From the beginning of time, people have been lying about Jews. From Pharaoh, who accused us of allying with Egypt’s enemies; to the early church, that damned us for killing G-d; to the benighted bigots of medieval times claiming that we had horns and drank the blood of children; to the protean anti-Semites of the modern era, where capitalists would claim that Jews were communists and communists would claim that Jews were capitalists. Jews have always been perceived as the dark side of Western civilization. Whatever was worst, that’s what we were.
Shame on all of them.
But now, shame on us.
Rarely, through four thousand years of lies, have we ever been so mindless, or so seduced by our environment, or so intimidated by the outside world, or so overwhelmed by media pollution, or so self-loathing, that we have stooped to believing the lies told about us. But now we do.
Awake from your slumber, because we have committed a new sin. We need to beat our chest—hard—”For the sin we have committed of believing the worst of ourselves.”
In our defense before the divine court, we could try to point out that today there is a vast array of liars, heavily credentialed all, that are spreading the lies. They are Human Rights organizations (so called), the “United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” Francesca Albanese (long impressive title, but otherwise just call her the liar-in-chief), an army of reporters, celebrated college professors, politicians from all over the map, and on and on.
And in our defense, we might also mention that the lies about us are incessant, detailed, graphic, and spread by the vast power of the internet.
Still, our behavior is inexcusable. The lies are so blatant that we should be inured to them by now. And we would be, if we were conscious. Awaken from your slumber. Stop believing the worst of ourselves.
If we were awake, we would know all we needed to know from an incident far removed from today’s Gaza. Back in 2002, at the height of the suicide bombings of the second intifada, the Israeli army went into a town called Jenin because it was a center of terrorist activity. Palestinian spokesmen, with the help of a fawning media, proclaimed that there had been a great massacre of civilians, with 2000 dead, buried hurriedly in mass graves to hide the evidence. José Saramago, the great Portuguese Nobel prize winning writer that no one has ever heard of, expounded that the destruction of Jenin was “worse than Auschwitz.” It turns out that, in fact, there were no mass graves, and the reported death toll was off by a factor of 40. There were not 2000 dead, but 53, almost all of whom were the terrorists Israel was going after. This lie was nothing less than a modern blood libel; but if you had been waiting for an apology, you’d still be waiting.
This episode offers clear evidence of the deceitful collaboration of terrorists, media, and the so-called intelligentsia. And evidence of the reversal of moral reality as well—the Israelis were falsely accused of doing exactly what the terrorists were in fact trying to do. But unfortunately, tragically, shamefully today we don’t see the very same evidence and draw the proper conclusions. Instead, we believe the worst of ourselves.
Awaken from your slumber…
During the past year we have been buffeted by a virtual hurricane of lies. How are we being lied to? Let me count the ways…
First, we are all reliant on mass media, but when it comes to Israel there is virtually nothing credible to rely on. I’m reminded of the old joke that in the Soviet Union there were two major papers, Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (News). The joke was that in Pravda there’s no Izvestia and in Izvestia there’s no Pravda. How bad is it today? A recent analysis showed that the BBC, once the gold standard of international news, violated its own editorial guidelines 1,553 times in the four months after October 7, 2023. That’s over 12 times a day. The BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism and presented Israel as an aggressor.
Here’s one particularly appalling example, especially meaningful today as we mourn Oct. 7. The BBC recently aired the incredible documentary, “We Will Dance Again” about the Nova festival. Good for them. But BBC refused to air it until references to Hamas as terrorists were removed. “Terrorism is a loaded word,” explained BBC world editor John Simpson, “which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn — who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”
Churchill must be rolling over in his grave. “We are fighting,” he said so powerfully, “to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man.” Here’s the modern BBC version: “We are fighting some people we think are the bad guys. But who knows? Who’s to say? To each their own. Whatever.”
Another prominent lie: the casualty figures from the quote “Gaza Ministry of Health.” Unquote. Which sounds very official, until you realize that a) it doesn’t distinguish between innocent civilian and terrorist and b) is run by Hamas—who have publicly stated that high numbers of dead Palestinian civilians help their cause. So to be clear, Hamas raped, murdered, and plundered with a fervor and ferocity that would put a Cossack mob to shame…but they would never, ever, ever, lie about statistics.
Sure.
Awaken from your slumber. Stop believing the worst of ourselves. If you drill down on statistics, and you don’t have to drill down very far, the Israelis have conducted the best urban warfare in history when it comes to sparing civilian life.
