Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 26, 2024

12/26 Links Pt2: The Onslaught against the Jews Is an Onslaught against the West; Palestinian antisemitism is spreading across the US; Piers Morgan, Candace Owens and ‘Haaretz’

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Onslaught against the Jews Is an Onslaught against the West

You might have thought that after the Oct. 7 onslaught, the world would have shown sympathy to Israel. Instead, much of the so-called civilized world has turned against Israel and the Jewish people. Attacks on Jews worldwide are at record levels. We can only understand what's happening if we realize that we're looking at a worldwide war on both the Jews and the Free World.

The first demonstrations in the West, mainly by Muslims, took place on Oct. 7 itself while the attack in Israel was still going on. They were an ecstatic celebration of the slaughter of Jews. The Islamists believed that their moment had come. They understood Oct. 7 to be the final and victorious onslaught. Having broken through Israel's defenses, they thought that they were now on the way to destroying Israel altogether. Then the path would be open for the defeat of the West.

There's been nothing spontaneous about these demonstrations. They've been organized from the start by an alliance composed of Hamas and other Muslim Brotherhood groups, the hard left, and Western Palestinian activists. Anti-Israel indoctrination has gone on for decades and long colonized the universities. Billions of dollars have been devoted to frying the minds of the Western intelligentsia.

For several decades, Western elites have held that the West was born in the sins of racism and colonialism and that therefore national identity in the West is itself intrinsically evil. The Western nation-state, they said, had created hatred, prejudice, and war. The culture and laws of Western nations therefore had to be trumped by universalist institutions and laws such as the UN, international law, and "human rights" legislated by international courts.

As John Lennon sang, there's nothing to fight or die for. But Israel - the paradigmatic nation-state - certainly believes there's something to fight and die for. That something is its continued existence. It refuses to negotiate its own demise.

Israel will survive because it has no alternative. Israel will prosper and grow because there the Jewish people know what they are, they love what they are, and as a result they want their nation to survive. The West will only survive if it decides to love us instead of disdaining us and trying to erase what makes the Jewish people special - which is what has made the West special too.

Rabbi Leo Dee shares his late wife’s lessons for life

Rabbi Leo Dee has shared his late wife Lucy’s life lessons and how they have helped him in the aftermath of her murder and the murder of two of their daughters.

Lucy Dee, 48, Maia, 20, and Rina,15, were shot by terrorists as they were driving in the West Bank in April 2023.

The daughters died at the scene and Lucy died three days later in hospital.

The London-born rabbi revealed "Lucy Dee’s 7 Fs” – otherwise known as “How to deal with anything in life” – during a moving presentation to a packed audience at Limmud Festival in Birmingham.

The “7 Fs”, he said, were the topics the couple had talked about when they went on date nights. They stood for family, friends, fitness, frumkeit, function, finances and fun.

Giving his talk in memory of his wife and two daughters, who were also born in the UK, Rabbi Dee said that when it came to his family, he and his surviving three children had been unable to sit down for Friday night dinner in their own home for the first three months following the funerals.

“We had been a family of two parents and five kids, and now we were one parent and three kids. We have one of those table where you can take out the middle part to make it shorter, and when I did that for the first time, it made me so depressed. We couldn’t sit down just the four of us.”

It was a conversation with Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition, which had shifted his mindset, he said. “His father had been a Holocaust survivor and then his sister was killed when she was eight. He said to me that when his father came back from the funeral, he had said: ‘This is a house to live in.’

“Three months after the funerals, the four of us sat down for Friday night dinner together. It was lovely, and I realised that we could do this.”

Andrew Pessin: "Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism," On Campus, Second Installment

[This is the next installment of the longer piece examining the expression “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” The first installment may be found here. That first installment offered some preliminary considerations then presented a ten-part case that anti-Zionism is prima facie a species of antisemitism. Further analysis begins with this installment.]

3. “Epistemic Antisemitism”
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Antisemitism in fact is at the very foundation of anti-Zionism.

We start by recalling the first two points above:
(1) For most Jews, Zionism is deeply entwined with or based on their Judaism and Jewish identity.
(2) Although not all Israelis are Jews etc., Israel is a, or the, Jewish project.

These two points made “hating Israel” while not “hating Jews” very challenging. As Salaita put it, Zionists make “antisemitism” honorable, recognizing that hostility toward Israel is ultimately hostility toward the Jews.

But that recognition now helps us locate the “antisemitism” in the right place. Once we realize that hostility toward Israel is hostility toward Jews and that the allegations against Israel are allegations against the Jews, the conversation shifts. It’s no longer about the anti-Zionist’s (failed) attempt to distinguish between opposing Zionism-Israel and opposing the Jews but about the deeper epistemic question of whether those allegations against the Jews are justified or not, true or not, or fair, or reasonable. It wouldn’t be bigotry, after all, to be against people who perpetrate dastardly deeds; no one said or says it was “anti-German” bigotry to condemn the Nazis and dismantle their evil empire. So if Israel—i.e. the Jews—really do all the terrible things anti-Zionists say they do, if the Jews really were guilty of genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, etc., then hostility etc. toward them would be justified, and not a form of bigotry.[1]

Once we recognize that speaking of Israel amounts to speaking of the Jews, this moves into the open: it’s easier to hide behind abstract allegations that a “country” is doing dastardly things than to assert quite concretely that the particular people are doing them. But once it is the people you are accusing, then the epistemic question becomes central to determining if the views are antisemitic or not.

