Tuesday, December 24, 2024
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‘Pure Make-Believe’ – Separating Divestment from Antisemitism

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-
Photo by skigh_tv on Pexels.com

Letter-writer Paul Cunningham picked an especially dreadful week for Jews to proclaim that antisemitism is not tied to divestment from Israel, a divisive topic in his home state of Maine.

Tell that to the Jewish community as a school shooter in California, who once attended school near San Diego, was motivated by Palestinian deaths; an Australian synagogue was set afire; an anti-Israel mob clogged the lobby of a Canadian Parliament building; and an Israeli writer was treated like a hostage at a London airport.

So-called friends of the Palestinians seemed to ramp up antisemitic activities to a whole new level of terror rivaling that of Hamas, just as Cunningham’s letter appeared on the Portland Press Herald website last Friday.

Perhaps we should be comforted by Cunningham’s words: “Divestment from Israel is a political maneuver and has absolutely no connection to religious hatred. The assertion that divestment is inherently antisemitic is pure make-believe. Jews worldwide understand this.”

He adds, “The FBI reports that flourishing Nazi/white supremacist groups are the threat.”

Indeed, the FBI has warned that the most severe violence is committed by the right wing, but leftists also engage in violence such as occupying campus buildings. The leftists constantly violate the law by blocking roads and bridges, and harassing Jewish students. However, they went even further in recent weeks.

I understand that protesters approach the issue with various motives. Many of them have genuine concerns that Israel’s attacks killed thousands of Gaza civilians in its response to the Oct. 7, 2023, slaughter in southern Israel. However, anyone who states that antisemitism has “no connection” to divestment is a liar or a moron.

I know similar incidents are more widespread in places like Amsterdam and Paris, but I feel a more automatic connection when disturbing incidents happen in English-speaking countries.

Especially in America, where a gunman shot and wounded two children in the playground of a private Christian-affiliated school last Wednesday (Dec. 4) and then shot himself to death, according to Butte County authorities in Palermo, Calif., near Sacramento, The Algemeiner newspaper reports. The children, ages 5 and 6, were hospitalized in critical condition.

Gunman Glenn Litton, 56, left behind a note disclosing that the shootings were rooted in his objections to “America’s involvement with genocide and oppression of Palestinians.” What did two young children in northern California have to do with the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza?

Litton had a remote connection to the school, named the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists, as he attended a Seventh-day Adventist school near San Diego when he was a “young man,” and may have had a relative who once attended Feather River, authorities told CNN. Authorities added that they have not determined a “current connection” between Litton and the school where the children were wounded.

Nearly 8,000 miles from San Diego, masked arsonists set fire to a Haredi Orthodox synagogue outside Melbourne in Australia early last Friday morning.  They were seen breaking windows, pouring a liquid accelerant on the floor inside the building and tossing firebombs into the building, according to reports from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the New York Times.

Damage was described as extensive at the synagogue, known as Adass Israel in the town of Ripponlea. Congregants gathered for morning prayers and fled into the streets when the fire broke out. One person suffered a minor injury. Political figures condemned the act, urged that the perpetrators be brought to justice and proposed increasing funding for security at synagogues.

There is no indication so far as whether the arsonists are from the left or the right. However, antisemitic incidents have quadrupled in Australia since Oct. 7, 2023.

Both Jewish and government leaders had to make clear that the fire was an act of antisemitism and it became a matter of debate as to whether it constituted “terrorism.” “Whatever we label it, it is an absolute outrage,” said senior federal minister Murray Watt, as quoted in The Guardian. “It should never have happened and the people responsible have got to be hunted down and pay a price for this.”

But it did happen. So did this: Australia’s one-time brother and sister colonists in Canada last week endured an hour-long anti-Israel demonstration inside the lobby of the Confederation Building in Ottawa, which houses offices of many Members of Parliament.

Demanding an embargo of arms to Israel, protesters were generous enough to allow the MP’s to pass through the clogged room, but the MPs would need to hear their demands first, according to CBC News.

