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News from Syria shouldn’t distract from what’s been going on in Gaza
By BERNIE BELLAN Amidst the head-spinning news coming out of Syria this past week, it’s easy to forget that there is still a war going on in Gaza. What, exactly, Israel’s government is trying to accomplish there now is not easy to figure out.
The Israel Defense Forces would seem to have achieved all their military goals, including completely nullifying Hamas and Islamic Jihad as threats to Israel, so what more does the Israeli government (and here, I want to clearly differentiate between the goals of the government and the goals of the IDF) hope to accomplish?
In asking that, I want to reflect on two recent articles that appeared in Haaretz. One was about a Hebrew University professor by the name of Lee Mordechai, who has been carefully cataloguing war crimes that the IDF has been committing in Gaza.
Here is the introduction to that Haaretz article: “A woman with a child is shot while waving a white flag ■ Starving girls are crushed to death in line for bread ■ A cuffed 62-year-old man is run over, evidently by a tank ■ An aerial strike targets people trying to help a wounded boy ■ A database of thousands of videos, photos, testimonies, reports and investigations documents the horrors committed by Israel in Gaza”
The article goes on to note that “The report Dr. Mordechai has compiled online – “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War” – constitutes the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. It is a shocking indictment comprised of thousands of entries relating to the war, to the actions of the government, the media, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society in general.”
In talking with many people about what’s been going on in Gaza over the past year and a half, the reaction I often receive when I suggest that Israel achieved all its military goals very early on in this war is: “Good, let them keep on hitting them so that they’ll never pose a threat to Israelis again.”
That’s understandable, but the dehumanization of the Palestinians in Gaza is something that many of us find detestable. If Israeli soldiers have lowered themselves to the same level of brutality as their enemies, is that anything to be proud of?
As for the rationalizations that by now we’ve become so accustomed to hearing – that you have to fight dirty when you’re fighting terrorists or that the IDF maintains the highest principles of conduct – notwithstanding any evidence to the contrary, simply don’t excuse the kinds of behaviour that Dr. Mordechai describes in graphic detail in his report.
As if that weren’t enough to lead one to doubt Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza – which is being pushed forward by the right wing forces who are calling the shots within the Likud-led government of Israel, there was yet another thorough indictment of Israel’s strategy offered up recently, this time by former Defense Minister and Army Chief of Staff Moshe Ayalon, who accused the IDF of engaging in “ethnic cleansing” in northern Gaza.
In an interview with Channel 12 news in Israel, Ayalon maintained that “The IDF is not the most moral army in the world.”
Later in that same interview, Ayalon offered two clarifications of what he meant by using the term “ethnic cleansing.” According to a report, also in Haaretz, Ayalon explained that “First, his definition of ethnic cleansing did not include genocide, but rather ‘evacuating civilians from their homes and demolishing those homes, as is happening in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.’ He also said that he does not hold the military responsible for these crimes but rather the government, in particular far-right lawmakers like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotritch, who have repeatedly declared their intentions to build Jewish settlements in Gaza.”
I would venture to say that, if you didn’t know who it was that offered that assessment of what Israel has been doing in Gaza, you would likely think that it came from one of the usual suspects, such as UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The fact that it came from a former Israeli defense minister, also a former IDF chief of staff, not to mention a member of the Likud Party, should lend it some credibility.
But, in the black and white worldview that permeates so many individuals’ thinking when it comes to what Israel has been doing in Gaza, Ayalon would no doubt simply fall into the category of naive critics of Israeli policy according to so many defenders of Israeli government policy.
It’s hard to know where readers of this publication stand, however, on what Israel has been doing in Gaza. There have been almost no letters to the editor commenting on this particular issue – not that letters to the editor offer a true picture of people’s thinking. Further, I don’t make it a habit of engaging everyone I meet in a conversation centering on Israel’s strategic goals in Gaza. Frankly, as is with the case involving a discussion of Donald Trump, tempers can flare easily – and trying to engage in a relatively dispassionate conversation about either Gaza or Trump isn’t easy.
But, a recent survey conducted by three different Canadian Jewish groups shows how diverse opinions are among Canadian Jews are when it comes to Israel.
The survey was conducted by marketing firm Leger and was sponsored by the New Israel Fund, JSpaceCanada and Canadian Friends of Peace Now.
