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Was anyone ever going to tell me that Ibn Ezra was gay or was I always meant to discover this by accident with my chavruta

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אנחנו איתכם

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Never forget that a smaller Israel was also an option in 1937. The Jews agreed, the Palestinian Arabs said no. The day after declaring independence in 1948 the Jews controlled that area all the same. Most Holocaust deaths could have been avoided and there would have been a state of Palestine too. The enemies of Israel wanted a Holocaust - then and now.

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by Ed Victor

On Sunday, Mohamed Sabry Soliman allegedly hurled two lit Molotov cocktails at a group of peaceful protesters in Boulder, Colorado, who gather each Sunday to demand the release of the 58 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. As Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, threw his homemade bombs at the group, consisting of families and the elderly, he shouted “Free Palestine,” “End Zionists,” and “How many children have you killed?”

Fifteen people were injured in what authorities quickly called a “terror attack.” One of the victims was an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor.

Soliman later said that he had “no regrets” over the attack and that he “wanted them all to die.” He had allegedly been planning the attack for over a year. He tried to purchase a gun but was denied because of his status as an illegal migrant, according to authorities.

Ed Victor, 57, who recently retired from a tech career, was there that day—like every Sunday—and he was extremely lucky to have walked away without any injuries. As you’ll read below, though, witnessing the terror attack up close was an experience that “unquestionably changed” him forever.

I heard a glass break. Then the first thing I felt was the heat. It came out of nowhere. Then I looked to my left, and the older woman near me was on fire.

She crumpled to the ground, the flames following her. This all happened in no more than two to three seconds.

The next few minutes—it couldn’t have been more than one or two—felt like an eternity. My world completely narrowed, rendering me oblivious to my surroundings, to the shirtless man not more than 15 feet away who was yelling “Free Palestine” at us and who had another firebomb in his hand. It never dawned on me that I might be in danger, too, until later that day when I watched a video of the scene that showed me with my back turned to the man, completely unaware of his presence. “Run away!” I told myself through the screen, watching the video. But in the moment, I didn’t. I couldn’t.

My Boy Scouts training from nearly four decades ago kicked in. I saw a fire, and I knew the only way to get out of it was to smother it. There was no water around, from what I could see, but I could also smell the subtle hint of gasoline. Water would never work to put this kind of fire out, I knew. I looked for something, anything I could find. A few Israeli or American flags strewn on the ground—no, they were too thin. So I grabbed the banner, the one we marched behind every Sunday, which read “LET THEM GO NOW.” I was concerned that it could be made of a synthetic material—“What if it lights on fire? We could create a fireball,” I feared. But there was no time, and nothing else in sight I could possibly use, so two others and I laid the banner on top of the agonized woman, trying to put out the flames all over her body.

Once the flames went out, one of my friends who had medical training began tending to the older woman and her wounds. By this point her clothes were tattered, and I noticed burns across her body.

My attention then turned to her husband, an older man standing beside her when the fire erupted. His leg was badly burned, and he watched as his wife lay on the ground in utter pain. He screamed. I can’t remember what he said, but he was distraught beyond distraught.

When the first responders finally arrived, I watched him get loaded into an ambulance. Eventually, I learned he was taken by helicopter to a local hospital.

Last Sunday had begun like any other. It was an overcast spring day. I woke up, put on a shirt, shorts, and a pair of Tevas, and drove from my home in a nearby suburb to Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall to join in the Run for Their Lives walk. I had been to the gathering every Sunday since September 2024, since a visit I took to Israel made me realize how important it was to keep the hostages’ names alive, to show that there were people fighting for them. To me, this rally never had anything to do with Israel. It was always about the hostages still in Gaza.

What bystanders normally notice about our walk is that we are completely quiet. People often hold pictures of hostages, some who have died, and some who are still being held by Hamas in Gaza—now for over 600 days. It wasn’t uncommon for a few bystanders to offer up nods of support or for others to shout “Free Palestine” at us as we walked. We were always instructed not to respond or react to it, so I learned to ignore these things. I never felt unsafe. I never imagined I would feel unsafe walking in downtown Boulder.

The attack occurred just as we gathered in front of the Boulder courthouse to read out the names of the hostages, both those who have been murdered by Hamas and those still held in captivity, and just before we were to sing together the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, which literally translates in English to “The Hope.”

I can’t remember much from the time I felt that sensation of heat to the moment that I found myself going from ambulance to ambulance, trying to gather the names of the injured and find out which hospitals they were being taken to so that I could communicate that information to our friends and their families. By the time I finally looked up and took in my surroundings, I could see police putting up caution tape around the area where I had just been standing minutes before. Police were speaking to witnesses.

The man who allegedly threw the firebomb had already been arrested and taken away. As for me, I’ve put up my own internal caution tape. I may never feel comfortable going back to that spot again, though I plan to try and rejoin the march this coming Sunday, one week after the attack. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to that exact space and feel normal. This has unquestionably changed me.

