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We Are a Nation of Life, and So We Lift Our Heads
A general view shows thousands of Jewish worshipers attending the priestly blessing on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, Sept. 26, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Ammar Awad.
Waiting for the elevator at Bloomingdale’s, I was noticed by a stranger who saw my Star of David, my “Bring Them Home” necklace, and a yellow ribbon pin.
“Shabbat Shalom,” he said with a smile. I smiled back, grateful for that unspoken Jewish connection.
When the elevator arrived, he asked loudly, “Are you Israeli?” As others entered, I replied, “No, but I am Jewish.” Suddenly, he pressed his fingers to his lips — “shhh” — a gesture familiar to me as a Soviet Jew. Moments earlier, he’d wished me “Happy Shabbos” when we were alone. But now, surrounded by strangers, fear took over him.
I left shaken — not by an immediate threat of antisemitism, but by his quiet warning, as if to protect us both.
Judaism — with its single G-d — altered how future generations would view morality and codify it into law. The Ten Commandments outline foundational principles, but the tensions lie between the lines. Jewish wisdom reconciles contradictions with questions. Strangers to our faith may feel uncomfortable with that. Jews, given the blueprint of values, had to learn how to become a nation by making mistakes.
The Torah has shaped us into a nation of contradictions — yet also guided by reason. Six million Jews perished in the Holocaust, and today, the global Jewish population remains just 0.2% of the world’s total. We have fought for survival, yet never sought converts. Jewish tradition makes conversion difficult. As Rabbi Tzvi Freeman explains, Judaism is a covenant, not merely a religion: belonging is not defined by belief alone.
But why are non-practicing Jews still considered Jewish, while committed non-Jews must convert? The answer lies in the fact that Jews were bonded first by covenant, not religion. This covenant was not solely between the nation and their G-d; it was an intra-communal bond.
At Sinai, they accepted the laws directly from Him. From that moment onward, they could choose to carry the Torah’s voice through history — or not — but what became irreversible was the creation of a nation bound by shared values. Whether they upheld the commandments or not, their primary common denominator remained the values inscribed in those laws.
The acceptance of the Ten Commandments forever bound every Jewish individual to one another and to G-d, thereby creating the Jews — a nation whose Judaism resided in the fabric of its community, not solely in its religion. Rabbi Freeman captures this perfectly: “In religion, you belong because you believe. In Judaism, you believe because you belong.”
We are who we are, whether religious or not. Our very essence belongs to the Jewish nation because we are bound by that ancient covenant.
Yet one cannot simply decide to become Jewish by learning religious laws and traditions. Herein lies the difficulty of conversion: to become one with the Jewish nation, one must become a ger — “a stranger who comes to sojourn among us.”
The word Hebrews means “on the other side” or “an outsider.” Perhaps the fate of always being the “other” was predetermined by this very word. For centuries, we built worlds within worlds: ghettos, shtetls, synagogues. We lived beside, but never fully part of, the gentile world.
The paradoxes within Jewish faith have never ceased to unsettle me. Shouldn’t religion bring peace? Not Judaism — because it is not solely a religion but a self-identity. Our Jewish “I” exists outside conventional religion.
We revere numbers in math and in trade, yet the Torah frowns upon counting people. Though it acknowledges counting for specific purposes — a minyan, mitzvot, or a census — the Torah teaches that we are never reducible to mere numbers, as the Nazis believed when they tattooed digits onto our flesh, stripping Jews of their humanity and individuality. Thus, it commands: Nasso Es Rosh — “Lift the Head.”
This is Jewish self-identity: unapologetic, unerasable. We declare our identity by lifting our heads. Our Jewishness is the source of our pride because within it, we find life. And so, we have never been — and never will be — victims.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, surrounded by its cynical antisemitism — which worked tirelessly to suppress the minds and erase the identities of so many Soviet Jews — I never imagined that one day in America, I would encounter mainstream antisemitism, or that it would be facilitated by members of my own Jewish community, whose Jewishness and Zionism have been hijacked by various progressive ideologies that frame Western Jews — and Israeli Jews in particular — as white colonial oppressors.