Here are some of the findings from that survey:
• While 84% of Canada’s Jews say they are “very” or “somewhat” emotionally attached to Israel and 94% percent support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, just 51% of Canadian Jews consider themselves Zionists.
• The poll also found that 34% of Canadian Jews believe the continued building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank hurts Israel’s security, with only 27% saying they believe it helps Israel’s security. The remainder of those polled either said it made no difference or they didn’t know.
• Most Canadian Jews still believe that the ideal outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a two-state solution – a Jewish state of Israel alongside an Arab state of Palestine, with 61% support amongst Canadian Jews with an opinion on the subject. 55% of Canadian Jews agree that Canadian politicians should increase pressure on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to engage in a meaningful peace process.
• Canadian Jews are also more likely to indicate their intention to vote for the federal Conservative party if the election were to be held tomorrow, with 55% indicating support for the Conservatives, and 26% for the Liberals. These trends are similar to those in the general population, but the decline in Liberal support and increase in Conservative support is more pronounced among Jews.
I would suggest that the majority of Canadian Jews don’t pay much attention to what Jewish federations do – and here it’s important to note that determining who is Jewish is not easy – as I showed repeatedly ever since the results of the 2020 census came out. (For instance, I was able to establish that only 6700 Winnipeggers identified as Jewish both in terms of their religion and ethnicity in that census.)
The groups that conducted this most recent survey of Canadian Jews’ attitudes would likely not be considered mainstream Jewish organizations in the sense that they do not follow along with what our Jewish federations and CIJA would suggest is the nominal position of most Canadian Jews on Israel. All three are highly critical of Israeli government policies and all three strive to promote peaceful co-existence among Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
Yet, by referring to the work done by Prof. Mordecai documenting Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the assessment that Moshe Ayalon offered that what Israel has been doing lately in Gaza amounts to “ethnic cleansing,” and the recent survey of Canadian Jews’ attitudes towards Israel, I wanted to show how thoughtful Jews – whether they’re in Israel or in Canada, can hold highly divergent opinions from what you are likely to read in most Jewish media (including The Jewish Post). If nothing else, if I can get some readers to consider different viewpoints when it comes to thinking about Israel, I will have accomplished something.
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‘This is sort of their normal’: Israelis confront yet another wartime flare after Iranian fire
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — As missiles flew toward Israel on Sunday night, beleaguered Israelis once again took to Facebook from their safe rooms.
“Whoever is in charge of naming wars over here, please do not give it a fierce animal name this time,” one Israeli wrote in an English-language group. “The last military operation was called ‘Roaring Lion,’ and the Twelve Day War in June 2025, ‘Rising Lion.’”
Another replied with a suggestion: “I hope it’s something like ‘The One Day War.’”
The idea may not have been far off. U.S. President Donald Trump said early Monday that he hoped both Iran and Israel would halt their fire. By mid-morning, Iran’s military announced the strikes were on pause, saying it had sufficiently retaliated for the Israeli strikes in Beirut, a tit-for-tat exchange. By Monday evening Israel time, Netanyahu, too, said the fighting was halted, but warned that Israel would respond “with force” to any future attacks.
Despite the tenuous pause — not quite a ceasefire — Home Front Command restrictions remained in place by Monday evening, touching every layer of daily life in Israel. Schools were closed through at least Wednesday. Or Erez, head spokesperson for Clalit, Israel’s largest health care network, told JTA, “We will continue to remain operating in shelters until the Home Front Command restrictions change.”
By 10 p.m. Sunday, NICU infants and those in critical care were already being moved to bunkers beneath Beilinson hospital, home to the largest emergency room in the Middle East.
“This is the third time within a year that we have carried out such a transition,” said Dr. Erez Barenboim, director of Beilinson and Hasharon Hospitals.
Hospital staff were visibly fatigued but resilient. Soroka University Medical Center was struck by an Iranian ballistic missile during the June 2025 conflict, and as is standard during attacks, health care staff canceled non-essential visits and moved operations to shelters.
Alexi Wirpel, a student at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, was on a Birthright trip in the Galilee when the first sirens rang out. “We could hear the dome working, so we knew we were going to be relatively okay,” she said.
It was not Wirpel’s first trip to Israel, but it was her first time hearing sirens signaling incoming missiles. Others on the Birthright trip were more anxious and had to be consoled by staff, she said.