Maybe that is why 14 protesters intercepted by Parliamentary Protective Services were released after being cited for trespassing. Surely Canada has stronger laws to apply to an incident that detains visitors, creates a captive audience, produces a disturbance and potentially delays paramedics and rescue crews in case of an emergency.

Can a trespassing charge be sufficient to deter future building occupations? The protest participants must be running scared now.

And in their former mother country, Israeli writer Alon Penzel – as a one-man captive audience – learned that Oct. 7 was just one incident and that parts of Israel were illegally occupied since 1948. At least, a security officer at Luton Airport in northwest London educated Penzel of this so-called history as the author was held there for an hour on allegedly trumped-up accusations of staging a pro-Israel protest.

UK Lawyers for Israel last week claimed that the security officer harassed and abused Penzel after forcing him “to be falsely detained for over an hour, in public, by a group of security officers, while they cross examined him and investigated (footage) to see if he had been in a protest.”

The airport likely violated the Equality Act 2010 by “creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for him,” UKLFI said in a news release. It also asked the airport to punish the officer.

While Penzel was detained, the UKLFI stated, the officer “said October 7 was ‘only one incident out of many since 1948,’ implying that Israel was to blame for the massacre on 7 October.” He then “told him there had been illegal occupation since 1948, implying that Israel did not have a right to exist at all.”

Penzel was just leaving England after promoting his new book, “Testimonies without Boundaries: Israel October 7th 2023,” which includes first-hand accounts from Nova Festival survivors and medical and rescue volunteers. Perhaps the security officer had an excuse, however weak, for detaining Penzel, but he abused his authority when he lectured Penzel about Israeli history, correct or not.

It sounded like the brainwashing scenes in “The Manchurian Candidate.“

Unbelievable: Biden Admin Asks Israel to Approve Military Aid to PA

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

The Biden administration has privately asked Israel to approve an urgent request for U.S. military aid to Palestinian Authority forces, Arab, American and Israeli officials told Axios on Sunday night.

The request comes after the P.A. launched a rare counter-terror raid in Jenin, where Ramallah for years refused to act against Iranian-backed terrorist groups, in violation of its commitments under the Oslo Accords.

Ramallah launched its operation, dubbed “Defense of the Homeland,” following the Dec. 5 seizure by Hamas and Islamic Jihad of a P.A. vehicle and amid fears that terrorists in the Samaria city could attempt a coup inspired by the swift rebel takedown of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria.

According to Arab media reports, two Arab terrorists have so far been killed by the P.A., including Yazid Jaysa, a leader in the Islamic Jihad-led Jenin Brigades who was reportedly also wanted by Israel.

The ongoing operation “is a make or break moment for the Palestinian Authority,” one official in Ramallah told Axios. “Either [you] act like a state you say you are or go back to being a militant organization.”

P.A. and U.S. officials told the outlet that P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas’s office had briefed the Biden administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s team ahead of the raid. U.S. security coordinator Gen. Mike Fenzel met with the Palestinian Authority police chiefs in preparation for the operation and went over their plans, the P.A. official claimed.

Ramallah reportedly gave Fenzel a list of equipment its forces urgently need, including ammunition, helmets, bulletproof vests, radios, night vision equipment, bomb disposal suits and armored vehicles.

The Biden administration reportedly also asked Jerusalem to release some of the P.A. tax revenues it has frozen so Ramallah can pay the salaries of its forces. The Israeli government has frozen the funds in response to the P.A.’s “pay for slay” policy in which it pays monthly stipends to terrorists and the families of slain terrorists.

Many members of Israel’s security brass support P.A. control over parts of Judea and Samaria as a “moderating force” opposed to Hamas and other Iranian-backed terror groups.

Members of Ramallah’s forces have a long history of carrying out terror attacks against Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians. Last year, Abbas’s Fatah boasted that most of its “martyrs” had served in the P.A. Security Forces.

In addition, the Hamas terrorist organization has recruited dozens of PASF operatives, using them as terrorist combatants and for intelligence gathering, Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster reported in mid-2023.

