I Challenge the Orthodox Rabbinate to Express "The Sentiments on Israel and Jews" as Reform Rabbi Hirsch : On the Election of Zohran Mamdani

Agudath Israel Must Publicly Reject and Condemn the Satmar Faction That Supported Anti-Israel, Anti-Semite, Jew-Hating Zohran Mamdani

 

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI)

There are moments in Jewish history when silence becomes complicity. When neutrality morphs into moral cowardice. When the lines that divide ideological disagreement from spiritual treachery must be redrawn — sharply, publicly, and without apology.

Such a moment is upon us.

 

 

Last week, a faction aligned with the Satmar Hasidic community openly lent support to New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — a man who has never hidden his hostility toward Israel and who traffics in the oldest, ugliest antisemitic tropes, now dressed up in the language of “anti-Zionism.” Mamdani, the self-styled “Palestinian socialist,” has accused Israel of genocide, championed the BDS movement, and cheered for the delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish state.

That any group of Jews — worse, Jews wearing the banner of Torah — would stand behind such a man is beyond disgrace. It is a moral catastrophe.

And Agudath Israel of America, the historic umbrella organization that has long claimed to represent Orthodox Jewry in the United States, must not look away. If Agudah wants to preserve even a shred of credibility as a voice of Torah in public life, it must do what decency, halacha, and Jewish history demand: explicitly reject and condemn the Satmar faction that endorsed this anti-Israel, anti-Jewish politician.

The Satmar faction’s flirtation with Mamdani is not a minor political gesture. It is an endorsement of hatred cloaked in the pretense of piety. Let us be clear: Mamdani’s record is not one of “principled critique” or “progressive values.” It is one of relentless demonization of Jews who live in their ancestral homeland.

He has marched with those who chant “From the river to the sea,” a slogan whose plain meaning is the eradication of Israel and the Jews within it. He has excused or minimized the October 7 atrocities — one of the darkest days in Jewish history since the Holocaust — as somehow “contextual.”

And in the face of that, a group of Satmar Hasidim smiled, posed for pictures, and called him a “friend.”

This is not Judaism. This is not holiness. This is political opportunism masquerading as righteousness, and it mocks every Jew who bleeds for Am Yisrael.

To understand the poison here, one must recall the Satmar ideology itself — born from the trauma of Europe but hardened into a theology of negation. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, built his empire on the claim that the State of Israel is a heresy, a rebellion against G-d’s will, and that the Holocaust was a divine punishment for Zionism.

It was a theology of exile frozen in amber — one that refused to see the miraculous rebirth of Jewish sovereignty as anything but a sin. In 1948, when the rest of Jewry wept with awe at the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland, Satmar wept in rage.

That ideology might have remained a footnote — eccentric, tragic, but contained — had it not metastasized into political activism. Over the decades, Satmar built alliances with anti-Zionist forces, aligning with the far left, the Islamist world, and anyone else who hated Israel enough to make common cause.

The result? Today we witness the grotesque spectacle of Jews shaking hands with men who would gladly see Jews murdered in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Sderot.

The Rambam writes in Hilchot De’ot that one must distance himself from the wicked, lest he learn from their ways and be destroyed by their company. This is not merely social advice — it is a Torah imperative.

To ally with an avowed hater of Jews is to desecrate the Name of Heaven. The Talmud in Avodah Zarah 18a teaches us that even the perception of association with idolaters or enemies of Israel can bring scandal to Torah itself. How much more so when the association is public, photographed, and celebrated in newspapers and social media?

Agudath Israel cannot pretend this is a “Satmar matter.” Silence here is endorsement. Failure to condemn is partnership.

If the Agudah leadership shrugs this off as "another “local issue", they forfeit their moral claim to speak in the name of klal Yisrael.

It was not always so. The original Agudath Israel of prewar Europe — the movement of giants like the Chafetz Chaim  — sought to protect Torah life through engagement, not isolation. They argued against Zionism politically, yes, but never allied themselves with enemies of the Jewish people.

They fought their battles within the Jewish world, not by empowering our external foes.

The founders of Agudah would have shuddered at the sight of Hasidim applauding a politician who slanders their brothers and sisters in Israel.

And make no mistake: many of today’s Agudah rabbis and lay leaders privately do shudder. They know this alliance is abhorrent. But private revulsion is not enough. The Torah demands public rebuke. “Hoche’ach tochiach et amitecha” — you shall surely rebuke your fellow.

To remain silent now is to invite G-d’s rebuke instead.

Satmar defends its political deals with anti-Israel figures by invoking “Torah values” — claiming to prioritize yeshiva funding, welfare benefits, or community protection over Israel’s fate. This is a grotesque distortion of Torah ethics.

The same Torah that commands us to love every Jew and defend Jewish life cannot be twisted into a tool for transactional politics. To barter away Jewish dignity for state funding is to sell our birthright for a bowl of lentils.

When Satmar activists cozy up to Mamdani, they are not practicing pikuach nefesh — they are practicing political idolatry, worshipping power and money in the guise of faith.

Agudath Israel now faces a defining test. Will it stand for Jewish unity rooted in truth, or will it allow fanaticism to drag it into moral bankruptcy?

It must issue a clear, unequivocal statement declaring that no Jewish organization can support a politician who traffics in antisemitism or calls for the destruction of Israel. It must name Mamdani for what he is — a demagogue — and the Satmar faction that supports him for what they have become — collaborators in our people’s humiliation.

Such a statement would not divide the Orthodox world; it would save it.

Because the greatest threat to Torah is not modernity, not secularism, not Zionism — it is hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of those who cry “Torah, Torah” while standing shoulder to shoulder with those who hate Torah Jews.

