Yehuda Kurtzer, Director of the North American Hartman Institute and host of the Podcast “Identity/Crisis,” interviews Tal Becker, an Israeli lawyer, Senior Fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Legal Advisor of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a veteran member of Israeli peace negotiation teams. They discuss the ethics of Israel’s war against Hamas.
Yehuda and Tal explore just war theory through legal, philosophical and Jewish frameworks and analyze the actions of the IDF and Hamas accordingly.
This is among the most important podcasts I have listened to since October 7. Their conversation is cogent and clear and goes far beyond the headlines and looks at the reality of this unprecedented war and the moral values of Judaism and Israel.
If you are confused by any aspect of this just war, are not certain that Israel is behaving according to the Laws of War even though everything Hamas did on October 7 is contrary to all ethics in war and are obvious war crimes, or want to understand more clearly the nature of the enemy that is Hamas and the principles of war that Israel has indeed followed to the best of its ability, listen to this hour-long podcast. You will be glad you did.
Days after October 7, my publisher at Ben Yehuda Press called to tell me that he wanted to reissue my 2019 book “Why Israel and its Future Matters” with a new cover and tag line “Letters of a Liberal Rabbi to the Next Generation” plus a Foreword that I would write about the Hamas massacre of 1200 babies, children, men, women, and the elderly in southern Israel, Hamas’ kidnapping of 240 hostages, and the Israel-Hamas War.
I agreed and on November 10, the book was reissued. Here is a brief description of the volume:
“Presented in the form of letters from a rabbi to his adult sons, this volume argues that Jews of all ages need Israel as a source of pride, connection, and Jewish renewal, and Israel needs them for the liberal values that they can bring to the Zionist enterprise. Exploring the roots and antisemitic branches of the campaign against Israel, Rabbi Rosove demonstrates why it’s wrong to characterize Israel as an oppressor state and damn it with blanket condemnation. A 15-page appendix features a timeline/mini-history of Zionism and Israel from the 19th century through October, 2023. After each letter/chapter are a series of discussion questions for families, book groups, and courses on Israel and Zionism.”
The Foreword discusses how Israel and the Jewish world are different after October 7 and how the Hamas attack shines a light on Hamas’ mission to destroy Israel, murder all the Jews of the Jewish State, and establish an extremist Muslim Caliphate on all the land between the river and the sea. Rosove explains that Hamas is an existential threat to the Jewish people and to anyone interested in Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian peace, that Israel has no choice except to prosecute its war fully to eliminate Hamas’ military capacity and its brutal sovereignty over Palestinians in Gaza while striving to retrieve the hostages, avoid killing innocent Palestinian civilians, and avoid opening up wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinians living under Occupation in the West Bank.”
The new edition is now available at Ben Yehuda Press (https://www.benyehudapress.com/WIM-2023) or online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Consider purchasing copies as gifts for Hanukah for your yourselves, your children, and grandchildren.
“A must read!” – Isaac Herzog, President of Israel
“This thoughtful and passionate book reminds us that commitment to Israel and to social justice are essential components of a healthy Jewish identity.” – Yossi Klein Halevi, author, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor
“Rabbi Rosove grapples with modern Israel, Jewish identity, relations between Israelis and Diaspora Jews, and perhaps most significantly whether ‘you can maintain your ethical and moral values while at the same time being supporters of the Jewish state despite its flaws and imperfections.’ It is a book that many of us wish we had written for our children.” – Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, Former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt (1997-2001) and to Israel (2001-2006), Professor of Middle East policy studies at Princeton University
“In its call for ‘aspirational Zionism,’ the book is honest and tough about Israel’s flaws, but optimistic about the country’s direction and filled with practical strategies for promoting change. This is a no-nonsense, straight-talking work, intellectually rigorous but deeply personal.” – Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, President Emeritus, Union for Reform Judaism
“Rabbi Rosove’s optimism, and his boundless faith in Jewish peoplehood and Jewish values, makes this book an invaluable blueprint for Jews, both in Israel and around the world, to help the Jewish State live up to its founding values of acceptance, pluralism, and democracy and become a true light unto the nations.” Anat Hoffman, Chair of Women of the Wall, former Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center
“A moving love letter to Israel from a rabbinic leader who refuses to give into despair, but instead recommits to building a democratic Israel that lives up to the visit of its founders.” – Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
“In a beautifully written, passionate, emotional and heartfelt book, Rabbi Rosove describes his love for Israel. Always honest, authentic and sincere, John does not attempt to hide Israel’s imperfections. His forty years in the rabbinate taught him that anything human is imperfect, and that true love requires engagement in the work of improvement and repair. The form of Rabbi Rosove’s book is a series of touching letters to his adult children. In this way, John writes to all our children. Read and Reread Rabbi Rosove’s book. Turn the pages over and over again. You will glean his spirit, and the spirit of our people that has created and sustained the State of Israel – one of the great miracles of the world.” – Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, Senior Rabbi, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, New York City, and host of “In These Times Podcast”
This message and the video below was sent by Shir Nosatzki, an Israeli woman who told the extraordinary story how on the morning of October 7 Israeli Arabs saved Jews at Kibbutz Be’eri. She wrote:
“Out of the horrible darkness of the October 7th massacre, there are shreds of light emerging in the form of heroic stories of rescue and humanity – Arabs and Jews facing the terrible inhumanity together and helping each other.
