A Price of Pain: Hostages Returned, Terrorists Released (Judean Rose)

“The nightmare is over.”

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Last Sunday, the entire nation of Israel was riveted to their screens, hoping for a glimpse of Emily, Romi, and Doron. At the same time, at least where I live, in Efrat, the joy and relief was tempered with the knowledge that the cost is higher than any of us can stomach: the release of 1700 terrorists. Among those terrorists to be released is Khalil Ali Jabarin who fatally stabbed and killed Efrat resident Ari Fuld, a husband and father of four, in 2018.

And now, apparently, he will be released from prison, to do it again. It’s what they do. Kill Jews. It’s a proven fact. The recidivism rate is high. Terrorists were released in exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011. By 2014, half of them had committed further acts of terror. So now we have three amazing women back, but we feel unsafe.

In an address to the nation the night before the hostage release, Netanyahu assured us that no terrorists would be released to Judea and Samaria. “We have established that terrorists who have killed will not be released to Judea and Samaria; they will be expelled to the Gaza Strip or abroad, and we also decided in the cabinet on a very significant reinforcement of our forces in Judea and Samaria to protect our citizens,” he said.

Yet we see report after report suggesting that the terrorists slated to be released in this “deal” will indeed be released to Judea and Samaria. Efrat, once home to Ari Fuld, is located in Judea. We are in agony at the injustice of his murderer and so many other murderers of Israelis, going free. How do we trade this for that? Three young woman, but Ari’s murderer is set loose to wander free, and perhaps among us. 1,700 terrorists to be released into the wild.

We are winning. Why should we trade anything at all for a ceasefire, let alone release 1,700 murderers for 33 hostages? Why did Trump insist that we accede to Biden’s very bad May ceasefire plan? Does the new president not know that this means the release of terrorists who murdered American citizens, such as, for instance, Ari Fuld and Richard Lakin?

But that’s not the entire story either. It’s not the only reason our feelings are a bewildered mishmash of orphaned puzzle pieces. Israel has been fully mobilized for more than a year. We are in constant fear for soldier husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters. They are gone for months. Wives and mothers are left on their own, some for more than a year. They are terrified. They must be strong for the kids. And how to soothe children when daddy is away and there are sirens.

As a mother of soldiers, I can tell you that it is hell to be a mother of soldiers in wartime. And now our soldier sons wonder why they served. Did they do their jobs bravely and well only to see the release of these monsters? Here, too, there is no justice. Especially for families who lost soldier husbands, sons, brothers, daughters, and sisters.

We are winning the war. Why are we being forced to capitulate, forced into Biden’s very bad “deal” from May, by Trump’s envoy, Witkoff. A man in Qatar’s pocket. Word is, Witkoff not only strong-armed Bibi into agreeing to this terrible deal (at Trump’s behest of course) but forced him to meet on Shabbos telling him that he knows Bibi isn’t orthodox, that he doesn’t wear a yarmulke, so he better damned well meet with him on Shabbos. Rumors. But rumors that rankle.

One woman friend told me that she had never cried so much as she did on Sunday, the day we waited for the hostages to be released. We didn’t know what feeling to land on: the fear, the feeling of being betrayed, that it was all for nothing, yet joy at the prospect of getting those girls, those three precious souls, out of hell.

Now, the newspapers are focused heavily on the hostages. The terrorist release is like a mere whisper in the media compared to the huge story of Emily, Romi, and Doron. They deserve our love and our joy. They deserved their hell to end. But to release terrorists who are almost certainly bound to kill again, is a terrible thing. And we can’t stand it.

I keep thinking back to October when JD Vance called on Americans in Israel to vote for Trump (emphasis added):

Vance stressed the importance of every vote in what is expected to be a close race. "This election could be decided by just a few votes. Do you want Kamala Harris, or do you want Donald Trump? If you want Donald Trump, get out there and make it happen." 

Aryeh Lightstone, Former senior advisor to Ambassador David Friedman, told The Jerusalem Post, "In an election that may be decided by just thousands of votes, the Trump-Vance campaign is convinced that Americans in Israel know better than anybody else, the value of strong leadership, and they are speaking directly to these voters to make sure to show up through these videos."

"They have promised to continue to stand by Israel, and they are asking Americans in Israel to stand by them," Lightstone said.

We did stand by them. We voted for Trump and Vance, and now they are forcing us to release terrorists from our prisons who have American blood on their hands. If this is Trump and Vance standing up for us, no thanks. They could have come up with a different “plan.” It didn’t have to be this one. The cost is much too high.

There is also the issue of the dearth of information regarding the terrorists to be released. The government is obligated to inform the families of terror victims before the terrorists who killed their loved ones are let loose. But the government has not done so. None of the families have been notified. If I am wrong about this, please do let me know. I would feel better to be proved wrong.

Not too many people know about it, and it is light on information, but there's a list of terrorists slated to be released on Israel’s government website. The names of the innocents they murdered are not listed there, of course, but only those of the murderers. It makes it difficult for the public to get a good picture of what this all means, the gravity, and the enormity of releasing these particular prisoners. For how can we know how bad this is without knowing their names and what they did?

Families of terror victims and the press have been sifting through some the information on this list as best they can (once they know a list exists). That's how Ari Fuld’s murderer was discovered there, as was Balal Abu Gaanam who murdered American citizen Richard Lakin.

Balal Abu Gaanam as his entry appears on the list of terrorists slated to be released in exchange for the hostages.

The mastermind of the murder of Rina Shnerb is on the list, Khalida Jarrar.

Khalida Jarrar

Slowly, we are finding out who is there on that list. The horrible people who killed our loved ones. Who would not hesitate to kill once more, a dozen times more. With passion.

Khalil Yusuf Ali Jabarin, murderer of Ari Fuld.

I asked Ari Fuld’s younger brother, Hillel, if anyone in the government had contacted the family regarding the impending release of Khalil Ali Jabarin. How did they find out that Jabarin would be released. Do they even know for sure that he will be released?

Hillel Fuld

Hillel Fuld has not heard anything from the government. Perhaps it's because he's a brother, rather than a wife. “The government didn't contact me. I'm not sure if they contacted Miriam, not that I know of, as far as I know they didn't contact us, but again, I can only speak with certainty about myself. I definitely didn't hear anything from anyone other than that list that was published,” said Fuld.