Satmar has inverted courage into cowardice. They have mistaken exile for holiness, submission for faith, and betrayal for purity.

And Agudah must not follow them down that pit.

This is not about politics. This is about Jewish survival — moral, spiritual, and historical.

Every yeshiva student who loves Torah should weep when Jews cheer for our enemies. Every rabbi who invokes ahavat Yisrael must condemn those who betray it. Every parent who teaches their child to say “Shema Yisrael” must remind them that Israel — the name itself — means struggling with G-d but standing with our people.

If Agudath Israel cannot find the courage to say that, then it will have surrendered the moral authority it once claimed.

But if it does — if it speaks truth, if it draws the line, if it reclaims the mantle of authentic Torah — then perhaps we can still hope that the rift within Orthodox Jewry can heal, not through silence, but through truth.

The world must know: There is no Torah without loyalty to the Jewish people. There is no holiness in betrayal. And there is no justification, ever, for standing with those who hate the children of Israel.

 

REPUBLISHED: 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/agudath-israel-must-condemn-the-satmar-faction-that-supported-zohran-mamdani/

Satmar Ideology Is Synonymous With Neturei Karta — Mamdani Proved It

 

Top Photo - New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI)

 

 I have said it for years, and I will say it again — this time louder: Satmar ideology is synonymous with Neturei Karta. The difference is one of tone, not theology; one wears shtreimels, the other keffiyehs. One organizes rallies in Williamsburg, the other in Tehran. Both pray for the same outcome: the delegitimization of the Jewish state and the paralysis of Jewish strength.

Now, thanks to Mamdani — the Moslem-born “influencer” who turned anti-Israel venom into viral content — the distinction between the two has evaporated. His public celebration of Hamas propaganda, his sneering dismissal of Jewish suffering, did not erupt in a vacuum. Mandani is not an anomaly; he is a product. A product of an ideology that has spent three-quarters of a century teaching that Jewish sovereignty is a sin, that the State of Israel is illegitimate, and that the blood of Jewish soldiers spilled in defense of Am Yisrael is not the blood of martyrs, but of sinners.

Satmar will pretend to be horrified. They will issue statements condemning the IDF “lack of tznius,” not her lack of morality. But in truth, they should be thanking Mamdani. For in his arrogance, he finally made visible what has long been whispered behind the beit midrash walls: that Satmar’s anti-Zionism is not a “spiritual disagreement.” It is the same poison that animates Neturei Karta — merely refined, repackaged, and sold as “Torah faithfulness.”

To understand how this happened, one must go back to Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the first Satmar Rebbe. Emerging from the Holocaust in 1945, Teitelbaum viewed the Zionist project not as redemption but rebellion. The Jewish people, he argued, had violated the “Three Oaths” mentioned in the Talmud (Ketubot 111a): that Israel must not “ascend the wall” to retake the Land by force, that they must not rebel against the nations, and that the nations must not oppress them too much.

Teitelbaum, in his sefer Vayoel Moshe, took this aggadic passage —never codified in halacha by Rambam, Rif, or Shulchan Aruch — and elevated it into dogma. From that interpretation grew an entire theology of Jewish passivity: that any human effort to restore Jewish sovereignty is forbidden until divine intervention announces the Messiah.

But Rambam himself would have been appalled. In Hilchot Melachim (11:1), he describes the messianic process as a gradual political restoration — a king from the line of David who rebuilds sovereignty, defends the Jewish people, and gathers exiles. Rambam explicitly praises Bar Kokhba, the second-century leader who rose against Rome, as a potential Messiah until he fell in battle. His failure did not make him wicked; his courage made him worthy of hope.

For Rambam, agency is not arrogance — it is faith in action. The Jewish people are commanded to pursue justice, to defend themselves, to inhabit and sustain the Land. Teitelbaum inverted this. He turned faith into fatalism, and paralysis into piety.

It’s impossible to grasp Satmar ideology without understanding the trauma of its birth. Teitelbaum, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, saw his community annihilated while the secular Zionists built their state. In his theology, that tragedy became cosmic proof that Zionism provokes divine wrath. The Shoah, in his mind, was punishment for Herzl’s rebellion.

But what began as postwar despair hardened into permanent ideology. In the early 1950s, as Israel gathered refugees from Arab lands and rebuilt Jewish sovereignty for the first time in two millennia, Satmar built a parallel world — a counter-state of Yiddish-speaking enclaves, defined not by Torah learning but by opposition to Israel itself. They withdrew from the Zionist “impurity,” raised their children on stories of Israel’s wickedness, and built an empire of protest.

The irony is that this protest was sustained by the very state they rejected. Satmar institutions flourished in Israel thanks to Israeli welfare payments, Israeli police protection, Israeli electricity, and Israeli hospitals. Their entire existence was — and remains — parasitic upon the state they denounce.

When the Agudath Israel movement begrudgingly split over cooperation with the state in 1948, Satmar accused Agudah of betrayal. The Agudah, for all its hesitations, chose engagement — recognizing that Jewish sovereignty, however secular, was better than exile. Satmar chose ideological purity over Jewish unity. The consequences of that choice are now visible in every anti-Israel rally where black hats stand beside Hamas flags.

Which brings us to Mamdani. He is not a scholar of Vayoel Moshe, as far as I know. He probably couldn’t quote a line of the Gemara his ideology claims to revere. But he absorbed its essence: contempt for Jewish agency, suspicion of Jewish power, and hostility toward Jewish self-defense. His social media performances were not deviations from Satmar theology — they were digital incarnations of it.

