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Yes, the IDF Is the Moral Army That It Claims To Be

November 2023: An Israeli soldier helps to provide incubators to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Photo: Screenshot

In a recent column in Haaretz, Prof. Yagil Levy claims, based on a “fundamental comparison,” that the IDF in its war in Gaza is not the moral army it purports to be. His claim is based on little evidence from the field and relies mainly on comparisons of numbers.

Levy’s database is simple. As of October 2024, about 43,000 Gazans had been killed in the war (Hamas data), of whom about 17,000 were terrorists (IDF data). There were about 350 IDF casualties. According to Levy, the best way to assess an army’s morality is to examine the ratio between soldiers and civilians killed. According to his calculations, the ratio in the current war is 68 Gazan civilians for every soldier killed. This is a higher ratio than was the case in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza (2014) or in the American battle to capture Fallujah (2004). In Levy’s opinion, this ratio indicates that the IDF “transferred the risk” to Gazan civilians more than Western armies have done in other cases.

Levy wishes to convey the impression that his conclusion is based on thorough research and is therefore well-founded. In practice, Levy’s claim is absurd. Morality, according to Levy, is directly related to the extent of casualties suffered by the military force. In other words, preserving the lives of our fighters, to a certain extent, becomes a moral flaw. According to this logic, sloppy fighting that results in many casualties for our forces would reflect the IDF’s moral virtue.

Levy’s “morality index” is, of course, Hamas’ dream. The enemy built a combat doctrine on the idea of ​​using its own population as a giant human shield. Its strategy was based on the assumption that it could avoid defeat in the war it itself initiated on October 7 through three components: holding hostages to be used as bargaining chips; maximizing deaths among its own population; and maximizing casualties for the IDF.

The comparison to the battle of Fallujah, a small city compared to the densely populated Gaza Strip, is also out of place. The level of organization, planning, and preparation for battle by the rebels there was immeasurably lower than in Gaza, and there was a much more sparse civilian presence as most had fled the city before the battle. In general, it is very difficult to compare battles and numbers, due to both the unique local circumstances of individual battles and the nature of such wars. Numerical data in wars against subversive forces tend to be extremely unreliable. To Levy’s credit, he emphasizes that he relies on Hamas data – data that has been proven false on multiple occasions.

How can one discuss the morality of combat tactics? Prof. Levy, in his usual fashion, treats war as a one-sided event, but this is of course a wrong view. It is of course worth taking into account comparisons of enemy strength and the risk posed to the soldiers.

In the 2016-2017 campaign to liberate Mosul, for example, a city in and around which about 1.8 million people lived, between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians were killed. The lower number was taken from a West Point study, while the higher number is the estimate published by the British Independent on July 19, 2017. About a million people were displaced from their homes and about 1,200 fighters from the coalition against ISIS were killed (and even as many as 8,200, according to the West Point study). The size of the ISIS force defending the metropolis was estimated at between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. The numbers, as mentioned, are highly questionable. Still, let’s assume that 3,000 ISIS fighters were killed in the battle (though it is more likely that many of them fled), and that only 30,000 civilians were killed in the battle (though the city was completely destroyed and ISIS prevented residents from fleeing). This would mean that for every terrorist fighter killed, the coalition forces (Iraqi forces led by the US military) killed about 10 civilians. In other words, in the campaign to liberate Mosul, the ratio of civilian deaths to enemy kills was 1/10. Even if we use the most conservative end of the estimates, 10,000 civilian deaths, the ratio would still be one enemy fighter to more than three civilians.

The lives of soldiers also have moral value. Twelve hundred coalition fighters killed in the battle for Mosul means almost one for every two enemy fighters. If we use the West Point numbers, the ratio would be reversed and stand at more than two coalition fighters for every enemy fighter.

In Gaza, the IDF faced a dense space that had been prepared for war for almost 20 years, and an organized military force that numbered about 40,000 Hamas fighters and thousands more from other organizations. This force continues to build itself up, recruiting more Gazans, as the war goes on. These are much more difficult conditions (speaking solely in terms of enemy strength, it is 10 times more difficult) than those faced by the liberators of Mosul. Under these extraordinarily difficult conditions, the IDF has managed, according to the numbers used by Levy, to harm no more than 1.5 civilians for every terrorist killed.

