I am not sure why I still get amazed and astounded by the way people praise Hamas, defend Hamas, and blame Israel and the Jews for everything that Hamas does. I shake my head as people are openly racist and show their Jew hatred by putting the blame entirely on Israel.
The actor Mark Ruffalo has been one of these people, blaming Israel and the Jews for everything. His bigotry, racism, and Jew hatred is beyond disgusting. I will no longer watch anything he has been in or will be in or be affiliated with. He recently posted on X (Twitter) blaming the US, President Biden, the IDF, and Prime Minister Netanyahu for Hamas murdering Hersh Goldberg-Polin (he neglected the other 5 hostages that were murdered because they weren’t well known enough). It didn’t matter that it was Hamas who attacked on October 7, that Hamas took him/them captive, that Hamas didn’t release them, or that Hamas murdered him/them with a bullet to the back of the head because they were getting close to being freed by the IDF. To Racist Ruffalo, they are blameless.
One person who has been speaking out against this racist behavior is the journalist Chris Cuomo. I have been surprisingly inspired by his coverage and how he clearly speaks the truth. As I watched the video below, I found myself responding out loud and wondering why the other journalists have been so blind and continue to see what is happening. I encourage you to watch his piece and share it with people who don’t understand. Chris Cuomo is not Jewish. He does get it.
As a passionate Zionist, somebody who has Israel deep in their soul, who travels there as often as possible, and has many friends and family who live in Israel, I get lots of information from people on the ground. My friend Yaron was the reserve commander in Gaza for the first four months of the war and has shared what October 7 was like and some of what he has faced and seen in Gaza. I have many friends who have served and been recalled to serve. Many friends who have children currently serving or been recalled in reserves. The word “Melowim‘, one I had never heard before October 8th, is now common. It is being recalled to serve in the IDF. I hear about a friend or a friend’s child having to do Melowim almost weekly.
When I was running Hillel at the University of Florida, we took many busses on Birthright to Israel every winter and summer break. The relationships made with these students have lasted decades. Recently, one of these students posted as he was finishing his duty in Gaza. He is American. When he went on Birthright with us, he was struggling and figuring life out. The trip inspired him to make changes and he ended up making Aliyah, serving in the IDF, returning to get his bachelors and masters degrees. A true life success story where Israel was the fulcrum that he needed to make change. Miles posted this on Instagram along with these photos. It is important to read what somebody who has been there sees. To view the pictures documenting what he is telling us. I hope it gives you a better feel for Hamas and most of the people in Gaza.
(Please read and view photos) As I finish my rotation in Gaza I wanted to share a few things that I witnessed to make the situation here abundantly clear: There was not a single house we entered in Gaza that did not have terrorist paraphernalia (whether it be Hamas, PFLP, or Fattah). The rest of the houses had family photos like the ones I’ve shared in this post (wedding photos where the entire family are holding AK47s, including the grandmother), back to school photos of children with assault rifles, etc. We found in houses copies of Mein Kampf published in Arabic. I found military manuals on weapons and small unit tactics in the same pile of rubble with children’s school backpacks. It is clear to me as it should be clear to everyone else (considering they rape and murder children, kidnap people and starve them in dungeons, murder hostages) that Gaza is a society that is solely devoted to the murder and destruction of the Jewish people. Since that is the truth, how can anyone expect to make a deal with the people who live here when their only aspiration in life is our death and destruction. Something that I hope is worth considering.
We are in an untenable situation. We want and need the hostages back. Hamas knows this and continues to negotiate for their release or a ceasefire unless they are allowed to go back to the way things were on October 6, 2023. That is also an unacceptable situation since that only ensures more things like October 7 will happen. The discovery of the tunnels at the Philadelphi Corridor into Egypt shows that Israel cannot trust Egypt on that border and must maintain control in the area to prevent rockets, bombs, guns, and more terrorists coming in. Hamas, of course, has made leaving it a condition of any ceasefire.
The thing that frustrates me is how people continue to fall into Hamas’s trap. They continue to empower Hamas in the most predictible ways. After the murder of Hersh, Eden, Carmel, Almog, Alex, and Ori, the demands for whatever deal needed to get the hostages back has emboldened Hamas to change their demands and to want more.
The more evil Hamas behaves, the more reinforcement they get, and the more they dig in and demand even more. We want the hostages back so much that we are tempted and some are willing to do anything that it takes. Noted American-Israeli author and journalist Yossi Klein-Halevi wrote exactly that in an article in the Times of Israel a few days ago.
The counter to Yossi Klein Halevi’s argument is New York Times columnist Brett Stephens. In a column titled, A Hostage Deal Is a Poison Pill for Israel, he wrote
Since the days of Abraham — who, according to Genesis, rescued his nephew Lot after he’d been seized by an invading army — Jewish tradition has placed supreme value on the redemption of captives. It is, in a sense, the fulfillment of a primary, implicit commandment: to be one’s brother’s keeper. It is also a source of Jewish communal cohesion over millenniums to never forsake those who have been taken, even if only to give them a proper burial.
It’s also, to mix references from antiquity, a Jewish Achilles’ heel.
