Photo by Lan Gao on Unsplash

Share

Leave a comment

I snagged the last spot on a tour led by Rabbi Gary Alon Rogoff. He picked me up in his Range Rover off a Carmei Gat highway exit. As I recall, there were eight of us representing the U.S., Australia, South Africa, and maybe even England.

We went to the southern city of Sderot, less than a mile from Gaza, where Hamas murdered 37 civilians, 11 police officers, two firefighters, and three IDF soldiers. We watched a movie composed of surveillance footage that captured the terrorists indiscriminately murdering passersby before storming the police station.

Sderot Memorial Mural at the police station site.

We went to the Nova Festival site, where I waded through a sea of pictures and biographies posted for each of the 344 men and women murdered by Hamas and Palestinian tagalongs.

The Nova Festival Memorial exhibit.

We were allowed into the Nahal Oz military base, where the terrorists overtook a communications center. I walked through a blackened, burned-out room with monitors and computer cables melted into the metal desks. The Hamas terrorists had hurled grenades and torched the place. Several soldiers were burned alive. Ten soldiers were taken hostage, seven of them female.

The communications center at Nahal Oz military base.

We visited two kibbutzim—I don’t even remember which ones; it was an emotional blur. At some point, I saw the burned-out shells of homes—the sites of kidnapping, rape, murder. Ashes of terror still lingered.

We spoke with survivors who lost family and friends. We learned about the bravery of soldiers and civilians who risked their lives to rescue others trapped in their safe rooms. We heard firsthand accounts of entire families being murdered, including mothers and children who were burned alive.

We visited the “Burnt Cars Exhibition” near the village of Tkuma. One thousand five hundred and sixty cars, some with their passengers inside, were burned by Hamas terrorists. These objects of terror and murder were brought to this site in Tkuma from across the Gaza envelope area. Seeing this collection of burned-out hulls is to bear witness to the depths of depravity that Israel faces.

The Burnt Cars Exhibition. Piles upon piles of cars burned by marauding terrorists. The two pick-up trucks with machine gun mounts were terrorist vehicles.

I didn’t know what to do with all the percolating emotions from this tour. Then I thought of the survivors, imagining what trauma they carried.

A week later, I attended my friend’s daughter’s wedding in Jerusalem. That simcha helped me process some of my Gaza envelope feelings. Jewish joy has always been our source of strength.

Subscribe now

I went back to Oakland a few weeks later with the aftermath of joy beating back my Gaza anger, sadness, and frustration. I resolved that battle six months later when I suddenly realized my time in Oakland was up. I started the Aliyah process in January 2025. By early July, I came home to Israel.

There are deep divisions in Israel over judicial reform, the Haredi, and who should be the next Prime Minister. But there is a truth in Israel that transcends all political differences. This truth is that we face an enemy with a genocidal Islamic ideology whose articulated goal is to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the face of the map. It is an understanding that comes from the Intifadas as the Arab response to Israeli peace offers; from having to head to shelters at all hours of the day and night as Iranian, Houthi, and Hezbollah missiles fly overhead, and from witnessing Iron Dome knock most of them down. It is a truth we know as we watch our sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives head to Gaza, Lebanon, Judea, Samaria in defense of the Jewish nation. It is the knowledge that affects us when we bury our fallen soldiers. We also know this truth because it’s told to us by Iranian leaders who openly declare their murderous intentions and by the genocidal language of hate spoken by Hamas and contained in their charter and Statement of Principles. It’s a truth validated by October 7.

Still, over time, the mind resists believing that a collective culture of people are capable of October 7’s abject barbarism. It had been fourteen months since my Gaza envelope visit. I was due for a reminder. When my friend Tania announced in a group chat that she was organizing a Gaza envelope tour, I had to return.

We visited some of the same places I had visited the first time: the Nova Festival site, Sderot, the Burnt Cars Exhibition. We also went to Be’eri, a kibbutz established in 1946. Dan, a kibbutz resident, described how he survived the Hamas attack in his safe room while receiving pleas over the phone from his sister and others who were later murdered. We toured the grounds. All but one of the burned houses were gone. The community was rebuilding.

It was hot, and by the end of the day, I was sweaty, dizzy, exhausted, numb.

On October 7, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Palestinian civilians launched a brutal attack against the Jewish people in the name of Islam. As Professor Rona Kaufman of Duquesne Law School described it in her recent article, Never Again: Zionism and the Jewess, “it was an attack motivated by their genocidal desire to ‘Free Palestine’ from the river to the sea—that is, according to their own governmental charter and repeated statements, to replace the nation of Israel with an Islamist state and kill all Jews. To that end, they engaged in mass murder, rape, mutilation, beheading, burning, and kidnapping. They filmed their barbaric attacks to show to the world. In addition to murdering 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages, they gleefully engaged in some of the most horrific methods of torture including ripping an unborn baby from its mother’s belly, and then murdering both mother and baby; raping girls to death using nails, bullets, and other weapons; baking a baby to death in the family’s kitchen oven; gang raping girls with such violent force they broke their pelvises; publicly raping girls and women; viciously murdering families; slicing off girls’ breasts; and uploading video documenting their murder of a woman to her own Facebook account”(footnotes ommited).

These barbaric acts against humanity are what Jews everywhere must sear into their brains because the threat is not confined to Israel. This perverted ideological version of Islam, openly proclaimed by the Iranian regime, Hamas, and Hezbollah, is the same ideology that has been exported to America. It is the same ideology that animates the likes of Zohran Mamdani, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed—to name just a few. The only difference is that these public figures and others like them articulate their genocidal ideology through coded expressions such as “Free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea,” “Globalize the Intifada,” and through the settler-colonialist “genocide,” “colonizer,” and “apartheid” libels. To ignore this reality is to let your guard down and allow October 7 to happen to Jews in America. It’s time that American Jews face down this evil.

Share

Leave a comment

WARRANT FOR THE ARREST OF ZOHRAN MAMDANI

I, Mark P Cohen, declare:

I am a writer, lawyer, Jew, Zionist, and Golden State Warriors fan, born in Brooklyn (which affords me jurisdiction) and a Jerusalem resident (which bestows upon me the authority). I have come into possession of the following information that justifies the arrest of Zohran Mamdani, the current mayor of New York City, for being a hateful, antizionist, antisemitic schmuck whose words and actions endanger the lives of Jews and non-Jews:

1. The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), is inherently antizionist and antisemitic and encourages violence against Jews. Mamdani has supported BDS since at least 2014. In his own coded words, “My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence. And I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law.”

2. In 2013, while a student at Bowdoin College, Mamdani co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine, a virulently antizionist organization that has condoned the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. According to the executive summary of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs study, SJP’s “founders, financial patrons and ideological supporters have been linked to Islamist and Palestinian terror organizations such as Hamas, Hizbullah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”

3. In 2016, referring to his Israeli high school teacher, Mamdani made the antisemitic, antizionist statement that he “tailed brown guys for a long time. He’s good at it” because he was a “graduate of the IDF.” Mamdani’s antisemitic and antizionist beliefs did not change over time. In 2023, Mamdani made the antisemitic and antizionist assertion that “we have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck it’s been laced by the IDF” (referring to the Israel Defense Force).

4. In 2017, Mamdani expressed and affirmed his antizionist hate and affinity for Hamas supporters in a rap song he wrote in which he praised the Holyland Five. The Holyland five—Shukri Abu Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain, Ghassan Elashi, Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh—the heads of the now-defunct Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development—were all convicted in 2008 by a federal jury of funding Hamas.

5. The day after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, Mamdani issued a statement that failed to name Hamas as the perpetrators of terror. Instead, he stated that he mourns “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.” Rather than condemning terrorism and Islamic extremism, Mamdani attacked Israel and its prime minister and used the libelous trope of “apartheid,” saying, “Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another Nakba will undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering in the days and weeks to come. The path to a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”

6. Referring to Israel’s actions, Mamdani has repeatedly used the antizionist blood libel of “genocide.”

7. Mamdani refused to condemn the use of the genocidal slogan, “globalize the Intifada,” and has refused to acknowledge that it’s a call to take “organized, deliberate violence of the Palestinian intifadas and replicate it against Jews everywhere.” Instead, Mamdani has hidden behind a manufactured ambiguity, which “can produce a climate that facilitates antisemitism—even in the absence of explicit hate speech.”

8. In 2025, Mamdani declined to sign onto a state Assembly resolution recognizing Israel on the 77th anniversary of its founding. Four months earlier, he refused to sign a separate resolution condemning the Holocaust;

9. On November 19, 2025, in front of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, where an event about moving to Israel was being held, protesters chanted “Death to the IDF,” “We don’t want no Zionists here,” and “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada.” Instead of condemning the protesters’ threatening behavior and genocidal language, Mamdani, then mayor-elect, issued a statement through a spokesperson criticizing the synagogue for hosting an event about moving to Israel: “[Mamdani] believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”

10. Mamdani has refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, a homeland for the Jews. When a reporter for the Forward recently pressed him with the fact that Israel is a Jewish state and “that’s in the charter, that’s the way it is now,” Mamdani stated he supports “the state of Israel as a state with equal rights.” But according to the Forward article, Mamdani added, “I believe that any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can’t tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.”

11. On his first day in office, Mamdani revoked New York City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. In doing so, Mamdani reversed an order that defined antizionism and antisemitism as hate.

12. Referring to the American Public Affairs Israel Committee (AIPAC), Mamdani recently invoked a classic antisemitic canard when he said, “They move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another” and singling out AIPAC said “the monsters that we are up against, they take many different forms.”

13. Fomenting hate against Israel and endangering Jews, Mamdani had pledged to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes even though doing so would be illegal. Although he ultimately admitted he has no authority to do so, in all his threats of arrest and criticisms of Israel’s response to terrorism, Mamdani failed to mention Hamas or its October 7 massacre of innocent civilians. “Instead, he delivered a sweeping moral indictment of Israel while erasing the terrorist atrocities that ignited this war.”

Subscribe now

Antizionism is the hatred of Israel. More particularly, under the Movement Against Antizionism’s definition:

“Antizionism is an ideology that treats the existence of Israel as an inherent crime. It emerged from three key sources: the Nazi-Islamist axis of the 1930’s-1940’s, postwar Soviet-Arab-nationalist propaganda (1956-1989), and Western academic settler-colonial theory (1990’s-present). Synthesizing these lineages, antizionism advances three core libels—colonizer, apartheid, and genocide—circulated not as contestable claims but as axioms that preempt debate. This ideology works to justify the elimination of Israel, normalize campaigns of isolation and terror, and extend repression beyond Israel itself by marking Jews worldwide as ‘Zionists,’ a category used to justify exclusion, intimidation, purges, and violence.”

Antisemitism, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Under the IHRA, manifestations of antisemitism include:

• “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”;

• “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

• “Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.”

  Share

Since at least 2013, Mamdani’s statements and actions have established his antizionist and antisemitic character and, through his words and actions, have enabled and empowered antisemites and antizionists. As mayor of New York City, Mamdani’s hateful words and acts represent a clear and present danger to Jews and non-Jews in New York City and beyond. As such, by this declaration, I pray for the issuance of a warrant for the arrest of Zohan Mamdani for being a Jew hater, antizionist, and an all around antisemitic schmuck.

I declare, under the laws of human decency (and the state of Freedonia), that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed on this 2^nd day of August 2026, in Jerusalem, Israel.

Mark P Cohen

WARRANT FOR THE ARREST OF ZOHRAN MAMDANI

Proof by declaration having been made this 2^nd day of August, 2026, to me by Mark P Cohen,

I find that there is probable cause to believe that the offenses of Jew hatred, antizionism, and antisemitism have been committed by Zohan Mamdani and therefore command any officer of the law and anyone with a sense of decency to arrest this schmuck, Zohan Mamdani and bring him to Israel (or a kosher restaurant in Boro Park) where he be required to answer for his Jew hatred, antizionist, antisemitic behavior (and eat kosher food).

The Red Heifer

Share

The second explosion deafened him...

Blinded by the stairwell’s darkness, he was in shock.

The sensation of concrete bits raining down on his face was all that told him he was still alive.

