#yom benjamin

[mygidon73]

Breaking Israel's Opium Addiction

How addicted is Jerusalem to Washington’s military aid? Israel’s planned preemptive strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Oct. 11, was narrowly averted after President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stand down, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. While Netanyahu dismissed this claim, members of his own Likud Party are increasingly speaking out against…

[gameofthrones2020]

Israel-Hamas War of 2023

Israel-Hamas War of 2023: On October 7, 2023, at 6:30 AM local time, a Palestinian and Islamic fundamentalist group attacked Israel

On October 7, 2023, at 6:30 AM local time, a Palestinian and Islamic fundamentalist group known as Hamas announced the launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, stating that it had fired over 5,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel within 20 minutes. Hams launched over 5,000 rockets due to the limitations of Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, an ante missile defence system that can stop some…

[plitnick]

Hamas attack the result of Washington’s hostility to Palestinian rights

To the extent that Hamas targeted the military, that is very much legal, and an exercise of the right to resist that is granted to people under a belligerent military occupation. The tactic of capturing civilians as hostages is a familiar one in conflicts, but that makes it no less criminal, and given some of the targets, including very young children, no less horrifying. The extensive targeting…

[ruminativerabbi]

Listening

I had a remarkable experience the other day when, while googling something else entirely, I stumbled across a recording of President Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third president of the United States. He was in the White House when my grandparents were children, from 1889 to 1893, and, although he was not the first of our presidents to have his voice recorded—that would be Rutherford B. Hayes, who was in office from 1877 to 1881—he is the oldest of our presidents a recording of whose voice has survived. It’s a short recording made on an Edison phonograph wax cylinder (to listen, click here), but it felt amazing to hear the voice of a man my grandmother would have thought of roughly in the same way I think of Dwight Eisenhower: as the president of my earliest childhood. Today forgotten by most, Harrison was nonetheless linked to our country’s past in two important ways other than with respect to his own service to the nation: he was our only president whose grandfather was also president (William Henry Harrison was president for about a month in 1841 before he died in office) and he was the great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, who was one of our nation’s founders and who, as a delegate to the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. So how amazing an experience was that—hearing the actual voice of a man whose grandfather’s dad would have considered Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as his peers, maybe even as his pals. It isn’t much to listen to, the recording—just slightly over half a minute in length—but it somehow brought our nation’s past into my study in a way that felt simultaneously mysterious, intriguing, and satisfying.

And that got me to wondering who else’s voice is out there to hear. In our highly digitized age, of course, there’s too much, not too little, of everybody to listen to: a quick google-search for “voice recordings of Barack Obama” undertaken by myself took exactly 0.51 seconds to yield 4,810,000 results. But there are also unexpected people to listen to. Robert Browning’s voice was recorded in 1889, as was Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1890 (and by Thomas Edison himself). Queen Victoria’s voice was preserved too: click here to take a listen. Thomas Edison even managed to record the voice of Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of the German Empire.

In their own category would be the recordings of Black Americans who had actually been slaves in the Old South as preserved and available to all on the website of the Library of Congress (click here). Readers with extremely good memories will recall that I wrote about the experience of discovering and listening to those recordings back in 2008 (click here to revisit those comments). The short version of the story is that the Federal Writers’ Project (a part of the Works Project Administration in the 1930s) undertook as one of its projects to locate still-living former slaves from pre-Civil War days and to record their stories so that they could be preserved for later generations to consider. Almost amazingly, they found over two thousand such people still alive in the nation—this was a full seventy years after the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution ended slavery in this nation—and many were more than willing to talk. The results were amazing—seventeen large volumes collectively called Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves—which have been abridged over the years into many single volumes (click here for an example of such a volume offered as a free e-book on amazon.com). But even more compelling than reading their stories was listening to them: wax cylinder recordings were made of many of these interviews, all of which should be required listening for all citizens hoping for our nation to transcend the racial divide that still, even now, characterizes so much of American society. To read about slavery, after all, is one thing. But to hear men and women who themselves were slaves telling their story is an entirely different experience, one I recommend to all. On Pesach, we make a big deal out of the thought that tradition bids us so fully to identify with the Israelites slaves that we come to consider their redemption to be our own as well. But how many of us have listened to actual enslaved persons tell their story? And then, while I was busy amusing myself by listening to Queen Victoria and Robbie Burns, Yom Hashoah was upon us. And that cast all the above in a different light.

I grew up in a world of survivors. Every Jewish American my age did, or at least those of us did who grew up in urban settings like New York or in neighborhoods like Forest Hills. I’ve often told the story—including just the other night at Shelter Rock—of my mother taking me aside as a young boy and warning me, gently but firmly, against quizzing the survivor parents of my friends from elementary school about their wartime experiences. My mom meant it as a kindness, feeling that it would only be cruel to ask people who had suffered such terribleness and such barbarism to revisit their own stories instead of allowing them to grow past the past into new American lives featuring bright American futures. But even if I agreed, albeit reluctantly, to obey my mother and not to ask the survivors I encountered about the camps or the circumstances of their personal survival, I still heard their voices. And their voices were amazing. I can hear them still too in all their strange linguistic variegation. In one home, they spoke a strange and wonderful patois of Yiddish, Polish, French, and English. In another they spoke a kind of English in which every third word was actually German. A third was similar, except that those every-third-words were Hungarian ones. A fourth home I frequented featured Rumanian as the “third language,” i.e., the one that wasn’t Yiddish or English. I spent those years listening to all those strange linguistic fruit salads and trying to figure out how the speakers themselves knew which language to draw which word from. And, in retrospect a bit oddly, wishing I could speak like that myself.

And then, eventually, I did learn their stories. It took a while. I became a teenager, and adolescent-me was not quite as obedient to my mother’s instructions as boy-me had been. These were the years that I was surreptitiously reading as much Shoah-based literature as I could find, starting with André Schwarz Bart’s The Last of the Just and Leon Uris’s Mila-18 and moving forward from there. And so I began a kind of two-tiered journey through my own adolescence, getting the information I needed and wanted about the Shoah from books but hearing the voices of so many survivors in those days that I don’t think I can remember them all now by name.

As the years have passed, the din has quieted down. It’s been years since I met a survivor who couldn’t speak English easily and well. My need to read maximally about every aspect of the Holocaust has died down too over the years, but without ever abating entirely. But as the survivor community has dwindled, my parallel need to hear them speak has only become more intense. I listened carefully the other evening to an interview conducted by Andrew Silow-Carroll of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency featuring Alex Groth, now a retired professor who taught for decades at the University of California at Davis but once a child in the Warsaw Ghetto. He spoke clearly and well, recalling details and incidents from his childhood in hell, and making certain unexpected assertions about life that only someone who had been present on the scene would be able to make. Other than that, though, he didn’t say anything I hadn’t read elsewhere. And yet the experience of hearing his voice, of hearing the voice of a man who was once a boy in the place that looms so large in my own consciousness—that was just amazing. And far more amazing, at least for me personally, than hearing what Queen Victoria sounded like.

Eventually, the only way to hear survivors tell their stories will be digitally. The patois of their homes when I was a boy is already a thing of the past. As the numbers dwindle and their collective voice becomes increasingly muted, our concomitant responsibility to listen all the more carefully will wax larger and greater. In these coming years, we will need to strain to hear every surviving survivor tell his or her tale, and in that way honoring the dead not by listening to Edison wax cylinders, but by listening to the actual voices of actual people for as long as they are audible.

