Category Archives: Israel

Vayeilech – Complementary Curses

The fact that the word tzaros in the phrase ra’os rabbos vitzaros – “many evils and troubles” (Devarim, 31:21) can mean not only “evils” but also “complementary” (for instance, as a description of the relationship of two wives of the same man – who are called tzaros) is seen as meaningful by Rav, in Chagiga 5a.

He explained that the Torah is predicting a time when some evils can be “complementary,” in the sense that addressing one will exacerbate the other, and vice versa.

The metaphor he cites is someone stung in the same place by both a hornet and a scorpion. The former sting’s pain is alleviated by a cold compress and intensified by a hot one; the latter’s, alleviated by a hot compress and intensified by a cold one. What can the stung person do? Whatever he chooses to do will leave him in greater pain.

To our anguish, we live in such times. The mortal danger that is Hamas, which is pledged to destroy the Jewish presence in our land, can only be “treated” by its utter destruction. And yet, seeing that goal to fruition is impossible without attacking the genocidal group’s forces, which are routinely embedded in hospitals and mosques, and among civilians.

Which means exacerbating world opinion, which chooses to see only the tragic but necessary wages of the war against Hamas and to ignore the terrorists’ declared goal.

We Jews in the U.S. are experiencing hornet and scorpion stings of our own. The polarization of American society leaves us with the impossible choice of supporting a political movement that largely has embraced us and Israel, which choice brands us as adversaries in the eyes of those who oppose that movement’s antidemocratic tendencies. And if we declare our fealty to the democratic institutions that have undergirded our security and prosperity for so long, we alienate those who have most strongly championed our rights and Israel’s.

To Americans who value respect for the rule of law and political propriety, the MAGA world is a dire threat. To the MAGA world, those upholders of law and liberal (in the best sense of the word) values are the hazard.

And Jews, who have always actively participated in the democratic system and who seek both security and respect for law and propriety, are viewed suspiciously by both camps. And utterly despised by the fringe of each.

We pray for the Divine intervention that alone can alleviate the pain born of galus.

© 2025 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Corrupt Chorus

The most comical reactions to Israel’s airstrike earlier this month on a building in Qatar’s capital Doha came from the group whose leaders were the strike’s targets.

That would be Hamas, which called the attack “a heinous crime, a blatant aggression, and a flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.” Words that nicely describe the goals and daily diet of the lynch mob itself.

Second place in risibility went to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which condemned the strike as a “blatant criminal act.” This, from a group whose dozens of terrorist attacks include detonating a bomb in a Hadera market in 2005, killing seven people and injuring 55; another one the following year in a Tel Aviv eatery that killed eleven and injured 70; and a suicide bombing at an Eilat bakery that killed three.

Then, of course, were the expected words of condemnation from the usual pack of wolves, like Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Sudan, Kuwait, Egypt, Algeria, Oman, Turkey, the UAE and Libya. And let’s not slight Kazakhstan, Mauritania and the Maldives.

Joining the clamoring canines were Jordan, Spain, Italy, Germany, the European Union, the United Kingdom and France.

And, at least perfunctorily, the U.S. too. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” (We’ll leave the highly debatable description of the country unaddressed for now, due to space limitations.)

Ms. Leavitt did add, though, that “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. did join the other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning the strike.

Ah, such short memories some have. Does no one recall how, on May 2, 2011, the Obama administration violated the territorial integrity of Pakistan, in Operation Neptune Spear, when SEAL Team Six members shot and killed a man named Osama bin Laden? You know, the founder of al-Qaeda and orchestrator of the recently commemorated September 11, 2001 attacks? Three other men and a woman in the attacked compound were also killed in that operation.

Or the first Trump administration’s violation of Iran’s space on January 3, 2020, when an American drone strike took out Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful person in Iran at the time?

The world tut-tutting Israel for actions it has taken is, of course, nothing new. In fact, it’s become something of a new normal. But it goes back quite a long way, at least to 1960, when Mossad agents captured Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. (He was spirited to Israel, tried and found guilty of war crimes and executed in 1962.)

At the time, The Washington Post huffed that “anything connected with the indictment of Eichmann is tainted with lawlessness.” And The New York Times wrote that “No immoral or illegal act justifies another.”

