"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

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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

Dear Mr. Mendlowitz, Thank you for taking the time to share your views. - C'mon Donald, Really? :-)

When I Saw Orthodox Jewish Sites Post " TRUMP'S HISTORIC LETTER TO BOBOV" - I DECIDED TO POST TRUMP'S HISTORIC LETTER TO THE UNORTHODOX JEW 

 DONALD DOES NOT READ:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-note-of-gratitude-from-a-jewish-never-trumper/

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

---

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/ 

Thank You, President Trump — But the Arab-Israeli War Is Not Over

 

The twenty Israeli hostages you brought home are a triumph of courage and conviction. But peace cannot be declared while our enemies still dream of our destruction. 

As a proud Jewish American, I want to begin with gratitude once and again.

President Trump, thank you. Twenty Israeli hostages are home because of your direct intervention — because you refused to accept “impossible” as an answer. For that, families in Israel are lighting candles not of mourning, but of joy. You have done something few world leaders even attempted. The Jewish people will not forget it.

But gratitude does not blind us. And it must not blind you.

Mr. President, I say this with the deepest respect: your declaration that “the Arab-Israeli war is over” is dangerously premature.

The Middle East does not operate by the logic of Western diplomacy. It is not a problem to be negotiated — it is a century-long religious and civilizational struggle. The conflict is not about land; it is about existence. The Jewish state’s very being is the offense. Until that changes, there is no peace.

Yes, Arab leaders are weary. Many are pragmatic. They want trade, technology, and quiet skies. But beneath the suits and smiles, the sermons and the schoolbooks still preach the same message: Israel is a temporary evil. The Jews are tolerated, not accepted. The dream remains — to erase the Jewish return from the map of history.

You, Mr. President, above all should recognize that reality. You’ve seen how flattery in the Middle East can melt overnight into fury. Today’s allies can turn tomorrow when the winds shift in the mosques and the media. You’ve been in the deal business long enough to know: never mistake a handshake for a settlement.

Hamas did not kidnap those hostages to negotiate peace. Iran did not fund them to build coexistence. They acted to humiliate Israel, to remind the Jewish people that they are still prey in a hostile neighborhood. The “ceasefires” that follow each massacre are not peace — they are intermissions in a very old play.

History is uncomfortably clear on this point. The 1949 armistice wasn’t peace. Neither were Oslo’s White House handshakes. Every “new dawn” in the Middle East has been followed by rockets in the night. When Arab regimes have recognized Israel, it has been for survival — not reconciliation.

You have done more for Israel than any American president. You recognized Jerusalem. You stood firm on Israel’s right to self-defense. You saw through the polite hypocrisy of the “international community.” For that, you’ve earned Israel’s trust and admiration.

But even your closest friends must tell you the truth: the Arab-Israeli war is not over because the ideology that fuels it is not gone. That ideology cannot be appeased or reasoned with. It must be defeated — militarily, morally, and theologically.

The Prophet Jeremiah warned long ago: “They have healed the wound of My people lightly, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” Those words should hang in every foreign ministry and every Oval Office. False optimism can kill. It lulls the innocent into lowering their guard.

So yes, Mr. President — celebrate the hostages’ freedom. But do not announce the end of a war that has not yet been won. Do not ask Israel to relax when her enemies have not repented. This is not 1979 Egypt or 1994 Jordan. This is a region still haunted by 1400 years of theological resentment. The weapons may modernize, but the hatred remains ancient.

The Jewish people have survived Babylon, Rome, the Inquisition, and Auschwitz — not because we believed the world had changed, but because we prepared for the day it would not. Israel cannot afford illusions.

Your instincts — strength, clarity, loyalty — are right. Don’t let the diplomats and the dreamers around you turn a victory for twenty hostages into a delusion for ten million Israelis.

Peace will come one day. Jews pray for it daily. But it will come not from a press conference or a peace plan. It will come when the Arab world finally accepts that the Jewish nation is home, permanently and providentially, in the Land of Israel.

Until that day, let America’s friendship with Israel be not only warm — but wise.

 

 REPUBLISHED:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/thank-you-president-trump-but-the-arab-israeli-war-is-not-over/

 *

Cc; President Donald J. Trump

The White House

🚨Hamas Are Preparing For A Complete Takeover Of Gaza

No, Trump Does Not Know What’s Better for Israel Than Bibi

 

Donald J. Trump likes to believe he knows what’s better for Israel than Israel’s own prime minister. It’s an astonishing claim, but then again, humility was never his strong suit. In recent months, Trump has scolded Benjamin Netanyahu for being “too tough,” for “losing control,” for not listening to his “advice.” As though the Middle East were another Manhattan construction deal waiting for “The Art of the Deal, Part II.”

But Israel is not a casino or a golf course. It is a nation surrounded by enemies sworn to its destruction, forced to make moral decisions in seconds that most American presidents wouldn’t dare confront in a lifetime. Trump’s belief that he “knows better” than Bibi is more than arrogance — it’s a dangerous illusion.

