JNS.org – U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech on May 7 at the U.S. Capitol, during which he eloquently revisited Nazi Germany’s journey from racial laws discriminating against Jews to outright genocide, demonstrating the parallels with today’s febrile situation along the way, struck all the right notes.

And that, perhaps, was the problem.

While I applauded pretty much every word that I heard, what frustrated me was that there was nothing new. True, it’s reassuring that an American president understands what the Holocaust was, how it was carried out and how it still continues to impact Jewish communities. As Biden said, “[B]y the time the war ended, 6 million Jews—one out of every three Jews in the entire world—were murdered.” Nearly 80 years on from the victory over Nazi Germany, and despite the existence of a Jewish state and an unprecedented flowering of Jewish communities in many of the world’s democracies, there are still fewer Jews now than there were before Hitler embarked on his program of slaughter. And as Biden’s speech indicated, what was in relative terms a post-war “Golden Age” is now over.

That was why I’d hoped I would hear something new, something different. But in the end, even if Biden spoke movingly, his words were safe and, for most Americans, non-controversial. Much of the closing part of his speech was given to a memoir of Tom Lantos, the late California congressional representative and a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who once worked on Biden’s staff. Lantos’s story is certainly inspiring, but an affectionate review of his life isn’t going to explain or deter the antisemitic wave we are facing.

On the pro-Hamas protests that have roiled U.S. campuses, again Biden correctly depicted the slogans and signs on display as “despicable.” Yet there was precious little detail in the speech about how to confront this problem, save for acknowledgement of truths that are widely recognized, at least among Jews (“We know hate never goes away, it only hides”), and a few bland clichés (“We also know what stops hate. One thing: all of us.”)

Any plaudits that Biden earned from American Jews were quickly lost in the days that followed the speech. As Israeli troops prepared for an assault on Rafah, the last bastion of Hamas in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, Biden announced a suspension of key weapons deliveries to the Israel Defense Forces in a bid to force a ceasefire. For many Jews, including the huge number who say they would never vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances, Biden’s decision to hand the Hamas rapists and murderers an operational advantage felt like the worst betrayal. Contrasting his speech at the Capitol with the subsequent interview he gave to CNN’s Erin Burnett, it was tempting to conclude that the kinds of Jews that Biden identifies with are those who stoically accept their fate while believing that there is sufficient goodness among the wider population to alleviate their plight. But fighting back? Seeking to destroy irredeemable enemies before they destroy us? That, it would seem, is a step too far.

What could Biden have said that he didn’t say on the day? What aspects of the current surge of antisemitism would have convinced a besieged Jewish community that the leader of the free world is not just an ally, but someone who fundamentally grasps the nature of contemporary threats on multiple fronts?

There was something of a clue in the middle of his speech, when Biden referred to the “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the earth.” It was this observation that needed expanding because it gets to the heart of the issue. For while the basic impulse here hasn’t changed over the centuries, the difference today lies with the bearers of this message. Pockets of antisemitism remain on the far right and among certain Christians, but that problem can be contained. The existential threat now emanates from Red-Green alliance of Islamists and the far left—this was what Biden should have identified. But he didn’t.

For this coalition, the existence of a Jewish state is the vehicle through which the “ancient desire” described by Biden manifests. Hence, the presentation is different. Whereas Jews were once portrayed as obstacles to spiritual redemption—a cursed people whose existence, as St. Augustine famously argued, is an example of what happens when Christ is rejected—in our contemporary secular world, Jews are obstacles to the realization of national and social justice, universalist goals that have been fatally compromised by Jewish particularism. Yet again, Jews are scorning both the messenger and the message, so yet again, they must suffer for it.

In the pro-Hamas encampments that have sprung up on college campuses across the United States, as well as in Europe and Australia, ancient cries of “Death to the Jews” and other epithets have been heard, but these have been overshadowed by sloganeering deemed progressive and enlightened: “Free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea,” “Globalize the Intifada” and so on. The immediate targets are not largely defenseless Jewish communities but the denizens of a nation-state armed to the teeth. Jews outside the territory of Israel who denounce the Jewish state are, for the time being anyway, welcome allies, but the remainder—90%, more or less, of the world’s Jews—are beyond the pale for as long as they support the State of Israel.

What Hamas and its Western allies are asking us to endorse is—in the memorable phrase of the 2006 conference in Tehran staged by the Iranian regime—the vision of a “World Without Zionism.” “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury, any Islamic leader who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world,” the then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared at the time. For the enemies of the Jews, therefore, this is a zero-sum game: us or them. And that idea has now been globalized, resulting in the transfer of Iranian regime slogans to our campuses and, increasingly, our city streets, our workplaces and all the other locations where we gather to get on with our lives.

That is the challenge that Biden should have addressed.

The post What Biden Didn’t Say About Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org – When I was debating whether to join a command course in the army, my late grandmother Esther told me, “In Auschwitz, we didn’t volunteer. We always tried to hide in the back.”

This advice was the expression of an extreme life experience, the days of hell in the Auschwitz concentration camp. But it also characterizes Jews throughout the generations, and that feeling of insecurity and instability as part of 2,000 years of persecution with the Holocaust as its most terrible and horrific manifestation. One of the great changes brought about by the establishment of the State of Israel was the opportunity to be a Jew with your head held high. These days, many sense that this feeling is eroding. But a historical perspective shows that we still can and should raise our heads proudly.

