Time to Starve the Monsters

Thoughts on the Bondi Beach Massacre, the Redlands, California Shooting and Possibly the Brown University Shooting

Something that every child who has ever hidden beneath their bed knows:  monsters eat hatred for breakfast, fear for lunch, and despair for dinner.

This is a cry from the heart as we weep over the children, the elderly, the teacher and the Holocaust survivor gunned down yesterday in Bondi Beach while together celebrating the liberation holiday of Hanukkah by monsters who may or may not have been set on their murderous ISIS spree by Iran. Ahmed al-Ahmed, the Syrian-Australian now in a hospital after he wrestled a gun from one of the terrorists, is a hero.

This is a cry from the heart as we read about a Jewish home shot up in Redlands, California because the people in that house were Jews commemorating the liberation day of Hanukkah with decorations outside their home.

This is a cry from the heart as we hear that the terrible shooting at Brown University yesterday may have been aimed at hurting and killing an openly pro-Israel professor and students who attended the class, and that the media may be muzzling or muddling the news.  Even if this were not the case, the students whose lives were taken and their classmates who were traumatized deserve to be remembered and helped in any way possible.

This is a cry from the heart in response to a sincere plea from a person who wrote through to a live broadcast by the Free Press from Australia, as a member of the Aussie Jewish community spoke of the terror that was visited on her family and friends – “I am a non-Jew and don’t know how to help.”

I will tell a story.  It happens to be true.

First, the background.  Years ago, I was the organizer of the U.S. arm of a U.S.-Israel project called Books for Israel.  The idea was simple.  This was during the Second Intifada, also known as the Al Aqsa Intifada (yes…. There’s that word.  Al Aqsa has been used as a pretext for violence against Jews numerous times – but that’s another story.) This was an outbreak of terrorism carried by various groups including Fatah under Yasser Arafat (former boss of the current Palestinian Authority  President, Mahmoud Abbas), Hamas, and others.

In Israel, public buses, restaurants, and public schools were being targeted for fire-bombings and shootings.  Bloody and horrific scenes were being perpetrated daily.  Americans knew very little about what was going on.  This was before 911. I was working full-time in the U.S. and raising my two children.  I knew all about it.  My sister, Jade Bar-Shalom, Z”L, was working in an Israeli public school as an English teacher and raising her children.

One day, I got a call from Jade.  The Israeli government had informed the English teachers that there could be no money for English books—money had to be diverted to cameras and fences and guards to try to keep the kids safe.  Parents in low-income Israeli schools, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim or Druze, did not have money to spare to help with books for their children, and we decided to work with U.S. synagogues, churches, community centers – anyone who could be persuaded to get involved – to send gently used English books overseas for schools in these low-income neighborhoods and towns to build little libraries so their kids might hope to learn English and be able to open the doors to higher education and a better future. Also so that Israelis would feel less isolated and forgotten as they faced constant onslaughts of terror with little interest being shown by the rest of the world.  Jade’s job was to organize the English teachers to be representatives and liaisons/coordinators for the project in their schools.  My job was to do outreach and find people who might help.

The response to the Books for Israel Project from Americans across the country was generous.  This was a campaign I ran at night, mostly using email.  I was working a full-time day job, was a mother of two young kids, and had little to no help or extra money.  There were no fancy ads, no podcasts, no mass social media floods, no cute photo ops.  But literally tons of good quality used English books were shipped to the Israeli schools on our list by people all over the USA who answered the call. Some really nice little libraries were built – some of them in bomb shelters that helped scared kids get through shellings aimed at Israel’s north and south.  Some of those people from the USA were an outstanding group in Denver, Colorado run jointly by Jews and Christians. I won’t name names because I haven’t asked permission. These are some sincerely wonderful people, and this is how I know the story, because if it ever made the press, it certainly wasn’t national U.S. news.

It was the first night of Hanukkah and someone put a rock through the window of a Jewish family in Denver because they had a menorah on display.  The Christian head of the Denver group heard about it and put out a call.  The next night, there were hundreds and hundreds more menorahs in windows in that Denver neighborhood.  That was the end of the rock-throwing.

Here’s the moral of the story.  Joining monsters in hate feeds them.  Cowering before monsters feeds them.  Going into despair because of monsters feeds them.

Jews – put on a Magen David.  Get one if you don’t have one. Walk proud, don’t walk alone, and don’t let your children see you pushed into a corner—they will learn fear, self-contempt, and self-hatred if you do.

Anyone who doesn’t want to be a monster, anyone who doesn’t want to have their mind ruled by monsters or their actions dictated to them by monsters – stand with us.

Let thousands and thousands of menorahs light the night.

Every light will remind us to mourn every lost person and to try to comfort every wounded soul.

We can’t bow to haters.

It is time to starve the monsters.