Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Israel Must Stop Its ‘Dimona Talk’” – by Ehud Barak

14 Sunday Jul 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

Introductory Note: This op-ed, published today in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, was written by Israel’s former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense and once the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history. It is both a pragmatic and visionary response to the extremist, self-destructive and dangerous rhetoric of right-wing messianic members in the current Israeli government. I urge you to read his analysis carefully. Haaretz is a subscription newspaper. I have urged my readers to subscribe for years as it is among the most important publications produced for thinking people in Israel itself and in the English speaking world.

Op-ed – Ehud Barak – Former Israeli Prime Minister – July 14, 2024 – Haaretz

“We have reached nine months of war. Despite the sacrifice and courage our soldiers and commanders display every day, and despite the harsh blows felt by Hamas and Hezbollah, still none of the war’s goals have been met. What’s more, the strategic paralysis exhibited by Israel’s leadership risks a comprehensive and prolonged regional conflict, while the deepening rift with the United States expands, and the country is being plunged into international isolation. This must not be allowed to happen.

This complex situation has generated a growing discourse in recent weeks, including in this newspaper and on television channels, centering on expectations or demands that Israel threaten to use its alleged nuclear capabilities as a means of emerging victorious from this crisis. There are those who even propose to consider actually making use of this ability.

This discourse, to the best of my understanding, is unnecessary, unhelpful and may even be harmful. It reflects feelings of frustration and helplessness, which are not desirable counsels to strategy and statesmanship. What is required here is common sense, not fantasies.

The failure to achieve the war’s goals does not stem from Israel’s use of conventional weapons alone, rather, it was the reluctance to determine on October 8 what we want the “day after” the war to look like. This reluctance derives from the prime minister’s considerations regarding his political survival and the extortion by extremists in his coalition against him. It has led to treading water and wasting military achievements that were reached at the cost of blood.

The solution to the impasse is to first remove the obstruction that caused it, that is, to replace the head and remove reckless figures from the government – and by not resorting to measures that many of those promoting them don’t even understand their implications.

Second, say “yes, but!” to the U.S. initiative to create an “axis of moderation” under its leadership, centering around Israel, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Saudi Arabia as well, that will ready itself against the “axis of resistance”: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and others, led by Russia. We saw the axis of moderation’s potential on the “night of the missiles” launched from Iran in April. That’s the appropriate strategic horizon for Israel.

In the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is simultaneously an all-powerful nation saving the world from a new Islamo-Nazi threat, and a whining victim abandoned to its fate of being threatened with annihilation by “Amalekites” from without and “traitors” from within. This bipolar perspective is disrupting his judgment of reality and dragging many confused Israelis into it.

Readers of newspapers in Israel can get the impression that, on the one hand, we can destroy and annihilate all our enemies one after the other at the slightest provocation, swiftly and at a tolerable price. On the other hand, the whole world is against us, and we can only rely on the Almighty and on Dimona, the site of an Israeli nuclear reactor.

That is not the case. Even today, in July 2024, Israel is the strongest state – militarily and strategically – in the region. The “axis of moderation” the United States is proposing is the most effective deterrent against an overall regional war at any foreseeable future. This axis is also the correct framework to ensure victory, if such war were to break out.

The threat of the “Dimona option” and the discourse around it doesn’t convey determination or power. They radiate insecurity, weakness and confusion, imbalance and a pinch of panic. The reason is that Iran knows our strategic capabilities far better than the Israeli public. The ayatollahs in Tehran are extreme fanatics, but they are also calculated chess players and certainly not stupid.

Similar to North Korea’s leadership – who has no intention of dropping a bomb on South Korea or Japan, understanding such actions would lead North Korea back to the Stone Age – Iran’s nuclear program has two goals. The first and foremost one is to ensure the regime’s survival. The second is to build – under the umbrella of the “strategic balance” that would be created by a military nuclear capability – a reliable conventional threat. The late and cursed Qassem Soleimani, called it a “ring of fire” which would exhaust Israel in a prolonged war of attrition until it weakens and collapses.

This “ring of fire” is based on proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and others. They are equipped with drones, rockets and missiles, some of them highly accurate, and have terror units trained with precise weapons, like the Kornet anti-tank missile, operating within the population and prepared to conduct years of guerrilla warfare, even under occupation.

The U.S.-led “axis of moderation” is the right answer to the current situation, where, despite the rapid progress, Iran is still hesitating to develop military nuclear capabilities. If it decides to do so, it will still take it another year or so to get to a crude nuclear weapon and a decade to build an initial arsenal. But Iran is already a nuclear threshold state, meaning Israel and the United States have no surgical way to stop it from obtaining nuclear weapons.

This requires an alignment between Israel, the U.S. and regional allies. Ali Khamenei and the ayatollahs know that Israel hasn’t hesitated to attack states in the region to thwart their production of nuclear weapons. But they also know that for the past 50 years, Israel has been making efforts and huge investments to ensure an adequate response to a situation in which a state in the region obtains nuclear weapons. Despite the attempts to stop it, Israel is not without means.

Strategic capabilities are at their best when they remain a threat. During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, this approach even kept at bay wide conventional confrontations. For reasons familiar to anyone who dealt with the matter, such abilities are not suitable means for preventive attacks. There’s no logic in considering them in a situation that is not a real, immediate, irrevocable existential threat, which cannot be thwarted in any other way.

This is definitely not our situation. Certainly not in view of the existing alternatives – joining the “axis of moderation” and replacing the failed Israeli leadership. These two steps will provide a quick, simple and much cheaper solution than resorting to the “Dimona option.”

The primary global danger posed by Iran’s nuclearization is that it will set off a chain reaction of nuclearization in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, thereby bringing down the entire regime of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. By its very creation, the U.S.-led axis can answer this challenge as well, in that it provides a “nuclear umbrella” to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. (Turkey already has such an umbrella through its membership in NATO.)

It is no coincidence that nuclear weapons have not been used in 80 years. Israel’s famous declaration that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region remains the correct policy.

There is also no reason to remove Israel’s nuclear ambiguity since, as noted, there is nothing the Iranians do not know. Lifting the ambiguity would only be seen as a gimmick meant to assuage the general despondency in Israel. Such a move, and also insinuations a la “Remember Dimona,” are liable to give Iran the incentive and the legitimacy to accelerate the race toward nuclear weapons, on the grounds that it is threatened by Israel’s “nuclear capability,” which, unlike Iran, has not even signed the NPT.

Israel is indeed in a complex situation requiring courage, discipline, sober, reality-based strategic thinking, making difficult decisions and determination in carrying them out. The current leadership is equipped with almost none of these. Alien considerations are leading it – and us with it – toward the abyss.