And when, in 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad, cries of woe were heard around the world (though Iran was gratified, having tried, and failed, to destroy the same facility a year earlier).

The New York Times called the attack “an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.” The Los Angeles Times referred to it as “state sponsored terrorism.” The United Nations passed two resolutions rebuking Israel for its chutzpah.

The Reagan administration, too, voted in support of a U.N. Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the raid, and the president suspended the delivery of six F-16 fighter jets to Israel.

There are those who maintain that, justification aside, Israel’s attack on a perceived ally of the U.S. was a strategic mistake. Others claim that, in the end, the net result will be positive. I don’t claim the geopolitical savvy to make any judgment in the matter.

What I do claim, in light of history, is the right to point out that Western powers’ condemnations of the Israeli strike against Hamas members in Doha are somewhat (to employ a less charged word than the one that first occurs)… inconsistent.

© 2025 Ami Magazine

“‘Zionist’ Contains Multitudes” — WSJ

An opinion piece of mine appeared in the Wall St. Journal. Its text is below:

I am a Zionist. I am not a Zionist.

Both statements are true, because the word, something of a war cry these days, has lost its meaning. Or, better, has multiple meanings. And it’s worth the while of anyone who cares about the Middle East, antisemitism or religion to tease out the details of the multiplicity.

As a haredi, or “ultra-Orthodox” (we dislike that pejorative), Jew, I do not subscribe to the foundational principle of the movement created by Theodor Herzl in the late nineteenth century that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel.

Before Israel’s founding, in 1948, the religious leaders to whom most haredim like me looked for guidance opposed the establishment of a political state for Jews, even one self-defined as “Jewish.”

Theologically, they insisted, the return of Jews en masse to the Holy Land needed to await the arrival of the messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets of old (Herzl, an avowed secularist, didn’t quite fit the bill). And from a practical standpoint, they feared that a “Jewish state” would only serve to spur the hatred of Jews that forever lurks and seeks some excuse to express itself, often with violence.

So, as a Jew who believes that the Jewish religion, not any political state, is the essential expression of Judaism, I’m not a Zionist, at least not if one defines the word in its historical sense, as a believer in the Herzlian Zionist program.

At the same time, just as the religious leaders who did not back the creation of Israel in the end accepted the state once it became a fait accompli, and urged their followers in the Holy Land to participate in the country’s civil and political processes, I feel a connection with Israel and a deep concern for the welfare and safety of its citizens, many of whom are my friends or (closer or more distant) relatives.

So I am a Zionist, at least if one defines the word as a “accepter and supporter of Israel.”

There is, though, a third definition of Zionist, a new one, this one a slur, intended to refer to anyone who supports Israel’s current war against her enemies.

How Israel is waging that war is rightly open to criticism, but it is subject, too, to reasoned defense. When  “Zionist!” is angrily shouted at those who seek to offer the latter, the word is used to portray defenders of Israel as moral monsters – for the slurred’s conviction that Hamas and other terrorist entities need to be destroyed, the Israeli government’s goal.

When that government’s goal is characterized, instead, as genocide, the accusers have gone from righterous protesters to ignorant haters. And when they vent their animus by intimidating random Jews or attacking them or their synagogues or institutions, they expose themselves as nothing short of old-fashioned antisemites hiding behind kaffiyehs.

It is unfortunate – no, tragic – that a terrible toll on civilians is so often taken in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. And eradicating the engines of terrorism in Gaza necessitates attacking the places from which they operate (including, sadly, hospitals and mosques).

But, in the end, whatever one may think of Israel’s actions, if words are to have meanings, “Zionist” can only mean either a subscriber to Herzl’s vision or a rejector of the same  who nevertheless supports the security of Israel’s citizens. When the word  is twisted to mean murderers, the twisters reveal nothing about Israel, and much about themselves,

(c) 2025 WSJ

Letter Published by The New York Times

To the Editor:

In his lengthy lamentation about Israel’s ostensible descent into genocide, Omer Bartov somehow overlooks a most germane distinction between Israel’s war to vanquish an enemy bent on its destruction and murderous campaigns like those that took place in Bosnia, Darfur, Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia — and certainly the one carried out by Nazi Germany.