I asked Arnold Roth, father of 15-year-old Malki Roth, murdered in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing by Hamas, if he’d heard of any families of terror victims being notified by the government that the murderers of their loved ones were about to be freed. “I saw an Israeli news report in the past few days which said the families of terror victims were going to be contacted by appropriate Government of Israel people once a decision had been made to free any of the terrorists convicted in the murder of a family member of theirs. That ought to include people like my wife and me. Our 15-year-old daughter Malki, was murdered in an act of Palestinian Arab terror orchestrated by Hamas in 2001,” said Roth.

“Although an entire gang of killers was caught, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned, they were all freed in the 2011 Shalit Deal. The woman who spearheaded the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria, Ahlam Tamimi, was one of them - perhaps the most famous of the entire Shalit Deal list of freed savages. She returned to her native Jordan the day after Israel let her loose and has gone on to make herself a spectacular career there as a media personality and commentator on issues that speak to the hearts of people who support the murder of Jewish children.

“But there's one exception. One of the terrorists who played a key role in the Sbarro atrocity (and numerous other atrocities) and who did not walk free in 2011 is Abdullah Barghouti. He's the weapons expert who fabricated the massively-explosive guitar case that a human bomb carried on his back and into the pizzeria with the help of the Tamimi woman.

Arnold and Frimet Roth gaze at a photo of their daughter Malki, HY"D

“Barghouti is currently serving a sentence of 67 life terms, the longest ever imposed by an Israeli court and tied to the number of innocent lives wiped out by his bombs.

I don't know if Barghouti has been designated as one of the beneficiaries of the current hostage-freeing deal. But this report says he's on the Hamas list of demands. This doesn't mean he will be released but who knows? If they get their way, meaning if Israel capitulates to the mass-murdering terrorists as it did in the Shalit Deal, this is horrific and indefensible,” says Roth.

As it stands, that particular Barghouti is not on the Israeli government list of terrorists slated for release, though a different terrorist Barghouti family member, Ahmed Barghouti is there. But it is all very unclear. Roth tells me that Abdullah Barghouti, a relative of Tamimi, boasted on Sixty Minutes of his “passion to kill again and again.” I took a look at the interview:

The most notorious of all the prisoners held at the Be'er Sheva Prison is Abdullah Barghouti. It's not easy to get to see him because he's being held in indefinite solitary confinement. He's been convicted of being the mastermind behind Hamas' deadliest suicide bombings, responsible for the deaths of 66 people, including five Americans. How does he feel about this death toll?

"I feel bad because the number only 66. This the answer you want to hear it?" Barghouti told Simon.

"I want to hear what you have to say," Simon replied.

"No, this is the answer they want to hear it? Yes, I feel bad, because I want more," Barghouti said.

Barghouti has already killed more Israelis than anyone else. For two years, he sent suicide bombers to places, ordinary places, the names of which no Israeli will ever forget. They include "The Moment Café," the Hebrew University cafeteria [where American citizens Marla Bennet and Ben Blustein were murdered, V.E.] and the Sbarro Pizzeria, where seven children were killed.

Still, Ari Fuld is dead, the hostages are yet alive and suffering immensely, clinging barely to life after more than a year underground. Those who aren't dead, that is. We owe it to those both living and dead to get them out. But in my opinion, not like this. 

Ari Fuld's funeral

I asked Hillel Fuld if he would share his own feelings about the deal. He said, “I feel there are two parallel lines when it comes to this deal. There's the beautiful line and there's the terrible line. These two lines can't coexist on one line like what social media would have you believe, that everything is just black and white. It’s beautiful and beyond beautiful and emotional that those poor hostages get to be reunited with their families and we all experienced that emotional moment a few nights ago.

“It’s also a terrible deal because they're releasing a thousand monsters to the streets and that could not be more terrible so it's both beautiful and terrible at the same time.”

Asked what he thinks of the framework for the ceasefire deal as proposed by Biden in May, now being set in motion, and how it went down now, with Witkoff, Hillel chooses to be positive. “I don’t know the details of what went on behind the scenes. I want to believe that there is more than meets the eye that there was some kind of incentive to get Netanyahu to agree to this deal. I don't have any information but that is something that I tell myself to make myself feel better and I hope that it will become clear in the coming months in terms of what was promised to Netanyahu.”

Freed hostage Emily Damari with her mother, Mandy.

What would you like to see happen now, I asked Hillel.

“What would I like to see happen now? I'd like to see our hostages come back so we can return to the war and obliterate Hamas and achieve our war objectives of eliminating Hamas from this world; removing all threats from Israel's borders; and getting our hostages back."

I appreciate Hillel Fuld’s life-affirming positivity. Unfortunately, I’m more like the people he describes on on social media who can’t see parallel lines. Like everyone in Israel I love, love, love to see the moving photos, stories, and videos of the freed hostages. Still, I am concerned that we are letting down the memories of terror victims, and leaving our people as unsafe as we were on October 6.

Perhaps that's not even the worst of it. It goes to the core of who the Israeli people are as a society. “No self-respecting government can justify to its citizens the restoration of the freedom of a barbarian like Barghouti,” says Arnold Roth. “Allowing him out of his cell would be a monstrous act of moral bankruptcy.”

And yet here we are, giving many killers of Jews a fresh start so we can get a very small number of hostages out of hell. I don't think it had to be that way. We are winning, or at least we were winning. Until the point where we were leaned on by Witkoff to capitulate to the enemy on behalf of President Donald J. Trump.

Now look, I am happy, truly happy, that Trump is doing so many nice things for Israel--I will let others talk about suspending UNRWA and lifting the sanctions imposed on Israeli Americans in Judea and Samaria because of where they live and their religion, and all the other goodies--but this “deal” spits on the memories of American citizens murdered because of their religion. 

I ask you, is this right, Mr. Trump? Is it just in your eyes?

I don’t expect an answer from President Trump, nor, the truth is, from my own government. The Israeli government is not being forthright with the families of the victims whose murderers are soon to be, if not already released.

This has engendered a deep sense of betrayal and despair in many of us Israelis, a feeling of why did we do all this--why did we sacrifice so much? To what purpose? To strengthen the hand of terror? And yet, it fills our hearts to see Emily, Romi, and Doron in the arms of their families once more. Can anyone really put a price on that?

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Blind Allegiance: The Dangers of Uncritical Jewish Support for Social Movements (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Black lives matter. Of course they do. Everyone’s lives matter. But you don’t just go and support a group with an agreeable name without some due diligence. Or do you?

My progressive Jewish friends don’t seem to think any due diligence is necessary when it comes to being gung-ho for organizations like Black Lives Matter, or the Women’s March. If Black Lives Matter says it’s against racism then gulldarnit, my progressive Jewish friends are going to put a clenched fist BLM badge on their Facebook profile pic. If they think the Women’s March is for women, they’re going to put on a pink hat with a name that inwardly makes them feel thrillingly naughty as they outwardly express their righteous indignation.