“Dimona talk” in the current context is unnecessary and harmful, and only distracts us from what is truly needed: to immediately replace the sinkers of the Titanic and join the axis of moderation with the United States. Such talk contributes no understanding, common sense or a relevant course of action for the challenge we face. We must end it immediately.”

“I am an Israeli American Jew. Bulldozing Palestinian homes is personal for me” by Ben Linder

11 Thursday Jul 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Ben is a friend who I met when I served for a year representing the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet on the Board of J Street, a national pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy organization based in Washington, D.C.

I urge you to read Ben’s heart-breaking account (published in the Jewish Journal of Northern California) of his Palestinian friends living in the West Bank who have become victims of the extreme right-wing Israeli government’s de facto (leading to de jure) illegal annexation of an increasing amount of West Bank territory. As the tumult in American politics, the horror of October 7 and the Israel-Hamas War continue, news about the West Bank has not broken through nearly enough in the west.

I am grateful to Ben for bringing this one single tragedy that just took place in the South Hebron Hills to our attention. Read his heart-breaking account here: https://jweekly.com/2024/07/10/i-am-an-israeli-american-jew-bulldozing-palestinian-homes-is-personal-for-me/

“The most flawed person I have every met in my life.” – General John Kelly

04 Thursday Jul 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

George Stephanopoulos has done America a great favor in publishing his readable and well-researched analysis of every American president’s use of the White House Situation Room (aka Sit Room) since it was established during the presidency of John F. Kennedy in Stephanopoulos’ The Situation Room – The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis (2024). To learn how other recent presidents (e.g. G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, and Biden) engaged fully with the Sit Room, American intelligence and military experts, and foreign policy crisis’s, I am filled with horror with what Trump did, did not do, and never learned to do as Commander in Chief. Stephanopoulos reveals Trump’s abject incompetence and the danger he poses to western civilization and America’s standing in the world.

As we now anxiously watch how the post-debate Biden crisis unfolds, wait for Stephanopoulos’ interview of Biden on Friday (July 5) and whatever other unscripted interviews the campaign arranges for Joe in the short term, and witness the precipitous loss of public and congressional support for Joe that may well compel him to step aside (despite his expressed intention to continue the campaign), the book reminds any objective reader again of Joe Biden’s personal, moral, intellectual, and presidential superiority over Donald Trump.

I quote below directly from Stephanopoulos’ research describing many insiders’ description of Trump’s lack of use of the Sit Room (pages 271-298) and his chaotic, thoughtless, ignorant, small-minded, egocentric, self-serving, and dangerous approach to foreign policy while President, and what we can certainly expect should he (God forbid) be re-elected in November.

Here is some of what Stephanopoulos wrote:

As Omarosa put it in an NBC interview: “This is a White House where everybody lies. The president lies to the American people. … Sarah Huckabee stands in front of the country and lies every single day.’’… Faith and trust were apparently in short supply in this White House… Almost nothing about it [Trump’s Sit Room] was normal… During the Trump administration, the president was the crisis to be managed.

Trump tore through and wore out his national security team: Four secretaries of defense. Four directors of national intelligence. Four White House chiefs of staff and five secretaries of Homeland Security. The most damning judgments of his competence and character come from those he appointed to these most sensitive positions [each of whom were key players in the Sit Room]. His first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, famously told colleagues that Trump was a “f_ _ _ ing moron.” James Mattis, the former Marine Corps general who served as Trump’s first secretary of defense, described him as a threat to the Constitution ‘”who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try.” Fellow Marine general and White House chief of staff John Kelly called Trump “the most flawed person I have every met in my life.”

“He was the least disciplined, least organized human I ever met in my life,” Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert told me. No matter how hard his top aides and cabinet members tried, “None of them stopped him from constantly undermining us and making decisions outside the process.”

“Anybody with any sense-somebody like Mattis or Tillerson – they immediately shunned and stayed away from Trump,” Bossert recalls. “I mean, you couldn’t get Mattis into the White House. His view was “That’s a madman in a circular room screaming. And the less time I spend in there, the more time I can just go about my business.” In fact, Tillerson and Mattis began meeting regularly outside the White House in order to circumvent the President.

National Counter terrorism Center head Nick Rasmussen served for two years under Obama, followed by a year under Trump. The difference, he told me, was profound. “The tempo of the White House Situation Room meetings went way, way down in the Trump administration,” he recalls. “In the Obama years, I would have been to the White House three, four, five times a week” for meetings at all levels. “In the Trump administration, it could be weeks and weeks without any involvement or meetings.”

“I don’t think we got Trump into the Situation Room, in my year and a half there, more than four times,” Bossert told me. “He didn’t like that room. He didn’t like the idea that he had to go to it. He wanted everybody to come to him.”

Trump rarely sought out information from the Sit Room. He didn’t request reports, and he never called down with questions. I asked Bossert whether it was fair to say that for Trump, Fox News channel was as much a conduit of information as the Sit Room. “I don’t even think that’s in question,” he replied. “I think that’s one hundred percent accurate.” Then he told me something I’d never heard before.

“For a while, he didn’t want to see what the news channels were saying. He wanted to see what the chyrons were reading,” Bossert says. Chryons, of course, are the news briefs crawling across the bottom of the TV screen. “He wanted the chryons captured and printed… And so the Sit Room would do that. They would produce for him books of chryons prints” surely one of the most prosaic tasks ever required of the highly trained intelligence officers serving in the White House.

Trump’s penchant for inviting random people into sensitive meetings led to some uncomfortable moments. Those who didn’t have clearances, but were reluctant to defy the president, would find themselves facing irritated intelligence officers. Classified briefings became fraught, with no one in the room comfortable except for Trump, who seemed happy to have his posse with him.

After Bossert had left the White House, he received a call one day from President Trump.

Bossert was in South Korea at the time, and both he and the President were using cell phones. “I said, ‘Sir, don’t even begin this conversation,’” Bossert recalls. “I’m in a foreign country where I’m connected to their network. There’s a hundred-percent chance your phone’s being listened to, and ninety percent chance mine’s being listened to in this country. Us together on this phone call, it’s a hundred thousand percent guaranteed that they‘re listening.”

Trump replied, “Okay, Tom. You tell them I’m sick and tired of them!” And then he went on with the conversation, completely ignoring the warning. You know, he just wouldn’t listen,” Bossert says, a sense of wonderment still in his voice.

And as much as Trump complained about leaks, he also used that phone to become, essentially, leaker in chief.