[mariacallous]

Something strange is going on with Israel, writes Elie Barnavi, a former Israeli ambassador to France and a prominent historian and writer, in his autobiography Confessions d’un bon à rien: In less than a century his country “has gone through the entire sequence of European wars, but in reverse order.” 

Barnavi’s book (which has not been translated into English) was published in 2022. He could not have known at the time that a furious war between Israel and Hamas would erupt in late 2023. Even so, his analysis of Israel getting involved in Europeans wars “but in reverse order” is perfectly applicable to the war now raging in Gaza. To be sure, his vision is pitch dark: Israel’s wars are getting worse, in Barnavi’s view. Therefore, the potential for further escalation of the Gaza war in the wider region is considerable. 

What exactly does it mean to have European wars in reverse order? In Europe, religious wars raged on for most of the 16th and 17th centuries, fought between Catholics and protestants and their regional, princely or city-state backers. The situation only changed after the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, a double peace treaty that put an end to both the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. From then on, states became the predominant actors in international politics. They certainly fought terrible wars, but also managed to contain and prevent them through peace conferences—the Concert of Vienna (1814-15) for example—where European powers guaranteed non-interference in each other’s spheres of influence. Finally, interstate wars in Europe stopped altogether after the Second World War, at least among member states of what has become the European Union. 

Israel, Barnavi argues, took the opposite trajectory. Israel’s wars began as battles between states: the Jewish state against neighboring Arab states, involving one national army fighting another. This interstate warfare ended with the Yom Kippur War in 1973. After that, Israel no longer fought large-scale wars against other states and instead mainly fought Palestinian guerrillas. Even in that new phase, however, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained a conflict between two nations, two national movements, over the same piece of land. Because of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, this struggle—which is raging still today—took on a colonial dimension.  

Beyond that, crucially, the war has changed in character. On both sides, politics and society are now deeply divided. Both in Israel and Palestine, the main internal division is between those who are secular and those who are religiously motivated. On both sides, the religious camp seems to be getting the upper hand. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Politico wrote recently, is “losing control” of his government because his far-right, religious coalition partners are uncompromising and pushing their way. For instance, the Israeli Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir—who both live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank—have publicly called for “migration” of Palestinians from Gaza and building new Israeli settlements there, and have referred to Palestinians as “human animals” and “Nazis.” Despite U.S. pressure, they have also refused to transfer tax revenues that Israel routinely collects for the Palestinian Authority to the government in Ramallah, Palestine’s de facto administrative capital. Netanyahu obviously no longer controls his own ministers. His religious coalition partners know he will not fire them. If he does, the government would fall and the prime minister, who faces charges on three cases of fraud, bribery and breach of trust, would lose the immunity that currently keeps him out of reach of the judiciary. 

On the Palestinian side, things are no better. For many Palestinians, 88-year old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has lost all credibility. Under his 19-year tenure, the Palestinian cause and the fight against the Israeli occupation have largely disappeared from the international agenda. Hamas puts them back on that agenda. A December 2023 poll showed that Hamas’s popularity was actually growing—even among secular Palestinians who normally do not support Hamas and condemn the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres. This result should be seen as a sign of utter political despair; they have lost hope that less extremist leaders can achieve a just peace with Israel. 

In this way, what used to be a national conflict is increasingly turning into a religious conflict. Barnavi, who has studied Europe’s religious wars extensively as a scholar, writes: “The growing power of fundamentalists on both sides drags us back to the pre-modern, pre-Westphalian era—to the religious wars in Europe of the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century.” 

This is bad news. Europe’s wars of religion were terrible. Everybody was fighting everybody, and there was no restraint in warfare. The French 16th-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne lived through them and wrote about them in his Essays. These wars led him to develop his theory of political governance and change through “petits pas” (little steps) instead of revolutionary, sweeping movements, so as to contain extremism and bloodshed. If religious lunatics have their way, he noted, compromises are no longer possible.  

Barnavi, without mentioning Montaigne, seems to come to the same conclusion. Two countries can negotiate a deal, he argues in his memoirs, with both settling for less than they originally demanded, using rational considerations. But two camps that deeply believe God has given them the land are incapable of doing this, because it requires them to renege on the fundament on which their faith and identity are based. 

The question whether Israel and the Palestinians can get their stranded peace process back on track thus depends less and less on negotiations between both sides—which was the case 30 years ago, resulting in the Oslo peace accords—and more and more on the struggle within the two camps between secular and religious parties. The more intense these internal power struggles become, the less likely the peace process can be put into motion again. This means, of course, that it also becomes more likely that the conflict will be settled militarily.  

European religious wars were eventually stopped because of the emergence of the modern, relatively secular state capable of compromise; its claims of the raison d’état eventually prevailed. The religious war in the Middle East, by contrast, is currently intensifying because the state (or the national movement, on the Palestinian side, which also used to be secular in character) is becoming weaker. 

If both sides are unable to broker a compromise, someone else needs to make sure things don’t spiral out of control, with Israel’s neighbors and other regional powers, including Iran (which is a theocracy itself), getting more directly involved. One can only hope that intensive diplomatic efforts, mainly by the United States and some Gulf states, behind the screens will eventually bear fruit. But thanks to books such as Barnavi’s, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: Compromise is now harder than ever.

[militantinremission]

The War in Gaza: Terrorism or Resistance?

Few would disagree that there are No Winners in the newly erupted 'War' between Israel & Hamas. Mainstream Media has already begun to make excuses for the expected carnage that Benjamin Netanyahu will rain on Gaza. The Israeli Prime Minister singles out Hamas for destruction, but is pretty general about his Military Targets; situated among an urban population of over 2 Million Palestinians. What's scary, is how easily News Correspondents & Political Contributors downplay Israeli 'revenge' as Collateral Damage.

58% of Palestinians support Hamas, but Mainstream Media collectively behaves like the Citizens of Gaza are ALL connected to Hamas. The same way that All Black Males are gang affiliated... I guess that's their punishment for voting Hamas into Political Power. The irony lies in the fact that Israel brought Hamas into existence, as a counter balance to Yasser Arafat & The PLO. The Media is already calling Hamas' Attack 'Israel's 9/11'- I find that classification curious. That 2001 Event looks more & more like a smokescreen for a larger Agenda. Despite the thousands of Americans killed, the Legacy of 9/11 are: The Iraqi War & The Patriot Act. There are correlations to point out between the 2 Events.

Benjamin Netanyahu's current political position resembles Rudy Giuliani's position, pre- 9/11. Rudy faced Police Brutality & Corruption in his Administration, while Bibi faces Fraud, Breach of Trust, & accepting Bribes on @ least 3 different occasions. Post 9/11, Rudy Giuliani became 'America's Mayor'. Israelis that screamed for Netanyahu's resignation last week, are now standing behind his 'War' on Hamas. The Patriot Act was what came out of 9/11, & increasing Jewish Settlements appears to be Israel's goal in Gaza. Pro- Israel supporters are calling for the complete destruction of Gaza. There is no regard for the welfare of Palestinians caught in the middle.

The Media Narrative has been Israeli Centered. Big Bad Hamas caught Israel off guard, & wreaked as much havoc as they could. Israel is known for their Security & Intelligence, so it's more than curious how Hamas could execute such a large scale Operation. Over 1,000 Hamas Soldiers stormed breached sections of Israel's Security Fence, along w/ other Soldiers attacking by Air & by Sea. Over 2,200 Military Grade Rockets were launched w/i the City of Tel Aviv. Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel's History. The Police & Military were both caught unaware... How?

