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What It Really Means to Be the ‘People of the Book’
The room full of Torah scrolls in Miami. Photo: Pini Dunner.
This week, Jewish communities worldwide will read Parshat Yitro, which recounts one of the most defining moments in Jewish history — God’s giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. These directives weren’t just words; they were the first written texts of Jewish tradition, forming the foundation of the Five Books of Moses, known as the Torah — the cornerstone of the Jewish faith. It was this moment that earned the Jews the title “People of the Book.”
But what does being “the People of the Book” really mean? It’s a title we’ve embraced for centuries, and it carries more than one meaning. We’re the people who received the book — the Torah, a divine blueprint for life. We’re also the people whose story is told in the book — the Bible is our collective narrative.
And perhaps most importantly, we’re the ones who’ve placed books at the center of our culture and identity — studying them, teaching from them, and passing their wisdom down through generations. Books aren’t just tools for us — they’re at the heart of what it means to be Jewish.
Clearly, books have always been at the core of Jewish life, tools to uplift and guide. But this week, books hit the headlines for a very different reason. In East Jerusalem, two booksellers, Mahmoud Muna and Munir Muna, were arrested at their widely known bookselling establishment, Educational Bookshop.
Israeli police claim the shop was selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism, and the two owners are being held on charges of disrupting public order. Cue the predictable global outrage: protests, op-eds, and online campaigns demanding the release of these “innocent booksellers.” The shop, after all, is described by its supporters as a “place of coexistence” and “a cultural hub.” But, as it turns out, that is not quite the whole story.
A post by my friend Saul Sadka on X (formerly Twitter) really made me stop and think. Saul met Mahmoud Muna five years ago when he joined a delegation from a center-left American Jewish group visiting the bookstore. The goal of the visit was dialogue, to create an atmosphere of understanding by “hearing the other side.”
But what Saul experienced was something else entirely. Instead of a pleasant bridge-building conversation, he and the group got an hour-long lecture dripping with thinly veiled antisemitism. Mahmoud sneered at the group’s efforts at coexistence and peppered his talk with tropes about Jewish power and “oblique references to their lack of connection to the land.”
Most of the delegation nodded along, possibly because they didn’t detect the malice in the subtext. But Saul and a few others left feeling sick to their stomachs.
“It wasn’t just antisemitic,” Saul wrote. “It reeked of genuine animus. He really enjoyed watching the Jews nodding along, completely unaware they were being mocked.” What struck me most was not only that this wasn’t dialogue but that it was derision disguised as intellectualism — because it took place in a bookshop and was delivered by a supposedly well-educated bookshop proprietor.
And this brings us to the heart of the matter. For Jews, books are sacred not simply because they exist, but because of what they contain and how they’re used. From the moment we received the Torah at Mount Sinai, books have been tools to build a better world — guiding us to live with purpose and integrity.
Contrast that with people like the Munas, who use books to spread hate, justify violence, and incite division. In their hands, books become weapons. That’s what the police claim was happening at the Educational Bookshop, and Saul’s experience suggests those claims are far from baseless. It makes you wonder — not just about the books they were selling but also about the books they chose not to sell.
Of course, the world’s reaction has been as predictable as ever. Mahmoud and Munir Muna have been cast as martyrs of free speech, celebrated as cultural icons targeted by an oppressive regime. No one seems to care about the content of the books they’re accused of selling. No one considers the harm such incitement can cause. The narrative is already fixed: Israel is the villain, and the booksellers are the victims.
But here’s the thing: not all books are created equal. And not everyone who champions books is a true “person of the book.” Being “people of the book” isn’t about celebrating any book just because it has words on a page. Like anything good, books can also be misused for bad.
The Torah, given at Sinai, is the original good book. It’s not just a collection of opinions or ideas — it’s a guide for living, a set of timeless truths meant to ground us and elevate us. That’s why Jews have spent millennia studying it, debating it, and teaching it — not to tear others down, but to build ourselves and the world up.
But when books are turned into tools of destruction — when they’re filled with hate and used to justify violence — even the staunchest advocates of free speech have the right to stand up and say, “Not on our watch.” And that’s exactly what’s happening here.