“I caught him doing it,” Bossert told me. “I was walking out of the room, and he picks up the phone before I’m out of earshot and starts talking to a reporter about what just happened. And I turned around and pointed right at him. ‘Who in the hell are you talking to?’” the President essentially shrugged, seemingly unbothered at being caught.

“He does it, so he assumed everybody was that way,” Bossert says. “His paranoia was in part because he assumes everyone else acts like he acts.”

…President Trump’s capriciousness drove [National Security Advisor John Bolton] particularly crazy. I asked him how different Situation Room meetings were under Trump than under the other presidents. “They were a disaster,” he told me. “He had no idea what the issues were. He never learned anything.” Bolton believes that Trump felt “out of his element. He was surrounded by people, every one of whom knew a lot more than he did. And so he liked to retreat to the Oval office.”

“He came in thinking that his personal relationship with foreign leaders would define the quality of bilateral relations,” recalls Bolton. “He’s still saying it today. ‘I had a good relationship with Putin … with Xi, or had a bromance with Kim Jung Un’ or whatever.”

You get the idea. Stephanopoulos continued with a description of Trump’s dangerous incompetence during the Covid epidemic, his refusal to wear a mask and his forbidding others in the White House to wear masks because he thought it made everyone appear weak, the impeachable telephone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky in which Trump tried to muscle Zelensky to give him dirt on Biden in exchange for already congressionally approved military equipment, Trump’s fixation on buying Greenland and making a trade for Puerto Rico after the island suffered a devastating hurricane (to get rid of the problem despite Puerto Ricans being citizens of the United States), and, of course, January 6.

The last chapter on Biden shows a fully engaged, informed, reflective, inquisitive, and decisive president who read in granular detail the briefing books presented to him by intelligence community experts, and based on all the information he had, informed by decades of his foreign policy experience as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as Vice President, made reasoned decisions. Biden’s greatest failure was the American exit from Afghanistan. Stephanopoulos describes what happened there and why.

The book is a fascinating read, and for history lovers and those who want to understand what’s behind some of the most serious foreign policy crises’s in the last 65 years in every presidency, you won’t be disappointed.

The Philadelphia Inquirer May Have Offered us a Measure of Hope We Badly Need

01 Monday Jul 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Last Thursday evening was devastating for anyone who loves and respects Joe Biden and for those millions of Americans and world leaders who fear another Trump presidency. I have found myself taking both sides of the argument about whether President Biden should step aside and open up the convention in August for another candidate to emerge, or to tough it out and presume that Joe and the Biden Campaign know what they are doing and are going on overdrive to take back the initiative with a full court press with Joe as the Democratic standard bearer.

Since last Thursday’s disaster, pundits across the spectrum have weighed in on what should happen next and what likely will happen next. The very best advice I have heard is for all of us to cool it for a week or so, take a deep breath, keep the panic at bay, let the dust settle, and wait to see what Joe and the campaign choose to do.

As one individual, I recognize that I have no power or influence to compel a decision one way or another anyway, and neither do any of us. Only Joe and Jill Biden and a few of his closest advisors know in their hearts whether he is capable of serving effectively as President or not. He knows what it takes to do so and he always, characteristically, has placed the best interests of the nation and the American people first. I have to assume that that is what he intends to do. It seems, so far, that Joe and those around him believe he can do the work of the presidency despite what happened at the debate. Certainly, if he does stay in the race and it remains a Biden-Trump contest, there ought to be no question about the choice. Not voting cannot be a third option. Too much is at stake for the country and western civilization.  

I am grateful this morning for the lead Editorial in The Philadelphia Inquirer that spelled out what is before us. Read it here To Serve His Country, Donald Trump Should Leave the Race

Zionism and Liberalism in America – Up Close and Personal

27 Thursday Jun 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

The linkage between Zionism and Liberalism in America today is one of the most important themes I write about in my recently published Memoir – From the West to the East – A Memoir of an American Liberal Rabbi (West of West Centers Books, 2024).

In this volume I discuss many important themes that directly confront Jewish and non-Jewish liberal Americans including the challenge of faith for the non-orthodox, my cancer diagnosis and the trauma and confrontation with death that it unleashed in me at the young age of 59 in 2009, the growing intermarriage rate between Jews and non-Jews, my decision in 2012 to officiate at interfaith marriages after 32 years not doing so and the strong unexpected positive reaction of my community when I spoke about it on the High Holidays that year, my engagement with the Soviet Jewry movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the challenge I made to my large Washington, D.C. congregation (Washington Hebrew Congregation) to become a Sanctuary Synagogue for El Salvadoran asylum seekers fleeing the Death Squads, the immediate negative reaction I received from leaders of the Reagan Administration when I spoke about the issue on Rosh Hashanah morning in 1987, my Los Angeles synagogue’s covenant relationship with an African American Church in South Los Angeles before, during and after the Rodney King beating and Los Angles riots, the homophobic stance of the Boy Scouts of America in the early 2000s and my synagogue’s decision that sparked controversy when we decided to end our sponsorship with a long-time Cub Scout troop, my 50-year activist commitment to a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the vicious hostility I have received continually from right-wing extremist pro-Israel activists in my city, the tragedy of the Hamas-Israel war, the antisemitic character of BDS, anti-Zionism and antisemitism, my leadership of the Association of Reform Zionism of America (the Reform movement’s Zionist organization representing 1.5 million American Reform Jews) that brought me to the center of the national institutions of the Jewish people and the world and Israeli Reform Zionist leadership, the J Street Rabbinic and Cantorial Cabinet centered in our nation’s capital representing more than a thousand rabbis and cantors, and my reflections about American intersectional progressive left-wing activism and conservative-right wing extremism in relationship to the American Jewish community and American liberal Zionism.

I share many dramatic stories about my engagement with all the above as well as my relationship with the most important mentors in my life including my father who died when I was 9 years-old, my Israeli great-grand-uncle, Avraham Shapira, the first Jewish commander and guard of the first agricultural settlement in Petach Tikvah from 1890-1948 who I met as a boy in 1956 when he visited our family in Los Angeles, my childhood Rabbi Leonard Beerman, the pacifist founder of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles with whom I developed a close relationship in the final years of his life, and my dearest friend, mentor and father figure, Rabbi Martin S. Weiner of Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco whose compassion, wisdom, social justice activism, and commitment to the Jewish people guided me in my first seven years as his Associate Rabbi and who set the standard for me of what a congregational rabbi must be as a leader and a mensch. I credit whatever success I have had to many colleagues, my synagogue leadership, and especially my wife Barbara, who has been my life-partner and dearest friend of more than 40 years, and my sons Daniel (his wife Marina) and David whose love, support and pride in me have sustained me through many challenges I have encountered as a rabbinic and community leader.

