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Street fights over prayer offer liberal Israelis a chance to define a Judaism they can believe in
(JTA) — Israeli, observant Jews living in the United States, and especially here on the West Coast, are aware of the time difference between them and Israel at the beginnings and endings of holidays. While Israel celebrates — or commemorates — meaningful days, I’m behind, still preparing. So unlike my family and friends in Israel who observe Yom Kippur and found out only after their sundown what transpired on Monday in Tel Aviv, I read reports and watched videos of the clash between secular and religious Jews in Dizengoff Square as it unfolded.
Feeling both devastated by the ruining of Yom Kippur prayers and angry at the provocation and manipulation by those who organized the Tel Aviv services, I entered Judaism’s holiest day with a heavy heart and teary eyes.
And yet, in the days since, I also found some reason for hope that this painful moment was a watershed in Israel’s path, in which secular Israeli liberals may claim Judaism on their own terms, despite a religious establishment that sees Orthodoxy as its only legitimate expression.
In brief, Rosh Yehudi (translated “Jewish head”), an organization whose goal is to spread Orthodox Judaism in secular Israel, received approval from the Tel Aviv municipality to conduct Yom Kippur services in Dizengoff Square. These services have been taking place since the early days of the pandemic, and many people — observant and secular alike — attend them. This year the municipality approved the services so long as they would not include a mechitza, a physical divider separating men and women, a decision that the courts supported. The context of the city’s decision was the ongoing assault by the government and its followers (in the name of religion) on the core values of Israeli liberals — specifically gender equality.
Rosh Yehudi declared it would abide by this condition and many people who just wanted to pray came to its services. Yet right after Yom Kippur started, religious activists — supported by the police on site — created a makeshift divider out of Israeli flags. In response, secular protesters, many of them affiliated with the mass movement to protest the government’s efforts to weaken Israel’s judiciary, interrupted the services by whistling, chanting “Shame!” and removing the makeshift divider, ultimately stopping the services. Similar protests of public Orthodox Yom Kippur services took place at other sites throughout Tel Aviv and other predominantly secular cities within Israel.
For decades, Yom Kippur in Israel has been a unique day. Despite a lack of laws regulating the day, no cars are seen on the roads. Praying, biking, walking and talking, observant and secular Jews mix in the streets and synagogues across Israel. But the events of the last nine months in Israel destroyed that fragile harmony.
Israel is once again caught in a war of narratives. Is it a story of Orthodox activists defying the court’s decision and intentionally causing provocation, forcing gender segregation in the bastion of Israeli secularism? Or is it a story about how Israeli liberals, protesters and the left hate religion and religious Jews?
Setting aside the blame game, the events of Yom Kippur raise two sets of questions for Israel’s future. The first is the nature of the Israeli public square as it relates to Israel’s Jewish character. What should be the boundaries of tolerance to illiberal practices such as gender separation when they are a part of a religious practice? Was the city right to limit the traditional form of Orthodox prayer due to the public nature of the space? Were the protesters wrong in not respecting this tradition? Should attempts at the religionization of the public sphere and political climate be ignored or taken into consideration?
The more profound question — and the one that is much harder to answer — revolves around the nature of Judaism itself. Who claims what in the name of Judaism will have lasting repercussions for the future of Israel long after the particulars of this year’s Yom Kippur are forgotten? And to that end, I want to suggest that a possible change is afoot in how secular Israeli liberals see Judaism.
For decades, Israel has been caught in a social dichotomy: right-wingers are seen as conservative and religious or traditional, whereas left-wingers are seen as liberal and secular. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embraced this dichotomy as early as 1997 when he claimed that the Israeli left “had forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” He doubled down on this view at the end of Yom Kippur this year when he stated, “The leftists had rioted against Jews.”
This dichotomy is also promoted by the Israeli left. About a week ago, former Meretz leader Zehava Galon shared the following post on X: “The problem with Israeli society is the assumption that there is wisdom in Judaism even though it is a manifest of Orthodox Jewish men who weren’t particularly smart. It’s time for us to realize that … their cart is full of inciting and dangerous nonsense, and it’s time we left it on the side of the road.” Galon represents the view of many in the Israeli liberal camp today who say they are ready to abandon Judaism, which they equate with Orthodoxy interpreted in the most extreme way.