On Sept. 2, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a “military arm” of Fatah, took responsibility for a double car bombing in Judea’s Gush Etzion region. The following day, the Brigades claimed responsibility for a drive-by shooting that killed three police officers near Hebron, also in Judea.

The P.A.-linked terrorist group vowed that it would continue to “pursue the occupier [Israel] at every intersection, alley and neighborhood, until it is expelled from our land and our holy sites, Inshallah [‘God willing’].”

THE MYTH OF “SETTLER VIOLENCE” with Prof Eugene Kontorovich

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

REGISTER AT ZOOM

Pleading for Permanence

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Hilaire Belloc once wrote that the loss of a family home where previous generations had lived and loved for centuries is “a sharp foretaste of death.” It is a sense that there will be no return, that the collective memory enshrined in the walls of the house will be no more; newcomers, who have no memory of the place and its traditions, will not even recognise its history.

Roger Scruton, that great philosopher of place, wrote that “belonging is a relationship in history.” What happens when both memory and history become weapons of war, when space itself, both sacred and secular, becomes a means by which the enemy destroys the signs and symbols which were, in a sense, the family home, erasing all memory of their presence with deliberate intent?

Conquerors have often destroyed important symbols of the subjugated people’s history or converted them to new use, but there has been a powerful development over the last several decades of the deliberate, systematic destruction of symbols—especially sacred symbols and the signs of the actual presence of a people—to deny historical reality, the eradication of memory as a weapon of war.

This was not just the Taliban destroying ancient Buddhist shrines in Afghanistan; it was far more deliberate and wide-ranging. It is ongoing in one country and seemingly unchallenged by the international community. That might be because, in two specific areas, the attempt to destroy the historical presence of a people was and is being perpetrated by Islamic forces against a Christian culture.

When the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS) swept through Syria and Iraq, beginning in 2014, they immediately began destroying both churches and the Christian symbols within them. Visiting both Syria and Iraq many times, I have seen every Cross in a church defaced, statues broken, and icons scratched and damaged. There was a reason, for example, that ISIS used churches in Mosul as torture centres, prisons, and often places for target practice. It was not only to blaspheme and insult their true purpose, to gloat over the defeated Christian populace, but also to deny the building ever had a sacred use. There was far worse to see. In many places, ISIS destroyed Christian graveyards, something I saw with my own eyes. They not only destroyed the graveyards; they dug up the bodies of the Christian ancestors and threw them away. If there are no graveyards, it means the people were never there. The policy was not merely cultural vandalism; it was deliberate and planned.

Scruton wrote that “sacred spaces are steeped in the hope and sufferings of those who have fought for them. And they belong to others who are yet to be.” To eradicate hallowed ground not only denies the reality of an historical presence but also attempts to ensure that those who are “yet to be” will never return.

This policy is happening in another part of the world at this very moment. This time, not the work of a revolutionary force, but the work of a nation feted across the globe, especially because it has seemingly unlimited amounts of oil and gas. The oldest Christian nation on earth, Armenia, is suffering an historical and cultural genocide to accompany not only the physical genocide of 1915 to 1917 but the forced expulsion of all the Armenian citizens from the territory of Artsakh, or Nagorno-Karabakh, in 2023. In every area that the Islamic nation of Azerbaijan takes from Armenia, churches, monasteries, and religious signs and symbols have been destroyed. Graveyards are desecrated. The famous Armenian khachkar’s, the decorated stone Cross so typical of Armenian culture, some from at least the 9th century, have been broken, moved, or vandalised. Following the example of their Turkish overlords, who accompanied the Armenian genocide of the last century with a similar policy of the destruction of memory and presence, the Turkic Azerbaijanis are seeking to eradicate all signs of the ancient Christian history of Armenia, present since the 4th century. It is, in fact, the prevailing policy and the absurd fantasy of the government of Azerbaijan that the very state of Armenia has never existed, which is precisely why all historical signs must be eliminated. Meanwhile, the world watches and fills the oil tanks and pays the petrodollars.

