad infinitum. They are an existential threat to the very people they claim to love and speak for.

But my own people have not done much better. The weeks leading to the mayoral elections in New York City saw a flurry of frantic denunciations of Zohran Mamdani, the now newly-elected Mayor of New York City. Over a thousand rabbis signed a letter excoriating the Democratic Socialist candidate for his virulent anti-Zionist beliefs, stating, in so many words, that he is an existential danger to Jews.

I am not a fan of Zohran Mamdani. I reject his anti-Zionism. I dislike his political ideology. I think very little of his policy proposals. I wish he were not elected mayor because I think he will be bad for New York. But what Zohran Mamdani is NOT, in my opinion, is an existential threat to Jews – not in New York City and not globally. He is a living personification of growing anger and frustration with government in general and with the state of Israel and its policies in particular.

The anger and resentment are not a gentile issue – they are generational and ideological.  Just about a third of New York’s Jews voted for Mamdani. Are all of them self-hating, anti-Zionists? What about the rest of the New Yorkers who voted for Mamdani – are they all antisemites and Israel haters?

Over the past year I have written a few posts in the Times of Israel addressing, among other issues, extremist Jewish violence on the West Bank. Despicable violence against Palestinian civilians – not people suspected of terrorist activities – ordinary civilians: women, children, and the elderly. This violence includes burning crops, uprooting ancient olive trees, stealing livestock, torching vehicles and homes, kidnapping and murdering unarmed civilians.  In many cases, this violence is not stopped by the IDF or the police and is given tacit approval by certain members of the Israeli cabinet.

If and when any objections are voiced by Israeli ministers, the attackers are called “a fringe, extremist minority.” Extreme, fringe minorities do not have government ministers representing them in key positions of any government – anywhere. Extreme, fringe minorities don’t have entire IDF units consisting of hyper-nationalist and messianic soldiers and commanders. Extreme, fringe minorities do not have their sectarian seminaries supported by funds from the Israeli tax payers.

10-year-old Palestinian children who throw rocks at IDF soldiers are arrested and called ‘terrorists’ by the Israeli government and by the Israeli court system. Jewish arsonists, vandals, and murderers who set out to terrorize a civilian population are a ‘fringe extremist minority.’ Aren’t semantics wonderful?

I have yet to see one letter signed by a thousand New York rabbis denouncing this outrage.  And scant few mass letters decrying the moral outrage that is the current Israeli government. Not one, consolidated effort to denounce and challenge a wicked, incompetent, and arrogant government that has been zealously pitting Jews against Jews, both in Israel and abroad, while openly engaged in destroying democratic institutes in Israel.

Instead of engaging in Talmudic disputations about the finer details of whether or not Israel committed genocide or ethnic cleansing in Gaza – intentionally or unintentionally – cast your eyes to the West Bank and observe the blatant ethnic cleansing campaign that is unfolding there. Ask many of the settlers what they are aiming to achieve and they will gladly tell you they are trying to ‘encourage’ all Palestinians to disappear from Judea and Samaria.

If there is an existential threat to Jews – it is the current Israeli government. A government that has isolated Israel from the international body it needs for its very survival and well-being. A government that has destabilized the decades-old foundations of support for Israel within the American body politic. A government that has alienated a shocking amount of young, educated, caring Jews through its thuggish and tone-deaf behavior for the past 3 years.

Just this week, following the torching of a mosque near Nablus, the IDF announced that it is on the verge of losing control of the Jewish violence on the West Bank. I have never heard such a statement in my seventy-five years on earth. It is shocking. It speaks of an existential threat to Jews, Judaism, and Israel.

We’ve been there before, folks. We have a long history of self-destruction and internecine violence and hatred on top of the tragedies that have befallen us through no fault of our own.

Say something. Now.

Not to do so is Jewishly unacceptable.