Indeed, for decades haredi and Religious Zionist rabbis and politicians in Israel have sought to dictate only one option for Judaism: an uncompromising religious Orthodoxy. This conception profoundly contradicts the values of Israeli liberals, and therefore many like Galon say they reject Judaism in any form. But in doing this, Israeli liberals also allow the most extreme elements within Israeli Judaism to deepen their grip and shape Judaism as they see fit.
As a result, secular Israeli liberals reduce themselves to a marginalized minority within Israeli society, the majority of whose members seek a connection to tradition and Judaism and distance themselves from values that run counter to it. Surveys show that only a minority of the general Israeli public supports the protesters’ actions on Yom Kippur, regardless of the motivations or provocations of the services’ organizers. If faced with an either/or choice between a discriminatory version of Judaism and universalist liberalism, the Israeli majority will choose the former.
For a long time, only a minority of Israelis actively worked against this dichotomy. Liberal Religious Zionist, Conservative and Reform Jews, as well as Jewish Renewal activists, mostly stood alone in trying to create and defend a liberal Israeli Judaism. But in the aftermath of Yom Kippur, this might be changing.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid shared on X that his neighbor didn’t fast on Yom Kippur for the first time in 30 years to spite the other camp. His response was telling: “You lost. You gave them ownership of your Judaism.” He went on to offer the following observation:
We don’t have anything to prove. And we don’t need anyone’s approval that we are good Jews. We have our own version, no less whole. The version that says that we chose to live in this country because we have roots here. That the Bible is our book, that the Hebrew of Ezekiel and Isaiah is the language of our dreams, that we are part of a community that has memories and commitments. We are the flag bearers of a Judaism that is not messianic, not racist, not arrogant and not violent.
Unlike Galon’s view that implicitly rejects all Judaisms because of how Orthodox Judaism is interpreted today by the government and its followers, Lapid offers an alternative vision by laying claim to a more expansive version of Judaism, whether based on beliefs, culture and/or a shared history.
A nascent but growing chorus of voices in Israel is creating just such an alternative. At nearby HaBima Square in Tel Aviv, a Conservative, egalitarian service took place at the end of Yom Kippur. The Neilah prayer that closes Yom Kippur started with 20 participants and ended with 300. Secular neighborhoods in northern Tel Aviv have plans to build a public secular sukkah and conduct egalitarian Hakafot (dancing with the Torah) on Simchat Torah. And as a response to Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s ultimately abandoned plans for a prayer/provocation on Dizengoff Square, the protest movement offered public, egalitarian prayer on HaBima Square Thursday night, which hundreds attended.
Two days after Yom Kippur, Magi Otsri, a writer and legal scholar and one of the protest movement’s leading online figures, posted a short video that went viral. In it, Otsri notes that Israeli Orthodoxy’s unwillingness to change the halacha of separating men and women during prayer is based on sexist, power-based notions of women created by men. She asserts that in the past biblical rules were easily changed when it suited religious decision-makers. What’s fascinating is that the secular, Tel Aviv-based Otsri uses arguments that were until now only employed by people internal to Orthodoxy (such as religious feminists). Referring to religious mechanisms for bypassing the prohibition on making loans with interest and the religious rules of war, Otsri is not making her argument on strictly liberal grounds but employing the language of Judaism.
Today, more than ever, Israeli liberals are at a crossroads. In the past nine months, they have articulated a Zionism they have embraced and claimed as their own. Will they leave Judaism behind, or will they claim it too?
Given the rate of shocking events in Israel, discerning social trends in Israel from afar can be overwhelming. But amid the conflicting narratives and deafening discourse, I want to encourage those who care about Israel to listen for and encourage the softer and more subtle sounds of Judaism in the words and deeds of Israeli liberals.
