One year ago, the voice of Charlie Kirk was silenced by an assassin’s bullet. The Torah teaches, however, that a voice is not silenced when a person leaves the world, as long as others study and learn from his words. The message that Charlie shared cannot be lost with him.

If Charlie stood for one thing, it was values. He advocated for the dignity of every person and group, recognizing the spark of the Divine in every human life. He championed peaceful and robust discourse. He spoke often of the importance of family and children, which he also demonstrated through personal example.

For countless Jews in America and Israel, Charlie was a true friend and ally. At a time when standing with the Jewish people became increasingly difficult and, in some circles, socially and professionally costly, Charlie Kirk stood with us proudly, publicly, and without apology.

Charlie understood what too many influential Americans have forgotten: Israel is not merely a modern country or a political project. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to which Jews have prayed to return for thousands of years.

His support for Israel was not contingent on polling, applause or political convenience, but rooted in moral clarity. Charlie recognized that Israel stands on the front lines of a much larger struggle between civilization and barbarism, freedom and tyranny, life and those who glorify death.

He understood that antisemitism is never only a Jewish problem. Hatred may begin with the Jews, but history teaches us that it never ends with the Jews. A society that tolerates the demonization of Jewish students, the celebration of terrorism or calls for Israel’s destruction is a society surrendering its own moral foundations.

After the horrors of October 7, when Hamas terrorists murdered, tortured and kidnapped innocent men, women and children, Charlie did not equivocate. He did not retreat into comfortable language, much less the moral rot that took over much of American academia. He defended Israel’s right to protect its citizens and confronted the poisonous spread of antisemitism, recognizing these as part and parcel of his efforts to promote peace, justice, and moral virtue.

Charlie recognized the connection between faith, family and freedom. Although he was a committed Christian, he respected the Hebrew Bible, defended the Jewish roots of American civilization, and encouraged young people to reject the emptiness of radical secularism. He called them back to belief, responsibility, marriage, parenthood and service to something greater than themselves.

Along the way, he consistently demonstrated his concern for ideology over identity. In one notable confrontation, Charlie faced the late founder of “Cosmic Judaism,” who rose to promote socialism by dismissing the value of Jewish Day School education and the clear gap between public and private schooling overall. Charlie could not conscience a purported rabbi calling a Torah education “brainwashing,” and rejected the questioner’s claim to accurately speak for Judaism. “No, you absolutely take the Torah literally,” he interjected. “It’s literally the Torah!”

In an age that rewards caution, Charlie was fearless. In a culture drowning in carefully rehearsed talking points, he spoke directly. He specifically entered hostile spaces because he believed truth should never fear a debate.

We must realize, then, that his murder was not simply another senseless crime. It was an attack upon the American tradition of resolving disagreements through argument and persuasion rather than intimidation and bloodshed. This, of course, is one of many key lessons the Founding Fathers learned from our people.

Judaism also teaches us to answer darkness by creating more light. We answer hatred with moral courage, and answer those who attempt to silence truth by speaking it more boldly.

Charlie left behind a wife, children and a movement that continues to carry his mission forward. Our prayers remain with his family, whose loss is beyond measure. May they find comfort in knowing that his life changed millions and that his friendship will not be forgotten by the Jewish people.

May his courage inspire a new generation to stand for values and against antisemitism, to defend life, marriage, Israel, and the freedom to speak the truth. And may we honor him not only with words, but by continuing the work for which he gave his life.

Photo: Charlie Kirk by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

American Jews are dealing with the reality of distressing Jew hatred, manifested by sporadic physical attacks and more prevalent verbal confrontations. Worse, it has become mainstreamed in the Democratic Party, with elected officials and prominent nominees unafraid to spew hatred against Jews poorly disguised as anti-Israel “activism.” Some of these Democrats are poor excuse for Jews, such as Bernie Sanders, while others, like Chuck Schumer, are so blinded by ambition that they pretend it doesn’t exist or rationalize its presence by blaming Israel.

Increasingly, this is becoming a viral strain in the Republican Party as well, engendering an insipid debate over who is or isn’t an anti-Semite, and ignoring its true causes. Why, indeed, has Jew hatred exploded in America and become commonplace across the world? Is it because of Gaza, as if Israel should have just accepted the October 7 massacre and the brutalization of its hostages, licked its wounds, and prepared for the promised, next massacre? Is it because the world has suddenly determined that Israel – alone among countries and Jews unique among nationalities – really has no right to exist? Burundi and Bhutan have an undisputed right to exist – but not the Jewish state of Israel?

That doesn’t seem credible, and for the apparently abrupt escalation in Jew hatred we must look elsewhere. As is often the case, history is quite instructive.

The United States was founded upon religious tolerance. Indeed, there were very few Jews living in colonial America (not many more than 1000 Jews lived there during the Revolutionary War), and Jews were treated well – better than well. In President George Washington’s famous letter to the Newport Hebrew Congregation in 1790, using language literally borrowed from Moses Seixas, Washington wrote:

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Tolerance? No. Jews are no different than any other group in America and are not “tolerated” but fully accepted.

As such, Jew hatred was largely unknown for almost the first century of the United States. Sure, there were some states that took time eliminating electoral provisions that barred any non-Christians (i.e., Jews) from holding public office, and General Ulysses Grant temporarily banned all Jews from entering the Tennessee territory during the Civil War, but there were few recorded attacks on Jews and Jews lived essentially unimpeded lives.

