It has been just over two weeks since the catastrophic and devastating attacks in Israel. These attacks have hit home up close and personal.
A teacher in our school received the terrible news that her precious 26-year-old daughter had been murdered in the desert at the Nova Music Festival. The heroic mother has been interviewed all over the major media where she has made a very strong point of the fact that her daughter and most of the victims at that dance, and for that matter, many of the victims of the Oct. 7 barbaric attacks were peace-loving Israelis who were very focused on living in peace with their neighbors in Gaza. The reward for their good intentions: brutal and sadistic rape, torture and murder.
I would like to focus on what has transpired since that terrible day outside of Israel.
We have witnessed shockingly, the most heartless reactions in many quarters. An elected official in Congress has refused point blank to condemn the decapitation and burning alive of babies! Academics at the highest level, have viciously attacked and blamed Israel — the victim — for these horrific attacks! Presidents of the most elite colleges in the country have remained silent in the face of their professors and student groups vocally going after Israel and ignoring — and sometimes applauding — the unthinkable brutality perpetrated on Oct. 7 against innocent men, women and children!
How is this happening in the United States of America?
Can you imagine what these very same academics, college leaders and student groups would do if someone would not only refuse to condemn, but would applaud the tragic murder of George Floyd? There is no doubt that those people would be expelled, shunned, canceled and blacklisted by society — and rightfully so!
Why is it that when it comes to the unprecedented massacre of over 1,400 Israelis, this carnage does not deserve unequivocal condemnation?
To think that at the highest level of academia, at colleges that young people work so hard to be accepted into like Harvard and Columbia, we are witnessing this total bankruptcy of what is moral and right!
There is a quote that is often attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”
I would like to address some of those vicious and baseless lies:
1) Gaza is the largest open-air prison in the world occupied by Israel.
In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza! Gaza has been under the full control of the local populace since that time. Hamas was voted in by the people of Gaza in 2006. They have been in power ever since. They have diverted a majority of the billions in world aid to their own militaristic and terroristic purposes. To blame Israel for the suffering of the Gazans is ludicrous. There is one party to blame – Hamas and their supporters.
2) These attacks were a reaction to the “Israeli Occupation.”
If that is the case, why is it that in 1929, 69 Jews in the City of Hebron were massacred by their Arab neighbors in a manner reminiscent of the Oct. 7 attacks? They cut off hands. They cut off fingers. They held heads over a stove. They gouged out eyes. A Rabbi stood immobile, commending the souls of his Jews to God, and they scalped him. They made off with his brains. There were students among the victims – 12 of whom were American citizens. The attackers slit their throats and mutilated them. They shoved 13-year-old girls, mothers and grandmothers into the blood and raped them in unison.
There was no Jewish state at that time, there was no “occupation” at that time, there were just Jews attempting to live peacefully in the Land of their ancestors. Let us call a spade a spade; the attack was a vicious antisemitic pogrom!
3) Hamas just wants their people to live in peace and Israel simply won’t allow them to.
Is that why the sovereign nation of Israel has been trying to make peace with its neighbors since the late ‘70s and more recently in 1993 with the signing of the Oslo Accords and the 2000 Peace Summit with U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, only to be rejected time after time?
There is no intent for peace from the perspective of Hamas.
What is the famous Hamas chant? “From the river to the sea” — a complete annihilation of Israel. That is what their charter states explicitly!
4) Israel practices genocide against the Palestinians and is an apartheid state.
This is an absolute blood libel against Israel.
The annual growth rate among the Palestinians is 2.31%. The world average is 1.17%. If Israel is indeed practicing genocide, we would not be witnessing a growth rate at all, let alone a robust one.
As far as apartheid, which is a government’s systematic oppression of a people, this is the ultimate definition of “chutzpah!”
Many of those Israelis butchered by Hamas would volunteer to transport sick Gazans to be treated, not in Egyptian or Jordanian hospitals, but in Israeli hospitals. In fact, the niece of Ismael Haniyeh, one of the leaders of Hamas, was treated for months in an Israeli hospital.
Prior to the attack, thousands of Gazans had jobs in Israel. These jobs enabled them to support their families.
If an Israeli citizen would as much as set foot in Gaza, they would be ripped to pieces!
Lies, lies and more lies!
If the world wants this carnage to end, people of goodwill must stand up and declare the truth that Hamas and all the other terror groups must be eradicated if there is any chance at all for peace.
This is a pivotal moment in world history because Hamas has an agenda that ends with world domination.
The Jews are like the canary in the coal mine issuing the warning to the rest of the world.
Remember the famous quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Let us hope and pray that almighty God will protect and preserve Israel and good people the World over, and bring a speedy and decisive victory to the forces of goodness and light.
Rabbi Yossi Blesofsky is the director of the Chabad of Northeast Queens.