When he mocked Israel during war, when he sneered at soldiers risking their lives to defend the Jewish people, he was expressing Satmar doctrine in 21st-century form. his sin, in Satmar’s eyes, was not his message — it was his  medium. He said publicly what Satmar rabbis teach privately.

And the truth is, Mamdani’s logic is unassailable — if you accept Satmar premises. If Israel is illegitimate, then its enemies are “resisters.” If Jewish sovereignty is sin, then Hamas is divine instrument. If Zionism is rebellion against Heaven, then terror becomes divine punishment. Once you embrace the Three Oaths as binding law, everything else — from anti-IDF protests to alliance with Iran — follows naturally.

Neturei Karta merely pushes that logic to its endpoint. Satmar merely stops one step short, preferring moral hypocrisy to full honesty.

Contrast Satmar’s paralysis with the courage of Bar Kokhba, whom Rabbi Akiva hailed as “King Messiah.” His revolt against Rome failed catastrophically, but Rambam never condemned him. Why? Because in the Jewish moral universe, failure in defense of Am Yisrael is not sin — it is sanctity.

Bar Kokhba’s spirit lives on in the young soldiers of the IDF who carry rifles instead of Gemaras, who build the wall of Jerusalem stone by stone. These are the Jews Rambam envisioned when he wrote that the Messiah will “fight the wars of God.”

Satmar mocks these soldiers as heretics; I call them heroes. When a 19-year-old paratrooper jumps into Gaza to save a kidnapped child, he fulfills pikuach nefesh — the highest commandment in the Torah. When a Satmar protester in Brooklyn waves a Palestinian flag, he fulfills nothing but cowardice.

And let us not forget: the same Rambam Satmar pretends to venerate also ruled (Hilchot Teshuva 3:11) that one who separates from the community, refusing to share in its struggles, “has no share in the World to Come.” By that definition, Satmar ideology — the ideology of separation, detachment, and denial — is spiritual treason.

When the State of Israel fights for survival, there is no such thing as “holy neutrality.” To abstain from the defense of Jews is to side with their enemies. During the Holocaust, that neutrality meant death; today, it means desecration.

In every generation, we face Jews who mistake fear for faith. During the Roman persecutions, they were the minim who sought appeasement. In the Middle Ages, they were the Marranos who rationalized betrayal. Today, they wear the black hats of Satmar, chanting “Down with Zionism” while Iranian missiles rain on Ashkelon.

And yet, there is a tragic consistency to it. A people trained to see exile as virtue cannot tolerate redemption. A theology that exalts victimhood must reject victory. Satmar’s tragedy is that it took the Jewish capacity for faith — our willingness to wait for redemption — and turned it into an excuse for passivity.

The State of Israel is not a rebellion against Heaven; it is Heaven’s response to rebellion. After two thousand years of exile, pogrom, and gas chambers, the Jewish people rose from the ashes — not to defy God, but to live again. That is the greatest Kiddush Hashem in modern history.

To call it sin is to call survival sin. To curse it is to curse the God who kept His promise.

Mamdani’s scandal is therefore not a footnote — it is a revelation. He showed us that Satmar’s polite separatism and Neturei Karta’s treacherous alliances spring from the same poisoned root. One smiles and raises money; the other sneers and raises flags. Both betray the same truth: they cannot accept a living, breathing, fighting Jewish people.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin teaches that when Mashiach comes, “all prophets and all the righteous will rejoice — except those who denied the redemption.” Satmar, with all its money, its schools, its newspapers, has built an empire of denial. And Mamdani, with all his bluster, simply said it out loud.

History will remember the difference between those who prayed for Israel’s downfall and those who fought for her survival. The black-coated spectators of exile will vanish into footnotes. The defenders of Israel will stand with Bar Kokhba, with Rambam, with every Jew who refused to wait for permission to live.

Mamdani proved the point: Satmar and Neturei Karta are not opposites. They are mirror images. One hides behind Talmud; the other hides behind Twitter. But both are preaching the same heresy — that Jewish life without Jewish power is somehow holier.

It isn’t. It’s just weaker. And weakness, in Jewish history, has never been holiness.

 

REPUBLISHED:
 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/satmar-ideology-is-synonymous-with-neturei-karta-mandani-proved-it/

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https://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2025/11/jonathan-conricus-on-war-after-war.html

Jonathan Conricus on the war after the war — Shurat HaDin - Israel Law

Fighting Abuse, Trauma, Addiction & Rehab in the Jewish World: The Full Baruch Bergman Story

As of June 2025, Northeast faced 30 child abuse lawsuits–a number that rose to 53 by August. The New York CVA, passed in 2019, allowed previously time-barred cases alleging child sexual abuse to be brought. Survivors can file civil lawsuits against abusers and institutions until they are 55 years old.

 

New York Hospital Insurer Files for Bankruptcy, Citing Child Sex Abuse Claims

 

By Andrew G. Simpson | November 3, 2025

 

 

A Bermuda captive that insured several New York hospitals affiliated with a leading Jewish not-for-profit organization says it is insolvent, citing millions of dollars in child sex abuse claims brought against it under the state’s Child Victims Act (CVA).

Northeast Insurance Co. has filed for “winding-up” of its business in Bermuda Supreme Court and has submitted a Chapter 15 filing in federal bankruptcy court in New York asking it to recognize those Bermuda liquidation proceedings.

The bankruptcy move comes eight years after Northeast stopped writing new policies in December 2017 and began the process of running off its existing liabilities, according to the filing. But the insurer says it cannot meet its obligations under policies it wrote before 2017.

As of June 2025, Northeast faced 30 child abuse lawsuits–a number that rose to 53 by August. Due to this unanticipated exposure, the insurer says its total losses and loss expense reserves have almost doubled, increasing from $15.7 million to $29.1 million, an amount it will not be able to pay.

