JNS.org – US President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel since the start of the Oct. 7 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has my head spinning. His approach has been marked by a delicate balancing act that attempts to support a key ally on one hand while addressing humanitarian concerns faced by Gazan civilians on the other. However, this balancing act—some might call it “nuanced”—has led to contradictions that impact the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Remember that it began after a horde of Hamas terrorists invaded Israeli communities along the Gaza border, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped some 250 Israelis and citizens of other countries, including a number who hold citizenship in the United States.

I have no doubt that Biden’s quickly spoken words of support for Israel and his ordering the US Navy to post two carrier strike groups off of Israel’s Mediterranean coast were sincere in their intent and purpose to thwart any ideas that Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsor may have had for joining in the war against Israel. Israel was quick to recognize Biden’s support when, within a week after the ground war started, large posters thanking him appeared in cities around the country. (The one near my home in Jerusalem is now down.)

But let’s look at the contradictions:

First, Biden has repeatedly emphasized his “ironclad” support for Israel. His visit to Israel on Oct. 18 so soon after the terrorist attacks was evidence of that. His recent comments in response to Iran’s missile launches and drone attacks overnight on April 13-14 are another example.

Yet at the same time, while recognizing Israel’s need to eliminate Hamas, the administration bemoans the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza that the war has created. Its call for increased aid to and the protection of civilians reflects this concern without in any way laying the blame for the crisis at the feet of Hamas, which steals food and fuel being delivered to the Strip before it can reach the Palestinian public.

Second, the Biden administration supports Israel’s military actions against threats posed by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. However, it also questions the motives of Israel’s war cabinet and chastises Israel for not having a game plan in place for administering Gaza “the day after” the war ends. Calls by leading Democrat politicians for what effectively is regime change in Israel could not have happened without clearance from the White House.

Thus, backing Israel’s war efforts while expressing reservations about its leadership affects negotiations and decision-making during the conflict.

Iran’s attack on Israel and the resulting US involvement shows the third contradiction. For when Tehran launched its barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones, the US military assisted Israel in intercepting many of them. Then, within hours and after witnessing a modern-day miracle of military technology, the Biden administration was urging Israel’s leadership to use restraint in any response. “Take the win,” Biden stated.

So, supporting Israel’s defense against Iranian aggression while urging restraint creates a delicate juggling act even in the best of times, and at this time, affects the dynamics of the conflict and raises more questions about escalation than it answers.

Fourth, and perhaps most significantly, the contradiction can be summed up in one word: Rafah. A city of some 175,000 people located on the border between Gaza and Egypt has now swelled by some estimates to 1.4 million people due to the influx of those who left the northern part of the coastal enclave following the Israeli incursion to root out and destroy Hamas. Rafah is the last Hamas stronghold with an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 fighters in its midst.

Publicly, the Biden administration has disagreed with Israel over how to remove Hamas terrorists from Rafah, which Israel believes has to be done in order to secure the country’s safety. Anything less than eradicating the terrorist organization there will be deemed by many as a win of the war by Hamas.

At the end of the day, Biden’s policies remain contradictory. The administration’s attempt to balance unwavering support for Israel’s war efforts, along with defense for future Iranian and Hezbollah attacks with humanitarian considerations for Gaza’s civilians, impacts negotiations, Israel’s military actions and civilian safety. As the war continues, finding a coherent path forward remains a challenge. Is the American president up to dealing with it?

The post Joe Biden’s Contradictions Are Hurting Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org – We have just concluded Passover. On the last day of the holiday, we recited Yizkor, the memorial prayer for our departed loved ones. In many synagogues around the world, in addition to our personal Yizkor prayers, we added memorial prayers for the Six Million and for Israel’s fallen heroes.

We are still fighting a war in Gaza. Hezbollah is increasing its attacks from the north. There is seemingly no end in sight. Now, on Sunday, we will be called upon to observe Yom Hashoah. Here we are, struggling in the aftermath of the massacres and atrocities of Oct. 7—a mini-Holocaust in its own right—and now we are expected to remember the Holocaust itself. I’m sure it will be a bit much for many of us.