Benjamin Netanyahu rose to power on the promise that he could protect Israel better than anyone that preceded him. The fact that Mossad, Shin Bet, & Unit 8200 all failed to anticipate such an attack is mindboggling. When we consider the fact that Netanyahu did not anticipate an attack on, or around the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (back in 1973), it's not hard to consider conspiracy theories. Some call it silly to think that Bibi Netanyahu would allow Hamas to breach Israeli territory & kill hundreds, but the alternative is to think that 3 Intelligence Agencies failed to gather Intel on a coordinated attack that took up to 2 Years to plan.

Benjamin Netanyahu's Legacy as Israeli Leader, is a continuous oppression of the Palestinian population. Under his leadership, Israel openly practices a System of Apartheid. Many refer to Gaza as an 'Open Air Prison', while Others call it a 'Concentration Camp'. Despite The 1993 Oslo Accords that laid out the foundation for a 2 State solution, Netanyahu still allows the development of Illegal Settlements in Gaza. It has become so rampant, that Pro- Israel Supporters are calling for the compete removal of All Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Israel's Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant referred to Hamas as 'Human Animals' that will be dealt w/ in a similar manner... Where is the compromise?

It's crazy to say, but Israel is planning a full blitzkrieg on The Gaza Strip. 300,000 Israeli Soldiers have been called to the Gaza Border, following days of incessant bombing on an urban population of over 2 million people. Over 300,000 people have already been displaced. Netanyahu says he issued warnings for Gaza Residents to leave, but where are they going? Access to Israel & Egypt has been completely cut off. Israeli Officials brag how Food, Water, Fuel, & Electricity supplies to Gaza have been shut off. Some News Correspondents mention Israel's clear violation of Human Rights & The Geneva Convention, but most News Reports focus on the Israeli perspective.

Volodomyr Zelenskyy is blaming Vladimir Putin for the War in Gaza; America's focus on Israel means less focus on Ukraine. The Pentagon has a limited surplus of weapons & ammunition. Zelenskyy understands Ukraine's place in the pecking order, so he's probably uneasy. The Geopolitics behind this Event are interesting. GOP Presidential Hopefuls, Sen. Lindsey Graham & Former Ambassador/ Governor Nikki Haley have blamed Iran for financing Hamas (through Hezbollah), & both called for an American attack on Iran. History shows that Israel supported Iran 40Yrs ago. They supplied the Ayatollah Khomeini w/ weapons in his War w/ Iraq. When Iran financed Hezbollah in 1983, leading to attacks on Israeli Occupations & U.S. Marines barracks (in Lebanon), Israel continued to supply Iran.

The U.S. has a Memorandum Of Understanding w/ Israel that promises $3.8B in Annual Military Aid. On top of this, Joe Biden has pledged full support to Israel, & has dispatched the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Gerald Ford w/ a Battleship compliment. No one knows what 'support' Biden intends to give, but his Pro- Israel stance ignores the Palestinian view. Nearly 80Yrs ago, roughly 60% of Palestine was seized & renamed 'Israel' by The British Government (via The U.N.). The Palestinians @ that time, explained that They ARE the Israelites! They are the descendants of those who 'accepted Al Islam' centuries ago. Nearly 60Yrs ago, Yasser Arafat formed The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to fight for the Palestinian Right of Expression on their Own land.

30Yrs ago, Yasser Arafat & Yitzhak Rabin agreed on a 2 State solution, but Israeli Leaders following Rabin have failed to go any further w/ the Oslo Accords. The political rise of Hamas, & their refusal to recognize The State of Israel has been blamed for the breakdown of negotiations. Meanwhile, Palestinians, Black Jews, Hebrew Israelites, & Muslims have all experienced an increase in Ethnic Bias/ Discrimination. Anyone that insinuates Ethnic Bias or Racism in Israel is either treated like a leper, or silenced; but Palestinians have been dealing w/ this Ethnic Bias for nearly 130Yrs.

Israel's problem w/ Gaza, is numbers. While the Israeli population is moderately young, the Palestinian population of Gaza has a Median Age of 19Yrs; half the population is under 18Yrs. This may explain Israel's aggressive stance towards Palestinians. Israel's 'gestapo tactics' run the risk of radicalizing a new generation of Palestinians. Not the best move to make, if Hamas is getting more sophisticated w/ their planning & methods of attack. Whenever Israel goes on the offensive, I always have to look @ their move in respect to 'Greater Israel'. This is Israel's vision for expansion. The Maps that I saw show Israel expanding into Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, & Iraq... I can't help thinking about The Book of Revelations & that 'Battle on the Hill of Megiddo'.

From an Indigenous Black American perspective, Gaza is Must See TV! Israeli UN Ambassador, Gilad Erdan made a comment a few years ago, that Black American Men were the greatest threat to Israel(???) American Police Departments, large & small are invited to visit Israel (All expenses paid), to learn the tactics they use on Palestinians. The Israelis learned from American Police tactics on Black Americans, so it appears that they are sharing Tools of Oppression. By the same token, as Malcolm X vocally supported the Palestinian Right Of Expression; Palestinians return the gesture, by teaching Black American Protestors how to handle tear gas & other 'Urban' Police tactics.

The United States & Israel are tethered to each other. European Jews use Hollywood to present specific images & narratives globally. Among the images are: 'America', The Great Society & 'Israel', The Holy Land. Both nations are White Supremacist Republics, so the goals are: Marginalization of the Indigenous People & Appropriation of the natural resources. Israel is practicing the American Model of 'Jim Crow' Anti- Black Racism, much like the Nazis & South Afrikan Boers practiced. America appears to be copying Israel's Urban Assault Tactics. I wouldn't be surprised if the Cop City Development outside of Atlanta, Ga. is the result of those Police junkets to Israel.

The Civil Rights & Black Power Movements inspired Black & Brown People globally. Our current fight against Police Violence & for (lineage based) Reparations is already having a similar effect. That being said, Palestinians live in an environment that can change forever- in a heartbeat. I don't think that they need to draw inspiration from Us, but it's clear that We are in solidarity w/ each other. Mainstream Media is mourning the dead babies in Southern Israel & uttering curses @ Hamas, but they have been silent for years about the dead babies in Gaza. The Zionists are quick to voice their Right to Retaliate, but are silent when asked if Palestinians have the same Right of Retaliation... It's No Fun when the Rabbit has the Gun.

[dragoneyes618]

On May 6, Ben, a Jewish New Yorker who was raised Orthodox, counter-protested a pro-Palestinian rally that was part of the “Citywide Day of Rage for Gaza,” outside of CUNY Hunter College on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

The “Day of Rage” coincided with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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The event was promoted by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an anti-Zionist organization spearheaded by Nerdeen Kiswani, a 2022 CUNY law commencement speaker who was caught on video telling a man, while she was holding a lit lighter, that she wanted to light his IDF sweatshirt on fire.

WOL announced the “Day of Rage” rally with an incendiary image of someone covered in a keffiyeh holding a fiery torch, which student groups, Palestine Solidarity Alliance (PSA) and CUNY for Palestine, posted onto their social media. Ben, who said he’d prefer to use only his first name, told The Jewish Press, “This was an angry mob and Within Our Lifetime was inciting a riot with obvious warlike imagery.”

