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The Rebbe’s Radical Approach to Anti-Israel Jews? More Love
Menachem Mendel Schneerson — the Lubavitcher Rebbe — at the Lag BaOmer parade in Brooklyn, New York, May 17, 1987. Photo: Mordecai Baron via Wikicommons.
JNS.org – In the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park on Feb. 18, a shockingly violent event took place. Scores of anti-Israel protesters marched through the streets, banging on drums, chanting slogans such as “There is only one solution. Intifada revolution!” and “How many kids did you kill today?” After physical assaults against Jews ensued, the police were called, and arrests were promptly made. Videos flooded the Internet late into the night capturing the melee.
The marching protesters claimed to represent an effort to “Free Palestine,” but after 16 months of watching similarly hateful gatherings around the world, it is abundantly clear that the only cause they are promoting is antisemitism. For local residents of Borough Park and Jews around the world, this outpouring of venom was especially painful as earlier in the day, news circulated about the murders of Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Ariel and Kfir, at the hands of Hamas.
On Oct. 7, the Bibas mother and babies were kidnapped not by Hamas but by Palestinian civilians, the very ones that the mindless protesters wish to “free.” Additionally, the keffiyeh-clad activists seem to have missed the obscene Hamas ceremonies of the last few weeks when freed hostages were paraded on a stage, given certificates and goody-bags and perversely made to thank their captors.
Adding shock to horror is the fact that the “Free Palestine” cause has attracted a non-insignificant amount of Jews—from college campuses to staff at the White House. Whether it has been Jewish students at Columbia University holding a “liberation seder” at the pro-Palestinian encampment or progressive rabbis draped in tallitot protesting against Israel in the Capitol, our collective heart sinks to see such a basic betrayal of Am Yisrael. And reality.
After nearly a year and a half since the world turned upside down on Oct. 7, I wish to propose a radically new approach based on this week’s Torah portion and the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson.
We need to pour love, not hate, towards the members of our community who have chosen the path of the meshumad, a Jew who has strayed from the Jewish tradition. Instead of the justified rage and pain that they evoke in us by promoting terrorism against Israel and Jews, we need to understand that they are indeed victims—victims of suicidal self-hate, of disinformation, propaganda and simplistic binary thinking.
Our collective shock and horror naturally have caused many of us to shun, ignore or perhaps engage in counter-protest against these individuals. However, this has not helped bring any of them closer to understanding the truth or defending the Jewish people. I suggest that it is time for a radical reset. The Rebbe taught that for wayward, self-hating or uninformed Jews, we must bring them closer with love, instead of driving them away with hate.
The Rebbe drew inspiration from previous Jewish sages who preached reaching out with open hearts and inclusion, such as the Rambam (Maimonides), the 12th-century codifier of Jewish law, and Saadia Gaon, the great ninth-century Jewish philosopher and theologian. The Rambam advised that the only effective way to bring wayward Jews back to Judaism was through non-judgmental love and acceptance (Mishna Torah, Mamrim, 3:3). Saadia Gaon was similarly quoted as saying that rebellious Jews are considered “kidnapped,” or Tinok Shenishba, literally children captured from our Jewish community and raised in captivity (Chezkuni on Exodus 2:15).
It is incumbent upon us to treat anti-Israel Jews the same way as previous Jewish generations treated the Tinok Shenishba or the meshumad.
If a child is tragically kidnapped or goes off the path, we should love that child and desire to bring them back because they are part of us; they are family members who should be redeemed. We need to adapt this approach to those Jews who harbor distorted and dangerous beliefs, even as they inflict pain upon themselves and our people.
Another way to look at it is that Jewish anti-Israel activism is a manifestation of Jewish anxiety over antisemitism. Our Hamas-supporting brothers and sisters are acutely aware of the threat of antisemitism; however, by siding with our enemies, they hope to escape being targeted. Sadly, they haven’t learned the lesson that history teaches us: Just as the Nazis killed Jews indiscriminately, anti-Israel Jews are targets as surely are Israel-loving ones.
This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, meaning “statutes” or “laws,” also provides fresh guidance for our present crisis for “lost Jews.”
Mishpatim discussed the various commandments related to interpersonal human relations, especially the relationships between parents and children.
Interestingly, from Chapter 21, verses 15-17, the laws about dealing with one who kidnaps another individual are sandwiched between laws for children who insult or strike their parents. The Saadia Gaon comments on this curious juxtaposition.
He posits that for a child to turn their back on their parents, they must have been kidnapped—not necessarily in a physical sense but in a spiritual, psychological or emotional sense. There is simply no way that a normal child would inflict harm on their parents under normal circumstances; a child who strikes or defames a parent is because they were absent in the formation of their Jewish identity, as if the child were kidnapped.
These are strong words, perhaps even harsh. But we must consider their value.
Few among us have the inner fortitude to engage in a debate with Jewish haters of Israel. Many will understandably regard them as a lost cause or see their behavior as akin to Hamas, but we must have compassion for them, for our sages tell us that they are akin to one who was kidnapped. Our love for them must transcend any of their suicidal and misguided rhetoric.
Is this easy? Absolutely not! The sight of Jews, including those who wear the garb of the ultra-Orthodox, shouting for Israel’s destruction is stomach-churning. The only way to heal the rupture in our people is to see anti-Israel Jews as being held in captivity, held in a proverbial “Gaza of the mind,” themselves victims of kidnapping, broken in mind, body and soul.
The approach of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement would be to put on tefillin with them or invite them for Shabbat dinner, but that’s not the only way. The next time you encounter an anti-Israel Jew, try to let kindness and civility inform your interactions with them, despite how difficult or excruciating this may be. The timeless words of “love your neighbor as yourself” ring true.
In this fraught environment, let us bond together as one people. Let us love one another even when it feels impossible, and from that unity, miracles will happen.
The post The Rebbe’s Radical Approach to Anti-Israel Jews? More Love 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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