This point is precisely why anti-Zionists believe that calling anti-Zionism “antisemitic” amounts to “weaponing antisemitism” to protect Israel, and thus object to IHRA. They truly believe that Jews are guilty of dastardly things, so it’s not bigotry to oppose them. From that perspective, calling anti-Zionists “bigots” could only be a bad faith move to silence them.[2] That’s also why Salaita put “antisemitism” in scare quotes above, because he believes that activism against the Jews and their state is not bigoted antisemitism but justified opposition to dastardly Jewish deeds.

This point is also why the antisemitism question is not directly located in whether (for example) the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel is “inherently” or “per se” antisemitic, or even whether “calls to dismantle Israel” are “inherently” or “per se” antisemitic; the Nexus and Jerusalem proponents have a technical but (temporarily) legitimate point when they say that BDS and even Israel-elimination are not antisemitic “on their face” or “per se.” If the Jews were truly guilty of dastardly deeds, it would not be bigotry to take even extreme measures such as those against them.[3]

The antisemitism here, then, is deeper: not necessarily in the measures “per se” one takes against the Jews, given one’s belief in their dastardly deeds, but in that which motivates those measures, i.e. in the (falsely) believing that Jews are guilty of those dastardly deeds in the first place,[4] in being all too prone to falsely believing this. I have elsewhere called this kind of antisemitism “epistemic antisemitism,” analyzing it as a kind of malicious cognitive bias of which the agent is often unaware, to which we’ll return in section (5) below.[5]

And this is also precisely why Zionists do sincerely see those anti-Zionist measures as antisemitic.

12/26 Links Pt1: The terrorist who shattered the Oslo myth; Israel Is Doing Everyone a Favor By Hitting the Houthis Harder; IAF targets PIJ terrorists posing as journalists

From Ian:

The terrorist who shattered the Oslo myth

If there was one terrorist whose life epitomized the Arab war against Israel and shattered the illusions fostered by the Oslo Accords, it was Fuad Shubaki, who died this week at the age of 83.

Shubaki was born in Gaza in 1940. Note that the Jews didn’t rule Gaza in those days (the British did), so Gazans didn’t demand a Palestinian state and didn’t organize any movement for independence. The next occupier was Egypt. The Egyptians illegally occupied Gaza in 1948 and ruled it for the next 19 years—yet still, there was no uprising against an occupation.

According to the Palestinian Authority’s Wafa news agency, Shubaki “was one of the first to join the Palestinian fedayeen movement in the mid-1960s.” Remember, there were no settlements or Israeli-occupied territories in those days. The territory that Shubaki and his fellow terrorists were trying to “liberate” was pre-1967 Israel.

The exact extent of Shubaki’s personal involvement in terrorism may never be known, but it is clear from his Wafa obituary that he was involved in many attacks. The news outlet put it this way: “He underwent training in the camps of the Palestinian revolution and participated in its battles.”

Shubaki gradually rose through the terrorist ranks. He was invited to serve on both the Palestinian National Council and Fatah’s Revolutionary Council. He became a senior aide to PLO chief Yasser Arafat, and Arafat appointed him to manage Fatah’s “military financial administration,” Wafa’s euphemism for arranging the financing to murder Israeli Jews.

When Arafat tried to take over Jordan, Shubaki was by his side. When Arafat and his guerrillas were expelled by Jordan and tried to take over Lebanon, Shubaki was there, too. When Israel succumbed to U.S. pressure to let Arafat and his senior terrorists escape Beirut in 1982 and set up bases in Tunis, Shubaki was among them.

From Gaza to Jordan to Lebanon to Tunisia, Shubaki devoted his life to financing the bombers, snipers, grenade-hurlers, stabbers and rock-throwers waging nonstop jihad against Israel.

Then came Oslo. Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Shubaki and their colleagues announced they would live in peace with Israel. They signed the first Oslo agreement in 1993. They signed Oslo II in 1995. They promised to give up terrorism, to arrest and extradite terrorists, and to stop teaching anti-Jewish hatred in their schools.

The Jewish world was deeply divided. Optimists insisted that Arafat could be trusted; he was laying down his arms. Others said he couldn’t be trusted; he would use front groups to continue terrorism and would never keep his Oslo obligations.

As the months passed, the pessimists’ worst fears began coming true. Terrorism resumed. Arafat refused to use his new Palestinian Authority security forces to take action against Hamas. Arafat’s Fatah set up thinly disguised front groups, such as the “Fatah Hawks” and the “Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade” to carry out attacks. Israel’s requests to extradite terrorists were ignored. A revolving-door “prison” was used by the P.A. when it wanted to pretend it was “detaining suspects” but really setting them free.

Arafat’s incitement also continued unabated. There was the infamous “jihad speech” (there were actually many). There was the “Abir and Dalal speech” (there were many of those, too), in which he presented Arab women terrorists as role models for Palestinian Arab girls to emulate. Another generation of young Arabs was being raised to hate and kill Jews, Oslo or no Oslo.