But what about all those blatant attacks on civilian targets? Don’t believe everything you hear. Remember the Israeli attack on Al Ahli hospital that killed 500 innocent civilians in one terrible bombing? Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s long-time Middle East “expert”—geherst, an expert taka—reported that “The missile hit the hospital not long after dark…The explosion destroyed Al-Ahli Hospital…The building was flattened.” Except there was no such attack. Instead, an errant rocket from Islamic Jihad aimed at Israel hit the parking lot and killed a few dozen Palestinians. Bowen “the expert” later admitted that “we got that wrong”—how exactly do you get “a hospital was flattened” wrong? Don’t ask—but stated that he “didn’t regret his reporting.” Of course he didn’t. He did exactly what he was assigned to do, and that is cast aspersions on Israel’s morality. Awaken from your slumber.
But how about all the destruction? Perhaps 75% of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or severely damaged. And that’s true. You can see it with your own eyes. But what’s also true is the report from the Israeli intelligence agencies, that reads as follows: “After consolidating all Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, based on what we saw in maps and documents and what was actually discovered, it is clear that Gaza was constructed as one large military base, including the use of kindergartens, schools, clinics, hospitals, and mosques.” To note one excruciating example, do you remember the six hostages murdered in cold blood just a few weeks ago? The entrance to the terror tunnel where they were held was through a child’s bedroom, with a mural of Mickey Mouse on the walls. It is hard to imagine a more blatant violation of international laws of war that call for a strict distinction between civilian and military; and it shouldn’t be hard to know exactly where to place the moral and legal opprobrium—squarely on the shoulders of Hamas. But that’s only if we are not smothered in self-loathing, believing the worst about ourselves.
Awaken from your slumber!
Still, isn’t there evidence of Israeli indifference to Palestinian life? No. I would just point out that which should be perfectly obvious to anyone who is awake. If Israel were indifferent, G-d forbid, the civilian casualty figure wouldn’t be 20k, it would be 200k. And if Israel were genocidal, G-d forbid, another mendacious claim I’ll address later, the casualty figure wouldn’t be 20k, or 200k. It would be 2 million. G-d forbid.
Awaken from your slumber. Stop believing the worst of ourselves.
But aren’t the Israelis starving the Gazans? Actually, no. The “Famine Early Warning Systems Network” claimed that the Gazans were only receiving up to 63 per cent of their caloric needs. The Famine Review Committee of the UN, of all people, found that Gazans in fact had been receiving up to 157 per cent of their caloric needs—or in layman’s terms, a 1200 calorie a day excess. So instead of believing the lie that Israelis were starving Gazans, we should anticipate an article accusing Israelis of killing Palestinians with obesity. The FRC also took note—which no one else seems to—of the two new goods crossings Israel built to deliver humanitarian aid after the Erez Crossing was destroyed by Hamas on Oct. 7. The Israelis have pumped a million tons of aid—literally—a million tons into Gaza since Oct. 7. Some starvation.
Awaken from your slumber.
Another lie is that Israel has unfairly targeted UNWRA for collaborating with Hamas. The UN did an investigation—and of course we must believe the UN—that only 9 out of 2000 UNWRA workers were members of Hamas. Sure. It turns out that Hamas was using the very headquarters of UNRWA in Gaza to recruit new members and to store rockets, explosives and drones. I can just hear the UNWRA officials sounding like Sgt. Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes—“I know nothing!” It makes belief in UNWRA’s innocence pretty hard to believe—if you’re awake.
Awaken from your slumber.
Consider Israel’s recent breathtakingly audacious pager operation in Lebanon. (We’ll call it “Operation Can You Hear Me Now?”). Kenneth Roth, the anti-Israel zealot who ran Human Rights Watch for 30 years, condemned Israel’s “use of booby traps” that could tempt and injure civilians. In fact, this operation was the most closely targeted anti-terrorist action in history. It was as close as you could get to the science fiction idea of pressing a button and eliminating all the bad guys. So why the critique from Roth and his ilk? Because the issue here is not how Israel defended itself. The issue here is that Israel defended itself. In the eyes of these critics, no defense of Israel is acceptable. Google the phrase “Israel has no right to defend itself.” Google that. You’ll get about 215,000,000 results in 0.53 seconds. Literally. I know. I tried it. Get it now? Awaken from your slumber!
Repent for believing each of these lies, and for believing the worst about ourselves. Awaken from your slumber.
