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For Jewish Americans, ‘Never Again’ Has Never Felt So Real

Pro-Hamas activists gather in Washington Square Park for a rally following a protest march held in response to an NYPD sweep of an anti-Israel encampment at New York University in Manhattan, May 3, 2024. Photo: Matthew Rodier/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

By BARRY FLEISHMAN The iconic Jewish sage Hillel is often quoted as teaching “If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?” This is the cornerstone of modern Jewish human rights philosophy.

For Jewish Americans, who have lived over the past half century in the protected bubble of American freedoms, the public repudiation of antisemitism, and US support for Israel, the focus and priority has often been on supporting others. Jews consistently have rejected a social philosophy of “for ourselves alone.”

Jews have been major supporters of the American civil rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and anti-poverty movements. Jewish organizations have been at the forefront of opposition to anti-Muslim and anti-Asian bias and discrimination. Jewish philanthropy has supported virtually every aspect of American life throughout the country. The vast majority of Jewish Americans have supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with a safe and secure Jewish state living side-by-side with a peaceful Palestinian state that has secure borders. (By the way, “Zionism” simply means support of the legitimacy of the Jewish State, which presumably everyone who seeks a two-state solution is willing to support and accept.)

Through their actions, Jews have become welcomed into American society to an extent otherwise unknown to them in modern world history. Whether it be in the arts, in medicine, in law, in politics, in business, in academia, in journalism, or elsewhere, Jews have achieved levels of acceptance and success that totally smashed the thick walls of embedded antisemitism.

Until now.

On October 7, Israel was viciously attacked and terrorized by Hamas. Since then, Israel has undergone missile attacks from Hezbollah in its northern border with Lebanon, forcing tens of thousands to leave their homes, and directly from Iran over its eastern border. Israel has faced attack from three of its four borders; the fourth border is with the Mediterranean Sea. Such is the definition of existential threat.

Israel is fighting enemies whose strategic goal is elimination of the Jewish state — period. For Hamas, this means ever-lasting terror regardless of the cost to the Palestinian population it purports to represent.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and, most importantly, Iran, do not seek a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue; they seek total elimination of the Jewish State no matter how many Palestinians die as a result. Their tactics are (i) to terrorize Israel through brutal murders, rapes, and missile bombings, (ii) to isolate Israel by using tactics that exacerbate the amount of civilian death and misery it can blame on Jews and the Jewish State, and (iii) to strangle Israel through world-wide economic and political attack and boycotting.

The response from much of the world, including the progressive wing of American politics, a wing largely led by Jews in the past, has been to support denunciation of Israel as a pariah state, and to utilize reckless language, bullying protest, and political power in a manner that has resulted in an unprecedented rise in antisemitism.

The de-Americanizing of Jews has been widespread, with the intent of nullifying the basic humanity of Jews. Cries that Jews should not be allowed to sing at world events, Jews are not welcome artistically unless they denounce Israel and Zionism, Jews are not welcome on college campuses unless they adopt the lie that Israel is committing genocide, Jews either are “pro-genocide or anti-genocide,” and Palestine should be free (meaning, according to Hamas, “Jew-free”) from the river to the sea, go without rigorous and effective denunciation.

Communities that have welcomed and benefited from Jewish support in the past, willingly chime in as the wave of anti-Jew rhetoric fills the increasingly polluted public airwaves of progressive speech and action.

It is in this context, that Hillel’s first teaching resounds with truth –“If I am not for me, who will be for me?”

Jewish Americans, despite their historic hope and preference to place their priorities elsewhere, now have been forced to prioritize their own safety and security.  Such is the shameful place we find ourselves.

“Never Again” has never felt so real.

Barry Fleishman is Chair of the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) National Commission’s Government Relations Committee.

This post originally appeared on The Algemeiner

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Features

Shall We Live by Our Swords Forever?

By ORLY DREMAN (Oct. 4, 2024) t is hard to believe a year has passed… the worst year of our nation… a year of grief, nightmares, sorrow, crying, pain, bereavement, anger, desperation, frustration, hurt and anxiety because of this horrible endless war. Every person in the country knows people who were killed. When an old person dies naturally one receives it with understanding, but when young people die it feels like Job.