Christians, certainly both Catholic and Orthodox, flowing from their Hebrew past, have a particular concept of memory, most completely and uniquely experienced in the mystery of the Mass, or Divine Mysteries. This is the sense of the past being made present, called anamnesis; not just the idea of the past being recalled, but, in a particular way, the past being truly present by being remembered.

Although not exactly the same, the presence of hallowed structures, signs, and symbols of memory and presence, makes present the reality, as Scruton again says, of “a relationship that binds both the present and absent generations, and which depends upon the perception of a place as home.”

This matters profoundly to a people who have a deep sense of home even if, like the Armenians, they have been forced to be in the diaspora so often.

Perhaps it is less understood and actively neglected in a West increasingly forgetful of home and culture. Ruled by elites, ‘anywhere’ people as David Goodhart has described them, who actually despise place and nation, secular in thought and contemptuous of religion, especially if it is Christian. Across the West, there is a destruction of memory, a denial of the past, exemplified by the refusal to acknowledge the foundational role of Christianity in the European Constitution; there is a reason why the European Commission is probably the most secular institution in Europe. Although churches, as they rapidly empty, are not being bulldozed, or at least not many, they are being used for other purposes, increasingly as mosques in Britain.

For those of us who care, this increased denial of people and place, their history and culture, as a weapon of war, must be fought vigorously. The defence of Christian Armenia is an imperative for all who claim the name of Christian. As in the Middle East, they belong where they have always been, where they deserve to be. As Roger Scruton noted, “By bearing the imprint of former generations, a corner of the earth pleads for permanence.”

Fr. Benedict Kiely is the founder of Nasarean.org, a charity helping persecuted Christians.

Repercussions and Reverberations

By
Michael Kuttner
-

This has been a vintage week where predictable events have followed dramatic consequences.

The question is whether the unfolding dramas could have been prevented or thwarted. Additionally, how effective will subsequent actions prove? In fact, will there be any serious responses or will political waffling and a refusal to face reality once again be the order of the day?

We face challenging times no matter in which part of the globe we live.

For Israelis facing a continuing hostage situation and terrorists from various locations, it’s a continuation of the battle against those who plot, fund and sponsor mayhem.

For Jews living in Diaspora communities, it means increased animosity from haters on the left and right.

Whichever place we find ourselves in, the common denominator is the same.

In Israel, we face an overwhelming double standard from an international community that is focused on supporting irrational policies and folding in the face of jihadist machinations.

In the Diaspora, Jews face indifferent politicians, political opportunism of the worst kind and even outright hostility.

It is true that there are indeed some staunch friends who, despite being faced with a barrage of baseless lies and mendacious media reporting, still stand up for truth. Unfortunately, these allies are facing increased delegitimization and intimidation from an increasingly brainwashed and ignorant sector of society.

One of the earth-shaking developments this week has been the fall of the Assad dictatorship. Like all tyrannies before him, the inevitable demise of this blood-soaked regime was only a matter of time, and it is a pity that it did not occur earlier. One only needs to acknowledge which countries propped him up over all these years to realize the extent of international culpability responsible for the crimes that were committed.

Witnessing the crocodile tears now being shed for Assad’s countless victims by the UN and other such groups makes one cognizant again of the total hypocrisy that prevails. Not one word of condemnation is heard about the support provided by the likes of Iran, Russia, China and others to the Syrian regime over many decades. Years of benign neglect and lack of definitive action against Syrian torture of its own citizens and support for terror groups such as Hezbollah are conveniently whitewashed and swept under the carpet.

Instead, the focus is on Israel’s responses, which have always been aimed at thwarting terror and safeguarding its security.

Observing the euphoria now sweeping all and sundry over events in Syria one can be forewarned as to what develops next. Media exultation over a supposed new “Arab spring” deliberately ignores the reality that those now in charge are nothing more than various versions of jihadist terror groups. Rhetoric by craven European appeasers and clueless political so-called experts leads one to believe that a golden age of democracy is about to dawn. The UN is already talking about removing the Syrian jihadists from their terror listing.

