We have had a few reminders this week of some very significant dates in our nation’s and our people’s history.
It now marks more than 1,000 days since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Babies and toddlers were burned; men and women were raped and murdered; bodies were mutilated; homes and communities were destroyed. Another 251 people were kidnapped, starved, otherwise abused and held in dimly lit underground tunnels as days stretched into years. Many who returned bore clear signs of torture.
There has never been an adequate commission of inquiry to respond to these barbaric atrocities. More than 1,200 of the brightest and the best of our people were massacred in cold blood.
The youngest victim was 9-month-old Kfir Bibas, abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his mother, Shiri, 32, and his 4-year-old brother, Ariel. All three were brutally murdered. Their father and Shiri’s husband, Yarden Bibas, spent a year and three months in underground captivity, only to return to Israel to learn that his family had been slaughtered. On Israel’s Channel 13, he spoke of the unbearable anguish he endures. His only fleeting moments of peace come, he said, when he looks up at the sky and sees three bright stars.
The oldest was 91-year-old Moshe Ridler from Kibbutz Holit. On Simchat Torah, 1941, he was deported from his home in Herta on the border of Rumania and Ukraine. The entire Jewish population was herded into the city square, where they were stripped naked, beaten and tortured. Little 10-year-old Moshe was sent to a transit ghetto in Romanchi. He felt like he was all alone in the world. In 1951, he immigrated to Israel to start a new chapter of life.
What sort of evil embodies this sort of animus toward our people? How long must this go on?
The Fourth of July holiday weekend was just celebrated in the United States, and celebrations of America at 250 are continuing all month. The county was founded on the loftiest of principles, with the Constitution greatly influenced by the writings of John Locke. Adopted in 1787, it contains the words: “No religious test should ever be required as a qualification of public trust.”
After assuming office as president, George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I.:
“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
“May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Jews back then were a small, scattered people, but many contributed to the American cause.
John Adams, the second president of the United States, was a deeply devout Christian who venerated the Jews for introducing monotheism into the world. When the French philosopher Voltaire wrote a scathing piece regarding Jews, Adams wrote back:
“How is it possible [that he] should represent the Hebrews in such a contemptible light? They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation ancient or modern.”
Our Bill of Rights and Article VI of the Constitution have guaranteed safety and security to most Jews in the United States.
These days, however, the road appears much more fragile and fraught with ditches.
How can one not look at the recent primary victories of the Democratic Socialists of America? Members of this extremist left-wing group, who have little real-world political experience, are radically hostile to the Jewish state. They endorse the BDS campaign against Israel and are in favor of withholding weapons when we, in Israel, are confronted with an existential crisis.
Four Democratic Socialists won primaries in New York, and one in Colorado, under the tutelage of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Darializa Avila Chevalier’s platform was “centered on babes, not bombs on families in the Middle East.” As a student at Columbia University, she organized with Students for Justice in Palestine. In April 2024, she participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia. She refrained from answering the question of whether Israel has a right to exist.
Claire Valdez advocates for a total arms embargo against Israel. She has called actions by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza “genocidal” and “apartheid,” and supports the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, if he ever comes to New York.
Brad Lander, although Jewish, stated that “Israel will not be safe until Palestine is free.” He said he would sign onto a resolution “recognizing Israel’s destruction in Gaza” and “won’t vote in favor of additional military aid to Israel.”
In Colorado, Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros beat out her primary challenger, Diana DeGette. At an after-campaign rally, she screamed, “We will not wait to reject the genocide in Palestine.”
People who despise Israel also despise all the values the United States represents.
In speaker Mike Johnson’s words, “This is a contest between people who love the United States and all that it stands for, and people who do not.”
With such ruptures in the body politic of the United States, we must work for civility and the mobilization of people to unite behind the country’s moral and secure causes, including that of its Middle Eastern ally: the Jewish state.