It is now more than 80 years since the Holocaust. The number of survivors among us is diminishing all too quickly. The child survivors are today elderly men and women. Please God, may they be with us for many more years to come.

When we think of Israel, we are always remembering those who gave their lives in our defense, as we should. But I don’t think we give enough thought to the injured, the many seriously wounded and those who, tragically, have been maimed for life. Presumably, almost all these brave fighters have been traumatized to one degree or another and will, no doubt, require much therapy when this is all over, please God soon.

Similarly, I wonder if we ever gave enough attention to those who survived the Holocaust but were also traumatized for life.

My late father, Shimon Goldman, was the sole survivor of his family in Poland. By the miracles of God, he escaped Poland. He fled to Vilna and when his Lubavitch yeshivah there received life-saving visas from the legendary Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, he traveled with his fellow students to Moscow and then across Russia to Vladivostok. They took a boat to Kobe, Japan, where they spent a year. In 1941, when Japan joined Nazi Germany in World War II, they moved on to Shanghai, where they spent the rest of the war years until they received visas to go to the United States.

Though orphaned and alone in the world from his teenage years on, my father never lost his mind, his faith or his sense of humor. He rebuilt his family and, when he passed away at age 91, he left behind children, grandchildren and 80 great-grandchildren. Today, there are many more, thank God.

But does that mean he was not scarred? We don’t have an inkling of the inner trauma that he must have experienced in his life. In his 1950 wedding pictures, he, the bridegroom, isn’t smiling. Having had no parents to escort him to the chuppah, was it any wonder? In 1961, during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, he woke up with nightmares screaming, “Eichmann araus!” Outwardly, he was fine, functional and a pillar of his community on many levels. Inwardly? We have no idea.

My friend’s father-in-law also survived Auschwitz and went on to rebuild his family in London, becoming a successful diamond merchant. But whenever he traveled, in his carry-on case together with his tallit and tefillin, there was always one more item he would never travel without: a loaf of bread. As successful as he was, the hunger pangs of Auschwitz remained with him for life.

I once read a story of a man in Talpiot, Israel, who lived in a big, beautiful villa but would collect the leftovers after the Kiddush in shul on Shabbat morning. One day, a little boy in his innocence asked the man directly: “Excuse me, sir; I don’t understand. You have a beautiful home. Why do you need to collect the leftovers?”

The man looked at the boy and replied: “How could you understand? Were you in Auschwitz?”

Can we understand this? Can we—born in freedom and privilege—grasp what they must have lived through for the rest of their lives?

Besides the Six Million who perished, a generation of survivors was scarred for life.

And the world would have us simply forgive and forget!

Today, we see clearly how the past informs the future. Who would have believed possible what is happening now in the United States at “enlightened” universities?

That’s why we dare not allow ourselves the luxury of national amnesia. We can never forget, and we can never tire of remembering the past.

And so, as difficult as it may be, even now, in the throes of another war against the new Nazis of today, we will still remember the Six Million martyrs of the Holocaust and honor their memories.

At the same time, we will pledge to stand strong against every enemy on any battlefield—whether in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Iran, or even against anti-Israel and anti-Jewish protesters on the Ivy League college campuses of America.

When we do, let us also spare a special thought for the traumatized survivors of then and now.

The post ‘Yizkor.’ Remember. Again. first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org – “Don’t take any guff from these swine,” Hunter S. Thompson used to say, and not without reason. The legendary gonzo journalist found himself constantly confronted with the appalling. The savage heart of the American dream prompted him to “make a beast of himself to escape the pain of being a man.” If only out of instinctual defiance, he refused to take guff from anyone.

American Jews need not make beasts of themselves, but it is time for them to heed Thompson’s advice. They should no longer take any guff from these swine. I refer, of course, to the swine who have infested many of America’s most unjustly revered institutions of higher learning. There, Sus scrofa domesticus have constructed a filth-ridden sty from which they spew antisemitism; advocate genocide; render normal university life impossible; force other students to study online; and abuse, bully and physically assault Jews and anyone else who dares dissent from their fetid ideology.

The swine want, of course, the consummation of the world’s oldest hatred: What Louis-Ferdinand Céline charmingly referred to as “a pile of a million dead stinking Yids.”