Could this be attributable to the dearth of Jews in America?

Possibly, but not necessarily. There are plenty of Jew-hating countries in the world today where no Jews live. Jew hatred can flourish without Jews, as long as there are a sufficient number of Gentiles reared with this spiritual and psychological malady.

Even the large influx of German Jews to the United States in the mid-19th century did not provoke any Jew hatred, perhaps because they were generally assimilated, their temples and services reminiscent of churches, their day of rest not Shabbat but Sunday, and their intense desire to blend into American life, which they did quite successfully. In fact, there was far more fear and hatred of Catholics in 19th century America than there was of Jews.

Of the 300,000 Jews who lived in the United States in 1880, more than 200,000 were German Jews. But in the next forty years, more than two million European Jews came to America, such that by 1920, the Jewish population of the United States had increased tenfold, to over 3,500,000 people.

By the early 20th century, Jew hatred had become more common in the United States. Leo Frank was falsely accused of murder, freed, and then lynched. A host of Jewish “defense” organizations arose (they all still exist). Jews were hassled on the teeming city streets. The 1920’s university quotas and job restrictions limiting Jewish opportunities became standard and even persisted into the 1950’s when civil rights laws cracked down on private conduct that had any public nexus.

What changed? Was it the mass influx of Jews that attracted Jew hatred?

No – it was the mass influx of European Gentiles. While two million Jewish immigrants came to America in that period, that number was dwarfed by the more than twenty million Gentiles who came – Poles, Germans, Russians, Italians, Irish, Slavs, and others. These immigrants, arriving from lands where they imbibed Jew hatred with their mother’s milk, brought their Jew hatred with them.

Jew hatred was never indigenous to the United States. It was imported, along with these millions of immigrants. Some of it was religious based – Polish, Irish, Italian Catholics reared on Jew hatred in their native lands – and some of it was sociologically based. Some of these newcomers, the lowest tier on society’s totem pole, simply sought out an ethnic group long despised in their native land, and disparaged them, persecuted them, and harassed them.

In a very short time, this imported Jew hatred spread to the establishment as well, and Jews (and blacks) became conventional targets for discrimination. For Jews it didn’t last or even sting as much because we were successful, skilled at adaptation, ambitious, educated, social climbers, and blessed. Law firms, hospitals, and country clubs didn’t want us? We just made our own, and better ones too. And built businesses. And Hollywood.

In time, and the Holocaust played a role in this as well, Jew hatred receded from American life (although you wouldn’t know it from the billions of dollars spent for many decades combating it) and became unfashionable.

Jew hatred is again fashionable, and not because the culture changed, or Israel became too bellicose, or Netanyahu is unlikeable, or Jews are too successful. The same dynamic that swept America over a century ago has repeated itself in the last thirty years – the large influx of Muslims, especially radical Muslims, who have brought with them the endemic Jew hatred that characterizes their native lands.

Millions of Arabs and Muslims have immigrated to the United States in the last fifty years, many claiming refugee status because of the depraved conditions in their countries of origin. To be sure, not every Arab or Muslim is a rabid Jew hater (any more than all of the twenty million European Christians who came to the US were), and many have become productive citizens, embodying the American ethos. But many have not.

Armed with literal fortunes in money – donated by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Muslim countries – they have poisoned the American bloodstream with their radical ideas, even insisting in some locales on the implementation of Sharia law. They have infiltrated local school boards and endowed university chairs, not surprising then that most Jew hatred in America has emerged on college campuses. Their culture is one of hatred of Jews and Israel, if not America itself. And it did not take long for some of their most radical imports – immigrants or children of immigrants, like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Zohran Mamdani, and others – to achieve important political positions.

They did it very slyly, cleverly, and surreptitiously. Who would have thought that a radical Muslim NYC mayor could preside next month over the 25th anniversary of the Arab terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? It is because their PR teams and useful idiots in the media immediately identified the major crisis in US life after 9/11 as “Islamophobia,” statistically insignificant as a social phenomenon but dominant and pervasive as a deflection. What better evidence than the universal hesitation to characterize the attacks of 9/11 as “Arab” or “Muslim”? Instead, it is just a date, 9/11, no perpetrators need be identified, for propriety’s sake.

Not only is “Islamophobia” used as a shield against exposing odious behavior on the part of Muslims, but it also rests on a fundamental hypocrisy. “Islamophobia” is premised on the reasonable idea that all Muslims should not be blamed for the detestable acts of a violent few, or even many. Yet, that same deference is not showed to Jews, who must be held accountable, hounded, beaten, attacked, vilified, and persecuted for the (righteous) acts of the State of Israel.

It is not just that “Islamophobia” is a crock of drivel as a real phenomenon, but rather that it is employed as armor against any criticism of even the most radical Muslims, and in turn is used as a weapon that has intimidated many Americans into silence and acquiescence in the transformation of their country.

Similarly, the infiltration of billions of petrodollars into the university system in the US has changed curricula and radicalized students. When American campuses erupted in anti-Jewish fury on October 8 (!), with spirited defenses of the Hamas massacre and vile accusations of genocide in Gaza even before Israel had responded militarily (!), these campuses had literally been preparing for years for just such a moment. Tents, signs, fences, loudspeakers resolutions had all be readied in advance, and pressure points against vulnerable Jews had already been identified.

And, just like a century ago, the Jew hatred that emigrated to America along with the Arabs and Muslims, slowly spread to other classes as well – including some American blacks and Hispanics (who are disproportionately assaulting Jews in NYC for no discernible reasons) and the old WASP class that has long resented Jewish success.

