U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Yad Vashem on Thursday to pay tribute to the six million Jews murdered by the Third Reich and its helpers.

During his visit, Huckabee laid a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance, bearing the inscription of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

In a post on X, he stated, “Today, I visited @yadvashem and paid respects to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. We reaffirm our sacred duty: Never Again. The United States stands firmly with Israel in combating antisemitism and preserving the truth of history.”

Huckabee’s visit to Yad Vashem underscores his longstanding support for the Jewish state. In an interview on May 11, he said U.S. President Donald Trump has not abandoned Israel.

Furthermore, Huckabee has expressed a deep personal connection to Israel, referring to it as his “home" on May 6.

The ambassador warned at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on April 28 that if Iran refuses to give up its nuclear ambitions, Trump "won’t be dragged into a war, he’ll lead it."

The National Hockey League has indefinitely suspended Florida Panthers vice chairman and alternate governor Doug Cifu following a series of social media posts that included strong pro-Israel and anti-Hamas statements during an exchange with a Toronto Maple Leafs fan.

During Game 4 of the Panthers' playoff series against the Maple Leafs on May 11, a fan criticizing Florida’s aggressive style of play drew a parallel to the Israel-Hamas war and falsely accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon against Palestinians in Gaza.

Cifu, whose X profile prominently featured Israeli flags and pro-Israel statements, responded with a series of heated posts, including: “Eat s*** 51st state anti-semite loser. Israel now and forever. Until every last Hamas rat is eliminated.”

The NHL deemed Cifu's posts "unacceptable and inappropriate," leading to his suspension from any involvement with the Miami area team or the league pending an in-person meeting with Commissioner Gary Bettman.

Cifu, who is also the CEO of Virtu Financial, co-founded with Panthers owner Vincent Viola, issued a public apology, stating, "My behavior does not reflect the standards of the Florida Panthers organization and the Viola family. I sincerely apologize to all those affected by my comments."

The Panthers, the defending Stanley Cup champions, lead their second-round playoff series against Toronto 3–2, with Game 6 scheduled for Friday in Florida.

A smattering of Arabic words has entered the English language in recent years, the direct result of more than a century of conflict between the Zionist movement and Arab regimes determined to prevent the Jews from exercising self-determination in their historic homeland.

These words include fedayeen, which refers to the armed Palestinian factions; intifada, which denotes successive violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel; and naksa, which pertains to the defeat sustained by the Arab armies in their failed bid to destroy Israel during the June 1967 war.

At the top of this list, however, is nakba, the word in Arabic for “disaster” or “catastrophe.” The emergence of the Palestinian refugee question following Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence is now widely described as “The Nakba,” and the term has become a stick wielded by anti-Zionists to beat Israel and, increasingly, Jews outside.

Last Thursday, a date which the U.N. General Assembly has named for an annual “Nakba Day,” workers at a cluster of Jewish-owned businesses in the English city of Manchester arrived at the building housing their offices to find that it had been badly vandalized overnight. The front of the building, located in a neighborhood with a significant Jewish community, was splattered with red paint. An external wall displayed the crudely painted words “Happy Nakba Day.”

The culprits were a group called Palestine Action, a pro-Hamas collective of activists whose sole mission is to intimidate the Jewish community in the United Kingdom in much the same way as Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists did back in the 1930s. Its equivalents in the United States are groups like Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine, who have shown themselves equally enthused when it comes to intimidating Jewish communities by conducting loud, sometimes violent, demonstrations outside synagogues and other communal facilities, all too frequently showering Jews with the kind of abuse that was once the preserve of neo-Nazis. These thugs, cosplaying with keffiyehs instead of swastika armbands, can reasonably be described as the neo-neo-Nazis.

The overarching point here is that ideological constructs like nakba play a key role in enabling the intimidation they practice. It allows them to diminish the historic victimhood of the Jews, born of centuries of stateless disempowerment, with dimwitted formulas equating the nakba with the Nazi Holocaust. It also enables them to camouflage hate speech and hate crimes as human-rights advocacy—a key reason why law enforcement, in the United States as well as in Canada, Australia and most of Europe, has been found sorely wanting when it comes to dealing with the surge of antisemitism globally.