He asked, “Inciting a riot – is that a crime anymore?”

Three months ago, The New York Jewish Week reported that a spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, told them that WOL accounts has been removed for violating its “Dangerous Organizations & Individuals policy.”

Ben said a high percentage of the protestors “seemed to be Arab,” and that he believed “a lot of them were definitely not Hunter students…they were much older.”

He was aware of a police presence, and didn’t see violent eruptions at that time.

To counter the pro-Palestinian slogans, Ben chanted back, “Down with Hamas! Victory for Israel!”

Ben said the protestors marched out of Hunter and around the Upper East Side in “a snaky path…probably trying to avoid the police.” He believes they could have been heading towards the Met Gala, where The New York Post reported over 1,000 protestors were being blocked by police. Ben explained, “They got filmed by half the city beating and harassing people, blocking traffic and swarming the Met Gala.”

As Ben followed them along Madison Ave. up toward 86th street, he described the crowd as “all over the place…arguing with people… exchanging insults with pro-Israel people.”

In a video posted on X, two masked men harassed a man with a dog in the street, and one of them threatened to slap the woman he was with.

Ben said a middle aged woman yelled “Heil Hitler!” at him, and a girl whose face was covered in a hijab shouted, “Hitler would burn you all!”

Ben relayed how he “let passion take over. I took out my Israeli flag. I just started shouting, “Nazis, out of the East Side! Nazis, out of the East Side!’” He said he called them Nazis because the “Day of Rage” was on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the protestors reminded him of “the pro-Nazi German American Bund that used to march on the Upper East Side back in the 30s.”

Jewish World War I veterans and gangsters like Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel took to the streets to battle them, believing it was their civic duty to fight back.

On 74th and Park Ave., Ben said there were no police in sight and he was assaulted – punched in the body and face, and kicked multiple times by different assailants. When one of them snatched his sudra decorated with the Star of David off his head, he dove into the violent crowd and retrieved it, waving it triumphantly. “I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of taking away my symbol,” he explained.

Someone threw a stone at Ben, injuring his right peck. A few people chased him down the street afterwards, but Ben said he walked and didn’t run because he “didn’t want to look like a coward.” Ben noticed that the glasses he was wearing weren’t even broken.

The Jewish Press has confirmed Ben’s account via the video that has been posted on social media.

Ben said that only after he viewed the video online did he see two New York intelligence offices restraining protestors who shoved and cursed at them on 74th street between Lexington and Park avenues.

Ben lost his beloved Chai necklace, which he believes someone could have grabbed off of his neck. He commented, “My uncle who gave who gave me that necklace would be proud that I lost it doing that.”

You can see the video here: https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1787671509051298154?s=46.

[eretzyisrael]

From Gal Gadot: 

Yom Hashoa. Holocaust Remembrance Day January 27

This is my grandpa, Abraham Weiss, he was born as Adolf Weiss but changed his name after the war for obvious reasons. 

My grandpa was born in Czechoslovakia also known as the Czech Republic. 

His father was drafted into the army and never returned, and so his mother was left with 2 young boys, Abraham, My grandpa, and Benjamin. 

After a long journey on the train to Auschwitz, being squeezed together with an inhuman amount of people in a railroad car, he was separated for the last time from his mother and younger brother. In what is called “the selection”. 

He never saw them again. 

In no time he became a 13 year old orphan who spent every day trying to survive, the sights he saw, the horrors he went through are unimaginable.

For years he didn’t talk about it, only after my grandma passed he realized how short life is and how important it is to tell the story so history will never repeat itself. 

NO ONE, should ever be oppressed or persecuted for their race, religion or for any reason.

That’s my take on life. 

My grandpa‘s legacy lives deep in my heart. 

He loved people, he believed in them and he respected people for who they are.

He came from the darkest, most oppressed place and with a seed of hope he built himself a new life in Israel. 

I pray that we, as humans, will come together and stop the bloodshed, everywhere and forever.

I pray for our children to have a normal, positive and fruitful future where people come together, and where we let hope and love rule the world. 

Remember and never forget #WeRemember

Joseph Waks

[zvaigzdelasas]

5 Oct 22

[groovysarity]

In honor and memory of "Yom Hashoah Day" on this the 27th of Nissan 5783.

This is such an iconic powerful photo. It was taken in April, 1945, by Major Clarence Benjamin and shows a train of Jewish prisoners that had been intercepted by Allied Forces. This is the moment they learned that the train would not be heading to a Concentration Camp and they had been liberated.

[zyx204]

Is Netanyahu's Career Over?

This article discussed Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, and if his political career is done for. This question is raised due to the recent escalation in tensions following the attack from Hamas. The article states that when looking at history, the last time Israeli intelligence failed to this degree with so many casualties was almost 50 years ago when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on Yom Kippur. This then leads me to my question. With this massive failure, is Netanyahu’s career over? I believe he can still recover from this if he plays his cards correctly. He is going to have to try to connect with central ideas in order to bring conservatives and liberals together to rally around this cause. Similar to how the Bush administration succeeded immediately after 9/11.   

[wanderingthedesertalone]

Jews of Early America and the Wild West: Bringing the Forgotten from the Grave and Rethinking Their Lives

Back in 1660, the Puritan Minister Thomas Thorowgood speculated that certain Native Americans and Mexican Indigenous Groups, because they practised circumcision, cannibalism (as mentioned in Ezekiel) at times, used certain literary devices (parables) to communicate ideas and some seemingly Judaic rights, descended from Jewish stock(9). How did Jews find themselves in the Americas? It’s supposedly the fulfillment of Ezekiel 5.10, where as punishment for idol worship, the tribes of Israel were to be “scattered to the wind.” It’s all hokum based on conjecture and aspects of culture that are shared across the human experience, except circumcision and cannibalism of course.

Jewish Voices from the Past

Unsurprisingly, many years later, Jews were among those who settled America and the Wild West as well as peopled Ferdinand II’s expeditions to the New World. The West represented a land of hope and new beginnings for many disenfranchised Jews. This experiment in the birth of a new country based on equality was a place “where everything was just beginning and in the process of becoming and, to a certain extent, still is in that condition, where it is still possible to plant the seed of civilization in virgin soil, where the foundation of the structure of the new state of necessity implied the acknowledgment of the common origin of all men and their common right to equality (Israel Joseph Benjamin, My Year in California and the West (6)).” The New World had an allure, despite the potential dangers, it beckoned to those who were Zionists and those who sought a simpler life or merely freedom from persecution alike. In fact, In the earliest days of the American experiment, Isaac Isaacs can be found in Virginia’s public records. By the late 1800’s, Jews could be found as far west as California.

At the offset of the American experiment, conditions looked favorable for Jewish immigrants. In fact, Jews voted if no one challenged them to take a Christian oath and conducted public worship. And, in 1718 Jews won the privilege of naturalization through special acts of the Assembly, a privilege that enabled them to own land (3). However, life on this new frontier wasn’t easy for anyone, especially those Jews who came to the New World in pursuit of religious and economic freedoms. For instance, to obtain the same rights that other immigrants enjoyed, in 1706, Jews of New York City resorted to writing a kind of constitution for their own regulation (3). The years between 1906 and 1718 were hard for even those Jews living in metropolitan centers, business disregarded the rights that were granted by special assembly. In rural areas, the situation was even worse.