To substantiate the quantitative analysis, we will perform a “sanity check” on the numbers by turning to a report from the Costs of War project of the Watson Institute at Brown University from November 2019. The report examines casualties in the 15 years of the war in Iraq. The use of multi-year data can mitigate the distortions created by the extreme uncertainty of numbers from specific battles. According to the Watson report, in the Iraq War (2003-2018), about 200,000 civilians, 40,000 enemy combatants, and 50,000 coalition combatants (nearly 10,000 Americans and the rest local) were killed — that is, five civilians for every enemy combatant and a little more than one coalition combatant for every enemy combatant.

The IDF, according to Yagil Levy, “transferred the risk” to civilians. But the numbers actually indicate an impressive success of the IDF on both a tactical and a moral level. If the IDF had met the Mosul standard, between 51,000 and about 170,000 Gazans would have been killed in addition to the 17,000 terrorists killed (a ratio of between three and 10 civilians for every 17,000 terrorists). In reality — again, according to Levy, who is basing his conclusions on Hamas data — about 26,000 civilians were killed, about half the ratio of the extreme-lowest estimate for Mosul.

According to Levy’s twisted index, in relation to the 17,000 terrorists killed, the IDF should have paid a price of between 8,500 and about 35,000 of its own casualties in order to meet the Mosul standard, or about 20,000 casualties to meet the overall standard of the Iraq War.

By the way, in the Kosovo War (1999), a war conducted by NATO from the air only, without risking ground forces, the studies indicate a ratio of between 1.4 and two civilians killed for every enemy combatant.

The data obtained by the IDF is not make-believe. It is the fruit of enormous, long-term professional effort, and impressive tactical skill achieved in the midst of battle. Systems of intelligence, air, and artillery support have been built in recent years for the benefit of the forces on the ground, as well as an extraordinary advanced system of warning and evacuating enemy populations – evacuations that are carried out at the cost of giving up surprise in battle. The IDF has reached a level of professionalism and skill in all these parameters that no army in the world has ever demonstrated before. Without delving into details, on a principled level, the IDF’s moral choice was simple: to be strict about protecting the lives of enemy civilians through evacuations from the battlefield, and to protect the lives of our fighters through intelligence-based but also relatively permissive cover of fire support towards buildings and infrastructure that had become enemy entrenchment complexes.

The sight of a destroyed Gaza is not pretty. But Gaza is no more destroyed than Fallujah and Mosul after those battles, and a much lower ratio of Gazan civilians and IDF soldiers were killed in the process. In my opinion, destroying infrastructure is an entirely defensible moral choice in exchange for saving human lives.

Let’s return to Levy’s description of the war. He stresses that, unlike in the past, the IDF did not use the “roof-tapping” technique this time to warn residents before bombing buildings. He does not mention that this technique is unique to the IDF and has never been carried out by any other army anywhere else in the world. In the circumstances of this war, the “roof-tapping” technique was not a practical option. Levy also cites unflattering testimonies about IDF conduct. I believe some of the testimonies are true, and this is unfortunate and dangerous. We must fight against this kind of behavior and condemn the helplessness of IDF command in dealing with it. Unfortunately, in this cruel war, these occurrences are not surprising. But Levy does not describe the enormous effort made throughout the war to evacuate the non-combatant population from the battle zones and ensure evacuation routes and humanitarian aid for them prior to the entrance of the IDF. In Fallujah and Mosul, no one gave a thought to systematically moving supplies and fuel into enemy-controlled territory and ensuring the continuity of medical services there. Nor was any concern given to allowing the flow of water, electricity, cellular, or internet services.

This is not the first time Prof. Levy has launched an attack on the idea of ​​tactical efficiency. About two years ago, he attacked Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, and me personally, for the effort that was then being made to improve the lethality of IDF forces – that is, their ability to locate an enemy and destroy him quickly and accurately. As Finkel has described, those efforts made an important contribution to the tactical success of the maneuver in Gaza. Levy denounced these efforts as “necrotactics” and accused the IDF of trying to prevent political agreements by improving Israel’s military capability. Levy even accused me of striving for endless wars because my work, as an IDF officer at the time, was striving for a more decisive military capability that would deny the enemy the ability to fire at Israel.

The current war is not being conducted flawlessly. Far from it. We will have many lessons to learn from this long war, and not just from the failure of October 7. There is also room for criticism of deviations from the morality of warfare.