Emma’s hands came up dry after patting down her body for blood…

She dusted shards of concrete off her clothes.

Her ears were ringing, but she could still make out a moan…

Nothing was visible in the stark, dark stairwell.

She remembered fleeing to the President’s building for safety. She was filming the encounter between the protestors and campus police with her phone’s camera when two protestors pulled out what she thought were probably AR-15s and started firing, one toward the police, the other at the opposition.

For the rest of my short story, please click the link to Judith Magazine.

JUDITH MAGAZINE

Hamsa

Editor’s Note: A short story by Mark P Cohen that explores whether shared humanity can overcome inherited hatred. —David Michael Slater…

Read more

2 months ago · 4 likes · David Michael Slater

“It’s a Thin Line Between Love and Hate,” written by Richard Poindextor, Robert Poindextor, and Jackie Members, was first covered by the Persuaders in 1971 and in 1984 by Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders.

Share

Leave a comment

I’m glad I went. I not only saw Haifa but, by the end of the second day, realized four crucial questions that scholars haven’t been asking about contemporary antisemitism.

Please support my work by clicking through the link to the Times of Israel for the rest of my report (it’s a short read and you won’t be bored): https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/four-questions-academics-missed-at-the-contemporary-antisemitism-conference/

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Boris_Niehaus[/caption]

The new antisemitism.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bloco_de_esquerda/53741132454/

The new antisemitism.

Leave a comment

For instance, How’d I get here? What possessed me? First, some perspective.

July 8, 2025, Ben Gurion Airport, my daughter and family greet me.

For a Jewish American, making Aliyah means separating yourself from over 99.9% of the Jewish American population. Depending on whose statistics you believe, there are between 6.2 and 7.5 million Jews living in America. Adults who identify as Jewish number an estimated 4.9 million. In 2025, 3,500 Jewish Americans made Aliyah. That’s 0.000714%—a mere speck—of the Jewish American adult population, and 2026 doesn’t promise dramatically higher numbers.

At an Oakland A’s game with my son in 2011; season tickets, right behind the A’s dugout.

I was born in Brooklyn, worked in the Catskills, attended Brooklyn College. I moved to San Francisco for law school, maintained a Bay Area law practice for thirty-three years, was a community activist, served on my city’s planning commission. For 21 years, I was part of a small but spiritually nurturing Modern Orthodox Jewish community in Oakland where I raised my kids. For three decades, I held season tickets to the Oakland A’s. Was even in a rock-and-blues band. This is all to say that I was firmly rooted in the States and in my Jewish community.

Yet here I am, almost a year later, looking out my terrace window, watching my Jerusalem street come alive as I write.

My experience is not unique.

Whatever happened to me happened to the 3,499 other Jewish Americans who felt compelled to pull up stakes, separate from over 99.9% of Jewish Americans, and high-tail it to the promised land. Whatever happened made the 3,500 of us unique.

I’ve formally interviewed about a dozen people who made Aliyah this past year and surreptitiously interviewed dozens more at Shabbat tables, shul kiddushes, cafes. Why did you make Aliyah? The standard answers: “I was always a Zionist.” “Always felt at home here in Israel.” “I wanted to raise my children here.” “My children and grandchildren are here.” “I felt this was where I belonged.” These are rational reasons why someone made Aliyah, but none explained what possessed them to do so. What was this enabling force that bestowed upon them the will to disengage from a deeply rooted Jewish American life and start a new, uncertain one here in Eretz Yisroel? I’ve been searching for the answer since my arrival.

Another question: Okay, I’m here. Now what?

My daughter and her family live here, but they’re in Carmei Gat, a community southwest of Jerusalem reachable by a two-hour bus-and-train ride. I see them occasionally, but not enough, as my daughter says. She’s right. I should visit more often, but I don’t believe I’m living in Israel just to be a father and grandfather.

I knew only a couple of people when I arrived. I had to find an apartment, a shul, friends, a community, good hummus (it was harder than expected), learn Hebrew (don’t get me started on Ulpan), buy a washer and dryer. I was starting over, by myself. I had to take root in my new city of Jerusalem. I had to find my life.

I’m making excuses, complaining; I haven’t answered my question. Patience.

You leave behind a life you’re used to in the States to live in the land that, in the Torah, G-d promised to the Jews eleven times. Because you’ve taken G-d up on that promise, in the back of your mind, you harbor an expectation of some sort of divine life change as you wander the streets of Jerusalem, or at least of hearing G-d whisper in your ear when you visit the Kotel. You’ll admit this to no one, by the way. But the reality is that life in Israel is almost as routine as it was in the States. Manna doesn’t fall from heaven in Jerusalem, so I have to cook and go food shopping. I make challah for Shabbat just as I did in Oakland. I watch movies on Netflix. I study a little Torah. I go to the dentist, exercise at the gym. I hang out, go out, and write at cafes. I get my hair cut. I go to shul. I’m doing all the same stuff I did in the States.

But is it really the same?

While I may have been firmly rooted in my Jewish American community, no Jew is entirely rooted in their host country, no matter how many generations back their family goes. The drastic rise in Jew hatred worldwide testifies to this point. Assimilation and success have guaranteed Jews nothing. As we are once again witnessing, our host countries inevitably turn on us, which is the message Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, tried to get across to the Jewish people in 1896 when he published “The Jewish State,” his eighty-eight-page manifesto of Jewish liberation.

Share

When the root of a tree seeking nutrients encounters a rock in the ground, it recognizes this obstruction as a threat to its survival and redirects itself toward life-sustaining soil. Herzl’s Zionism was about recognizing the threat that Jew hatred posed to the survival of the Jewish people and the necessity of redirecting the Jewish soul back to Eretz Yisroel for safety and spiritual sustenance. For the 3,500 of us Jewish Americans who made Aliyah in 2025, we rode the will of our roots back to Eretz Yisroel for the nourishment of our souls and the protection of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

During the five weeks of war with Iran this year, I had to enter either my miklat, my apartment building’s communal bomb shelter, or a friend’s mamad, a safe room in an apartment, more than 40 times at all hours of the day and night. With my own eyes, I saw Israel’s Iron Dome intercept Iranian missiles flying over Jerusalem. I feel protected here rather than afraid when I see a Jew in a grocery store with Tzitzis hanging out and an Emtan Ramon 9mm semi-automatic pistol clipped to his belt. Wearing a yarmulke here is the norm rather than a fearful fashion statement. I wrap tefillin on a train ride from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and no one looks at me as if I am doing something strange. As Shabbat arrives, the streets of my Jerusalem neighborhood grow quiet because this day of rest is part of the cultural fabric, even among the non-observant. None of this was routine in the States.

I listen to mothers and fathers talk about what they’ve been through, watching their sons and daughters repeatedly called up to war by the IDF. Everyone knows someone lost to war. I see the strain on young mothers as they manage their households while their husbands fight in Lebanon or Gaza. I see the resilience of these same mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, who declare they will make whatever sacrifices are necessary to defend the Jewish State. None of this was part of my routine in Oakland. I am part of Israel now, where, unlike in the States, Jews are not afraid to do what it takes to protect the Jewish people. This makes everything I do here non-routine.

Like everyone else I’ve met in Israel who once hailed from the U.S., Canada, England, Australia, South Africa, South America, Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, I am here as an affirmation of my Jewish identity. We have all submitted our wills to the pull of our souls and planted ourselves in the land of Israel.

So, Now what?

We nourish ourselves. We cry with our Jewish brothers and sisters when we hear of a loss. We attend each other’s simchas. We do Shabbat together. We seek companionship, friendship, love. We shop, argue, complain, study, exercise, vote, swim in the ocean. When we’re on a bus and see young children aboard coming home from school, we watch them as if they’re our own. And because we do all of this in the land that G-d promised us, we listen for G-d’s whisper at the Kotel. And when we go about our routine, we seek the divine.

Am Yisroel Chai.

Share

Leave a comment

On June 16, I published a post explaining the essential terms of President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”) with Iran, entered into in 2015. I figured we’d need an explanation of the Obama deal with Iran reached through diplomacy so we can see how it compares to a deal reached after five weeks of bombing by Israel and the U.S.

So, let’s see what Trump got us into—or out of—with his deal. For the sake of entertainment, the Red Heifer will offer some running commentary.

We’ll start with the preamble:

“The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have jointly agreed in good faith on [date] on the following:”

Iran and “good faith” in the same sentence? In fairness, the JCPOA said the same thing (see paragraphs viii, 26, and 28). Where did that get us?

😊😊😊

“Paragraph 1: The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war, by signing this MOU, declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph.”

Everyone is supposed to make nice until the final deal is done. Okay, I can live with that. Actually, I live in Israel, where Iran—sorry, Freudian slip—Hezbollah continues to lob missiles and fly explosive drones into Northern Israel. No, I can’t really live with that. But here’s the interesting part of this paragraph. Iran is supposed to ensure Lebanon’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. This is good. Now let’s have Iran tell Hezbollah to leave in the name of Lebanon’s sovereignty. I’m not holding my breath.

😁😁😁

“Paragraph 2: The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.”

Okay, so let Iran continue to go about its repressive, radical Islamic business. The JCPOA contains no such concessions.

“Paragraph 3: The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran commit to negotiating and achieving the final deal in maximum 60 days, extendable with mutual consent.”

Yeah, 60 days. It took two years for Obama to negotiate the JCPOA. This just gives the Iranian regime time to regroup.

🥲🥲🥲

“Paragraph 4: Immediately upon the signing of this MOU, the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion to the numbers of prewar traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.”

In other words, the U.S. is removing the hammer from over Iran’s head. Way to negotiate, Trump. Why is it so hard to understand that the Iranian regime acts on a radical Islamic ideology and responds only to force and pressure? What did Iran do to deserve this breathing room that undermines the U.S.’s negotiating position?

😒😒😒

“Paragraph 5: Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements, using its best efforts, for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states, in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.”

This legitimizes Iran’s attempt to control the Straits of Hormuz and, eventually, to charge fees for passage. Nice work, Trump. You gave the Iranian regime a gift.

😢😢😢

“Paragraph 6: The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of a final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers and permissions used for the relevant financial transactions will be graded by the United States of America.”

So, let me see if I understand this correctly. We bomb the crap out of a regime because they are nuts, can’t be trusted with a nuclear bomb, and repeatedly threaten to annihilate Israel. They represent a radical Islamic ideology that preaches the murder of Israel and the Jews, is responsible for the deaths of almost 1,000 Americans, has murdered over 30,000 of their own citizens for protesting, and as Marjan Keypour Greenblatt of the Atlantic Council put it, “Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has operated along two strategic tracks: exporting its Shia revolutionary doctrine and establishing influence through networks like the ‘Axis of Resistance.’” What does Trump do? He rewards them with a promise of at least “USD $300 billion”?

This is an even better deal for Iran than Obama’s JCPOA. Under that deal, Iran received only $100 billion to $150 billion upon signing on the dotted line. Way to go, Iran!

👌👌👌

Paragraph 7: The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, i.e., IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned and express their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

Let’s be fair. In the JPCOA, many sanctions-relief measures were contingent on compliance. See paragraph v and the Sanctions section of the JPCOA.

😊😊😊

Paragraph 8: The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpile and rich material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in Paragraph 7, with the minimum methodology to be down-blending on-site under the supervision of the IAEA. The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal. The final deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran acknowledge the critical importance of the nuclear issues above mentioned and express their attention to immediately direct these issues in the negotiation in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

Oh wow! Iran promises not to procure or develop nuclear weapons. That’s good, right? Old news. It’s what Iran promised in 2015 under the JCPOA. See the Preamble, Preface, Nuclear, and Transparency sections of the JCPOA. Where did that promise get us? Yeah, I know. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018. Now we’re back to square one.

😒😒😒

Paragraph 9: Pending the final deal, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree to maintain the status quo. The Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the United States of America will not impose any sanctions and will not support additional forces in the region.

Does anyone, even for a moment, believe Iran can be trusted to maintain the status quo? Didn’t the JCPOA’s critics warn us that Iran can’t be trusted?