At the center of it all was Fuad Shubaki, the master financier who made sure that funds were always available to keep terrorizing Israel.

Caroline Glick: The battle for Jerusalem

Israel’s ruling elites—from the IDF General Staff to Shin Bet leadership, from the media to the legal system to academia—have refused to admit this state of affairs. Instead, they have insisted on an artificial distinction between the “moderate” P.A. and the “radical” Hamas and Islamic Jihad forces. In their efforts, they have been supported by successive U.S. administrations. The unbridled hostility of the European Union, the United Nations and other international actors towards Israel as a whole has been used by Israel’s leftist ruling class and Washington as a means to coerce successive governments and the unwilling public to maintain faith with the fiction that the P.A. is a stabilizing force, whether in Judea and Samaria or in the Gaza Strip.

Most of their efforts across the years were directed not against the Palestinians calling for the conquest of Jerusalem. Their chief foe (and the focus of their anger) has always been the Israelis—IDF officers, politicians, journalists, academics and regular citizens who have insisted on listening to the Palestinians and acting accordingly.

If the war is to end, Israel must win this battle in a manner that is not open to question. To win this war, Israel needs to dismantle not only Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but the governing body that has cultivated and grown these forces. To win the battle for Jerusalem, Israel must dismantle the P.A.’s security forces and the notion that they are moderates, or that they aren’t fighting for Jerusalem.

The presence of advanced weapons and tens of thousands of men under arms supported by a society mobilized to use them to kill thousands of Israelis at the first opportunity has made the situation untenable. The government is well-advised to delay the reckoning until after Donald Trump becomes president in January and until after Halevi’s expected resignation in February. It is clear that the battle cannot be won so long as the IDF is led by a man who refuses to abandon the strategic conception that the P.A. is Israel’s partner, not its enemy.

In the past year and three months of war, the overwhelming sense has been that we are fighting for the survival not only of Israel but of the Jewish people. There is poetic justice, then, in the fact that the approaching battle for Jerusalem has come into view just as we celebrate the festival of Chanukah, the time when the Jews fought both their enemies and their internal demons to secure their religious freedom and restore Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Israeli Arab Leaders Betray Their Own People

"For the longest time, I struggled with my identity. A Palestinian kid born inside Israel. Like...wtf. Many of my friends refuse to this day to say the word 'Israel' and call themselves 'Palestinian' only. But since I was 12, that did not make sense to me. So, I decided to mix the two and become a 'Palestinian-Israeli.' I thought this term reflected who I was. Palestinian first. Israeli second. But after recent events, I started to think. And think. And think. And then my thoughts turned to anger. I realized that if Israel were to be 'invaded' like that again, we would not be safe. To a terrorist invading Israel, all citizens are targets.... And I do not want to live under a Palestinian government. Which means I only have one home, even if I'm not Jewish: Israel." — Nuseir Yassin ("Nas Daily"), Israeli Arab blogger, the day after October 8, 2023.

These [Arab Israeli] leaders will do anything to grab the attention of the media – even if that means inciting against Israel. They know that when they deal with the real problems facing their Arab constituents – such as unemployment and poverty – no one will write about them in the media. Yet, when these leaders make fiery statements against Israel, they often win headlines and front-page stories. As far as they are concerned, "I don't care what you write about me as long as you spell my name right."

By engaging in anti-Israel incitement, these Israeli Arab leaders are causing huge damage to their own constituents. These leaders make the Israeli Arabs look as if they are a "Fifth Column" -- an enemy within. These leaders are stoking fear and mistrust between Jews and Arabs inside Israel, while ignoring that most Israeli Arabs say they feel comfortable living in the Jewish state.

If Israeli Arabs want to secure a prosperous future for themselves and their children, they need to get rid of extremist Arab leaders who speak and act against the interests of the Arab community inside Israel. If these Arab leaders are unhappy living in Israel, they are welcome to move to the West Bank, Gaza Strip or any Arab country -- where they will quickly miss Israel's democracy and freedom of speech.

Palestine Activist Knows Hanukkah Candles AKSHULLY Celebrate Increasing Gaza Deaths (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Berkeley, December 26 - Jewish households continue in the coming evenings to kindle their octuple lamps with wax or oil in celebration of a rededication to purpose and holiness even amid rampant degradation and hopelessness - but one observer has determined that the ancient Jewish practice in fact marks something far more sinister: the addition of one light each night glorifies, by analogy, the growing number of Palestinian casualties in an ongoing genocide.

Hassan Phipps, 20, made his discovery through logical deduction. "Once you start with the axiom that anything Zionists do is evil, or motivated by evil," the Students for Justice in Palestine campus activist explained, "the truth emerges quickly. Start with the realization that what they do is nefarious and deceitful - so lighting the candles is never the innocent or pure thing they make it out to be - and then the possibilities are limited to the obvious conclusions."

"No one celebrated Hanukkah until the Zionists made it a thing, to establish a fake connection to Palestine," he elaborated, repeating a talking point popular among Palestine propagandists. "They also must have fabricated any ancient sources that talk about it. It's pretty straightforward. So what are they really celebrating? Palestinian deaths, as they always do. It's the only thing that animates them. Nothing else explains Zionist behavior."