These same progressive friends at some point take down the badges from their profile pics as the truth outs, as truth so inconveniently tends to do. Now they know: BLM is inherently antisemitic and anti-Israel—really the same thing. Were they sheepish when the Women’s March and the Chicago Dyke March excluded women and dykes if they happened to be Jews or Zionists? Or did they just quietly take down the badges on their profile pics and find something hopefully innocuous to support—something that doesn’t hate Jews or Zionists? (Good luck with that.)

But why didn’t they give these groups a thorough vetting before throwing their support behind them? The answer is pathetic: they didn’t believe that someone protesting racism could hate Jews. They didn’t believe that someone speaking up for women’s rights didn’t believe in Jewish women’s rights.

Even very, very intelligent Jewish women—women like Bari Weiss—were surprised when all the groups fighting against sexual violence, looked the other way when the victims of sexual violence were Jews. In her introduction to a podcast with Sheryl Sandberg to discuss the documentary Screams Before Silence, Weiss said, “Sheryl Sandberg watched the horrors of October 7th unfold and assumed that everyone she knew would rally against these unspeakable atrocities—particularly after reports of sexual violence and rape committed by Hamas started pouring in. But when she saw that many people didn't, or worse, that they denied it was even happening, she was stunned. She was particularly shocked that many of her would-be allies—prominent feminists and progressives in this country and around the world—stayed silent.”

During that same podcast, Sandberg described when drove her to make the documentary. “I never thought I would do this, and I wish this didn't have to be made. When October 7th happened, I was shocked. I think everyone was shocked. I was even more shocked afterward. The single most surprising thing I found was that in the weeks following, people started coming out with what I thought was clear evidence that this wasn't just mass murder; there was rape. Women were found naked and bloodied. Over and over, the stories were coming out, and what I then expected to happen is for people to say, ‘Oh my God, rape is never supposed to be used as part of war. No sexual violence is part of conflict.’ But that just wasn't happening.”

Sandberg made the video to convince the rape deniers who only deny rape when Jews are involved. But it didn’t much help. People who hate Jews hate them whether or not they are gang raped, tortured, kidnapped, and abused. They hate Jews whether or not they are Zionists, hate them whether or not they live in Israel.

“We made a video,” said Sandberg, “and that video went very viral. I tried to make that video really carefully. I mean, I have strong views on what's going on, but there were no views in this video. This video said, ‘No matter what flag you're flying,’ carefully including half Palestinian flags and half Israeli flags, ‘No matter what you believe, we have to stand united against the clear use of sexual violence.’

“Yet people were still not believing it. So, I helped organize a conference at the UN where we brought witnesses who stood there and cried and said, ‘Here's what I saw with my own eyes.’ Then I took those same witnesses to parliaments in Europe, where I felt they needed to speak out, but we still encountered some denial and significant silence.”

Bari Weiss details the various denials of October 7 rape even in the face of the rape videos that the terrorists proudly shared. “Max Blumenthal, a commentator and journalist, said that a woman’s body found naked from the waist down was simply because women at festivals like to dress in skimpy attire. Another example is the prominent British commentator Owen Jones, who said there's no evidence of rape. This is a guy with a million Twitter followers.

“Then there’s Briahna Joy Gray, who was Bernie Sanders’s press secretary in 2020. She said Zionists are asking that we believe the uncorroborated eyewitness accounts of men who describe alleged rape victims in odd fetishistic terms. She said, ‘Shame on Israel for not seriously investigating claims of rape and collecting rape kits.’ How do you understand the logic or the worldview that leads people to say things like that?

“Before this conversation,” said Weiss, “I checked in with some of the top feminist organizations in the country. Since October 7th, the National Organization for Women made a statement two months after the fact, which didn’t mention Hamas. UN Women, a group whose mission is to create an environment where all women can exercise their human rights, waited 55 days before saying anything. The International Committee of the Red Cross has issued nothing. I could go on for hours detailing the silence—or worse, weaselly statements where they fail to mention the perpetrators of evil actions.”

So much for “Believe all women.” (Perhaps they should change that to “Believe all shiksas.”)

As for Black Lives Matter, their adherents thought they were invincible. Probably because they saw how all my progressive Jewish friends were using that clenched fist badge on their Facebook pics. They saw how easy it was to pull the wool over our eyes under the guise of a fight against racism. But now we all know about the corruption of those at the top of the BLM food chain.

Take Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors, for example. Cullors resigned from the “charity” in 2021 after getting caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. Back in June, the Washington Free Beacon reported that BLM is still reeling from Cullors’ abuse of power:

Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors resigned from the embattled charity in 2021, but the charity suffered from the excesses of her tenure well into 2023, according to a copy of its latest tax return obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Under Cullors’s leadership, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation doled out massive contracts to her friends and family, purchased a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles in 2020, and financed the purchase of an $8 million mansion in Canada in 2021. By the end of its 2023 fiscal year, the tax forms show, Black Lives Matter saw the $80 million windfall it raked in during the George Floyd riots of 2020 diminish to under $29 million as it hemorrhaged cash fulfilling lingering contractual obligations to Cullors’s associates.

Those individuals include Damon Turner, the father of Cullors’s only child, whose art firm Trap Heals received $778,000 from Black Lives Matter in 2023 despite performing no work for the charity that year.

But hey, Black Lives Matter, gulldurnit, so all those progressive Jewish women rushed to put up that clenched fist badge on their Facebooks. It made them feel good, like they were making a statement about their own goodness, I suppose. Because those badges certainly didn’t do a THING for black people or against racism. And neither did Black Lives Matter.

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), under whose umbrella Black Lives Matter falls (or at least did, originally), is drenched in Jew hatred. In its original 2016 platform, M4BL stated that “[the] US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” that “Israel is an apartheid state,” and that “[the] US [has funded an] apartheid wall.”

The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US-made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Everyday [sic], Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US-funded apartheid wall.

Cullors, back in 2015, while speaking as a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School's 'Globalizing Ferguson: Radicalized Policing and International Violence' forum, opined that people must "end the imperialist project that's called Israel." “Palestine is our generation's South Africa. If we don't step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that's called Israel, we're doomed.”

