I have been to Efrat and met with community leaders. This is a community which has forged relationships with its Arab neighbors, regularly interacts as a sister community from my experience and are reasonable,, peace loving and entitled to its hard won place in Judea. I have also personally visited the Nova and recorded a moving video of the memorial. If interested reply.
Every word you have written is from the heart and true. I realize this is largely an echo chamber, but it is an echo chamber of the truth about this conflict.
Israel is not perfect. It has its jerks and bad actors like every country, but I would like to highlight a very recent example of an episode in the last week which reveals the heart and souls of the Jewish people who live in the Jewish State:
A 4 year old Jewish boy Yuval Kogan went missing on a walk with his father and sisters. He had wandered off on a sandy isolated beach near Ashkelon, a southern city on the shores of the Mediterranean. It became apparent very soon that this boy's life was in danger and the cry went out from the parents to PLEASE help find our son.
Thousands joined in within an hour and the search went on for hours into the night. People were losing hope. Maybe a kidnapping, or worse, but it continued minute by minute into the next morning when a volunteer riding a mule because of the adverse dry and sandy conditions found the boy. He wouldn't have made it through the day. The videos show hundreds of total strangers (in Israel there is no such thing, Ahm Yisroel is one family) celebrating the miracle like it was their own son.
That is Israel in a nutshell.
So go to NOVA and tell us what you would do if 1200 relatives of your family are brutally murdered in unimaginable ways not just by a terrorist army, but civilians who have been taught from early childhood that Jews are the devils, monsters, inhuman. Then along the way are taught that martyrdom is a reward for hiding behind your own children and family and getting them killed in the name of Jihad.
They sit in their ivory towers sucking up the lies, the words Apartheid, Genocide, War Criminals demonizing the Jewish State and of course, because they live in their polite superior world they avoid the "This is because it's the Jews," overt form of anti-Semitism. It's the Zionism not Jew hatred they come down on. It's still all comes down to the 3 D's, Demonization, Double Standards, and Delegitimization.
The accusation of Israel as colonizers is another outrageously false narrative which has been culturally and scientifically refuted through genome testing. Whether a refugee has come from Iraq or Yemen, Hungary or Poland, the Jewish people did not mix or intermarry outside of their communities and genome testing shows matches which indicate irrefutably all have Levantine sources.
They can all say what they want, it's our land, the land of our forefathers we have turned into a Garden of Eden from the swamps the Jewish settlers came to in the late 19th century and turned to in prayer for over 3000 years, and 2000 years of exile. over 2500 years before Mohammed was born. So let's get off the indigenous B.S. the Arabs with their Western backers have tried to sell.
In closing, through this horrific almost 3 years since October 7th, 2023, the resilience of the Jewish people of Israel is an inspiring and miraculous demonstration of the permanence in OUR land from the River to the Sea!
Right on the head. I love reading it. And...Only subhuman beings use their own children and their sick civilians as human shields. They are not only cowards but also evil. We don't want those subhumans to be roaming this planet among us.
You are right to separate the noise from the principle. Expecting lies from Hamas, from activists, and from distant academics is one thing. Hearing a Jewish communal leader treat “war criminal” as a settled verdict against an Israeli prime minister is something else entirely. That is not analysis. It is the abandonment of the presumption of innocence — the same presumption Jews have spent centuries watching others discard when it was convenient.
The Dreyfus parallel is exact. Accusation first, narrative locked, evidence later (if at all). We are supposed to know better.
You live the war. Rockets, reservists gone for months, funerals in your own communities, tunnels under hospitals and schools, hostages held beneath civilian areas. That is not a seminar topic. It is the operational reality. The question you put to the critics remains unanswered because most of them have no answer: how do you fight an enemy that deliberately embeds its military infrastructure inside the civilian population and then demands the world treat every strike as a crime?
Israel’s own courts have constrained governments, overruled ministers, and even imprisoned a former prime minister. That is not the profile of a country incapable of investigating itself. The ICC was designed as a court of last resort under the complementarity principle. Treating its filings as final moral judgments, especially given the documented problems with its own prosecutor, is not serious legal reasoning. It is political theater.
Your closing point is the one that matters most. When Jewish leaders casually repeat the accusation as established fact, the world does not hear careful nuance. It hears confirmation. “Even the Jews agree.” That sentence travels farther and faster than any later clarification.
This is not about defending any single politician. Governments change. The principle does not. Allegations are not convictions. Evidence still matters. And after everything this people has endured, Jews should be the last to hand the oldest accusation a fresh coat of respectability.
I felt the same way when I learned that there were Rabbis who supported and actually met with Mamdani! I’ve given up trying to figure out people’s thinking.
This is an excellent summarization of the whole situation. Thanks for writing
Why not name this person? They should not be gifted immunity from the harm they do to Jews worldwide.
I have been to Efrat and met with community leaders. This is a community which has forged relationships with its Arab neighbors, regularly interacts as a sister community from my experience and are reasonable,, peace loving and entitled to its hard won place in Judea. I have also personally visited the Nova and recorded a moving video of the memorial. If interested reply.
Every word you have written is from the heart and true. I realize this is largely an echo chamber, but it is an echo chamber of the truth about this conflict.