When word came of a tenuous pause, Wirpel said, she and others didn’t believe it would last long.
“All day today we’ve all kind of been just waiting for something to go off again,” she said. “It’s become a very real reality that this is something that my family has to go through instead of just hearing about it.”
Caroline Flannery manages an after-school program at a Tel Aviv middle school and has watched the cumulative toll of two and a half years of conflict reshape an entire generation of Israeli children. Added to the time lost during the pandemic, students in those grades have missed the equivalent of a year of school.
“We have kids in fifth and sixth grade that still don’t know the alphabet,” Flannery said.
Israel’s education system has been among the hardest hit since Oct. 7. Leaked results of a government aptitude test found that only 3% of Israeli ninth graders met the national benchmark for science, and just 22% met the benchmark for English, figures that prompted opposition leaders to call for a declaration of a “national educational emergency.”
The disruption extends to staff, who are just as rattled as students when a siren sounds and a week of lesson plans is suddenly worthless.
Flannery moved to Israel in 2019 and hadn’t planned to stay, but the impact she could make on Israeli children convinced her to commit to another year, and then another, until she was running the after-school program herself.
The conclusion she has come to in the wake of Oct. 7 is that many of her students, faced with constant disruption, will never fully catch up.
“It’s not just that they miss school, so now they have to work extra hard and catch up,” she said. “Their whole routine was disrupted and they come back. They’re not ready, not used to, not prepared to sit, to come into class, to sit in their seats, to learn. Their minds aren’t there.”
With Trump pressing Israel and Iran to return to the negotiating table, Flannery discussed contingency plans already on the table — such as Zoom classes, home visits — should the war return to its March tempo.
“This,” she said, “is sort of their normal.”
The post ‘This is sort of their normal’: Israelis confront yet another wartime flare after Iranian fire appeared first on The Forward.
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Celebrated German Jewish bakery closes, saying ‘the hatred reached Berlin’ after Oct. 7
(JTA) — BERLIN — A Jewish bakery owned by Polish and Israeli immigrants in this city has shut its doors, citing a combination of economic pressure and antisemitic harassment.
Babka & Krantz opened in the Friedenau district in November 2022 and added a second location in December 2024, adjacent to the memorial at the site where the Nazis devised their “final solution” for the Jews during the Holocaust.
The second location at the House of the Wannsee Conference closed on Nov. 30, according to the bakery’s Instagram account, which directed followers to a statement from the memorial that has since been deleted from its website.
“We regret the verbal abuse and the difficult situation to which the managing directors and employees of BABKA & KRANTZ Meisterkonditorei were exposed and express our full understanding for the termination of the cooperation under these circumstances,” said the March 10 statement, which was preserved by the Internet Archive.
Now, the original location has closed, too.
Café owners and married couple Shahar Elkin and Marcin Liera-Elkin said in a statement to friends and supporters that a construction site had blocked access to the bakery for more than a year, curbing foot traffic.
But they also said they had been affected when, after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, “the hatred reached Berlin as well.” The bakery was “subjected to constant verbal abuse” since that time, they said in their statement, which has circulated on social media.
Elkin and Liera-Elkin declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying they were turning down all media inquiries for the time being. “We and our family need to settle down and attend to a few matters,” they said.
Some would-be customers in the neighborhood said they were already missing the Babka & Krantz on Sunday.
“I was actually going there every day recently, after I found out they were closing. I found that really unfortunate,” said Rebecca, who declined to share her last name. She said she had heard about both the economic impact of the construction and about harassment that had taken place at the store, adding, “It makes me sad that things are this way. I’m trying not to cry.”
Babka & Krantz joins a growing list of beloved eateries that have cited the aftermath of Oct. 7 in announcing their closures. Also in Berlin, the hummus bar Kanaan, which was jointly owned by an Israeli and a Palestinian, closed in March after experiencing protests. An Israeli restaurant in Portugal cited harassment when it announced its closure in January, as did an Ethiopian-Israeli eatery in New York City that recently ceased operating as a traditional restaurant. In Washington, D.C., a local chain of Israeli restaurants closed down late last year following a boycott campaign.
Elkin came to Berlin in 2012 from his home city of Haifa, Israel, and in 2019 earned a master baker’s certificate, becoming the first Jewish master baker accepted into the Berlin Bakers’ Guild. Liera-Elkin was born in Posen, Poland, and grew up in Berlin.