Rights aside, there’s a certain pain to becoming American, a loss of identity that only the immigrant understands. In less populated regions hardships were worsened by the lack of a Jewish community and antisemitic ideals forcing those who newly arrived in the New World to take on Gentile customs. For instance, Rebecca Samuels, a polish immigrant living in Petersburg Virginia, a small and isolated town, wrote this in a letter to her family during 1791:

Dear Parents,

I know quite well you will not want me to bring up my children like Gentiles. Here they cannot become anything else. Jewishness is pushed aside here. There are here [in Petersburg] ten or twelve Jews, and they are not worthy of being called Jews. We have a shochet here who goes to market and buys trefah [nonkosher] meat and then brings it home. On Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur the people worshipped here without one sefer torah and not one of them wore the talit or abra kanfot [the small fringes worn on the body], except Hyman and my Sammy’s godfather. The latter is an old man of sixty, a man from Holland. He has been in America for thirty years already, for twenty years he was in Charleston, and he has been living here for four years. He does not want to remain here any longer and will go with us to Charleston. In that place there is a blessed community of three hundred Jews.

You can believe me that I crave to see a synagogue to which I can go. The way we live now is no life at all. We do not know what the Sabbath and holidays are. On the Sabbath all the Jewish shops are open, and they do business on that day as they do throughout the week. But ours we do not allow to open. With us there is still some Sabbath. You must believe me that in our house we all live as Jews as much as we can.

All the people who hear that we are leaving give us their blessings. They say that it is sinful that such blessed children should be brought up here in Petersburg. My children cannot learn anything here, nothing Jewish, nothing of general culture. My Schoene [my daughter], God bless her, is already three years old, I think it is time that she should learn something, and she has a good head to learn. I have taught her the bedtime prayers and grace after meals…(5)

As early as 1759, Newport Rhode Island had a vibrant Jewish community and synagogue, but places like Richmond Virginia didn’t get a place of worship until 1789, Temple Beth Shalom (5).Despite writing the letter in 1791 and the Thomas Jefferson have written the Bill to Establish Religious Freedom in 1779 church and state hadn’t been fully pulled. Besides, Rebecca would’ve still been pressured to live and raise her children like a Gentile.

In contrast, Abigail Minis is, in my opinion, one of the most heart warming biographies herein, she was the embodiment of the spirit of the western frontier. She was a 70 year old widow at the time of the Revolutionary War who made kosher meals for the revolutionary army and fled British occupied Savannah for Charleston. She wrote this to Mordacai Sheftall Esquire, the highest ranking Jewish officer in the colonial forces:

Dear Sir,

Enclosed I have sent you a copy of certificates given me for sundry Articles provision, [?] delivered the Allied Army When before the lines of Savannah in September 1779 immediately after the Surrender of this Town to the British I gave the Original Certificate to General Lincoln. Who promised to have settled and paid, but the communication between Philadelphia [the US capital at the time] and this place being totally stopt [I] have not heard from him(5).

If Jews had few rights at the time, even in metropolitan centers rights were granted and revoked or granted and dismissed by businessmen (3) Jewish women of the Frontier had even fewer rights and freedoms. Most women of this period made a name for themselves by proxy, Betsy Ross, for example, only became the seamstress of the flag through marriage. Early American women lived through their husband’s accomplishments. Yet, Abigail Minis bumped elbow’s with the elite and even ran her own inn. She broke the rules, where Rebecca lived the life of the Jew who was broken by Gentile society, Abigail made her own rules. Minis is the embodiment of the American experiment and the westward expansion.

It wasn’t just Abigail and Rebecca who had to buck the system and carve their own path. Michael Allen was a chaplain for Northern Jewish soldiers during the Civil War. “Although Allen had never been ordained, he was allowed to act in place of an ordained Rabbi because there were so many Jewish soldiers in the Cameron Dragoons, who were mounted soldiers with heavy arms.” Interestingly, a special act of Congress had to be passed in order for Allen to perform his duties, because he wasn’t a Christian(4). This incident occurred well past it was declared that the “free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be.” In New York, Jews had won the right to bury their dead within city limits(5), but on the battlefields, where the dangers of both being scalped and killed by the Confederate Army prevailed, a special act was required for a Rabbi to say the Kaddish with mourners.

Between 1848 and 1888 the Gold Rush drew people from all walks of life out west. The promise of financial freedom and overall freedom was alluring to Jewish pioneers. You may be surprised to find that Jews “constituted on of the more prominent ethnic groups of the California Gold Rush (10).” A modern, hands-on approach was used to determine if individuals of the Gold Rush era or any period in American history were Jews. To find the forgotten Jews of the Gold Rush the writers of The Jews in the California Gold Rush used the inscriptions of gravestones, public documents in county courthouses, probate records, newspaper and Jewish organizations. It’s said that “the Gold Rush was a significant event in Jewish history because it placed Jews side by side with a large and diverse group of races, religions, and nationalities. At first, the Jews were strangers who made their homes among strangers, but they became friendly with their Gentile neighbours and were soon important figures in the communities in which they lived. They established themselves in business, and they also remained true to their ancestral faith by forming benevolent societies, establishing separate cemeteries, and conducting worship services (10).” Too bad these histories were largely forgotten until recently, not to mention, this is a somewhat optimistic notion of living among less than accepting Gentiles.

Why were early American Jewish contributions to the Wild West and Frontier left out of history books? This is because, the chronicles of Jews in America had always focused on “the metropolitan centers of the East and Middle West(6).” Accounts of Jews in the American West had long been considered “peripheral to mainstream Jewish America, at best and tributary and derivative and of no serious interest(6).” But there were Jewish pioneers wearing kippah under their ten gallon hats. It just took 100 years to discover this. In the 1960’s, among Social Scientists, methods of research became more hands-on, as earlier noted, and historians and the like scoured dusty genealogies left to rot in old west courthouses and microfiche to unearth the forgotten, or never known, legacies of Jews of early America and the Wild West(6). Most Jews of this American era disguised themselves as Gentiles to escape persecution and fit into the society at large. Jewish rights in the old west were tentative at best, granted and revoked or just ignored. For example, during the election of 1737 Jews were disallowed to vote for assemblymen or give testimony in a court of law(3). Those rights that were granted in 1718 suddenly evaporated. In the end, those rights that the Jews of New York made a “constitution of their own ‘’ to protect had been taken away again. It was best to fiend the life of a Gentile on the new Frontier.

Despite the tentative status of Jewish rights in the New World, Jewish communities in America were established in New York as early as 1654, followed by communities in

A few small communities in the original colonies withstanding, Jews didn’t begin to see America as a possible place to recreate Zion, a new land to prosper without persecution until much later. In fact, the first attempts to create communes didn’t happen until in the 1820’s in Florida. Later, in 1881 Jews attempted to make a colony on Sicily Island Louisiana. In 1882 there were several attempts to establish Jewish colonies in S. Dakota but all 6 colonies failed due to crops and malaria. And, in 1904 a colony was established in Colorado but it too failed. Some of the most notable examples of the American Kibbutz are the New Odessa and Clarion colonies. To make forge this community, JACA and The Jewish Agricultural Aid Society purchased 6,085 acres of public land in Sanpete County, Utah. The initial plan was to settle roughly 200 families on the colony, with the number eventually growing to 1,000 families(6). The New Odessa Community was a land where Russians could escape persecution from the Russian Czar.