In the Epilogue that I wrote after October 7, 2023, I share my outrage against Hamas, my grief at the loss of so many Israeli and innocent Palestinian lives, my desire for revenge against Hamas, and my eventual affirmation of the dire need for a complete ceasefire and end of the war, the immediate return of all hostages, a clear plan forward for Gaza and the West Bank that includes new Israeli and Palestinian leadership, the United States, and western aligned Arab states, the conduct of the war, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

See a few of the many endorsements on the book jacket above, the publishers description of my story and the cameo appearances of some of the 20th and 21st centuries greatest heroes.

I invite you to purchase the book directly from my publisher at https://westofwestcenter.com/product/from-the-west-to-the-east/ and especially share copies with young adult Jews who may be experiencing a crisis of identity as Jewish Americans in these years of challenge.  The book is not yet available on Amazon.

Confronting the Moral and Political Issues Raised by the Israel-Hamas War

23 Sunday Jun 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

As the Israel-Hamas War entered its 8th month at the beginning of May 2024, I wrote and posted 5 blogs (titles and links below) to help clarify the political and moral issues raised in this war, arguably the most serious threat to the State of Israel and Jewish people since Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

I invite you to read again the 5 blogs listed below and share them with those in your family and amongst your friends who may gain a measure of insight and perspective about what Israel and the Jewish people are facing today.

The first item is particularly apt for college-age students who will return to their campuses in the fall and for young liberal American Jews under the age of 35 who have confronted anti-Israel sentiment, anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the workplace and in social media. According to polls, this younger American liberal Jewish demographic is the most alienated from Israel and organized American Jewish life as a consequence of the entrenched power of Israel’s most right-wing, extremist, ultra-Orthodox, and racist governing coalition in its 76-year history, the lack of a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Israel-Hamas war. The majority of younger American liberal Jews, however, despite the extremist right-wing politics of the Israeli government and the war still remain supporters of Israel and have drawn closer to the Jewish people and state, as polls also indicate.

I wrote the first blog at the top of the list below in preparation for meeting with thoughtful graduating high school students in my synagogue who were confused and torn about Israel’s government, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, West Bank Jewish settler violence against Palestinian shepherds and farmers, the harsh military occupation of the West Bank, the internal tensions between secular and ultra-Orthodox and extremist settler Israelis, and the war. Following hours of discussion, I urged them to carry those talking points with them to their campuses as a means of girding themselves against irrational and hate-filled fellow students who don’t really understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and who naively gravitated to support demonstrators who are anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, or antisemitic. The other four blogs discuss, as the titles indicate, some of the core issues raised by Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israelis on October 7 and the ensuing war.

I pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the safe return of the hostages.

Talking Points for College Students Concerning Palestinian Protests – 31 Friday May 2024  

Despite an increasingly divided Israel at war, the State of Israel is still worth celebrating – 16 Thursday May 2024  

How BDS is Part of the Problem – 09 Thursday May 2024   

“There is No Warrant to Israel ‘Genocide’ Claim” – 01 Wednesday May 2024  

Confronting Antisemitism on College Campuses – 28 Sunday Apr 2024

2 Recommendations this Summer – a Netflix Series and a Book

20 Thursday Jun 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

The first time I encountered the Holocaust as a child I was 5 years-old. In my father’s home study I found a Life Magazine with photographs of what the allied armies discovered when they entered the death camps and liberated what remained of abused and emaciated survivors. Over the years I read multiple histories, novels and theologies focused on the Shoah. I saw many films and documentaries about WWII, Nazi antisemitism, and how an entire nation and continent succumbed to its inhumane policies towards Jews.

As a congregational rabbi, I taught about the Holocaust to high school students and I debated with my fellow educators how best to teach the Shoah to young students without traumatizing them as I was traumatized as a 5 year-old so long ago. In recent days, I encountered the Shoah anew in watching a powerful documentary series meant to introduce the criminality and evil of the Nazis to a new generation of teens and young adults; and I read an account (publ. 2022), both of which I recommend for viewing and reading this summer.

The first is the 6-part Netflix documentary called Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. The series is framed by the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. It uses Nazi film footage, original audio recordings and massive amounts of forensic evidence to chart the progression of Adolph Hitler from his childhood to power and the Nazi extermination of European Jewry and the devastation of Europe during WWII.

I believe that it is important especially for young people from high school age to young adults to watch this Netflix series. The 6-episodes is a tutorial about how a democratic society can devolve into autocracy. The series describes sweepingly how the Nazis systematically subjugated the German masses, destroyed enlightened European culture through propaganda, marketing, lies, violence, cruelty, bigotry, injustice, theft, deportation, and murder. It presents how the Nazis responded to high inflation and unemployment in the Germany of the 1920s and how the Nazi circle of evil created a movement that played to the German people’s baked-in fears and resentments. It made clear how the Nazis took historic religious anti-Jew hatred and cast it as pseudo-scientific racial antisemitism, and then blamed Jews, communists, socialists, liberals and foreigners for their own real and imagined misfortune, and brutally dehumanized non-ethnic Germans and characterized them all as vermin. It discussed how extreme right-wing nationalism and the belief in German-Aryan racial supremacy and superiority were used to attack the dignity of anyone not included within the Nazis’ exalted Aryan self-image. It described step-by-step how the Nazi Party destroyed individual freedoms of speech, religion, press, a fairly-based criminal justice system, and democratically elected political parties. Through propaganda and deliberate myth-making the series conveyed well how the Nazis created a heroic cult of personality around Hitler, and emphasized his super-human characteristics of will, power, self-righteousness, and hard-heartedness thereby infusing and permeating every aspect of German Aryan society with Hitler’s exalted omniscience and omnipotence.

My second recommendation is the book “The Escape Artist – The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World” written by the British journalist Jonathan Reedland. The volume tells the true story of the escape by two young Jews, Rudolf Vrba (née Walter Rosenberg) and Fred Wetzler – both originally from Slovakia – who in April 1944 became the first Jews to successfully escape from the most heinous of the death camps. The book cover describes their intent and journey:

“In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom – among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world – and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen – a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man – a gifted “escape artist” who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.”  

I have read many Holocaust histories, but nothing compares to “The Escape Artist.” I appreciate that many of us prefer not to spend our time immersed in the darkest and most depraved stories ever recorded in human history. But, I recommend reading this book anyway.

The reader finds him/herself with Walter (he took another name Rudolf Vrda) in Auschwitz, seeing, hearing, watching, fearing, feeling, doing, and succumbing to everything every Jew was subjugated to by the Nazis.