Phipps found various details of Hanukkah observance that also bear out the perversity. "The whole dreidel thing - it's not a simple game of chance - it's about plundering Palestine," he asserted. "It was a peaceful place where everyone lived in harmony until the Zionists came and slaughtered everyone so they could take the olive oil. That's why so many Zionists insist on using olive oil, and not just plain candles, to light their menorahs."

"I don't know why people don't see it. It's staring them in the face."

The activist's circle of comrade in social justice have followed similar reasoning in analysis of other aspects of Jewish practice. "Jews stole victimhood from Palestine," stated Palestine Action activist Yusuf Massoud. "They invited the Holocaust to happen so they could have the moral high ground to then do the same thing to Palestinians, and they keep trying to pretend Jews are still in danger when we all know there wouldn't be any danger to Jews if the Jews would just let Muslims have what's rightfully Muslim, which is everything."

Massoud, Phipps, and their comrades refused to hear anything about the ancient sources that mention no such ideas, calling those sources "satanic and Talmudic."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Chanukah music video night 2: Defying Gravity (We’ll Rise Above) The Maccabeats (Wicked parody) (plus Yiddish medley)

The obligatory Maccabeats song.

Plus this medley of Yiddish Chanukah tunes.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

As Israel struck back against Houthi infrastructure today, YNet's Smadar Perry writes:

You can't make the Houthis back down, they are not afraid
Iran will continue to supply its Yemeni proxy with arms and directives to attack Israel until a cease-fire is reached in Gaza

So far, Israeli strikes on Houthi military bases and targets in Yemen have not inflicted significant defeats on their leadership. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree, in their bizarre, pompous appearances, continue to issue direct threats against the U.S., the UK and especially Israel.

Until a full cease-fire is achieved in Gaza, Iran is expected to keep supplying the Houthis not only with weapons and military equipment but also with directives to persist in their attacks on Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week vowed that the Houthis would pay a heavy price for their attacks. Katz went even further with his threats. Yet Al-Houthi doesn’t seem fazed.

The Houthis, as their statements imply, are preparing, recruiting and stay undeterred. Elizabeth Kendall, a leading American expert on Yemen, summed up the situation succinctly: "The biggest dilemma is that it looks impossible to influence the Houthis without military pressure, but it’s hard to see how military pressure can work.”

It is true that long distance Israeli strikes is unlikely to deter the Houthis. They are dedicated jihadists, dedicated antisemites and don't care about their own people but would happily use their suffering to get the world to condemn Israel for any attacks that kill civilians. After all, the Hamas playbook was fond to work quite well.

Worse, they know that they have relatively inexpensive weapons that can reach Israel and defending Israel from them is very expensive.

There are only two ways to deter the Houthis, and they follow the same playbook that worked against Hamas and Hezbollah: Attack their leaders and stop the supply of weapons from Iran.

Attacking the leaders from a distance is a Herculean task. Israel had years of intelligence to lean on when they chose that strategy against Hamas and Hezbollah; it would take time to build the same capacity in Yemen, although you can bet that Israel is working on it. Israel doesn't have years to build that intelligence infrastructure.

Which is why the deterrence must be not against the Houthis but against Iran itself.

Unlike their proxies, Iran has a lot to lose. The reason Iran has been distancing themselves from their proxies is because they don't want to be held responsible for their actions against Israel - in short, they are frightened of an Israeli attack that would cripple Iran's oil exports, the keystone to their economy.

The Houthis can shoot rockets and drones all day as long as Iran supplies them for free. Which is why Iran's economy must be attacked, not Yemen (except for specific strategic targets.)

Anyone could have foreseen that the Houthis would increase their attacks when Israel struck them. Honor/shame demands that. In fact, in some ways Israel's attacks on the Houthis increase their prestige because there is only so much Israel can do; it makes the Houthis look stronger.

But if Iran would tell them to stop attacking, and if Israel (possibly together with the US and European allies) blocks off the path of weapons exports from Iran to Yemen with either threats or with military action against their ports and airports, the Houthi calculus would change. They can act as belligerent as they want but they don't want to run out of arms.

As I've said before, Israel needs to make it publicly clear that it holds Iran responsible for every Houthi rocket and drone attacking Israel, and Iran will pay the price. And Israel must follow through.

That is how to deter the Houthi threat.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Maccabees’ Sister (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

The Maccabees’ Sister

Centuries of living in strange lands led Jews to change the focus of the Chanukah story – emphasizing the miracle of light and by default, minimizing the war fought and won against abusive occupiers who stole Jewish freedom.

The oil that should have lasted one day and lasted eight is not the point of the Chanukah story – it’s a symbol of what faith and effort can achieve, even against impossible odds. The real story is that of the war the Maccabees fought, against the greatest empire at the time, which did everything possible to stamp out their Judaism, to make the Jews forget their uniqueness and become “citizens of the world”. There were Jews who were willing to put aside their identity in hopes of being embraced by the “enlightened” ones, in hopes that submitting would put a stop to their abuse.

Sound familiar?