The Educational Bookshop, far from being a “center of coexistence,” appears to have been a hub for something far more sinister. Mahmoud and Munir Muna are not champions of free speech; they seem to be peddlers of incitement, hiding in plain sight behind the veneer of intellectualism.
The story of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai reminds us that being “people of the book” is a mission, not merely a title. It’s about holding the written word to the highest standard — using it to enlighten, not to inflame.
Each year, as we read the Ten Commandments in synagogues around the world, we are reminded of our sacred duty to recommit to that mission. We must stand against those who twist the power of books, making it clear that the book is not a prop for the basest human instincts. Books are tools — and how we choose to use them defines who we are.
Mahmoud and Munir Muna may run a bookstore, but that doesn’t make them “people of the book.” For them, books appear to have become weapons — tools to ensnare others in pseudo-intellectual justifications for hatred and violence.
We can never accept such a betrayal of the written word. For us Jews, books are sacred tools to enhance life, uplift society, and bring light to the world. And that’ s a difference worth standing up for — and fighting for.
The post What It Really Means to Be the ‘People of the Book’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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In Reversal, Trump Says Russia Attacked Ukraine
US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin shake hands as they meet in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump reversed course on Friday and said Russia did in fact invade Ukraine, and that Kyiv would soon sign a minerals agreement with the United States as part of efforts to end the Ukraine war.
Trump had said on Tuesday that Ukraine “should have never started” the war three years ago, prompting a wave of criticism both domestically and internationally. Pressed on the subject in an interview with Fox News Radio on Friday, he acknowledged Russia had invaded Ukraine on the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Russia attacked, but they shouldn’t have let him attack,” Trump said, adding that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and then-US President Joe Biden should have taken steps to avert the invasion.
Later, Trump predicted a minerals agreement would be reached soon.
“We’re signing an agreement, hopefully in the next fairly short period of time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about a possible deal for Ukraine’s minerals.
Zelensky said separately on Friday that Ukrainian and US teams were working on a draft agreement. “I am hoping for … a fair result,” he said in a video address after sharp exchanges this week between the two leaders.
Trump denounced Zelensky as a “dictator” on Wednesday and warned he had to move quickly to secure peace with Russia, which invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, or risk losing his country.
The change in tone from the United States, Ukraine’s most important backer, has alarmed European officials and stoked fears that Kyiv could be forced into a peace deal that favors Putin.
Zelensky had said Trump was trapped in a “disinformation bubble,” but later toned down his statements and said he was hoping for American pragmatism.
Zelensky on Wednesday rejected US demands for $500 billion in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the United States had supplied nowhere near that sum so far and offered no specific security guarantees in the agreement.
Ukraine has valuable deposits of strategic minerals that the US wants. These include uranium, lithium, cobalt, rare earths and more and are used in applications such as batteries, technology and aerospace.
‘THEY DON’T HAVE ANY CARDS’
Speaking at a White House event earlier on Friday, Trump was critical of Zelensky while refraining from negative comments about Putin.
“I’ve had very good talks with Putin, and I’ve had not such good talks with Ukraine,” Trump said. “They don’t have any cards, but they’re playing tough.”
Separately, the United States on Friday proposed a United Nations resolution to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The three-paragraph US draft, seen by Reuters, mourns loss of life during the “Russia-Ukraine conflict” and “implores a swift end to the conflict.”
Kyiv and its European allies want their own text to be adopted by the UN General Assembly on Monday calling for de-escalation, an early cessation of hostilities and peaceful resolution to the conflict.
The German government said on Friday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Zelensky agreed in a phone call that Ukraine must have a seat at the table in peace talks.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, meanwhile, urged Zelensky to keep up calm and constructive cooperation with Trump.
Duda, whose term in office expires this year, was one of Trump’s preferred international partners during his 2017-2021 presidency and they have described themselves as friends.
Poland’s president is due to meet Trump in Washington on Saturday, Poland’s state news agency PAP reported.
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Syrian Refugee Arrested After Berlin Stabbing as Germany Prepares to Vote
Police officers work at the Berlin Holocaust memorial after a suspected knife attack, February 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
A Syrian refugee arrested over the stabbing of a tourist at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial had been planning “to kill Jews,” prosecutors said on Saturday, the day before an election which is expected to see a surge in support for the anti-migrant AfD.