If we have sinned regarding all these issues, how much the more when we consider the greatest lie of all, the accusation of genocide. The accusation is as ridiculous as it is horrible, and as demonstrably false as it is incendiary. Consider: First, quantitatively: 20k Palestinian civilians died—tragically, to be sure—over the course of this past year. By comparison, during Operation Reinhard at the beginning of the Shoah, nearly 15,000 Jews were murdered every day for a hundred days. That’s genocide. My Alex’ partner Bari has an aunt who has charted her family’s fate during the Holocaust. She alone has counted nearly 1000 relatives who perished. That’s genocide. The relatively small number of 20k, through a year of urban warfare, explains why there is currently a bizarre and macabre attempt to expand the death toll. Anti-Israel pundits are trying to multiply the already inflated Hamas health figures on a speculative basis—calculating what the impact of disease, starvation, environmental degradation, etc. might be in the future. So it’s not 20k, its 80k. No, 160k. No, 200k. It reminds me of the Passover seder: 10 plagues. But not 10 plagues; 50/200/250.
Second, and more important from a moral point of view, is the qualitative distinction. The Germans didn’t kill innocent Jews as collateral damage in the German pursuit of Jewish terrorists. Murdering innocent Jews was the goal, not the tragic byproduct.
Third, from a legal perspective, genocide depends on intent. Exactly how many steps and how much effort has to be put into saving civilian life before we decide that the Israeli intent is not to cause civilian death but rather to prevent it? I won’t go into all the details of the leaflets being dropped, the cell phone warnings of imminent action, the safe corridors that are intended to protect civilian life—efforts that are simply unparalleled by any other army in the world, including the American army. Meanwhile, Hamas and Hezbollah are indeed explicitly genocidal organizations. But when they act out on their genocidal aims, Israel is blamed. The irony is nearly unbearable.
Deeper still, and even more crucial, is perspective number 4: What we know personally. Israeli soldiers are not aliens from another planet. We know the people who supposedly are committing the worst of all possible crimes. We know them. How? They are us. They are our children. Think of our brave lone soldiers. Adam and Jesse Talmud, Sam Brandt, Haley Nagelberg. I defy you to find a finer group of young people anywhere on this planet. And we are supposed to suspend our personal knowledge and believe that they are all mass murderers? Seriously? And then there’s Jon Cohen, son in law of the Safeers, Tomer Zach, son in law of the Goldmans, and the children of Moshe and Cheryl Attas, and dozens of Alan and Ruth Schechter’s nieces and nephews, and my Alex and Joseph’s wrestling teammate Yitzy Peret who was seriously wounded in Lebanon (and for whom we pray today), and on and on (and I apologize to anyone unnamed here whose service in the IDF deserves to be richly honored and respected). What a shande that we would believe the worst of them! Who are you going to believe, some pompous talking head with a British accent who never met a terrorist she didn’t love, or your own eyes? As you know, our beloved Bashe Rockman recently made aliyah. This is a girl so sweet I was afraid she would melt in the rain on the way home from shul on shabbos. But we are supposed to believe that the second she enlists in the IDF, she’ll turn into a raging genocidal maniac?!
Stop it, just stop. Stop believing the worst of ourselves. Awaken from your slumber.
Before I conclude, there are two points I must clarify, so that you don’t get the wrong impression. First, in case you hadn’t heard, war is hell. I recognize, and we all must recognize, that the Oct. 7 murders and kidnappings and rapes have triggered mass destruction. Where once were buildings, there are now ruins. Innocent life has been destroyed. We must be willing to take responsibility for the conduct of the war, and pray for all innocent victims, on both sides—which I do publicly every shabbat—and—somehow, I don’t know how yet—work toward reconciliation and reconstruction. But Israel choosing to defend itself in this war makes us human, not diabolic.
Second, my remarks today have nothing to do with questions like right vs. left, Netanyahu vs. Gallant, Israeli policy choices, etc. The struggle about what to sacrifice for the rescue of hostages goes back at least 2000 years, and I won’t indulge in discussions of Israeli politics, about which I know nothing authoritative. The political trivialities detract from the real issue: our willingness to believe every single lie that comes down the road, even lies about our own children, G-d forbid. Shame on us.
That is a sin. Nothing less. For the sin of believing the worst of ourselves, slach lanu mchal lanu kaper lanu—forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
So wake up from your slumber. It is October 7. It is still October 7. It will remain October 7 until every hostage is home. Nothing has changed, and we must persevere. To do that, we need to believe the best about ourselves. To believe in our children. To believe in the IDF. To believe in the Jewish people. To believe in Israel. To believe… in a future.
Ken yehi ratzon. So may it be G-d’s will.