Part of the response needs to be legislative. That means clamping down on both sides of the Atlantic on groups that glorify designated terrorist organizations by preventing them from fundraising; policing their access to social media; and restricting their demonstrations to static events in a specific location with a predetermined limit on attendees, rather than a march that anyone can join, along with an outright ban on any such events in the environs of Jewish community buildings.

These are not independent civil society organizations, as they pretend to be, but rather extensions of terrorist organizations like Hamas and—in the case of Samidoun, another group describing itself as a “solidarity” organization—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. If we cannot ban them outright, we need to contain them much more effectively. We can start by framing the issue as a national security challenge and worry less about their “freedom of speech.”

But this is also a fight that takes us into the realm of ideas and arguments. We need to stop thinking about the nakba as a Palestinian narrative of pain deserving of empathy by exposing it for what it is—another tool in the arsenal of groups whose goal is to bring about the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.

When it was originally introduced in the late 1940s, the word nakba had nothing to do with the plight of the Palestinian refugees or their dubious claim to be the uninterrupted, indigenous inhabitants of a land seized by dispossessing foreign colonists. Popularized by the late Syrian writer Constantine Zureik in a 1948 book titled The Meaning of Disaster, the nakba described therein was, as the Israeli scholar Shany Mor has crisply pointed out, simply “the failure of the Arabs to defeat the Jews.”

Zureik was agonized by this defeat, calling it “one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations with which the Arabs have been inflicted throughout their long history.” His story is fundamentally a story of national humiliation and wounded pride. Yet there is absolutely no reason why Jews should be remotely troubled by the neurosis it projects. Their defeat was our victory and our liberation, and we should unreservedly rejoice in that fact.

The only aspect of the nakba that we should worry about is the impact it has on us as a community, as well as on the status of Israel as a sovereign member of the international society of states. As Mizrahi Jews know well (my own family among them), the nakba assembled in Zureik’s imagination really was a “catastrophe”— for us. Resoundingly defeated on the battlefield by the superior courage and tactical nous of the nascent Israeli Defense Forces, the Arabs compensated by turning on the defenseless Jews in their midst. From Libya to Iraq, ancient and established Jewish communities were the victims of a cowardly, spiteful policy of expropriation, mob violence and expulsion.

The inheritors of that policy are the various groups that compose the Palestinian solidarity movement today. Apoplectic at the realization that they have been unable to dislodge the “Zionists”—and knowing now that the main consequence of the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom in Israel has been the destruction of Gaza—they, too, have turned on the Jews in their midst.

They have done so with one major advantage that the original neo-Nazis never had: sympathy and endorsement from academics, celebrities, politicians and even the United Nations. Indeed, the world body hosted a two-day seminar on “Ending the Nakba” at its New York headquarters at the same time that pro-Hamas fanatics were causing havoc just a few blocks downtown. Even so, we should take heart at the knowledge that nakba is not so much a symbol of resistance as it is defeat. Just as the rejectionists and eliminationists have lost previous wars through a combination of political stupidity, diplomatic ineptitude and military flimsiness, so, too, can they lose this one.

French television producer and host Thierry Ardisson has apologized for his comments on the situation in the Gaza Strip. On France 2 public television last Saturday evening, during the weekly "Quelle époque!" talk show, he declared that the Gaza Strip “is Auschwitz, that’s it, that’s all there is to it.”

His statement drew angry reactions within the Jewish community.

Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, the umbrella organization of Jewish institutions of France, declared: “No, Thierry Ardisson, Gaza is not Auschwitz. The memory of the Shoah is never so much called into public debate as by those who want to turn it against the Jews.

“Since October 7 2023, I have deplored the distress of all civilian populations, Israeli and Palestinian. But for what other conflict do we use these comparisons with the Shoah? No criticism of Israel justifies Nazifying it,” Arfi said.

The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) said it "condemns once again the trivialization of outrageous comparisons and the prevailing confusion.”

“Nazism and the Shoah are not the alpha and omega of all national and international crisis. Gaza is not Auschwitz,” it wrote on X.

In a statement sent to AFP, as well as to French-Israeli lawyer, author and columnist Gilles-William Goldnadel, a former president of the France-Israël Association and an ex-member of the CRIF Steering Committee, Thierry Ardisson apologized.