Céline also asserted that this stinking pile was “not worth the life of a single Aryan.” The adults in the room appear to agree. Those who should and almost certainly do know better have been remarkably sanguine about having their institutions infested with Scrofa domesticus. Even President Joe Biden, in whom so many Jews put their trust and their vote, seemed content to channel his predecessor’s famous “very fine people on both sides” admonition on the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. For Biden and most of his Democratic colleagues, it appears, some Nazis are more condemnable than others.

As for the high rollers of academia, who suddenly find themselves presiding over a sty rather than a school, even this small measure of equivocation is out of fashion. Faculty happily jump into the wallow while administrators either collaborate or—as is common in catamites—bend the knee and simply look away. That everything the swine are doing violates these institutions’ alleged codes of conduct as well as numerous laws is irrelevant to those who know better. That they could end the scatologic orgy tomorrow through mass arrests and expulsions is unthinkable. They are too sympathetic with or too terrified of the sows.

To what quarter, then, may American Jews turn? The obvious answer would be to their communal leadership. Unfortunately, as I know from the many who have contacted me, this only evokes a sense of total despair—and quite rightfully so. The warning signs that the swine were gathering have been there for a quarter-century. The red flags were so plentiful that only the willfully blind could fail to see them. But the American Jewish leadership chose to be blind. They either did nothing or were so ineffective they might as well have done nothing. They had a chance to contain the thing before it became impossible to contain, but they chose not to.

The reasons for this dereliction are legion and will be fully understood only in the light of history. Certainly, the nepotistic gerontocracy that rules the major Jewish organizations was woefully unprepared to deal with a grassroots neo-Nazism arising from the political left and the Muslim community. These leaders often enjoyed seven-figure salaries and flattering political connections they did not wish to jeopardize by rocking the boat. Many are graduates of the very institutions from which the swine have now come wriggling forth. Perhaps it was a simple failure of nerve. They lacked the strength necessary to face unpleasant facts.

Right now, however, the failure of American Jewish leaders is clearly manifest. That failure squeals and snorts and wallows right before our eyes. American Jews should have no illusions about what this means: They are more or less on their own, abandoned by many of their political allies, bereft of effective leadership, and lacking the means for basic communal self-defense. And it is only a matter of time before the swine burst forth from the campuses into the broader Jewish community, wreaking bloody mayhem wherever they can.

Some I have spoken to believe that the answer lies in the formation of a new organization or organizations dedicated to active self-defense of the Jewish community and a more militant and radical resistance to antisemitism. This is a fine idea, but such organizations will take time to build and the problem is immediate. American Jews must use the tools they have.

The major organizations are there and still have enormous political, financial and organizational resources to draw on. Overnight, they could organize an effective counter-protest movement and a nationwide Jewish self-defense force. They could hold the relevant institutions’ feet to the political, cultural and financial fire. They have chosen not to. The imperative of the moment is to force them to do so.

This will only happen if the American Jewish community demands it. The major organizations should be deluged with emails and phone calls. Donors should threaten to withhold their money. Denunciations should be issued from the pulpit, in the media, and even in quotidian personal interactions.

In all of them, there should be not just recrimination but an absolute and irrevocable demand: Don’t take any guff from these swine. Stop indulging Scrofa domesticus with the excuse of free speech and assembly, when neither of those rights protects organized violence, genocidal incitement and systematic lawbreaking. Stop pussyfooting around your treasured political allies and threaten them with a total cessation of Jewish support if they don’t take effective action. Stop indulging in nostalgia for your alma mater and admit that these institutions willfully permitted their swine to micturate on everything you believe in.

Above all, end your silence. Speak up, speak out, denounce, demand. Be angry, be uncompromising, make it plain, make them listen. Don’t take any guff from these swine. You still have the power to do so, though you will not have it for long if the swine get their way. If American Jewish life becomes impossible, it will be as bad for you as for the rest of your beleaguered community. Act.

You have a chance now, perhaps for the last time, to redeem yourselves. Take it. If you cannot or will not do so, please step aside to make way for those who will.

The post Don’t Take Any Guff From These Swine … first appeared on Algemeiner.com.