The events on Yom Kippur might lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of a religious war, where Israeli Judaism will be lost to the hands of religious extremists and Israeli liberalism will disconnect entirely from Judaism. Such an outcome is desired by some in both the Orthodox and liberal camps, not to mention the government. But this is not a foregone conclusion, as the words and deeds of Israeli liberals after Yom Kippur reveal. There is an alternative: a more humanistic and pluralist vision of Judaism that Israeli liberals ought to embrace and nurture if they want to win over Israeli society to their vision of the future.
In Jewish tradition, the High Holidays are days of judgment for the past year and a time for resolutions for the coming year. According to tradition, divine judgment starts on Rosh Hashanah, but the verdict is only submitted for enforcement on the last day of Sukkot, or Hoshana Rabbah — to give people every last chance to set a new course.
The events on Yom Kippur were undoubtedly heartbreaking, but we are still only halfway through the High Holidays. There is no better time in the Jewish calendar for Israeli liberals to change the trajectory of Israeli Judaism. As a member of the protest movement posted the day after Yom Kippur, “The protest movement should do for Judaism what it did for the flag. Embrace [it]. Hard.” Instead of blaming the people or groups responsible for the old dichotomy, we just might be witnessing Israeli liberals taking responsibility for a Judaism they believe in.
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UNRWA Meets the Spanish Inquisition
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
JNS.org – The collaboration between UNRWA, the U.N. agency solely dedicated to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and the Hamas rulers of Gaza continues unabated.
Two episodes over the last week underscore that claim. On May 14, Israeli jets carried out a precision strike against a Hamas war room and weapons depot that was concealed beneath an UNRWA school in Nuseirat. Fifteen terrorists—10 of them members of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force—were killed in the strike. Meanwhile, three days earlier, the Israelis released aerial surveillance footage of armed Palestinians in an UNRWA compound in the southern city of Rafah, where the IDF is facing off against four Hamas battalions. The video showed the gun-toting Palestinians milling inside the compound, from where they launched attacks on the gathering Israeli forces.
The intermingling of UNRWA facilities and personnel with Hamas and its nefarious aims has been a constant theme of Israeli messaging throughout the current war in the Gaza Strip. At the beginning of this year, it seemed as if other Western countries shared Israel’s concerns, with 18 of them, among them the United States, suspending funding to UNRWA. However, as the NGO UN Watch has documented, in the intervening period, nine of them have quietly restored their fiscal support. One of these countries was Germany, whose foreign ministry declared in an April 24 statement that UNRWA’s verbal willingness to implement the recommendations of an independent commission headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna was enough to turn the money faucet back on. Israel’s vociferous objections—pointing out that Colonna had elided Jerusalem’s claim that more than 2,000 UNRWA staff members retain ties with Hamas—made no difference to the Germans, nor to the Japanese, or the Canadians or the other six nations who resumed financial assistance to the agency.
In the midst of all this, UNRWA received an award from the government of Spain—one of the countries that has maintained its funding throughout the conflict triggered by the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The spectacle of a U.N. agency that indulges a terrorist group, whose tactics include the mass murder and rape of civilians for the crime of being Jews, being feted like this is, of course, deeply regrettable. But looked at from another angle, it is highly appropriate.
The award presented to UNRWA director general Philippe Lazzarini by Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares during his visit to New York on April 19 inducted him into the “Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic.” The “Isabella” referred to here is Queen Isabella I of Castile, who ruled Spain alongside her husband, King Ferdinand II, from 1474 until her death 30 years later. In 1492, at the height of the Spanish Inquisition, Isabella and Ferdinand issued an order for the ejection of Spain’s Jewish population, estimated to have been 300,000-strong.
The king and queen’s announcement of the expulsion—known as the Alhambra Decree—is on display, fittingly, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Spanish Jews were given four months to pack up their belongings and settle their affairs, a chaotic and painful process that left Spain as a country economically and culturally impoverished. Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire, who offered shelter to some of these Jews (among them my own family, who lived for centuries under Turkish rule in the Balkans), poked fun at the Spanish monarchs, questioning the judgment of those who would degrade their own kingdom only to “enrich ours.” In making that observation, Bayezid inadvertently grasped one of the more curious aspects of Jew-hatred—that its advocates will push for it relentlessly, even when it doesn’t suit their own interests to do so.