Northeast’s board has determined it is insolvent on both a cash flow and balance sheet basis and will not be able to raise sufficient funds to meet all of the anticipated settlement payments for the CVA claims.

The company is owned by five health nonprofits affiliated with the UJA/Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and is also affiliated through common shareholders with FFH Insurance Co. Among the hospitals that Northeast insured were Mount Sinai, Montefiore, Beth Israel, Maimonides, and Center Light Health System.

The New York CVA, passed in 2019, allowed previously time-barred cases alleging child sexual abuse to be brought. Survivors can file civil lawsuits against abusers and institutions until they are 55 years old. A number of churches, schools, hospitals, doctors, coaches, municipalities, (yeshivas, synagogues) and other individuals and institutions have been hit with CVA claims. Several Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy as a result.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/mag-features/2025/11/03/845629.htm

“Hamas Has Not Lost” – The TRAGIC Truth Behind This Deal | Haviv Rettig Gur

Jonathan Conricus on the war after the war — Shurat HaDin - Israel Law

Mamdani's Rise and its Consequences - with Reihan Salam

"New York Intifada" On The Line!

 

An Open Letter to the Jews of New York

The NYC mayoral candidate’s constant condemnations of Israel are not merely dog whistles for Jew-haters but clarion calls to action.

Michael Oren Oct 22

READ IN APP

Though I have not lived in New York for many years, I have close family and friends there, and visit it regularly. And while I never interfere in internal American politics, I care far too much about New York, Israel, and the Jewish people to remain silent. For all three, the stakes are alarmingly high.

Soon, my friends, you will have the opportunity and the duty to vote for the mayor of your extraordinary city. The frontrunner in the race is a thirty-four-year-old Socialist, a former housing counselor, hip-hop musician, and state assemblyman who has never run a business, headed a school, or left a serious legislative legacy. He offers to provide free public transportation, a city-wide rent freeze, and discount groceries without explaining how such handouts will be financed.

Yet it is not his qualifications for office or the policies he promises to pursue that I wish to question here. Rather, it is his quality as a human being. I want to urge you to think clearly and deeply about what this person’s candidacy means for you as a Jew and for the Jewish people everywhere.

The candidate insists that, of the 195 states in the world, only one has no right to exist.

The state which the candidate wishes never existed has never known a second of non-democratic governance. Its leader is democratically elected yet the candidate has repeatedly pledged to arrest that leader should he ever set foot in New York. Presumably, the candidate would not arrest the visiting leaders of Russia, North Korea, China, or Iran. Those of Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia—anti-American Socialists—he would likely embrace. But the prime minister of the Middle East’s only democracy could conceivably, if the candidate is elected, be remanded to Rikers Island.

Repeatedly, unabashedly, the candidate has refused to rule out the possibility of destroying that state in a new “intifada.” Previous intifadas were carried out by terrorists who murdered many hundreds of that state’s innocent civilians.

The state is, of course, Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, singling out Israel and holding it to standards different from those of other democracies is, by definition, antisemitic. Singling out its leader for arrest is, by definition, antisemitic. Calling for our violent destruction by U.S.-designated terrorist organizations is simply criminal.

Yes, the candidate is young, charismatic, and brimming with new ideas. So, too, are many of the Jew-hating influencers followed by millions. There can be no obscuring the fact that the candidate wants to see my state, my family, and the home of the world’s largest Jewish community erased from the map. And clearly the candidate would not care if that erasure were accomplished with violence.

The candidate’s vicious positions on Israel come after the two years in which the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism has virtually disappeared. In that time, New York Jews have been threatened almost daily by the haters of both the Jewish people and the Jewish state. For them, the candidate’s constant condemnations of Israel are not merely dog whistles but clarion calls to action.

To the 42% of New York Jews who, according to the most recent polls, are planning to vote for this candidate, I implore you to think clearly and deeply before you do. Consider what this candidate’s victory would mean for your family, for your children and grandchildren. Think what it would mean if the mayor of America’s largest Jewish community calls for the disappearance of the world’s largest Jewish community. The person who denies our right to defend ourselves and our right to exist may well end up opposing your right to self-defense and your ability to live peacefully and securely in the magnificent city you call home.

'Vicious campaign portraying Mamdani as antisemitic is false and dangerous' - Satmar - The Legacy Of Yoel Teitebaum!

Zohran Mamdani is not antisemitic, Satmar's Brooklyn leadership says

 

NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is a liberal muslim, and not antisemitic, Satmar's Williamsburg, Brooklyn, community leadership wrote in newsletter Der Blatt.

 

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (R) visits a sukkah of Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025

ByJERUSALEM POST STAFF

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is "not an antisemite," leaders of the antizionist haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Satmar community wrote in the upcoming edition of weekly community newspaper Der Blatt.

Screenshots of the article in the newspaper, dated for Friday, were shared by Jewish NYC journalists on Wednesday.

"From the first minute he was very open with the rabbis [of the Satmar community] about the war in Israel, he’s a very liberal Muslim," the letter continued.

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The Satmar community in New York is split based on which son of the previous grand rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum is recognized as the legitimate heir.

 

'Vicious campaign portraying Mamdani as antisemitic is false and dangerous'

 

Der Blatt is the outlet of the followers of Aaron Teitelbaum, However, the other Satmar community, which follows Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, also issued a similar statement, condemning the "vicious campaign" portraying Mamdani as an antisemite as "false and dangerous."

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (center) visits Satmar community leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, October 10, 2025. (credit: SCREENSHOT/X/@ZOHRANKMAMDANI)

Notably, neither Satmar community issued an official endorsement for any mayoral candidate.