Is this really what my progressive Jewish friends, relatives, and acquaintances wanted to support as they watched BLM gain momentum? Did my fellow Jews support an end to Israel? Probably not. But they hadn’t bothered to check what BLM actually stands for. Black Lives Matter was a sentiment that brooked no criticisms or doubts about the respectability of the group going under the mantle of that oh-so-progressive-sounding name.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors calls to "end the imperialist project that's called Israel." pic.twitter.com/0PgEtPMpVx

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 28, 2021

That same year, Cullors and her friends organized a solidarity trip to Nazareth called “Ferguson to Palestine.” To liven things up, they did a flash mob “specifically calling for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions of the state of Israel. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it’s won.”

Here’s some of the other Jew-hating bullpucky they spouted:

We came here to Palestine to stand in love and revolutionary struggle with our brothers and sisters. We come to a land that has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hate. We learn of laws that have been co-signed in ink but written in the blood of the innocent. We stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupation. People continue to dream and fight for freedom. From Ferguson to Palestine, the struggle for freedom continues.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it’s won. We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

We sit in a sea of settlements while the sound of suffering is lost in the listening, as the voices of heartache hail the power of presence. People are portals, passports to heaven. Here is a protest in the form of a prayer. God is in the holy water lining the lower lids of a child’s eyes, a tear running against a cheek in Old Jerusalem. The lonely storyteller sits on a leaning chair in the market.

God is a woman holding a crying baby in her arms at a checkpoint, waiting at the gates like cattle. God is in the rubble, with gnarled hands rinsing in an open fire. A journey of dreamers sings through empty streets in Bethlehem. We survive in the telling, unafraid. We survive in the telling.

What if the occupations drain the Palestinians who had thrills underneath their teeth, and they suddenly awoke to see the ships at the Bay of the West Bank shore, discovering that the occupation existed no more? What if Zionism is the second coming of Christ? Destruction is the matriarch of sight, for if we are the Messiah, then God is not white. What if life is the afterlife, and we are already dead? The footage of the moment loops in your head, replaying until you die for the second time.

What a power influence your intelligence and mind, and those with lesser means—the oppressors. Would you still steal this land under that pressure?

Free Palestine! Palestine and Ferguson in the occupation. Ferguson and Palestine, we fight to free our nations.

Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

I believe! I believe!

They know that we know. They know that we win. We are all right.

Group hug! Come on!

Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

See? As long as you say it under the rubric of “Black Lives Matter!” you can say any gulldurned hateful lie you can think of. It’s all good. Good enough for my progressive Jewish friends to not bother to even do a rudimentary check of what these people are plugging—and they ain’t plugging DEI—they’re plugging antisemitism.

There really was such a wealth of material out there, attesting to the disingenuousness and horrifically hateful views of BLM. If only my progressive Jewish friends had been interested in examining even a modicum of the evidence. In 2016, for example, several horrible people made a film comparing anti-black racism, to “Palestinian” suffering under the supposed thumb of Israel.

From Moment Magazine:

Stragglers arrive; extra seats are formed into rows, and even more latecomers will be forced to stand. The lights dim, and a video recently released on YouTube begins to play on the projection screen. Entitled When I See Them, I See Us, it features activist-scholars Angela Davis and Cornel West, musician Lauryn Hill, actor Danny Glover, writer Alice Walker and dozens of other prominent activists, Palestinian and black. Narrators recite the title in rhythmic repetition as the activists hold up a series of slogan-bearing signs: “Racism is systemic. Its outbursts are not isolated incidents.” “Your walls will never cage our freedom.” “End state racism.” “Gaza stands with Baltimore.” Photos of dead Palestinian children alternate with photos of black victims of police shootings and scenes of Gaza rubble.

When the three-minute video ends—directing viewers to the website blackpalestiniansolidarity.com—the room bursts into applause. Dajani introduces the guest speaker for the evening, Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler, the senior minister of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC. From his temporary pulpit, Hagler weaves a web of parallels—the walls of a maximum-security prison in Massachusetts to Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank; property destruction in Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray to the first and second intifadas. His voice frequently reaches sermon pitch, his audience full of nodding heads, murmurs of approval, snapping fingers, and calls of “Yes.”

For all my progressive Jewish friends who so proudly displayed BLM FB badges until they didn’t, here’s a taste of that film script:

When I see them, I see us.

Every 28 hours, a Black life is stolen by police or vigilantes in the U.S. Every two hours, a Palestinian child is killed in Israel's attacks on Gaza.

Eric Garner, 43 years old, father of six, grandfather, friend. Seven-year-old killed when an Israeli missile struck her home. Hashem Abu Maria, 45 years old, father of four, human rights worker. Ayanna Jones, seven years old, killed in her sleep by Detroit police.

I see us—harassed, beaten, tortured, dehumanized, stopped and frisked, searched at checkpoints, victims of administrative detention, youth incarceration. When I see them, I see us—from Rikers Island to Ophir Prison, from Raeford to Chicago, lives are being stolen.

Remember them. We are not statistics. We are not collateral damage. We have names and faces: Sakia Nadeem Kimani, Renisha Muhammad. They burned me alive in Jerusalem. They gunned me down in Chicago. They shot out our water tanks in Hebron. They cut off our water in Detroit. They demolished our homes in New Orleans. When I see them, I see us.

They see our rooms as dangerous, label us as demographic threats. They sterilize us without our knowledge and mark our children as criminals. We say no to all forms of oppression in U.S. cities and on the streets of Palestine. We respect the uniqueness of our struggles and our varied histories. When I see them, I see us—resilient, steadfast, determined.

I see who we were meant to be: alive, free, liberated, mapping out our destiny. I see hope, strength, love—a place where our children can dream. I see a road, a partner, a family, a world where we can rise and be seen.

Now, with Cullors out of the picture, it has become clear that the BLM people need a new Jew-hater in charge. Which is why they just hired Yonasda Lonewolf!

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Black Lives Matter Grassroots announced in a New Year's message to its supporters on Thursday that it hired Yonasda Lonewolf, a rapper and activist with close ties to Farrakhan, as a "special projects specialist" to help the group as it works to "claim victory over the white-supremacist systems designed to kill our people." Black Lives Matter Grassroots said in the message it would enter 2025 with "the revolutionary spirit of our Haitian forebears" and featured an image of Haitian revolutionaries in the early 1800s lynching French military officers.

Lonewolf doesn’t shy from her devotion to Farrakhan, who has praised Adolf Hitler as a "very great man" and casts Jews as "termites" and "enemies" who control black people. She professed her love for Farrakhan in a 2016 Facebook post and later, in a 2020 Instagram post, described the minister as "my grandfather Min. Farrakhan who also eased my spirit." In 2023, Lonewolf attended Farrakhan’s annual keynote address, where she told the ministry’s propaganda website that she felt "rejuvenated" by his message.