Undoubtedly, the Jew hatred in Europe over the last several decades has a similar provenance – the large, and until recently, unstoppable incursion of Arabs and Muslims into the UK, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and elsewhere. It is no surprise that all those countries, like the USA, has been visited multiple times by Arab mass terror attacks, and no surprise that Jews are repeatedly victimized there. The Jew hatred in Australia and New Zealand follows the same pattern – Muslim immigration that is accompanied by Muslim Jew hatred. But go ahead and blame Israel for it.

Is there a solution to this problem? A century ago, time played the largest factor and Jew hatred receded within several decades because of our prosperity and societal integration, each a divine blessing of sorts. But time may not be our ally here. And the hoary staples of outreach and dialogue will be of limited value when dealing with an entrenched, religious-based hatred, which is not to say it won’t be tried, and when it fails, tried again.

America is changing. Its establishment is reproducing itself far below replacement rates and thus it is becoming ever more distant from the Enlightenment roots that spawned the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Hence, the current demand of the Socialists to gut the Constitution, the product of dead, white, European males. Jews, who do have a homeland that will welcome them happily if they so choose, will mostly try to ride out the wave, making deals with the devil when necessary (including turning on Israel), and wondering why the US continues to elect more and more radical Jew haters rather than the pareve Protestants who made the US such a palatable home for so many for so long.

Is it possible that the children of radical Muslim immigrants will over time mainstream and Americanize, what once was the dream of every class of immigrants? It certainly is possible, but the early returns are not good. The children of radical Muslim immigrants are just as radical but they have sufficiently acclimated to American society to perceive how to attract votes, money, and support, how to camouflage the most despicable ideas behind the toothiest and oleaginous smiles.

Immigration changes every nation, and many for the better, the United States among them. But some types of immigration transform in ways that obscure the national purpose and obliterate the founding ethos. That is what has occurred in Europe and is occurring now in the United States.

This is one of the ways in which exiles come to an end.

Photo: Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, courtesy of the Coalition for Jewish Values

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary was a clarifying moment. By endorsing the winner, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) abandoned all pretense of serving as a shomer, or “guardian,” of the beleaguered Jewish community. It is not just that Schumer indicated that he would endorse even an antisemite for political gain; it is that he did.

El-Sayed has not hidden his attitude toward Jews, which wallpapers slogans about Israel and Zionism over classical antisemitism. No one of intelligence could fail to see the similarities between his beliefs and those that overtook Germany less than a century ago.

He regards the Jews as a collective threat, stating without evidence that the Israeli government is “just as evil as Hamas,” the genocidal terrorists responsible for the worst anti-Jewish massacre since the Holocaust. El-Sayed claimed that rescuing hostages from torture and rape, and neutralizing those genocidal terrorists, constitutes “genocide.” Jewish lives, in other words, have no value in his view.

In a modern spin on the old “Chosen People” myth, he accuses Jews of racism, calling the only Middle Eastern country that gives both Jews and Arabs civil rights an “apartheid” state. And like his ideological forebears, he considers a boycott of Jews an appropriate “response.” Perhaps worst of all, El-Sayed used these depraved lies about Israel to justify violence against Jews in his home state. This is no different than the Nazis blaming Jews for the violence of Kristallnacht in 1938.

No one who values Western civilization or basic human decency would consider El-Sayed remotely fit to be a U.S. senator.

This brings us back to Schumer, who is placing political gain ahead of moral principle. During the primary, he backed the more moderate, pro-Israel candidate Rep. Haley Stevens. But once El-Sayed prevailed, Schumer immediately pivoted and was quite forthright about why. He issued a statement with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that declared they were “united by a common purpose” with El-Sayed: “taking back the Senate.”

To Schumer, party cohesion and electoral math come first, while the character of the nominee takes a distant second. That is why he and Gillibrand both supported the now disgraced Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine, despite his Nazi tattoo and a series of scandals, until a sexual assault accusation from a former Platner girlfriend sent them scurrying like rats abandoning a sinking ship.

For a lesson in moral courage, Schumer could learn from Boy George, who released a new song, “Od Nirkod” (“We Will Dance Again”), standing with the Jewish community at great professional and personal cost. In fact, he could study a political leader Schumer himself has accused of antisemitism in the past: U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump has openly stated that El-Sayed hates Jews and Israel. Though entirely accurate, one could dismiss this as political posturing based upon party affiliation. This, however, would fail to recognize Trump’s penchant for repeatedly getting it right about hatred of Jews and Israel. He demonstrates this most clearly not when his targets are his political adversaries or adversarial college administrators, but his fellow Republicans.

Trump has distanced himself even from former allies over antisemitism, pushing back when they cross into anti-Jewish bias and conspiracy theories. He forcefully rejected former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and actively campaigned against soon-to-be-former Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), both Republicans.

After podcaster Tucker Carlson’s interviews with a series of antisemitic bigots and his subsequent attacks on Trump’s policy on Israel and Iran, including claims that attacked Jewish organizations, Trump declared that Carlson “has lost his way,” is “not MAGA” and does not represent “America First.” Trump has said his movement has no room for antisemites.

This difference in attitude has an obvious practical impact upon the two parties. The most powerful Democratic leaders, including one who proudly trots out his personal Jewish identity whenever it suits him, treat fighting antisemitism and the demonization of the Jewish state as secondary to gaining power.