Rudolf (aka Rudi) was only 17 years-old when he arrived in Auschwitz, yet his superior linguistic ability, keen intelligence, iron-clad memory, swift survival instincts, blind courage, clear sense of purpose, and sheer luck enabled him to do what virtually no other inmates were able to do – survive and escape from Auschwitz and then give a detailed account of everything that happened in that death camp in granular detail between June 1942 when he first arrived and April 1944 when he escaped.

In his and Fred Wetzler’s “Auschwitz Report,” they told of how many trains and trucks brought Jews from diverse countries daily into the camp, how many Jews were selected to live a few days longer and how many (usually women, children, the elderly and infirm) went directly – without realizing where they were going – to be gassed and burned. Rudi detailed the cruelty of the SS and the Kapos (the Jewish henchman appointed to do the Nazis’ dirty-work), their indiscriminate beatings, torture, shootings, starvation, and cruelty.

Once Rudi and Fred successfully told the story of Auschwitz when they arrived back in Slovakia, it was written in the form of a legal brief, translated into German, Hungarian, and English, and sent to Roosevelt, Churchill, the Pope, and the Jewish leadership of Hungary, but nothing was done to alert Hungarian Jewry about where they were being sent so they could resist boarding the trains. Nor was there a decision taken immediately by the allied powers to bomb the train tracks leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau or to destroy the death camp itself, though it could have been done easily.

The remaining Jews in the Hungarian countryside in 1944, the last country to be emptied of its Jews by the Nazis, numbered 437,402 souls. They were all shipped at the rate of 12,000 per day, crammed into 147 trains (about 3000 Jews per train) over the course of 5 to 6 weeks, and almost all of them were gassed and burned on arrival in Auschwitz. 200,000 Jews in Budapest were next on the Nazi’s hit list and were, in effect, the last Jewish group to be exterminated in Europe. For a variety of reasons explained in the book, the Jews of Budapest were sparred, mostly as a consequence of Rudi’s and Fred’s “Auschwitz Report.”

The book concludes by telling of Rudi’s post-Holocaust life during which time he earned a doctorate in bio-chemistry, married, had two daughters, divorced, remarried, and lived in Soviet-controlled Prague, London, Vancouver, and Boston. 

We can read histories of the Holocaust and after a while come to the conclusion that we’ve engaged enough with those horrid events. Over the years, after I read the classic books, saw the many films and documentaries, many times visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and Holocaust Memorial Museums in the states, I thought that, for me, there was nothing more I needed to read or see because the tragedy is just too overwhelmingly soul-crushing and heart-breaking.

The Jewish Book Council in America recently recommended as an award winner The Escape Artist. I took the recommendation and read the book. I have asked myself about the timing of the book’s publication 2 years-ago and the appearance of the Netflix series on Hitler and the Nazis last month. Perhaps they were issued now because Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is the most serious assault on any country in Europe since WWII, and the cruelty of Hamas’s massacre and hostage-taking against Israeli civilians is the worst pogrom against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Whatever the cause that produced the Netflix series and book, it has become clear to me over the years, and most especially this past year since October 7, that far too many Americans are historically illiterate and that they lack a moral compass when evaluating the significance of history and contemporary events and trends. Naively taking the high road and thinking that current events aren’t that bad, or don’t concern us, or recognizing that their pure and self-righteous ethics in the face of evil is actually self-defeating, or choosing the path of isolationism and dis-engagement such as what the “America First Movement” did in the 1930s in alliance with the Nazis and many in the MAGA Party are doing today in alliance with Putin’s Russia and Orbán’s Hungary, so many Americans don’t appreciate enough that there are brutal actors in the world that think nothing of slitting the throats of their perceived enemies. The only response of the civilized world to such brutality has to be to fight those evil actors while maintaining a humanitarian and ethical vision for a better democratic future. I recall often to myself, in order to maintain my moral compass, Edmund Burke’s warning: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

Perhaps, this film and this book can be helpful in addressing those historic and moral deficiencies in what every decent human being ought to know, understand and appreciate about the significance of the Holocaust not only in its own tortured era, but for today’s politics, events and trends in America, the Middle East, Europe and around the world.

This blog also appears at The Times of Israel – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/2-recommendations-this-summer-a-netflix-series-and-a-book/

TIOH Speaks Shabbat w/Rabbi John Rosove, discussing “From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi” Friday, June 21, 7:30 pm

17 Monday Jun 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Click here to join our “Temple Israel of Hollywood Speaks Shabbat” dinner with me (7300 Hollywood Blvd). I will be interviewed following services and during Shabbat dinner by journalist Susan Freudenheim Core, formerly an editor and writer at the LA Times and once the Managing Editor of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. You can purchase the book directly here or acquire copies this coming Shabbat evening.

My publisher wrote this on the cover jacket:

“John Rosove messes with our easy notions of identity. His deeply probing and arresting memoir tosses aside the neat little boxes we put ourselves in. Longtime Hollywood rabbi, he is proof that a thinking person can be many different things at once. American Liberal. Progressive Zionist. Lover of Israel. Dreamer of Palestine. Man of peace.”

The following is advanced praise:

“From the West to the East is a beautifully written and thoughtful guide to the challenges facing American Jewry, shared by one of America’s most influential rabbis. From the demographic changes in the Jewish community and its relationship to Israel, to the existential threats and profound moral dilemmas confronting Israel amidst a tide of rising antisemitism, Rabbi Rosove’s words are sure to inspire — and provoke — as any account of this period should and must.” – Congressman Adam Schiff, author of Midnight in Washington – How We Almost Lost our Democracy and Still Could, Democratic candidate for the Senate from California

“In this moving memoir, Rabbi John Rosove models how a liberal Jew can be a passionate lover of Israel while remaining uncompromisingly faithful to the prophetic tradition… Now, at a critical crossroads for the community, he offers an indispensable guide to help American Jews navigate through a time of crisis.” – Yossi Klein Halevi, author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem

“In his powerful and revealing memoir, Rabbi John Rosove persuasively confronts some of the most challenging moral issues of our time, including Israel-Palestine, civil rights and liberties, immigration, and more. From the West to the East is not just a memoir. It’s a book full of lessons to help us navigate a world that often seems unrecognizable.” – Zev Yaroslavsky, former member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and LA City Councilman, author of Zev’s Los Angeles