Mamdani visited Satmar community leaders during the Sukkot festival on October 10.

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-872118?

The Satmar Anti-Zionist Manic Stance & Today’s Vicious Antisemitism 

The vicious antisemitism erupting in cities across the West—from New York to London, from Paris to college campuses in America—is not nuanced, not theological, not even pretending to differentiate between Satmar, secular, Zionist, or Torah Jew. It is raw Jew-hatred, unmasked. The mobs do not pause to ask: “Are you Satmar? Are you anti-Zionist? Are you pro-Palestinian?” They see a Jew, and that is enough. 

READ:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-satmar-anti-zionist-manic-stance-todays-vicious-antisemitism/

Ultra-Orthodox fight against IDF service

Eli Lake: Zohran Mamdani’s woke intifada | The Brendan O’Neill Show

A Mamdani Win or Loss, New York Is Already Lost

Follow the money invested in Qatar. It is the only way to understand why Israel was forced to lose the momentum enabling it to destroy Hamas and to agree to another hudna.

Trump forced Israel to relinquish its military advantage in Gaza

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Gerald A. HonigmanTrump Gaza Peace Plan

• 2 minutes

לוחמים בעזהצילום: דובר צה"ל

Have you followed reports in the media regarding what has transpired in Hamas-ruled Gaza since President Trump forced Israel to accept a much flawed ceasefire “deal”?

Any serious observer of the Middle East understands that Hamas, whose charter calls for total obliteration of Israel and Jews everywhere, never intended to live up to most of its end of the deal. For Hamas, it is what Arabs call a “hudna,” a temporary cessation of fighting to regroup, rearm, and live to fight another day to try to achieve victory-especially over kafir infidels.

Question: What is the name of the only nation in history which has been denied victory after being repeatedly and viciously attacked, and instead has been forced by others not to bring its genocidal enemies to justice?

Answer: The Jew of the Nations, Israel, of course.

After the horrific invasion from Gaza on October 7th, 2023, which included thousands of ordinary so-called "civilian" Arabs in addition to thousands of Hamas Nukhba murderers who deliberately slaughtered the equivalent of 40,000 Americans , engaging in such atrocities as microwaving live Jewish infants, Israel was forced to act. It had endured such attacks for decades-blown up buses, pizza parlors, Passover Seders, etc.

October 7th is Israel’s version of 9/11, only worse, given the proportion of dead suffered by its population.

The resulting war has also taken its toll on civilian Gazan Arabs, as wars tend to do, but…

The difference is that these people are killed because their heroes, whom they freely elected twenty years ago with Jimmy “Apartheid Israel” Carter overseeing the election, habitually use them as human shields.

It is also becausd most still identify with Hamas, which therefore has no trouble recruiting. Many alleged Arab “innocents” partook in the atrocities which started this war, and posted their photos on the internet.

They’ve ignored millions of leaflets, phone calls, and other methods warning them to move out of harm’s way. No other army, besides the IDF, has ever done this to protect its existential enemies’s non-combatants.

There is no moral equivalency here. None…

Leading experts on urban warfare, such as West Point’s Major John Spencer, marvel at how hard Israel has gone to avoid harming its foes’s civilians.

The "Deal"

Trump’s latest “deal,” forged in cooperation with Hamas-enabling Turkey & Qatar, was forced upon a war weary Israel against its own better wisdom.

Israel, indigenous ancestral homeland of those many Arabs refer to as kilab yahud (Jew dogs), knows its enemies better than anyone else.

Yet Donald Trump repeatedly acts as if it’s a beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister who is unreasonable because he refuses to acknowledge Trump’s alleged “better” comprehension of what’s actually happening in Gaza.

Trump shamefully forced Prime Minister Netanyahu to eat crow, embarrassing him before millions watching on television, because he did what America did itself after being attacked on 9/11/2001.

A bullying Trump forced Netanyahu to call Qatari leaders to apologize for attacking Hamas masterminds of butchery on October 7th to whom they had given refuge.

Qatar, with Trump’s other good buddy, oppressor of Kurds, Assyrians, and others-Turkey’s would be Sultan Erdogan-is a major enabler of Hamas and other jihadis. It pours billions of dollars into universities to greatly prejudice how subjects related to the Middle East are taught. I witnessed this personally over the years.

Israel’s earlier action in Qatar was a precision strike, not an attack against Qatari sovereignty. It was the catalyst for the ceasefire. And regarding the Qatar sovereignty issue, America didn’t ask permission of Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq when it went after Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda after 9/11.

Sovereignty in Judea and Samaria

Furthermore, if America is entitled to sovereignty over places like American Samoa, Guam, the American Virgin Islands, and other places as well (not to mention Texas, New Mexico, and California), how can Jews, with 4,000 years of sounding corroborated history, be denied it in at least a good portion of it in Judea and Samaria?

See here if you question whose age-old ancestral homeland Israel truly is.

The Six Day War and its aftermath

Remember? In the wake of cries of “itbach al-Yahud”-slaughter the Jews-and the illegal blockade of Israel and, shelling of Jerusalem-Israel was forced to preempt in June’67.

At the end of this conflagration and much debate, the normally hostile UN itself came up with a final accepted draft of UNSC Resolution 242 which guaranteed that Israel would never have to return to its 9-15 mile wide, zipper of a nation status again.

Meaningful acquisition of at least some lands in Judea and Samaria and the Golan (all part of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine in the first place-along with present day Gaza and Jordan) was to occur at last.

So, where does the American administration now come off making threats to Israel over this same sovereignty issue?

