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‘We were broken to see what we saw’: US rabbis visit Israel during wartime

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Wearing army-green helmets and bulletproof vests, the group of American rabbis and community leaders stood next to the ruins of a building at Kibbutz Be’eri as Cantor Luis Cattan chanted El Maleh Rachamim, the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, for “all those who were murdered in Israel and beyond.”

The group then collectively said the Mourner’s Kaddish and walked silently back to their bus.

So ended the first day of a three-day solidarity mission to Israel, which brought the group through the ravaged communities of southern Israel, to a volunteer center in Jerusalem and back home. One of multiple such missions taking place this week — another was organized by New York’s UJA-Federation — the goal of the trip was to expose the participants to the horrors of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, provide them with opportunities to give back to the country and help them articulate a message to bring back to their communities.

“I hear over and over again American Jews saying there are no words,” said Rabbi Neil Zuckerman of New York City’s Park Avenue Synagogue. “I think there are a lot of words, actually. And I think being here gives us some words that need to be spoken about what’s happening here, the moral clarity that’s here, both the pain and the incredible acts of unity that we see.”

Cantor Luis Cattan sings a prayer for the dead at Kibbutz Be’eri on a mission of Conservative Jewish leaders to Israel on Oct. 30, 2023. (Screenshot)

The group of 34 consisted of 19 Americans and 15 more Israeli counterparts and support staff, and was organized by the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center, a complex that serves as the home base of Conservative Judaism in Israel. It ran from Monday to Wednesday. The goal, said Fuchsberg CEO Stephen Daniel Arnoff, was to help “our colleagues from North America have a firsthand, very human experience of this horrible time in our world.”

After landing at Ben Gurion Airport on Monday, the participants first traveled to Ofakim, a southern Israeli city that also suffered the Hamas invasion, where they visited the home of Rachel Edri, who became an Israeli folk hero after stymying terrorists by offering them cookies. From there, the group went to Be’eri, where attackers killed more than 100 people.

They were the first civilian group since the massacre, aside from journalists, to tour the site, where homes are burnt and blood and knives still line the floor. They ended the day at Camp Shura, a military base that has transformed into a facility for identifying the bodies of those killed in the invasion.

“What I saw and experienced yesterday is imprinted in me for the rest of my life,” said Rabbi Marc Soloway of Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder, Colorado. Arnoff said, “We were broken to see what we saw and the difficult but natural response was to say the prayer for the dead.”

Tuesday was spent volunteering at a relief center in Jerusalem and meeting with families directly impacted by Oct. 7 and Israel’s ensuing war on Hamas in Gaza. Those included Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin is held hostage by Hamas, along with about 240 others. The couple have become two of the leading faces of the movement demanding the hostages’ freedom, which has galvanized Jewish communities across the United States and beyond. Before they spoke to the delegation, Goldberg-Polin’s parents had made the reverse trip — returning to Israel after a short stint advocating for their son in New York City.

“I am in shock, walking through the world without my heart,” Goldberg told the group. She and Polin described the horror of not knowing whether Hersh is still alive, after he was last seen in a video lifting himself up with his own strength into the rear of a Hamas pickup truck on its way back to Gaza — after he had lost one his arms in a grenade attack that killed 18 of 29 people who were crammed alongside him in a roadside bomb shelter.

“We are not convinced that the Israeli government is putting the hostages front and center,” Polin said. “They are talking about war and victory, but they are not talking about the hostages. It is critical even in Israel that we are not forsaking the 239 hostages. The biggest moral victory that this country needs now is to see 239 hostages returning to their families.”

Goldberg described herself as a naturally shy person who has become incapable of feeling emotions such as nervousness or fear when thrust onto the public stage to push for her son’s release. But she said that small gestures still make a difference. “It actually helps, receiving the one-line message on Whatsapp,” she said.

The final day of the trip was about “resilience and inspiration” for “clergy and communal leaders to go back home, representing tens of thousands of people who are frozen with fear and don’t know what they can do to help,” said Arnoff. “Now, they can go back and explain what they saw, what they witnessed.”

The solidarity mission is part of Fuchsberg’s broader efforts to respond to the crisis. It has also turned its Jerusalem campus into a sanctuary for 200 evacuated families from Israel’s south and north, living in dorms generally reserved for students on the Conservative gap-year program Nativ. It has also opened its synagogue for young Israelis of all stripes to sing and pray together.

“I came here because it’s home and I needed to come home and really give the message to everyone here who is struggling, who have lost people ,who are hurting — you’re not alone, we are with you,” said Rabbi Annie Lewis of the Shaare Torah congregation in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

A personal moment for Zuckerman came when he was able to give a quick hug to his son, who is serving in the IDF in Gaza. He compared the experience of being a pulpit rabbi now to how he felt at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Whatever we were planning on doing this fall with our communities, we’ve pivoted,” said Zuckerman. “This is very much a marathon, not a sprint.”