“The emotion was undoubtedly too strong and my remarks exaggerated,” he said. “I ask my Jewish friends to forgive me,” he added, recalling that he had repeatedly taken a public stance against antisemitism.

Goldanel criticized the host of the program, Léa Salamé, for not having challenged this "appalling comparison" made by Ardisson.

"Once again, I see that the public broadcasting is becoming the main instrument of hatred of Israel and the manufacturer of antisemitism. This is why I have decided to lodge a complaint with ARCOM," said Goldnadel.

ARCOM (the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication) is a French independent administrative agency.

Originally published by the European Jewish Press.

Christian Zionists in South Korea are preparing to open a Holocaust museum on Monday in response to the global surge in antisemitism and the uptick of anti-Israel agitation in their country, their leader told JNS.

The space of about 180 square meters (some 1,940 sq. ft.), which the Korea Israel Bible Institute (KIBI) is scheduled to inaugurate on May 19 at a ceremony attended by local and foreign dignitaries in the city of Paju near Seoul, features an exhibition on the Genocide, Jewish People and the State of Israel, said Mansuk Song, a leader of the KIBI community.

The museum will open 12 years after the inauguration of an earlier Holocaust museum, which has since become inactive, at the National Memorial Museum of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Occupation in Busan, South Korea.

“Our community saw with shock the resurgence of antisemitism worldwide after Oct. 7,” 2023, Song said, referencing the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas after thousands of Gazan terrorists invaded Israel and murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 251.

Additionally, anti-Israel protesters took unprecedented actions in Korea against Israel, including when Israel’s Ambassador to Seoul Rafael Harpaz was harassed at a restaurant while he was dining with his family on April 22. Activists encircled the dinner table and accused him of being complicit in genocide.

Such incidents “convinced us we need to educate people in Korea about Jews, Israel, what genocide means. But it’s also important for us to send a message of support and solidarity to the Jewish people,” Song added.

The space in Paju is rented with money raised from community members for the project, he said. Paju, just south of Panmunjeom on the 38th parallel frontier with North Korea, is an artistic hub with a vibrant cultural scene and many museums, which attract many local and foreign tourists.

“So we hope it’s a good location to open a Holocaust museum because it will engage audiences who otherwise may not have gone,” Song said.

The Israeli Air Force conducted a strike in the Arnoun area of Southern Lebanon's Nabatieh Governorate on Thursday, targeting and killing a Hezbollah operative involved in efforts to rebuild the organization's terrorist infrastructure in the region.

This operation follows a series of targeted strikes by the IDF aimed at disrupting Hezbollah's activities along Israel's northern border. Notably, on Wednesday, the IDF confirmed the elimination of Hussein Naama, a regional Hezbollah commander responsible for the Qabrikha area, in an airstrike on Qaaqaaiyet el-Jisr, also in the Nabatieh Governorate.

In a parallel development, the United States announced new sanctions on Thursday against two senior Hezbollah officials and two financial facilitators based in Lebanon and Iran.

The U.S. Treasury Department stated that these individuals were instrumental in channeling overseas donations to Hezbollah, which constitute a significant portion of the group's budget. One sanctioned man, Jihad Alami, coordinated the delivery of at least $50,000 from Iran to Lebanon, funds likely intended for onward transfer to Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel in October 2023.

These coordinated military and financial actions underscore the ongoing efforts by Israel and the United States to counter Hezbollah's influence and operational capabilities in the region.

Israeli air defense operators and system engineers are learning lessons from both local and overseas conflict zones, as a global and regional technological arms race continues to unfold. 

In Israel, fighting a multi-front war against Iranian-backed jihadist armies that have fired barrages of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic threats, a rapid and continuous evolution in air defense capabilities is ongoing.

This evolution is somewhat informed by overseas flashpoints such as the Ukrainian-Russian war and even the India–Pakistan flare-up. Iran, meanwhile, continues to mass-produce and develop a host of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones. 

The primary challenge remains robust detection and accurate identification of diverse threats, an informed Western observer told JNS. 