"We are all under attack right now, and it’s the fight against good and evil, at the end of the day," Lonewolf told the Final Call, the Nation of Islam's official publication. "The fact that we still have a great leader amongst us is a testament that he’s standing, that we need to be able to continue." Other Farrakhan devotees interviewed in that article praised the Nation of Islam leader's stand against "the Satanic Jews" and "the Jewish powers that be."

As to the pink pussy hats, they were all the rage with progressive Jewish women. But that didn’t go very well, either.

From Barbara Kay in the National Post:

It should be obvious to progressive Jewish women by now that the Women’s March, an allegedly feminist movement, which allegedly supports the rights of all women, just isn’t into Jewish women. To progressive ideologues, Jews are burdened by the original sin of Zionism, whether they are pro-Israel or not.

On why we asked folks to leave the rally at Piotrowski Park yesterday pic.twitter.com/4FKSStFFF2

— Chicago Dyke March (@DykeMarchChi) June 25, 2017

This was made very clear in June 2017, at the Chicago Dyke March, when three Jewish LGBT Pride marchers carrying flags adorned with a Star of David (similar to, but not the flag of Israel) were ousted from the parade. This was an act of pure anti-Semitism by radical feminists. 

In fact, at the event in question, the 21^st annual Chicago Dyke March, a member of the group said that the women were told to leave because the flags “made people feel unsafe” and that the March was both “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian.”

Two years later, things had not much (read “not at all”) improved. But at least the rules of the 2019 DC Dyke March were clear.

From JNS (emphasis added):

The DC Dyke March, returning to Washington, D.C. on Friday after a 12-year absence, will prohibit Jewish and pro-Israel pride symbols, including flags.

“Jewish stars and other identifications and celebrations of Jewishness (yarmulkes, talit, other expressions of Judaism or Jewishness) are welcome and encouraged. We do ask that participants not bring pro-Israel paraphernalia in solidarity with our queer Palestinian friends,” Yael Horowitz, a Jewish organizer of the D.C. march, told A.J. Campbell, who wanted to bring a Jewish Pride flag to the march, in a Facebook message, reported The Washington Post.

The progressive Jews I know are on the whole, accomplished professionals with Ivy League educations. Why then, do they completely lack the ability to see when they’re being taken for a ride? How is it that they’re so quick to support what isn’t? BLM isn’t about equal rights for black people. It’s about misusing funds and hating Jews. The Women’s March and Dyke Marches aren’t about women or dykes. If it were, Jews and their symbols showing up in solidarity would be welcomed. After all, what does Israel have to do with the women’s rights movement in the United States?

Answer: not a thing. It’s not even intersectional. The marches are a pretext to hate whatever floats their hate boat. Straights, whites, Jews, Donald J. Trump . . . whatever they hate most at the moment. None of it hangs together in any cohesive form whatsoever.

In the run up to the election, a friend explained to me that she could not vote for Trump because she feared her elementary school-aged granddaughter would someday not be able to get an abortion as a result. But Trump didn’t do anything with abortion in his first term, and has no intention of having much to do with it now. It’s not even a thing. He’s leaving it up to the states to decide these things for themselves.

And guess what, they already have. There is no place in America where a woman cannot get an abortion where there is a risk to the life of the mother. In fact, there are very few places in America where the usual exceptions are not in place. 

But you know, Kamala Harris told them otherwise, so they believe her. And voted for her. Because they are Jewish progressives, so they embrace whatever cause they are told is progressive without even the smallest effort made at verifying the facts. 

Are they aware that Kamala Harris supports student protests against “Israel’s genocide in Gaza” and tells them they have a right to “their truth?”

 

Probably not. Again, because they don’t care. What they care about is the appearance of being consonant with progressive values. They want to belong, so when others scream BLACK LIVES MATTER, they put those badges up on their Facebook pages. And when Kamala tells them that Donald J. Trump wants to control their bodies, they vote for her, despite her hatred of their homeland and the people who live there. They comfort themselves by saying, there's no way she hates Jews. Her husband is Jewish!

Will Jewish progressives wake up in time to save themselves? Probably not. They are too intellectually lazy to perpetuate their own species. That expensive education their Yiddisher parents paid for is basically a framed diploma on a wall. They graduated a long time ago, and no longer have to use their brain cells to dig deep and critically think about anything much at all.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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When Humanitarianism Ends: Jimmy Carter's Disturbing Request on Behalf of a Nazi War Criminal (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Jimmy Carter died, but few Jews mourn him. Carter’s animus toward the Jewish people is by now, legendary. Elder of Ziyon offered an overview Carter’s overt Jew-hatred in Jimmy Carter, antisemite. Saving the worst for last, Elder detailed Jimmy Carter’s plea for leniency for Martin Bartesch, a former SS guard at the Mauthausen work camp during WWII:

The single most damning example of Carter's antisemitism comes from an incident in 1987.

Neal Sher was the head of the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department’s Nazi prosecution unit. They had iron-clad evidence that a Chicago resident, Martin Bartesch, a member of the SS Death’s Head Division at the Mauthausen concentration camp, was a war criminal and a murderer.

Bartesch's family started a huge campaign against the OSI, writing letters to members of Congress and other prominent people asking for help. Most politicians contacted the OSI to find out the details, OSI provided them with evidence of his guilt, and they would drop the matter.

But, Sher says, not Jimmy Carter.

During a 2007 Israel National Radio interview, Neal Sher went into some detail about a letter he received from Carter (emphasis added):

“In 1987, Carter had been out of office for seven years or so,” Sher recalled. “It was a very active period for my office. We had just barred Kurt Waldheim – he was then president of Austria and former head of the United Nations – from entering the U.S. because of his Nazi past and his involvement in the persecution of civilians during the war. We had just deported an Estonian Nazi Commandant back to the Soviet Union after a bruising battle after which we were attacked by Reagan White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan.

“Also around that time, in the spring of 1987, we deported a series of SS guards from concentration camps, whose names nobody would know. One such character we sent back to Austria was a man named Martin Bartesch.

“We had an extraordinary piece of evidence against him – a book that was kept by the SS and captured by the American armed forces when they liberated Mauthausen,” Sher said. “We called it the death book. It was a roster that the Germans required them to keep that identified SS guards as they extended weapons to murder the inmates and prisoners.