“From the West to the East invites us to experience an immersive slideshow—one that is personal, vivid and compelling—the engaging journey of a committed liberal American Zionist leader over the last 50 years. Through reflections and wonderful stories, Rabbi Rosove deftly captures the complexities, beauty and challenges of navigating. This is not a preachy tome; it is lovingly told from his California home. With wisdom gleaned from experience, Rosove’s memoir illuminates how the interplay of activist courage and faith have been builders of American liberal Zionism. It shares what principled determination can yield and hence, a measure of hope to draw upon now, in these most wrenching times.” – Robin M. Kramer, former chief of staff for both Los Angeles Mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa, and past president of the board of trustees of Temple Israel of Hollywood

“At a time when lots of us are sick with despair, Rabbi John Rosove offers a cure. A life of activism – from his arrest as an anti-war protestor, to lobbying to free Soviet Jews, to fighting for peace between Israelis and Palestinians – Like Abraham Joshua Heschel a generation before him, Rabbi Rosove shows that at the heart, and power, of Judaism are decency, kindness, empathy, and Menschlichkeit. His is the voice, and this is the beautiful book we need in these troubled times.” – Professor Noah Efron, Chair of Graduate Program in Science, Technology & Society at Bar Ilan University, Israel, writer and host of “The Promised Podcast”

“From the West to the East is a beautifully written, intensely personal and deeply profound book. John takes us through the long arc of his consequential and impactful career, and with the benefit of hindsight, brings ideas, emotions and history alive. His love for Judaism, America and Israel shine through on every page. A rabbi’s rabbi, this memoir is a must read for rabbis and all who are interested in the contemporary Jewish experience.” – Rabbi Ammi Hirsch, Senior Rabbi, Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue, Manhattan, NY, host of “In These Times Podcast”

“John Rosove’s fine sense of humor, his excellent storytelling skills, his willingness to address the most confounding disputes head on make this memoir an affecting and engaging read. Rosove has had a lifelong love affair with Israel, at once clear-eyed and affectionate, avoiding the Pollyannaish sentimentality and extreme judgmentalism that so often obfuscate our Israel discourse. His memoir is an act of witness and testimony, an insider’s up-to-the-minute account of the dilemmas that have tried the souls of liberal American Jewry as Israel’s government has grown increasingly illiberal. This book is a call to arms for the vision of Reform Judaism and of Zionism and it is a delight to read.” – Don Futterman – author of Adam Unrehearsed, co-host of The Promised Podcast, Israel Director of The Moriah Fund

“Rabbi John Rosove’s Memoir is a ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ in our era. John embodies the deep connection between Zionism and liberalism and he refuses to compromise his moral standards at a time when discerning truth is becoming ever more difficult.” – Rabbi Galit Cohen-Kedem, Founding rabbi of Kehilat Kodesh v’Chol in Holon, Israel

“Rabbi Rosove vividly portrays his life as a man with two functioning hearts in a poignant reflection of his deep connection to both the land of the free and the home of the brave, as well as to Jerusalem. Both hearts pulsate with a powerful Jewish conscience that sees, hears, motivates for action and inspires reflection and understanding. This book recounts the personal odyssey of a unique rabbi unafraid to wrestle with man and God in his quest for Tikun Olam.” – Anat Hoffman, Founder and Chair of Women of the Wall, former Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center

“I describe Rabbi John Rosove this way: Piv v’libo shavim (His mouth speaks what his heart feels), which is the sense one gets when reading From the West to the East. I was swept along on his life journey and experiences, sharing in his dilemmas with all its complexities—all lovingly expressed through his tears of joy and sorrow.” – Yaron Shavit, Deputy Chairman of the Executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel, President of the 38th Zionist Congress

“Rabbi John Rosove’s Memoir From the West to the East should be required reading for all who love Israel and being Jewish, and who struggle to find a balance between the universal and the particular, and applying liberal values to our Zionism in order to make a better world. In clear and accessible writing, Rosove shares profoundly relevant stories and lessons gleaned from a lifetime of service. I am grateful to John for being the rabbi, teacher and leader that he is, and for sharing his wisdom and life’s lessons in these pages.” –Rabbi Josh Weinberg, Vice President of the Union of Reform Judaism for Israel and Reform Zionism and Executive Director of ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionism of America 

My Father’s WWII Foot-Locker Returned to me on D-Day

09 Sunday Jun 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

The day before D-Day on June 5, I received an email from a stranger who wrote in the subject line: “Your Father’s Trunk from WWII.” The writer  saw the Navy-issued trunk pictured above in the alley behind her apartment building in Culver City, walked past it, thought for a moment and recalled as a young girl seeing in her two Grandfathers’ homes the same vintage trunks from their years of service as Marines in the Pacific during WWII. She turned around, saw a name impressed on the front –  Leon Rosove MC. USNR – thought this Navy man’s family, if she could find them, may want it, and she and her husband carried the trunk to their apartment building for safe-keeping.

She went online and googled the name and then wrote to me in that email: “When I googled Leon Rosove I came across THIS article from your blog which is how I found you.”

I responded to her immediately, and we arranged for my son to drive to her apartment on his way home from work the next day, pick up the trunk, and deliver it to me. On the trunk’s lid is the red emblem of the US Marine Corps and the words “Semper Fidelis” (“Always Faithful”).  

I remember well my Father’s Navy trunk/footlocker from my childhood home. Inside he kept his pristine white Navy Cap and other mementos from his naval service in the South Pacific during WWII. Years after he died and my mother sold our home the trunk ended up for a while in my grandmother’s garage in the mid-Wilshire district of LA, and eventually it was emptied of its contents (I have that cap) and was given away – until it reappeared on June 5th ready for the trash heap.

Lt. Col. Leon Rosove, MD, 1942

My Dad was a physician in private practice in Santa Monica on December 7, 1941 when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. On December 8, President Roosevelt declared war against Japan. On December 9, my Father re-enlisted as a Naval Reserve officer, got his orders, packed his trunk, and sailed in late January 1942 on a Navy vessel from San Diego, CA. to Hawaii. On February 2, his vessel entered Pearl Harbor. He wrote soon thereafter to his Philadelphia cousins about what he saw and knew – the massive oil and wreckage in the waters that contained 19 Navy ships including 8 battleships all sunk to the bottom of the harbor. 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians, perished that day.

My Dad (1905-1959) served in the US Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the medical staff of the Aiea Naval Hospital in Honolulu (1942-1943) and as the navy’s chief and only medical officer on Midway Atoll (1943 to 1944). He loved the year in Hawaii healing soldiers and working alongside his fellow colleagues and hospital staff. The year in Midway was lonely as he was the only medical officer there and he had to share that small piece of territory with millions of migrating birds whose squawking and squealing made sleep at times impossible.  