This is particularly acute with the proliferation of low-cost drones that can be hard to distinguish from benign aerial objects or even friendly assets, as tragically highlighted in past incidents, such as the Oct. 13, 2024, Hezbollah drone strike on the Golani Brigade training base near Binyamina, which killed four soldiers and injured dozens.

 "The first question is detection," the observer stated. "The second is the ability to identify and verify," he added. "Israel faces this problem with UAV infiltrations, where it’s difficult to distinguish them from, say, helicopters operating on similar routes."

This complex threat environment is driving significant upgrades across Israel's renowned multi-layered air defense array. 

The Iron Dome

Building on operational lessons from the current war, the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO) in the Defense Ministry and Haifa-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems successfully completed a series of comprehensive flight tests for the Iron Dome system in March 2025. These tests examined scenarios simulating current and future threats, including rockets, cruise missiles and UAVs, and incorporated enhancements to the system. 

"Throughout this war, we've seen that the Iron Dome ... remains a critical asset," said IMDO director Moshe Patel at the time of the trial, adding that its capabilities are continuously being enhanced "on both land and sea—even while operating under fire." 

Rafael CEO Yoav Tourgeman described the current war as the "largest and most significant ever conducted with the Iron Dome." 

The sheer quantity of ordnance expended in modern conflicts, both offensively and defensively, is another critical lesson, according to the Western source. 

"One of the key takeaways is the enormous consumption of ammunition," he stated. This has led to massive American funding for replenishing Israel's stocks of Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow interceptors. 

The Defense Ministry and Israel Aerospace Industries signed a multi-billion-shekel deal in December 2024 to significantly expand the procurement of Arrow 3 interceptors, which are designed to engage long-range ballistic threats of the type the Houthis in Yemen frequently fire at Israel, in space, before they reenter the atmosphere and potentially maneuver.

However, the observer cautioned about waiting for too long for funding to arrive to boost capabilities. 

"From the moment a check arrives until a missile is delivered, factoring in supply chain issues, it can be years. Aid is announced, [but] takes months to arrive, and then often comes in batches." 

This necessitates sophisticated planning and, at times, for the Defense Ministry to take calculated risks to fund production gaps, or "bridge," as the source said, needing to overcome bureaucratic elements focused strictly on procedure.

The war in Ukraine offers a stark illustration of high-intensity air warfare. "The Ukrainians and Russians are on a contact line reminiscent of World War I, though the Russians are slowly pushing," he said.

For Ukraine, with its vast territory and roughly 100 brigades to equip, the primary need is for tactical, shorter-range air defense systems, supplemented by longer-range air defense capabilities like the Patriot mobile interceptor missile surface-to-air missile (SAM) system. "They don't need many long-range strike assets; what they have, they use effectively, converting various systems to strike deep into Russia," he said. 

A significant development in Ukraine has been the extensive use of drones with fiber-optic tethers for secure communications, a response to potent Russian electronic warfare (ECM) capabilities. 

However, the observer clarified, "It's not really a new genre." In fact, he argued, it's the anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) that has significantly hampered Russian armored advances.

For that threat, Israeli armored vehicles are equipped with active protection systems—either the Rafael Trophy for tanks or Elbit Systems' Iron Fist. 

Israel, the observer continued, must enhance defenses for its own heavy unmanned aerial vehicles, and even its helicopters, drawing lessons from incidents like Houthi attacks on expensive American drones. 

This necessitates bolstering "soft-kill" capabilities, primarily those targeting Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS—the generic term for a range of satellite navigation system—including GPS, GLONASS and Galileo). 

"Soft defense is strengthening today, mainly because a large part of attack assets use GNSS," he explained. "Its advantage is that it generally affects everyone in the area, requires relatively few personnel and resources, and is much cheaper than kinetic [firepower] interceptors."

Manpower remains a primary constraint for Israel, as it is for many European nations, the source noted, when it comes to air defenses. "People don't realize this is the first limitation," the observer stressed.

While Israel can utilize trained reservists, especially for systems such as older artillery cannons, automation is being pursued, though its ability to fully compensate for manpower shortages is debatable without compromising certain command structures preferred by the Air Force.