How Israel is waging its war against an enemy that has loudly declared its genocidal intentions is rightly open to criticism, and subject, too, to a reasoned defense. But it is a strange sort of “genocide” that can end immediately with the rulers of the attacked region simply laying down their arms, releasing those they kidnapped who are still alive and leaving the scene.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran

Staten Island

Two Quotes

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:

“The US… has committed a grave violation of… international law… by attacking Iran’s peaceful nuclear installations.”

Benito Mussolini, in 1936:

“[Our German alliance] is… animated by a desire for peace ….”

Peace, yeah.

Reaction to Zoharan Mamdani

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was asked about the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” He declined to condemn the phrase and, in its defense, said that “The very word [Intifada] has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic because it’s a word that means struggle.”

Yes, and in math class, an equation has a “Final Solution.”

Inhumanitarianism – Hamas honcho bankrolled by Brits?

Many a Jewish educational institution or organization will readily tell you that fundraising is an uphill slog.

But it’s smooth sailing if you’re an anti-Jewish terrorist entity like Hamas, which, without official fundraisers, receives largesse from a number of eager sources. 

There’s Iran, of course. Any cause holding the promise of dead Jews is a shoo-in for the mullahs. And they go the extra mile, offering would-be killers not only cash (according to the State Department, up to $100 million annually to Hamas and other assorted such gangs) but also weapons and training.

Then there is Qatar, which has covered salaries of government (i.e. Hamas) employees in Gaza. And there’s no lack of private groups and individuals in places like Algeria, Sudan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates who are more than happy to aid evildoers. And don’t forget the lucrative smuggling of weapons, chemicals and electronics. And income from sham “humanitarian” charities in Western countries.

Like the U.K., at least according to a recent investigation by Israel’s Channel 12. The Brits? Who knew? Not many, it seems, at least until now.

Hamas is banned in the U.K. as the terrorist organization it is. And no one is accusing the country’s government or official entities of intentionally funding it. The problem is that it may be enabling aid to Hamas, by supporting efforts with nefarious connections. By taking, in other words, the famed road of good intentions to an unexpected but not uncommon terminus.

The U.K. and, to be fair, Canada and the European Union, as well as Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and others, have sponsored a project of UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Emergency Fund, whose beneficiaries are designated by a Hamas-run office, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD).

The program provides monthly cash payments to 546,000 Gazans the MSD deems needy.

The MSD’s head is Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ politburo. The U.S. Treasury Department identifies him as a “senior Hamas official.”

NGO Monitor, a group that investigates non-governmental organizations, found a document from back in 2022 that shows how the U.K. Foreign Office was aware even then of the involvement of Hamas, “a proscribed group,” with the program. The office was concerned about “severe reputational damage” that revelation of the connection might cause Britain.

All respect is due to traditional British fussiness about appearances, but blimey, there’s a rather larger issue here, namely handing funds over to a member of a terrorist movement and allowing him to disburse them as he sees fit. 

And the U.N. agency “is just the tip of the iceberg,” according to NGO Monitor’s legal advisor, Anne Herzberg, “because 13 U.N. agencies are operating in Gaza. There is very little information into how these other U.N. agencies are operating.” 

What’s more, there are also Hamas operatives active in the U.K., including Zaker Birawi, a head of the Palestinian Return Center, who has helped organize weekly anti-Israel protests in London. A former member of the Hamas politburo, Issam Yusef Mustafa, a U.K. citizen, is the biggest fundraiser for Hamas in Europe.

In response to a query from Jewish Insider, the British Embassy in Israel insisted that “Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.K., and funding or supporting it is a crime.” The embassy, moreover, “categorically reject[s] the false and irresponsible allegations in the Channel 12 investigation,” and maintains that “No U.K. funding was provided to the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza.”

That, though, wasn’t the investigators’ allegation. It was that UNICEF funds the MSD, with cash provided by the U.K. It’s the old “I didn’t give the killer a gun, I just left it on his nighttable” excuse.

The U.K. claims that its Foreign Office monitors where funds provided to UNICEF  end up. But allowing a Hamas honcho to be a conduit doesn’t inspire confidence in the effectiveness of that supposed oversight.

Recently, the U.K., along with France and Canada, threatened Israel with “concrete actions” if it does not lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and work with United Nations agencies. 

Humanitarians, heal thyselves.

(c) 2025 Ami Magazine