If anyone asks me about how I’m doing, I say I’m okay. But if I dig a little deeper, I’m sad, angry, and outraged. Upon reflection, I have come to realize that “Free Palestine” can mean something for those who want a Palestinian state, but it has also become a rallying cry for killing the Jews. It was the rallying cry for the two people gunned down in Washington, D.C., just two weeks ago. It was the rallying cry in Boulder. That is not okay, and I don’t know what to do about it.

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By Taishya Adams's logic, the Holocaust could not have been antisemitic due to the involvement of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini. There is no legitimate driver of the attempted murder of Jews peacefully marching for the release of Jewish hostages. Adams may deny it, but she is trying to minimize and rationalize antisemitic violence, and in so doing demonstrating just how there is no difference between antisemitism and the anti-Zionism she professes.

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“The second question I hear over and over and over is some version of the following. Why can't Israel just tell its story better to the world? If only we could get the facts out, everyone will understand.

We want to believe that the way to counter the lie is with a better story, with talking points, with media tools, better content distribution. We want to believe that if we can just hack the algorithm, tweet that viral tweet, our kids won't have to view those toxic reels on TikTok attacking Israel. Now, the algorithm spreading the lie is definitely a problem.

But the bigger problem is the popularity of the lie itself. It is a lie that has stood the test of time. From Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440, which inadvertently enabled the spread of antisemitic blood libel in books throughout Europe to the technologies of today.

The reality is that today, there are only 16, one six, 16 million of us, and 8 billion people in the world. I'm not saying we shouldn't fight these important fights, and I've been involved in some of these efforts. But no matter how viral we go[…]”

“After all, there's a reason it's called the oldest hatred. So if we can agree that Israel isn't going to win the information war anytime soon, and that we can't make the antisemites any less antisemitic, and that simply investing in non-Jewish causes will never be enough to grant us a get out of the pogrom free card, then what are we to do? My fear is that without something more lasting, a shift at the core of our approach to American Jewish life, we may drift back into that false sense of normal we were living on October 6th.

The author Sarah Hurwitz put it this way when addressing a group of Hillel's student leaders. Jews don't control antisemitism, Sarah said, and I quote here, We can fight it, and I think that's great, but I think instead of trying to bail out a tsunami with buckets, we should also build an ark. Put differently, there's one thing that is entirely within our control, and it's the one thing that the antisemites want to disrupt.

The one thing we can control is whether we choose to lead Jewish lives.”

From Call Me Back - with Dan Senor: Dan Senor’s State of World Jewry Address (@92NY), May 14, 2025

This material may be protected by copyright.

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Valerie Hamaty, Narkis and Marina Maximilian Blumin perform Marina Maximilian's song "Beyachad" ("Together") in a Yom HaZikaron [Israel's Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism] eve ceremony in Tel Aviv on April 29, 2025

"Together all time / Now is the moment of truth / What each of us is willing to give / With no fear / Not here / The money is gone / Let it be gone / Time with you got longer

With you even the end of the world doesn't scare me / I'm etching a picture on my heart / On the bed / The way the light falls on you / As if it were costume made

Together all the time / We find ourselves playing hide and seek with life / Opening a new page / And painting for our daughters / a man climbing the walls"

Video Source: The full ceremony posted by the Tel Aviv-Jaffo Municipality on YouTube

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Rachel Goldberg Polin - The Paradox of Passover 2025 - YouTube

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The Hebrew Language Academy (הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית, HaAkademyah LaLashon HaʿIvrit) announced today to Yarden Bibas (יַרְדֵּן בִּיבָּס) that a native butterfly will carry the name Ariel in memory of his son. The little orange Jerusalem Fritillary (Melitaea telona), previously known in Hebrew as כְּתָמִית יְרוּשָׁלַיִם‎ K'tamit Yerushalayim, will henceforth be called כְּתָמִית אֲרִיאֵל K'tamit Ariel. The Bibas family was abducted by Hamas terrorists on October 7th, 2023 and Shiri Bibas (שִׁירִי, 32), Ariel (אֲרִיאֵל, 4) and Kfir (כְּפִיר, 0) were later murdered in captivity. 1 2

Correction: this common name change possibly affects both M. ornata, the Eastern Knapweed Fritillary, found throughout Europe and Asia, and M. telona, known in English as the Jerusalem Fritillary. 3 (official statement mentioning כתמית ירושלים and M. ornata) 4 5 (connecting the Hebrew common name to both species).

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Sometimes I encounter a novel form of antisemitism instead of just the ubiquitous jihad-fan variety.

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Gaza captor told hostages that Hamas collaborates with US campus protesters, lawsuit alleges | The Times of Israel

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https://vimeo.com/574196447/f84d38d408

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Source: AIPAC

Source: https://x.com/HenMazzig/status/1889700995489243633