The story of Chanukah is that of the Maccabees who refused to submit, who clung to their faith and the dignity of their people, our people, and against impossible odds – won.

That is what the oil is – a symbol of the light of our people that should have died out but thanks to those who clung to their faith and fought against all odds, didn’t.

The Maccabees were the warriors who led the revolt but there is a story that is not often told of the Maccabee who insisted that fighting was necessary. Because why fight against impossible odds? It’s easier to turn a blind eye and pretend that you don’t see abuse and oppression.

But doing so facilitates even greater evils.

Did you know that the Maccabees went to war to protect their sister and the other women of Israel from RAPE by their oppressor?

It was Hannah, the Maccabees’ sister who demanded Jewish dignity. Hannah the Maccabee SPOKE when all others remained silent.

She forced her brothers to look at the ugly reality of what was happening to the women of Israel and once they saw, they had to act.

According to the midrash, the Jews, then living under Greek Seleucid rule, had remained silent for three years; three years in which every woman who married would first be raped by the local Greek governor before she could enter her husband’s house. This is how the midrash describes it: “When the Greeks saw that Israel was not affected by their decrees, they stood and decreed upon them a bitter and ugly decree, that a bride would not go in [to her husband] on her wedding night, but rather to the local commander” [all quotes from Midrash Ma’aseh Chanukah “alef,” A Tale of the People’s Resistance to the Seleucid Greek Occupation].

It is awful to imagine how many women underwent this violation and humiliation. The midrash tells us that the men of the Hasmonean family did nothing. And the women of Israel fell victim again and again to the abuse.

Then came the wedding day of Matityahu the Hasmonean’s own daughter Hannah. This time, Hannah decided to put an end to the ongoing atrocity. In the middle of the wedding banquet, while all the distinguished and important guests were eating and enjoying themselves, she stood up and ripped off her wedding dress, leaving herself naked in front of her family and friends.

“And when everyone was sitting down to eat, Ḥannah, the daughter of Matityahu, stood up from her palanquin and clapped her hands one on the other and tore off her royal garment and stood before all of Israel, revealed before her father and her mother and her groom!”

At first, her brothers reacted with anger and shock. They wanted to kill her for having disgraced them and for shaming the family and herself.

But she, in turn, scolded them for turning a blind eye, all the while knowing what awaited her that night at the governor’s palace. Not one of them had raised a finger, not one had stood up to protect her dignity. She reprimanded her brothers for being angry at her nakedness in front of them, even as they remained calm at the thought of her having to go later that night to the governor who would sexually assault her.

“She said ‘Listen, my brothers and uncles! So what—I stand naked before you righteous men with no sexual transgression and you get all incensed?! And you do not become incensed about sending me into the hands of an uncircumcised man who will abuse me?!’”

She forced them to face up to the bitter truth. According to the midrash, this was the moment her Maccabee brothers first raised the flag of rebellion.

The stories of Israel repeat themselves. Then, like now, once the horror is SEEN, the People of Israel understand that it cannot be unseen. We must act to change the reality and ensure safety for all of Israel.

On October 7th the People of Israel were forced to see that we cannot live with monsters on our borders. That it is deadly to pretend that the monsters don’t exist or want things other than what they openly declare about themselves. That it doesn’t matter how mighty our enemies are, or even if the Superpowers of the world tell us we must not defend ourselves. It is up to us to be Maccabees..

And with strength of spirit, and our warriors, and by the grace of God, we will win. We have no other choice.

And as we light the Chanukah candles, we thank God for the miracles granted to our ancestors in those days and in our days.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The New York Times breathlessly reports:

At exactly 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military leadership issued an order that unleashed one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.

Effective immediately, the order granted mid-ranking Israeli officers the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza. Officers could now pursue not only the senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also the lowest-ranking fighters.

In each strike, the order said, officers had the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians.

The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in Israeli military history. Mid-ranking officers had never been given so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which had lower military significance, at such a high potential civilian cost.

It meant, for example, that the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside.

Observers of the Gaza war might not have known the specific formula of "20 civilians per terrorist," but it was clear that the initial bombing campaign in Gaza was far more devastating than any previous Israeli campaign

The NYT broadly implies that this change in IDF reflects a clear violation of international law. But it doesn't. It reflects that Israel has always gone way beyond international law in the past to preserve civilian lives and in this case it loosened up the rules to be more in line with actual international law.

The article buries a partial quote of the IDF response to the reporters starting in paragraph 20:

Provided a summary of The Times’s findings, the Israeli military acknowledged that its rules of engagement had changed after Oct. 7 but said in a 700-word statement that its forces have “consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law.”

The changes were made in the context of a conflict that is “unprecedented and hardly comparable to other theaters of hostilities worldwide,” the statement added, citing the scale of Hamas’s attack; efforts by militants to hide among civilians in Gaza; and Hamas’s extensive tunnel network.

“Such key factors,” the statement said, “bear implications on the application of the rules, such as the choice of military objectives and the operational constraints that dictate the conduct of hostilities, including the ability to take feasible precautions in strikes.”

I wish I could see the entire 700 word statement instead of the 60 or so words the Times quotes, but it emphasizes the key points that the NYT glides over.