The 19-year-old suspect appears to have been planning to kill Jews for several weeks – apparently motivated by the Middle Eastern conflict – which is why he chose this location, the prosecutors said in a statement.
Police arrested the suspect, whose hands and trousers were smeared with blood, shortly after the stabbing on Friday evening.
He was found to be carrying a prayer rug, a Quran, a note with verses from the Quran dated the previous day, and the suspected weapon in his backpack, which suggests a religious motivation, the prosecutors’ statement said.
The 30-year-old Spanish tourist underwent emergency surgery after sustaining injuries to his neck and was placed in an induced coma, the statement added, although he was no longer in a life-threatening condition.
Campaigning for Sunday’s election has been marred by a series of high-profile attacks in which the suspects are from migrant backgrounds, shifting the focus away from Germany’s ailing economy and boosting support for the far-right Alternative for Germany. Opinion polls show the AfD is on track to secure second place behind the conservative CDU/CSU bloc.
A January stabbing in which two people were killed, including a toddler, was blamed on an Afghan immigrant, prompting the CDU/CSU bloc to break a taboo on cooperating with the far right to push a motion cracking down on migration through parliament with the AfD’s support.
In December, a Saudi man who had lived in Germany for years, and whose social media posts indicated he sympathized with the AfD, rammed a car into a Christmas market, killing six and injuring hundreds.
The Holocaust memorial, one of the German capital’s most sacred sites, commemorates the six million Jews murdered by Adolf Hitler’s Nazis during World War Two, one of the darkest episodes in human history and a continuing focus of German historical atonement.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the center-left Social Democrats, who have been accused of not doing enough for German security, said the perpetrator must be punished with the full severity of the law and immediately deported from prison.
“We will use all available means to deport violent offenders back to Syria,” she said. “Anyone who commits such acts and so disgustingly abuses the protection offered in Germany has forfeited any right to remain in our country.”
There is, so far, no evidence linking the suspect in Friday’s stabbing to any other persons or organizations, prosecutors said.
The suspect, who arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor, had no prior criminal record in Berlin and was previously unknown to both the police and the judicial authorities.
He was, however, known to police in the eastern state of Saxony, where he lived, for minor offenses related to general criminal activity, Bild newspaper cited the Saxon interior ministry as saying. The ministry did not reply to a request for comment.
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US Piles Pressure on Iraq to Resume Kurdish Oil Exports
FILE PHOTO: An oil field is seen in Kirkuk, Iraq October 18, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo
US President Donald Trump’s administration is piling pressure on Iraq to allow Kurdish oil exports to restart or face sanctions alongside Iran, eight sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
An advisor to the Iraqi prime minister denied in a statement there had been a threat of sanctions or pressure on the government during its communications with the US administration.
A speedy resumption of exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region would help to offset a potential fall in Iranian oil exports, which Washington has pledged to cut to zero as part of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.
The US government has said it wants to isolate Iran from the global economy and eliminate its oil export revenues in order to slow Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.
Iraq’s oil minister made a surprise announcement on Monday that exports from Kurdistan would resume next week. That would mark the end of a near two-year dispute that has cut flows of more than 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Kurdish oil via Turkey to global markets.
Reuters spoke to eight sources in Baghdad, Washington and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, who said that mounting pressure from the new US administration was a key driver behind Monday’s announcement.
All of the sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Iran views its neighbor and ally Iraq as vital for keeping its economy afloat amidst sanctions. But Baghdad, a partner to both the United States and Iran, is wary of being caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s policy to squeeze Tehran, the sources said.
Trump wants Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to sever economic and military ties with Iran. Last week, Reuters reported that Iraq’s central bank blocked five more private banks from dollar access at the request of the U.S. Treasury.
Iraq’s announcement on export resumption was hurried and lacked detail on how it would address technical issues that need to be resolved before flows can restart, four of the eight sources also.
Iran wields considerable military, political and economic influence in Iraq through its powerful Shi’ite militias and the political parties it backs in Baghdad. But the increased US pressure comes at a time when Iran has been weakened by Israel’s attacks on its regional proxies.