In 2024, in this period between Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) and Israel’s national holidays—Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron) and Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut), Israel and the Jewish people are in serious crisis. After months of war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip in the south and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north, and weeks of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish demonstrations on U.S. campuses and in various cities around the world, the feeling of persecution is hard to shake.

Indeed, recent surveys by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) reflect this all too well. JPPI’s monthly “Voice of the Jewish People” survey of American Jews found that in April, about 90% of respondents from across the political spectrum (from very liberal to very conservative) reported feeling that “discrimination against Jews has increased.” This follows data from previous surveys showing an increase in the sense of threat they feel as Jews in the United States.

A similar situation is clearly reflected in JPPI’s survey of Israeli society conducted a few days ago. There, for the first time, it was revealed that more Israelis (44%) are not confident in Israel’s victory in the war compared to the 38% who are. It also found an alarming decline in the number of Israeli Jews who are optimistic about the country’s future and their personal future as Israelis. Here in Israel—and there in the world’s largest Jewish community outside Israel—our spirit suffers.

Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), when we face the absolute human evil directed specifically at the Jewish people, likely intensified these feelings. The narratives of those persecuted in the Holocaust echo in the present. Stories of survivors of the killing machinery of Europe reverberate in the stories of those who survived the Oct. 7 massacre.

The images coming to us from the United States—the place where Jews experienced a flourishing unprecedented in history—recall those from a century ago. Scenes of attacks on Jews and blatantly antisemitic chants remind many of the atmosphere in Germany in the 1930s, which culminated in the most terrible genocide of all. When traces of a horrible past can be found in the challenging present, it is clear why many feel despair.

But it is precisely the depths of the current crisis that require us to broaden our gaze, so that it accommodates both past and future. The blow we suffered on Oct. 7 was cruel and costly, in human life and in damage to Israel’s deterrence and national resilience. But it is very far from triumphing over us.

During the long years of exile and their nadir during the Holocaust, all the Jews could do in the face of violent pogroms was pray for a miracle and cry for help—a cry that mostly went unanswered. On Oct. 7, as soon as the extent of the attack by the Hamas butchers became known, civilians and soldiers headed south and fought back. Within a few hours, the Israel Defense Forces mobilized and within about 24 hours launched its counteroffensive. Although Israel’s image as an unshakeable power has taken a hit, its power and its strength are very much intact and robust. The IDF is still a formidable army. The Israeli economy is still sound. Israelis are still determined and able to defend their homeland. Despite the destruction, which requires thoughtful recovery, our situation remains better than it was across the many years of Jewish history.

The same is true outside Israel. It is true that antisemitism is rearing its head. The number of antisemitic attacks reported in Europe and the United States has exponentially increased in recent months. In several European cities, and unfortunately, also on some of the most prestigious American college campuses, Jews are afraid to display their Jewishness openly. And yet, these are still the exceptional cases that prove the rule. Throughout Europe and certainly in the United States, the Jews are a strong group in every sense, whose rights are recognized—chief among them the right to live in security wherever they are. True, we should be vigilant, and the fight against antisemitism should be determined and uncompromising. And yet, broadly speaking, the situation of Jews in the world is better than ever before.

Between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israel’s national holidays, we need both resolve and optimism. If we thought that our enemies had given up their desire to expel us from the land, we have discovered once again, the hard way, that they are bloodthirsty and seek to destroy the Jewish state. But despite the darkness of our past, when there was no real Jewish sovereignty, and the challenges of the present, we are a strong people with a strong state. The indomitable Jewish spirit—together with the capabilities we have built—will safeguard our future. In these trying days, it is still possible and appropriate to raise our heads a little, and to take in a brighter horizon.

The post Resolve and Optimism Between Yom Hashoah and Israel’s National Holidays first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

i24 News – On Sunday and Monday, Israel is to observe Yom Hazikaron, the nation’s official Memorial Day for her fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. The commemoration comes amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas.

According to the Defense Ministry, 766 Israeli soldiers were killed while serving in the military during the past year. Another 61 veterans died due to complications from wounds sustained during their service in previous years.

A minute of silence will be held across the country at 8:00 p.m. (local time). A minute-long siren will sound and after that the state memorial ceremony will open in the Western Wall Plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem, with the President Isaac Herzog and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi planned to attend the event.

On Monday, at 11:00 a.m. a two-minute siren will sound, followed by the state ceremony for the martyrs of Israel’s systems at the State Memorial Hall for the fallen of Israel’s systems on Mount Herzl, in the presence of President Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.

Immediately after the siren, at 11:02 a.m., a special flight of fighter jets with a missing structure will pass over the military cemetery and the state memorial hall on Mount Herzl and over Pilot’s Mountain. At 1:00 p.m. the state memorial ceremony for the victims of hostilities in Israel and abroad will be held at the state memorial on Mount Herzl.

The Memorial Day events will end at 20:00 when with the torchlight ceremony that will mark the 76th Independence Day of the State of Israel. Following the events of October 7, the ceremony will be conducted in a different manner – with no audience present, filmed in advance – and honor the Hamas hostages.

Earlier on Saturday, hostages’ families rallied to demand a deal, emphasizing 38 captives have been already declared dead. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the demonstration is meant to mourn the memory of the hostages who have been killed and whose bodies are being held by Hamas in Gaza.

The post Israel to Observe Memorial Day Amid Gaza War, Hostage Crisis first appeared on Algemeiner.com.