Anyone with even the slightest understanding of Islamic Arab reality knows that, in actuality, one despotic regime will be replaced by yet another copy. This, of course, will not convince those who are desperate to avoid any sort of reckoning with purveyors of hate and incitement against Israel. Those who supported Assad are already pivoting to embrace the new masters in Damascus.

Turkey, a member of NATO, now sees an opportunity to increase its suppression of the Kurds, which, thanks to a gutless response by the democracies, gives a free pass to further crimes against this long-suffering ethnic minority.

The inevitable repercussions will not be long in forthcoming. It remains to be seen whether the incoming American Administration will follow a more realistic policy whereby patronage and support of terror carries dramatic negative consequences.

Terror has not been confined to the Middle East. It has spread to most parts of the globe. Whenever the responses by democratic countries have been vacillating, weak and of a double standard, you can guarantee that hate crimes and incitement against Jews will flourish.

This can be witnessed as Australia, once the lucky country for Jews, joins the ranks of those countries where it is becoming increasingly dangerous to be identified as Jewish. Outbreaks of hate have become more frequent and brazen in recent times. Those perpetrating vandalism and violent confrontations become more emboldened when the authorities enforcing the law are seen to be ineffective and inconsistent.

The recent example of an unauthorized anti-Israel demonstration outside the Sydney Great Synagogue is a perfect example. Chants of vile anti-Jewish and anti-Israel abuse attracted no police penalties. Instead, a Jewish man unfurling an Israeli flag was threatened by the police with arrest if he did not desist. The excuse given by the police that he was “provoking” the demonstrators was a classic case of targeting the victim rather than those breaking the law. If the demonstration was unauthorized, why was it not dispersed and prosecuted?

Concurrently, political gestures intended to mollify the Jewish communities are merely a transparent attempt at damage control. Providing millions of dollars for more cameras will not stop arson attacks as we have seen in Melbourne. Giving millions to the Sydney Holocaust Museum makes great PR, but it will not prevent those already infected with Jew hate from carrying out more violent acts. Though well intended, political hot air will be ignored by those intent on causing hurt. Exhortations by the Jewish establishment to avoid challenging those in authority will merely reinforce the image of a cowering community. Voting against Israel at the UN and claiming a moral equivalence with terror-supporting UN members fuels an increasingly uncontrollable domestic Australian reaction. Albanese and Wong are giving the green light for all Israel and Jew haters.

The most immediate and urgent action which should be taken is the implementation of the full force of the law. Slaps on the wrist, hand-ringing expressions of disgust, and immoral attempts to equate anti-Jew hate with Islamophobia are no longer acceptable.

Unless the Australian authorities get real, the reverberations will become more serious.

Here are two more examples of how disgusting consequences follow dubious actions.

The Vatican has never been entirely at ease with renewed Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land. In fact, it still has a hankering for wresting control of Jerusalem away from the Jewish State. Unfortunately, however, in recent times, the Pope has demonstrated a worrying embrace of historical revisionism. There was his contention that Israel may be guilty of genocidal acts in Gaza.

His latest gesture, however, is so unacceptable that it cannot be ignored. The “Embassy of Palestine” to the Holy See has presented a nativity scene featuring baby Jesus in a manger resting on a kaffiyeh. Pope Francis visited this tableau, thus giving a Papal benediction to the lie propagated by the Palestinian Authority that Jesus was a Palestinian. Instead of refuting this historical assertion, he gave it another lease of life. Following uproar from many Christian quarters worldwide, it now seems that the Vatican may remove this offensive display. Better late than never but the damage has already been done.

In yet another mistaken gesture, the Pope will be giving an audience to Abbas, who is visiting Italy. Embracing a funder of terrorists and a professional denier of Jewish historical realities is not exactly a Christmas gesture that should be appreciated. As Abbas attempts to spread Christmas cheer and accuse Israel of crimes the media no doubt will have a field day. The Vatican should be ashamed for falling for this transparent charade.

It has been revealed that the Biden Administration has renewed a sanctions waiver that will allow Iran access to about US$10 billion in payments from Iraq. This decision to help the world’s most prominent funder of terror was made just two days after the US elections. It is mind-boggling that even at this stage, the outgoing Administration could be so clueless as to allow Iran access to this money. A more classic example of how not to counter terror is hard to find. Hopefully this asinine act of appeasement will be reversed after 20 January.