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Paragraph 10: The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of the MOU, and until the termination of sanctions, the U.S. Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.

Give away the store, why don’t you, before you negotiate the full terms with Iran.

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Paragraph 11: The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MOU. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the central bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all necessary licenses and authorizations accordingly.

Remember how the Republicans criticized Obama for shipping a plane load of cash to Iran?

😮😮😮

Paragraph 12: The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree that an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this MOU and the future compliance of the final deal.

We’ve been here before. The JCPOA addressed this. But I’ll stay hopeful. Let’s see how Trump negotiates a better deal.

😊😊😊

Paragraph 13: After signing this MOU and subject to the beginning of the implementation of Paragraphs 1,4, 5 10 and 11 of this MOU, and the continuing implementation of these measures, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will start negotiations regarding the final deal exclusively on the other paragraphs.

Well, that’s nice. Iran promises to talk. They talked for two years before the JCPOA was finalized and during that time, Iran further developed its nuclear program.

😊😊😊

Paragraph 14: The final deal will be endorsed by a binding UNSC resolution.

Who really cares about the U.N., anyway?

There’s little doubt that the 2025 and 2026 wars set back Iran’s military defenses and nuclear programs. In other words, what Obama and the JPCOA achieved through diplomacy—a significant slowdown of Iran’s nuclear capabilities—was achieved by Trump and Israel through bombing and military intervention. But when dealing with a regime that represents a self-confessed, undisputed evil, a show of force sometimes becomes the only morally correct response, and at least initially, the U.S. and Israel responded accordingly. Against the grain of this Israel-U.S. response, we have a memorandum of understanding (whatever that means) that reads as a U.S. sellout of Israel and a capitulation to Iran. Now Israelis and Jews throughout the world are disappointed. So, what went wrong?

The mistake made by us Jews was placing our faith in a person. Yes, Trump’s done more than any other American president for Israel. He’s also taken strong measures against Jew hatred on U.S. college campuses. But he’s a human, not G-d, and he’s erratic, narcissistic, authoritarian. Those traits in a host nation leader have never boded well for Jews. Case in point is this MOU.

Here’s the lesson we must learn, as my friend Marci Reiss explained beautifully in her weekly Shabbat greetings:

“We forget that Israel exists not because of Trump, but because of G-d…

It’s time to remember that the Jewish people have a different Memorandum of Understanding.

It’s called Torah.

It’s the full version of the Memorandum…

It’s not between the United States and Iran.

It’s between G-d and the Jewish people…

It spells out the real terms of the agreement that was signed in perpetuity long ago.”

Am Yisroel Chai. Shabbat Shalom.

Share

Leave a comment

No terms of the deal have officially been released. Instead, we have informed speculation, a sport of sorts that every news outlet will entertain you with.

Except me.

I’ll entertain you with what you need to know now, namely the essential terms of President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”) he entered into with Iran in 2015, because let’s face it, inquiring minds are going to want to know how the Trump deal—whenever he tells us—compares to the JCPOA. But first, some background.

• On July 14, 2015, the United States, along with its international negotiating partners, reached an agreement (the JCPOA) with Iran on its nuclear program;

• Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the agreement a historic mistake for the world;

• The JCPOA was both highly criticized and praised;

• Since Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran has significantly increased its production of weapons-grade uranium;

• On June 13, 2025, Israel began striking a number of Iranian nuclear sites;

• On June 22, 2025, the U.S. brought out its B-2’s and rained bunker-buster bombs on three major Iranian nuclear sites;

• Trump then called a ceasefire on June 25, thus ending the 12-day war with Iran;

• On February 28, 2026, Israel and the U.S. launched a major offensive against Iran;

• On April 8, a two-week ceasefire was announced. Throughout this timeline, Hezbollah, Iran’s stand-in, has been firing missiles into Northern Israel. Israel has responded by entering Lebanon and shelling Hezbollah hideouts;

So, in the context of a couple of short-term wars with Iran, during which many bombs were dropped and Iran’s military and nuclear capacities were degraded, let’s take a look at the JCPOA.

The JCPOA consists of a Plan and five Annexes. Here, I focus on key provisions in the Plan. All references are to the page number in the Plan.

Yagasi, translation of the original work by Sémhur, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. Iran’s Nuclear program. Diagram created June 21, 2012.

·

• With multiple countries as signatories, the JCPOA ensures that Iran’s nuclear program will only be used for peaceful purposes

China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) and Iran are signatories.

The purpose of the JCPOA is to “ensure that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful, and mark a fundamental shift in their approach to this issue.” (Preface, p.2)

I can’t wait to see whether the Trump deal allows “peaceful” nuclear development or precludes it entirely.

• The JCPOA allows Iran to move forward with a “peaceful” nuclear program

“Iran envisions that this JCPOA will allow it to move forward with an exclusively peaceful, indigenous nuclear programme, in line with scientific and economic considerations, in accordance with the JCPOA, and with a view to building confidence and encouraging international cooperation.” (Preface, p.2)

That is, under the monitoring and limits on the development of nuclear-grade uranium spelled out in the JCPOA (discussed below), Iran’s nuclear program can only be for peaceful purposes. Sounds good to me.

• Iran affirms it will not acquire nuclear weapons

“i. Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” (Preamble, p.3)

Isn’t this what Trump and Israel said they want?

• Sanctions will be lifted in the future

“V. This JCPOA will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy.” (preamble, p.3)

That is, Iran is eligible for sanctions relief if it behaves. We shall soon learn how much money Trump gives to Iran.

• Joint commission to monitor

“ix. A Joint Commission consisting of the E3/EU+3 and Iran will be established to monitor the implementation of this JCPOA and will carry out the functions provided for in this JCPOA.” (preamble, p.4)

“x. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be requested to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related measures as detailed in this JCPOA. (preamble, p.4)

Iran is monitored to make sure they only do nice things with the nuclear program. That’s a good thing.

• Iran agrees to enrichment limitations for 8 years, with evolution exclusively for peaceful purposes

“Iran’s long term plan includes certain agreed limitations on all uranium enrichment and uranium enrichment-related activities including certain limitations on specific research and development (R&D) activities for the first 8 years, to be followed by gradual evolution, at a reasonable pace, to the next stage of its enrichment activities for exclusively peaceful purposes, as described in Annex I.” (Nuclear, p.6)

“Exclusively for peaceful purposes.” That sounds nice. What? You don’t trust Iran?

• Phase out of some centrifuges in 10 years

“Iran will begin phasing out its IR-1 centrifuges in 10 years. During this period, Iran will keep its enrichment capacity at Natanz at up to a total installed uranium enrichment capacity of 5060 IR-1 centrifuges. Excess centrifuges and enrichment related infrastructure at Natanz will be stored under IAEA continuous monitoring, as specified in Annex I.” (Nuclear, p.6)

I don’t know what this means, but phasing out centrifuges and IAEA “continuous monitoring” sounds like good things. If you are a physisist, tell me in the comments what this means.

• Iran to continue limited enrichment R&D but can’t accumulate

“Iran will continue to conduct enrichment R&D in a manner that does not accumulate enriched uranium. Iran’s enrichment R&D with uranium for 10 years will only include IR-4, IR-5, IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges as laid out in Annex I, and Iran will not engage in other isotope separation technologies for enrichment of uranium as specified in Annex I. Iran will continue testing IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges, and will commence testing of up to 30 IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges after eight and a half years, as detailed in Annex I. (Nuclear, p.6)

Yes, Iran can continue to conduct research. That’s not good. But no, they can’t accumulate enriched uranium. That’s good. If you are a physicist, explain this in the comments.

• No new manufacturer of centrifuges during the first 8 years, after that, they can manufacture some centrifuges

“As Iran will be phasing out its IR-1 centrifuges, it will not manufacture or assemble other centrifuges, except as provided for in Annex I, and will replace failed centrifuges with centrifuges of the same type. Iran will manufacture advanced centrifuge machines only for the purposes specified in this JCPOA. From the end of the eighth year, and as described in Annex I, Iran will start to manufacture agreed numbers of IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuge machines without rotors and will store all of the manufactured machines at Natanz, under IAEA continuous monitoring until they are needed under Iran’s long-term enrichment and enrichment R&D plan. (Nuclear, p.6)

Some of this sounds good, especially the monitoring. But I don’t like the idea of manufacturing additional centrifuges at the end of the eighth year.

• Enrichment permitted for 15 years in Natanz up to 3.67%

“Based on its own long-term plan, for 15 years, Iran will carry out its uranium enrichment-related activities, including safeguarded R&D exclusively in the Natanz Enrichment facility, keep its level of uranium enrichment at up to 3.67%, and, at Fordow, refrain from any uranium enrichment and uranium enrichment R&D and from keeping any nuclear material.” (Nuclear, p.7)

Isn’t it a good thing that Iran can only enrich uranium up to 3.67% and only for peaceful purposes? Well, a physicist friend told me that allowing such enrichment shortens breakout time and preserves an industrial-scale enrichment program that can easily lead to the development of weapons-grade uranium. If you are a physicist, let me know in the comments what you think.

• Iran uranium stockpile limited to 300 kg, enriched up to 3.67%

“During the 15 year period, and as Iran gradually moves to meet international qualification standards for nuclear fuel produced in Iran, it will keep its uranium stockpile under 300 kg of up to 3.67% enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) or the equivalent in other chemical forms.” (Nuclear, p.7)

It’s another significant limitation imposed on Iran. That’s a good thing.

• Modernize Arak heavy water reactor to support peaceful nuclear research, medical and industrial purposes

“8. Iran will redesign and rebuild a modernised heavy water research reactor in Arak, based on an agreed conceptual design, using fuel enriched up to 3.67 %, in a form of an international partnership which will certify the final design. The reactor will support peaceful nuclear research and radioisotope production for medical and industrial purposes. The redesigned and rebuilt Arak reactor will not produce weapons grade plutonium.” (B. Arak, p.7)

No weapons-grade plutonium. Only peaceful nuclear research. Kinda sounds good. Iran is also precluded from constructing additional heavy water reactors, accumulating heavy water in Iran, and reprocessing spent fuel for 15 years (B. Arak, p. 8). Another limitation. That also sounds good.

• IAEA to monitor Iran with long-term presence (25 years)

“15. Iran will allow the IAEA to monitor the implementation of the voluntary measures for their respective durations, as well as to implement transparency measures, as set out in this JCPOA and its Annexes. These measures include: a long-term IAEA presence in Iran; IAEA monitoring of uranium ore concentrate produced by Iran from all uranium ore concentrate plants for 25 years; containment and surveillance of centrifuge rotors and bellows for 20 years; use of IAEA approved and certified modern technologies including on-line enrichment measurement and electronic seals; and a reliable mechanism to ensure speedy resolution of IAEA access concerns for 15 years, as defined in Annex I.” (C. Transparancy,p.9)

This is good. For twenty-five years, Iran will be monitored.

• Iran is not to develop nuclear explosive devices or manufacture uranium or plutonium metallurgy activities

“16. Iran will not engage in activities, including at the R&D level, that could contribute to the development of a nuclear explosive device, including uranium or plutonium metallurgy activities, as specified in Annex I.” (Transparency, p.9)

Yet more language that prohibits Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Again, isn’t that what Israel and Trump want?

• Iran gets sanctions relief when IAEA verifies that Iran has implemented nuclear-related measures.

“18. The UN Security Council resolution endorsing this JCPOA will terminate all provisions of previous UN Security Council resolutions on the Iranian nuclear issue… simultaneously with the IAEA-verified implementation of agreed nuclear-related measures by Iran and will establish specific restrictions, as specified in Annex V.1”

Likewise, with the EU under paragraph 20 and the U.S. under paragraphs 21 and 22, Iran gets sanctions relief but only after “IAEA-verified implementation of agreed nuclear-related measures.”

That is, Iran gets rewarded for complying with the various JCPOA conditions.

I have not covered the JCPOA’s Implementation and Dispute Resolution sections, nor have I reviewed the Annexes. Read them for yourself.

***

The JPCOA in the Context of its Time

President Obama took office in 2008 after eight years of lies and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under the George W. Bush administration. President Obama believed there was a need to restore trust and develop a new U.S. Middle East policy. He also saw the need to contain Iran’s nuclear program. That is, the JPCOA should be viewed within the context of its time.

