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World News Standing with Zionism Is Standing with Liberty and Justice
Theodor Herzl, considered the father of modern-day Zionism, leans over the balcony of the Hotel Les Trois Rois (Three King’s Hotel/Hotel drei Könige) in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – Understanding a two-sided conflict requires nuance. In almost all disputes, both sides have merit to their arguments; simultaneously, flaws can also be found in their position.
There are rare conflicts that require no nuance to understand them. These conflicts pit good against evil. One side is so obviously moral and the other so vile that even trying to understand the vile side doesn’t help a person understand the topic of dispute, but rather, runs the risk of demonstrating empathy for a position so objectionable that it deserves no space in a moral society. One doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) study Nazi thought to understand why antisemitism and murder are wrong. The same is true of racism and rape. There aren’t many conflicts that are so obvious, but when they occur, it’s important to relate to them properly and not treat them as normal conversation.
Zionism is a modern political movement based on a 4,000-year-old ideology that maintains there is an intrinsic connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. The modern political Zionist movement started in the middle of the 1800s and advocated for the rights of the Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland, the Land of Israel. Its founder is generally recognized as Theodor Herzl, but hundreds of Zionists came before him. The Zionist movement experienced success in its mission with the establishment of the modern-day State of Israel in 1948. Since its founding, the nation has remained loyal to its purpose of ensuring the Jewish people determine their destiny on their land.
Zionism was the modern age’s greatest liberation movement. For 2,000 years, almost every country the Jews settled in eventually turned on them, persecuted them and expelled them. The Jew was known as a wanderer—always a stranger in a strange land. The Jewish nightmare reached its lowest point when Nazi Germany, aided by antisemites throughout Eastern and Western Europe, murdered 6 million men, women and children. This evil was so singularly unique that it was given its own name: the Holocaust. Many opposed to Zionism or who had yet to understand its merits understood the need for Jewish self-determination and a Jewish state after witnessing the evils perpetrated against the Jews when they didn’t have their own nation to defend them and provide refuge to their persecuted. Zionism stands as an outline for every liberation movement that came after it.
On the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah on Oct. 7, the Jewish people, Israelis and the international community were given a harsh reminder of the violent plots antisemites plan for the Jews. Palestinians by the thousands stormed across the Gaza-Israel border and committed acts equally as heinous as the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews of Europe and North Africa. The barbarians who killed, kidnapped, raped, burned, beheaded and tortured innocent Jews that day targeted civilians. The atrocities weren’t acts of resistance but evil savagery. The acts that day were premeditated and committed out of antisemitism.
In the year since, antisemites around the world have felt emboldened to express their Jew-hatred in ways not seen since Nazi rallies. These rallies aren’t about a free Palestine, justice or human rights. In the past few decades, Palestinians were massacred by the tens of thousands in Syria, uprooted from their homes in Egypt and discriminated against in Lebanon. Not one rally was held anywhere in the world for these genuine atrocities committed against Palestinians in Arab countries. It was antisemitism that awakened the masses to scream vile hate-filled slogans like “Kill the Jews” in cities spanning from San Francisco to London to Sydney. The people at these rallies looked at a conflict that pitted the freedom movement of Zionism against the hate of antisemitism and chose to rally for evil. For shame.
The conflict that has sprung up since the Simchat Torah massacre pits the Jewish state against terrorists who wish for the demise of the one nation that protects the Jewish people. It doesn’t aim to win freedom or rights for the Palestinian people but to reverse global progress that achieved liberation for the Jewish people. The side of the conflict that waves flags of terrorist organizations intends to put the Jewish people back at risk of the extermination they faced throughout the Crusades, during pogroms and the Holocaust.
This two-sided conflict isn’t a normal conflict that requires nuance to understand it. This conflict pits good vs. evil. Israel’s enemies and their supporters use emotion instead of facts, demonization instead of history and victimhood instead of responsibility to trick society into confusing weakness for virtue and strength for misconduct, leading the public to support evil instead of standing up for a liberal and democratic state.
All great justice movements fought for the liberty and rights of their people. These movements weren’t built around fighting against others. They advocated for their people’s rights and used violence to achieve their goals when they were left with no other choice. Zionism followed the American Revolution, among other movements, to earn its liberty. Israel’s enemies have consistently chosen to leave the negotiating table or never join it in the first place and use violence as their first option.
A year after the Simchat Torah massacre, the world has become a more confused place. People who stand for justice are standing on the wrong side of a conflict between the liberation movement of Zionism and violent antisemites who march with terrorist flags, following people being paid by terrorists to disrupt Western, liberal and free societies. There must be a moral reckoning directed by global leaders who don’t try to kowtow to both sides and appease the most evil actors in today’s world. The world must choose—and declare Zionism and Israel just and its opponents the enemies of liberty, democracy and justice.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
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