VP JD Vance’s are especially troubling. If it was up to him, Israel would have never attacked Iran, despite being blasted with powerful ballistic missiles, and the Ayatollah’s race to develop nukes to obliterate Israel (and the USA) once and for all. And he blatantly made these provocative remarks during the very week of the American election, when some of us were out there trying to gain more Jewish votes for a non-Democrat.

Back to square one?

Now that Israel has had its collective arm twisted by the Trump team to accept this non-ceasefire “ceasefire,” it’s back to square one, after losing the equivalent of 40,000 American dead 19-25 year old soldiers, older reservists, and a like number of civilians on 10/7.

As has been noted many times, with billions of dollars in aid provided to Gaza over the years, it could have become prosperous if its funds weren’t devoted to constructing tunnels, enriching its leaders, acquiring weapons, teaching Jew hatred, and terrorist acts aiming to destroy its neighbor.

Tens of thousands of rockets and even incendiary balloons were launched against Israel over the past decades by Hamas and other Gazan terrorist groups. Not to mention similar attacks blasting Israel in the north by Hezbollah.

Gaza also has a rich Jewish history dating back millennia, and was part of the original 1920 Mandate until Egypt illegally seized it in Israel’s War of Independence in May 1948. It was never meant to be Judenrein.

For the sake of others’s business deals with autocratic Arab petro-potentates by its “best friends,” Israel, once again, after being wantonly attacked, was forced by the new American leader, who was supposed to be not like his predecessor, to cease and desist.

True, the Trump deal got some living hostages back, a wonderful accomplishment. And Trump accomplished some great things during his first term in office-Jerusalem, Golan Heights, Iran oil revenues greatly reduced, hostile UN agencies defunded, and so forth.

But, in return, Israel was forced to release thousands of Arab butchers and wannabes, who’ll live to slaughter Jews another day-like Yahya Sinwar, who was released in a previous swap and then directed the Simchat Torah massacre on October 7th, 2023… Nice “deal.”

When any army fights a war, gaining momentum is a top priority.

The goal is to gain control of tempo and direction in conflict to rapidly build upon successes to maintain a hoped-for unstoppable advantage.

Trump forced Israel to sacrifice this hard won momentum, just as it was about to conquer Gaza City, Hamas' last stronghold. Thata momentum was gained at great cost by going from house to booby-trapped house, and has already paid the price with the loss of two soldiers because the predictable happened, and Hamas broke the “deal.”

Unlike Gaza or Arabs under control of latter day Arafatian terrorists in suits of “pay to slay (Jews)” Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah, who pocket billions and spend funds on weapons and teaching youth to hate and murder “kilab yahud” Jew dogs, Israel is a nation in the forefront of technology, innovation, and assisting other countries, but has also been traumatized because of having to continually fight a multi-front war.

No one in Israel wanted this tragedy.

Jews cherish life, and too many Arabs idealize death and slaughter of Islam’s kafir infidel enemies-especially Jews, half in Israel who fled Arab/Muslim lands, the other side of the refugee coin no one hears about because an Israel didn’t stick its brethren into squalid camps as Arabs did with their own.

The entire situation was created due to a combined unprovoked Arab attack seventy seven years ago.

The inevitable has now happened.

Hamas brazenly struts through Gaza stealing truckloads of aid, killing in broad daylight its rivals and those they suspect cooperated with Israel. New attempted arm shipments have been intercepted, with others probably already having arrived in areas Trump forced Israel to cede.

It didn’t take a Carl von Clausewitz to figure out that this “deal” was extremely problematic, despite Trump, as usual, claiming that it was fantastic because it was his team’s concoction.

The latest news is that the President is threatening Hamas with “hell to pay” if it doesn’t disarm and so forth. Don't hold your breath.

Hamas is laughing because its Qatari and Islamist Turk enablers are best buddies with the Trump Corporation and are business partners with his, Steve Witkoff’s, Jared Kushner’s, and others business interests.

Follow the money...

So, after Israel was forced to lose its momentum, it will now have to be the one to carry out Trump’s threat.

Will Israel have to sustain more casualties because it has lost the momentum it so painfully gained after two years of booby trapped, house to house fighting, and condemnation from Western hypocrites? None of them would have put up with what Israel endured for so long before finally acting to try to solve its existential crisis.

Any nation faced with such a genocidal foe, whose charter calls for its total destruction, has no option but to settle for nothing less than absolute victory over its would be executioners, not a ceasefire which will only be repeatedly broken.

America and the Allies wouldn’t settle for anything less from Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

How can a nation which can fit twice into America’s Lake Michigan settle for anything less?

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/416925

What If Trump’s 20-Point “Peace Plan” Is Just Another One of His Bankrupt Casinos?

 

 

 Donald Trump has gone bankrupt more times than most nations survive wars. His “empire” — a string of hollowed-out towers, shuttered casinos, and unpaid contractors — is a monument to illusion. Now he wants to roll those same instincts into the Middle East, pitching a “20-point Peace Plan” like it’s another Trump-branded resort on the Mediterranean.

Israel should know better.

Because every Trump venture starts the same way: big talk, big promises, big gold letters — and ends in court filings, unpaid bills, and other people cleaning up the mess.

The pattern is unmistakable.

Trump Airlines, bankrupt.
Trump Vodka, bankrupt.
Trump Steaks, bankrupt.
Trump University, sued into oblivion.
Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza, Trump Castle — all bankrupt.

And now, if Israel isn’t careful, Trump Peace will be next on the list.

The sales pitch never changes. Trump arrives with swagger, declares himself the only man who can fix everything, and dazzles the room with promises of “tremendous success.” Then come the debts, the defaults, the denials.