Yet antisemites must know this: we are here to stay. Antisemitism lingers like a virus, but it is no longer a death sentence, thanks to those who say: “NO MORE!”
Today, as Israel fights an existential battle, as its most ethical army in history removes — with surgical precision — some of the world’s greatest evils one by one, and as the Jewish nation defends not only every Jew in the Diaspora, but also every person who yearns for a free society, every Jew must lift his or her head and reaffirm their Jewishness through that sacred covenant forged millennia ago in a scorching desert, on the journey to the Promised Land.
Anya Gillinson was born in Moscow, Russia, into the family of a renowned physician and a concert pianist. When she was thirteen years old, her father was killed during a botched robbery on his first and last visit to New York. Two years after his death, Anya moved to New York with her mother and younger sister and went on to graduate from high school, college, and eventually law school. She considers it a privilege to practice law and to be able to be useful to people, but literature has always been her true calling. In 2015, she published a volume of poetry in Russian, Suppress in Me the Strive To Love. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.
The post We Are a Nation of Life, and So We Lift Our Heads first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UN Data: Nearly 90 Percent of Gaza Aid ‘Intercepted’ Before Reaching Intended Recipients
Palestinians collect aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients, newly released data from the United Nations shows, fueling growing concerns among Israeli officials and international observers about systemic aid diversion by armed groups in the enclave.
According to figures tracking humanitarian assistance for Gaza from May 19 to Aug. 1 of this year, out of the 2,010 UN trucks (carrying 27,434 tons of aid) collected from any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter, only 260 trucks (4,111 tons) reached their intended destination. That equates to a staggering 87 percent of all trucks and 85 percent of all tonnage of aid being stolen and not getting into the hands of civilians at the intended destination.
The UN’s own data, posted on the website of the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) as part of the “UN2720 Monitoring & Tracking Dashboard,” reveals that almost all the aid — 1,753 trucks (23,353 tons) — has been “intercepted, either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors” while being transported inside Gaza over the past few months.
No breakdown is provided of how much aid has been seized by armed groups versus civilians.
The data also shows that much of the UN aid offloaded at any of the crossings along Gaza’s perimeter has not been collected to enter the war-torn enclave during this period. Out of 40,012 tons of aid (2,134 trucks) being delivered to the crossings, just 27,434 tons (2010 trucks) have been picked up. It’s unclear what exactly led to this discrepancy, with issues such as poor internal coordination and security concerns potentially delaying aid shipments.
The UN2720 mechanism, created earlier this year, was intended to boost transparency by verifying and tracking aid shipments via QR codes at key checkpoints. The system monitors each pallet from offloading to delivery and flags any discrepancies in a centralized database.
Israel has facilitated the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, with Israeli officials condemning the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen by the ruling Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
On Sunday, Israel announced a halt in military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and new aid corridors as Arab and European countries began airdropping supplies into the enclave.
However, the UN and several Western governments have increased pressure on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, blaming the Jewish state for what they described as a hunger crisis and insufficient amounts of aid reaching civilians.
Israeli officials have said that claims of mass starvation in Gaza are false and being amplified by not only Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, but also international humanitarian organizations and media organizations to manipulate global opinion.
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Dutch Nurse Under Police Investigation for Alleged Threats Against Israeli Patients
Pro-Hamas demonstrators march in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Photo: Reuters/Romy Arroyo Fernandez
A Muslim nurse in the Netherlands is under police investigation after allegedly threatening to administer lethal injections to Israeli patients — an incident that has sparked public outrage and intensified fears over rising antisemitism and patient safety in Europe’s health-care systems.
The comments were widely circulated by Israeli influencer Max Veifer, who also exposed a recent case in Australia where two nurses were suspended for two years over antisemitic threats and remarks.
In a video shared on social media, Veifer denounced Dutch-Muslim nurse Batisma Chayat Sa’id’s remarks as a serious violation of medical ethics.
“Someone like that should be prosecuted and barred from treating patients. Imagine your grandparents being cared for by someone so hateful,” the Israeli influencer said.