The reality is that the JPCOA effectively limited Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons. When Trump exited the deal in 2018, Iran’s nuclear program took off. President Obama’s error, however, was his failure to take into proper account Iran’s radical Islamic ideology of hate toward the U.S. and Israel, one that the Iranian regime has sought to export throughout the world. While Obama believed that through a policy of diplomacy and negotiations, Iran could be coaxed into a nuclear arms control deal, his failure to recognize Iran as an ideologically rabid regime led to a major flaw in the JCPOA: The deal permitted Iran to operate a “peaceful” nuclear program. This left the door open for an Iranian nuclear weapons development program, notwithstanding language in the JCPOA to the contrary, because Iran could not be trusted. Still, the JCPOA did significantly slow down Iran’s nuclear development program which should not be overlooked.

Now we wait until Friday or whenever President Trump decides to let us in on the terms of the deal he made the Iranian regime. Then we’ll see how it lines up with with the JCPOA.

Share

Leave a comment

In part 1, I reviewed early Zionist thought and showed how the Black Panther Party’s 1966 ten-point platform reflected Zionist philosophy. I suggested that this overlap between Black and Jewish liberation had to be more than a coincidence. I received feedback indicating that some of my points were a stretch. Maybe. In this final part, we will see how and why this relationship between Black and Jewish liberation first developed, and the power of the Jewish story.

How the early Black Nationalists Came to Embrace Zionism

Edward Blyden and W.E.B. Du Bois were two of the most influential figures in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Pan-African and Black Nationalist movements. But Blyden was widely known as the father of Pan-Africanism. According to Dickinson College Africana Studies Professor Nadia Alahmed, Zionism was a significant influence on 19th-century Black nationalists such as Blyden because “they saw a powerful connection between the goals of [Zionism and Black nationalism] from which it grew: an oppressed people fighting for land and sovereignty in their historical, ‘ancestral’ lands.”[1]

Blyden felt strongly that Zionism, the plight of the Jews, and Black nationalism are interrelated, and he expressed these beliefs in his 1898 pamphlet, “The Jewish Question.” In this pamphlet, Blyden warmly recounts growing up in St. Thomas, the West Indies, where his neighbors and friends were Jews. This experience led him to visit Palestine and take a deep interest in Jewish history and “especially in that marvelous movement called Zionism,” which “in some respects, is similar to that which agitates thousands of descendants of Africa in America,…”[2]

Blyden saw it as his “privilege and my duty” to study Zionism, “as the history of the African race—their enslavement, persecution, proscription, and sufferings—closely resembles that of the Jews.”[3] To Blyden, “There is hardly a man in the civilized world—Christian, Mohammedan, or Jew—who does not recognize the claim and right of the Jew to the Holy Land;..”[4]

By Professor Alahmed’s account, “W.E.B. Du Bois’ scholarship and activism created one of the most lasting, multidimensional, and complex impacts on Black radical political philosophies.”[5] Du Bois, a founding member of the NAACP, was among the foremost Black intellectuals of his era. Du Bois saw a direct link between Zionism and the “African movement” of his time, stating in a 1919 editorial that “The African movement means to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews, the centralization of race effort and the recognition of a racial fount.”

Almost thirty years later, Du Bois remained a champion of the Zionist cause. “Everyone knows the way in which the Jewish religion is wound through Palestine and from there how the thread runs through all modern history,” Du Bois wrote in his May 8, 1948, Chicago Star editorial where, just a week before the U.N. vote, he passionately pleaded the case for a Jewish state: “In the meantime, a million displaced Jews are begging to be allowed to migrate to Palestine, where there’s room for them, where there is work for them to do, where what Jews have already done is for the advantage, not simply of the Jews, but of the Arabs.” A week later, the U.N. voted to create the State of Israel and a separate Arab state. The Jews accepted their new state. The Arabs declared war instead and lost.

In his 1952 address to a New York City audience commemorating the ninth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Du Bois doubled down on his view that there is a deep connection between the Jewish and Black experiences of oppression. There, he described his pre- and post-WWII visits to Warsaw, and compared the hate, destruction, and genocidal remnants he observed in 1949 Warsaw to the hateful and often murderous racism in America: “Nothing in my wildest imagination was equal to what I saw in Warsaw in 1949…The result of these three visits, and particularly, of my view of the Warsaw ghetto, was not so much clearer understanding of the Jewish problem in the world as it was a real and more complete understanding of the Negro problem….No, the race problem in which I was interested cut across lines of color and physique and belief and status and was a matter of cultural patterns, perverted teaching and human hate and prejudice which reached all sorts of people and caused endless evil to all men.”

Through De Bois and Blyden, two intellectual giants of Black Nationalism and Black consciousness, we see both a visceral and a practical connection between the Black American experience and Zionism, as well as the Jewish plight. The profound influence of these two leaders embedded this pro-Zionist perspective in the Black American experience during the first half of the 20th century.

By the mid-to late 1950’s, however, anti-Zionist views began to emerge within the Black community, particularly from the Nation of Islam and later, Malcolm X. Both were highly critical of Israel and its creation. In late 1959, NOI leader Elijah Muhammad met with Egypt’s authoritarian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who convinced him that the NOI was an ideal movement for propagating the Arab cause against Israel in the U.S.

But even Malcolm X could not resist Zionism’s appeal. In a May 1964 letter to Amsterdam News (pp.54-55), Malcolm X recognized Zionism as an effective nationalism strategy that Pan-Africanists should emulate. As he observed, “We can learn much from the strategy used by the American Jews. They have never migrated physically to Israel, yet their cultural, philosophical and psychological ties to Israel have enhanced their political and economic and social position right here in America. Pan-Africanism will do for people of African descent all over the world the same that Zionism has done for all Jews all over the world.”

Malcolm X’s admission that Zionism was a strategy Black Nationalists should emulate must have created too much dissonance for him to bear. Just four months later, he turned up the antizionist vitriol with the publication of “Zionist Logic” in The Egyptian Gazette. In this Jew hatred screed, Malcolm X incorrectly described Zionism as religious-based and claimed that “their Jewish G-d has chosen them to replace the outdated European colonialism with a new form of colonialism.” Using a dictionary definition of a Jew-hatred trope, Malcolm X went on to claim that “the Zionists have mastered the science of dollarism” and that “The number one weapon of 20th-century imperialism is Zionist dollarism, and one of the main bases for this weapon is Zionist Israel.” Apparently, Malcolm X did not know that Zionism was a secularly rooted liberation movement and that Israel in 1964 was a financially struggling nation.

To Malcolm X, Zionism was a model of liberation that “people of African descent” should emulate, yet when it came to the Jews, they were not entitled to the benefits of their own liberation model. It’s a double standard that persists to this day.

In March 1964, Malcolm X left Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was murdered while giving a speech at New York City’s Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, reportedly by members of the Nation of Islam.

The Black Panther Party was the leader in the 1960s Black Power movement. Regarding Zionism and Israel, the original BPP narrative held that Zionism and Israel were a colonialist, imperialist project and ethnically discriminatory, as Malcolm X described them in “Zionist Logic.” A study by the American Jewish Committee quotes Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver as saying in a December 1969 interview that “Zionists, wherever they may be, are our enemies. We totally support the armed struggle of the Palestinian people against the watchdogs of imperialism.”

While Israel had nothing to do with the Black plight in America, the BPP appeared obsessed with the Jewish state and with Zionism’s success as a Jewish liberation movement. As Michael Fischbach notes in Black Power and Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019, p.114), “In fact, of the forty-three issues of the Black Panther that ran from June 1, 1969, until March 28, 1970, the party ran thirty-three articles or other items in support of the Arabs or attacking Israel.”

Fischbach also points out (p.117) that in March 1970, the BPP’s international section in Algeria issued a statement that read, “The Palestinian liberation struggle stands in the vanguard of the struggle against the Zionist menace that plagues the people of the entire Arab world in general, and has usurped the national rights and freedom of the Palestinian people in particular. . . . The Black Panther Party unconditionally and firmly supports the just struggle of the Palestinian people and their war of national salvation against the lackey state of Israel and its imperialist backers.”

Four months later, however, we see the beginnings of a dramatic ideological about-face within the BPP on Israel and Zionism. As Fischbach notes (p.123), when BPP leader Huey Newton was released from prison on August 26, 1970, after serving two years, he held a press conference where he stated that “Our situation is similar in so many ways; we say, that morally perhaps, the Jewish people can make a case for separatism and a Zionist state based upon their religion for self-defense. We say, morally, perhaps we could accept this, but politically and strategically we know that it is incorrect.”

Almost four years later, on May 25, 1974, the BPP issued a new policy statement that was nothing short of a tectonic shift. In this statement, the BPP called upon “the Jews” to recognize Palestinian claims and for the “Palestinian Liberation Movement to recognize the existence of the state of Israel as the national sovereignty of the Jewish people.” No longer did the BPP consider Israel the “Zionist menace that plagues the people of the entire Arab world.” Rather, “the Party asserts that the fact the existence of the State of Israel will prove no real hardship to the Arab peoples, if the Jews and their 400,000 comrades living in Israel throw off their mutual yoke of oppression, and build a people’s government serving the human interests of all.”

But the BPP policy statement went further, rebuking Islamic radicalism: “The peoples of the Arab nations need only turn their attention away from the so-called Holly War over with what is now called Israel, to their own oil-rich countries, and throw off the yoke of their oppressive regimes.”

Reminiscent of De Bois and Blyden, the BPP policy continued by noting the role Jews played in the fight for equality both for themselves and the Black people, and how the holocaust explains Jewish sensitivity to social justice struggles. Then, in another mind-blowing rebuke, the policy statement continues by chastising the Arab nations, claiming that “the rulers of the Arab states are not interested in the self-determination of the Palestinians…or peace in the Middle East” and that “the war against Israel is diversionary.” This is what Israel and Zionists had been saying all along!

On August 22, 1989, Huey Newton, the ideological force behind the 1974 BBP policy statement, was murdered on the streets of Oakland. By one account, Newton’s murderer, Tyrone Robinson, was a member of the Black Guerilla Family and a drug dealer.

Today, with much of the post-BPP Black Power movement adopting the settler-colonist, antizionism ideology—one derived in part from Soviet Union antizionist propaganda and from what grew out of an alliance between Nazi Germany and radical Islamists in the 40s—the divide between Black and Jewish communities is deeper than ever. This settler-colonist-antizionism ideology is nothing short of a blindfold designed to alter vision and distort history, the effect of which has been to sow division between Blacks and Jews. Yet if our common experiences and histories with their shared narratives were strong enough to reach Malcolm X and eventually the Black Panther Party, they should surely now be capable of bringing Jews and Blacks together again. But there’s a bigger point here.

The Jews had great storytellers among the early Zionists, such as Birnbaum, Pinsker, and Herzl (see part I). With the early Black Nationalists as one example, we’ve seen the power of our story when told well. It became so baked into the archives of Black consciousness that the Jewish story even overcame antipathy toward Israel, reaching the Black Panthers in their 1974 pro-Israel statement. And that is the point here: Telling our story and telling it well.

The power of the Jewish story, when told well, gives vision to the ideologically blindfolded. As Dara Horn asserts, “Our responsibility, not only as Jews but as members of the liberal West descended from Jewish civilization, is to make people curious about that dramatic story to which we owe our world. Jews are among the first groups in history to stand up to tyranny, and to this day they continue to do so. No one can defuse the lie of antisemitism without understanding that story, because it explains how people who want to dominate need that lie as a tool to stop curiosity and crush dissent.”

The Jewish story—our history, struggles, discrimination, oppression, genocide, culture, religion, Zionism, overcoming oppression—is the not-so-secret weapon in our arsenal against Jew hatred. Jews need an army of storytellers because, as Dara Horn also asserts, “There is no way to debunk the lies of antisemitism without investing in teaching the truth about who Jews are,” and that is the moral of this two-part story. We need to tell our story because the Jewish story is powerful, and we need to do a hell of a lot better job of telling it than we have been.