One of the more curious aspects of Jew-hatred is that its advocates will push for it relentlessly, even when it doesn’t suit their own interests.
Few institutions would be as receptive as UNRWA when it comes to Spain expressing pride in a monarch who deservedly has the reputation as one of the worst persecutors of Jews in their history. The history of antisemitism has been captured in a simple formula: You have no right to live among us as Jews; you have no right to live among us; you have no right to live. Queen Isabella’s place on this spectrum is evident and unarguable. Equally, Hamas belongs there no less. The Iranian-backed organization doesn’t like Jews, doesn’t like Jews living among Muslims and doesn’t like Jews being alive at all. They may be separated by seven centuries, but Isabella and UNRWA, which has actively promoted Hamas-style antisemitism in its schools, have a huge amount in common when it comes to the Jewish people.
Were Hamas to succeed in its goal of eliminating Israel as a sovereign state, we might well expect an announcement to that end not dissimilar to the Alhambra Declaration. Those Jews who survived the destruction of their only state would, if they were lucky, be given four months to liquidate their assets, hand over their properties to “returning” Palestinian refugees and make their way out of the country. No doubt some would figure out a way to stay—probably by hiding their Jewish identities and attempting to integrate with the rest of the population, as those Jews who remained in Spain after the expulsion did. UNRWA, by a twist of historical irony, might even offer to shepherd their exit within parameters set by Hamas that would prevent forever any possibility of returning. While such a scenario may seem improbable today, if history has taught us anything, it’s that it’s not improbable tomorrow.
The history of antisemitism has been captured in a simple formula: You have no right to live among us as Jews; you have no right to live among us; you have no right to live.
Fundamentally, the problem here is that too many states—not just Turkey, Iran, Russia, North Korea, China and other citadels of authoritarian rule, but democracies as well—believe that the way to convince the Palestinians to accept peace is by kowtowing to their jealously guarded victimhood status.
By the end of this month, it’s likely that several European Union member states, including Spain and also Ireland, Malta, Slovenia and Belgium, will have unilaterally recognized an independent Palestinian state. Albares is one of the foreign ministers actively promoting the fiction that such a move will bolster, rather than undermine, the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel that will coexist peacefully.
Deep down, you have to believe that Albares knows that’s simply not true—that most Palestinians, as successive opinion polls since Oct. 7 have borne out, regard a state alongside Israel not as a final settlement but a step towards conquering the entire land “from the river to the sea.” These are the stakes that Israel has to contend with when it deals with diplomats and other foreign officials quietly sympathetic to the idea that the Jewish state shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Isabella the Catholic would be proud.
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The UN’s World of the Absurd
Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, delivers a speech remotely at the UN General Assembly 76th session General Debate in UN General Assembly Hall at the United Nations Headquarters on Friday, September 24, 2021 in New York City. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI Pool via REUTERS
JNS.org – Only in the world of the absurd can a despicable purveyor of terror, Hamas, carry out a brutal massacre, killing over a thousand innocent people, torturing, murdering and carrying out sadistic mass rape, over a space of just a few hours, and then run home to Gaza taking with them hundreds of hostages.
Only in the world of the absurd can the Palestinian representative organization that encourages, finances, supports and represents such murderers be feted and upgraded by the majority of member states in the international community.
Only in the world of the absurd can a group of non-democratic, terror-supporting states oblige the United Nations General Assembly by proposing a resolution that indulges in pampering a terror-supporting entity in a misguided and surreal demonstration of naïveté, skewed political correctness and acute hypocrisy.
Only in the same world of the absurd can 143 states parrot their support for what they blindly proclaim to be a “two-state solution” without really understanding what they are talking about out of ignorance and stupidity.
Only in the world of the absurd can the majority of the international community deliberately ignore the openly declared genocidal intentions of Iran, Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in their efforts to eliminate the Jewish state and kill all Jews. And this, while at the same time upgrading the Palestinian representation in the United Nations.