Zorgwekkende dreiging op Instagram: Nederlandse verpleegkundige is bereid om “zionisten een extra spuitje te geven” en bereid “zionisten te laten sterven binnen de gezondheidszorg.” pic.twitter.com/xTnXNi1wH5
— CIDI
(@CIDI_nieuws) July 29, 2025
The incident was sparked when an Israeli-Dutch woman living in the Netherlands commented on a social media post by far-right politician Geert Wilders, who cautioned about what he called the country’s looming radical Islamization by 2050.
A social media account belonging to the Muslim nurse also commented on the post, claiming it would happen by 2027, to which the Israeli woman responded, “Your dream is our nightmare. But people wake up from nightmares. Our Netherlands, our Israel.”
“Nothing belongs to you! My grandparents built the Netherlands. I was born and raised here, and I will do everything in my power to help this country get rid of the Zionist cancer,” the nurse further replied.
“You know what I’m doing with Zionists — giving an extra injection as a nurse specialist. Letting them go to heaven!” Sa’id continued.
When the Israeli woman threatened to report her, Sa’id replied: “Haha, try your best! I don’t have a boss — I’m the boss! All Zionists can die, inside healthcare and beyond, and I’m happy to help with that!”
Shortly after her posts gained widespread attention, Sa’id deleted all her social media accounts, insisting that her identity had been stolen and that she was not responsible for such comments.
On Wednesday, local police detained Sa’id for questioning, but she denied the allegations, asserting that someone had impersonated her online.
“It seems someone is pretending to be me, posting false and defamatory statements,” the nurse said. “I want to make it clear — I hold no hatred toward Jews or any people, race, religion, or identity.”
Even after announcing plans to file an identity theft complaint, she faces skepticism from authorities, who have assigned a digital forensics expert to scrutinize her online accounts.
Last year, an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
Earlier this year, two Australian nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night-shift conversation with Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide.
They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
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French Authorities Halt Gaza Evacuations After Palestinian Student Expelled Over Viral Antisemitic Posts
Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
French authorities have halted evacuations from Gaza after a Palestinian student was expelled from the prestigious Sciences Po Lille and placed under investigation, following the viral circulation of hundreds of antisemitic posts praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and calling for the murder of Jews.
The incident drew widespread condemnation and public outrage, prompting French ministers to demand answers and call for an investigation into how the Gazan student was allowed into the country in the first place.
On Friday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that all further evacuations from Gaza would be suspended pending the completion of the investigation into the student’s background.
After receiving a scholarship, 25-year-old Nour Atalla, a Palestinian from Gaza, arrived in the country in early July to begin her master’s degree in law and communications this fall at the Institute of Political Science in Lille, northern France.
Barrot confirmed that discussions are ongoing about the student’s possible return to Gaza, making clear that she must leave the country pending the investigation’s outcome.
“She has no place at Sciences Po, nor in France,” the top French diplomat said.
On Thursday, local authorities reported that a criminal investigation is underway into Atalla, with the public prosecutor in Lille confirming the case was opened for “apology of terrorism, apology of crimes against humanity using an online public communication service.”
Barrot admitted lapses in the screening process that allowed her entry and has mandated a comprehensive review of everyone evacuated from Gaza to France.
“The security checks, carried out by the French services and Israeli authorities, did not detect the antisemitic content,” the French diplomat said.
Atalla is one of 292 Gazans admitted to the country following a court ruling that opened the door for Gazans to seek refugee status based on their nationality.
She was offered a place at Sciences Po Lille University based on “academic excellence” and following a recommendation by the French consulate in Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, the university announced it had revoked Atalla’s enrollment after hundreds of her past antisemitic and violent social media posts went viral, sparking widespread condemnation from political leaders and members of the local Jewish community.
In several of these posts, she glorified Hitler, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, called for the execution of Israeli hostages and the killing of Jews, and expressed support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
In one post, Atalla shared a video of Hitler giving a speech about Jews, writing, “Kill their young and their old. Show them no mercy … And kill them everywhere.”
In another post shared on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, she wrote, “We must do everything we can to match the bloodshed — as much as possible.”