[1] Alahmed, N. (2023). From Black Zionism to Black Nasserism: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Foundations of Black Anti-Zionist Discourse. Critical Sociology, 49(6), 1053-1064.

[2] Lynch, Hollis, Selected Writings of Edward Wilmont Blyden, 1971, pp.209-210.

[3] Ibid, p. 211.

[4] Ibid, p. 211.

[5] Alhamed, Supa, p.1054

Leave a comment

I was introduced to the Black Panthers in the eighth grade by my friend Gene—I think that was his name. We were walking to the train station from Shallow Junior High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. I’d been in a fist fight with an Italian the week before (Shallow was about eighty percent Italian). This Italian called me a Jew boy. It was a traumatizing encounter, not so much by the actual fight as from the blinding speed at which my gut overrode any sense of retreat. Before I knew it, I was planting my fist on this Italian’s face (to be fair, he got his licks in too). The fight was the talk of my class. We all had our view of who won, and Gene was consoling me.

Gene told me that the black panther avoids confrontation and attacks only when threatened or in self-defense. That’s how Gene explained the Black Panther Party to me, and my reaction to the Italian. “Welcome to the oppressed,” I remember Gene saying. As soon as the words left his mouth, Gene and I were struck by how much the Jewish and Black experiences overlap. Thus began my fascination with the Black Panthers and the Black struggle.

Back in my Boro Park neighborhood, I saw Jews as weak. Then, when I was fifteen, I took karate lessons from a bearded, payos-wearing, muscle-bound Jew in a karate gi. He was from the Jewish Defense League. I had no trouble seeing the ideological overlap between the JDL and the Black Panthers. Yet, it was a Black Power fist medallion I wore around my neck, and not a Magen David. I carry that fist with me to this day. But instead of a Magen David around my neck, I made Aliyah to Israel from Oakland, California, ten months ago. As a Zionist, I wanted to be with Jews who were proud of their identity and had the courage to do what it takes to deal with Jew hatred.

The Black Power medalion I’ve carried with me since high school.

I had recalled what Gene told me while researching for an article on Jewish Americans who were carrying guns as a defensive response to violent Jew hatred. So, I revisited the Black Panthers and came across the Party’s 1966 Ten Point Platform. I read the very first point and thought, “Wow. That’s a page out of Herzl”: “We Want Freedom. We Want Power to Determine the Destiny of Our Black Community. We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.”

Just substitute “Jewish” for “Black,” and you have Zionism. Far out, right? Was the Black liberation movement, and the Black Panther Party (“BBP”), inspired by Zionism and the Jewish experience? That would be a mindblower to those married to the antizionist settler-colonist ideology. I had to know. It would be like informing a Ku Klux Klansman that he’s been half black all his life and didn’t know it.

Zionism as Self-Determination (“We Want Power to Determine the Destiny of Our Black Community”)

First, I had to nail down what Zionism meant before it was hijacked by the left and made into a dirty word. Educator, novelist, and author of People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn, in her 2024 Atlantic article, “Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies,” offered a good starting point by her observation that “Jewish civilization has been centered for thousands of years, in ways large and small, on its homeland in Israel, where Jews have had a continuous presence since ancient times. The modern political idea of Zionism as Jewish self-determination in this homeland emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amid many other anticolonial movements around the world,…” Sounds like the BPP’s self-determination to me.

Birnbaum’s call for a reawakening of Jewish national consciousness (the BPP’s call for self-awareness and education—Black consciousness by any other name)

Jewish nationalist Nathan Birnbaum was the first to employ the term “Zionism” in his 1890 German-language journal, Selbstemanzipation! (Self-Emancipation!), which he founded and edited in Vienna. According to historian Robert Wistich, Birnbaum believed that assimilation as well as antisemitism posed a threat to Jews. Assimilation, Birnbaum argued, was an attack on Jewish identity, a weakness, an admission of inferiority, and he called German assimilation suicidal. The remedy for these ills was a reawakening of Jewish national consciousness and a return to the land of Israel. As Wistich put it, Birnbaum believed that “Jews must seek national equality as a group in order to regain their inner balance and respect of other nations.”

As the BBP’s fifth point of their ten-point platform puts it, “We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.” For the Panthers, it’s about Black consciousness-raising as a means of liberation, which mirrors Birnbaum’s reawakening of Jewish national consciousness to achieve inner balance.

Pinsker and Herzl’s call for a Jewish homeland to establish equality, and remedy Jew hatred (the BPP’s call for land, forty acres, and two mules, and to separate as a distinct political entity)

A major influence on Birnbaum was his contemporary, Leo Pinsker, who in 1882 penned “Auto-Emancipation: AN APPEAL TO HIS PEOPLE By a Russian Jew.” In this monumental document, Pinsker argued that “Jews comprise a distinctive element among the nations under which they dwell, and as such can neither assimilate nor be readily digested by any nation.”

Pinsker described in detail how Jews of Europe are victims of systematic Jew hatred and that “No matter how much the nations are at variance in their relations with one another, however diverse their instincts and aims, they join hands in their hatred of the Jews; on this one matter all are agreed.” To remedy such intractable hate, Pinsker argued, Jews are “bound by duty to devote all our remaining moral force to re-establishing ourselves as a living nation, so that we may ultimately assume a more fitting and dignified role among the family of the nations…[and] as long as we lack a home of our own, such as the other nations have, we must resign forever the noble hope of becoming the equals of our fellow-men.” To Pinsker, Jewish liberation comes only through coming together as a living nation.

While Pinsker did not use the word “Zionism,” he described it in its essence: Jews are the victims of oppression, and liberation lies in taking control of their destiny by reconstituting themselves as a nation physically and spiritually.

Under the influence of Pinsker and Birnbaum, on February 16, 1896, Theodor Herzl published “The Jewish State.” In this eighty-eight-page manifesto of Jewish liberation, Herzl observed that “We are a people, one people,” and as a people, over the course of history, we as Jews “have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so,…but I think we shall not be left in peace.” The reason: undeniable antisemitism. “No one can deny the gravity of the situation of the Jews. Wherever they live in perceptible numbers, they are more or less persecuted. Their equality before the law, granted by statute, has become practically a dead letter.” But oppression, antisemitism, “binds us together, and, thus united, we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough to form a State, and, indeed, a model State.” Thus, to Herzl, the only way for Jews to liberate themselves from historic Jew hatred that has proven never to go away and to determine their own destiny is by forming their own state. That is Zionism in a nutshell.

Corresponding to Pinsker and Herzl’s call for land is the BPP’s point three, where they “believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules” and point ten, where they demand that “We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.” Point three also refers to the history of robbery, slavery, and oppression of the Black people, which corresponds to how Pinsker and Herzl detailed the history of Jewish hatred throughout the millennium.

In support of point three, the BPP goes so far as to draw support from the Jewish Holocaust as parallel to the Black American experience and how “The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.”

The Zionist themes inherent in point ten (“we want land…”) of the BPP platform jump out when its key provisions are read alongside Pinsker and Herzl’s Zionist pronouncements:

POINT TEN OF THE BPP PLATFORM NEXT TO ZIONISM

ZIONISM: A Jewish State as a remedy

To remedy intractable Jew hatred, Jews are “bound by duty to devote all our remaining moral force to re-establishing ourselves as a living nation.” (Pinsker)

“But oppression, antisemitism, “binds us together, and, thus united, we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough to form a State, and, indeed, a model State.” (Herzl)

Compared to:

BPP POINT TEN: Land and Separation as the remedy for Injustice

“We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.”

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

__________________________________

ZIONISM: Zionism understands that Jews have tried to live in the diaspora, but the hate is systematic, and Jews have never been left to live in peace.

“We are a people, one people,” and as a people, over the course of history, we as Jews, “have honestly endeavored everywhere to merge ourselves in the social life of surrounding communities and to preserve the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so,…but I think we shall not be left in peace.” (Herzl)

Compared to:

BPP POINT TEN: The “long train of abuses” has shown that humankind is not inclined to right itself.

“All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

__________________________

ZIONISM: Jew hatred is intractable. A Jewish homeland is the only remedy.

“No matter how much the nations are at variance in their relations with one another, however diverse their instincts and aims, they join hands in their hatred of the Jews; on this one matter all are agreed.” To remedy such intractable hate, Jews are “bound by duty to devote all our remaining moral force to re-establishing ourselves as a living nation, so that we may ultimately assume a more fitting and dignified role among the family of the nations…[and] as long as we lack a home of our own, such as the other nations have, we must resign forever the noble hope of becoming the equals of our fellow-men.” (Pinsker)

But oppression, antisemitism, “binds us together, and, thus united, we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough to form a State,”(Herzl)

Compared to:

BPP POINT TEN: In the face of intractable oppression, separation becomes necessary, along with the establishment of a new government to secure civil liberties and happiness.

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“…all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

________________________

Zionism: A Jewish homeland / The Black Panthers: Land, compensation, justice.

Zionism: As long as Jews live in the diaspora, they cannot live in peace /

The Black Panthers: “The long train of abuses” teach that society is not likely to change.

Zionism: Jew hatred in the diaspora is intractable. A Jewish homeland is the remedy to secure safety and freedom /

The Black Panthers: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to separate, it is the right, the obligation of Black Americans to do so and set up a new government to secure their safety and freedoms.

There are too many similarities between late nineteenth-century Zionism and the 1966 BPP Ten-Point Program to call it a coincidence. So, how did Zionist principles wind up as an ideological underpinning to the Black Panther Party platform well over half a century later? I address this question next week in Part II, by turning to Black nationalist and civil rights leaders during the early period of Zionism, as well as BPP leader Huey Newton and former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, who we will see was a closeted Zionist admirer. Why does this all matter now more than ever? Tune in next week to part II for the answer. Okay, a hint. It’s about storytelling.

Leave a comment

Life goes on in Israel, ceasefire or not. We hear sirens, head to the miklat (bomb shelter) or mamad (apartment safe room), hear bombs bursting in the air, wait for the “event has ended” signal, exit, resume our meals, take a shower. Ceasefire; we do the same things, minus the inconvenience of sirens interrupting our routines or missiles landing in our neighborhoods, on our homes, apartment buildings, streets. We suffer less death and destruction. Still, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers are in Lebanon, Gaza, and G-d knows where else.

I’ve lived in Israel for nine and a half months now and am just beginning to crack the code to what it means to be an Israeli. But experiencing 128 incoming missile alerts in five weeks– many in the middle of the night–running down three and a half flights of stairs to my building’s miklat or the nearest public shelter, seeing missiles streak across the sky, hearing their booms, and feeling my apartment building rattle have been a crash course in Israeli identity. Still, my experience pales in comparison to those who have been going through this since October 7 or to those who lived through the Intifadas, the Yom Kippur War, the 1967 War. Next to those Israelis, I’ve got much to learn. So I listen to conversations around me, talk to people at the Shabbat table, cafes, grocery store lines, and compare what I hear to my own thoughts. Ceasefire? There is an array of feelings out there, and as I discovered, a unifying force hiding in plain sight that has always defined who we are as Israelis:

Relief—Thank G-d

Thank G-d. Now Gan will start up, and I can get the kids out of my house. I have to work. (The answer to my question, “What do you think of the ceasefire?” posed to a working mother at Carmei Gat playground, as others looked on and nodded in agreement)

Frustration

I’m frustrated. We need to get the job done. Let’s just get it over with. (Two women in a Jerusalem café, their laptops open, talking to each other about the ceasefire)

Aggression

I’ll go through it again if it means getting rid of Iran. (A friend said, sharing his attitutde about the ceasefire at the Shabbat table)

Catching cynical breath

I’m grateful for a chance to breathe and regroup before it inevitably starts again. (Comment from a WhatsApp chat group after I posed the question, “What do you feel about the ceasefire?”)

Sacrifice

I’d rather deal with this for the next two months than rush into a cease-fire. (Eavesdropping on a conversation in a Jerusalem café)

Endurance

I’ve kept a log. I’ve been in my mamad over 60 times (A friend’s response to my question, “What do you think of the ceasefire?”)

What ceasefire?