Lastly, only in the world of the absurd can all this happen at the same time as incited and handsomely financed and organized groups of violent, hysterical, antisemitic demonstrators occupy campuses and town centers in U.S. and European cities, calling for the elimination of the only Jewish state.
Shooting blanks for statehood
Despite the artificial hype surrounding this resolution, the bottom line is that this upgrade does not grant the Palestinians the status of statehood or U.N. membership that they wished to receive. The U.N. General Assembly has neither authority nor jurisdiction to establish states and grant membership status without Security Council sanction.
The sad naïveté and hypocrisy of those states that proposed and voted in favor of this abnormal new General Assembly resolution are evident in their stated determination in the body of the resolution to the effect that “the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the U.N. in accordance with article 4 of the U.N. Charter.”
But the U.N. Charter article 4 requires that United Nations membership be open to “all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter.”
One may legitimately ask if the self-respecting states voting in favor of this resolution, including Russia, China, Norway, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, and E.U. member states Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain, genuinely believe that the Palestinians are, or could be a “peace-loving state,” or is this just self-delusion, artificial political correctness or naive wishful thinking?
International law requires the fulfillment of universally accepted criteria for statehood, including control of a defined population and territory and enforcement of the rule of law, none of which the Palestinian Authority has ever fulfilled. This is in addition to the Charter requirement of being a peace-loving state, assuming responsible governance and the capability of respecting international obligations. Therefore, it is clear that this resolution is nothing more than a sad and miserable fiction, a sham.
Clearly, no element of the Palestinian political existence—neither the infamous and brutal terror organization Hamas nor the terror-supporting PLO and its Palestinian Authority—can seriously claim to fulfill such criteria.
Like all General Assembly resolutions, the resolution is not binding, only recommendatory. It does not represent international law and only reflects the political views of those states that proposed and supported it.
The various modalities listed in the resolution for improving the seating, establishing a speaking order of the Palestinian delegates in the General Assembly’s chamber and other U.N. bodies, and upgrading their participation in meetings and conferences are cosmetic, symbolic lip-service.
Despite its call for full Palestinian membership, the resolution distinctly denies and negates any notion of full membership in the United Nations. As such, the Palestinian delegation remains nothing more than an observer delegation, wherever and however they may be seated.
The resolution stresses that they have no entitlement to vote and have no right to membership in U.N. organs, including the Security Council.
The violations inherent in the resolutions
However, in the context of the Palestinian obligations set out in the Oslo Accords, this attempted change of status constitutes a serious and fundamental violation of the agreed obligation not to change the status of the territories pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
The Palestinian leadership and Israel agreed that all outstanding issues, including the permanent status of the territories, must be resolved through negotiations and cannot be determined by unilateral action, whether in the United Nations or anywhere else.
Even the United Nations itself, in several resolutions, has given its endorsement to the Oslo Accords as the only agreed-upon means to resolve the Israel-Palestinian dispute.
Similarly, the European Union, Russia, Egypt and Norway, together with the United States, are signatories to the Oslo Accords as witnesses. A vote in favor of this new resolution by these witnesses undermines the Oslo Accords and is contrary to the accepted obligations of states and organizations that witness international agreements.
Indeed, by supporting this new resolution, they seek to bypass the requirements in the Oslo Accords for the negotiation of the permanent status of the territories and attempt to prejudge the outcome of any such negotiations unilaterally.
Despite this resolution’s artificial and ineffectual symbolic and cosmetic aspects, the overall result of the exercise is nevertheless grave and unfortunate. It will be seen by Hamas and the Palestinian leadership as a green light from the international community for them to continue to support and conduct terrorism.
The regrettable message emanating from this resolution is that the international community is not just ignoring Palestinian terror against a fellow U.N. member state; it is encouraging it.
Originally published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
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Is God Protecting Us?
Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law (1659), by Rembrandt. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – It’s been a tumultuous, emotional roller coaster of a week in Israel and around the Jewish world: Memorials, moments of silence and then celebrations, albeit muted and rather subdued under our current difficult circumstances.