But that is not where Yagil Levy has directed his criticism. In his article in Telem in 2022 and again in his current column in Haaretz, for Levy, the enemy does not exist in war. The enemy is nothing more than a passive subject whom the IDF kills unilaterally and at will. The distorted measure of morality he presents is a denial of our right to self-defense, or at least of our right to fight to win.

Levy does not focus on specific incidents of moral excess that are proper to condemn. He chooses to use a broad moral index that purportedly gives him the right to condemn the morality of the war as a whole. In his view, the deaths of thousands of Gazans used deliberately by Hamas as human shields would be moral if thousands of IDF fighters were killed too.

The “Levy index” of morality requires careless and unsuccessful fighting on our part… that is, defeat. Well, Prof. Levy, the defensive war in Gaza is justified and moral. Fortunately, it is being carried out — at least generally and on a tactical level — in a professional and efficient manner. Your index’s moral compass demands the shedding of more Israeli blood. Its practical meaning is the negation of the morality of defensive war. It is your index, not the IDF’s conduct, that reflects the loss of a moral path.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking. His book The Battle Before the War (MOD 2022, in Hebrew) dealt with the IDF’s need to change, innovate and renew a decisive war approach. His next book, Renewal — The October 7th War and Israel’s Defense Strategy, is about to be published by Levin Publications. A version of this article was originally published by Zman Israel and The BESA Center.

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Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters

An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

A Brooklyn woman denied killing anyone when she appeared in court on Thursday, less than a week after a Jewish woman and her two daughters died when she crashed her car into them at a crosswalk.

Miriam Yarimi, 32, appeared in Brooklyn Criminal Court via a video stream from her room in NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News. She is undergoing a psychological evaluation at the hospital following Saturday’s deadly car crash.

After the crash, Yarimi told first responders she was “possessed” and believed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was following her. She has made similar claims about being pursued by the CIA on social media several times in the past, The Algemeiner previously reported.

Yamini, who is also Jewish, faces a slew of charges that include three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault.

“The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof,” Yarimi said in a statement after Saturday’s crash, according to Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Nocella. “I need CT scans in my eyes. I need to get the scanning done now … Where’s my daughter? My daughter’s always in my heart.”

“People are out to get me,” added the single mother. “I need CT scans on my entire body. F— you. I need a whole work up to get whatever is in my body out of it. I did not hurt anyone. All the evidence is on my phone.”

Nocella called Yamini a flight risk and asked the judge that she be held without bail due to the “nature and severity” of the allegations, as reported by the Daily News. Judge Jevet Johnson agreed with Nocella and ordered Yamini to be held without bail. Nocella said prosecutors are prepared to present grand jury indictment on the manslaughter charges.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration is “committed” to taking more action to prevent traffic violence and deaths following the fatal car crash that killed Natasha Saada, 35, along with her daughters Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5. Saada’s 4-year-old son Philip was injured in the crash and is still being hospitalized in critical condition.

Adams’ office announced on Wednesday that there were 41 traffic deaths during the first three months of 2025 — 24 fewer than last year and the second fewest since they started being recorded by the city. Despite the decline in traffic deaths, Adams admitted that more work needs to be done to keep New Yorkers safe on the streets, as evident by Saturday’s deadly car crash.

“In order to make New York City the best place to raise a family, we need to be safer at every level — including on our streets,” he said in a released statement on Wednesday. “Our administration’s investments in intersection safety improvements, treating traffic violence as the serious crime that it is, and our expanding automated camera enforcement are all helping ensure we’re leading the way toward a safer future for all New Yorkers — whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists.”

“We understand there is more work to do, as evidenced this past weekend’s tragic crash in Brooklyn because one lift [sic] lost to traffic violence is one life too many, but our administration remains committed to reducing traffic violence as much as any other form of violence,” Adams added.

On Saturday afternoon, Yarimi crashed her car into an Uber and then slammed into four members of the Saada family as they were trying to walk across the street at an intersection on Ocean Parkway in Midwood.

Yarimi was speeding at the time of the incident, “probably doing close to twice the speed limit,” and “ran a red light” just before the crash, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez revealed on Wednesday while speaking to Eyewitness News. Yamini was also driving on a suspended license and has accumulated almost 100 parking and camera violations, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets.