The couple said they were proud to be producing Jewish baked goods in a city with a resurging Jewish population.
“Our families come from cities with a vibrant Jewish life and a formative culture of debate. Today, few or no Jews live in these places anymore,” they said in their statement last week. “That’s why Berlin is such a miracle.”
Germany is home to an estimated 200,000 Jews, including many from the former Soviet Union and a large contingent of Israeli expats. The bakery catered to them, offering special menus for Jewish holidays, devising baked goods that reflect diverse Jewish traditions and even bringing in a rabbi to answer visitors’ questions.
But the bakery catered not only to Jewish customers. According to the owners, non-Jewish locals learned about Jewish culture at their tables. “Our neighbors have seen that different people can eat together at one table and speak to each other,” they wrote in their goodbye note.
The business also won professional recognition, earning a Craftsmanship Award sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs last year.
The couple said the good relations they had built as unofficial ambassadors of Jewish culture – introducing Berliners of all backgrounds to Jewish culinary specialties – were endangered when the construction site went up in their neighborhood, blocking the street view of their business. They lost customers and money, they said, and their anxiety was increasingly visible on their Instagram account, where they chronicled their fruitless efforts to make their story accessible again.
Speaking to the Berliner Morgenpost in November, Liera-Elkin hinted that the two-pronged pressure — economic and harassment — might force them to close. He reported that their vehicle had been vandalized and that they had “experienced numerous verbal and even physical attacks in our private life, received hate-filled letters and calls.” The couple said they had even sent their daughter to stay elsewhere for a time.
“We are just a bakery that wants to offer great products. But now we are only confronted with problems and politics that leave us in despair,“ he told the Morgenpost. “We really don‘t know if Berlin is still the right place for us.”
The post Celebrated German Jewish bakery closes, saying ‘the hatred reached Berlin’ after Oct. 7 appeared first on The Forward.
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Dave Matthews pushes back on claims his criticism of Israel is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dave Matthews, the frontman of the American rock band Dave Matthews Band, pushed back on allegations Friday that his vocal criticism of Israel in recent years had crossed into antisemitism.
Reading his remarks from a sheet of paper on stage at the Coastal Credit Union Music Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, Matthews, whose criticism of Israel has drawn backlash from some Jewish and pro-Israel voices, pushed back on accusations of antisemitism.
“It’s no secret, at least I don’t try to make it a secret, that I disagree with the policies of Israel and the United States, and their treatment of the civilian population in Gaza and the West Bank,” Matthews said. “But that should by no means be twisted into anybody thinking that I am bigoted or antisemitic in any way at all.”
Matthews continued: “On the contrary, I have a deep respect and love for all of my life that I can remember, and an admiration for the culture and history of the Jewish people.”
The frontman of the band continued to list a host of prominent Jewish figures he admired, including Albert Einstein, George Gershwin, Hannah Arendt and Anne Frank, and described being at a friend’s son’s bar mitzvah on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel.
“I hold the Jewish people in the highest regard, and it breaks my heart that my opinions born out of deep commitment to nonviolent resolution and resistance can be twisted to serve any hateful or racist or bigoted ideas,” Matthews said.
Matthews’ remarks come after years of outspoken criticism of Israel, including in 2024 when he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Washington, D.C., against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.
“I’m ashamed that my tax dollars are going to the brutalizing of an entire people,” Matthews told Al Jazeera at the time. “It’s shameful. And I’m ashamed that our government is welcoming him here.”
At a New Jersey concert last year, Matthews also donned a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf, and held up signs reading “Stop The Genocide” and “Stop Killing Children.”
A representative for Matthews did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of what prompted his remarks Friday.
Matthews is among a growing number of prominent artists who have become outspoken critics of Israel in recent years, including Macklemore, the Irish rap group Kneecap and the British punk band Bob Vylan.
Matthews’ statement Friday was not the first time the artist has defended his rhetoric. In a December 2023 letter to his Jewish fans obtained by JNS, he also assured fans that he “strongly and unequivocally condemn the horrific events of Oct. 7.”
“I will never stop calling for an end to the violence in Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon, and for that matter, the Congo and Sudan and Ukraine, or the violence, or the horrific violence against immigrants and their neighbors in our country,” Matthews concluded during his remarks Friday.
The post Dave Matthews pushes back on claims his criticism of Israel is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.