What ceasefire? Someone should tell Hezbollah. My son’s in Lebanon. (A mother snapped at me after I struck up a conversation in the grocery store line)

Emotional blur

What happened to Passover? (A friend’s greeting to me a few days after the ceasefire took effect, before I even had a chance to ask what she thought of the ceasefire)

Humor, Israeli style

We’ll bitch about the road works because we can’t bitch about our safe rooms anymore (and delight in living in the best place on earth). (An answer to my question posted to a WhatsApp chat group, “What do you think of the ceasefire?”)

Jewish humor

“The Iranian regime is like a sinus infection. If you take half the antibiotics, you feel better. But then it comes right back a little bit later.” (Danial Pomeranz, Reality Check)

Pragmatic

I have a wait-and-see approach. Enjoy the quiet as long as it lasts. (A friend’s response to my question)

Then there’s the politicians:

It ain’t over till I say it’s over

“Israel ‘has more goals to complete,’ says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video statement after a ceasefire between the US and Iran is announced…“We will achieve them,” he promises, ‘either through agreement, or through renewed fighting.’…Israel, he says, ‘is ready to return to fighting at any time.’ ‘The finger is on the trigger,’ he warns.” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-we-have-more-goals-to-complete-the-finger-is-on-the-trigger/)

A diplomatic disaster

“Israel wasn’t even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security.” “There has never been such a diplomatic disaster in all our history.” (Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid)

It only helps Iran

“MK Avigdor Liberman, head of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, warned that ‘a ceasefire with Iran gives the ayatollahs’ regime a break and time to regroup.’”

Donald, the duck

“Donald, you came off as a duck!” (Netanyahu coalition member MK Zvika Fogel, of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, wrote on X).

But it was historian and former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, who, in a recent Substack post, best revealed how these sentiments capture the Israeli character:

Hope

Endurance Depression

“The depression felt by a great many Israelis on the day of the ceasefire now appears to have been fully justified…In the Middle East, victory is defined not by an army’s performance but by its enemy’s ability to survive. For the Iranian regime, like Hamas and Hezbollah, victory is established when the successors of assassinated leaders can emerge from the rubble and flash a “V” sign…Many Israelis would be willing to endure another six weeks—and more—of sleepless nights, school-less days, and hours in our safe rooms to bring about even part of our vision of regional peace. Most would not be crestfallen if the current ceasefire fails and the campaign to defeat Iran in Middle Eastern terms resumes. The tens of thousands of IDF reservists who have already served hundreds of days in combat would readily serve hundreds more. Throughout, we would cling to the belief that “it’s possible”; that someday a jeep will pass by with soldiers shouting, “It’s over.” (“What Does the Ceasefire Mean in Israel?” Michael Oren, Clarity Substack post)

From Israel’s inception to the present, the Jewish State has existed under an existential threat from regimes that have sought to wipe it off the face of the map. But this genocidal plot has backfired on Israel’s enemies. Living under such conditions has instead instilled fearlessness, Jewish pride, and sacrifice in Israeli character. These attributes are among the reasons I made Aliyah. I wanted to be in a country where Jews were not only proud of their identity but were also unafraid to do what it takes to fight Jew hatred. With few exceptions, I found these attributes lacking in American Jewish communities and, certainly, in Jewish legacy organizations.

A couple walking down HaRakevet Road, Jerusalem.

But there’s “something more” that explains the heart and soul of Israeli character beyond fearlessness, Jewish pride, and sacrifice. I see it in the men and women who have chosen to embrace their Jewish identity by uprooting their lives in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, South Africa, England, South America, for a harder but more satisfying one in Israel. I see this “something more” in couples holding hands and in fathers and mothers pushing strollers as they walk down HaRakevet Road in Jerusalem, or Sderot Lachish in Carmei Gat. I saw it at the Kotel a couple of nights ago when we transitioned with prayer from the solemnity of Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, to the joyous holiday of Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day—and then at Safra Square, where Israelis danced in celebration. My friend Marci Reiss explained what this “something more” is in her weekly pre-Shabbat email to friends where she comments on the ceasefire. Her insight turned me around. Yes, we all have practical questions, but it’s “the real deal,” as Marci puts it, that matters:

“Will it last? Was it too early? We don’t know…We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But we never do. Now is no different…We should take comfort in what we do know…There is a real deal. And it isn’t with Netanyahu, and it certainly isn’t with Iran. We know that G-d is with us. We know that we are the chosen nation. We know that G-d shows us endless miracles if we choose to see them. We need to remember that there is a real deal. It isn’t about enriched uranium. It isn’t about the Strait of Hormuz. And it certainly wasn’t brokered by Pakistan. It’s a deal with the Creator of the World. And it’s a deal that will last.”

History has shown us that we, as Jews, cannot count on politicians and world leaders. But in the final analysis, we could always count on the real deal–the heart and soul of the Jewish people–because we, as Jews, have always outlasted our enemies, and Iran will be no exception.

Share

Leave a comment

Rather than take offense at my snide remark, my friend took the high road and asked me to share what “Next year in Jerusalem” “means to me in my heart in this world.”

A street in Jerusalem’s Yemen Moshe neighborhood.

It was a simple request, yet, for reasons I didn’t understand at first, I stumbled as I bounced “Next Year in Jerusalem” around in my mind. To get a grip, I pulled out my go-to ArtScroll Family Haggadah. I placed my index finger on the wine-stained page and gazed at the words, לשנה הבאה בירושלים, transliteration: L’Shanah HaBa’ah BiYerushalayim. The next thing I knew, I was having Seder flashbacks (I thought all traces of hallucinogens had left my body years ago). I was sitting at my Uncle Milt’s Long Island Seder table, freaking out because I was the youngest of all the cousins and had been called upon to read the four questions. Fade in San Francisco, where I made a statement by helping organize a Seder for my law school class. I hadn’t even finished my soup when I flash-forwarded to a reform synagogue in the Bay Area city of Fremont, where the Rabbi somehow managed to condense the Seder into an hour. I landed at my orthodox Rabbi’s home in Oakland, where five hours and four glasses of wine later, we loudly proclaimed, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

I took my finger off the page and returned to my apartment, where I looked out my living room window and saw my Jerusalem street with houses built from various shades of rough-hewn, pinkish-beige Jerusalem stone. I am in Jerusalem, and this is next year.

What does “Next year in Jerusalem” mean to me in my heart? I stumbled at first because I relied on my intellect rather than my heart. True, “Next year in Jerusalem” is both a state of mind and a literal goal. However, I don’t think my friend realized that the frame of his inquiry held the answer. “Next year in Jerusalem” is a place in my heart. It’s a place in the Jewish soul. How do I put that meaning into words?

Help me answer my friend. It’s for a good cause. What does “Next Year in Jerusalem” mean to you in your heart? Let me know in the comments.

חג פסח שמ

Leave a comment

Share

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/fear-and-loathing-in-iran-where-ayatollahs-say-the-darndest-things/

• In November 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini started playing the name-calling game with the U.S. Fresh off a successful overthrow, Ruhollah declared that, “In this revolution, the Great Satan is America that gathers around other devils blatantly.”

• March 20, 2080, Ayatollah Ruhollah declared, “We must strive to export our Revolution throughout the world, and must abandon all idea of not doing so, for not only does Islam refuse to recognize any difference between Muslim countries, it is the champion of all oppressed people.”

• In 2000, Iran’s now-dead Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “Iran’s stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon (Israel). We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.”

• In 2005, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a holocaust denier, Jew hater, and Iranian loyalist, famously said that Israel “is a disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the face of the earth.”

• In 2006, Mohmoud said, “You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.”

• But Mohmound got a little testy in September 2008, when he declared that Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be “eliminated.”

• How should Israel be “eliminated’? In 2014, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini made it clear that “while waiting for an end to this cold-blooded murderous regime, mighty armed resistance is the only way to deal with it.”

• In 2015, Ayatollah Ali said, “G-d willing, there will be no such thing as a Zionist regime in 25 years.” No lines to read between. Iran had a twenty-five-year plan to wipe out Israel. But there’s more: “Until then, struggling, heroic, and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists.”

• On October 3, 2023, Ayatollah Ali warned that “The definitive stance of the Islamic Republic is that the governments which prioritize the gamble of normalization with the Zionist regime will incur losses” and “Today, the situation of the Zionist regime is not one that should motivate closeness to it; they shouldn’t make this mistake. This cancer will certainly, G-d willing, be eradicated by the hands of the Palestinian people and the resistance forces throughout the region.”

• In July 2024, Revolutionary Guard aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh, proudly boasted that of course, Iran has been acting through Hezbollah and Hamas, “as it is obvious from the weapons of our dear ones in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere, it has now become clear that they are in fact being helped and supplied by Iran”. But Amir is dead now. Israel took him seriously and then took him out.

Teased enough? Go to The Times of Israel to learn about the Iranian regime’s capacity for depravity, the threat its ideological export program poses, and how it treats Iranians. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/fear-and-loathing-in-iran-where-ayatollahs-say-the-darndest-things/

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Jerusalem - Center In a few minutes, alerts are expected in your area 11:38 a.m. Jerusalem - Center

I was at a café on Emek Refa’im, enjoying my cappuccino and a pastry, while working on an article for The Times of Israel blog, when I received this alert. I walked back to my apartment, which is only a five-minute walk. Not the smartest move, given I might only have a minute before the sirens and missiles arrive.

Jerusalem - Center Missiles 11:43 a.m.

I reached my miklat before the missiles came. One of my neighbors was already there. We talked about the nice weather. Then we heard some blasts.

The event has ended 11:55 a.m. Jerusalem - Center

I went back up to my apartment. I kept writing and reading about Iran and its oppressive regime. Their theocratic leaders have said some really nasty things about Israel and the U.S. They’re just not very nice. It’ll all be in my article.

In a few minutes, alerts are expected in your area 16:39 (4:39 p.m.)

Jerusalem – Center

The pulsing sound of my phone startled me. I was typing on my laptop, trying to explain Iran’s evils. Sometimes it’s hard to put the obvious into words. I kept writing, hoping the sirens wouldn’t sound.

Missiles 16:50 (4:40 p.m.) Jerusalem - Center

Back to the miklat. I ran downstairs only to have to run back up because I forgot my phone. This time, my neighbor, his three young children, and his brother, who also has three young children, were there. We caught up on each other’s lives since we last saw each other yesterday in the miklat. The dads were trying to keep six kids, all five and under, entertained.

The event has ended 17:01 (5:01 p.m.) Jerusalem – Center

Back upstairs I go, continuing to write for the next few hours. Made dinner. Had a glass (okay, two) of wine. I was relaxed. Watched a Sherlock Holmes episode on Amazon Prime, exchanged texts with friends. Reviewed what I had written during the day on Iran. I’m thinking, it’s sleep time.

In a few minutes, alerts are expected in your area 22:41 (10:41 p.m.)

Jerusalem - Center

Sleep? Who am I kidding? Okay, let’s get the late-night missiles over with. I put on my hoodie, make sure I have my phone and a flashlight. I’m ready.

Missiles 22:44 (10:44 p.m.) Jerusalem - Center

Iran did not disappoint. I hurry down the three-and-a-half flights of stairs to my miklat. My downstairs neighbor is there, along with the other neighbors—the couple with their three young children. There are mattresses in our apartment building, Miklat, for the kids, along with chairs, two heaters, a light bar, and some toys. But the lights are off. The kids need to sleep. Amazingly, they are asleep. We whisper to each other. At the same time, our phones are out. I search for information, updates. Any news.

The event has ended 22:56 (10:56 p.m.) Jerusalem – Center

Okay, it’s 10:56 p.m. I take off my sweats and get ready for bed. But I can’t sleep, so I read. I can’t read, so I take another look at what I had written during the day. I start editing.

In a few minutes, alerts are expected in your area 23:27 (11:23 p.m.)

Jerusalem – Center

Seriously? Another alert? I hear from friends. We comfort each other via WhatsApp. I put on my sweats and make sure I have my keys and my phone.

Missiles 23:30 (11:30 p.m.) Jerusalem - Center

I head down to the miklat and run into my neighbor, who is carrying his sleeping little girl. There is a stranger in our miklat. He must have come off the street. For some reason, he leaves before the all-clear signal is given.