Earlier in the day on June 6 this year, I watched President Biden speak at the Normandy Cemetery and offer words of tribute to the few surviving soldiers and the 195,000 naval personnel from eight allied countries who stormed the beaches of France on 7,000 ships and landing craft. 73,000 allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded in the battle of Normandy. Of the 4,414 allied troops killed on D-Day itself, 2,501 were Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. All of them saved western civilization from the tyranny of the Nazis.

The blog noted above tells the story of the birth of our grandson two+ years ago and that his parents (our son and daughter-in-law Daniel and Marina) named him Leon after my Dad. When little Leon grows up, I will present to him this trunk (which I intend to restore) used by my Father, little Leon’s great-grandfather born 116 years before.

I’m so grateful to Lindy Townes for her thoughtfulness in finding me and returning this old and weathered WWII artifact that carries my father’s name and inspires so many memories of his life, now long passed, but ever alive in my heart.

Our parallel family stories intersected on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, and I’m grateful for that as well. She wrote to me the following after my son Daniel visited her and retrieved the trunk, and she included this photograph:

Lindy Townes – June 6, 2024

Hi John, 

I am so very glad that your Dad’s trunk has made its way back to you!

[Our meeting] does feel like a divine intervention with the Anniversary of D-Day. My family, especially my parents, have enjoyed following along with this story as well!

[I am] Lindy Townes and my husband is Rivers Townes. Both of my maternal grandparents, Captain Genevieve Irene Burns and Captain Henry Lee Burns, were in the Marine Corps. They met and were married at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina before my grandfather deployed to Iwo Jima where he was wounded in action in 1945. My paternal grandfather Wallace James Holts Sr. was in the Navy and served on the USS Gwin DM-33 in the Pacific from 1944-1946. 

I feel so happy to have been able to make this connection and to get your Dad’s trunk back to you and your family. I hope that you all now will have it to remember your Dad and the name “Leon” for generations to come!

Best, 

Lindy 

We intend to meet when she and her husband, recently married, return from their honeymoon.

Talking Points for College Students Concerning Palestinian Protests

31 Friday May 2024

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

I was invited this May to speak with my synagogue’s graduating high school seniors about how best they might respond to anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses when they appear on their college campuses for the first time beginning in August when classes commence.

I emphasized a few points up-front, that the October 7 Hamas massacre and hostage taking is the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and that the death and destruction in Gaza of thousands of Palestinian civilians is a humanitarian nightmare. I said as well that Hamas must be held to account for bringing this war upon Israel and the Palestinian people and for deliberately using Palestinians as human shields resulting in the death and injury of tens of thousands of innocent human beings. Though Israel in this war of self-defense bears responsibility for harm done to Palestinian civilians too, Hamas is by far the most responsible party in this disastrous war.

We talked about many things together in our two-sessions and three hours of conversation including the harm Israel’s continuing Occupation of the West Bank and of East Jerusalem has had on the Palestinians and upon the soul of the Jewish people and Jewish State. I noted that most protesting students against Israel, however, despite their legitimate humanitarian concerns for innocent Palestinian civilians, do not understand the history and politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and more generally the century-long Israeli-Arab conflict, have little knowledge of the nature and character of Hamas as an absolutist terrorist Islamic organization intent on the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of all Jews. Most students do not understand Israeli democracy and politics, the nature of the current extremist Israeli government as opposed to the more moderate attitudes of the Israeli population as a whole, nor do they understand how  the American intersectional movement’s presumptions about victimization have little application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I urged the students, when they get to their college or university, to do two things: First, find a Jewish community on campus in which they can feel safe and supported in their pro-Israel liberal values and concerns; and second, to take courses on Middle East politics and history with professors who are fair, balanced, moral, critical thinkers, and who present the varying positions and perspectives of Zionism, Israel and Palestine without prejudice.

I presented the following talking points to the students and we discussed each one in depth. The subject of each bullet point is in response to a faulty accusation against Zionism, Israel and the Jewish people. Just as the medieval rabbinic sage Rashi (11th century France) wrote commentaries on the Tanakh and Talmud in response to a koshi (difficulty) in the text, so too are the following responses to difficulties in the debate concerning Israel and the Palestinian people.