According to the Rome Statute, to violate the principle of proportionality, an attack must be known that it "would cause incidental death or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects ...and that such death, injury or damage would be of such an extent as to be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated." This means that the value of the damage would be excessive compared to the military value of the target. Both of those values are difficult to calculate, but existing rulings give us some guidance.

There are three court rulings I am aware of that attempt to quantify proportionality in war. Two of them I have discussed previously.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that a 1999 NATO attack on the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters that the deaths of 16 employees were "unfortunately high but do not appear to be clearly disproportionate." There was no specific warning of the airstrike ahead of time. The station was only off the air for a day and NATO knew that the effects of the strike would be temporary.

In 2009, Taliban fighters hijacked a fuel truck that NATO feared would be used for attacks. It bombed the truck but some 90 civilians who were unexpectedly nearby were killed. A German court ruled that "Even if the killing of several dozen civilians would have had to be anticipated, from a tactical-military perspective this would not have been out of proportion to the anticipated military advantages.." Moreover, it gave a definition of what would and would not be proportionate: "[C]onsidering the particular pressure at the moment when the decision had to be taken, an infringement is only to be assumed in cases of obvious excess where the commander ignored any considerations of proportionality and refrained from acting “honestly”, “reasonably” and “competently” … This would apply to the destruction of an entire village with hundreds of civilian inhabitants in order to hit a single enemy fighter, but not if the objective was to destroy artillery positions in the village …

The German court ruled an entire village could be wiped out if artillery positions were in the village.

A 2012 ruling appears to be more restrictive. In Prosecutor v. Gotovina, a general was accused of using disproportionate means in bombarding an urban area with artillery. The ICTY made up a fairly arbitrary definition of what would be considered a valid artillery attack and what would not be: “artillery projectiles which impacted within a distance of 200 meters of an identified artillery target were deliberately fired at that artillery target.” In short, if there is evidence that there was a valid target within the targeted area - which obviously includes Hamas terrorists, tunnels, rockets - the attack could not be considered illegal; the prosecution charged that using this 200 meter rule, 5.5% of the attacks approved by General Gotovina were outside the 200 meter radius, ignoring that the 94.5% that landed within the radius that were proved he was not arbitrarily shooting at the town.

The ICTY accepted that bizarre argument that doesn't account for normal operational error.

Gotovina appealed the ruling, and it was overturned, although the court didn't rule specifically on the proportionality issue so we do not have a clear definition from this ruling.

At the same time, the ICTY ruled that an artillery barrage aimed at President Martić's apartment - in the middle of a residential apartment building - that was fired from 25 kilometers away was disproportionate since even the person responsible for the attack recognized that "the chance of hitting or injuring Martić by firing artillery at his building was very slight." Apparently the proportionality calculation must also include the likelihood of success of the attack. The IDF never attacks when the chances of hitting the target are "slight."

Israel's bombing of a similar urban area would not be considered illegal unless there was no valid military target in the area of the bombings and little chance that the target would be hit, and even the New York Times doesn't make that claim.

It certainly sounds crass to weigh the value of human life, which is infinite, against military necessity. But if anything, Israel continues to err on the side of human life even given the context of legal rulings allowing far more leeway.

October 7 did change the calculus. Israel's goal now is to destroy Hamas, not to dissuade it as in past wars, and destroying Hamas is a perfectly valid military goal that includes targeting mid-level terrorists who are using their families as human shields - knowing that Israel had avoided them (but not the higher level terrorists) in the past under those circumstances.

The New York Times, as usual, doesn't address the legality of the attacks, which is the key consideration.

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Was the Golan Heights in Biblical Israel?

L'Orient Today interviews Michael Mason, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. He says:

Israel’s messianic claims to the Golan Heights are a very recent historical invention. During the 1967 war, the Golan Heights were regarded by key Israeli politicians and the Zionist right as outside the boundaries of the “Greater Land of Israel” — a point acknowledged by Yigal Kipnis, one of Israel’s leading historians on the Golan region.

After 1967, significant efforts were made to establish archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence in the area during antiquity. Much of this ‘evidence’ was later dismissed by Israeli archaeologists, including Zvi Ma’oz (who wrote Jews and Christians in the Golan Heights).

It was only from the mid-1970s onward that the Orthodox Jewish settlement movement, followed by far-right politicians, began claiming the Golan as part of ‘Greater Israel.’

Is this true?

Well, yes and no.

Most maps of the Twelve Tribes during the Biblical period do not include the Golan, even though it was meant to be part of the Promised Land in Deuteronomy - for most of the Biblical period it was not conquered.

However, the Golan Heights came under Jewish rule in the first century BCE.