Leaders on the other side, including Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), dismiss erstwhile allies and refuse to include them and their bigoted views for political profit.

This is what Jews in America need: not calculations of which candidate is electable in a purple state, but clarity on who will defend their security and legitimacy without apology.

El-Sayed’s primary victory, coupled with Schumer’s subsequent endorsement, demands a moral choice that transcends political inclinations. True friendship with the Jewish community is evaluated based on actions and adherence to principles, rather than on birth certificates or party affiliations. In this regard, the Democrats’ record is not even close to that of the Republicans.

Photo: Chuck Schumer official photo by U.S. Senate Photographic Studio/Jeff McEvoy, public domain (U.S. federal government work), via Wikimedia Commons

At its recent Board of Governors gathering (June 2026), the Jewish Agency for Israel issued a statement declaring that “a diverse, pluralistic and tolerant Judaism has been and remains one of the cornerstones of Zionism.”

It is a pleasing sentiment. It is also untrue – provably so, from the movement’s own founding documents.

The cornerstone of Zionism was never a theology. It was peoplehood. Theodor Herzl built the movement on a single premise, stated plainly in Der Judenstaat: “We are a people – one people.”

Precisely because the Jews of 1897 could not agree on Judaism, Herzl’s achievement was to set religion aside as the basis of the enterprise. Would the Jewish state be a theocracy? “No, indeed… We shall keep our priests within the confines of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the confines of their barracks.” Religion – in every form – was to be respected and contained, not enthroned as a founding value.

Herzl’s oft-quoted promise that “every man will be as free and undisturbed in his faith or his disbelief, as he is in his nationality”, was a pledge of civic liberty extended to all future citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike. It was freedom of conscience – not a declaration that competing denominations constitute Zionism’s foundation. To read it otherwise is to confuse a civil right with a religious ideology.

History of the Jewish Agency

History is even less kind to the Agency’s formulation. The movements that today carry the banner of “pluralistic Judaism” were not Zionism’s cornerstone; they were among its most determined opponents.

The Reform movement’s Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 declared: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine…” In July 1897 – weeks before the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel – the Central Conference of American Rabbis resolved its total disapproval of any attempt to establish a Jewish state. In 1942, Reform rabbis founded the American Council for Judaism for the express purpose of fighting Zionism.

The Reform movement entered the World Zionist Organization only in the late 1970s and fully reconciled with Zionism only in its 1997 Miami Platform. A cornerstone cannot be laid one hundred years after the foundation – least of all by those who opposed the construction.

The Conservative movement fares a little better in this history – yet its record, too, refutes the Agency’s claim. Solomon Schechter, the architect of American Conservative Judaism, endorsed Zionism in 1906 – but as a bulwark against assimilation and an ally of traditional Judaism, not as a warrant for pluralism.

He did so over the public objections of his own seminary’s patrons, and his successor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Cyrus Adler, remained a committed non-Zionist. Institutionally, the movement joined the World Zionist Organization only with the founding of Mercaz in 1976. Where early Conservative Zionism existed, it was an argument from peoplehood and tradition – which is precisely our point.

The Jewish Agency’s statement also invoked the Western Wall. For the sake of historical integrity and honesty, we refer readers to the Memorandum on the Western Wall, submitted in 1930 to the Special Commission of the League of Nations on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Palestine – the direct precursor of today’s Jewish Agency for Israel, written by the same Cyrus Adler, Ph.D., D.H.L., then president of the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. In the section titled “Action Requested,” Adler wrote: “We now come to the request that we will make to your honorable body on behalf of the Jewish Agency: That you give recognition to the immemorial claim that the Kotel Maaravi (Western Wall) is a Holy Place to the Jews; that they should have the right of access to it for prayers to be conducted in accordance with their ritual in a decent and dignified manner; that the regulation of such services shall be under the direction of the Rabbinate in Jerusalem, who shall assume responsibility therefor.”

Such is all that is requested now – that which the president of the Conservative movement’s own seminary, writing for the Jewish Agency itself, requested then.

What, then, was the movement’s actual founding arrangement on religion? The Basel Program of 1897 contains not a single word of religious law. When the question arose, the Second Zionist Congress in 1898 resolved that Zionism would undertake nothing contrary to the precepts of the Jewish religion – a pledge of deference to traditional Judaism, offered to keep Orthodox Jewry within the tent.

The paper trail settles the matter. Language about “mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people” entered the movement’s platform only in the 2004 Jerusalem Program. It appears nowhere in 1897, and nowhere in the 1951 revision.

The Zionist movement’s own constitutional documents date the concept – and refute the words “has been.” And, let us be brutally honest, a politically (and financially) motivated phrase added to the World Zionist Organization Jerusalem Program by a small group of delegates does not redefine Zionism.

Some will object that Zionism was always a big tent, and that is true: the World Zionist Organization has housed secular, religious, socialist, and Revisionist factions for well over a century. But coalition politics is not theology.

A Congress in which Mizrachi and Poalei Zion (a movement of Marxist Zionist Jewish workers) sat together did not thereby declare all Judaisms equally valid; it declared the Jewish people indivisible.

Herzl’s Altneuland preached civic tolerance – its villain is the demagogue who would deny others a share in the commonwealth – but tolerance among citizens is not “pluralistic Judaism” as a creed. Both partners to the founding compact, the secular majority and the religious Zionists, would have rejected such a creed.

It would have shattered the coalition from either side.