The event has ended 23:42 (11:42 p.m.) Jerusalem - Center

Okay, now I try to sleep. Who am I kidding? I can’t sleep. I sit down on my living room couch, reach for my laptop, and...

In a few minutes, alerts are expected in your area 23:47 (11:47 p.m.)

Jerusalem – Center

What’s it been? Five minutes, and we get another alert? I’m running out of witty jokes to tell myself and share with my WhatsApp friends. I’m getting aggravated. So are my friends.

Missiles 23:51 (11:51 p.m.) Jerusalem – Center

Downstairs, I go once more. My neighbors are already there, and I’m uncertain if they left after the last incident. We sit silently, our quietness revealing our irritation. We hear explosions, which we assume are from Iron Dome. I share this update on my Facebook to inform my friends back home about life here in Jerusalem.

In a few minutes, alerts are expected in your area 00:02 (12:02 a.m.)

Jerusalem – Center

Yet a second alert sounds while we are in the miklat. I try to silence the loud signals coming from my phone. I don’t want to wake the sleeping kids. One of the kids stirs but goes back to sleep. We are all serious now. It’s unusual to get a second missile alert while sheltering from the first one. We hear more booms that shake our building (at least it feels that way).

Missiles 00:05 (12:05 a.m.) Jerusalem - Center

Our phones alert us with a siren that echoes what we hear outside. The kids stay asleep. We hear explosions. We feel the vibrations. The adults are worried. I post this missile attack on Facebook.

The event has ended 00:17 (12:17 a.m.) Jerusalem – Center

We are all weary, exhausted. I go upstairs to my apartment, but I can’t sleep. I message friends on WhatsApp. I keep writing and reviewing, rereading the part where I describe the genocidal statements made by Iran’s Ayatollahs since the 1979 Islamic revolution. I try to understand their hate, their obsession with Israel and the Jews. It’s two in the morning, and I still can’t sleep.

I wake up at six. I don’t remember falling asleep. I make breakfast and write some more. I’m about to head to the Farmer’s Market when, at 8:41 a.m., Home Front Command issues a missile alert. I jump. I wait for the sirens. They don’t come, so I go to the Farmer’s Market.

Farmer’s Market off of Emek ReFai’im, Friday morning, March 20.

I get home after my Farmer’s Market run and try to finish this article. I still need to cook for Shabbat, but I need words to conclude. I see a text from my friend, Dr. Marci Reiss. She said it better than I could have at this fatigued moment. As I prepare to insert her message, I receive another missile alert. I brace myself for the sirens, but they don’t come.

Shabbat Shalom, from Jerusalem, Israel. We are here for you.

Share

Leave a comment

Shabbat in Jerusalem is always special. Add missiles to the mix, and you have something supernatural.

Friday evening, I go to shul. The prayers are joyous. Our rabbi advises us that if a siren sounds, we will go to the miklat (shelter) across the street. After services, I walk to my friend’s house for a Shabbat dinner. There’s a calm in the air that has no right to be there at a time of war, but this is Shabbat and Jerusalem has its ways. I pass at least a dozen strangers. We exchange Shabbat Shaloms. Everyone needs comfort.

I return home from dinner around 11:00 p.m., relax, get into bed, slip under the covers. I read my book, ready to fall asleep. Silly me. A missile alert blares from my phone at 11:23 p.m., startling me. I had lulled myself into a false sense of security by the lack of missiles during the evening. I hurry to put on my shirt, socks, sweatpants, sweatshirt. I run down the three-and-a-half flights to reach my miklat. I expect to see my neighbors, but no one is there—they’ve gone away for Shabbat. I sit silently until rumblings from the sky penetrate this below-ground room. Is the Iron Dome doing its job? Did a missile land somewhere? The missile event ends at 11:34 p.m. I go back to my apartment and read some more. I sleep lightly. I wake up at 6:30 a.m., foggy in the head.

I get dressed, eat breakfast, head to shul. The rabbi saves his drash (Torah talk) for the end, explaining that he wanted to make sure we finish our prayers first before any sirens. A chatan (bridegroom) is among us, who will marry later in the week. It’s his ufruf, the occasion when the groom is called up to the Torah for an Aliyah, the honor of saying a Torah blessing. There’s dancing, chanting, candy thrown at the chatan, and a special kiddush. No missiles. I leave early for a Shabbat lunch with friends.

The six of us sit at the Shabbat table in an apartment high enough to provide a panoramic view of Jerusalem. I scan the heavens where clouds obscure the source of the rumblings that speak to us. We assure each other that its Israeli fighter jets heading somewhere.

Share

The conversation around our table centers on how we are all coping. Most admit to feeling on edge, emotionally drained. Over the past two weeks, we’ve had to rush to the miklat or mamad at all hours of the day and night, at least thirty times. We worry about sons, daughters, and friends in the IDF, fighting for us. We are exhausted. We eat chocolate, exercise, and drink wine to relieve stress. When will it end? But no one is really complaining. Everyone agrees that if this is what it takes to defeat an ideology of Jew-hatred aiming to wipe Jews off the map, we are in it for the long haul. We gain strength by gathering around a Shabbat table with friends, good food, wine, talking Torah, and sharing.

All of us feel better after our lunch conversation. We relax, pour more wine, and make a L’chaim, a toast to life. Then, at 2:59 p.m., we hear a siren. Off to the mamad, the six of us, crowded into a six-by-ten room with a bed, desk, closet, and coat rack. We hear a big boom. The vibrations reach us. We think a missile over Jerusalem has been shot down. One of us gives a Devar Torah, a short teaching on this week’s Torah portion. The alert ends at 3:14 p.m. We go back to our table, have dessert, and say the Birkat HaMazon, grace after the meal. We thank our host for this therapeutic lunch. We all needed it.

The five of us leave together, sharing the afterglow of a good meal. Friendships are made. We begin our walk down the seven flights of stairs. We are on the fourth-floor landing when, at 4:29 p.m., another missile alert jolts us out of our mood. Back upstairs we go. The alert ends at 4:47 p.m. We head home. Nothing, certainly not the threat of missiles, can take away our Shabbat. That’s our strength.

Leave a comment

Now that I am here, I am no closer to figuring out what possessed me. Yet, I know I want to be nowhere else but in Israel. That’s crazy.

It’s now 12 days since Iran aimed its missiles at Israel, and I’ve had to shelter from them in my miklat or a mamad about 28 times. All that experience has done is reinforce my decision to be here. Go figure? I can’t, but I’m trying.

I just published Meditating on Missiles, Miklats, and Making Aliyah in The Times of Israel, where I provide a harrowing account of what it’s been like since the Iran war began on February 28. Please support my writing and click on the link: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/meditating-on-missiles-miklats-and-making-aliyah/. The algorithm needs feeding. Somehow, the answer to what possessed me may be found in what’s happening in Israel now, as I spend on average one or two times a day in a miklat or mamad, praying that missiles don’t land near me or anyone else.

Let me know what you think.

Am Yisroel Chai.

Leave a comment

Two of my neighbor’s three young children, all under five, were lying on a twin-size mattress, staying warm under a blanket. The youngest, their girl, about three, was in her father’s arms. On the other days and nights I had spent in the miklat, the boys took pleasure in testing my poor Hebrew as they held up a plastic horse (סוּס-sus), cow (פָּרָה-pa-RAH), and chicken (עוף-of). My other neighbor, who lives below me, turned off the light so the children could rest. I found the darkness strangely comforting. No one spoke. Instead, we all looked at our phones, searching for news, quietly praying that there were no reports of missiles landing.

Today was Purim in Jerusalem, and I planned to go to shul in the morning to hear the second reading of Megillat Esther. The story, which dates back to about 356 BCE, recounts how Mordechai and Esther (mostly Esther) saved the Jews from what may have been the first genocidal plot against the Jewish people.

After 10 minutes, we received a message from the Home Front Command informing Jerusalemites that it was now safe to leave the shelter. I go upstairs, take a shower, get dressed, make coffee, have breakfast, practice my Hebrew. Against the backdrop of a war with a country whose dictators both preach and act out a religious ideology of genocide aimed at Israel, the Jewish people, and America, I prepare to go to shul, where I will hear a story about a genocidal ideology directed at the Jewish people that took place 2,381 years ago.

By 8:30 p.m., the sirens had sounded five more times, four of which occurred during a traditional Purim Seudah meal I was attending. Most of us headed across the street to an underground parking garage. I got to know my fellow guests well. What our enemies don’t realize is that each missile launched, each threat made, each siren sounding, each death brings us closer together as a people, reinforces our identity as Jews, and strengthens our resolve.

Just another day in the life of a Jew in Israel.

Leave a comment

My one regret after making Aliyah last July is that I didn’t show my friend Patrick how I make challah. If I had, maybe he would have made Aliyah, too. He had asked me several times, but I never got around to it. Patrick and I were part of the same small but vibrant modern Orthodox Jewish community in Oakland. We argued a lot about politics, but our common ground was Israel, Judaism, and challah.

I started making challah about two years ago for reasons I didn’t understand at the time. I have nothing against bakery challah. Most Jews go that route, and that’s fine. I just felt a compelling need to make the challah I would bless at my Shabbat table.

Oakland Shabbat challahs.

My challah recipe is simple: quality bread flour, sugar, salt, oil, eggs, and yeast dissolved in warm water, which I feed with a little sugar. I fashion my challah from a vision of a golden, flaky crust and a moist crumb (the inside) that pulls apart in strands.

My first try yielded two small, dense challahs. Probably a yeast issue. I didn’t lose hope. Instead, I imagined them as closer to what the Jews ended up with in their haste to leave Egypt. Then I did a little research and learned that braided, white-flour challah didn’t appear until the 1400s, and the fluffy, strand-like texture I was seeking came even later, after the Fleischmann brothers introduced their mass-produced yeast to the American market in the 1870s.

I solved my yeast issue with a food thermometer. I make sure the water is around 40°C (105°F) and add a generous tablespoon of sugar for my yeast to feast on. After a few tries, I could tell by touch when the water was the right temperature. After about ten minutes, I gently stir my yeast mixture into a bowl containing two eggs, sugar, salt, and oil. I measure my flour precisely in grams (540, depending on the flour), but I always adjust for the kitchen atmosphere, which changes weekly. With a fork, I gradually incorporate the flour into the bowl mixture, observing it transform into a moist but not too moist dough. I started out using a KitchenAid for kneading, but it didn’t feel right giving up my dough to a cold, mechanical hook. I was making the centerpiece for my Shabbat dinner. I needed my own hands to connect directly with this living, growing, spiritual medium.

I press my palm into the center of my dough, take one end, and fold it over the other, all the while thinking, I’m doing this for Shabbat. This quickly evolved into a meditation that I knead into my dough with each fold. I listen to the dough with my hands, waiting for its texture to tell me when it’s ready to rest. Usually about fourteen minutes.

I place my dough in a lightly oiled proofing bowl and cover it with plastic wrap (not a wet towel). Within a couple of hours, my dough usually doubles in size unless my mind wanders during the kneading, and I didn’t fold enough Shabbat thoughts into it. I gently press the dough with my hand and let it rest for another hour and a half. It will double again, if it wishes.

I flour my granite countertop, then roll out my dough into a long log. I cut it in half with my dough scraper. I take one half and cut it into three equal pieces. I roll each piece, then braid them into a loaf. I do the same with the other half, all the time, holding the thought that I am doing this for Shabbat. I cover my challahs with plastic and wait about an hour for another rise—but not too much of a rise. I crack open two eggs and place the yolks in a cup. I want the yolks at room temperature when I’m ready to coat my challahs.

I paint my challahs a transparent yellow and then sprinkle them with poppy seeds. I bake my challahs at 177°C (~350°F) for about twenty to twenty-five minutes (every oven is different). I know my challahs are ready when they turn to gold.

Even in Jerusalem and after two years, my challahs are still a work in progress. But these tasted good.

