{"id":14879,"date":"2024-03-15T13:14:51","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T11:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=14879"},"modified":"2024-03-15T13:14:51","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T11:14:51","slug":"rabbis-not-supporting-the-war-against-hamas-are-acting-irresponsibly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/rabbis-not-supporting-the-war-against-hamas-are-acting-irresponsibly\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbis not supporting the war against Hamas are acting irresponsibly"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 7 confirmed that calling for ceasefires prematurely, as many of these \u201creligious leaders\u201d also did in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, is peace-posturing and not peace-seeking.<\/h3>\n

Jewish history resounds with noble leaders taking responsibility. God teaches Cain, \u201cYou are your brother\u2019s keeper.\u201d Moses says \u201cHineni,\u201d here I am. Esther says \u201cIf I\u2019m to perish, I shall perish,\u201d while outing herself to Ahasuerus as a responsible Jew. And, every day, in Gaza, up North, and throughout Israel, officers and soldiers yell \u201cAcharai,\u201d follow me, taking achrayut, \u201cresponsibility,\u201d to defend us \u2013 and Western civilization.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Bibi bleated: \u201cIf they had grabbed me by my coat lapels and said, \u2018Look, there\u2019s going to be a terrible disaster,\u2019 I promise you that I would have handled it.\u201d That\u2019s how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the increasingly in-artful dodger, dodged responsibility for the 2021 Meron stampede that killed 45 celebrants.<\/p>\n

Days later, Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef was equally dishonorable in championing ultra-Orthodox draft dodging. Speaking for \u201call the ultra-Orthodox\u201d \u2013 insulting many who have served heroically and given generously, since October 7, he whined: \u201cIf you force us to go to the army, we\u2019ll all move abroad.\u201d Despite all his yeshiva time \u2013 without military distractions \u2013 this Rav Yosef missed the Talmudic teaching that \u201cAll of Israel is responsible for one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, across the ocean and the political aisle, 600 American Jewish rabbis and cantors made dodgy, irresponsible statements urging Joe Biden to bully Israel into a ceasefire. Most of their letter unfairly castigated Israel from their well-paid perches 6,000 miles away from Hamas \u2013 and Hezbollah, whose aggression they chose to simply overlook. Accusing Israel of going down the path of \u201cnever-ending war,\u201d was a \u201cHappy Ramadan\u201d gift to Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah, who benefit most from Biden-Bibi tensions.<\/p>\n

Most disgraceful is the letter\u2019s sloppy phrase about \u201ccontinuing fighting along the Lebanon border.\u201d Implying that \u201cfighting\u201d simply erupted legitimizes Hezbollah\u2019s one-sided, immoral assault on civilians.<\/p>\n

These rabbis clearly only read half of Isaiah 58:7. While urging \u201cClothe the naked,\u201d God warns: \u201cDon\u2019t ignore your own flesh and blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grandiosely characterizing the petition as \u201can opportunity to save life, the primary duty in the Jewish tradition,\u201d one rabbi earned gold medals in shortsightedness and self-righteousness.<\/p>\n

October 7 confirmed that calling for ceasefires prematurely, as many of these \u201creligious leaders\u201d also did in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, is peace-posturing and not peace-seeking.<\/p>\n

Against evil enemies like Hamas and Hezbollah, well-timed, well-fought wars are more likely to yield lasting peace. Had Israel hit Hamas harder, earlier, thousands of Israelis \u2013 and Palestinians \u2013 would be alive today.<\/p>\n

Similarly, how dare Rabbi Jill Jacobs, whose organization T\u2019ruah spearheaded the petition, allege that Israel \u201cwas not concerned about collateral damage to Palestinian civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the new blood libel. The carnage is heartbreaking but the dilemmas are complex \u2013 and terrifying. And yes, Israel must take some responsibility for better managing the Gaza chaos.<\/p>\n

But judge us in context.<\/p>\n

America never provided humanitarian aid mid-war to enemies who attacked it.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s low ratio of one-or-two civilians killed for each Hamas terrorist killed, amid excruciatingly difficult urban warfare, proves the IDF minimizes \u201ccollateral damage\u201d more effectively than other democratic armies, including America\u2019s.<\/p>\n

With un-Jewish rabbis like that, it\u2019s not surprising to see Jonathan Glazer use his Oscar win off a Holocaust-related film, The Zone of Interest, to \u201crefute\u201d his \u201cJewishness\u201d \u2013 whatever that means \u2013 while blaming the \u201coccupation\u201d for everything.<\/p>\n

Shirking is easy. You create a simplified world. Netanyahu and his dwindling corps of groupies never have to ask \u201cHow did we mismanage Meron or Gaza?\u201d Instead, they smear all critics as political assassins.<\/p>\n

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PRO-ISRAEL advocates protest across from a JVP rally in Atlanta, last Tuesday. (credit: Cheryl Dorchinsky\/Atlanta Israel Coalition)<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yosef and his devotees offer daily seminars in free-loading, demanding more subsidies while ducking the basic responsibilities of self-defense \u2013 which could begin by organizing the 66,000 draft-age yeshiva boys into civil defense squads.<\/p>\n

And because political extremists parallel one another in their self-righteousness, America\u2019s remote-control moralists fling holier-than-thou, long-distance, thunderbolts of judgment, endangering our kids, and us, soldiers and civilians, so that they can feel better in Brooklyn Heights.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t envy these shirkers, draft-dodgers, and blame-Israel-firsters. I cast my lot with the Israeli mainstream \u2013 supported by most Jews and many democracy-lovers worldwide. Together, we mourn heroes like Amishar Ben-David, a 43-year-old Commando Brigade commander and father of five, killed last week.<\/p>\n

Our smug rabbis might only see this martyr as a \u201cright-wing settler,\u201d from the \u201cextremist\u201d settlement Eli, and a cousin of the controversial Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.<\/p>\n

I, however, hail him as a hero and mensch. This high-school teacher donated his kidney to a stranger last year \u2013 beaming that day \u201clike a groom at his wedding.\u201d Ben-David, the 18th genuine justice warrior to fall from Eli\u2019s legendary pre-military academy, died so that we can live safely. I regret not meeting him \u2013 and the hundreds of others we have lost, Left and Right, religious and non-religious.<\/p>\n

These positive and negative role models demonstrate why Judaism makes responsibility a keystone value achrayut echoes the word \u201caher,\u201d other. Leaders who are unresponsive to others and who don\u2019t respect their rivals, create cultures of irresponsibility and demonization. If you\u2019re only focused on your supporters and your political survival, your soul shrinks, your vision narrows \u2013 and the catastrophes start accumulating.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the sanctimonious 600 and ultra-evaders let others take bullets for them, literally.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t raise our kids to die. But we do raise them to live purposeful, meaningful, and responsible lives, intertwined with those \u201caher\u201d \u2013 and responsive to them. Because they are willing to die for others, for us, they also know how to live and love and dance and win.<\/p>\n

Published by Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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October 7 confirmed that calling for ceasefires prematurely, as many of these \u201creligious leaders\u201d also did in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021, is peace-posturing and not peace-seeking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-israel-diaspora-relations","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14881,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14879\/revisions\/14881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}