We are living at a time when the wrong decisions can result in devastating repercussions.

October 7, Antisemitism and the War on the West

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

After the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, a global wave of depraved antisemitism has inverted victims and aggressors and confused good with evil. Israel’s present war will decide the fate of the free world.

  Download pdf  

Dr. Fiamma Nirenstein
Dr. Fiamma Nirenstein was a member of the Italian Parliament (2008-2013) where she served as Vice President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Chamber of Deputies, served in the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, and established and chaired the Committee for the Inquiry into Anti-Semitism. A founding member of the international Friends of Israel Initiative, she is the author of 13 books, including Israel Is Us (2009). She is a Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Credibility of the Israel Policy Forum on matters of murder

By
David Bedein
-
Appeal to the conscience the Israel Policy Forum
 
Attn Michael Koplow, spokesman, IPF
 
You will establish  credibility  of the Israel Policy Forum by demanding that aid to the PA be premised on the repeal of the PA ordinance which mandated that anyone who murders a Jew will receive a salary for life.
 
 
A step in  the right direction would for the IPF to issue a and statement of shock and condolence in the fresh memory of 12-year-old-yehoshua Aharon Ttuvia- who was murdered by Arabs in  a drive by shooting on Wednesday. His  killer turned himself in after the PA awarded him his   fee for life  for  the murder of a Jewish child.
 
Thank you
David Bedein

12-Year-Old Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Murdered by Terrorist on Rt. 60

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-
Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Hy’d

12-year-old Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia was murdered in a shooting attack that took place Wednesday night on Highway 60 south of Jerusalem. Three other people were wounded moderately and lightly. The hunt for the escaped terrorist continues, and security forces have surrounded Bethlehem and its neighbor Husan.

The boy was critically wounded by the terrorist’s gunfire and was taken to Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem for treatment. After several hours of prolonged resuscitation efforts, the doctors declared him dead.

MDA Paramedic Elhai Sofer and Senior EMT Yaakov Greenwald reported: “We arrived quickly at the scene and saw the bus with passengers. We conducted a quick search and found a 12-year-old boy with gunshot wounds to his upper body. We provided life-saving treatment and evacuated him in MDA’s mobile intensive care unit to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital while continuing treatment and fighting for his life.

“A 40-year-old female suffered gunshot wounds to her limbs. She was fully conscious and in moderate condition, and she was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Hospital. Two other injured people, in mild condition from glass shards, were evacuated from the scene. Additional MDA teams are now providing medical care to several people suffering anxiety symptoms.”

A spokeswoman for the Beitar Illit municipality said: “Unfortunately, the child who was seriously injured in the fatal shooting attack on a bus that was traveling from our city to Jerusalem has been pronounced dead. The family, residents of Jerusalem, were returning from a family celebration, and after the celebration, they were caught in the inferno that the terrorist fired at the bus passengers. The terrorist fired 23 bullets, and fled the scene.”

Help Us Rebuild Our Shul

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

A brazen anti-Semitic arson attack on our Shul (Synagogue) has left the Adass Israel Congregation and the broader Melbourne and global community shaken.

The Shul and its mission to create a Jewish place of worship and community will not be deterred.

Help us rebuild and rededicate the Adass Israel Shul complex.

This is an attack not only on Adass Shul, but on every Jew and every Australian.

In fact – this is an attack on democracy and freedom of religion.

WE WILL RESPOND TO THIS HATE WITH LOVE AND STRENGTH, AND REBUILD OUR SHUL BIGGER AND BETTER.

REBUILD OUR SHUL

Parshat Vayishlach: The Remaining Camp Will Survive

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

The stories of our forefathers are not only historical accounts of events gone by, but rather foreshadow the future. Yaakov’s fateful meeting with his brother Eisav has thus been reenacted on numerous occasions throughout the generations.