Farhad Alaaldin, a foreign affairs adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, said in a statement there was no U.S. threat to impose sanctions if oil exports were not resumed. He noted Iraq’s parliament had already passed a law establishing a price for the oil and it was down to the companies involved to start pumping it to the pipeline.
“Decisions related to the management of national resources are taken in accordance with Iraqi sovereignty and in a way that serves the country’s economic interests,” he said.
CURB SMUGGLING
With the pipeline taking Kurdish crude to the Turkish port of Ceyhan closed since 2023, the smuggling of Kurdish oil to Iran by truck has flourished. The US is urging Baghdad to curb this flow, six of the eight sources said.
Reuters reported in July that an estimated 200,000 barrels per day of cut-price crude was being smuggled from Kurdistan to Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey by truck. The sources said the exports remained at around that level.
“Washington is pressuring Baghdad to ensure Kurdish crude is exported to global markets through Turkey rather than being sold cheaply to Iran,” said an Iraqi oil official with knowledge of the crude trucking shipments crossing to Iran.
While the closure of the Turkish pipeline has prompted an uptick in Kurdish oil smuggling via Iran, a larger network that some experts believe generates at least $1 billion a year for Iran and its proxies has flourished in Iraq since al-Sudani took office in 2022, Reuters reported last year.
Two US administration officials confirmed the US had asked the Iraqi government to resume Kurdish exports. One of them said the move would help to dampen upward pressure on oil prices.
Asked about the administration’s pressuring of Iraq to open up Kurdish oil exports, a White House official said: “It’s not only important for regional security that our Kurdish partners be allowed to export their own oil but also help keep the price of gas low.”
There has been close military cooperation between authorities in Kurdistan and the United States in the fight against Islamic State.
Trump’s restoration of the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran was one of his first acts after returning to office in late January. In addition to efforts to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero, Trump ordered the US treasury secretary to ensure that Iran can’t use Iraq’s financial system.
Trump also came into office promising to lower energy costs for Americans. A sharp drop in oil exports from Iran could drive up oil prices, and with it the gasoline price worldwide.
The resumption of Kurdish exports would help offset some of the loss to global supply of lower Iranian exports, but would cover only a fraction of the more than 2 million bpd of crude and fuel that Iran ships. However, Iran has proven adept in the past at finding means to circumvent US sanctions on its oil sales.
Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said the restart of exports from Kurdistan could help increase global oil supplies at a time when output was disrupted from other regions, such as Kazakhstan, where exports have dropped this week following a Ukrainian drone attack on a major pipeline pumping station in southern Russia.
“At this point in time, I believe the market has adopted a relatively neutral but nervous stance on crude oil prices,” he said.
HURDLES TO RESTART
The pipeline was halted by Turkey in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad $1.5 billion in damages for unauthorized exports between 2014 and 2018.
There are still unresolved issues around payment, pricing and maintenance, the sources told Reuters. Two days of talks in the Kurdish city of Erbil this week failed to reach agreement, sources said.
The federal government wanted exports to restart without making commitments to the KRG on payments and without clarity on the payment mechanism, a source familiar with the matter said.
“We can’t do that. We need clear visibility on guarantees,” the source said.
Oil companies working in Kurdistan also have questions over payments.
Executives from Norwegian firm DNO told analysts on Feb. 6 that before agreeing to ship oil through the pipeline to Ceyhan they wanted to understand how the company would be paid for future deliveries and how it would recoup $300 million for the oil it had delivered before the pipeline was shut.
Turkey has yet to receive any information from Iraq on the resumption of flows, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told Reuters on Wednesday.
A restart could also cause issues in OPEC+, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus Russia and other allies, where Iraq has been under pressure to comply with its pledge to reduce its output. Additional supply from the Kurdish region could put Iraq over its OPEC+ supply target.
An Iraqi official said it was possible for Iraq to restart the pipeline and remain compliant with OPEC+ supply policy.
Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at investment bank UBS, said the overall impact of the resumption could be muted.
“From an oil market perspective, Iraq is bound to the OPEC+ production deal, so I wouldn’t expect additional production from Iraq in case of a pipeline restart, but just a change in the way it is exported (currently, among others, using trucks),” he said.
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