“It actually exceeds just being reckless, it’s almost being wanton, we’re not going to tolerate that,” Gonzalez told Eyewitness News. “Her vehicle had been ticketed many times by red light cameras and speed cameras, that car was a frequent violator of both speed laws and red-light laws, and there is no excuse for running a red light.”

Saada and her daughters were buried in Israel this week. Four-year-old Philip remains at the hospital for his injuries and is facing “tough straights,” Gonzalez said. “We expect him to make some kind of recovery, but it’s going to be a long road for him.”

The boy lost one of his kidneys during treatment at Maimonides Medical Center, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “It’s heartbreaking,” Lander said after he visited the home of the Saada family, according to the New York Post. “He’s still in critical condition. He lost one kidney but they are hopeful about his prognosis.”

Five people in the Uber hit by Yarimi’s car suffered minor injuries.

Supporters of a proposed state law that would stop repeat super speeders in New York have rallied together since the car accident on Saturday, calling for the passage of the bill that they said could have prevented the crash. The legislation would require speed limiters to be installed on vehicles owned by repeat reckless drivers, like Yarimi. The device automatically limits the vehicles to within 5 mph of the legal speed of the road. The “Stop Super Speeders” bill was sponsored by New York State Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and Senator Andrew Gounardes.

The New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, supports the bill and criticized Adams for not already implementing such measures.

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Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

Hungary on Thursday announced that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the country welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the capital city of Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.

Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest. Instead, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed his Israeli counterpart with full military honors.

Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, is his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him last year. In February, he made his first foreign trip altogether since the ICC’s decision to the United States, where he met with US President Donald Trump.

As Orban and Netanyahu met to discuss regional developments and bilateral cooperation, Hungarian Minister Gergely Gulyas released a statement announcing that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” from the ICC, which could take a year or more to complete.

After their meeting, Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Budapest’s decision to withdraw from the international court, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”

“I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC,” Saar wrote in a post on X. “The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense.”

In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war. Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

After the court issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”

During Thursday’s news conference, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”

“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”

After the Israeli leader was welcomed in Budapest, Hamas issued a statement calling on the Hungarian government to reverse its decision and extradite Netanyahu to the ICC to stand trial, calling the decision an “immoral stance that shows collusion with a war criminal who is running away from justice.”

In a post on X, Israel’s top diplomat reiterated his support for Hungary’s decision, arguing that Hamas’s statement only proves the country is taking the correct stance in this matter.

“Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it,” Saar wrote.

“Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called ‘International Criminal Court.’ And that’s the whole story.”

After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.

US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2o23.

The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.

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Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must

The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

During the events of Purim, Haman approached King Xerxes I and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So, it is not in the king’s interest to let them live.”

Queen Esther’s solidarity with her dispersed people in Persia, and her profound loyalty to her Jewish identity, saved them from Haman’s genocide and secured their self-defense when she courageously revealed her heritage to Xerxes I.

Today, Israeli Jews are once again fighting for their Jewish and Zionist survival. Since Oct. 7, 2023, this Jewish Armageddon has extended anew to Diaspora Jews, who have felt the past’s chilling draft. Antisemitism has reawakened, infecting non-Jews and Jews alike. Few people contribute to antisemitic attitudes more than “self-loathing” Jews. These “self-loathing” Jews, who cynically reveal only the negative aspects of their Jewishness, believe they can avoid antisemitic attacks if they condemn Israel. But they achieve only self-betrayal, gaining neither acceptance nor respect from those who hate all Jews. Jews are a nation of people who question, not people who answer.

Questions pervade the Jewish mind to such a degree that the adage, “two Jews, three opinions,” has become a common characteristic of Jewish identity. Moreover, the pursuit of an answer often serves as a springboard for further inquiry. For us, as Jews, the ultimate answer, akin to the messianic ideal, remains a distant, undefined future. This traditional perspective has granted Jews a sort of perpetual license to disagree. Jews enjoy engaging in debate with others, but they sometimes find particular delight in debating amongst themselves, which allows their intellects to roam and their sardonic wit to playfully engage with each other’s vulnerabilities, finding humor without causing offense.

This love for discourse, for questioning everything in sight, including Hashem himself, is by no means the only puzzle that makes up our Jewish identity. Another crucial element of our makeup is solidarity. In times of major upheavals, we have always stood together against the masses who rose against us. To our enemies, we Jews — atheists, nihilists, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Haredi, religious Zionists, non-religious Zionists, or undecided — look, taste, and feel the same. They care nothing for our ingrained liberalism. Our enemies seek cracks within our communities in order to break us apart and cause irreparable damage.