This time the stakes aren’t unpaid electricians or stiffed architects. This time, the “investors” are Israel’s soldiers, families, and children. The collateral is the safety of the Jewish state.

Trump’s 20 points sound like they were drafted in the boardroom of a bankrupt casino: all marble and mirrors, but no structure underneath. A “historic” deal, a “once-in-a-century” opportunity — he always says that. The showmanship hides the bankruptcy of substance.

Like his Atlantic City casinos, the plan glitters until the first bomb goes off.

For decades, Trump sold himself as the “King of the Deal.” But his real art was the art of the bankruptcy — walking away before the collapse, leaving investors holding the bag. He called it “smart business.”

That’s what Israel risks becoming: the latest bagholder in Trump’s long trail of “smart business.”

Trump thinks peace is a real estate closing. Sign the papers, pose for the cameras, shake a few hands, declare victory. But the Middle East doesn’t forgive unpaid moral debts. When the photo ops end and the rockets begin, Trump will shrug and say, “It was a beautiful deal — until the Israelis ruined it.”

He’s done it a hundred times before.

Ask the bankers in Atlantic City who trusted his spreadsheets. Ask the students who paid for “Trump University.” Ask the bondholders of Trump Plaza. Ask anyone who thought “The Donald” ever stayed to finish what he started.

The moment the math turns ugly, Trump vanishes.

Trump is a master of illusion. His casinos were built to make losers feel like winners — at least until the lights went out. His politics work the same way. He tells Israelis they’re winning, that the Arabs are lining up to sign peace deals, that “everyone loves Israel” now. But it’s just the casino glow before the collapse.

Reality doesn’t sparkle. The Iranian regime still funds terror across the region. Hezbollah’s rockets still aim at Haifa. Hamas still builds tunnels under Gaza. And the so-called “Arab moderates” still whisper that Israel is the problem.

Peace isn’t built on press releases. It’s built on truth. And Trump’s record with truth is as bankrupt as his balance sheet.

The Rambam warned that false peace — shalom shel sheker — is more dangerous than open war. Trump’s plan reeks of false peace: a deal designed to look like success while quietly mortgaging Israel’s security to unstable regimes and temporary applause.

In the 1980s, Trump turned Atlantic City into a circus of self-promotion. He built gaudy palaces with names like “Taj Mahal” and “Castle,” promising jobs, glory, and endless profit. Within a few years, they were all bankrupt. Thousands lost livelihoods. Trump walked away richer in fame, poorer in everything else.

Israel cannot afford that cycle.

Ben-Gurion didn’t build the Jewish state by chasing photo ops. He built it by defying the world, standing alone when necessary. When Eisenhower threatened sanctions in 1956, Ben-Gurion didn’t blink. He understood that Jewish survival isn’t a “deal” — it’s a destiny. Trump, by contrast, mistakes attention for achievement. His “Peace Plan” isn’t about Israel’s future — it’s about Trump’s next headline.

Like every Trump venture, the debts will come due — and Israel will be asked to pay them. In lost deterrence. In emboldened enemies. In the false comfort of promises written on the back of a bankrupt man’s business card.

Trump’s entire career is a warning label: he bankrupts everything he touches — except his own ego.

He’s bankrupted companies, casinos, and truth itself. Now he wants to try peace.

Israel must walk away from this table before he flips it. Because when the cards are down and the cameras off, Trump will walk away — just as he always has — leaving others to pay for his performance.

 

 

REPUBLISHED:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-if-trumps-peace-plan-is-just-another-one-of-his-bankrupt-casinos/

The Tragic Ignorance of Those Who Spit on Jewish Soldiers

 

ISRAEL

There is a special kind of blindness that afflicts certain Jews — a blindness not of the eyes but of the soul. It is the blindness of the Satmar demonstrators marching in Brooklyn, chanting “Judaism yes, Zionism no,” while Jewish blood soaks the soil of Israel. It is the blindness of the Haredim in Bnei Brak and Meah Shearim who throw stones and curses at Israeli soldiers, calling them Nazis as they go off to defend Jews everywhere — including their mockers. It is not holiness. It is not faith. It is ignorance masquerading as righteousness, a perverse distortion of Torah that denies the brutal reality of Jewish history.

These protests are not isolated incidents of dissent. They are moral obscenities that expose a chasm within the Jewish world — between those who understand that Jewish survival has always depended on Jewish defense, and those who retreat into fantasy, thinking that God will protect them while they spit on those who bear that divine responsibility with their lives.

There are Satmar banners that read, “Judaism opposes the Zionist State.” Their message is simple: the return to the Land of Israel before the Messiah is forbidden. They believe that the establishment of the State of Israel was a rebellion against God Himself. The late Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, articulated this view in his 1961 work Vayoel Moshe, grounding his argument in the Talmudic legend of the Three Oaths — that the Jewish people must not “ascend as a wall” to the Land, rebel against the nations, or force the end of exile.

To the devout Satmar, these oaths are divine decrees. But history has shown, in blood and smoke, that the nations themselves have long since violated their side of the covenant — “that they not oppress Israel too much.” From Pharaoh to Hitler to Hamas, the world’s response to Jewish helplessness has not been mercy but murder. To remain motionless under the banner of exile, to trust the world’s kindness rather than Jewish self-defense, is not piety; it is suicide.