Israel is not perfect. It has its jerks and bad actors like every country, but I would like to highlight a very recent example of an episode in the last week which reveals the heart and souls of the Jewish people who live in the Jewish State:
A 4 year old Jewish boy Yuval Kogan went missing on a walk with his father and sisters. He had wandered off on a sandy isolated beach near Ashkelon, a southern city on the shores of the Mediterranean. It became apparent very soon that this boy's life was in danger and the cry went out from the parents to PLEASE help find our son.
Thousands joined in within an hour and the search went on for hours into the night. People were losing hope. Maybe a kidnapping, or worse, but it continued minute by minute into the next morning when a volunteer riding a mule because of the adverse dry and sandy conditions found the boy. He wouldn't have made it through the day. The videos show hundreds of total strangers (in Israel there is no such thing, Ahm Yisroel is one family) celebrating the miracle like it was their own son.
That is Israel in a nutshell.
So go to NOVA and tell us what you would do if 1200 relatives of your family are brutally murdered in unimaginable ways not just by a terrorist army, but civilians who have been taught from early childhood that Jews are the devils, monsters, inhuman. Then along the way are taught that martyrdom is a reward for hiding behind your own children and family and getting them killed in the name of Jihad.
They sit in their ivory towers sucking up the lies, the words Apartheid, Genocide, War Criminals demonizing the Jewish State and of course, because they live in their polite superior world they avoid the "This is because it's the Jews," overt form of anti-Semitism. It's the Zionism not Jew hatred they come down on. It's still all comes down to the 3 D's, Demonization, Double Standards, and Delegitimization.
The accusation of Israel as colonizers is another outrageously false narrative which has been culturally and scientifically refuted through genome testing. Whether a refugee has come from Iraq or Yemen, Hungary or Poland, the Jewish people did not mix or intermarry outside of their communities and genome testing shows matches which indicate irrefutably all have Levantine sources.
They can all say what they want, it's our land, the land of our forefathers we have turned into a Garden of Eden from the swamps the Jewish settlers came to in the late 19th century and turned to in prayer for over 3000 years, and 2000 years of exile. over 2500 years before Mohammed was born. So let's get off the indigenous B.S. the Arabs with their Western backers have tried to sell.
In closing, through this horrific almost 3 years since October 7th, 2023, the resilience of the Jewish people of Israel is an inspiring and miraculous demonstration of the permanence in OUR land from the River to the Sea!
Pls NAME this Jewish 'leader'.
He/she had the audacity to print this lie, then give him/her the EXPOSURE deserved.
Right on the head. I love reading it. And...Only subhuman beings use their own children and their sick civilians as human shields. They are not only cowards but also evil. We don't want those subhumans to be roaming this planet among us.
Yonah,
This one cuts clean.
You are right to separate the noise from the principle. Expecting lies from Hamas, from activists, and from distant academics is one thing. Hearing a Jewish communal leader treat “war criminal” as a settled verdict against an Israeli prime minister is something else entirely. That is not analysis. It is the abandonment of the presumption of innocence — the same presumption Jews have spent centuries watching others discard when it was convenient.
The Dreyfus parallel is exact. Accusation first, narrative locked, evidence later (if at all). We are supposed to know better.
You live the war. Rockets, reservists gone for months, funerals in your own communities, tunnels under hospitals and schools, hostages held beneath civilian areas. That is not a seminar topic. It is the operational reality. The question you put to the critics remains unanswered because most of them have no answer: how do you fight an enemy that deliberately embeds its military infrastructure inside the civilian population and then demands the world treat every strike as a crime?
Israel’s own courts have constrained governments, overruled ministers, and even imprisoned a former prime minister. That is not the profile of a country incapable of investigating itself. The ICC was designed as a court of last resort under the complementarity principle. Treating its filings as final moral judgments, especially given the documented problems with its own prosecutor, is not serious legal reasoning. It is political theater.
Your closing point is the one that matters most. When Jewish leaders casually repeat the accusation as established fact, the world does not hear careful nuance. It hears confirmation. “Even the Jews agree.” That sentence travels farther and faster than any later clarification.
This is not about defending any single politician. Governments change. The principle does not. Allegations are not convictions. Evidence still matters. And after everything this people has endured, Jews should be the last to hand the oldest accusation a fresh coat of respectability.
Well said. Stand your ground.
Semper Fi and have a Blessed day 🙏
I felt the same way when I learned that there were Rabbis who supported and actually met with Mamdani! I’ve given up trying to figure out people’s thinking.
Very well laid out points to present to those that are faced with a deluge of lies produced on this topic but still willing to listen to a reason.
Don't feel bad about "Jewish leader" . Just another useful idiot.
What a great question to ask people who say stupid things like— but more Palestinians were killed than Israelis.
As a Jew, I despise any Jew who sides with the "palestinians", especially if it involves a lie. Who is the so-called leader?
Another excellent essay, Yonah! As others have asked (if you’re able) who was this Jewish communal leader?
What happens when an accusation becomes accepted knowledge before the evidence underneath it has been adequately tested?
I agree 1000% and a smooch!
Good one….But which “community leader” were you referring to? Out him/her/it.
רסקו את הכושים חמאס, חיזבאללה ואיראן. ואז נחזור לאתיקה ולדמוקרטיה.
This is a Must-Read
Good job... 74.43% porn