Years of relative peace and prosperity since the Holocaust have allowed us to gather again and engage in countless polemics over the fate of Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism. However, we have failed to notice that we are at war again, and that our enemies eagerly exploit the divisions within a nation that comprises only 0.2% of the world’s population. These enemies — radical Islamists and progressive Western leftists who view Jews and Israel as white oppressors and colonizers — avidly listen to Jewish internal squabbles and criticisms of the Israeli government.

Despite the significant progress the Shin Bet and IDF have made in dismantling much of Hamas’s leadership and terrorist infrastructure, destroying its complex network of tunnels and command centers, and weakening Hezbollah, in addition to eliminating tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists, many Jews remain critical of, and disagree with, what Israel represents today. Aware of government problems, Israelis desire improvement. However, their rage and almost addictive pattern of anti-government protests have provided their adversaries with more opportunities to exploit perceived weaknesses.

This has resonated with some Jews worldwide. In New York, some Jewish intellectuals have defended “free-Palestine” and pro-Hamas protesters harassing Jewish students, invoking freedom of speech. They appear to have fallen prey to what they perceive as the lies of progressive anti-Zionist media, which systemically omits crucial facts about Israel. This includes the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties, and its role in eliminating thousands of Hamas terrorists and dismantling their terror network, which posed a significant threat to Israel (and innocent Palestinians themselves).

These “romantic” progressive Jews also forget that no matter how critical they are of that “brutal” IDF, it is still fighting on their behalf, because it is fighting on behalf of every Jew. Civilian deaths do occur, but they are either unfortunate incidents of war or, more often, a direct result of Hamas’s cruelty, as Hamas terrorists purposefully embed themselves within the civilian population. I once sat at dinner in Israel with a wealthy American Jewish couple who came on a sympathy tour a few months after Oct. 7. Nevertheless, the husband was convinced that the IDF was deliberately killing Palestinian children.

Those were wealthy, educated American Jews who thought they were charitable because they donated to Jewish causes, and therefore, believed they had the right to express their views on everything. This is where I, a Soviet Jew who grew up deprived of Judaism yet targeted by antisemitism, felt differently. To begin with, the husband was completely wrong. Second, in times of existential crisis, we, as Jewish people, must set aside our irresistible urge to disagree and criticize Israel on basic premises such as Israel’s fight to ensure Jews don’t live through a second genocide. The freedom to speak our minds has been ours for thousands of years. We conversed with Hashem, we obeyed Him, we sacrificed for Him, and then we quickly learned to disobey and question Him, even before we began arguing amongst ourselves.

Still, throughout our dotted and punctured history, it wasn’t our tongues or our disagreeable minds that kept our small nation together; it was our solidarity. In solidarity, we walked out of Egypt. In solidarity, tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews came to their promised land as early as the 1920s and began to build from nothing. In solidarity with his orphans, Dr. Janusz Korczak, despite being given the chance to save himself, chose to march with them, hand in hand, through the ghetto to the deportation point, on their way to Treblinka, where they met their final hour. In solidarity with other Jews across the Soviet Empire, Soviet Jews secretly tried to remember who they were, despite years of persecutions and purges.

In solidarity with their Soviet brethren, powerful American Jewry fought for Russian Jews to be able to emigrate to Israel and the United States. One of the main reasons our small nation has not disappeared into the abyss is because, in Diaspora, across oceans, and through impenetrable iron curtains, we never ceased to support one another. We knew we could not afford the luxury of neglecting our faith, traditions, and, most importantly, we could never abandon defending ourselves against our enemies.

Caesar’s “Divide et impera” (“Divide and Conquer”), though a cliché, is particularly relevant here. Seeing fractures within our communities, our enemies have intensified these divisions through incessant anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda and violence. Therefore, only as an undivided people, united by a single purpose — eradicating our enemies and protecting our promised land — do we stand a chance of survival. Perhaps only then will the day come when Jewish people gather on virtual street corners to argue and ask questions to which they seek no answers.

Anya Gillinson is an immigration lawyer and author of the new memoir Dreaming in Russian. She lives in New York City. More at www.anyagillinson.com.

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