The story is told that in 1933 after Hitler’s rise to power, the Ponovezher Rav (Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman) asked the Chofetz Chayim: “What will happen to the Jewish People now that we know about Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’?” The Chofetz Chayim answered: “We know what the Torah says in Parshat Vayishlach (32:9) “If Eisav comes to one camp and strikes it down, then the remaining camp shall survive.” The Ponovezher again asked: “Where would this remnant be found?”, to which the Chofetz Chaim replied quoting from this week’s Haftorah: “But on Har Zion there shall be a remnant that escapes, and it will be holy” (Ovadiah 1:17). To this day, this verse from Ovadiah graces the entrance of the Ponovezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak.

On the words quoted by the Chofetz Chayim, the Ramban comments as follows: “The remaining camp will survive – Yaakov knows that at least one camp will survive – his seed will not be totally destroyed by Eisav. This story points to the future when some nations will do evil to our People, while other rulers will gather in the survivors.”

This brings to mind a second episode which took place in mid-1942. Rav Yitzchak Isaac Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, was in the USA and was cautioned by Lord Halifax, the British consul to the USA, that due to the rapid advance of the German general Rommel towards Palestine, the British were advising their citizens to evacuate the Middle East. Rav Herzog, as a British citizen, was asked by Lord Halifax not to return to Palestine. Rav Herzog responded: “Inform them in London of my opinion that there is no reason to be afraid because a Nazi victory in the Middle East would constitute a third destruction of the Jewish settlement in the Holy Land and our Prophets do not prophesy about a third destruction.” Once again: The Bible is not a record of what was, but a depository of knowledge as to what will be.

When a number of rabbis attempted to convince Rav Herzog that he should err on the side of caution, and not to return to Palestine he retorted: “Not returning would cause a big Chilul Hashem, as it would indicate that I am unsure of the veracity of our prophetic tradition.” When the Rav returned to Palestine, as Rommel continued his advance towards them, there were those who suggested preparing mass graves on Har HaCarmel for another occurrence of Masada-like proportions. Rav Herzog was unmoved, however, publicly reiterating his position that our tradition depicted no possibility of a third Churban.

The advance of Rommel on Palestine was finally stopped by British General Montgomery with the famous victory of El Alamein, thereby ending the so called “two hundred days of dread” in Israel.

Interestingly enough, as the battle raged on and fears kept mounting, we find Rav Yosef Kahaneman laying the foundation for the new Ponovezh Yeshiva from upon whose rooftop the Israeli flag is flown to this day on every Yom Ha’atzmaut…

This message of hope emerging from the shadow of the Holocaust brings us back once again to Yaakov and Eisav. Having concluded his rendezvous with his brother the Torah writes that “Yaakov arrived Shalem (intact)” (Bereishit 33:18). As Rashi points out “He arrived intact physically, monetarily and spiritually”.

The remnant that remained on Har Zion continued to rebuild, opening up a new chapter in Jewish history. As some focus on Israel’s physical and monetary situation, it is our responsibility to do all in our power to further Israel’s spiritual rebuilding as well – for then and only then will we truly be Shalem.

Rabbi Yerachmiel Roness

Ramat Shilo, Bet Shemesh

RABBI YERACHMIEL RONESS was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. After serving as a congregational Rabbi and as a Hillel Director in New York City, he made Aliyah in 1983 with his wife Dina and their five young children.

Ever since, Rabbi Roness has dedicated his life to promoting Aliyah. First, as Rabbi of the Jewish Agency’s Absorption Centers, and subsequently as the executive director of the Aloh-Naaleh organization.

This article was taken from Rabbi Roness’s new book: Aloh Na’aleh – Eretz Yisrael and Aliyah in the Weekly Parshah. The book is for sale on Amazon:

https://us.amazon.com/Aloh-Naaleh-%D7%A2%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%A0%D7%A2%D7%9C%D7%94-Yisrael/dp/B0CMB1J5QT/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14895ZICJOK54&keywords=aloh+na%27aleh+book&qid=1698954958&sprefix=aloh+na%27aleh+book%2Cspecialty-aps%2C282&sr=8-1

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