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The post ‘We were broken to see what we saw’: US rabbis visit Israel during wartime appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist

The Jewish community of Beit El in Judea and Samaria. Photo: Yaakov via Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Theroux first visited the West Bank in 2011 to film a documentary titled Louis and the Ultra-Zionists, part of his long-running series for the BBC. Back then, he at least seemed to possess a trace of journalistic curiosity. Even the title signaled a degree of editorial caution — framing his subjects as a small, ideological fringe rather than representative of Israeli society as a whole.

At the time, Theroux made an effort to clarify that he was profiling a narrow segment of Israelis. He showed legally purchased Jewish homes (sold by Arab landowners, no less) and acknowledged the regular — and at times deadly — terror attacks faced by Israeli civilians living in the area, often requiring military protection. There was condescension, certainly. But there was also context.

Fast-forward to 2024, and the curiosity is gone — though the bemused, slightly smug expression remains. His new BBC documentary, Louis and the Settlers, drops even the soft qualifiers. No “ultra.” No nuance. Just “settlers.” And with that, Theroux makes it clear: half a million Israelis living in the West Bank are one and the same — extremists who, we’re told, want every last Palestinian removed from the land.

This time, the documentary doesn’t begin with questions. It begins with conclusions. And Theroux uses a brief, unrepresentative snapshot of life in the West Bank to draw sweeping indictments of the entire Israeli state.

The message is unmistakable: Israel is the problem. Settlers are the villains. And Palestinians are passive, blameless victims of a colonial project.

Within the opening minutes, Theroux plants his ideological flag. He refers to the West Bank as “Palestinian territory” and describes every Israeli community within it as illegal under international law — a sharp departure from his more qualified approach 14 years earlier.

And while his personal views seep in throughout the film, they become crystal clear during one exchange at a checkpoint, where an Israeli soldier casually refers to their location as “Israel.” Theroux shoots back: “We’re not in Israel, are we?”

And just like that, the BBC and Louis Theroux have redrawn Israel’s borders. No Knesset debate needed.

Erasing History to Blame the Massacre

The timing of this return trip is no accident. The film comes in the shadow of the October 7 Hamas massacres — the day 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, families were burned alive in their homes, and children were dragged into Gaza. And yet, Theroux barely mentions it.

The few passing references to October 7 serve not to inform the audience — but to imply that Israel may be exploiting its own dead to justify further expansion. It’s not an investigation. It’s an accusation. And it allows him to skip over thousands of years of Jewish history in order to frame the current war in Gaza as a convenient cover story for Israeli “aggression.”

Take Hebron, for example. Theroux tells viewers that “in 1968, the year after [the West Bank] was occupied by Israel, a community of Jewish settlers moved in illegally. They now number some 700.” He fails to mention that in 1895 — decades before the modern state of Israel existed — Hebron had a Jewish population of 1,429.

Jews have lived in Hebron since antiquity — it’s where, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs. Modern records date the community back centuries, despite discrimination under Ottoman rule and bans on Jewish prayer at holy sites. In 1929, Arab rioters carried out a massacre, wiping out Hebron’s Jewish population. Dozens were murdered; the rest were expelled. Under Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, Jews were banned from the city entirely. When they returned after the Six-Day War — not as colonists, but as a displaced community coming home — Theroux picks up the story there and calls it “illegal.”

On the Six-Day War itself, Theroux offers no context. No mention of the Arab armies preparing to destroy Israel. No mention of Israel’s preemptive strike against an existential threat.

According to The Settlers, Israel simply “occupied” — full stop.

Palestinian Terrorism? Not Even a Footnote.

Theroux visits Evyatar, a small Jewish community near the Palestinian town of Beita, and uses it as a stand-in for the entire West Bank. Beita is depicted as a symbol of peaceful resistance: a proud, ancient Palestinian village standing firm against violent settlers backed by IDF soldiers.

It’s a neat story. Too neat. Because missing from the story are years of organized, violent riots from Beita — complete with Molotov cocktails, burning Stars of David, and Nazi swastikas. All carefully omitted to preserve the narrative: Palestinians peaceful, settlers aggressive. Facts that don’t fit? Left on the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile, Israeli nationalism is treated as something sinister and unsettling — a moral aberration to be examined. The notion that Jews might want sovereignty or security is met with thinly veiled suspicion. Yet Hamas’ goal of a Jew-free Palestine, explicitly laid out in its charter, is never mentioned. Nor is the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” policy, which literally incentivizes terrorism by rewarding those who murder Israelis — including women and children.

These aren’t fringe details. They’re central to understanding the region. And Theroux knows it. He just doesn’t care.