In 2006, an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas and held in Gaza. He was released five years later in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners — a euphemism, in many cases, for terrorists. The deal, which was approved by Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, included the release of Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Oct. 7.
These two reference points are now at the heart of the debate Israelis are having about what comes next in Gaza. Huge demonstrations in Tel Aviv, coinciding with the heartbreaking funerals of six murdered hostages, have demanded that the prime minister agree to a cease-fire deal to obtain the release of additional hostages, at the cost of conceding one of Hamas’s core demands: an Israeli withdrawal from a strip of land known as the Philadelphi Corridor, which separates Gaza from Egypt. Netanyahu has refused, insisting in a news conference on Monday that Israeli forces will not leave.
Netanyahu is right, and it’s important for his usual critics, including me, to acknowledge it.
He’s right, first because the highest justification for fighting a war, besides survival, is to prevent its repetition. Israel has lost hundreds of soldiers to defeat Hamas. Thousands of innocent Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands have suffered, because Hamas has held every Gazan hostage to its fanatical aims. Hamas was able to initiate and fight this war only because of a secure line of logistical supply under its border with Egypt.
Israel’s control of the Philadelphi Corridor largely stops this. To relinquish it now, for any reason, forsakes what Israel has been fighting for, consigns Palestinians to further misery under Hamas and all but guarantees that a similar war will eventually be fought again. Why do that?
The answer, many of Netanyahu’s critics (including Yoav Gallant, his defense minister) would rejoin, is that the imperative to save the hostages supersedes every other consideration — and that Israel can always retake the corridor if Hamas fails to fulfill its end of the bargain or if Israelis feel their security is again at risk.
That last argument is a fantasy: Once Israel leaves Gaza, international pressure for it not to re-enter for nearly any reason short of another Oct. 7 will be overwhelming. And Hamas will ensure that any Israeli effort to retake the corridor will be as bloody as possible, for both Israelis and Palestinians, whom Sinwar treats as human shields. Those risks, too, should weigh on the moral scales of what Israel does next.
The more powerful case, especially emotionally, concerns the remaining 95 hostages, of whom 60 are believed to still be alive. Their agony is immense, as is that of their families. Any decent human being must feel acutely sympathetic to their plight.
But sympathy cannot be a replacement for judgment. Israelis — the hostage families above all — have spent the past 11 months suffering the bitter and predictable consequence of the Shalit deal, which also came about on account of intense public pressure to free him.
A good society will be prepared to go to great lengths to rescue or redeem a captive, whether with risky military operations or exorbitant ransoms. Yet there must also be a limit to what any society can afford to pay. The price for one hostage’s life or freedom cannot be the life or freedom of another — even if we know the name of the first life but not yet the second. That ought to be morally elementary.
Also elementary: Whatever one thinks of Netanyahu, the weight of outrage should fall not on him but on Hamas. It released a video of a hostage it later murdered — 24-year-old Eden Yerushalmi, telling her family how much she loved them — on Monday, the day after her funeral. It’s another act of cynical, grotesque and unadulterated sadism by the group that pretends to speak in the name of all Palestinians. It does not deserve a cease-fire so that it can regain its strength. It deserves the same ash heap of history on which, in our better moments, we deposited the Nazis, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
There are bright people who say that what Israel ought to do now is cut a deal, recover its hostages, take a breather and start preparing for the next war, probably in Lebanon. Israelis should remember that wars will be worse, and come more often, to those who fail to win them.
Both Yossi Klein-Halevi and Brett Stephens are correct. It’s an incredibly challenging situation. The one thing they both agree on is that the problem is Hamas. Chris Cuomo points out the problem is Hamas. Representative Ritchie Torres addresses Hamas as the problem. Senator John Fetterman calls out Hamas. Yet Vice President candidate Tim Walz says that those protesting American support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza are doing so for “all the right reasons.” While he states Israel has the right to defend herself, he qualifies it by saying that, “we can’t allow what’s happened in Gaza to happen. The Palestinian people have every right to life and liberty themselves.” without ever mentioning Hamas, the reason for the attack on October 7, the ones who took the hostages, the ones who fire rockets on civilians, use human shields, place their military headquarters and armories in schools, hospitals, private homes, and mosques. Hamas, who won’t agree to a ceasefire, who still has children as hostages, and who just brutally murdered six hostages including an American, remains nameless and blameless.
A decade ago, the late Joan Rivers (z”l) was asked what she thought about the conflict, the possibility of a two state solution and more. Her epic response is even more true today. It’s worth watching and replacing Palestinians with Hamas
As we get closer to the election in November, campuses heat up with antisemitism and Jew hatred, protests grow all over the world, especially in front of Jewish spaces, we must remember that it is Hamas, funded by Iran. That is who is responsible for the horror of October 7. They are responsible for the taking and keeping of the hostages. They are responsible for using human shields and terrorizing the people of Gaza. They are who murdered Hersh, Eden, Carmel, Almog, Alex, and Ori. No matter how people want to twist things, we must always remind them that it is Hamas. Hamas is evil and we are fighting evil. Failure to fight evil will only allow it to grow.
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