The Iron Beam

Looking to the future, Israel is on the cusp of deploying a revolutionary capability: the Iron Beam high-energy laser system. Developed by Rafael and the Defense Ministry, Iron Beam is expected to be operational by the end of 2025 and will be integrated into Israel’s multi-layered defense network.

Rafael confirmed to JNS in mid-March that "the system has already demonstrated successful interceptions, and Rafael, together with Israel’s defense establishment, is accelerating its deployment."

A senior Defense Ministry official described it in March as a "technological breakthrough at the global level," capable of downing rockets, mortars, UAVs and cruise missiles.

The most significant advantage of Iron Beam is its low cost. "Each interception costs only a few dollars in electricity," Rafael stated, fundamentally changing the economic equation where adversaries launch cheap projectiles against expensive interceptors. A single Iron Dome Tamir interceptor costs around $50,000, while terrorist rockets can cost as little as $500. 

Iron Beam, with its 100-kilowatt laser and an effective range of eight-10 kilometers, will provide "continuous protection with an unlimited interception capacity," according to a Rafael source. It will be connected to Israel’s national threat detection grid and will complement Iron Dome, with command algorithms deciding when to use lasers versus missiles. 

While ground-based initially, laser systems are also being developed for mobile ground units, and airborne platforms, with a successful 2021 test of an airborne laser intercepting UAVs in the skies. This technology is being closely watched internationally, with Lockheed Martin partnering with Rafael to develop an export version for the U.S. market.

Preparing for the future

To address urgent operational needs during the current war, the IDF also confirmed the deployment of Rafael's Spyder mobile air defense system. The Spyder All-in-One (AiO) version, which integrates radar, command, launcher and camera sensor on a single vehicle for high mobility, is in service and has conducted several successful UAV interceptions. 

The Israeli Air Force also announced on May 6 the establishment of a new air defense battalion, though details of its specific systems (whether laser, Spyder or other) were not disclosed, it points to ongoing expansion and specialization of air defense units.

Every interception, or failure to intercept, provides invaluable data. "Every attack event in Ukraine, Israel, or India-Pakistan is accompanied by lessons learned," the observer noted.

He pointed to instances where even advanced systems like Arrow 3, which successfully intercepts ballistic missiles in space, don't always achieve a kill, sometimes due to the complexities of discriminating the warhead carrying reentry vehicle from other debris, like the spent motor, especially when these components travel at similar speeds. "The interceptor is not 100%; it depends on many other things," including correct target identification by the detection system.

On May 4, a Houthi ballistic missile fired at Ben-Gurion Airport hit near a terminal building after an Arrow 3 interceptor, as well as a U.S. THAAD interceptor, missed it. The IAF later concluded that its interceptor suffered a rare malfunction. 

The arms race between air defenders and attackers does not look to be slowing down any time soon.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani in Antalya, Turkey, marking the first high-level diplomatic engagement between Washington and Damascus in 15 years.

The meeting follows President Donald Trump's announcement of plans to lift U.S. sanctions on Syria.

Rubio, according to a State Department readout, "welcomed the Syrian government’s calls for peace with Israel, efforts to end Iran’s influence in Syria, commitment to ascertaining the fate of U.S. citizens missing or killed in Syria, and elimination of all chemical weapons."

He also emphasized the importance of protecting human rights for all Syrians, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

The meeting coincided with a trilateral discussion involving Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, reflecting Ankara's role in facilitating dialogue between the U.S. and the new regime in Syria.

This diplomatic engagement follows Trump's meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh on Wednesday, where the American leader encouraged Damascus to join the Abraham Accords and expel foreign terrorist groups. Al-Sharaa expressed support for these initiatives and proposed economic partnerships with the U.S.

In parallel, Israel is reportedly conducting secret talks with the new Syrian regime, mediated by the United Arab Emirates. According to Channel 12, a recent meeting in Azerbaijan involved IDF Operations Directorate head Maj. Gen. Oded Basyuk and representatives close to al-Sharaa, alongside Turkish officials.

Al-Sharaa has also confirmed indirect talks with Israel aimed at de-escalating tensions and reaffirming commitment to the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria.

While these developments suggest a possible shift in regional dynamics, Israeli officials remain cautious, citing al-Sharaa's past affiliations. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has previously referred to the new Syrian government as "jihadists in suits."

