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The settlers’ attack on Huwara is not the Orthodox Judaism I grew up on
(JTA) — Nighttime in Huwara, a small Palestinian town in the West Bank. Jews in large skullcaps and sidelocks, prayer fringes dangling from their waists, responding loudly to the cantor: “Yehei shmei raba mevurach leolam u’leolmei olmaya” (“May His great name be blessed, forever and ever”) — the words of Kaddish, a regular daily prayer that can also be said to mourn the dead.
The gloom outside is illuminated by an enormous bonfire of cars, shops and homes belonging to the Palestinian residents of the village, which the Kaddish-reciters have set on fire, in revenge for the horrific and heartrending murders, hours before the pogrom, of brothers Hillel and Yagel Yaniv (may their memory be a blessing) and for other recent terror attacks in the area.
One Palestinian was killed during the rioting by these Jewish settlers. Dozens of wounded Palestinians were evacuated to hospitals, some from smoke inhalation, others from beatings and stabbings. A family was evacuated by IDF troops, moments before they might have perished in the flames that took their home.
This wasn’t just any Kaddish, yet another one of those said and repeated by any observant Jew multiple times a day, sometimes in mumbling fashion. This time it was a Kaddish for Judaism itself.
I grew up in a small town in central Israel, in a classic “dati leumi” or national religious community whose ideology combines Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. I studied in typical religious institutions: a school in the state-religious education stream, a high school yeshiva and a “hesder yeshiva,” which combines advanced religious studies with military service. I was also very active in the religious Zionist Bnei Akiva youth movement, as an educator and leader.
Even today I live in a religious community in Jerusalem, and my young children study in schools that belong to the state-religious education stream.
The Judaism that I know and by which I try to live is a Judaism that operates according to the commandment “walk in His ways” (Deuteronomy 11:22) and the Talmud: “As He is gracious you should also be gracious, as He is compassionate you should also be compassionate” (Shabbat 133b:4-6). This Judaism operates according to the verse from Leviticus, “The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land belongs to Me, for you are strangers and [temporary] residents with Me.”
By contrast, the Judaism that the militant settlers imbibed — or distorted — led one of the pogromchiks, he too in skullcap and sidelocks, to speak in Hebrew words I understood but whose language I could not not comprehend. “There is something very moving here,” he told a reporter. “Jews won’t be silent. What the army can’t do, what the police will never do, simple Jews come and carry out a simple act of vengeance, setting fire to anything they can.”
The same Judaism led Davidi Ben Zion, deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council, also an observant Jew, to say blithely, shortly before the pogrom, that “Huwara should be wiped off the earth — no room for mercy,” and “the [Jewish] guys in Huwara right now are behaving precisely like guys whose brothers were massacred in cold blood at point-blank. The idea that a Jew in Samaria is a diasporic Jew who will be stabbed in the heart and politely say thank you, is childish naivete.”
That same Judaism led Israel’s finance minister, Betzalel Smotrich, the de facto governor of the West Bank, to publicly support a tweet by another coalition member calling to “wipe out” the village.
In the name of this Judaism, denizens of hills and outposts abuse the Palestinians daily, with the aid or under the blind eye of the IDF. A national Jewish settlement endeavor has been taking place for two generations now, which despite the good intentions of some of its practitioners, has included land theft, institutionalized discrimination, killing and hatred. An endeavor under which the current coalition, the most observant ever, only grows and intensifies.
In ordinary times life is not black and white. The Palestinian side also has a significant part in the story. The violence comes in great force and cruelty from there as well, and its many victims and circles burn the soul and draw many good people into the cycle of vengeance. The solution, too, is complex and hard to see, even far off on the horizon. But there are moments when things are actually very clear, clarifying the gray areas, when the choices are between life and death, and good and evil.
This evil version of Judaism is a lethal drug, which through a historical twist of fate gained ascendance over our ancient tradition. Combined with nationalism and majority hegemony in the Land of Israel, it has become a conflagration, one that has long since spread beyond religious Zionism — what Americans might refer to as “Modern Orthodox” — to the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox sector, and Israeli society in general.
An entire generation of Jews has been raised on this Judaism of hate, contemptuous of anyone who is not Jewish, of any display of weakness, of compassion. To whom Judaism is not the keeping and continuation of our tradition, observing commandments or studying Torah, but a worship of “Jewish might” (“Otzma Yehudit,” the name of a far-right political party) and limitless greed. In this Judaism, traditional values like modesty, pity and charity are signs of weakness, or remnants of a pathetic and feeble Christian morality that under no circumstances are to be shown to a stranger, the other, those who are not like us.
What we need now is not accommodation, nor soft words and platitudes. Neither will an obvious and empty condemnation of the pogrom do a bit of good. What we need now — having seen the elected officials who represent this religious population, having witnessed their nationalist Judaism — is a policy rooted in a tradition they abandoned. We should treat those who distort Judaism as the Mishnah tells us to treat all evildoers: “Distance yourself from an evil neighbor, and do not cleave to a wicked person” (Ethics of the Fathers 1:7). We need to announce that we want no part in the feral growth that has sprung up here, that this is not the tradition we grew up on, this is not the Torah we studied, and this is not how we wish to live our lives and raise our children.
Let us return to tradition and start over.
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The post The settlers’ attack on Huwara is not the Orthodox Judaism I grew up on appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Police denied Jewish community’s request for more security before Sydney massacre, commission finds
(JTA) — Days before a massacre on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, Sydney, the region’s Jewish security organization asked the police to send officers to Hanukkah events in the city.