  • As a liberal Jew, liberal Zionist, and supporter of the State of Israel, one can be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, meaning that one can support two states for two peoples even as both peoples claim the same land as its national home. A 2-state solution will require compromise by Israel and the Palestinians that includes establishing clear borders, sharing Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel and the capital city of Palestine, security guarantees for both states, a demilitarized State of Palestine, shared water, economic and cultural relations. Hamas is not capable of compromise and neither are the extreme right-wing messianists in the Israeli ruling government coalition and settler community in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and so they should not be at the table when negotiations take place. True peace will require that Israelis and Palestinians not demonize the other as illegitimate in their respective educational systems. Two states for two peoples is necessary as a matter of justice for the Palestinian people who deserve, like the Jewish people, to have a nation-state of their own, and for Israel’s self-interest to remain democratic and Jewish.
  • In 1900, there were 80,000 Jews living in the Land and 600,000 Arabs. By 1939, there were 450,000 Jews and 1.05 million Arabs living in Palestine. Jews had flocked to Palestine as European antisemitism intensified. Many thousands of Arabs came from surrounding Arab lands seeking work that became available because of Zionist building projects. Those Arabs who emigrated are called “Palestinian” if they only lived in Palestine for at least 2 years (according to the PLO’s designation). Many have no historic connection to Palestine beyond the past 80 or 90 years.Jews have lived in the Land of Israel continuously since antiquity and the Land was never devoid of Jews since the time of the Biblical Judges (circa 1200 B.C.E.).
  • Zionism is defined generally as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and is, at its heart, the Jewish people’s social justice movement (see below). Zionism began in the late 19th century as part of a European movement in many countries to establish nation states. Zionism was a response to the “problem of the Jews” (i.e. antisemitism) and the “problem of Judaism” (i.e. that Jewish and Hebraic culture would save the Jewish people from disaffection and assimilation). The Zionist movement is highly diverse today from secular to ultra-Orthodox. Zionism presumes that Judaism is far more than a religion; that it is a civilization inclusive of a long history, a Homeland, languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Aramaic), law (Torah, Talmud, Codes, Responsa literature, etc.), ethics, a sacred literature, faith, theologies, rites, rituals, holidays, customs, culture, and the arts.
  • The State of Israel is the modern political expression of Jewish nationalism and is NOT a colonial power, nor is it a foreign element in the Middle East, nor an oppressive racist state inside the Green Line (the armistice line after the 1948 War). The majority of Israelis come from the Arab world, North Africa, Ethiopia, Latin America, Asia, and are people of color. Therefore, it is not a “racist” nation, though there are plenty of racists in Israel. Israel is also not an Apartheid State as was South Africa because every Israeli Arab citizen has equal rights with every Jewish Israeli citizen. Palestinian Israelis, however, living inside the Green Line are treated as 2nd class citizens with respect to services given by the state and, in many cases, there is discrimination. However, unlike Apartheid, in Israel there are no separation laws. Arab Israelis are lawyers, physicians and health care workers, business people, and Members of the Israeli Knesset. There is also an Arab-Israeli citizen on Israel’s High Court. Those Arabs living in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, however, are not Israeli citizens and live under an often harsh military administration. Those Palestinians do not enjoy the same rights as Israeli Jews and Arabs.
  • Judaism is both a universal and a particular tradition, and Zionism serves not only the rights and security of the Jewish people but is the social justice movement for the Jewish people. The ancient Biblical Prophets of Israel, though expressing universal humanitarian values, were speaking specifically to the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. Tikun Olam (translated as “the repair of the world,” originally a mystic concept, is understood today as “social justice”) has universal humanitarian application, but it was never divorced from the peoplehood of Israel (Am Yisrael). The Jewish State has become an arena in which, for the first time in 2000 years, the Jewish people has been able to test our tradition’s ethics and moral principles in the context of our attaining sovereignty and power. Those Jews who focus only on Judaism’s ethical tradition, however, while ripping it from the peoplehood of Israel have done a gross disservice to the nature of Judaism itself.
  • In 1948, 600,000 Jews were expelled and/or fled from antisemitism in Arab Lands after rioting against them was provoked upon the establishment of the State of Israel. The same numbers of Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven from Palestine-Israel after the 1948 and 1967 wars. The former settled in the new State of Israel and the latter settled into refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gaza Strip. However, thousands of Palestinians remained in their villages and cities inside the new State of Israel and were not forced to flee. Both groups of Jews and Palestinian Arabs also left the region and settled abroad. Whereas Palestinian leadership is demanding on behalf of Palestinian refugees the rightful return to their homes and villages that they vacated in the midst of an aggressive  war prosecuted against Israel by the surrounding Arab states (the purpose of which was to destroy the Jewish state of Israel), Jewish refugees from Arab lands have never made a comparable demand upon those Arab nations from which they fled nor do they wish to return to their homes in those Arab nations.
  • The expression “From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free!” (Referring to the Jordan River on the east to the Mediterranean Sea on the west) is essentially an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic declaration because it denies to the Jewish people what every other people in the world are entitled to claim for themselves – the right of self-definition, self-determination and a nation state of their own in their ancestral Homeland.
  • Some Jews are anti-Zionists but are not necessarily self-hating Jews or antisemites. These include extreme orthodox Jews who believe that a Jewish state can only come with the coming of the Messiah, and anti-nationalists, such as those affiliated with The Jewish Voice for Peace. We may not understand them or agree with their perspective, but their positions do not necessarily mean that they are self-hating Jews or antisemitic, though many harbor positions and attitudes that may indeed bleed into antisemitism.
  • Hamas is an extremist, intolerant, anti-liberal, misogynist, anti-LGBTQ, Islamic, autocratic, and theocratic Palestinian terror organization that, before October 7, fired tens of thousands of missiles into undisputed Israeli territory indiscriminately from Gaza since it took over the Strip in 2007 in a violent coup de etat against the Palestinian Authority (PA). Hamas’ first order of business in 2007 was to march leaders of the competitive PA to the highest buildings and throw them to their deaths. They execute Palestinians frequently who speak against the Hamas regime, deny the rights of LGBTQ individuals, and according to their extremist interpretation of Sharia law, punish girls and women with beatings if they express individuality and resist the patriarchal order. They subject girls to clitoral mutilation and women are required to wear the Burqa or Nijab or Hijab as a sign of submission to male dominance and power. Before October 7, Hamas had the approval of less than 30 percent of Palestinian Gazans. No election has been held since 2005. Hamas must be distinguished from the Palestinians as a whole. Many protestors of this war do not distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinian people thereby indicating their lack of understanding of the Palestinians and the historic nature and character of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Hamas conflicts.
  • The Biden Administration has been the most supportive American presidential administration of any in Israel’s history. President Biden has a life-long deep affinity for the people and State of Israel and has a vision of a united regional pro-western coalition that includes Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates, and a reconstituted Palestinian Authority against the Islamic extremist Iran and its Muslim proxies (e.g. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, among others). Biden has called for a pathway to a 2-state solution, and Saudi Arabia has agreed to make peace with Israel if Israel accepts an eventual 2-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To those who criticize Biden as not being pro-Israel enough or as anti-Arab fail to understand the nuances of this conflict, the nature of Hamas and Islamic extremism, and the international stakes for America and western civilization.
  • The current Israeli government is the most extreme, right-wing, supranational, supremacist, and racist government in Israeli history. It is against a 2-state solution and believes that Palestinian-Israeli citizens should not enjoy equal rights with Israeli Jewish citizens. There is still a strong minority of Israeli opinion, however, that recognizes that only in a 2-state solution can Israeli democracy and the Jewish character of the only Jewish state in the world be sustained over the long term. To be pro-Israel and anti-Israeli government is therefore legitimate, especially in a democracy.
  • Diaspora Jews have the right to share our opinions with Israeli leaders based on the premise that we are one people and one greater Jewish family living in the Jewish State and Jewish Diaspora with strong links of affection and identity. Though Diaspora Jews are not citizens of the State of Israel, do not pay taxes, and do not send their children to the Israeli army, what Israel does affects Diaspora Jewish pride and security nevertheless, and we therefore have a right to share our ideas with Israel’s leaders. That is different than our demanding that Israel follow policies we believe it should follow. For the first time during the pre-October 7 protest demonstrations against the anti-democratic judicial overhaul by the current Israeli government, opposition leaders called upon Diaspora Jews to support them and be part of the conversation concerning what Israel’s democracy required.
  • There is a strong minority of extremist and violent West Bank Jewish settlers whose goal is to force Palestinians to leave the West Bank so that Jews can expand the borders of the Jewish State to include all the land between the river and the sea as part of the State of Israel de jure. These extremists are a destabilizing force within Israel.

In the past few weeks, I posted several blogs that help to clarify the difficult issues facing Israel and world Jewry since October 7. See www.rabbijohnrosove.blog. I discuss there anti-Zionism, anti-Israel sentiment, and antisemitism on college campuses, the charge of genocide against Israel, and why Israel is worthy of our love and support in light of this war and all that Israel has contributed to the Jewish people and humanity as a whole.