In this week’s parsha, Emor, we read about the required standards of behavior of the Kohanim, the Priestly tribe. They are not permitted to come into contact with the dead and their marriage choices are more limited than the average Israelite.
We also find the commandment of Kiddush Hashem. Every Jew, not only a Kohen, is expected to sanctify the name of God. Sometimes, this means actually giving up one’s life for the faith, as millions of our brethren have done throughout the ages. For most of us, however, it means behaving in a way that will bring praise to the God of Israel. When we act morally, ethically and righteously, people generally respect us, and this brings credit to our God and our faith.
Way back at this very first revelation at the Burning Bush, Moses was told by God that we were expected to become a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” When we have lived up to that calling, we have indeed been a “light unto the nations.”
Today, Israel is confronted with a world in which hypocrisy has reached proportions unheard of in the annals of history. The whole planet seems to have lost its moral bearings, and frankly, its senses. Even our friends are pressuring us, and now threatening and extorting us, too.
Yet we must do what we must do. Will all the hundreds of precious, young lives snuffed out be in vain if we don’t finish the job in Gaza?
Things seem very confusing. On the one hand, we recently witnessed the incredibly miraculous hand of God protecting us from a 300-plus missile and drone attack by Iran. The 99.9% success rate of our defenses simply cannot be explained militarily or scientifically. On the other hand, we have lost hundreds of our best brave defenders. Where was God there? Is there a contradiction here?
This is shaping up to be nothing less than an existential war for our very survival. The question is: Are we safe or not? Is God protecting us or not?
My mind goes back to 1991 and the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein of unblessed memory was threatening Israel with his lethal Scud missiles and even chemical weapons. Israel was distributing gas masks to every citizen in case of a chemical attack by the vicious dictator.
Iraq had invaded Kuwait. The United States warned Iraq to get out and gave it a deadline. It was not our battle. Israel has no border with Iraq and the war had nothing to do with Israel. Yet Saddam was threatening us and America provided Israel with the Patriot missile-defense system and asked us to stay out of it. The United States would deal with Iraq.
So they did, but not before Iraq had fired dozens of Scud missiles at Israel. Miraculously, there was not a single fatality.
I remember clearly how the whole Jewish world was petrified at the time. There were prayer meetings and emergency fundraisers for Israel in Jewish communities around the world, including ours.
There was one lone voice in the wilderness, however, who declared that Israel was safe and would be safe from any such attacks. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, went further and advised the Israeli government that gas masks would not be needed. How right he was.
Here in South Africa, the Zionist Federation was organizing a solidarity mission to Israel. The Rebbe encouraged us to join and several of my Chabad colleagues went with me, along with the late Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris. I even took along my 12-year-old daughter, Zeesy. She was the youngest member of the mission.
It is my personal belief that Israel was miraculously protected by God from the Iraqi Scuds because Israel was simply minding its own business. It was attacked for no reason whatsoever. We had done nothing to compromise our security. The heavenly Guardian of Israel responded accordingly.
Similarly, in the recent Iranian attack, we were completely innocent targets. We have no border with Iran and they have zero justification for being involved. So, we suffered not one fatality. Again, God watched over us miraculously.
But when we make strategic mistakes in our approach to Hamas; when we allow international pressure and public opinion to endanger the lives of our valiant young soldiers; when we refrain from bombing and instead send them into booby-trapped buildings; then, tragically, we suffer fatalities.
It’s one thing to boast about being the most moral army in the world (and we are), but is it wise to tell our enemies in advance when and where we are coming for them? We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Our unprecedented noble gestures have been completely ignored by the world, and we are still being accused of genocide. So shouldn’t we be sparing our innocent, precious boys from harm instead?
I am fond of quoting Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who once said, “It doesn’t matter what the world says. It matters what the Jews do.” How true.
I believe that when we do what we must do, then God does what He must do. May we merit His Divine protection now and always and may our defenders be completely safe and successful.
Please God, we will practice Kiddush Hashem by behaving as noble examples of humanity rather than as martyrs in a war in which, sometimes, we seem to be fighting with our hands tied behind our backs. Six million was enough martyrs. Not one more, please God.
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