Biographies of Early American Jews

To Carvalho’s dismay, the expedition already had a photographer, a man who I can only find his last name, Bomar. Bomar used the wax method but Carvalho championed the daguerreotype method for processing film. Fremont held a contest between the two men, speed was the deciding factor. In the end, Bomar’s wax process required more time and would have caused delays(4).

So, Carvalho became the expedition’s official photographer. Along this voyage, Carvalho met Brigham Young, the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints and Governor. It was in Utah, in the midst of a massacre, with Brigham Young that Carvalho met the Ute Chief, Wakara. He said of the Ute Indians:

“The first principle among them was life for life; it made no difference whether, in their wrath they massacred an innocent, or an unoffending man; a white man slew my brother, my duty is to avenge his death, by killing a white man. Their first Open demonstration was the massacre of Gunnison; and the allied troops of Utahs, Pahutes, Parvains, and Payedes determined to continue in open hostility, both to the Mormons, and Americans(1).”

When Young’s cavalcade arrived at the Ute camp he sent the message that he was ready to meet with Wakara. Wakara responded with “If Gov. Young wanted to see him, he must come to him at his camp, as he did not intend to leave it to see any body.” When this message was delivered to Young, he gave orders for the whole cavalcade to proceed to [the] camp. If the mountain will not come to Muhomet, Muhomet must go to the mountain(1).” When the cavalcade entered the camp, they found Wakara surrounded by 15 old chiefs.

Carvalho noted that “[Wakara] stood upon the dignity of his position, and feeling himself the representative of an aggrieved and much injured people, acted as though a cessation of hostilities by the Indians was to be solicited on the part of the Whites, and he felt great indifference about the result.” Negations for a peace treaty went on and Carvalho remained in camp, near Wakara’s Village until next day, he was able to get Wakara agree to sit for his portrait as well as Chief Squaeh-head, Baptiste, Grosepine, Petetnit and Kanoehe, the Chief of the Parvain Indians(1). Of Carvalho’s work, portrait of an Ute Chief, 1854, is the most striking.

Later, accompanied by two interpreters and several other gentlemen, “we proceeded to the Indian’s camp, to see their celebrated Chieftain, Kanoshe, whose portrait I was anxious to obtain. I found him well armed with a rifle and pistols, and mounted on a noble horse. He immediately consented to my request that he would sit for his portrait; and on the spot, after an hour’s labor, I produced a strong likeness of him, which he was very curious to see. I opened my portfolio and displayed the portraits of a number of other Ute chiefs, among which he selected Wakara, the celebrated Terror of Travellers, anglicised Walker, (since dead). He took hold of it and wanted to retain it(1).” Throughout this article, I’ve given my interpretation of the scene, but this needs none. I don’t know if one might say that Carvalho found the best of all possible worlds in Utah, living among Indians and in constant danger, or if life would’ve been better for him in the relative safety of New York. The painting now resides in the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Rather than give a single biography of a Gold Rush era Jew, I believe that the reader is aware of life during the period, if was wrought with hardship, it was a time of physical labor and a time of feast and famine for the average panhandler, I’d rather include excerpts from newspapers that describe the general attitude towards those who ventured to California to unearth what lay beneath the ground.

A Jew of our acquaintance came in to his neighbor’s place of business, yesterday morning, bringing an intolerable smell with him, and, “fast as a little wagon,” made the announcement that he had killed a “vesel [weasel],” in his “schicken house.” He said the animal was “black, mit a vite tail, and schtinks like de tuyvel [with a little tale and stinks like a turtle].” A wicked wag, next door, persuaded the victor to bring in his trophy, as he wanted to buy the skin. The Jew soon appeared and drew from his pocket a half grown pole cat(10).”

The Wild West wasn’t Zion, nor a land of dignity where “acknowledgment of the common origin of all men and their common right to equality” existed. In fact, The Grass Valley Union posted this:

Dead at Last… We had almost forgotten to say that it undertook to run all the disloyal Irish and Jews out of the State…. It is now thoroughly dead, we are assured — dead beyond the power of resurrection — and the general opinion is that it lived too long. Sorrowers over its death are found only among the poor printers who were swindled out of their wages(10).

Gold Rush California was yet another land of antisemitism. On the few occasions when local Jews battled Gentiles, the newspaper editor was likely to report the event in as much detail and as humorously as he was able.

Volcano Items. The Spring Fights Commenced. — What the boys call the “spring fights,” in Volcano, commenced on Sunday last. On the forenoon of that day, a son of Isreal [tit], whose proportions are not gigantic, desired and insisted that a portly Gentile, of robust dimentions [ski, should pay to him, the said son of Israel, a sum of money due for a rig of “store clothse” [sk]. Hard words ensued, whereupon the Gentile seized the Jew by the capillary substance that vegetates upon the summit of the cranium. The Jew seized a hatchet, and cut the Gentile on the hand. So ended the first heat. — In the afternoon, they again met at the store of the Israelite. Big Gentile seized little Jew by the aforesaid capilary [sic] substance; this time, the latter had a “sticker” that horses are bled with, and the Gentile was cut in divers and sundry places, insomuch that blood flowed profusely. The Gentile was cared for by a physician, and the Jew was terribly frightened lest the populace should become excited and hang him and all his friends(10).

Sadly, exaggeration and biased media existed during the Gold Rush too. Where the first example was merely supposed to be humorous, the last may be perceived as an incitement of violence. Something that was common in Gold Rush era California. In fact, because Jews were upright citizens and posed a threat to General Grant’s election, it was stated that:

For alleged trading infractions along Union and Confederate lines during the Civil War, General Grant had issued General Order №11 from Holly Spring, Mississippi, December 17, 1862, concerning the military department of Tennessee: The jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order(10).

You may have strongly mixed emotions about this but the hero of The Battle of Beecher Island, 1868, was Sigmund Schlesinger, there he fought off 1,000 Cheyenne, Oglala Sioux, Arapahos, Kiowas and Comanches over 9 days. The band of Indians was led by the great Cheyenne warrior, Chief Roman. Schlesinger was a darkhorse. General B. Fry had this to say about Schlesinger: “[he] seemed to be inferior, in all respects unfit for service; a Jew, small with narrow shoulders, sunken chest, quiet manner and pipey voice, and little knowledge of firearms or horsemanship; he was indeed unpromising(4).” Yet, this Hungarian immigrant, despite seeming unfit for battle, was victorious.

Later, in 1895, there was much disbelief about Schlesinger’s role in the battle, to clear this up Colonel Forsysth recounted the story to Harper’s Magazine: “as for the little Jew…! Well, the Indian that from dawn to dusk was incautious enough to expose any part of his person within the range of his rifle had no cause to complain of a want of marked attention on the part of that brave and active young Israelite…in fact, he most worthily, proved himself a gallant soldier among brave men(4).”

This is one of the most interesting tales of Jews in the Wild West. During 1885 Solomon Bibo was married to an Acoma Indian, a Pueblo native group who inhabited New Mexico, named Juana Valle. Valle was the daughter of the Acoma Governor. Because he bought the rights to the Pueblo land and married a Acoma Governess, Bibo eventually became the Jewish Indian Chief.