The Satmar ideology was born in the ashes of Auschwitz, an attempt to make sense of catastrophe by blaming human defiance rather than human evil. The Rebbe saw in the Holocaust divine punishment for Zionist arrogance, for daring to rebuild Jewish sovereignty without awaiting Messiah. In his mind, the Shoah was not a call to arms but a divine warning: never again should Jews try to save themselves through human power. (To Hell with Kastner)

It is a theology of paralysis. And it has left generations of Jews shackled to a fantasy of exile even while living in freedom. In the postwar decades, Satmar Hasidim flourished in Williamsburg and Kiryas Joel — shielded not by God’s hand alone but by American democracy, by police, by the U.S. military, and yes, by the deterrent power of the Israeli army, which guarantees that Jews worldwide will never again be defenseless.

When Satmar protesters in New York burn Israeli flags, they do so under the protection of a Christian-majority nation whose values are secured, in part, by the same principles of self-defense that Israel lives by. The irony would be amusing if it weren’t tragic.

Jewish tradition knows no virtue in passivity. The Rambam — that paragon of reason and halakhic clarity — wrote in Hilchot Melachim that in a milchemet mitzvah (a war of divine obligation), “everyone must go forth — even a groom from his chamber and a bride from her canopy.” The defense of Jewish life is not optional; it is sacred duty. There is no exemption for the pious, the learned, or the fearful.

The Torah itself declares: “Shall your brothers go to war while you sit here?” (Numbers 32:6). Moses rebuked the tribes of Reuven and Gad for precisely this sin — preferring comfort to courage. Today, that same rebuke echoes across the yeshivot of Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, where too many study while others bleed.

Torah study is indeed holy, but holiness divorced from responsibility is hypocrisy. A Torah that cannot protect Jewish life is a desecrated Torah. A faith that calls its defenders “Nazis” while terrorists slaughter Jews is not faith — it is blasphemy.

Jewish arms are not a modern innovation. From the Bible through the Talmud, Jewish tradition honors those who fight for the people of Israel. Abraham led 318 men into battle to rescue Lot. Joshua fought for the land itself. King David — the singer of psalms — was also commander of armies. The Maccabees were kohanim, priests of God, who took up the sword against tyranny.

Even the Talmud praises the “heroes of Israel who fell in war, who sanctified God’s Name with their blood.” To dismiss the modern Israeli soldier as “secular” or “heretical” is to forget that courage, too, is a mitzvah.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, Rabbi Akiva himself believed Bar Kokhba to be the Messiah. He knew that messianic redemption might fail — but he also knew that the fight for Jewish sovereignty was itself sacred. When Bar Kokhba fell, Akiva did not curse the fighters. He wept for their loss — but he understood the holiness of their attempt. Better a failed defender of Israel than a silent bystander in exile.

Contrast that to the Satmar theology of surrender, which condemns every Jewish act of self-assertion as rebellion. Their doctrine has turned despair into faith, and faith into fear. It is a betrayal of the living spirit of our ancestors who, time and again, picked up the sword because no one else would defend them.

In Israel itself, the paradox is even starker. The Haredi population enjoys unprecedented prosperity, safety, and freedom — all safeguarded by the very army they refuse to serve. Yeshiva students in Bnei Brak debate Talmudic minutiae while secular and religious soldiers alike defend the borders that make such study possible.

Many Haredi leaders justify this exemption by claiming that Torah study “protects” the Jewish people. But protection is not theoretical. When rockets fall on Sderot, it is not pages of Gemara that intercept them; it is the Iron Dome, manned by Jewish soldiers.

Yes, the merit of Torah may bring unseen blessings. But the Torah itself commands action. It commands responsibility. Rambam’s “groom from his chamber” applies no less to the yeshiva student than to the farmer or merchant. To sit in safety while others die for your freedom is not faith — it is cowardice sanctified.

The Satmar in America and the insular Haredim in Israel share one common denominator: a refusal to look reality in the eye. They have built walled cities of ideology to keep out the harshness of history. But the world has not changed. Antisemitism is rising in America, Europe, and beyond. Israel is under existential threat. And yet they cling to the fantasy that exile is safer than sovereignty.

It is a grotesque delusion. The exile that Satmar idealizes was not a golden age but a graveyard. Every century of Jewish dispersion ended in violence — from the Crusades to the Inquisition, from the Cossack massacres to the Shoah. The difference between then and now is the existence of an army willing to fight back.

That army — the Israel Defense Forces — is not merely a military institution. It is the embodiment of Jewish continuity. It is the living proof that the curse of helplessness has been broken. To curse it, to mock it, to equate it with evil, is to spit in the face of every Jew who died defenseless before it existed.

The greatest Kiddush Hashem — sanctification of God’s Name — is not in ritual perfection or theological correctness. It is in moral courage. When a young Jewish soldier risks his life to save others, he sanctifies God’s Name more profoundly than any sermon ever could. When the Jewish people stand united, defending their homeland, they declare to the world that Jewish life will never again be cheap.

By contrast, the protests of Satmar and their ideological cousins are a chilul Hashem — a desecration of the divine. They give comfort to Israel’s enemies and mock the very idea of Jewish solidarity. They display not piety but arrogance — the arrogance of those who mistake fear for faith and confusion for conviction.

It is time for the Jewish world — especially the religious world — to grow up. The Holocaust should have shattered the illusion that Jews can survive without power. Instead, it became for some a theological crutch, an excuse to retreat from responsibility. But history has no patience for cowards cloaked in holiness.

The Jewish soldier in Gaza, the pilot over Lebanon, the medic tending to the wounded — they are not the enemies of Torah. They are its truest heirs. For without them, there would be no yeshivot, no synagogues, no future.

To those who curse them from the safety of exile or the comfort of their study halls: your ignorance is no longer innocent. It is a luxury bought with the blood of others.

 

 REPUBLISHED:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-tragic-ignorance-of-those-who-spit-on-jewish-soldiers/