Watch this inspiring story (no traumatic images). This video reached over a million views throughout Israel in less than 24 hours. It was shared widely throughout social media by both Jews and Arabs, further strengthening our belief in a Jewish-Arab partnership. While there are people in Israel, including senior government officials, who are trying to fan the flames between Jews and Arabs and use this horrible moment to try and break us apart – we resist. We will not let them, nor Hamas, destroy what we’ve built.
Please share this [blog] with friends to spread the notion that October 7th was not a war between Jews and Arabs. It was between light and darkness. And there are Jews and Arabs on both sides. Let us all spread light.”
The following, posted by Jonathan Alter (the American journalist and author) that he calls “Thinking Straight about the Israel-Hamas War,” was signed by more than 400 Columbia University and Barnard College faculty about the Israel-Hamas War that I would have signed in a New York minute. Alter wrote at the end: “This fine letter should be a model for statements from other institutions and communities. Higher education, in particular, must now face a reckoning. It will either retreat to the status quo ante, failing to instill the proper “ideals and values” in students or undertake a much-needed assessment of what a liberal arts education — or any education — means.”
Here is the open letter:
“There are many statements, letters, and counter letters circulating, and we have no interest in waging a war of words while an actual war is raging. Still, given what we have heard from others on campus, we are moved to writeto emphasize three simple points.
First, at a great university like Columbia, there should be robust debate about complex and difficult issues, such as whether a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is appropriate or feasible, who is to blame for the miserable conditions in Gaza, and what the wisest strategy is, going forward, to produce a just and secure peace in the region. The signatories to this letter themselves have diverse views on these subjects. The university must foster an environment where debate on these important issues can proceed without intimidation or harassment.
At the same time, there is no excuse for Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians, which was an egregious war crime. There is no justification for raping and murdering ordinary citizens in front of their families, mutilating babies, decapitating people, using automatic weapons and grenades to hunt down and murder young people at a music festival celebrating peace, burning families alive, kidnapping and taking hostages (including vulnerable populations of elderly, people with disabilities, and young children), parading women hostages in front of chanting crowds, and proudly documenting these nightmarish scenes on social media. We are horrified that anyone would celebrate these monstrous attacks or, as some members of the Columbia faculty have done in a recent letter, try to “recontextualize” them as a “salvo,” as the “exercise of a right to resist” occupation, or as “military action.” We are astonished that anyone at Columbia would try to legitimize an organization that shares none of the University’s core values of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law. Any civilian loss of life during war is awful but, as colleagues on the faculty acknowledged in the letter mentioned above, the law of war clearly distinguishes between tragic but incidental civilian death and suffering, on one hand, and the deliberate targeting of civilians, on the other. We feel sorrow for all civilians who are killed or suffering in this war, including so many in Gaza. Yet whatever one thinks of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or of Israeli policies, Hamas’s genocidal massacre was an act of terror and cannot be justified, or its true purpose obscured with euphemisms and oblique references. We ask the entire University community to condemn the Hamas attack unambiguously. We doubt anyone would try to justify this sort of atrocity if it were directed against the residents of a nation other than Israel.
Finally, the University cannot tolerate violence, speech that incites it, or hate speech. Just as we condemn any bigoted comments or acts directed at Palestinian and Muslim students, we are appalled by the spate of antisemitic incidents on campus since October 7. These incidents, which include antisemitic epithets, physical assault, and swastikas scrawled on bathroom walls, are growing in frequency and are creating a hostile and unsafe environment that impacts our entire community. In the same way that the University defends other groups from this sort of disgusting conduct, it is essential to do the same for Jewish and Israeli students. To do otherwise would betray our ideals and the values of Columbia as a great university.”
Rabbi John Rosove's Blog 