Song of Manuel the Navajo Chief, sung by Sol Bibo : Bibo, Sol, singer : Free Borrow & Streaming …

Sol Bibo sings Song of Manuel the Navajo chief, recorded by Charles Lummis in Los Angeles, 1904.Lummis announces that…

archive.org

During 1846, the United States acquired New Mexico. At that time, Indians lost their land. In 1848, in accordance with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Acoma were no longer considered Indians and eligible to get their land back. But, “when a survey of Acoma lands was finally taken in 1858 the Indians could offer little proof of their original boundaries, since they had no maps or stakes before the arrival of the first explorers. Even though additional surveys were made in 1876 and 1877, the outcome for their claims were unfavorable. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes agreed with the survey of 1858 and [the] Acoma received its share of 94,196 acres, which was far less than the residents believed themselves entitled to(4).” In April. 1884. a year before Solomon’s marriage to Juana, the Acoma tribe leased the entire 94.196 acres to Solomon Bibo. A period of thirty years the Indians signed away their rights to Bibo. On October 1888 it was declared that:

That’s how Solomon Bibo became Don Solomono, the Jewish Indian Chief. Many believe his motivations to have been nefarious, they believe that he simply wanted the right to trade with this indigenous population, something he had applied for and was rejected for several times.

In his defense, reports from the Bureau of Ethnology substantiates by inference that Solomon Bibo could not have persuaded the Acomas to do what they did not desire to do. In fact, Solomon Bibo was accepted and trusted by the Acomas. Or as stated by Leslie A White:

Acoma’s early reputation for vigorous unfriendliness to the whites has been maintained to this day [1929] … Government officials and employees, representatives of religious organizations, and tourists well know the difficulties which confront a white man or woman at Acoma. The Acoma people are suspicious, distrustful and unfriendly. In addition to their constant fears that they may have their land taken away from them … they are even on guard to prevent any information concerning their ceremonies from becoming known lest they be suppressed (or ridiculed) by the whites(8).

Moreover, friend of Juana and Solomon, the historian and archaeologist Charles Lummis, dedicated one of his books to Solomon and Juana. It rend:

To Sol and Juana Bibo. whom I have known and loved for forty years. since the dear old days in New Mexico, when they were beginning that married life which has been, to this day, so beautiful an example and so rare an inspiration. Dona Juana. of the oldest aristocracy in this country. worthy daughter of the First Americans, whose noble grandfather first told me the story of the Enchanted Mesa. is a much finer type than the storied Pocahontas. and of hatter blood. Don Solomon has; left his mark all across New Mexico as one of the wisest. shrewdest, high-minded, most just and most generous of men that ever dealt with the natives of the Southwest(4).

Wrapping Up and Reinterpreting a Stereotype

Ending at the beginning much like the Torah, a 2000 year old tefflin was supposedly found in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1815(2). It is said to have ancient Hebrew on the scroll it contained. However, it was likely, if not a hoax or misinterpretation of the Paleo-Hebrew script for any text that originated by carving into stone or bone (constructed of straight lines), dropped by a Jewish Settler In 1851, Elkehah Watson wrote:

“I am more inclined to believe that [the tefflin] belonged to the well-known Connecticut family of that name which was early settled in Greenwich, Stamford, and Norwalk. But whether lost by an early settler or dropped by some pioneer traveler, the finding of the phylacteries at Pittsfield affords only another indication of the ubiquity of the Jew in early colonial America(2).”

There’s no evidence that Native Americans descend from Jews or that the exodus from Israel was G-D casting the Jews to the 4 corners of the earth as prophesied in Ezekiel, however, not surprisingly, there were Jews who settled America, lived among the Indians and herded cattle. There’s a ubiquity to it, Jews needed a home, a place to regroup and start again, America offered that. As Jews, we are tenacious as the Olive Tree’s root, resourceful and full of fortitude, both emotional and physical. Like the rest of Jewish history, our history on the American Frontier is turbulent, human, filled with ups and downs… Yet, we’ve survived and some of us will be recalled as pioneers of the Wild West.

Finally, I would like to leave you with this poem written by Colonel Forsyth about Sigmund Schlesinger but it refers to all Jews in the Wild West and those brave souls who reclaimed Israel and continue to fight today in the face of another wave of antisemitism:

When the fee charged on the breastworks,

With madness and despair,

And the bravest souls were tested,

The little Jew was there.

When the weary dozed on duty

And the wounded needed care,

When another shot was called for,

The little Jew was there.

With the festering dead around them,

Shedding poison in the air,

When the crippled chieftan ordered,

The little Jew was there.

In the mind’s of many, we may be little, but we are there, America, leading in innovation and working towards the greater good of humanity, despite a cultural climate that sometimes despises us or uses us as a scapegoat. As an endnote, I’ve neglected to mention many pioneering Jews of early America, like the man who transported the Liberty Bell on a voyage from the West Indies, the man who saved Mote Cello… There’s just not enough room to mention everyone who contributed to what we now know as America.

Works Cited

1 Billington, R. A. (1956). The Far Western frontier, 1830–1860. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA84415206

2 Friedman, L. M. (1917). The Phylacteries Found at Pittsfield, Mass.

3 Hirschman, E. C., & Yates, D. N. (2012). Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America: A Genealogical History. McFarland.

4 Maidens, M., & Marks, M. (1997). Jewish Heroes of the Wild West. Bloch Publishing Company.

5 Malamed, S. C. (2003). The Jews in Early America: A Chronicle of Good Taste and Good Deeds. Daniel & Daniel Publishers.

6 Rischin, M., & Livingston, J. (1991). Jews of the American West. Wayne State University Press.

7 Song of Manuel the Navajo Chief, sung by Sol Bibo : Bibo, Sol, singer : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive. (1904, July 20). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/WC.A.41

8 The Impact of the Frontier On a Jewish Family: The Bibos | Southwest Jewish Archives. (n.d.). https://swja.library.arizona.edu/content/impact-frontier-jewish-family-bibos

9 Thorowgood, T. (1660). Jews in America, Or, Probabilities, that Those Indians are Judaical, Made More Probable by Some Additionals to the Former Conjectures: An Accurate Discourse is Premised of Mr. John Elliot, (who First Preached the Gospel to the Natives in Their Own Langua.

10 Gartner, L. P., & Levinson, R. (1980). The Jews in the California Gold Rush. The American Historical Review, 85(1), 211. https://doi.org/10.2307/1853609

[mariacallous]

So far, only one Israeli senior officer, Aharon Haliva, the chief of Israeli military intelligence, has resigned, accepting personal responsibility for what he called the “black day” of October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, brutally killing 1,200 Israelis and seizing 253 hostages. Throughout Israel’s continuing confrontation with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and, most significantly, Iran, no other Israeli officer or official with responsibility for the stunning Israeli security and intelligence failures on October 7 has resigned or been held accountable.

One might have expected if not resignations then at least explanations for the failures. But none has been forthcoming—there have been no meaningful explanations from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, while Gallant accepted responsibility for failing to stop Hamas’s attack on October 7, Netanyahu, who bears the ultimate responsibility for the shameful collapse of Israeli security, has so far hidden behind escapist rhetoric about some kind of postwar reckoning—but not now, he stresses, not during the war. A number of Netanyahu critics, including journalist Anshel Pfeffer, who wrote a biography of Netanyahu, have suggested that the prime minister has been more absorbed in this war with his personal and political survival than with Israel’s security.

Seven months into what seems like an endless war, Israelis have become increasingly uncertain about their future, and they have still not been provided with a satisfactory explanation of why October 7 happened and who is responsible.