“We kicked him out and he went back to Austria. In the meantime, his family – he had adult kids – went on a campaign, also supported by his church, to try to get special treatment. In so doing they attacked the activities of our office and me personally. They claimed we used phony evidence from the Soviet Union – which was nonsense. They claimed he was a young man of only 17 or 18 when he joined the Nazi forces, asking for some sympathetic treatment and defense from our office, which they claimed was just after vengeance.”

The family approached several members of Congress. “The congressmen would, very understandably, forward their claims over to our office and when they learned the facts they would invariably drop the case,” Sher recalled.

“One day, in the fall of ’87, my secretary walks in and gives me a letter with a Georgia return address reading ‘Jimmy Carter.’ I assumed it was a prank from some old college buddies, but it wasn’t. It was the original copy of the letter Bartesch’s daughter sent to Carter, after Bartesch had already been deported.

“In the letter, she claimed we were un-American, only after vengeance, and persecuting a man for what he did when he was only 17 and 18 years old.

“I couldn’t help thinking of my own father who returned home with shrapnel wounds after he joined the U.S. Army as a teenager to fight the Nazis and hit the beaches at Normandy at that same age on D-day.

“On the upper corner of the letter was a note signed by Jimmy Carter saying that in cases such as this, he wanted ‘special consideration for the family for humanitarian reasons.’

“I didn’t respond to the letter – the case was already over and he was out of the country – but it always stuck in my craw. A former president who didn’t do what I would expect him to do - with a full staff at his disposal – to find out the facts before he took up the side of this person. But I wasn’t going to pick a fight with a former president. We had enough on our plate.”

“It always bothered me, but I didn’t go public with it until recently, when he wrote this book [Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid V.E.] and let it spill out where his sentiments really lie,” Sher said. “Here was Jimmy Carter jumping in on behalf of someone who did not deserve in any way, shape or form special consideration. And the things he has now said about the Jewish lobby really exposes where his heart really lies.”

As Sher states, the family of Martin Bartesch, launched a letter-writing campaign on his behalf. At that time, in 1987, the Washington Post saw fit to print Heinz Bartesch’s defense of his Nazi father:

'FALSE ALLEGATIONS' ABOUT MARTIN BARTESCH

Over the past several weeks The Post has carried the story of the Office of Special Investigations' prosecution of my father, Martin Bartesch. The misquotes and false allegations have been so great that what most Americans now know is a gross distortion of the truth and equals the disinformation campaigns of the KGB. Some of the falsehoods that have appeared in print:

It is alleged that Martin Bartesch lied on his immigration form. He didn't lie -- his immigration form clearly states his service in the S.S. in 1943-45. He did serve in the Prinz Eugene division. His only oversight was to not list his duty as guard at Mauthausen for three weeks. A questionable oversight, not a lie.

It is alleged that my father fled the country to avoid prosecution. He didn't flee but left as a free man with a valid U.S. passport, with full knowledge and consent from the government. He left willfully to avoid financial ruin from a trial which, under the Holtzman Amendment, would have been grossly unfair and therefore impossible to win.

It is alleged that he is accused of murder. As a guard, his duty was to shoot at escaping prisoners. He shot an escaping convicted felon. The Wehrmacht penal code clearly stated that failure to perform duties would result in execution. This is exactly the command that the American GIs had who did shoot and did kill escaping Japanese from our internment camps.

It is alleged that my father assisted in the persecution of the Jews. His only guard duties before fighting on the Russian front were at labor camps that contained prisoners of war, resistance fighters and convicted felons. It is a known fact that the subcamps where my father was stationed had very few Jews and no women and children. Most of the deaths at Mauthausen occurred at the end of the war, long after my father left in October 1943.

Martin Bartesch committed no war crimes -- the OSI knows this. The complaint against him never even mentioned any war crimes. Again, his only "crime" was a questionable immigration infraction.

These are not all, but certainly the biggest of the falsehoods presented in my father's case. What the OSI did to my father was unfair, cruel, immoral and very un-American. It is appalling that the media acted as a free public relations vehicle for the OSI to spread its lies. HEINZ H. BARTESCH Corte Madera, Calif.

Was Heinz Bartesch being honest when he claimed that Martin Bartesch didn’t lie on his immigration form—that he simply forgot to write that he was a guard at Mauthausen? Put simply: no. When Bartesch was deposed in 1986, he refused to answer questions about what he did during the war pleading the Fifth on the grounds that he feared foreign prosecution. This suggests that Bartesch intentionally omitted the same key information on his immigration form.

Bartesch wasn’t talking then. He sure wasn’t going to talk in 1986, when the US government—with darned good reason—was after him.

At that point, the US government took Bartesch to court, asking that he be compelled to provide answers to their questions. The court did so, noting that the deposition and Bartesch’s responses would be sealed to protect him from prosecution outside of the US.

From United States v. Bartesch (1986) (emphasis added):

*428 I. FACTS

The government filed this denaturalization action against the defendant Martin Bartesch on April 7, 1986. The government alleges that the defendant misrepresented his activities during World War II when he applied for and obtained immigration to, and citizenship in, the United States. As an alternative ground for denaturalization, the government alleges that the defendant acquiesced and personally assisted in persecution and conduct contrary to civilization and human decency on behalf of Nazi Germany during wartime. The wartime activities occurred during defendant's service as a concentration camp guard in the Totenkopf-Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) at the Mauthausen concentration camp system in Austria.

During his deposition conducted on June 2 and 3, 1986, defendant, on advice of counsel, asserted a Fifth Amendment privilege and refused to answer questions concerning his whereabouts and activities between July 1, 1943 and August 25, 1945. In addition, he refused to answer questions regarding his efforts to immigrate and obtain United States citizenship. Defense counsel stated that the invocation of the Fifth Amendment was not based on the possibility of prosecution in the United States, but rather on the possibility of prosecution in West Germany, Austria, or Romania.

Relying on his Fifth Amendment privilege, defendant refused to answer questions such as: (1) whether (during the period between July 1, 1943 and August 25, 1945) he had ever been at Mauthausen or any concentration camp; (2) whether he belonged to a Totenkopf-Sturmbann; or (3) whether he performed military service. With respect to his immigration and naturalization, defendant refused to answer whether he intentionally had provided false information to United States officials and whether sworn immigration documents placing him in the SS combat division "Prinz Eugen" were correct. These questions are some examples of the questions which defendant refused to answer in his deposition.