Why does this matter? Because the Jewish Agency is a national institution, entrusted with the heritage of the entire Jewish people.

The Jewish Agency is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world, serving as the primary link between the State of Israel and Jewish communities globally. It is responsible for facilitating aliyah, managing global shlichut programs, and strengthening Jewish identity. The organization is funded by global philanthropic efforts, including the Jewish Federations of North America, KKL/JNF, Keren HaYesod, and the Israeli government.

When it converts a contested contemporary agenda into a founding principle, it does not honor history – it rewrites it. Religious pluralism is a position some hold; but they can not smuggle it into Basel.

Zionism’s cornerstone was, and remains, Klal Yisrael – the unity of one people. That foundation is broad enough for every Jew who ever prayed, in any accent, “Next year in Jerusalem.” It requires no retroactive renovation.

Also printed in Israel National News as “A Cornerstone Laid a Century Late.”

Photo: Delegates at the First Zionist Congress, Basel, 1897, by the Government Press Office (Israel), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The newest kid on Israel’s political block, and this season’s general de jure, is Gadi Eisenkot, former IDF chief of staff and a relatively brief member of the wartime security cabinet. It has long been a tactic of the Israeli left to seek out a former general to lead its election campaigns in order to bolster its credibility on security matters, given its propensity for policies that weaken Israel’s security. And Eisenkot is what President Trump would call – and likely appoint – “right out of central casting,” tough-looking, son of Moroccan immigrants, career army man, and, most sadly, father of a soldier who fell in battle in Gaza. We all honor his service.

Nevertheless, most mature countries have moved away from the “general as president or prime minister” fantasy. The United States has not elected a general as president in almost 75 years (Dwight Eisenhower, in 1952) and only once since then has a general even competed for the presidency (Wesley Clark, in 2004). No other general has served as US president since the 19th century. No English general has served as prime minister in almost two centuries (the first Duke of Wellington). The general who assumes political power is the hallmark of banana republics.

Yet, many Israelis remain enamored with the general-turned-prime-minister model, and to our misfortune. As it turns out, the three greatest strategic blunders in the history of Israel were made by renowned generals who were elected prime minister.

It was PM Yitzchak Rabin, former IDF Chief of Staff acclaimed (rightly or wrongly) as one of the heroes of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, who foisted the Oslo Accords on the people of Israel in 1993. He thought that it was a grand idea to import into the heartland of Israel our sworn enemy, one with genocidal ambitions, and give them a governing authority and weapons.

What could possibly go wrong??

What went wrong was a wave of terror that left Israelis dazed and despondent, and thousands of Israelis dead and maimed.

Almost as egregiously, the Oslo Accords essentially announced to the world that the Land of Israel does not belong exclusively to the Jewish people. Since then, we have struggled to prove to the world that we are entitled to any part of the land of Israel. But Rabin was Mr. Security, being a former general, and Israelis bought it.

It was PM Ehud Barak, also a former IDF Chief of Staff, and lionized as “Israel’s most decorated soldier,” who orchestrated the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon in 2000 in the dead of night, abandoning our Lebanese allies to their fates and leaving behind enormous stores of IDF weapons. This was in response to the campaign of the “Four Mothers” who mobilized much of society against the IDF remaining in Lebanon and Barak’s strong conviction that the IDF could return to Lebanon at any time to deal with terror.

Well. Instead, the hasty retreat emboldened Hezbollah to conquer southern Lebanon, which it did in due course, and build the elaborate underground terror infrastructure that we are slowly and painfully dismantling.

Additionally, Israel has since been forced to fight several wars in Lebanon, extracting a far greater cost in life than the number of soldiers who were killed annually while the IDF still occupied southern Lebanon in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Barak’s tactical retreat was widely perceived by our enemies as a timorous surrender that has engendered even deadlier conflicts.

The failed Ehud Barak – who later served multiple terms as Defense Minister – was succeeded as prime minister by Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s greatest generals and a genuine hero of the Yom Kippur War who crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt, turned the tide of war, and forced Egypt to its knees. And his legacy as Prime Minister was the forced expulsion of 9500 Jews in 2005 from Gaza and the northern Shomron and the destruction of two dozen thriving communities.

That folly, twenty-one years ago this week, occasioned the speedy takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the construction of another elaborate terror network through diversion of all the billions of dollars of international aid that flowed into Gaza, constant terror attacks on Israel, multiple rounds of fighting, and all culminating in the catastrophe of October 7.

It is worth noting that all the generals who became prime minister claimed to know better than others what would provide security to Israelis and what would endanger our existence. They also claimed that their withdrawals were all easily reversible and that, if the need arose, the IDF could simply retake the territory surrendered. No harm, no foul.

The opposite, of course, was true; grave harm resulted from multiple fouls, all self-inflicted. And the land that each purported to surrender to our enemies in order to safeguard our security – land originally conquered and held at a high cost in Jewish blood – has mostly been retaken by saner heads (non-generals) responding to reality and not fantasy. That land has been reconquered, and again at a high cost in Jewish blood.

What then qualifies Gadi Eisenkot to serve as prime minister, other than that he has been designated as leader of the ABB (Anyone but Bibi) sect? He could be the exception to the rule but his tenure as Chief of Staff was unremarkable, mainly remembered for Eisenkot’s advocacy of a “small and smart IDF,” an IDF that relied more on technology than on manpower, something that debilitated us on October 7 and thereafter.