The average life span of Israelis is going down every day. We try to relax, breath deeply, do mindfulness, exercise, meet friends. Israel suffers four times more from anxiety and depression than any other place in the world. I feel I just want to sit down one day, cry and release, and not be strong all the time. All our souls are already in reserves for a year . Since our army’s survival depends on its reserve soldiers it means they are tired, have lost their jobs, and wives are heroes and have to quit their jobs because the husbands are not there to help with the kids. Children see their parents recruited, they see people with weapons in the streets, they hear the word “hostages”, they hear war planes in the sky twenty four seven, they are scared, and no wonder there is regression in their behavior.

We are an injured society in a war routine- every new death swallows up the death from the day before.

When the six young hostages were murdered in the tunnels in September and the bodies were brought back by our soldiers, many people in Israel felt it is like the day their own parents passed away- it was so sad. It was revealed they were starved- the bodies weighed 35 kg. (close to 80 pounds). In the tunnels with no air, no light, low ceilings so they could not stand up, no sanitary conditions – tortured by Satan. They urinated in bottles that remained next to them. We all feel responsible for their deaths. Did we demonstrate enough? Did we pray enough? The members of the cabinet who voted with Bibi not to make a deal to save them – how can they live with themselves? What if the nightmare came true and there are babies who were born in captivity and survived? Then we have more than 101 hostages. Our country was established on social solidarity that we do not leave bodies and injured behind. We are going to pay a heavy price if we do not do the just and correct thing and bring them back home.

I recommend you read the book “One day in October” – forty heroic stories from that day told by remaining relatives and friends about the heroic citizens who saved the country. Who is a hero? A person who cannot stand aside if someone is in distress; hey come to help, like those who jumped on hand grenades to save the rest. The injured who continued to fight. Men who stalled the terrorists in order to enable women and children to escape until they were murdered. Women who ran out of their homes while the shooting was going on to pull the injured into buildings. Five young women and men soldiers who saved one hundred new recruits in their base till they themselves were killed. The paramedic Amit Mann in Kibbutz Be’eri who stayed to save many lives when she could have escaped until she was killed. (in that kibbutz out of 1000 residents 100 were killed.) Aner, who was at the “death shelter” and managed seven times to catch the hand grenades the terrorists threw inside; Aner threw them back out, until the eighth time he was killed while his friend Hirsh Goldberg Polin lost his hand and was kidnapped to Gaza where he was murdered 11 months later. The few survivors of this shelter survived because bodies fell on them and hid them. So many who already got to safety with friends, but drove back again and again to rescue young people from the festival until they themselves got killed. How parents had to close their babies’ mouths so they did not cry and be heard, with the risk of choking them to death. Even for those who held a gun, it was not enough against groups of hundreds of terrorists. The families in the center of the country heard their dear ones on the phone screaming they are burning us and they have RPGs (rocket propelled grenades). There were some who wanted to do like in Masada- kill their families and then kill themselves – just not to be kidnapped.

The first eight hours of the war the terrorists were stopped only by citizens and some police. The army was not there. Every person who in his lifetime had taken a first aid course – even people in their seventies, bandaged and put tourniquets on the wounded while they were without water, with no electricity. In the book, an officer of the “Zaka” organization- whose members are always on scenes of unnatural deaths to collect body parts and who have seen all possible atrocities, said that if he would have known what he is about to see on Oct. 7th he would have asked God to make him blind. Another story in the book is of a Holocaust survivor who said it was worse than things they have seen during the Holocaust.

Whole families on the kibbutzim on the border were murdered- children, parents, grandparents. A friend of my seven-year-old granddaughter told me her grandparents lived on kibbutz Be’eri. I asked her if they were evacuated and she answered yes. I was told later that the grandfather was murdered while protecting his wife, who survived. The seven-year-old is in repression and denial. We have friends who live on the Gaza border who told us how the father, the son and a friend left in two cars to return and rescue people, but in the chaos our army mistook them for terrorists and they shot at the cars. The friend of the son was killed while the son managed to roll out of the car. The father who was in the second car describes the car being riddled with bullet holes and he still does not understand how he survived. Unfortunately, there were quite a number of these incidents.