The organization, the Community Security Group, had already worked with Chabad of Bondi to create a security plan for the event that included fencing off an area that normally had no barriers.
Now, in the message to police, the group emphasized that Jews in Sydney were facing unusual danger. The threat level, it wrote, was “HIGH. A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish Community is likely and there is a high level of antisemitic vilification.”
The police responded by saying that they could not devote additional officers to the events but would send patrols by. Three days later, 15 people, including rabbis and a child, were killed when two men opened fire on the event, known as Chanukah by the Sea.
The sequence of events appears in the first report issued by Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, formed in the wake of the massacre amid pressure on the government to do more to keep Australian Jews safe.
The report, issued Thursday, contains 14 recommendations, some of which were obscured from public view for security reasons. They include elevating and strengthening counter-terrorism policing and improving policing of Jewish events.
The top recommendation: “The procedures adopted by NSW Police in respect of Operation Jewish High Holy Days should apply to other high risk Jewish festivals and events, particularly those that have a public facing element.”
The Australian Jewish Association welcomed the report’s release but said it was marred by failing to address the form of antisemitic extremism said to have motivated the Bondi Beach shooters.
“The report’s credibility is undermined by its failure to address the issue of radical Islamist extremism. No serious analysis of the lead-up to the Bondi massacre can ignore this,” it said in a statement. “It’s concerning that the report identifies no urgent legislative changes required. There were serious failings by multiple agencies. If the legislation is adequate, then these failings are inexplicable.”
In particular, the group said, the commission should explore the fact that gun-control laws bar private security from being armed in Sydney, adding, “Whether different security settings could have changed the outcome is a matter that warrants urgent examination.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Police denied Jewish community’s request for more security before Sydney massacre, commission finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish man arrested for allegedly firing pellet gun at left-wing activists in Rome
(JTA) — Italian Jewish leaders are condemning the alleged acts of Jewish man who was arrested this week after police said he fired a pellet gun at participants in a parade marking Italy’s Liberation Day from Nazism and fascism.
Eitan Bondì, 21, was charged with attempted homicide in connection to the shooting of Rossana Gabrieli and Nicola Fasciano, two members of the National Association for Italian Partisans, a group founded by members of the Italian resistance, during the Rome parade.
Neither victim was seriously injured by the attack, according to Italian media.
Bondi’s arrest marks the second instance of confrontations involving Jews during Liberation Day festivities this year. In Milan, pro-Palestinian activists, including members of ANPI, blocked participants honoring the Jewish Brigade, a Jewish military unit that fought the Nazis in Italy during World War II.
Bondi said he was affiliated with the Jewish Brigade. Davide Romano, the director of the Jewish Brigade Museum in Milan, wrote in a post on X that the organization did not know Bondì, and that he felt “horror and condemn in the most resolute manner, and without any justification, anyone who dares to use the name of the Jewish Brigade to carry out acts of violence.”
“The Jewish Brigade fought for freedom and human dignity. Instrumentalizing its name to justify or cover up violent behavior is an outrage to its memory and to all those who sacrificed themselves under that flag,” Romano wrote, adding that the organization reserved the right to “pursue legal action against all those who use the name of the Jewish Brigade to associate it with this shameful act.”
Victor Fadlun, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, condemned Bondì’s alleged acts in a statement, saying that his detention “fills us with dismay and outrage” and voicing his organization’s “full solidarity and closeness” to the victims.
“The Jewish Community of Rome condemns and dissociates itself unreservedly from any form of anti-democratic violence,” Fadlun said, according to the Italian news agency Ansa. “In such a tense moment … we appeal to political and civil society to avoid any exploitation (of the case) that could fuel hatred and generate new violence.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish man arrested for allegedly firing pellet gun at left-wing activists in Rome appeared first on The Forward.
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British police pledge 25M pounds for Jewish security in wake of London stabbing
(JTA) — British police have allocated 25 million pounds, or about $33 million, in new funding to keep Jewish communities safe, officials announced on Thursday.
The announcement came a day after a stabbing in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green left two men injured and a community reeling. The stabbing has been ruled a terrorist attack.
“There’s no getting away from the fact that this was not a one-off,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited the neighborhood on Thursday, said during a press conference. “This has been a series of attacks on our Jewish community, particularly in recent weeks, and there is a very deep sense of anxiety, of concern about security, about safety, about identity frankly.”
A new group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand, that has claimed attacks on Jewish targets across Europe said it was responsible for the stabbing. British officials said they were investigating that claim.
They disclosed that the 45-year-old man arrested in the stabbing, who was first subdued by Jewish security forces, was a British national who had come to the country “lawfully” from Somalia as a child.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who joined Starmer in Golders Green, told the BBC that she was treating the spree of antisemitic incidents as “absolutely an emergency,” though she declined to adopt language used by Starmer’s terrorism advisor that there was a “national security emergency” because of its implications on civil liberties.
Still, she said, she believed that frequent pro-Palestinian protests in London contained “far too many instances” of hate crimes and she spoke of her opposition to antisemitism in terms of her own religious identity.
“When I take the stand that I am taking against antisemitism, I am doing so as a practicing Muslim. It is absolutely in line with my faith,” Mahmood said. She added about British Jews: “This land is their land. It is my land too. We share this land and we must all work together to keep each other safe.”
The incident, which followed arsons at synagogues and of ambulances owned by a Jewish emergency service as well as a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue last year, has prompted an escalation of fear among British Jews. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that visibly Jewish people — those wearing symbols of their Jewish identity — were “not always safe” in England.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post British police pledge 25M pounds for Jewish security in wake of London stabbing appeared first on The Forward.