Claudine Dauphin wrote in Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 1982:

The name 'Golan' is first mentioned in Deuteronomy 4.43 as a settlement in the region of the Bashan, that fell in the territory allocated to the tribe of Manasseh. It is referred to as a free city in Joshua 20. 8, and appears again as a Levitical city in IChronicles 6.7 I. The settlement in question is thought to be Sahem ed-Qjolan, beyond the eastern border formed by the river Rukkad. The name of the entire area is believed to be derived from this, according to FlaviusJosephus (Ant. IV, 5, 3: VIII, 2, 3; XIII, 15,4; BJ, 11,20,6; III, 3, 1-5; III, 10, 10; IV, I, I). His works allow one to retrace in detail the history of the province of Gaulanitis from Hellenistic times. The Golan fortresses of Gamala, Seleucia and Hippos, held by the Hellenistic Empires, were captured by Alexander J anneus in 83-8I B.C.E. and the area was annexed to the Hasmonean Kingdom (Ant. XIII, 15,3). This opened the way for increased Jewish settlement of the hitherto predominantly pagan area. It then seems to have become the scene of disturbances and violence, created by bands of robbers and political rebels who sought refuge on the wild rocky terrain of the Golan Heights (Ant. XVI, 9, 2). The Roman Emperor Augustus sought to contain this source of unrest by annexing the neighbouring districts of Batanea, Trachonitis and Auranitis. These he placed under Herod's administration in 23 B.C.E., and in 20 B.C.E. he added the area of Gaulanitis itself, the city of Pane as and the Ulatha Valley, all of which had until then been ruled by the kingdom of Iturea. To implement this new rule and maintain the peace, Herod initiated an extensive programme of paramilitary settlement. He transferred 3,000 Idumeans to the area of Trachonitis and 500 families of Jewish soldiers to Batanea, rewarding them by exemption from taxation (Ant. XVII, 2, 1-3). The intensity and extent of Jewish settlement in the Golan and surrounding districts, which reached in the north as far as Damascus and in the east to Naveh, is reflected in the baraita discussing the boundaries of 'Eretz- Yisrael', defined as the 'territory occupied by those who came back from Babylon' (Tosephta, Sheviiit IV; Jerusalem Talmud, Shevieit VI and Demai 11).

Clearly the idea that the Golan is part of halachic Israel has been around far longer than 1967.

Dauphin's paper shows some of the artifacts found as of 1982 that were clearly Jewish in al-Farj in the eastern Golan.

However, they probably came after the destruction of the Temple.

Far more synagogues and other evidence of Jewish settlement has been found since then, especially in Tel Dan, which shows Biblical-era finds, including an Israelite-style four horned altar.

In the end, Israel's claim to the Golan is not Biblical but practical. It must hold the high ground for security reasons in the absence of a trustworthy government in Syria. That was the entire reason Israel allowed the buffer zone of land it conquered after suffering major losses in 1973 to be controlled by the UN for 50 years.

But to say that Jews have no historic claim on the land is simply false.

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From Ian:

JPost Editorial: We need to find the crack in the darkness

The most recent repercussion of the Hamas massacre of October 7 was the death on Tuesday of Kibbutz Nir Oz member Hannah Katzir, 76, who was released along with 50 other hostages held by Hamas in a deal in November 2023Katzir was kidnapped to the Gaza Strip from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Her husband, Rami, was murdered during the massacre. Her son Eldad, taken captive the same day, was later murdered in Gaza.Katzir’s daughter, Carmit, had written in December last year that her mother returned from captivity “both heartbroken and with serious cardiological issues, including broken heart syndrome.”

The Katzirs’ story is just one of many unfathomable tragedies that have befallen thousands of families in Israel on October 7 and since - those who fell then, those who have fallen in battle, and all of those who have not returned home, as the country gathers to celebrate one of the most family-oriented holidays in the Jewish calendar.

Yet, celebrate we will, as the people of Israel continue to choose life over death and light over darkness.

As Rabbi Stewart Weiss states in a column that will appear in this Friday’s Post magazine, “Hanukkah, at its core, is the celebration of miracles - both then and now. Yet exactly which miracles are being referred to is the subject of much debate.”

One way to look at it is that the lights of the hanukkiah have illuminated our path through the interminable darkness and continue to light our way toward redemption, writes Weiss.

So, when we light the first Hanukkah candle tonight, let’s rejoice at what the Jewish people have and what we’ve accomplished – and the existence and durability of the Jewish homeland, of the state of Israel.

But let’s also think about the Jews suffering from persecution and antisemitism, who are too afraid to display the hanukkiah in their windows and will light in secrecy inside, reminiscent of the dark periods of Jewish history.

And let’s think about the hostages, some languishing below ground with their mental and physical health deteriorating on a daily basis. If anyone deserves a Hanukkah miracle, it’s them and their families.

May the lights from our hanukkiah illuminate a path that reaches them and sends them a message of hope amid their darkness.

As the great Jewish poet Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack, a crack in everything… That's how the light gets in.”

This year, the miracle of Hanukkah will be to find those cracks and shine the light through.

Yisrael Medad: Needed: A little more ‘Three Wise Men’ wisdom

While wise not to reveal to Herod the location, they were even wiser to know that the child was Jewish; he was born in Judea and that area was the land of Judah, a son of Jacob. While not specified, I am fairly certain that they knew the country was not Palestine and as such, that the child was not an Arab Palestinian (even if, earlier this month, the current pope gazed upon a Nativity display of a manger scene that had the representative doll resting on a keffiyeh).

Pope Francis attended the unveiling of the exhibition at the Paul VI Hall on Dec. 7. It was designed by artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi from Bethlehem’s Dar al-Kalima University.