Defendant did answer "no" to the following questions: (1) whether he had ever mistreated, shot, or killed a prisoner; (2) fired a weapon; (3) touched a prisoner; and (4) was ever present at a hanging. Defendant's answer to the complaint, filed on June 13, 1986, took a similar approach. In all, defendant invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to 21 paragraphs of the complaint (paragraphs 7, 9-11, 14-15, 18, 22, 36, 42, 48, 53, 55-58, 65, 70, 75-76, 79).

Also among the falsehoods in the letter the Washington Post saw fit to print, Heinz Bartesch claimed that his father had nothing to do with the “persecution of the Jews.” Furthermore, wrote Heinz, there were “very few Jews” at places like Mauthausen. This too, is a lie.

From Yad Vashem (emphases added):

In May 1944, Mauthausen admitted large transports of Jews from Auschwitz. The number of Jews who died in Mauthausen that year topped 3,000. Many groups of Poles also arrived in Mauthausen in 1944, after the Warsaw Polish Uprising was suppressed, in October 1944. Many Polish students and underground members were killed soon after they arrived.

Almost 25,000 new prisoners came to Mauthausen in 1945, including a stream of Jewish prisoners from Hungary who had been previously interned in camps along the Austrian-Hungarian border, and forced to build a line of fortifications. As the battlefront drew closer, their camps were emptied out and the prisoners were marched on foot to Mauthausen. Many died en route.

The Jews interned in Mauthausen were treated much worse than the other prisoners. They were forced to dig tunnels at the sub-camps for underground ammunition factories and were expected to do so at an unbearably fast pace. After a month or so, the Jewish workers were so physically broken and exhausted they could hardly move.

On May 3, 1945, a police unit from Vienna took over the camp's security. The next day, all work stopped at the camp and the SS officers left. On May 5, American troops arrived and liberated the camp. Altogether, 199,404 prisoners passed through Mauthausen. Approximately 119,000 of them, including 38,120 Jews, were killed or died from the harsh conditions, exhaustion, malnourishment and overwork. Furthermore, the sick, weak and "undesirable" prisoners were taken to the nearby Hartheim Castle to be exterminated in the gas chamber during the periods of August 1941 to October 1942 and April to December 1944.

A US soldier looks at the Mauthausen crematorium during the liberation of the camp. Austria, May 1945.

A US soldier with liberated prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Austria, May 1945.

A pile of corpses at the Russian Camp (Hospital Camp) section of the Mauthausen concentration camp after liberation. Mauthausen, Austria, May 5-15, 1945.

A view of the quarry at the Mauthausen concentration camp, where prisoners were subjected to forced labor. Austria, 1938-1945.

So many lies from Heinz. Heinz wrote that “Martin Bartesch committed no war crimes -- the OSI knows this. The complaint against him never even mentioned any war crimes. Again, his only "crime" was a questionable immigration infraction.”

Again, false. As Neal Sher told Israel National Radio, the OSI had the murder book, the “roster that the Germans required them to keep that identified SS guards as they extended weapons to murder the inmates and prisoners.” That murder book identified Martin Bartesch as having shot and killed a French Jew.

From the NY Times (emphasis added):

One piece of evidence gathered against Mr. Bartesch by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations was the Mauthausen ''Unnatural Death Book,'' a log kept from October 1942 to April 1945 of prisoner deaths.

Entry No. 300 shows that on Oct. 20, 1943, a French Jew named Max Ochshorn was shot to death at the main camp of Mauthausen by Pvt. Martin Bartesch of the SS, who was then 17.

There is much more to say about Martin Bartesch, for instance that he continued to collect social security after he was stripped of his citizenship and deported for a further two years until he died. (I hope it was painful.) Bartesch did evil and lied about it to get off scot-free. His family was complicit in covering up his crimes against humanity, because yes. Jews are human.

Martin Bartesch after the war

Which leads us back to Jimmeh and his little note in the upper corner of a letter from SS-Sturmmann Martin Bartesch’s daughter, asking for clemency for her father. The letter, similar to that of her brother Heinz, was one filled with lies. As Neal Sher related, without any fact-finding process whatsoever, the dead president decided to let the Nazi (unknown to Carter, already deported) off the hook. Why?

Because of “cases like this.” (emphasis added):

To director O.S.I.

     I hope that in cases like this that special consideration can be given to affected families for humanitarian reasons.
       Jimmy Carter

Now what are we to think when the “case like this” is, in fact, one in which someone killed a Jew (and probably more) and covered it up? In light of the now-dead president’s long history of, for example, cozying up to Jew-hating terrorists like Haniyeh and preaching against Jews in church, there can be only one conclusion. 

A bad bad man and there’s no reason to sugarcoat it. pic.twitter.com/XpAyIMgntB

— Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) December 30, 2024

From the perspective of Jimmy Carter the antisemite, in the case where the murder victim is Jewish, the perpetrator (and his family!) deserve special consideration for “humanitarian reasons.”

That sure sounds a lot like “Final Solution.” Which makes sense: in the antisemitic world of Jimmy Carter—or rather the one he just left—liquidating the Jews is something people do for “humanitarian reasons,” i.e.; to benefit humanity. Which is why many of us Jews are not sorry Jimmeh has, in the inimitable words of Monty Python, joined the bleedin' choir invisible.

I don’t wonder what awaits—I hope he loves a good fire.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Chanukah Misunderstood: A Call for Intellectual Curiosity Amidst Exploitation (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Chanukah is kind of lucky because everyone just loves Chanukah, which is why everyone and their dog wants to borrow Chanukah and use it to express themselves however. Take Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. He thinks Chanukah is about people hiding and running out of oil and such. You know the tweet I’m talking about—the one from 2023—the one ole Dougie had to delete because it was stupid and made up and betrayed his ignorance about his own religion and heritage.

“The story of Chanukah and the story of the Jewish people has always been one of hope and resilience. In the Chanukah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive or that the few drops of oil they had would last,” said Doug E. “But they survived, and the oil kept burning.”

Oh my. People like Dougie Emhoff really shouldn’t just make stuff up about Chanukah and distribute it to the masses. Because people were bound to see it and make fun of him and his ignorance. Which they did. Because Chanukah is definitely not about people hiding and running out of Wesson.

But Doug wasn’t done putting his foot—instead of say a jelly donut or even a latke—in his mouth, “During those eight days in hiding,” said Doug, “they recited their prayers and continued their traditions.

“That’s why Chanukah means dedication. It was during those dark nights that the Maccabees dedicated themselves to maintaining hope and faith in the oil, each other and their Judaism.”

“In these dark times, I think of that story,” added Emhoff.