He threw the book at Elor Azaria, provoking indecision among soldiers that factored into the deadly terrorist attack last Friday. His brief tenure on the wartime cabinet was also undistinguished, noted for his advocacy for the release of the hostages at any price and opposition to initiatives that actually worked. Apparently, he still supports the establishment of a Palestinian state and has suggested that we learn to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. He also currently favors the immediate entry of 150,000 Gazans to work in Israel, as if that hasn’t been tried before with devastating results.

It is not often realized that generals might be brilliant tacticians on the battlefield but simultaneously awful geopolitical strategists. Those are completely different skill sets. The affairs of state require the ability to navigate multiple and often conflicting interests, and on both the domestic and international stages. Clichés aside, does Eisenkot have an economic or educational policy, an objective more comprehensive than “Israel must win,” a position on the dictatorial excesses of the Supreme Court, or a desire to do anything other than topple Netanyahu?

The failed Israeli generals-turned-prime-ministers also had tenuous commitments to democracy, and especially to the rights of minorities, as evidenced by Rabin and Sharon’s contemptuous dismissal of their opponents and settlers. After all, generals are used to giving orders and are not always amenable to the give-and-take of democratic governance. Harry Truman, who chose not to run against Eisenhower, predicted that his successor would have a hard time getting things done: “He’ll sit right here and he’ll say do this, do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ike-it won’t be a bit like the Army.”

If only that would be our problem! Our problem has been not military leaders turned prime ministers getting nothing done but in getting the wrong things done. Our problem has been generals spearheading and bulldozing their (and our) way into strategic calamities that cost us dearly in lives, treasure, international standing, and the fulfillment of our destiny.

A mature society knows better than to expect tough-looking generals to be successful politicians. A Jewish society should know to find leaders who can advance our national, spiritual destiny, until we merit true leaders as we had in days of old.

Photo: Gadi Eisenkot by Elad Malka, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Few Americans realize that one of the country’s most beloved entertainers was born Israel Iskowitz, the orphaned son of impoverished Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. He later changed his name to Eddie Cantor—the comedian, singer, actor and radio personality who entertained millions. But when European Jewry came under assault during the 1930s, Cantor never hesitated to speak publicly as a Jew, even when doing so invited criticism and placed his career at risk. When history demanded that he choose which identity would speak first, Eddie Cantor answered as a Jew.

As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence, Cantor’s example invites us to ask a larger question: How should Jews understand themselves while living in America? Are we Jewish Americans—or American Jews?

At first glance, the distinction seems little more than wordplay. After all, both phrases describe Jews who proudly call America home. Yet perhaps the difference is more than linguistic. It may reflect something deeper about how we understand ourselves.

The question is not whether we are patriotic. Nor is it how deeply we cherish either America or Judaism. Rather, it is which identity each phrase places first.

For some Jews, Judaism is understood primarily as a source of universal moral values—justice, compassion and creating a better world. For others, Judaism begins with belonging to the Jewish people, an eternal nation whose shared history, memory and covenant have shaped Jewish life for more than three millennia. Both perspectives see themselves as part of the Jewish people and embrace many of the same ideals, yet they begin from different starting points. And where we begin often shapes where we arrive.

Perhaps this helps explain why thoughtful, committed Jews can respond so differently to many of the questions confronting our community today. Recent disagreements over Israel, antisemitism, Jewish education, religious observance and communal responsibility have revealed differences that often run deeper than politics or religious affiliation. They reflect differing understandings of Jewish identity itself.

The point is not that one group loves America more than another. American Jews across the religious and political spectrum have every reason to feel profound gratitude toward this country. The United States has offered the Jewish people freedoms and opportunities unmatched in much of our history. Here, Jews have flourished as citizens while contributing richly to American life. That is a blessing worthy of celebration, especially as our nation marks this historic anniversary.

Yet gratitude alone does not answer the deeper question of identity.

For my part, I think of myself as an American Jew—a Jew whose family has been blessed to now make its home in America, while some of our children have built their lives in Israel. I cherish this country, pray for its welfare, and remain deeply grateful for the liberties it has afforded my family and generations of Jews before us. But my citizenship, precious as it is, does not define the deepest part of who I am. That identity was forged long before the United States came into being. It binds me to a people, a history and a covenant that transcends every country in which Jews have lived.

America’s 250th anniversary is a fitting moment to reflect not only on what it means to be an American, but also on what it means to be a Jew living in America. Whether we ultimately describe ourselves as Jewish Americans or American Jews, the more important question remains: which identity does each phrase place first? Our understanding not only shapes how we see ourselves, but also how we meet our responsibilities to one another, to our country and to the Jewish people.

Photo: Statue of Liberty, NY by William Warby, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s bogus threat against Israel’s prime minister revealed something essential about his political career — and even more about his sycophants. When Mamdani promised to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu should he set foot in the United States, only to admit that this would be both impossible and illegal just days later, his fan club did not blink, much less assess whether he was prone to reckless, false claims. They simply moved on.

That indifferent reaction is the point: Mamdani’s followers are not impressed by truth or history.

A fact-free mob is dangerous, often more likely to justify violence than to condemn it. One can expect that they will respond to his new call for “protest” by conducting themselves like those described on CNN as “mostly peaceful” while stores burned in the background. As NYPD Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry put it, “violent agitators will assume they have permission to cause as much havoc as possible.” Already, a deranged man yelling Allahu Akbar attacked bystanders (including a Jew coming from prayers) in NYC just days after Mamdani’s racist tirade.

