Oh, for G-d's Sake....Stop Drinking Hamas Kool-Aid

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Pash, Sarah Mendelson,
Yaakov Pinto, Rabbi Israel Matzner
Rabbi Mordechai Steintzag, Rabbi Yosef David

I lost my editor today. She is very ill, and I knew this day would come. But that's not the whole reason I lost her. She is angry with me because I don't simply condemn Israel to its core over Gaza.  Today. When 6 people were gunned down at a bus stop in Jerusalem. When 6 people were minding their own business when terrorists fired into the crowd

Of course, the NYT headline read "Gunmen Attack Bus Stop in Jerusalem, Killing at Least 6;" G-d forbid they should call them terrorists because, after all, it happened in Israel. If a bunch of guys shot up a bus stop in Peoria, you damn well better believe they would've immediately been labelled terrorists, domestic or otherwise. But wait! There's more. The NYT goes on to say:

The Israeli police described the shooting as a terrorist attack and said that the perpetrators had been killed at the scene.

Excuse me??????? Described ???????? What? Did they think it was some unruly teenagers?

This is the double standard in the media. Had this happened ANYWHERE in the world except Israel, it would've immediately been labelled terrorist. 

The civilian deaths in Gaza are tragic. The death of children is hard to fathom. Yet, it really isn't. Their deaths underscore the arc of the human shield. They are meant to die, and their deaths are meant to cause outrage and anger. Hamas had more than enough room in the hundreds of miles of tunnels to protect most of their civilians, but the chose to put them directly in harm's way. And when their own bombs fell on their own civilians, they made sure to take no responsibility for those deaths....remember Al-Ahli Arab Hospital? 

When your charter calls for the dismantling of an entire country and executing the population of said country, why would you think said country would go, "Okay. We'll just march into the sea for you." ?

If only Israel had Hamas's PR machine.

If you drink the Kool-Aid, you do more damage to Palestinians than Israelis. If you insist on chanting FREE PALESTINE!, do the Palestinians a favor and add the real, second part of that sentiment: FREE PALESTINE FROM HAMAS. Give those people a fighting change to actually have a state. Unless you rid them of the yoke, the oxen will never be free. 

In today's, MORNING MUSINGS, Peter Himmelman puts today's terrorist attack into harsh perspective:

This “oppressor versus oppressed” binary makes Israel automatically the villain. The narrative requires it: Israel strong, Hamas weak. Once you’ve accepted that framing, the facts no longer matter. And here is where the human cost comes in. I have seen the images from Gaza—children torn apart, families buried. The kind of horror no parent, no human being, should ever have to witness. Anyone who claims those lives don’t matter has cut away their own humanity. 

Yet, to see those deaths and leap to the word “genocide” is to compound the tragedy with a lie. When you declare that Zionists are Nazis, you are saying my mother, my late father and sister, my other siblings, my wife, my children, my grandchildren—you are calling nearly everyone I know and love a Nazi. You may revel in the irony of calling Jews Nazis. To you it feels clever. To me, it is sickening. It shows your ignorance, your gullibility, and your malice. 

Because I’ve seen the other images too; the ones you never mention. October 7th. Hamas slaughtering, raping, burning people alive. Hostages dragged into tunnels, some barely alive, others fully murdered. And still, marches in Western capitals waving Hamas flags, demanding ceasefire before a single hostage was freed. Hamas is not a liberation movement. It is a death cult steeped in radical Islamist ideology that seeks not peace, but the eradication of Israel and the murder of Jews. That day, as today, showed us exactly what we are up against. 

And here is the brutal irony: supporting Hamas does not “save” Gaza—it destroys it. Every rocket fired from a schoolyard, every tunnel dug beneath a hospital, every hostage still held prevents any chance of rebuilding. Gaza cannot be restored so long as Hamas remains, because Hamas thrives on ruin. It needs suffering as its currency. Those who excuse or endorse it are not allies of the Palestinian people. They are accomplices in ensuring that the rubble remains rubble.

When you boycott Israel, Israeli products, Israeli artists, scientists, engineers, and medical research, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. None of that helps the world, much less the Gazans who live beneath the thumb of a regime that sees them only as cannon fodder.  It doesn't get them food or jobs or housing or clean water. You are simply enabling the leaders to take the money and run...usually to Dubai where they live is opulence while Gazan children starve. It's nothing more than performative activism that is all show and absolutely no action. All those celebrities and musicians who preach this non-active performative activism are doing nothing to help the people of Gaza. If anything, you are supporting the very regime that continues to enslave them. 

Look, when Europe was done trying to kill us, they sent us to a barren strip of sand no one wanted to settle. But like Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch, this is exactly where we wanted to go. It's our home. Before you know it, the desert is green, industry is booming, and Israel, that little strip of land, is thriving. So instead of saying, "Hey! How did you do that?" our neighbors attacked with the intent to destroy. It didn't work in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, two intifadas, 2008, 2012, 2014, or on October 7th, 2023. Offered a state 5 times since 1948, they have never accepted the offer of statehood. Why do you think that is? Because it meant Israel would continue to exist. 

I've said it often enough in this space: the government of Israel is not perfect and Israelis are as unhappy with the prosecution of this war as everyone else. They want the hostages, alive or dead, to be returned. They want the missiles to stop. Everyone is tired of racing to shelters. Israelis are no more interested in war than anyone else, but it's tough to stand down when you are constantly under attack. 

Just like all Americans in this melting pot of a country, everyone has a vested interest in American democracy...or so we all hope.. Same in Israel, a smaller but no less diverse democracy. Most of all, Israelis, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze, Baháʼí, Buddhist, Rastafarian, or pastafarian...they all want one thing: to be left in peace to live their lives. 

Photo by Sharon Waxman

In a few weeks, I will be in Israel. One of the things we are planning is a trip to the Nova site. It's not that I want to go; I feel that I must go. Just like the World Trade Center site, I never want to go, but I do because it's my cousins' grave site. I may not have known anyone who died there or in the kibbutzim, but they are also my family. Each one has had a profound impact on my life, my psyche. I will go and I will grieve for the lives mowed down by terrorists. 

If anyone is to blame for all the deaths...Israeli or Palestinians....it's Hamas. They attacked. They raped. The executed children in front of parents and grandparents. They used their own children as shields. They stole humanitarian aid to feed their fighters and left the civilians without sustenance. The Palestinian people are caught in the middle of a war they probably don't want either....but what choice do they have? Just remember, all those dead bodies would probably be alive had Hamas not attacked on October 7th. 

If you really wanna free Palestine.....Free Palestine from Hamas. That is the only chance those people have. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

It's getting to be cemetery visit time again.

Jewish tradition tells us people die twice:

once when they leave their body

and again when people no longer say their name.

Talk about your family...the live ones and the ones who are gone.

From generation to generation, pass on that which makes you unique.