Uh huh. Sure you do, Dougie. I can just picture you late on the night of November 5, 2024, thinking of Chanukah. It would have been a very dark moment for you, for sure. I can’t even imagine how loud and long Kamala screamed and pulled her hair out and blamed everyone but herself on her poor showing in the election. But you had faith in the oil!

Old Doug would not have been bothered one bit about Kamala's stunning loss. Not Doug. Doug E. would have been thinking about Chanukah and about hope and about how to squeeze out a few more drops of canola so he wouldn’t have to go to the store and pay out the nose for another bottle because of Biden-Harris inflation. 

I jest.

But it has long been the way of progressive Jews like Emhoff to use and distort the holiday of Chanukah to suit their agenda—an agenda that has nothing to do with religion. In 2012, for example, writing for the Portland Press Herald, Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld, an “orthodox” rabbi, tied Chanukah to gay marriage. “With my very own eyes, I have seen a great miracle this year right here in Maine. A small group of people, homosexuals and their supporters, stood up for their equal rights in marriage.”

Wait, whut??? Chanukah isn’t about standing up for gay marriage. The complete opposite of that. Chanukah is about RELIGION. Specifically about Jewish fidelity to the Jewish religion.

Writing about Herzfeld’s idiotic op-ed, Rabbi Steven Pruzansky was clear, “The demand for same-sex marriage is personal and political, but not at all religious.”

Herzfeld, writes Pruzansky, “inverts the story of Chanukah on its head in order to make a political point that is shockingly shallow and entirely bereft of Torah wisdom.”

What makes the irony even more pungent is that the Greeks – against whom the Maccabees fought and prevailed – were avid supporters of and indulgers in homosexuality. It was just one of the immoral practices of the Hellenists that the faithful Jews found so repugnant, and therefore went to war in order to purge the land of it. In other words, to be faithful to the Chanukah story, the rabbi should have opposed same sex marriage. I.e., rather than succumb to the morality of the dominant culture and wrench the definition of marriage from its traditional moorings, he should have stood with the faithful Jews of yesteryear (and today) and preached the truth of Torah even if – particularly if – he would thereby remain in the minority. That is, after all, a dominant theme of Chanukah historically: that the Jewish people have survived not by mimicking the fluid morality of others but by clinging tenaciously to our own timeless moral norms. Surely the rabbi knows this.

Back in 2014, my piece, The Truth About Hannukkah, was yoinked and printed word for word on a website with an evangelical readership. The piece was an attempt to explain Chanukah in simple terms, in order to combat this rabid infection of everyone abusing the holiday in support of their current ideological flavor of the month or minute. It was irritating the heck out of me. So I explained Chanukah and the history of the holiday as I saw it, in simple terms, a kind of Chanukah for Idiots:

Those flickering Hanukkah lights have nothing to do with equality, integration, and multiculturalism. They have nothing to do with coexistence. They have nothing to do with charity. They have nothing to do with peace.

The candles, in fact, have everything to do with insulating the Jewish people from outside influences which might contaminate them and draw them away from their God.

The story of Hanukkah, the real story, and not the pretend stories that people tell you, begins in 174 BCE when Antiochus IV decided to consolidate his reign by imposing a single culture and religion on those who lived in the region of the Seleucid Empire. Seeing Judaism as a threat, Antiochus outlawed Jewish practice and installed Jews who had come under the influence of Greek culture (Hellenism) in positions of Jewish influence in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Torah scrolls were burned. Many Jews were killed for refusing to give in to Antiochus’ decrees. They would die rather than give up their God and their faith in favor of Hellenism.

The altar of the Temple was defiled by a Hellenist Jew and that was the tipping point. Matthias killed this man with his sword and then it was all-out war. The Jews formed legions and fought back against those who would destroy their faith.

They fought against integration.

They fought against multiculturalism.

They fought against coexistence.

They fought assimilation—the outside influences that would drown out the voice and spark of the Jewish soul within.

And won.

The evangelical website plagiarism was only the start of what proved to be a very strange phenomenon  in which churches distributed the article among their parishioners, and homeowners all over America found copies left outside their doors. At any rate, some two months after the Chanukah (or “Hannukkah” as we were spelling it that year) piece, I had an odd encounter on Twitter, which led to the following email exchange with a Jewish woman in California:

I saw your tweet about getting in touch with you about your interest in my blog with this address. How may I help you?

Varda Epstein

Hi! Yes I don't have a twitter account, but my daughter tweeted you for me with my email address. I was at an upscale outdoor shopping mall in Berkeley CA on Friday, and when I returned to my car, your flyer, "The Truth About Hanukkah" was on my windshield and plastered on all the cars in the lot. 

It befuddled me!! When I read it, I thought it was a Christian doctrine, as it read like that. These days there is so much antisemitism that I was concerned about who did this and why?  

(name withheld)

Ten years ago, I sat in my living room in Israel, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a world where a Christian slips a flyer about Chanukah under your windshield, and your mind goes to, “Is it antisemitic?”

Today, I no longer want to tell anyone about Chanukah, what it is, or how they should observe it. I’m not a rabbi and it’s not my place. What I do want is for Jews to show more intellectual curiosity! Don’t take his word for it when an “orthodox” rabbi tells you that the message of Chanukah is that community support for gay marriage is a “great miracle.”

In general, when it comes to Jews mouthing off about Judaism, if what they say sounds shockingly cool, it likely isn’t. More probably it’s just someone saying stuff they made up to get attention. That’s the kind of person who, for instance, is going to tell you that Chanukah is about the miracle of abortion, or the fight for human rights in some third-world country. Don’t listen to that person. See through them, please.

Even if you don’t have a rabbi, or much knowledge of Judaism, you can question what people tell you about Chanukah. Don’t be satisfied with a recitation or a narrative. Press them for sources. Get the facts about Chanukah and don’t allow others to use this Jewish holiday to get you to believe whatever they want you to believe.

Doug Emhoff used Chanukah as a platform to issue platitudes. His words were meant to be some kind of sweet message for the public, something to post on social media on a Jewish holiday, just generally. “Poor” Doug. He didn’t realize that it was important to be accurate about the Chanukah story and its meaning. From his point of view, that tweet was just a season’s greeting, for crying out loud. He was doing something NICE, and look how they treated him. Sheesh.

And yet, Doug ended up deleting that tweet. He came to understand that, indeed, some folks genuinely care about these matters—about the accuracy of it all, and about what Chanukah means. Perhaps Doug Emhoff views these individuals as religious zealots, failing to see that he himself unwittingly represents the very Hellenized Jews that the Maccabees themselves were forced to confront.

Chanukah Sameach to all my readers!

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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