And Mamdani must have known he was inciting his crowd. He gave them not only permission but pretense, stating as fact that Netanyahu was a “war criminal,” deserving of a violent welcome. He claimed that Israel’s rescue of hostages being tortured, starved and raped, and the elimination of the terrorists responsible, constituted a “genocide.”

He wants us to imagine that it’s simply coincidence that the victims whose rescue he condemned were primarily Jews. Surely he would deny being the monster and sexual deviant that such condemnation makes him out to be.

But, crucially, his entire effort is based upon such obvious lies. Equating the neutralization of terrorists to murder of civilians is the least of his problems.

That honor goes to the underlying narrative of “Palestine,” which Mamdani and his followers defend with fervor and without curiosity.

The Bible refers to Israel thousands of times as both a nation and a homeland. “Palestine,” on the other hand, was invented by Greco-Roman colonialists, and instituted by Hadrian to replace the indigenous name Judea, identified with the Jews he was driving out.

The “Palestinian” flag flown at rallies is derived from that of the Arab Revolt of 1916, representing no new identity, but the Jihadists’ dream of a unified Arab kingdom from Syria to Yemen. Old administrative maps of the British Mandate, and similar bureaucratic charts dating back hundreds of years, are exploited to rewrite the historical record of the land they depict.

The history of the region called Palestine is real — and overwhelmingly Jewish. It produced the Palestinian Talmud (also called the Jerusalem Talmud) and the Palestinian Gaonate.

The four central cities of Jewish scholarship — Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias — fundraised together for centuries as “the Four Holy Cities of Palestine.” Maimonides, Rabbi Yosef Karo, the Ari, and Rabbi Moshe Cordovero all lived and taught there. Safed alone produced a revolution in Jewish mysticism.

None of the foregoing related to “Palestine” as anything more than the name used by Greco-Roman and Christian scholars. And notably, there is no parallel Arab or Muslim, much less “Palestinian,” intellectual tradition tied to the region, until Arafat’s PLO determined that manufacturing one would serve their bigoted cause.

In other words, the modern Palestinian national narrative is a mid-20th-century political fiction, built upon the erasure of two millennia of Jewish history and the denial of the land’s holy status to Jews as their homeland and center of Jewish religious practice. That is not a judgment about any individual Arab or Muslim, much less “Islamophobia.” It is simply historical fact.

Thus it is fair and accurate to describe Mamdani’s followers as indifferent to the truth. The tragedy is not that Mamdani is so wrong, so malevolent, and so clearly adversarial towards American values, but that his followers have lost the ability to care.

That is why his reelection isn’t just plausible, but likely — at least until New Yorkers recognize that following in the historical footsteps of Berlin and Moscow is a truly bad idea.

Photo: Zohran Mamdani Speaking at a DSA 101 Meeting at the Church of the Village in NYC by Bingjiefu He, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There are moments when you leave a gathering feeling not simply encouraged, but genuinely inspired. Less than three years after the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and amid a worldwide resurgence of antisemitism, attending Christians United for Israel’s annual conference was one of those moments. This is not simply because CUFI is home to millions of admirers and supporters of the beleaguered Jewish community, but because of the courage found among them.

When antisemitism is surging around the globe, Jewish students are harassed on college campuses, and synagogues require heightened security, the easy course is to keep one’s distance. Some would even call that prudent. CUFI celebrates those who do just the opposite, who lean in against those who threaten us. CUFI’s founder and creator, Pastor John Hagee, put it this way: “If a line has to be drawn, draw it around Christians and Jews. We are united.”

In the federal FACE Act case born from the mob that blocked access in November 2024 to a synagogue in West Orange, N.J., the defendants are asking the courts to abandon the constitutional protections of religious freedom that make America great, while disregarding Jewish law, prayer and lived experience. One could hardly seek better proof that the defendants in this instance discarded both the law and America’s founding principles in their pursuit of antisemitic bigotry.

The legislation was initially designed to protect people entering abortion clinics from being harassed; eventually, it was expanded to apply to the entrances to houses of worship.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation New Jersey, American Muslims for Palestine New Jersey and numerous individual defendants all outrageously insist that the synagogue event they disrupted—one that memorialized a murdered Israeli rabbi and encouraged Jewish life in Israel—was not religious at all. They arrogate for themselves the right to decide what Judaism is, what Jews believe and which parts of Jewish life count as religious. That is not a legal defense, but an act of erasure, as antisemitic as it is unconstitutional.

The court filings could hardly make their intent and animus more blatant. One defendant asserts therein that encouraging Jews to live in the Holy Land “could not plausibly be interpreted” as a religious activity. Another compares such a real estate fair to “bingo night in a church basement.” A third faults the government for failing to prove, from Jewish law, that it’s a mitzvah (“commandment”) for Jews to live in the land of Israel, as if U.S. attorneys should be expected to research Jewish sources to establish basic Jewish tenets.

All of these attempt to force the courts into unconstitutional entanglement with religious doctrine, while denying and distorting obvious Jewish beliefs.

The First Amendment, to be certain, forbids the courts from wading into this argument; they cannot be called upon to determine what is or is not a Jewish religious activity. American courts cannot claim expertise in the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel, the relevant mitzvot (“biblical commandments”) or how they apply today.