It seems that brit milah is under attack again. 

Police in Antwerp, Belgium, raided the home of two Haredi mohels in the morning hours of May 14, confiscating their knives and demanding a list of the circumcisions done in the past year. The Jewish community there was stunned, and the European Jewish Association claimed that this crosses another red line, having struggled with issues of shechita (“ritual slaughter”) for quite some time. But this case is not a clear-cut example of antisemitism as has happened in other parts of the world.

A little less than a year ago, a mohel from the United Kingdom was arrested in Ireland for performing circumcision. The charge against him was impersonating a medical professional.

In 2007, a law was passed in the region restricting circumcision to only be performed by a doctor. Prior to his arrest, it appeared to be settled law that circumcision carried out for religious and cultural reasons was not classified as a medical procedure, and therefore, not a violation of the law. It was further understood that this arrest was most likely motivated by Ireland’s disdain for the State of Israel and the ongoing conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which they vocally opposed.

The case in Belgium is more complicated. The raid was initiated by a local Jewish man, who is the plaintiff in a longstanding case against the local Jewish community. In October 2023, Rabbi Moshe Aryeh Friedman filed a police complaint against six mohels, claiming their practice of metzitzah b’peh (MbP) endangered the children’s health.

MbP is a controversial step in the procedure where there is direct oral contact with the penile incision. The custom, which is commonplace in the ultra-Orthodox community, is believed to transmit bacteria and potentially Herpes Simplex 1, which can be life-threatening to a newborn.

Unlike Ireland, Belgium doesn’t have the implied exemption for ritual circumcision to be performed by a non-medical professional. The lack of exemption means that the mohels in question were breaking the law, whether or not those in the Jewish community agree with the statute as it stands.

I have to admit, this case is the most complicated I’ve encountered in my career. In 2018, Iceland proposed a ban on all non-medically necessary circumcisions. At the time, I was so passionately opposed to the proposal that I floated the idea of publicly protesting the law if it came to pass. I wanted to conduct the rite in the public square to demand the law’s reversal. I now see how foolish that would have been.

I’ve spent the majority of my career fighting the practice of metzitzah b’peh. I established an organization in Israel called Magen HaBrit to educate parents to ask their mohel to use a tube. Suction done with a sterile tube alleviates the issue of any germ transfer between the ritual circumciser and the baby. And although my feelings on the practice haven’t changed, I now realize that there are many moving parts when it comes to religious freedom.

When I first embarked on my career as a mohel some 15 years ago, and even when I heard of the actions that Friedman was taking to oppose MbP, I couldn’t think of a better solution. Earlier in my career, I even questioned the Rabbinut HaRashit of Israel directly as to why they didn’t take a stronger stance against the practice. Their excuse at the time was that if they openly opposed the practice, then mohels in Germany (which was attempting to outlaw the rite) who continued the practice could be arrested. I dismissed their excuse as weak and spineless. But now I’m not so sure.

What’s clear about what’s happening in Belgium is that no one is doing the right thing. As much as it pains me to say, if the law of the land is that circumcision must be performed by a medical professional, then they are the only ones who can do it. The mohels in the Haredi community who continue to violate the law are responsible for their own fate. 

But both of the mohels in question and Friedman have been completely short-sighted in their behavior. Just as the Rabbinut HaRashit indicated to me many years back, their actions have ramifications for everyone around them. Those who are breaking the law and those who are revealing their behavior to the authorities have jeopardized our sacred ritual far beyond their local community. They’ve given excuses to the other countries in Europe and beyond to question our commitment to the safety of this Jewish practice. And as much as we’d all like to say those who restrict our religious freedoms are to blame, we must look inside ourselves and make sure that we’re not causing more harm than good, for the betterment of Am Yisrael.

I’m slated to travel for a brit milah in the coming days to an area I’ve yet to visit. As always, I’ve done my due diligence to make sure the practice can legally be performed by both medical professionals and religious leaders alike. As far as I know, there is no local mohel in the region.

But short-sighted infighting, such as what’s happening in Belgium, endangers our practice worldwide. Until the day comes that Jews have all come to Israel to live, it’s on us to work together to make sure that our religious duties can be carried out in as many places as possible.