Yes, Trump gave Israel historic gifts. He recognized Jerusalem as its capital, moved the U.S. embassy, and tore up the Iran nuclear deal that Barack Obama had naively embraced. He blessed the Abraham Accords and ended decades of diplomatic paralysis. Those acts earned him deep gratitude and a chapter in Israel’s history books.

But gratitude does not equal obedience. And friendship is not fealty.

Netanyahu is not a client of Washington, nor a prop in an American political drama. He is the democratically chosen leader of the Jewish state, accountable to Israeli citizens — not to Trump’s campaign rallies. When Bibi weighs a military decision, he isn’t thinking about polling numbers in Michigan. He’s thinking about Jewish lives — children in Ashkelon, soldiers in Gaza, families in Sderot. Trump may understand power, but Bibi understands survival.

This isn’t the first time an American president has presumed to know what’s “best” for Israel. Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 threatened sanctions when Ben-Gurion refused to retreat from the Sinai after routing Egypt in the Suez War. Ben-Gurion resisted for as long as he could, declaring, “Israel will not be a vassal state.” He knew that dependence is the enemy of sovereignty.

Ronald Reagan, beloved as he was, also lectured Israel after Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Washington condemned it as “reckless.” A decade later, the entire world realized it was one of the most courageous preemptive strikes in modern history. Without Begin’s audacity, Saddam Hussein would have had the bomb.

Even Richard Nixon, who privately bristled at “those Jews,” understood better than most that Israel must be free to defend itself. When Golda Meir came to Washington during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Nixon — against the advice of his entire national security team — ordered an airlift that resupplied Israel’s nearly depleted forces. Nixon later said he acted because he remembered his mother telling him as a boy: “One day, the Jews will need help. And you must be there for them.” He didn’t think he knew better than Golda. He respected her judgment and trusted her instincts.

Benjamin Netanyahu carries the same burden those leaders carried — and more. He leads a nation that cannot afford to lose a single war. Every battle is existential. Every ceasefire is temporary. And every inch of restraint is analyzed by enemies who interpret mercy as weakness.

Trump, with all his bombast, confuses diplomacy with branding. He sees peace as a contract, not a covenant; war as a negotiation, not a nightmare. Netanyahu knows that the Jewish people are not living in the post-war world Trump imagines — We are still living in the shadow of the Crusades, vicious pogroms for thousands of years, and the Holocaust. We can not get this war wrong!

When Trump scolds Israel for being “too harsh” in Gaza, or for rejecting his “peace plans,” he betrays his ignorance of Jewish history. He forgets that every Israeli leader since 1948 — left, right, religious, secular — has been forced to make decisions that would break lesser men. From Ben-Gurion’s defiance in ’56 to Begin’s strike on Iraq, from Rabin’s painful Oslo gamble to Sharon’s tragic Gaza withdrawal, every Israeli prime minister has carried the same question: How do we stay alive?

That is the question Netanyahu wakes up with every morning. It’s not the question Donald Trump asks.

Trump’s favorite slogan, “America First,” should make him the first to understand why Israel must put Israel First. Yet somehow, when Israel asserts independence — when it refuses to bend to an American president’s political timetable — Trump takes it personally. He mistakes sovereignty for betrayal.

Israel’s moral compass cannot spin around Mar-a-Lago. Its security cabinet cannot be an appendage of a campaign committee. A true ally does not demand submission; he respects self-determination.

And this is what Trump fails to grasp: Israel’s mission is not to please the White House, but to protect Jewish life and Jewish destiny. The State of Israel exists precisely so that never again will Jews rely on the benevolence of foreign powers to live.

If that principle offends Donald Trump’s pride, so be it. It is the same principle that offended Pharaoh, Haman, and Antiochus — that the Jewish people answer to a higher authority than earthly kings.

When Trump says he knows what’s best for Israel, he’s revealing that he doesn’t understand what Israel is. It is not just a military power or a strategic ally. It is the vessel of a three-thousand-year covenant. Its survival defies logic, and its endurance is a miracle.

Bibi Netanyahu may be cynical at times, and his political maneuvers may exhaust even his supporters. But in his bones, he understands the ancient rhythm of Jewish destiny: Ein li al mi l’hisha’en ela al Avinu shebashamayim — “We have no one to rely on but our Father in Heaven.”

Trump believes in deals. Bibi believes in destiny. And that’s the difference.

Trump may think he knows what’s better for Israel. But Israel was not reborn so that foreign leaders — even friendly ones — could script its fate. It was reborn so that Jews could finally chart their own course, make their own mistakes, and defend their own existence — on their own terms.

And on that, Mr. Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu knows infinitely better.

 

REPUBLISHED: 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/no-trump-does-not-know-whats-better-for-israel-than-bibi/

The Theater of Absurdity: Trump’s Envoys Land in the Wrong Country!