At the same time, the defendants’ attitude is so obviously at odds with Jewish belief and so dismissive of the Jewish experience as to prove antisemitic bias. The desire to live on holy ground is a theme that saturates Jewish prayer, holy texts and halachah (“Jewish law”). Antisemitism does not only target Jews as individuals, but Judaism as a religion, and the defense filings openly express that the defendants share this familiar and repugnant hostility.

To claim that a synagogue event about land in Israel is “not religious” requires, first of all, that one deny the mitzvah of yishuv ha’aretz, “settling the land,” affirmed by the Ramban and rooted in Torah. It demands nullification of the pleas for rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, restoration of the Davidic Kingdom and return of the Divine Presence that are at the core of every Jewish prayer service, every day of the year.

And, of course, it erases religious expression by Jews. Whether those making aliyah come from the United States, France, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Argentina or anywhere else, political Zionism is rarely even a secondary concern. The overwhelming majority move either to escape Jew-hatred or to fulfill numerous religious commandments, including living in the Land of Israel and participating in its rebuilding. Maimonides, Rav Ovadiah of Bartenura, Rav Yosef Karo, in addition to the hundreds of students of the Vilna Gaon and Ba’al Shem Tov who moved to the Land of Israel, all did so exclusively as an expression of their Jewish religious beliefs.

Most fundamentally, to insist that their motivations are “not religious” is to tell the Jews targeted at Congregation Ohr Torah that their own lives, fears, hopes, beliefs and commitments do not matter. That is not a defense. It is an expression of transparent—and transparently hateful—disregard for Jewish humanity.

The FACE Act protects all forms of religious exercise, not only ritual. Congress enacted it to protect houses of worship and religious communities from intimidation and obstruction. This protection is not limited to prayer services, but encompasses the full spectrum of religious life, including gatherings that express, celebrate or advance a community’s religious identity. A synagogue event discussing Jewish life in Israel is unquestionably part of that spectrum.

If a court accepted the defendants’ framing, that would set a chilling precedent. Jewish prayer would be protected, but attempts to realize the commitments expressed in those prayers would not. That would hamper Jewish religious liberty no less than attacks on circumcision or kosher meat. It would have the courts annul the parts of Judaism that anti‑Israel activists find inconvenient.

The defendants’ argument is unconstitutional because it asks the court to define Judaism, and antisemitic because it expressly denies both Judaism’s own self‑definition and the religious beliefs of the targeted Jews. In other words, the defendants want the courts to declare their activities not to be hateful or bigoted, precisely because they are.

This is dangerous not only for Jews who seek to fulfill mitzvot, but for all Americans who share the reverence of the country’s Founding Fathers for religious freedom and tolerance.

Consider that without those principles, Pilgrims in Massachusetts, Mennonites in Pennsylvania and Anglicans in Virginia could not have united to build the world’s dominant superpower. The defendants have thus proven both their guilt and their hostility towards Judaism, Jewish life and the values that make America great.

If you think about it, it is shocking that Korach joined forces with Datan and Aviram in his campaign to usurp leadership. Korach had a distinguished reputation, as Chazal (the Sages) explain, and he presented his case by way of (very flawed) doctrinal arguments, trying to persuade the masses that his theological position was correct. In stark contrast, Datan and Aviram had a very checkered and disreputable past of nasty confrontation and shameful instigation.

As Rashi explains, based on midrashim, it was Datan and Aviram who were violently fighting with each other in Egypt when Moshe tried to stop them (Shemot [Exodus] 2:3); it was Datan and Aviram who badmouthed Moshe to Pharoah, thereby almost causing Moshe’s execution (ibid. 2:15); it was Datan and Aviram who violated the command not to leave over any manna until the next day (ibid. 16:19-20); and as Midrash Ha-Gadol (Bamidbar [Numbers]16:1) states, it was Datan and Aviram who complained at the shore of Yam Suf (the Sea of Reeds) about having left Egypt and who sought to return there (Shemot 14:11-12 – v. Rashi on v. 12).

Why in the world did Korach join forces with Datan and Aviram, whose very compromised past and quite negative reputation would surely not have served his professed ideological campaign well?

How could people who were known for their belligerent personalities and violations of Torah bring prestige to what Korach promoted as a grassroots religious drive founded on positive principles?

Why would Korach tarnish his movement by aligning with known troublemakers and negative forces?

The answer is that despite Korach presenting his agenda as an ideological crusade for the betterment of the masses, in truth it was a self-serving power grab motivated by jealousy and personal ambition; the ideology was a mere front and a ruse to draw pubic support for what was nothing more than an egocentric stunt. As such, Korach needed loud voices and strident personalities to amplify his message and force Moshe into a position of weakness and concession.

Datan and Aviram were the perfect characters for this. They were the ideal “hit men” and the best people to catalyze a mass movement against Moshe Rabbeinu, escalating matters to the point of surrender and collapse.

It is not surprising that throughout Jewish history, those who sought to challenge the Mesorah (Torah tradition) typically launched their campaigns by professing lofty ideologies that purported to enhance or ennoble Judaism, whereas the reality is that these deviant movements’ true aim to was to dilute and tear down Torah values and observance, usually with an underlying motivation of opportunism on the part of those involved.

By including Datan and Aviram in his uprising, Korach in effect exposed his campaign for what it really was – a self-serving power grab, in which Torah and Torah leadership were contested and defied by ostensibly lofty religious philosophies, all in a base effort by an illegitimate and greedy player to undermine the system and seize power.

May Hashem continue to illuminate our path, provide us with true Torah leaders, and enable us to realize when people are seeking to subvert Torah values while professing to enrich them.