In the classic movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, we witness Richard Dreyfuss’s character obsessing over the meaning of a vision he has of a mountain. So much so that, with his two hands and a lot of garden plants and earth, he crafts a miniature mountain in his living room, hoping that by doing so, he will learn the meaning of his vision. When he sees a news report on TV about strange activity at a mountain in Wyoming that resembles his model, Dreyfuss knows he must go there (watch the movie for the ending).

From our Torah, we learn that G-d told Avraham he was giving the land of Israel to Avraham’s offspring, his descendants—the Jews—as “an everlasting possession.” Clearly, G-d was insistent that Avraham get the message, because he repeated it to him on three separate occasions (Genesis 12:1-2, 7; 13:14-15; and 17:8). Because this message of faith was meant to be passed down through the generations, G-d, being G-d, didn’t want to leave anything to chance. So, he made the same promise to Isaac (Genesis 26:3-4) and then to Jacob, whom he told twice (Genesis 28:13 and 35:12). But much went down after Jacob. Memories fade, Jews get enslaved. Then Moshe comes along and frees the Jews. The Jews wander in the desert, miracles happen. Still, the Jews complain. So, after much desert wandering, to hedge his bets, G-d instructs Moshe to speak to the children of Israel and tell them that “you shall possess the land and settle in it, for to you have I given you the land to possess it” (Numbers 33:53).

In January 2025, approximately 3,762 years after G-d first told Avraham that he was giving the land of Israel to the Jews, and after about a year of making my own Shabbat challahs, blessing them, and handing pieces to my guests, I received the memo—or, rather, the vision.

Share

In relative terms, my decision to make Aliyah was sudden. It came to me in the space of less than ten days, during which I gained a clarity of sorts that culminated at my Shabbat table. I hard no heavenly voice, nor did I experience an epiphany, and making Aliyah was not on my mind during my challah-making sessions. The best way I can explain it is that the many reasons for making Aliyah converged all at once, and the practical reasons I wouldn’t consider Aliyah no longer mattered. Was it my Shabbat challah-making meditation that induced this clarity?

The last challahs I made in Oakland, July 4, 2025, before leaving for Israel on July 6.

Before I started publishing with the Times of Israel, Substack, and Instagram, I was on Facebook, where I mainly posted about music, Israel, and politics. Nothing I posted received more favorable reactions than pictures of my challahs. I’ve always understood these praises not as a compliment to how my challahs looked—many left much to be desired—but rather as a y’yasher koach, an encouragement for the strength of what I was doing. These imperfect-looking challahs of mine, these spiritual vehicles of Shabbat, had in some way moved even my non-observant friends. Had my challahs also moved me to Israel?

It’s fair to say that engaging weekly in a three-thousand-year-old ritual central to Judaism, one packed with spirituality, can be a weighty experience. Either by coincidence or design, I was developing a vision of Israel without even realizing it. Then, on a Shabbat night in early January, after my meal (and several glasses of wine), like Dreyfuss seeing his mountain on TV, I looked at the half-eaten challahs on my Shabbat table and found myself in Israel. Just like that, I achieved clarity. My time in Oakland and the U.S. was up, and I had to make Aliyah—there was no reason not to. So, here I am, in Jerusalem, still making challah. But now, I’m trying to get a handle on this force that brought me here and figure out where it’s leading me as I dwell in the land G-d first promised to Avraham and his descendants as an everlasting possession.

Share

Leave a comment

Jew hatred graffiti around Oakland’s Lake Merritt

Shortly after landing in Israel, and well under the influence of Jerusalem’s spell, I submitted an opinion piece to a Bay Area Jewish news outlet. In it, I spelled out the failure of Jewish legacy organizations and laid out a proven strategy to combat Jew hatred. Additionally, I gave credit to the Oakland Jewish Alliance, the Jewish Coalition of Berkeley, the Jewish Community of Piedmont, and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition in the South Bay—grassroots organizations that got their hands dirty and did the heavy lifting. They did the stuff Jewish legacy organizations declined to do.

Two months later, my opinion piece was rejected because, in the managing editor’s words, “It was not directly tied to current news or events, which is one of the first things we look for in opinions of this sort. (Yes, I know Jew hatred is a constant.)”

Seriously? Jew hatred is not current news? Outlining an effective strategy to combat Jew hatred is not tied to current events?

I had to laugh because the response I received perfectly illustrated my thesis: Jewish legacy organizations—here, legacy Jewish media—have their heads in the sand.

My rejected opinion piece now appears on the Times of Israel blog page. Please support my algorithm by checking it out: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/fear-denial-and-the-jewish-american-response-to-jew-hatred/

I decided to publish my opinion piece now and with the Times of Israel because, even though it centered on the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, it’s a story repeated in too many Jewish communities in America. Equally important, the very rejection by Jewish legacy media is the story. Let me know what you think in the comments.

For my Red Heifer subscribers and readers, I have bonus material that supplements the Times of Israel article. The Red Heifer takes care of its own. Again, let me know what you think. Here we go.

How to Fight Jew Hatred and Chew Gum at the Same Time in Three Easy Lessons

JEWS HAVE BEEN MURDERED. THE OLD STRATEGIES ARE NOT WORKING: Fundamentally, Jew hatred in America must be addressed through a strategy that recognizes the gravity of the problem. To be clear, Jew hatred in America has led to the murder of Jews, and the climate is only getting worse. What’s more, Jews are facing formidable, well-funded, and well-organized Jew hatred groups. The old strategies for fighting Jew hatred are not working. Jewish philanthropists and legacy organizations must be prepared to reallocate funds to implement new strategies and respond to Jew hatred far more aggressively than they have. This requires a paradigm shift.

LESSON ONE: RECOGNIZE WHAT JEWS ARE UP AGAINST: American Jews are facing widespread, structural, institutionalized Jew hatred. It is dogmatic and ideologically driven. You can’t reason with this hate. Facts don’t matter. As Jews, we must stop deluding ourselves and define the problem as virulent, systematic Jew hatred that has already proven deadly.

The result of this virulent Jew hatred is that Jews live under the threat of violence and are treated differently because they are Jewish. Jews must take this discrimination and the threat to our safety and security more seriously and respond to it more aggressively.

LESSON TWO: THE PARADIGM SHIFT: We, as Jews, are being discriminated against because we are Jews. This discrimination is a civil rights issue. See it that way and talk about it that way. Stop framing our discrimination as antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric.

Jews are the oldest and most persecuted minority community in the world. Don’t fall into the trap of talking about our discrimination or responding in terms of Israel and pro-Israel advocacy. That position only sets up a counterargument that takes the issue outside the context of civil rights. Take Jew hatred out of the partisan political realm. We, as Jews, are the objects of discrimination. This discrimination is a civil rights issue. That’s our mantra. We, as Jews, are being discriminated against because we are Jewish, not because of our political beliefs. Our discrimination is not about Israel.

Our Jewish civil rights movement is about ending Jew hatred, the threat of violence, and discrimination against Jews. Call it Jew hatred, not antisemitism, not anti-Israel rhetoric. Take control of the paradigm.

Ending Jew hatred is not a partisan issue. Don’t let Jew haters turn it into one. Jew hatred and discrimination are civil rights issues, and ending Jew hatred is a civil rights movement.

LESSON THREE: FOLLOW THE PLAN: We must use the same tools and tactics as other civil rights movements. We must openly demonstrate pride in our Jewish identity and create social, political, and legal consequences for Jew-hatred. We achieve this with:

• Impact litigation;

• Political lobbying and organizing;

• Social tactics: change the culture, challenge the status quo, call out Jew hatred;

• Creating social consequences to Jew hatred;

• The Imposition of legal and other consequences for Jew-hatred. Jew hatred has gone on without consequences long enough. Mobilize against Jew hatred in a way that assures there are consequences to Jew hatred behavior;

• Demonstrate pride in Jewish heritage through proactive Jewish activities that the entire community can see. This serves as a deterrent to Jewish hate activity;

• Grassroots mobilization. Every successful civil rights movement involved extensive grassroots mobilization, where the community showed up. This is where legacy Jewish organizations have not been effective;

Much of what I say here is inspired by and drawn from civil rights attorney Brooke Goldstein of the Lawfare Project (https://www.thelawfareproject.org/) and EndJewHatred (https://www.endjewhatred.com). Many of Brooke Goldstein’s ideas parallel my own. Ms. Goldstein and her EndJewishHatred organization, however, have not only been effective in framing the problem of Jew hatred but also in taking action against it.

What gives the Red Heifer—grazing in the land of milk and honey—the right to tell Jewish Americans what to do? There are at least 6 million Jews in North America, and, excluding Israel, at least 1.9 million Jews in the rest of the world. That’s a lot of Jews. That population, together with the Jewish state and the Jews who dwell there, make up the Jewish Nation. While the United States Constitution speaks of rights and liberties individuals possess, our Torah speaks of the obligations Jews have to one another. From my Jerusalem vantage point, reflecting on my experiences in Oakland, California, it’s not a question of what rights I, as a Jew living in Israel, have, but rather the obligation we, as Jews, have to one another to speak out. Besides, it’s a long-standing Jewish tradition to serve up good-hearted criticism of one another.

Leave a comment

I am pleased to announce that, for reasons unknown to me, The Times of Israel has seen fit to publish my words on its blog. I can only speculate that the Red Heifer has her ways beyond my understanding. I will continue to publish on Substack along with The Times of Israel, though the stories will likely differ from site to site. I haven’t quite figured it all out yet. For now, please be a dear and feed my algorithms by checking out my first Times of Israel publication:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-story-guns-tell-about-israel-and-america/

May the Force Be with You. My Half-Year Aliyah Review

A little over six months ago, after living a rather comfortable life in Oakland, California, where I raised my family in a small but intimate modern Orthodox community, I high-tailed it out of there to start over in the promised land. It was a sudden decision for me. I had not seriously considered Aliyah until, over about a two-week period, I realized that my time in Oakland was up and that I belonged in Israel. A multitude of reasons seemed to converge all at once, effectively eliminating any reason why I shouldn’t make Aliyah.

My daughter and her family are here, which helps. But for the most part, I came to Israel as a single person, knowing only a handful of people. It’s been work, and I’ve had to go beyond myself to integrate, which is what I believe G-d had in mind. Still, every day I wake up feeling grateful to be in Israel. I’m part of this Jewish milieu with French, Australian, British, American, Brooklyn, South African, Canadian, Russian, North African, Yiddish, and Hebrew accents. All of us are connected by this land and our Torah, even the non-observant. Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with this connection and the force behind it. Whatever it is, it has led me and others to leave our host country and make Aliyah to Israel.

To put this force in perspective, there are about 4.9 million adult Jews in America. Of that population, 3,500 made Aliyah in 2025. A mere speck. But we all came under the influence of a force powerful enough to impel us to leave the comforts of America and move to the promised land, surrounded by enemies who wish to wipe us off the face of the map, and where there’s no Trader Joe’s. It’s meshuga.

I’m working on a story now about this impelling force. How do you explain its power to lift only a few from an American, largely pro-Zionist population of millions? Meshuga, right? I’m interviewing recent Olim and researching, hoping for some insight. Perhaps in a month I’ll have something to report. Please stay tuned, and feel free to point me to sources—spiritual and otherwise—that may help explain the force.

A Uniquely Israeli Short Story and the Force

I want to learn Hebrew, so I’m trying to get into an Ulpan class. In December, I show up at Ulpan Beit Ha’Am office in downtown Jerusalem because I couldn’t reach anyone by phone, and my emails went unanswered. I speak with a woman who was nice enough to explain how their classes work. She writes my name and number on a Post-it note, slips it under her other papers, and says that when they begin the February beginners’ Hebrew class, someone will call me. Two weeks ago, I get a call from a woman who only speaks Hebrew about the beginner’s Hebrew class. This is what I love about Israel. Only in the promised land would someone who speaks no English call someone who speaks no Hebrew about a beginner’s course for those who speak no Hebrew. But what makes this extra special is that, somehow, I understood her. My theory is that the same force that had impelled me to make Aliyah also endowed me with the ability to understand what this woman was saying to me in Hebrew. I begin Ulpan on February 2^nd.

To be continued. May the force be with you.

Leave a comment