 

'Bibi-sitting' the PM to keep ceasefire

 

CAN YOU FIND ISRAEL?

When the financiers of terror sit undisturbed in Qatar and Turkey, and the lectures are delivered in Jerusalem, the world has turned moral clarity into a diplomatic crime.

There are moments in history when the theater of politics becomes so absurd that even satire bows out, muttering, “I can’t compete with reality.” This is one of those moments. President Trump — self-anointed dealmaker, lover of spectacle, and self-proclaimed “friend of Israel” — is once again dispatching his emissaries, not to the sponsors of Hamas terror, not to the architects of October 7’s bloodshed, but to Israel itself.

One stands bewildered.

Why send envoys to Jerusalem, when the real puppeteers sit comfortably in Doha and Ankara? Why rebuke the patient, while ignoring the infection?

Qatar bankrolls Hamas — proudly, openly, even ostentatiously — hosting its leaders in five-star suites as they sip imported espresso and order more rockets for Gaza. Turkey, under Erdoğan, has turned its once-proud republic into a megaphone for Islamist rage, giving Hamas legitimacy as “freedom fighters.” These two nations don’t hide their intentions. They celebrate them.

And yet, it is Israel that receives the envoys, the lectures, the “urging of restraint.” Israel — still burying its dead, still retrieving the kidnapped, still patching the holes in its soul — is told to “show moderation.”
Moderation to whom?

To Hamas, which executed families and burned babies? To the sponsors who cheered it on?

One remembers the old Biblical pattern: the prophets were never sent to the nations who sinned, but to Israel, who could be rebuked. The nations never listen, and Israel, being moral, always listens too much. The modern prophets wear tailored suits and speak from press podiums, but the old script remains.

The bewilderment deepens when one recalls Trump’s boasts — that he was the “most pro-Israel president in history,” the architect of the Abraham Accords, the man who moved the embassy to Jerusalem. But in this new act of political theater, his envoys treat Israel not as an ally under siege, but as a misbehaving child in need of supervision.

Where are the envoys to Qatar, to demand the expulsion of Hamas’s politburo?

Where are the envoys to Turkey, to confront Erdoğan’s poisonous embrace of jihadist rhetoric?

Where are the sanctions, the diplomatic cold shoulders, the grandstanding that Trump so loves to perform when it suits his ego?

Perhaps the answer lies not in diplomacy but in vanity. Sending envoys to Qatar wins no votes. 

Confronting Turkey risks oil, trade, and complications with NATO. But pressuring Israel? That’s the easy applause line. It looks “balanced,” it sounds “presidential,” and it costs nothing politically. The irony is bitter — and so typically American.

Trump’s envoys should be landing in Doha, not Tel Aviv. They should be speaking to the financiers of terror, not the defenders of civilization. But perhaps that’s too much to expect from a world where moral courage is inversely proportional to global influence.

So the bewilderment remains.

REPUBLISHED: 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-theater-of-absurdity-trumps-envoys-land-in-the-wrong-country/

 

 From Tablet:

"President Trump's Middle East emissaries were chatting with Lesley Stahl, and, like a modern day Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, delivered a few perfect deadpan howlers. As Park Macdougald reported in The Scroll:

 

Our favorite was Witkoff's claim that to convince Hamas to disarm, the United States would be arranging a "weapons buyback program"—a ludicrous proposal made even funnier by its association with decades of Democratic Party domestic gun control efforts. (If it's too hard to buy back assault rifles from Steve in Waycross, Georgia, try convincing Abu Jihad in Gaza City.) Kushner was less ridiculous but possibly more misguided. "The success or failure of this will be if Israel and this international mechanism is able to create a viable alternative [to Hamas]. If they are successful, Hamas will fail, and Gaza will not be a threat to Israel in the future," Kushner said during the interview. "You can't replace a corrupt government with another corrupt government."

 

How to react to such blatant bulls***? Maybe a quote from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations can come in handy: "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

 

It's Tablet's literary editor David Samuels's favorite quote from the great Roman, and in a blockbuster essay in Tablet today, Samuels tracks the insanity that is crippling so much of the west and keeping it from recognizing simple truths that would have been self-evident to westerners from Aurelius onwards. He writes:

 

I am not a fan of killing babies. On the other hand, as a person who exists in the world, I accept the death of innocent people, children included, as part of the observable world of cause and effect, which is at best only partially amenable to human control. That belief hardly makes me a monster. In fact, it makes me a normal citizen of any civilized order I might name, whether Roman, Christian, Muslim or Enlightenment Europe. It is true however, that some individual human decisions may tilt the odds in favor of less fortunate outcomes. For example, if you choose to cross the border of your enemy and murder over 1,100 people in the most barbaric ways imaginable, your life is very likely forfeit, as are the lives of your family members and neighbors—not to mention the leaders of the states that trained you and funded your attack. To believe otherwise would be to license barbarism, which historically didn't work out too well for Rome or any other empire that tried it."