“The keffiyeh was added at the last minute during the installation phase,” said Faten Nastas Mitwasi, one of the two artists, students at Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem overseeing the project, along with Johny Andonia.

In a Dec. 12 interview with the Religious News Service, she said that while it was not their initial intention to turn the display into a political statement, they welcomed the final addition of the keffiyeh as a symbol of national identity. She added, “This is a gift from the Palestinian people. So, it’s holding and carrying the Palestinian identity.”

Minister for Diaspora Affair Amichai Chikli quickly wrote to the pope that the decision to portray the scene as such was “a deliberate adoption of the Palestinian narrative.” Within days, the keffiyeh was removed.

A few years ago, in response to the propaganda campaign comparing Jesus, Mary and Joseph with present-day Arabs being held up a roadblock put up by the Israel Defense Forces, there was need of a concerted effort to point out that roadblocks are due to Arab terror operations and not to Jews seeking to be cruel. Moreover, as Matthew 2:19 records, Mary and Joseph, following Herod’s death, returned from a short exile from Egypt and the country to which they came back is recorded, at 2:20-21, as “Israel.” Again, no “Palestine.”

Anyone who searches the Christian Bible will find dozens and dozens of references to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. And a Jewish Temple, too, which was also an object of PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s erasure efforts. “Palestine” and “West Bank” are not to be found, nor, as the case is, in the Quran. Not even Jerusalem. However, at Sura 5:21 the Children of Israel are charged to live in the Holy Land (al-Ard al-Muqaddas).

The verse refers to the words spoken by Moses to the descendants of Isaac: “Remember Moses said … O my people! Enter The Holy Land which God hath written for you, and turn not back.”

Imam Abu al-Qasim Mahmud al-Zamakshari, in his 11th-century commentary al-Kashaf, explained that the borders of “the Holy Land” are from Mount Hermon and part the Golan, whereas others say it extends from the territory of the Philistines (Gaza) until Damascus.

It would be wise to inject more objective, fact-based, ecumenical and genuine knowledge into the regional equation, which would achieve much for religiously motivated supporters—and opponents—of Zionism.

Israel: A protector of minorities in the Middle East

Given the Jewish people’s two millenniums of wandering without access to their homeland, it’s only natural for Israelis to empathize with the Kurdish people and their desire for a state of their own. In past conflicts between Turkey and the Kurds, such as in the fall of 2019, Jerusalem declared its support of the Kurdish people. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Facebook that October, “Israel strongly condemns the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria and warns against the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds by Turkey and its proxies. Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the gallant Kurdish people.”

Just last month, the newly installed Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, emphasized the importance of forging a “natural alliance” with the Kurdish nation.

The Turks, Iranians and the Arab regimes in Iraq and Syria share little in common, except a unifying desire to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state. Turkey and Iran, in particular, have been aggressively persecuting their Kurdish population. The major ambition of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is to impede any manifestation of Kurdish independence or autonomous status in Syria.

Erdoğan has trained and financed the rebel groups that ended the Bashar Assad regime’s control of Syria. While the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group focused on capturing Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, Erdoğan’s proxy—the National Syrian Army—focused on killing Kurds and conquering Kurdish majority communities in northern Syria.

Israel has a security and strategic stake in an alliance with the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, as well as supporting the Kurds in Iran and the Druze community in Syria. Strong alliances with these minorities would create a barrier against any future attempts by Iran and its Shi’ite Iraqi proxies to infiltrate Syria and link up with Hezbollah.

A prominent Syrian-Kurdish leader told me that while words of support from Israeli government officials are nice, the Kurds need action. The Kurds want an alliance with Israel and they want military assistance. I responded by noting that while it has been difficult for Israel to aid the Kurds militarily given the close military relations Israel had with the Turkish army and intelligence apparatus, Erdoğan’s openly hostile declarations indicate him to be a declared enemy of Israel. As a result, this has changed the calculations in Jerusalem and, Israel may now be prepared to render military assistance to the Kurds.

An alliance with the Druze is much easier given the proximity of the Golan Heights to the Druze villages in southern Syria. As seen in a widely circulated video on social media, some Druze leaders have expressed a desire to become part of Israel to prevent assaults by “radical Islamists.”

These Druze villagers remained loyal to the Assad regime until the end. As a minority, they were always watching their backs, and now they fear retribution from the Sunni jihadist rebels who have taken over Syria. In terms of the bigger picture for the Druze, they would like to be granted an autonomous status in southwestern Syria, realizing that right now, an independent Druze state is unrealistic. Given the weight of the Israeli Druze community, coupled with the prestige and affection with which they are held by the Jewish majority, Syrian Druze feel compelled to choose sides. Their fear of jihadist rule and the prospect of joining with their fellow Druze in Israel under the protection of the Israeli Defense Forces’ umbrella, makes for an easy choice.

A Christian-Lebanese friend of mine recently told me that “Israel must become the protector of the minorities in the Middle East.” He had in mind not only the Kurds and the Druze but the Christians in Lebanon and Syria. Although it is a tribute to Israel’s recent military victories, which have projected Israel as the “strong horse” in the region, those objectives, however, might be far beyond Israel’s resources. Still, an alliance with the Kurds and the Druze in Syria has considerable merit.

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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