The BBC’s Complicity

That The Settlers aired on the BBC — a publicly funded broadcaster once seen as a gold standard of global journalism — says plenty. Not just about Louis Theroux’s agenda, but about the institutional direction of the BBC itself. This wasn’t a rogue filmmaker sneaking bias past the editors. This was bias built into the foundation — signed off, packaged, and broadcast under the banner of credibility.

There is, of course, no problem with scrutinizing Israeli policy, and no issue with questioning the settlement enterprise or highlighting the tensions in the West Bank. But journalism — real journalism — demands context. It demands precision. It demands at least a passing familiarity with the full scope of the story.

Theroux offers none of that. He arrives with a predetermined script and casts his roles accordingly: Hero. Villain. Victim. Oppressor. And when reality refuses to cooperate? It’s left out.

Louis Theroux didn’t return to Israel to understand it. He returned to flatten it. To reduce its complexity to a morality play — and to ensure everyone knows the antagonist is.

The Settlers isn’t a documentary. It’s a hit piece. And the BBC handed him the camera — then applauded the performance.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl

Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Photo: Screenshot

The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military forces had killed “Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist,” who was connected to the 2002 murder of Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

On Wednesday, India launched “Operation Sindoor,” which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claims is targeted at dismantling “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The operation came after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

In a post on X, the BJP confirmed that during this week’s operation, the Indian army killed Islamist terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar, who was involved in numerous terrorism plots, including the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, the 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament, and the 2016 Pathankot Air Force base attack.

Azhar’s involvement in the 1999 hijacking led to the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born al-Qaeda member with close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services, who later was involved in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of 38-year-old Pearl, who was covering the war on terror as a journalist when he was abducted.

In a statement on X, Pearl’s father, Judea, addressed initial reports regarding Azhar’s death and his connection to his son’s murder.

“I want to clarify: Azhar was a Pakistani extremist and leader of the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed. While his group was not directly involved in the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated the hijacking that led to the release of Omar Sheikh — the man who lured Danny into captivity,” he said.

In 2002, the Jewish-American journalist was abducted and killed by a group of Islamist terrorists connected to Azhar’s militant network, which had ties to al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terror group aiming to separate Kashmir from India and incorporate it into Pakistan.

On Jan. 27, 2002, an email was sent to several Pakistani and US media organizations, which included several photos, stating that Pearl was being held in “inhumane” conditions to protest the US treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba. Photo: Screenshot

Originally stationed in New Delhi as the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, Pearl later moved to Pakistan to investigate terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

After kidnapping Pearl at a restaurant in Karachi, southern Pakistan, the Islamist terrorists, who identified themselves as the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being an Israeli spy and sent the United States a list of demands for his release.

However, Washington did not meet their demands, and Pearl was ultimately executed after being held captive for five weeks.

His wife, Mariane Pearl, gave birth to a baby boy, Adam D. Pearl, in Paris later that year. On the Daniel Pearl Foundation website, she said, “Adam’s birth rekindles the joy, love, and humanity that Danny radiated wherever he went.”

The post Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete. Photo: Screenshot

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete just days before the Tunisian island was set to host its annual Jewish pilgrimage, which is expected to draw thousands of visitors.

On Wednesday morning, two Jewish men — owners of a jewelry shop in the center of the island, located off Tunisia’s southeast coast — were physically assaulted by a man carrying a large knife.

Although the attack was halted when one of them screamed — alerting members of the local Jewish community who subdued the assailant — one of them was left severely injured.

According to local media reports, the attacker had surveyed the island the day before, visiting several stores to identify those owned by Jews. Local police arrested him shortly following the assault.

After the attack, one of the owners was admitted to the hospital with severe injuries. The 50-year-old Jewish man had his fingers severed during the assault and underwent surgery to reattach them.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the attack and expressed his wishes for a swift recovery to the victims.

“This attack comes two years after the previous deadly assault that claimed Jewish lives and the lives of security personnel during the Lag BaOmer celebration,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

“I call on the Tunisian authorities to take all necessary measures to protect the Jewish community,” Saar continued.

Djerba is home to the majority of Tunisia’s Jewish community, numbering about 2,000 people, and is also where the renowned El Ghriba Synagogue, one of North Africa’s oldest synagogues, is located.

The attack comes just a week before Jewish pilgrims are expected to arrive on the island for the Lag B’Omer holiday, when thousands gather annually for three days of festivities. The annual pilgrimage to El Ghriba Synagogue, scheduled for May 15 and 16 this year, draws visitors from around the world.

The synagogue has been targeted in multiple terrorist attacks over the years, including in 1985, 2002, and 2023.

Two years ago, a shooting at the synagogue claimed the lives of two Jewish cousins and three police officers. Aviel Hadad, a 30-year-old Israeli goldsmith, and Ben Hadad, a 42-year-old Frenchman who had traveled to join the festivities, were among the victims.

The post Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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