There are evacuees who moved almost 10 times this year with their families from place to place. They cannot hold a job, the children change schools and change friends. What is nice about “the good Israeli” is one sees requests on Facebook from evacuated families asking for a place to live because the government does not pay for some of the hotels anymore, or those people live in areas that were not officially evacuated by the army/government, but still are in the rockets’ range. Other Israelis open up their homes to host these people.

We are now fighting seven fronts. We just started in Lebanon and we already have eight soldiers killed there in one day, but the damage from Hizballah was growing every day and they were crushing us. If Hizballah would have joined Hamas in sending 6000 terrorists through their tunnels into Israel on Oct. 7th in addition to the 4000 terrorists Hamas sent, it would have been the end of Israel. We’d have hundreds of thousands dead. The tunnels we discovered now in Lebanon are bigger than those in Gaza and cannot be blown up because of the terrain; it will only make them wider. Iran lost again in this second round of 200 rockets on Oct. 1st. Our air defense systems shot down most of the ballistic rockets. We must retaliate with a strong hand. We cannot live by our sword forever.

Our challenges today are not just against our enemies, but also against others who have different moral and ethical values. How can Bibi even think of replacing our excellent defense minister in the middle of the war – only for political reasons? Instead of making a deal in the south- returning the hostages, making peace with Saudi Arabia, forming a coalition against Iran, he is busy eternalizing his coalition. We deserve an empathetic leadership which sees the good of its people before themselves.

We have thousands of new disabled servicemen and women. It is no wonder that at all the Para Olympic games we win the highest number of medals. For organ donors today doctors are especially asking for cartilage because we have 20,000 new wounded ; this is something they did not do in the past.

It has been a very challenging year and we learned how strong we are. For the New Year may we blessed to see the return of all our hostages, start to rehabilitate them, put a smile back on our faces, sleep at night, worry less and feel safe again.

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Features

New documentary about expulsion of Jews from Arab lands

An organized riot against Egyptian Jews in 1947

On Monday, October 7 at 9pm ET, VisionTV will present the world premiere of Forgotten ExpulsionJews From Arab Lands, a new documentary from filmmaker Martin Himel specially commissioned by Executive Producer Moses Znaimer.

ABOUT FORGOTTEN EXPULSION: JEWS FROM ARAB LANDS

On October 7, 2023, Palestinian Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 Israelis and took some 250 hostages in an invasion marked by methodically planned unprecedented levels of barbarism.

Not only was it the most extensive slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, it also sparked a wave of Pro Palestinian/Antisemitic protests worldwide. The protestors claim Israel should be destroyed because it is allegedly a colonial state artificially created by European and North American Zionists.

The documentary Forgotten ExpulsionJews From Arab Lands shows that these Zionists are Jews, and that Jews have been indigenous to the Land of Israel and the Middle East for the past 3,500 years. Jews are, and have been an intrinsic part of the Middle East long before the Arabs conquered the region 1,400 years ago; 1,000 years before Christianity, 1,500 years before Islam.

In 1947/48, it was not only 700,000 Palestinians who were displaced during the Israel war of Independence, but 850,000 Jews were also expelled from their ancient homes in Arab countries by Islamic regimes + their murderous mobs.  The film argues that if Palestinians are to be repatriated and to receive compensation for their loss, then Jewish refugees from Arab Lands should also be repatriated + compensated.

Forgotten Expulsion also highlights the strange case of the Palestinians, the only refugee population in the world that never declines. That original refugee population of 700,000 now numbers 5 million. Some genocide!  