Lessons from 1973

One possible path forward can be found by looking back to the events of 1973, 50 years and one day prior to October 7, 2023. Half a century ago, on October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria took advantage of the Yom Kippur holiday to launch a surprise attack on Israel, leaving it for a while in alarming disarray. There had been warnings of an imminent Arab attack, but they were foolishly ignored. Even Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, an Israeli hero, wondered if Israel would survive. But, once again, like in the present crisis, the United States came to Israel’s rescue. President Richard Nixon ordered emergency shipments of military supplies. Israel, reinvigorated, counterattacked and not only survived but prevailed.

But then, like now, Israelis were saddled with the agonizing question, who was responsible for this near disaster? Prime Minister Golda Meir, unlike the current prime minister, accepted that Israelis deserved an answer. On November 21, 1973, she established the Agranat Commission of Inquiry to investigate the glaring failures in Israeli intelligence and military preparedness for the 1973 war. The commission was limited by design: it was not to examine Israel’s political leadership, only its military leadership. Still, it functioned by reviewing strategy and interviewing key personnel. Led by Shimon Agranat, chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court, it produced a final report, placing blame for Israel’s failure of military preparedness on the chief of military intelligence, Eli Zeira, and the chief of staff, David Elazar, both of whom immediately resigned. Months earlier, Meir and Dayan had also resigned, accepting responsibility for their roles in the 1973 war.

The commission served two important public services: it explored how the intelligence and military failures happened and how the risk of a repeated failure might be mitigated, and it produced a measurable degree of official accountability, which the Israeli people had demanded and deserved.

A cry for accountability

Of course, history follows no exact libretto, but Israelis are again demanding accountability and an explanation for the obvious political and intelligence failures that led to the October 7 calamity. So far, for different reasons, there has been no sign that Netanyahu will follow in Meir’s controversial footsteps. He has refused to resign. No national commission has been organized. Nor have national elections for a possible change in government been announced, even though Benny Gantz, a moderate member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, has raised the possibility of elections this fall. So too in a stronger voice has Yair Lapid, a prominent anti-Netanyahu politician.

The Israeli people have been demanding some degree of political accountability for this war without end, and, with even more force, they’ve been screaming for the release of the more than 100 family members still being held hostage by a hostile Hamas. Elections are one form of accountability; a national commission is another.

But in the immediate future, Israel’s destiny lies in the hands of a prime minister who continues to pretend that he doesn’t hear the people’s cry for accountability. His political future appears to depend on the continuing cohesiveness of his ruling coalition. Should it crack apart under increasing public pressure, a major change in the Israeli government is certain. But should it somehow hold together, the streets and squares of Israel will again be crowded with angry, disappointed, and frustrated protesters, demanding, among other things, a return of hostages, accountability for October 7, and a change in government.

[partisan-by-default]

But while Hamas bears moral responsibility, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu created the conditions that led to the Oct. 7 massacres, the Israeli reprisals, and now the ground invasion – and, if it’s any consolation, Israelis are holding him accountable. 

First, of course, Netanyahu’s government is accountable the astonishing military and intelligence failures that allowed Hamas operatives to break through Israeli defenses and occupy several towns and kill ravers, peace activists, grandparents, little kids, and entire families. The equivalent death count in the United States population would be over 49,000 people. 

This devastating massacre is unprecedented, but also is reminiscent of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when a coalition Arab armies caught Israel by surprise and inflicted heavy damage before being turned back. Ultimately, Prime Minister Golda Meir was forced to resign as a result, and after the inevitable investigations into this government’s shocking failures, it’s quite likely that Bibi will be too. This, at least, is a sliver of good news for anyone who wants peace and justice for Israel and Palestine.

But there is another, deeper reason why Bibi owns this war: his overt and covert support of Hamas in his zeal to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

[dwa340]

Background Information: The Situation in Palestine

The Situation in Palestine traces back to the end of the nineteenth century, with the modern Zionist movement being founded by Theodor Herzl in the 1890s. However, the modern history of the Situation starts after WW2 with the creation of the modern State of Israel by the United Nations.

1947 → United Nations adopted Resolution 181 (Partition Plan) which aimed to split the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states

1948-49 → British Mandate expires, Israel’s War of Independence and the Palestinian Nakbah, Israel comes out victorious

750,000 Palestinians displaced

Territory split into State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip

1956 → Suez Crisis

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, Israeli ships blocked from using canal

Israel invades Egypt, Israeli army captures Gaza, Rafaḥ, and Al-ʿArīsh

Egypt drops blockade, UN buffer zone placed on Sinai Peninsula

1967 → Six Day War

Syria bombards Israeli villages

Egypt mobilizes near Sinai border after Israel shoots down Syrian MIGs

Israel takes control of Gaza strip, Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, and Jerusalem

1973 → Yom Kippur War

Egyptian forces cross Suez Canal, Syrian forces cross into Golan Heights

Egypt and Syria negotiate with Israel over previously ceded territory

Egypt and Israel sign the Camp David Accords

1982 → Lebanon War

Israel bombs Beirut and southern Lebanon, where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had strongholds

Israeli invasion of Lebanon

Negotiations with PLO, PLO withdraws from Beirut, Israel withdraws from Lebanon

1993-95 → Oslo Accords (I & II)

Oslo I: Set up (in response to the first intifada) a framework for the Palestinians to govern themselves in the West Bank and Gaza, with mutual recognition between the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s government.

Oslo II: Expanded on the first agreement and added provisions that mandated the complete withdrawal of Israel from 6 cities and 450 towns in the West Bank.

2000s → Second intifada, Israel approves construction of wall around West Bank

2013 → US attempt to revive the peace process, Fatah—the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party—forms a unity government with Hamas (spin-off of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood)

2014 → Clashes between IDF and Hamas in Gaza, 73 Israelis and 2,251 Palestinians killed, Palestine ratifies Rome Statute

2015 → Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announces that Palestinians are no longer bound by territorial divisions created by the Oslo Accords.

2018 → Palestinians start weekly protests at border between Gaza strip and Israel, fighting breaks out between Israel and Hamas, US moves embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

2020 → US “Peace to Prosperity Plan” rejected, UAE and Bahrain normalize relations with Israel

2021 → Israel and Hamas agree to a ceasefire, moderated by Egypt, after fighting breaks out in early May 2021

2022 → The most far-right and religious government in Israel’s history was inaugurated in December, led by Benjamin Netanyahu

ICC Procedure regarding the Situation in Palestine thus far:

In 2018, Palestine referred the Situation, specifically the war crimes committed “in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, since June 13, 2014″ to the ICC Prosecutor, requesting an investigation. In 2019, the Prosecution announced that the findings from the preliminary examination met the criteria laid out by the Rome statute for the opening of an investigation. In 2020, the Prosecutor requested a ruling from Pre-Trial Chamber 1 to clarify the territorial scope of the investigation, which the chamber determined to be the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. On March 3, 2021, the Prosecutor confirmed that an investigation into the Situation in Palestine has been initiated.

Sources to learn about the Situation in Palestine

https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflict

https://www.britannica.com/event/Arab-Israeli-wars#ref340993

https://www.icc-cpi.int/victims/state-palestine

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33223365

[human18]

"Never Again is Now. We shall defeat our genocidal enemies." Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Ceremony at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel, June 23, 2024