Featuring: 

Rabbi Elie Abadi, Senior Rabbi for the Jewish Council of the Emirates in Dubai, UAE, prominent Sephardic Judaism scholar

Avraham El Arar, President, Canadian Sephardi Association 

Judy Feld Carr, Rescuer of 3,228 Syrian Jews + Human RIghts Activist

Professor Henry Green, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami

Eylon Levi, Former Israeli Government Spokesman, Current Leader of the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office, prominent figure representing Israel internationally since the start of the October 7 War against Hamas

Simcha Jacobovici, Canadian-Israeli Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker 

Professor Shimon Ohayon, Head of the Dahan Center for Culture, Society & Education in the Sephardic Heritage, Bar Ilan University 

Ambassador Mark Regev, Chair Abba Eban Institute at Reichman University, Former Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs + International Communications

Eli Sadr, Former Jewish Refugee from Syria

Dr Stanley Urman, Executive Vice-President, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries

Levana Zamier, Former Jewish Refugee from Egypt

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Features

The Issue with Anti-Zionism

One narrative that has grown more dominant in the past few months is that which seeks to target, discredit, and harm “Zionists.”
I worry that many Canadians do not actually know what “Zionism” means, nor do they understand its origins, or how its sudden weaponization is concerning to Jews everywhere, and should be concerning to you, too. I write this piece with the hope that it may provide some clarity to those looking to delve more deeply into discussions they are seeing emerge online and in our public discourse on this topic.
This week, I made a post on social media that took exception to a group trying to garner support for the boycotting of “Zionist Restaurants” in Montreal. In my response, I said the following: “Don’t be fooled by what this means: it means don’t buy from Jews. Don’t associate with Jews. Don’t be near Jews. This is antisemitism. This is hate. Call it out for what it is.”
“Remember to ask yourself this”, I said: “Why should my Jewish friends, colleagues, neighbours and fellow Canadians be the subject of targeted attacks because of how some feel about Israel?”
Why do I believe the demand to boycott or target “Zionists”, whether that be businesses or individuals, is problematic? I’ll explain.
Those who suggest anti-Zionism is not antisemitism will point out that Judaism and Zionism are different. They are correct in that one is a religion, and I would argue, a people (or culture for some), and the other is simply a belief that Israel, as a Jewish homeland, should exist. By critiquing Zionism, they say, they are taking issue with the Israeli Government, and not Jews.
Here is the problem with that: the vast majority of Jews identify as Zionists. Again, this just means that they believe in a Jewish State or homeland. Some hold this belief because they see Israel as the ancestral homeland of Jews. For others, it is because they feel as though the treatment of Jews, as destructive as it has been over history, merits a safe place for them to live as a collective.
Whatever the reason one calls themselves a Zionist, the important thing to know is that the view pertains to the existence of the State as a homeland itself, not the way the state conducts its affairs.
Zionism has absolutely nothing to do with a predetermined set of views about what the Israeli Government of the day decides to do on any issue, whether that be about Gaza, or policies related to education, or the environment.

Zionism does not presuppose a singular position on the actions of the government of Israel or of the Jewish people. When the Zionist movement began in fact, there was no Government of Israel.
Some Zionists will support elements of Israeli Government policy, and others, such as the over 500,000 protesting in the streets of Israel itself, will have a different view. At any given moment, Zionists, just like anybody else, will hold a range of views on various topics to do with both Israel and beyond.
So, when one says “boycott Zionists”, presumably on the basis of some objection that they have to Israeli’s military campaign in Gaza, they make an assumption that all Zionists are supportive of those actions being undertaken by the Israeli government. As such, they say, the “Zionists” should be punished through boycotts and public shaming.
The main point here is that one can be a Zionist while at the same time disagree with the way Israel responds to conflict. So why treat all “Zionists” the same?
Therein lies the problem. If one wants to call out people who support the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, so be it – there is plenty to object to in my view – but don’t use the label of Zionism as the pretext that serves as the foundation of those criticisms. When one does that, they are crossing the line into antisemitism.
If one doesn’t believe Israel has a right to exist, they should say that instead. Do not universally categorize a group of people as being responsible for the actions of individuals or governments; that is what we call “prejudice.” Do not be prejudiced towards Jews by assuming they are all the same, that’s called antisemitism.
To call for the universal boycott and targeting of “Zionists” is really just a call to boycott those that believe Israel has a right to exist, and that, as it were, just so happens to include the overwhelming majority of Jews, too.
Ben Carr is the MP for Winnipeg South Centre

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